18/01/2023

In Folha de S. Paulo, Viana talks about the mathematician pope.

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S. Paulo.

My friend Jorge Buescu, a professor at the University of Lisbon and former president of the Portuguese Mathematical Society, writes a monthly article about mathematics for the magazine of the Portuguese Order of Engineers.

His articles have been collected in books, copies of which he kindly sends me. The most recent, "Love, Mathematics and Other Wonders," which I have just received, introduces me to a fascinating character: Gerbert d'Aurillac, the mathematician Pope Sylvester II, who ruled Christendom at the turn of the first millennium, between April 2, 999 and May 12, 1003.

We don't know exactly where or when he was born, but it is believed to have been around 945 in the French region of Auvergne, certainly of humble origin. At the age of 18 he had already been accepted into the Benedictine monastery of Saint Géraud d'Aurillac, under the protection of Abbot Raymond de Lavaur. There he began the "trivium," the basic cycle of medieval studies, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. But the advanced studies of the "quadrivium," consisting of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, were beyond what the monastery could offer.

In 967, taking advantage of a visit from Borrel II, Count of Catalonia, the abbot asked him if there were any good mathematicians in his domains. When the count replied that there were, Raymond de Lavaur asked him to take Gerbert with him to further his studies.

Catalonia was then on the border between the Christian kingdoms of the northern Iberian Peninsula, imbued with an irresistible impulse for territorial expansion, and the sophisticated culture of the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus, the most advanced of the time. The three years he spent there allowed Gerbert to realize his full potential as a student. It is even believed that he spent periods in Córdoba, the capital of Al-Andalus.

In 970, Borrel II went on a pilgrimage to Rome, taking Gerbert with him. Presented to Pope John XIII and the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, Gerbert must have made a strong impression, as the Pope recommended him as tutor to the imperial heir, the future Otto II. Two years later, he became a teacher at the Reims Cathedral School.

In that period before the creation of universities—the first of which would only be founded in 1088, in Bologna—cathedral schools were the most advanced educational institutions, and Reims, where the kings of France were crowned, was one of the most prestigious in Europe. There, Gerbert reached the peak of his fame as an academic.

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