Un neveu entre deux évêques

In tracing the beginnings of Adelard of Bath’s intellectual journey, it is useful to consider the bishops to whom he dedicated his first works: Guillaume de Syracuse in the case of De eodem et diverso, and Richard de Douvres in the case of Questiones naturales. A third individual, whom Adelard introduces as his nephew, is his interlocutor in these two texts and in De avibus tractatus. The sequence of these three treatises can be seen as the steps in an intellectual self-education.