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578 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
and Mesopotamia into Syriac; in the eighth, ninth, and tenth
centuries they were translated, both from the Syriac and the
Greek, into Arabic. Though some Arabic scientific influence
is detectable in the west as early as the end ofthe tenth century,
the new translations into Latin did not begin effectively until
the end of the eleventh
century, when the Norman conquest
of Sicily and the reconquest of New Castile brought many
Arabicxspeaking subjects under Christian rule. For over a
century and a half scholars journeyed from all over the west
to these frontiers of Christendom and Islam, and made Sicily
and Toledo the chiefcentres of translating into Latin from the
Arabic. About the same time translating began also from the
original Greek, Sicily again being an active centre, and some
scholars travelling to Byzantium.
The first English scholar to take part in this movement was
Adelard of Bath. Little is known of Adelard except from his
own writings, but the evidence shows that he was born at Bath,
of English stock, went early to France to study at the cathedral
school at Tours, and later taught at Laon. He travelled
widely,
visiting Greece and probably Sicily some time before 1 1 16. He
refers to a
seven^years* absence in search of Arabic learning,
specifically mentioning things heard in Tarsus and an earth/*
quake witnessed from a bridge at Antioch, then under a
Crusader prince; at this time he possibly visited the Latin kingx
dom ofJerusalem. He may also have been in Spain. By 1126
he was back at Bath, making the geometry and astronomy of
the Arabs available to the Latin world. After this the evidence
connects him with the AngkvNorman court of Henry I,
possibly with a post in the exchequer, and suggests that he was
tutor to the future Henry II; he wore a green cloak and was
almost certainly not a monk.
Educated in the old Latin tradition ofthe cathedral schools,
Adelard belonged to the generation of scholars who brought
about the first
stages ofthe intellectual revolution coming with
the new learning from the old Byzantine regions of southern
Italy and from the Arabic east. Adelard himselfwas the first
known Latin scholar to assimilate Arabic science in the revival