Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

16

INTlRODUCTION.

the author of a work, "De Computo Ecclesiastico," and of the "Kalendarium Lincolniense," which latter was long held in high estimation.
Copies of it still exist, of which only the Latin manuscript copies
contain the Arabic numerals. After he was made bishop, Grosstete's
firmness in resisting the encroachments of the papacy drew down
upon him the censures of the Pope, but the Pope's censures had not
the effect of inducing him to alter the line of conduct he deemed it
his duty to his sovereign to adopt in the administration of his diocese.
He died in the year 1253, at Buckden, the year before the death of
John of Basingstoke.
Johannes de Sacro Bosco, or John of Holywood or of Halifax as he
is sometimes called, studied at Oxford. He was the author of a
treatise on the Sphere, and of a tract, "De ArteNumerandi,"l both of
which were celebrated works. This tract of Sacro Bosco gives the
Arabic numerals, explains the local value, and gives the rules for
arithmetical operations, including the rules for the square and cube
roots. He was also the author of a work entitled "De Computo
Ecclesiastico." His death took place at Paris, A.D. 1256.
Contemporary with Matthew Paris, Sacro Bosco, and Robert
Grosstete, was Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester, who was born
about 1214, and died in 1292. He was one of the great men that
held forth the light of truth in a dark age, only a few years after the
lingdom of England had endured the degradation of a Papal Interdict of the third Pope Innocent. In his work entitled " Opus Majus"
he highly commends the sciences, and that of number among them.
HEe employs the word a7goristicus several times, and repeats the names
of the same set of rules as are given in the treatise of Sacro Bosco.
The following extract from the first chapter of the "Opus Majus " can
scarcely fail of being interesting to the student.
" There are four principal stumbling-blocks in the way of arriving
at truth-authority,2 cofilrmed habit, appearances as they present themselves to the vulgar, and concealment of ignorance under the ostentation of
1 In 1839 a small volume (pp. 120) was printed by Mr. Halliwell, with the title of
R' Rara Mathematica." In the collection will be found five tracts on the Arabic
numerals. Of these the most important is the treatise of Sacro Bosco, the text of
~vhich he states is taken from a manuscript he purchased at the sale of the library of
the Abbate Canonici at Venice.
There is another treatise entitled "Carmen de Algorismo," in hexameter verse,
containing 255 lines. It appears that Alexander de Villa Dei was the author, and
that he lived in the fourteenth century. The manuscript copies existing of this
lpoem are very numerous, from which it may be inferred that it was highly valued
and extensively read. There are manuscript copies of this treatise preserved both
in the University Library and in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Mr. Halliwell quotes the following lines, which he has appended as a note, to the
twenty-sixth line of the Carmen de Algorismo:En argorisine devon prendro Et de radix enstracion
Vii especes.... A chez vii especes savoir
Adision subtracion Doit chascun en memoire avoir
Doubloison mediacion Letres qui figures seOt dites
Mlonteploie et division Et'qui excellens sont ecrites.
MS. Seld. Arch., B. 20.
'T1.'se lines are probably as old as the time of Roger Bacon.
2 Shakespeare saw the same causes at work in his day, and has left the record of
Lis opinion of them in one of his sonnets in these words:"And Art made tongue-tied by Authority,
And Folly, doctor-like, controlling Skill,
And simple Truth miscalled Simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain Ill."