Rica M.

Bautista
Math 1-1

Chapter 10
Mathematics in the Medieval Period

The Mathematics in Medieval Europe

Coming to Pisa in 1225 on orders of the Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250), Leonardo
found that his king was interested in mathematics:
“After being brought to Pisa by Master Dominick to
the feet of your celestial majesty, most glorious
prince, I met Master John of Palermo; he proposed
to me a question that had occurred to him,
pertaining not less to geometry than to arithmetic.
Introduction to the mathematics of medieval
Europe:
The Roman Empire in the West collapsed in 476
under the onslaught of various “barbarian” tribes.
Feudal societies were soon organized in parts of the
old empire, and the long process of the development
of the European nation-states began.
The early Middle Ages had inherited from antiquity
the notion that the quadrivium —arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy— was required
study for an educated man, even in the evolving
Roman Catholic culture.

St. Augustine (354–430) had written in his City of

God that “we must not despise the science of
numbers, which in many passages of Holy Scripture.
Roman scholar Boethius (480–524) and the
seventh-century bishop “Thou hast ordered all
things in number, and measure, and weight.” Yet the
only texts available for the study of these subjects
were brief introductions.
Isidore of Seville (560– 636). Thus, the outline of
the mathematical quadrivium was in place, but it
was only a shell, nearly devoid of substance.

Gerbert d’ Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II

In the tenth century, a revival of interest in
mathematics began with the work of Gerbert
d’Aurillac (945–1003), who became Pope Sylvester
I in 999.In his youth, Gerbert studied in Spain, where
he probably learned some of the mathematics of the
Moslems. probably learned some of the
mathematics of the Moslems.He reorganized the
cathedral school at Rheims and successfully reintroduced
the study of mathematics.He also taught the use of a
counting board.
Geometry and trigonometry
Euclid’s Elements was translated into Latin early in
the twelfth century. Before then, of course, Arabic
versions were available in Spain. And so, when
Abraham bar hiyya (d.1136) of Barcelona wrote his
Hibbur ha-Meshihah ve-ha-Tishboret (Treatise on
Mensuration and Calculation) in 1116 to help French
and Spanish Jews with the measurement of their
fields, he began the work with a summary of some
important definitions, axioms, and theorems from
Euclid.

Abraham bar H. iyya’s Treatise on Mensuration

Abraham was not so much interested in the
theoretical aspects of Euclid’s Elements as in the
practical application of geometric methods to
measurement. But he took over the Islamic tradition
of proof, absorbed from the Greeks, and gave
geometric justifications of methods for solving the
algebraic problems he included as part of his
geometrical discussions. He included in his work the
major results of Elements II on geometric algebra
and used them to demonstrate methods of solving
quadratic equations.
In fact, Abraham’s work was the first in Europe to
give the Islamic procedures for solving such
equations.
Example:
“If from the area of a square one subtracts the sum
of the (four) sides and there remains 21, what is the
area of the square and what is the length of each of
the equal sides?
Translate the question into the quadratic equation
x2−4x =21
• equation he solves in the familiar way by
halving 4 to get 2, squaring this result to get 4,
adding this square to 21 to get 25, taking the
square root to get 5, and then adding that to the
half of 4 to get the answer 7 for the side and the
answer 49 for the area.