Adelard of Bath - Background

Background

Given the time period when he was alive, Adelard’s biography is spotty in places and leaves some aspects open to interpretation. As a result, much of what we ascribe to Adelard is a product of his own testimony. As his name suggests, he was born in the Roman English city of Bath but how he lived is not entirely known. Despite his expansive travels, by the end of his life he had returned to Bath, where he died. Scholars are hesitant to ascribe definitive parents to the philosopher but Fastred, a tenant of the Bishop of Wells, is mostly plausibly identified as this figure. His name (Adelard) is of Angle-Saxon origin, which would have placed him in the subordinate class, status wise, in 11th-century England. It is believed that he left England toward the end of the 11th century for Tours, likely on the advice of Bishop John de Villula, who had moved the seat of his bishopric from Wells to Bath in 1090. During his studies in Tours, an anonymous "wise man of Tours" inspired Adelard with his interest in astronomy to study the science. Adelard later taught for a time at Laon, leaving Laon for travel no later than 1109. After leaving Laon, he travelled to Southern Italy and Sicily no later than 1116.

Adelard also travelled extensively throughout the "lands of the Crusades": Greece, West Asia, Sicily, Spain, and potentially Palestine. The time spent in these areas would help explain his fascination with mathematics and his access to Arabic scholars. Tarsus and Antioch. By 1126, Adelard returned to the West with the intention of spreading the knowledge he had gained about Arab astronomy and geometry to the Latin world. One aspect of particular interest with respect to Adelard, his teachings, and the time period he grew up, was the relation to the Crusades. This time of remarkable transition marked an opportunity for someone to gain valuable influence over the evolution of human history. While the Crusades offered little in the way of a “victor,” Adelard’s nondiscriminatory scholarly work inspired him to bring back to England many ancient texts and new questions that would later give rise to an English Renaissance. Again, given the 11th-century time period that Adelard was alive, it was understandably difficult for Adelard to have achieved his educational pursuits. In the absence of a printing press and given the weak public literacy rate, books were rare items in medieval Europe—generally held only by royal courts or Catholic monastic communities (Kraye, et. al. 1987). Fittingly, Adelard studied with monks at the Benedictine Monastery at Bath's Cathedral.