King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts. Claudia Gold
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William was one of Europe’s great scholars. He possibly taught at the great cathedral school of Chartres in northern France, was either a physician or a physicist (he is described as a ‘physicus’ which meant both), and had a passion for the natural sciences. William wrote commentaries on the works of Plato, Boethius and the Latin grammarian Priscian. When he quarrelled with a bishop, he sought sanctuary with Geoffrey. William approved of Geoffrey’s attitude to education. He dedicated his magnificent work Dragmaticon philosophiae (‘Dialogue on Natural Philosophy’) – the culmination of his studies in natural philosophy and observations of the physical universe, written for Henry – to Geoffrey, praising him for encouraging his children to study rather than playing the popular game of hazard.106 This became one of the most important texts of the twelfth-century renaissance. The work ranged over subjects such as medicine and astronomy, and took the form of a ‘dialogue’ between a philosopher and a duke – that is, between William and Henry. One particular episode may have been based on the recollection of a conversation that took place between them:
Duke: ‘There is one thing that still puzzles me about hearing. If I emit a sound in a cave or a high forest, someone repeats and returns my word to me.’
Philosopher: ‘Do you not know, then, that this is performed by “Echo, the resounding nymph”?’
Duke: ‘I am not Narcissus to be pursued by her. I ask for a physical explanation.’
The philosopher goes on to explain the science to his pupil, and the duke replies, ‘I do not know if what you are saying is true, but I do know that it pleases me a great deal. And so I am waiting all the more keenly for what remains to be said about the other senses.’
Philosopher: ‘It pleases me that such explanations please you.’107
William had taught John of Salisbury – himself among the greatest writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, who wrote on the intellectual energy of the age, and the debt owed to the past:
Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the menial strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Clairvaux used to compare us to punt dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.108
The linguist and scientist Adelard of Bath, at the forefront of this renaissance, also had a profound impact on Henry’s education. Adelard probably taught Henry when he was at Bristol. He was famed for his knowledge of Arabic and his translations into Latin of Arabic treatises on mathematics and astronomy. It was Adelard who introduced Arabic innovations in mathematics into England and France. He had travelled for seven years in Italy, Sicily, Antioch and Cilicia (the southern coast of Turkey), dedicating himself to the ‘studies of the Arabs’.109
The twelfth century saw an explosion in knowledge and cultural exchange from as far afield as the icy western fringes of northern Europe to the Middle East. Crusaders had established a Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem in 1099, and it would not fall until nearly two centuries later.
In 1130 in Sicily, a Norman mercenary – Count Roger de Hauteville – founded a dynasty, conquering the island and much of southern Italy. He and his successors presided over a society of remarkable cultural and religious tolerance, marked by an exchange of ideas between Christians, Muslims and Jews. It was a place where all scholars, regardless of faith, were welcomed. From the ninth century, Spain’s Christian kings began their slow conquest of the Iberian Peninsula from its Muslim rulers, leading to a ‘rediscovery’ of the ideas of Greece and Rome, and Arabic intellectual developments, in western Europe. It was in this exceptional atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and achievement that we find tolerant and humanitarian scholars such as Adelard bringing the ideas and teachings of the Greeks, the Muslims and the Jews to the cathedral schools and the burgeoning European universities. Henry learned from among their finest.
In 1150, Adelard dedicated his work De opera astrolapsus (‘The Workings of the Astrolabe’) to Henry. Here he laid out his understanding of the cosmos, gave detailed instructions on how to use the astrolabe, a device used to track the path of the sun and the stars, and even included a section on hawking as light relief for the scholar. It was the apotheosis of his career.
Adelard’s dedication to Henry sets out the aspirations he held for his able pupil:
I thoroughly approve of the fact that the nobility of a royal race applies itself to the study of the liberal arts. But I find it all the more remarkable that preoccupation in the affairs of government does not distract the mind from that study. Thus I understand that you, Henry, since you are the grandson of a king, have understood with the complete attention of your mind, what is said by Philosophy: that states are blest either if they are handed over for philosophers to rule, or if their rulers adhere to philosophy … Since your childhood was once imbued with the scent of this reasoning, your mind preserves it for a long time, and the more heavily it is weighed down by outside occupations, the more diligently it withdraws itself from them. Hence it happens that you not only read carefully and with understanding those things that the writings of the Latins contain, but you also dare to wish to understand the opinions of the Arabs concerning the sphere, and the circles and movements of the planets. For you say that whoever lives in a house, if he is ignorant of its material or composition, its size or kind, its position or parts, is not worthy of such a dwelling …110
The love of learning and spirit of inquiry Henry imbibed from these exemplary scholars would last all his life. His parents had provided him with the tools to be anything he wanted. His teachers (or masters, magistri), tolerant and inquisitive, had opened Henry’s mind; many chroniclers tell of his passion for books, learning and discourse. He would aspire to be a philosopher-prince in the Platonic mould.111
V
The first war on English soil since the Conquest was a war of attrition, bitter and vindictive, with the rule of law sporadic. Although the fighting was mostly confined to the south-east and south-west of England, Stephen’s leadership was inadequate. Contemporaries called it ‘the anarchy’, a time when they believed themselves abandoned by Christ. The author of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote in despair, ‘The earth bore no corn, for the land was all laid waste … and people said openly, that Christ and his saints slept.’
When he was fourteen Henry, imbued with loyalty to his parents and belief in his own right to rule, decided to fight alongside his mother for their birthright. At the beginning of 1147, he hired mercenaries on credit and sailed to England with a few companions to aid her. He led an attack against his first cousin, Philip of Gloucester, at Cricklade, just over thirty miles west of Oxford. Philip, Robert’s son, had deserted Matilda for Stephen, ‘seeing that at that time the king had the upper hand, [he] entered into a pact of peace and concord with him, and after being lavishly endowed with castles and lands, he gave hostages and paid him homage’.112 Philip’s defection was a reminder of the extent to which this war left families bitterly divided. But it is likely that Geoffrey knew nothing about his eldest son’s trip to England, for Henry had no money to pay his men, and had arrived in England with virtually nothing; once they realised, they deserted. Henry, desperate, asked his mother for money but she had none to spare. His uncle, Robert, gave him a similar answer.
When Stephen’s forces routed him nearby, at Bampton in Oxfordshire, Henry persuaded his cousin to give him money to pay for his journey home. Unwisely, Stephen agreed; he was, according to the author of the Gesta Stephani, ‘always full of pity and compassion’. But whether it