Pope Sylvester II (; – 12 May 1003), originally known as Gerbert of Aurillac, was a scholar and teacher who served as the bishop of Rome and ruled the Papal States from 999 to his death. He endorsed and promoted study of Moorish and Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics and astronomy, reintroducing to Western Christendom the abacus, armillary sphere, and water organ, which had been lost to Latin Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. He is said to be the first in Christian Europe (outside of Al-Andalus) to introduce the decimal numeral system using the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.

Early life

Gerbert was born about 946, His exact birthplace is unknown, but it must have been in what was then the Duchy of Aquitaine, part of the Kingdom of France. More precise proposals include the town of Belliac, near the present-day commune of Saint-Simon, Cantal, or Aurillac. Another speculated location is the province of Auvergne. Gerbert's parents, wanting him to have a quality education, took him to receive instruction at the nearby Benedictine Abbey. Like all Catalan monasteries, it contained manuscripts from Muslim Spain and especially from Córdoba, one of the intellectual centres of Europe at that time: the library of al-Hakam II, for example, had thousands of books (from science to Greek philosophy). This is where Gerbert was introduced to mathematics and astronomy. Borrell II was facing major defeat from the Andalusian powers so he sent a delegation to Córdoba to request a truce. Bishop Atto was part of the delegation that met with al-Ḥakam II, who received him with honour. Gerbert was fascinated by the stories of the Mozarab Christian bishops and judges who dressed and talked like the Moors, well-versed in mathematics and natural sciences like the great teachers of the Islamic madrasahs. This sparked Gerbert's veneration for the Moors and his passion for mathematics and astronomy.

Abacus and numerals

thumb|Model of the addition 908+95 on part of Gerbert's abacus (with modern numerals, not Gerbert's ones)

Gerbert learned of Hindu–Arabic digits and applied this knowledge to the abacus, but probably without the numeral zero. According to the 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury, Gerbert got the idea of the computing device of the abacus from a Moorish scholar from University of Al-Qarawiyyin. The abacus that Gerbert reintroduced into Europe had its length divided into 27 parts with 9 number symbols (this would exclude zero, which was represented by an empty column) and 1,000 characters in all, crafted out of animal horn by a shieldmaker of Rheims. According to his pupil Richer, Gerbert could perform speedy calculations with his abacus that were extremely difficult for people in his day to think through using only Roman numerals. Bernelinus' Liber Abaci has survived in 11 manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries. In two of them, probably the oldest ones, the number 3 is reproduced in a form that differs from the other manuscripts. This symbol is reminiscent of the "Tironian note" for the Latin word "ter" from the Roman shorthand. The reason for this is not known, but it is speculated that Bernelinus did not want to use an "unbeliever" symbol to indicate the number that represents the Holy Trinity.

Armillary sphere and sighting tube

Although lost to Europe since the terminus of the Greco-Roman era, Gerbert reintroduced the astronomical armillary sphere to Latin Europe via the Islamic civilization of Al-Andalus, which was at that time at the "cutting edge" of civilization. The details of Gerbert's armillary sphere are revealed in letters from Gerbert to his former student and monk Remi of Trèves and to his colleague Constantine, the abbot of Micy, as well as the accounts of his former student and French nobleman Richer, who served as a monk in Rheims. Richer stated that Gerbert discovered that stars coursed in an oblique direction across the night sky. Richer described Gerbert's use of the armillary sphere as a visual aid for teaching mathematics and astronomy in the classroom.

thumb|right|upright|An [[armillary sphere in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, ]]

Historian Oscar G. Darlington asserts that Gerbert's division by 60 degrees instead of 360 allowed the lateral lines of his sphere to equal to six degrees. By this account, the polar circle on Gerbert's sphere was located at 54 degrees, several degrees off from the actual 66° 33'. This armillary sphere was also described by Gerbert in a letter to his colleague Constantine. Gerbert instructed Constantine that, if doubtful of the position of the pole star, he should fix the sighting tube of the armillary sphere into position to view the star he suspected was it, and if the star did not move out of sight, it was thus the pole star. Furthermore, Gerbert instructed Constantine that the north pole could be measured with the upper and lower sighting tubes, the Arctic Circle through another tube, the Tropic of Cancer through another tube, the equator through another tube, and the Tropic of Capricorn through another tube. He dedicated immense sums of money to establishing the library and purchasing texts from a wide variety of western European authors. When Otto II became sole emperor in 973, he appointed Gerbert the abbot of the monastery of Bobbio and also appointed him as count of the district, but the abbey had been ruined by previous abbots, and Gerbert soon returned to Rheims. After the death of Otto II in 983, Gerbert became involved in the politics of his time. In 985, with the support of his archbishop, he opposed King Lothair of France's attempt to take Lorraine from Emperor Otto III by supporting Hugh Capet. Hugh became king of France, ending the Carolingian line of kings in 987.

Adalberon died on 23 January 989. Gerbert was a natural candidate for his succession, where the air had to be pumped manually. In a letter of 984, Gerbert asks Lupitus of Barcelona for a book on astrology and astronomy, two terms historian S. Jim Tester says Gerbert used synonymously. Gerbert is sometimes credited with the invention of the first mechanical clock in 996, though it was perhaps only an elaborate water clock, as the verge and foliot does not appear to have been invented until the 13th century. Gerbert may have been the author of a description of the astrolabe that was edited by Hermannus Contractus some 50 years later. Besides these, as Sylvester II he wrote a dogmatic treatise, De corpore et sanguine Domini—On the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Legends

thumb|left|upright|Pope Sylvester II and the Devil in an illustration of

The legend of Gerbert grows from the work of the English monk William of Malmesbury in De Rebus Gestis Regum Anglorum and a polemical pamphlet, Gesta Romanae Ecclesiae contra Hildebrandum, by Cardinal Beno, a partisan of Emperor Henry IV who opposed Pope Gregory VII in the Investiture Controversy. During Gerbert's time in Spain, he was said to live with a Saracen philosopher, who was responsible for giving this knowledge to Sylvester. This knowledge was first obtained through using money and promises as bartering chips for the philosopher's books, which Gerbert translated and learned from.

thumb|right|200px|Statue of Pope Sylvester II in [[Budapest, Hungary]]

Gerbert was supposed to have built a brazen head. This "robotic" head would answer his questions with "yes" or "no". He was also reputed to have had a pact with a female demon called Meridiana, who had appeared after he had been rejected by his earthly love, and with whose help he managed to ascend to the papal throne (another legend tells that he won the papacy playing dice with the Devil).

According to the legend, Meridiana (or the bronze head) told Gerbert that if he should ever read a Mass in Jerusalem, the Devil would come for him. Gerbert then cancelled a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but when he read Mass in the church Santa Croce in Gerusalemme ("Holy Cross of Jerusalem") in Rome, he became sick soon afterwards and, dying, he asked his cardinals to cut up his body and scatter it across the city. In another version, he was even attacked by the Devil while he was reading the Mass, and the Devil mutilated him and gave his gouged-out eyes to demons to play with in the Church. Repenting, Sylvester II then cut off his hand and his tongue.

The inscription on Gerbert's tomb reads in part ("This place will yield to the sound [of the last trumpet] the limbs of buried Sylvester II, at the advent of the Lord", mis-read as "will make a sound") and has given rise to the curious legend that his bones will rattle in that tomb just before the death of a pope.

The story of the crown and papal legate authority allegedly given to Stephen I of Hungary by Sylvester in the year 1000 (hence the title 'apostolic king') is noted by the 19th-century historian Lewis L. Kropf as a possible forgery of the 17th century. Likewise, the 20th-century historian Zoltan J. Kosztolnyik states that "it seems more than unlikely that Rome would have acted in fulfilling Stephen's request for a crown without the support and approval of the emperor."

Though the testimony of William of Malmesbury did much to discredit and defame Gerbert, there were many important intellectual distinctions made from it. For example, the legend of Gerbert of Aurilac's talking head helped to describe the line between prohibited and permitted knowledge. Gerbert did work in music theory, mathematics, geometry, and several other fields accepted and taught in the quadrivium. and France honoured him in 1964 by issuing a postage stamp.

Works

thumb|12th century copy of De geometria

Gerbert's writings were printed in volume 139 of the Patrologia Latina. Darlington notes that Gerbert's preservation of his letters might have been an effort of his to compile them into a textbook for his pupils that would illustrate proper letter writing.

  • De geometria
  • Gerbert d'Aurillac is the protagonist of Judith Tarr's 1989 novel Ars Magica.
  • Gerbert d'Aurillac is referred to in the first chapter of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita.
  • Legends about Gerbert D'Aurillac as Pope Sylvester II inspired the short story "The Demon Pope" by Richard Garnett, first published in the original, 1888 edition of The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales.
  • In Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels, Nectaire (a fallen angel) speaks of this Gerbert: "We taught them letters and sciences. A mouthpiece of their god, one Gerbert, took lessons in physics, arithmetic, and music with us, and it was said that he had sold us his soul." Then "The successors of the studious Gerbert, not content with the possession of souls (the profits one gains thereby are lighter than air), wished to possess bodies also."

See also

  • List of Roman Catholic scientist–clerics
  • Barcelona astrolabe

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

  • .
  • Freudenhammer, Thomas (2021). "Gerbert of Aurillac and the Transmission of Arabic Numerals to Europe - Gerbert von Aurillac Und Die Übermittlung Der Arabischen Ziffern Nach Europa." Sudhoffs Archiv, vol. 105, no. 1, 2021, pp. 3–19.,

Further reading

  • Brown, Nancy Marie. The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages (Basic Books; 2010) 310 pages,
  • Navari, Joseph V. (1975). "The leitmotiv in the mathematical thought of Gerbert of Aurillac". Journal of Medieval History. 1 (2): 139–150.
  • A translation of the letters of Gerbert (982–987) with introduction and notes, Harriet Pratt Lattin, tr., Columbus, OH, H. L. Hedrick, 1932.
  • Letters of Gerbert, with His Papal Privileges as Sylvester II, Translated with an introduction by Harriet Pratt Lattin, Columbia University Press (1961),
  • The Peasant Boy who Became Pope: Story of Gerbert, Harriet Pratt Lattin, Henry Schuman, 1951.
  • The Policy of Gerbert in the Election of Hugh Capet, 987: Based on a Study of His Letters, Harriet Pratt Lattin, Ohio State University, 1926.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia
  • Betty Mayfield, "Gerbert d'Aurillac and the March of Spain: A Convergence of Cultures"
  • Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 955–1003), lecture by Lynn H. Nelson.
  • Women's Biography: Adelaide of Burgundy, Ottonian empress, includes four of his letters to Adelaide of Italy.