ABSTRACT
First, the good news. Frederick II’s official astrologer, Michael Scot, hadclass. He predicted his own death. Charting his horoscope he found that he would be killed when a stone of a particular weight fell on his head, so he began wearing a helmet at all times. Once, during mass in a church, he lifted the helmet and a small stone fell from the vault, injuring him slightly. He weighed the stone, found it was the predicted weight, went to bed and died. The year was 1235. He had joined the Holy Roman Emperor’s court in Italy in 1220 as resident alchemist and astrologer. His most singular achievement, apart from predicting his death, was the translation of Aristotle that reached Europeans through that great Arab scholar, Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes. Frederick was one of those great princes who sought to build personal and intellectual bridges between the worlds of Christendom and Islam during the first half of the thirteenth century.
