AROUND AD 1000, Gerbert of Aurillac served a brief stint as pope.
He
was not an especially distinguished pontiff and he didn't reign for very
long, yet he is of perennial interest to both academic and popular
historians.
Why?
The answer can be found in books such as John William Draper's 1874 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science.
In it, Draper characterised the Middle Ages as an era of faith, a time
when everyone thought that the Earth was flat.
Draper may have been
forgotten, but his narrative lives on.
And that is what makes Gerbert of
Aurillac so fascinating.
At a time supposedly devoid of science, here
is a medieval pope who was highly proficient in mathematics and
astronomy.
In
fact, the scientific advance of western Europe began even earlier, when
Roman astronomical textbooks were analysed in the court of Charlemagne
in the 9th century.
In Gerbert's time, the fruits of Arabic mathematics
found their way west. Gerbert himself was part of a circle of
correspondents who excitedly discussed the latest developments as they
arose.
By the 12th century, the trickle of knowledge from the Muslim and
Byzantine empires had become a flood. The works of Euclid, Aristotle and
Averroes were translated into Latin and intensively studied at the new
universities in Oxford and Paris.
In the 14th century, Europeans
surpassed their ancient predecessors by developing theories of impetus
and uniform acceleration.
Gerbert played a small but important part in the unknown story of
medieval science and Nancy Marie Brown has rightly decided that it is
time to highlight his achievements.
Luckily for her, there is a good
amount of material for historians to get their teeth into and she has
taken full advantage of it.
Brown uses Gerbert's collected letters carefully, aware that they
were compiled by an admiring student to present a positive image. She
correctly characterises Gerbert as a transmitter of mathematical
knowledge without exaggerating his importance.
Arithmetic, astronomy and
geometry were a standard part of the curriculum in medieval schools,
making Gerbert's enthusiasm for these subjects unusual, but not unheard
of.
Brown's demolition of the myth that medieval people believed in a
flat Earth is especially welcome.
Brown's Gerbert is neither a saint nor a hero.
Like many senior
churchmen of his time, he enjoyed the finer things in life and was as
much a politician as a scholar.
His ability to gain promotion from three
different emperors, including Otto III who made him pope, shows that he
was adept at the courtly arts.
But the political chaos that followed
Otto's early death meant that Gerbert had little chance of fulfilling
his ambitions.
Brown provides plenty of background information to help readers who
may be unfamiliar with the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, she is prone to
occasional anachronisms.
She describes Gerbert's geometrical
speculations as "experimental" when the modern concept of experiment was
alien to the medieval mind. She also believes that scientific progress
came to a halt after Gerbert's death in 1003.
Despite debunking many of
the legends of the Dark Ages, she can't quite stop believing in them
herself.
For her, the worship of relics and intolerant crusaders soon
replaced the rationalism championed by Gerbert.
But the medieval world was more complicated than that.
She is right
to deplore the pogroms against Jews and the beginning of the
inquisition.
Yet Brown seems unaware that within a century of Gerbert's
passing, western philosophy reached such heights that historians call
the period the "Twelfth-Century Renaissance".
The Abacus and the Cross
is a useful corrective to popular prejudice, but it does not go far
enough.
SIC: NS/INT'L