Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck

Legends about Gerbert and his talking head had circulated for at least fifty years before William's early twelfth-century account, often conjoined to stories of how he had learned the impermissible arts of necromancy in Muslim Spain, and had summoned the Devil in order to enter into a diabolical pact. William repeated, embellished, and changed some aspects of Gerbert's biography, while adhering to the main elements of the narrative. According to William, Gerbert acquired the knowledge and skill to create his oracular head during a lengthy sojourn in Seville. After growing up in the Cluniac monastery of Saint-Géraud, Gerbert escaped the strictures of monastic rule to pursue his education. ''[E]ither bored with monastic life or smitten with a desire for glory, he fled one night to Spain, intending primarily to learn the science of the stars and others of this kind of art from the Saracens.'' 3 It was [t]here he conquered Ptolemy in knowledge of the astrolabe, Alhandreus in the positions of the stars, Julius Firmicus in prophesying. There he learned what the song and flight of birds portended, there he learned to summon ghostly forms from hell; there he learned everything that is either harmful or healthful that has been discovered by human curiosity; but on the permitted arts, such as arithmetic, music, and astronomy, and geometry, I need say nothing. By the way he absorbed them he made them appear beneath his ability, and through great effort he recalled to Gaul those subjects that had been long obsolete. He was truly the first to snatch the abacus from the Saracens, and gave the rules for it that abacists, for all their intelligence, hardly understand. 4 William's description of Gerbert's intellectual achievements, including the talking head, is more detailed than some of the earlier versions reand M. Winterbottom, 2 vols.

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Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck

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