Opinion – Marcelo Viana: Silvestre II, the mathematician pope

My friend Jorge Buescu, professor at the University of Lisbon and former president of the Portuguese Society of Mathematics, writes monthly about mathematics in the journal of the Order of Engineers of Portugal.

His articles have been collected in books, of which he kindly sends me copies. The most recent one, “Love, Mathematics and Other Portents”, 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 of 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 the abbot Raymond de Lavaur. There he began the “trivium”, the basic cycle of medieval studies, formed by grammar, rhetoric and logic. But the advanced studies of the “quadrivium”, formed by 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 domain. The earl having replied that he was, 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 north of the Iberian peninsula, imbued with an irresistible impulse for territorial expansion, and the sophisticated culture of the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus, the most advanced at the time. The three years he stayed there allowed Gerbert to realize his full potential as a student. It is even believed that she spent periods in Córdoba, the capital of Al-Andalus.

In 970, Borrel II went on a pilgrimage to Rome, taking Gerbert with him. Introduced to Pope John XIII and the 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 cathedral school in Reims.

In that era before the creation of universities —the first 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 height of his fame as an academic.

Before the vicissitudes of his career took him to international politics and to the top of the Christian church, Gerbert made important contributions to the development of mathematics in Europe. It will be the subject of next week.