Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 01-03-2011, 10:40 AM

The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Nancy Marie Brown.

There is an interview with the author on Religion Dispatches: Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

Quote:

Gerbert made sighting tubes to observe the stars and constructed globes on which their positions were recorded relative to lines of celestial longitude and latitude. He (or more likely his best student) wrote a book on the astrolabe, an instrument for telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars. You could even use it to calculate the circumference of the earth, which Gerbert and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple.

Much of this science Gerbert learned as a youth living on the border of Islamic Spain, then an extraordinarily tolerant culture in which learning was prized. Born a peasant in the mountains of France in the mid-900s, Gerbert entered the Benedictine monastery at Aurillac as a boy. He learned to read and write in Latin. He studied Cicero, Virgil, and other classics. He impressed his teacher with his skill in debating. He was a fine writer, too, with a sophisticated style graced with rhetorical flourishes. To further his education, his abbot sent him south to Christian Barcelona, which then had diplomatic ties with the Islamic caliphate of al-Andalus.

In the caliph’s library in Cordoba were at least 40,000 books (some said as many 400,000); Gerbert’s French monastery owned less than 400. Many of the caliph’s books came from Baghdad, known for its House of Wisdom, where for 200 years works of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and medicine had been translated from Greek and Persian and Hindu and further developed by Islamic scholars under their caliph’s patronage. In the world Gerbert knew, Arabic was the language of science. During his lifetime, the first Arabic science books were translated into Latin through the combined efforts of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars.

But it didn't last. After this pope's death, and the death of his patron Otto III, he was demonized as a "a sorcerer who had sold his soul to the devil."

aeebee50 · 01-04-2011, 10:04 PM

Just more evidence that Science and religion can survive together. Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II, should have his name cleared and the church should send out an apology to all the good people and the science community. Even Simon the Sorcerer could fly until the disciples stepped in and had him killed. Some people just will not get along.

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01-04-2011, 10:04 PM	#2
aeebee50 Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Texas Posts: 5,810	Just more evidence that Science and religion can survive together. Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II, should have his name cleared and the church should send out an apology to all the good people and the science community. Even Simon the Sorcerer could fly until the disciples stepped in and had him killed. Some people just will not get along.

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