While the Breton, Abelard, and the Saxon, Hugh of St. Victor, were reviewing patristic literature from somewhat new angles and were laying the foundations of scholastic method, an Englishman, Adelard of Bath,[26] was primarily interested in exploring the fields of mathematical and natural science. As Hugh came from Saxony to Paris and Abelard went forth from his native Brittany through the towns of France in quest of Christian teachers, so Adelard, leaving not only his home in England but the schools of Gaul where he had been teaching, made a much more extensive intellectual pilgrimage even to lands Mohammedan. “It is worth while,” he declares in one of his works, “to visit learned men of different nations, and to remember whatever you find is most excellent in each case. For what the schools of Gaul do not know, those beyond the Alps reveal; what you do not learn among the Latins, well-informed Greece will teach you.”[27] Adelard seems to have devoted himself especially to Arabian learning and to have made a number of translations from the Arabic, continuing at the beginning of the twelfth century that transfer of Graeco-Arabic science which we have associated with the name of Gerbert in the tenth century and which Constantinus Africanus carried on in the eleventh century. Adelard himself hints that some of his new ideas are not derived from his Arabian masters but are his own, and Haskins has well characterized him as a pioneer in the study of natural science.
Some dates in his career.
Adelard has been described as “a dim and shadowy figure in the history of European learning,”[28] and the dates of his birth and death are unknown. We possess, however, a number of his works and some may be either approximately or exactly dated. In the preface to his translation of the astronomical tables of Al-Khowarizmi he seems to give the year as 1126.[29] The Pipe Roll for 1130 informs us that Adelard received four shillings and six pence at that time from the sheriff of Wiltshire. This suggests that he was in the employ of the king’s court,[30] and his brief treatise on the astrolabe seems to be dedicated to Prince Henry Plantagenet,[31] later Henry II, and to have been written between 1142 and 1146. It was probably one of his last works and in it he mentions specifically three earlier works.[32] Two other writings, which are the best known and apparently the most original of his works, namely the Questiones naturales and De eodem et diverso, may be dated approximately from the fact that they are dedicated respectively to Richard, Bishop of Bayeux from 1107 to 1133, and to William, Bishop of Syracuse, who died in 1115 or 1116. Both works are addressed to Adelard’s nephew, who is presumably the same person in both cases, one in the form of a letter, the other of a conversation, and both justify Adelard’s studies in foreign lands. In an appendix to this chapter the question when these two treatises were written and their relations to each other will be discussed more fully.
Mathematical treatises.
The subjects of a majority of Adelard’s known works and translations are mathematical or astronomical. The most elementary is a treatise on the abacus, Regule abaci,[33] in which his chief authorities are Boethius and Gerbert and he seems as yet unacquainted with Arabic mathematics. [34] But most of the mathematical treatises extant under Adelard’s name are from the Arabic, such as his translation of Euclid’s Elements;[35] of the astronomical tables of Al-Khowarizmi—who flourished under the patronage of the caliph Al-Mamum (813-833)—“apparently as revised by Maslama at Cordova,” under the title Liber Ezich; and, if by a “Master A” Adelard is meant, of a treatise of the first half of the twelfth century on the four arts of the quadrivium and especially on astronomy, which is apparently also a work of Al-Khowarizmi.[36] Some of the introductory books on the quadrivium have been printed,[37] but “the astronomical treatise has not yet been specially studied.”[38] One therefore cannot say how far it may indulge in astrology, but we are told that Adelard translated from the Arabic another “astrological treatise, evidently of Abu Ma’ashar Dja’afar,”[39] or Albumasar. We have already mentioned in another chapter the ascription to Adelard of one Latin translation of the superstitious work of Thebit ben Corat on astrological images, and in the present chapter the treatise on the astrolabe for Henry Plantagenet.
Adelard and alchemy.
Adelard was interested in alchemy as well as astrology and magic, if the attribution to him in a thirteenth century manuscript[40] of the twelfth century version of the Mappe clavicula is correct. We have seen that the original version of that work was much older than Adelard’s time, but he perhaps made additions to it, or translated a fuller Arabic version. The occurrence of some Arabic and English words in certain chapters of the later copies are perhaps signs of his contributions. Berthelot, however, thought that few of the new items in the twelfth century version originated with Adelard and that many of the additions were taken by him, or by whoever was responsible for the later version, from Greek rather than Arabic sources.[41]
Importance of the Natural Questions.
Our attention will be devoted chiefly to the two treatises by Adelard which we have already mentioned as the most original of his works. Of these the Natural Questions are evidently much more important than the De eodem et diverso, which is largely taken up with a justification, in the style of allegorical personification made so popular by Martianus Capella and Boethius, and with much use of Plato’s Timaeus, of the seven liberal arts against the five worldly interests of wealth, power, ambition, dignities, and pleasure. The Natural Questions, although put into a dramatic dialogue form somewhat reminiscent of Plato, deal without much persiflage with a number of concrete problems of natural science to which definite answers are attempted.
Occasion of writing.