The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [17]
The intellectual plunder of Toledo brought the scholars of northern Europe like moths to a candle. They streamed over the Pyrenean passes and along the Provençal coastline through Barcelona, heading for the fortress city on the Tagus. A spectacular sight, Toledo rose on a granite cliff, the green waters of the river circling it below in a deep ravine. It had been the Visigoth capital for two hundred years until the Arab invasions of 711. Significantly for the intellectual life of Toledo, it was the home of the biggest Jewish population in Spain: in the year of the city’s capture by the Christians they numbered about ten thousand. These Jews and the few Christian scholars in residence were to be of the greatest help to the academic tourists from the north.
The scholars came in a steady flood. Some stayed, some translated the text they were looking for and returned to the north. All of them were amazed by the culture they found. The Arabs regarded the northern Europeans as being on an intellectual and cultural level with the Somalis. The intellectual community which the northern scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Arab culture which was to colour Western opinion for centuries.
One of the first scholars to arrive and to take back what he discovered was an Englishman from Bath. His name was Adelard, and his prime interest was in astronomy. In Spain he found much more. Adelard had previously travelled through other Muslim countries, having finished his studies at the cathedral school of Laon. After passing through Syria, Palestine and Sicily, he reached Toledo some time in the second decade of the twelfth century. When he returned to England with his translated texts, the most important part of his baggage was the Latin version of an Arab translation of Euclid’s geometry.
But it was Adelard’s exposition of the new method of thought he found exemplified in the Arab texts that made the greatest impact on his European contemporaries. He described it in two books, which took the form of conversations with a young nephew who had never travelled and who wanted to know what his uncle had learned from the Arabs. The books show that Adelard had acquired rationalism and the secular, investigative approach typical of Arab natural science. Among the points he made was: ‘The further South you go, the more they know. They know how to think. From the Arabs I have learned one thing: if you are led by authority, that means you are led by a halter.rsquo;
Adelard’s new insight convinced him of the power of reasoning, rather than the blind respect for all past authority that he had left in Latin Europe.
Although man is not armed by nature nor is naturally swiftest in flight, yet he has something better by far - reason. The visible universe is subject to quantification, and is so by necessity…. Between you and me only reason will be the judge … since you proceed according to the rational method, so shall I.… I will also give reason and take it…. This generation has an innate vice. It can’t accept anything that has been discovered by a contemporary!
And in a sweeping attack on authority and obedience to dogma, he wrote: ‘If you wish to hear more from me, give and take reason—because I am not the kind of man to satisfy his hunger on the picture of a steak!’
This kind of approach was not, in itself, the stuff of revolution. But together with what else was coming in from Spain, it was explosive. After Adelard returned, many others from all over Europe went in search of the knowledge of Spain, among them Robert of Chester, Hermann of Carinthia, Hugh of Santalla, Raymond of Marseilles, Plato of Tivoli and Michael the Scot. Some stayed to work for Raymond, Archbishop of Toledo, who in 1135 set up a loose fraternity of translators to deal with the mountain of manuscripts coming in from all over the newly conquered regions of Spain.
An Arabic drawing of the constellation of Leo. A major source of Greek astronomy was preserved in