[103] Ibid., fols. 120v-124v.
APPENDIX I
THE PROBLEM OF DATING THE DE EODEM ET DIVERSO AND QUESTIONES NATURALES AND OF THEIR RELATIONS TO EACH OTHER
Difficulty of the problem.
It is a difficult matter to fix the date either of the De eodem et diverso or of the Questiones naturales, and to account satisfactorily for the various allusions to contemporary events and to Adelard’s own movements which occur in either. It is not even entirely certain which treatise was written first, as neither contains an unmistakable allusion to the other. On general grounds the De eodem et diverso would certainly seem the earlier work, but there are some reasons for thinking the contrary. It seems clear that not many years elapsed between the composition of the two works, but how many is uncertain. It is evident that the De eodem et diverso must have been written by 1116 at the latest in order to dedicate it to William, bishop of Syracuse. But the Questiones naturales apparently might have been dedicated to Richard, bishop of Bayeux, at almost any time during his pontificate from 1107 to 1133, although probably not long after 1116.
Before what queen did Adelard play the cithara?
Professor Haskins would narrow down the time during which the De eodem et diverso could have been written to the years from about 1104 to 1109, with the single year 1116 as a further possibility. He says, “Adelard speaks of having played the cithara before the queen in the course of his musical studies in France the preceding year, and as there was no queen of France between the death of Philip I and the marriage of Louis VI in 1115, the treatise, unless the bishop of Syracuse was still alive in 1116, would not be later than 1109.”[104] But may not the queen referred to have been Matilda, the wife of Henry I?[105] She was a patroness both of artists and of men of letters, and the Pipe Roll for 1130 and the treatise on the astrolabe have shown us that later, at least, it was the English royal family with which Adelard, himself an Englishman, was connected. It is of “Gaul,” not of “France” in the sense of territory subject to the French monarch, that Adelard writes,[106] and Normandy was of course under Henry’s rule after the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.
Circumstances under which the De eodem et diverso was written.
The De eodem et diverso takes the form of a letter[107] from Adelard to his nephew, justifying his “laborious itinerary” in pursuit of learning against the reproach of “levity and inconstancy” made by the nephew, and stating “the cause of my travel among the learned men of various regions,” at which the nephew has time and again expressed his astonishment, and the reasons for which his uncle has kept concealed from him for two years.[108] This letter seems to have been written by Adelard in Sicily, since it is prefaced with a dedication to William, bishop of Syracuse, and since towards its close Adelard speaks of “coming from Salerno into Graecia maior”[109]—a phrase by which he presumably refers to the ancient Magna Graecia, or southern Italy, and perhaps also Sicily. In the preceding year, however, Adelard and his nephew had been together in Tours.[110] It thus appears that the De eodem was written not very long after Adelard set out on his quest for foreign learning, while he was still in the Greek or semi-Greek learned society of southern Italy and Sicily, and presumably before he had come into contact with the science of the Saracens, which he does not mention in the De eodem et diverso, although traces of it undoubtedly lingered in Sicily. He writes as if the idea had only comparatively recently come to him “that he could much broaden his education, if he crossed the Alps and visited other teachers than those of Gaul.”
Different situation depicted in the Natural Questions.