Sicut anima de incorporalibus velud odore, pulcritudine, suavi auditu, et cetera. Michael Scotus, Liber introductorius (for a translation, see Glenn Michael Edwards’s edition, available at http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll36/id/111855)
In March of this year I took an interest in Michael Scotus (Michel Scot) and scoured the Internet in pursuit of versions of his texts. Whilst looking for early translations into English, I came across this gem of a Q&A passage from a book published in 1609 (hence the old spellings):
Q. What is the Soule?
A. It is a spirituall and reall substance created by God to enliven the body; and by how much the heaven is more glorious then the earth, by so much doth the [Page 345] beauty of the soule excell the body; the immediate descent being from God, and not from the body: for the Wise-man saith, Si cum corpore oritur, cum corpore moritur: If it had his beginning from the body, then the bodies end would determine that, but after the soule once lives, it never dyes, it dwels in the body, and governes it, as the Pylot in the Ship, directing it from haven to haven: the Soule is all this while imprisoned in the body, and yet to it some bodies are pallaces to others streightned prisons: according as one writes one,
She who’s saire body no such prison was,
But that a Soule might well bee be pleas’d to passe
An age in her. And so further speaking of the freedome of the Soule in death, saith then,
Think that a rusty peece dischargd is flowne
[Page 346] In sunder, and the bullet is his owne.
Q. Wherefore is the Soule of man called the Lanthorne of God?
A. For the Light that is infused into it by God, in whom all the Divine faculties dwell, and therefore for the most part is put for the whole man: for, mens cuius (que) es est quisque.
The philosophers banquet
furnished with few dishes for health: but large discourse for pleasure. Dilating by table, conference [sic] of the natures and qualities of things, the alterations & changes of states, of the ingenious and acted conceitednes of men, both phisically, and philosophically. Translated by W.B. Esquire
London, printed by N[icholas]. O[kes]. for Leonard Becket, and are to be sold at his shop in the Inner Temple, 1609
I shall be updating this page with any such excerpts I shall stumble across in whilst reading through the literature.
In the meantime, you might want to read http://paulzanotelli.ch/blog/spirituality/soul/intro.html.
Lausanne, 21st November 2020