Gerbert of Aurillac and a Tenth-Century Jewish Channel for the Transmission of Arabic Science to the West

Speculum ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 742-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Zuccato
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Gerbert Of Aurillac

The excavation of a Buddhist temple complex of the Qocho Uyghur kingdom in the middle of the west zone of the Tuyoq caves in Shanshan County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-112
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ◽  
Buddhist Temple ◽  
Temple Complex ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
And Storage

AbstractIn 2016, remains of a ground-level Buddhist temple complex were found in the middle of the west zone of the Tuyoq caves in Shanshan (Piqan) County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This Buddhist temple complex consisted of the Buddha hall, dorms for monks, and storage facilities. In the Buddha hall, many murals of bodhisattvas, devas, and donors were found, and artifacts such as household utensils made of clay, wooden architectural components, textiles, and manuscript fragments were unearthed. The date of this Buddhist temple complex was the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom from the latter half of the tenth century to the latter half of the fourteenth century; the excavation is very important for understanding the distribution of the construction centers and the iconographical composition of the Buddhist cave temples and monasteries in the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom period.

scholarly journals GERBERT OF AURILLAC: ASTRONOMY AND GEOMETRY IN TENTH CENTURY EUROPE

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 467-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
COSTANTINO SIGISMONDI
Keyword(s):  
Rational Approximation ◽  
Equilateral Triangle ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
The North ◽  
Celestial Pole ◽  
Gerbert Of Aurillac

Gerbert of Aurillac was the most prominent personality of the tenth century: astronomer, organ builder and music theoretician, mathematician, philosopher, and finally pope with the name of Silvester II (999–1003). Gerbert introduced firstly the arabic numbers in Europe, invented an abacus for speeding the calculations and found a rational approximation for the equilateral triangle area, in the letter to Adelbold here discussed. Gerbert described a semi-sphere to Constantine of Fleury with built-in sighting tubes, used for astronomical observations. The procedure to identify the star nearest to the North celestial pole is very accurate and still in use in the XII century, when Computatrix was the name of Polaris. For didactical purposes the Polaris would have been precise enough and much less time consuming, but here Gerbert was clearly aligning a precise equatorial mount for a fixed instrument for accurate daytime observations. Through the sighting tubes it was possible to detect equinoxes and solstices by observing the Sun in the corresponding days. The horalogium of Magdeburg was probably a big and fixed-mount nocturlabe, always pointing the star near the celestial pole.

Jewelry and Enamels

2021 ◽  
pp. 574-592
Author(s):  
Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Gold Jewelry ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter surveys jewelry and enamels. Byzantine jewelry has survived in small numbers. Early Byzantine rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings were made with gold, gemstones, and pearls, often in the opus interrasile openwork technique. From the tenth century, enamels could also adorn (imperial) gold jewelry. Inscribed and engraved rings were common in the Middle and Late Byzantine period. Bronze pieces attest to everyday jewelry. Increased exchange with other areas, especially the West, is noticeable in post-Crusader times.

Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fine Collection ◽  
Irish School ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.

Perceptions of Tenth-century European elites by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Thietmar of Merseburg, Odilo of Cluny, the Quedlinburg Annales , and other contemporary chroniclers

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Penelope Nash
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Partial Picture

Many of the actions of elites, especially kings, and their followers, are known through the writings and images of their contemporaries. However, the motives attributed to these privileged members of society by their peers, although often plausible, present only a partial picture. In the tenth century in the West, an age when authority resided predominantly with the ruler and when primogeniture was not firmly established, the motives of struggling or jealous elites often encompassed a naked search for power. Such motives meant that would-be rulers started arguments and battles to obtain such power, but perhaps disguised their motives under more worthy aims. The chroniclers of these deeds were at times themselves deceived or had their own agendas. Queens and other aristocratic women sought power no less often than their male counterparts. Bound more rigidly by an expected code of action their methods were more circumscribed. Nevertheless the ruling women in tenth-century Italian and German lands had in general more scope than women in other western kingdoms. They created favourable images of self which came to be accepted and promoted to a surprising degree by the chroniclers of their actions: Widukind of Corvey, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, the anonymous author of the Quedlinburg Annales, Odilo of Cluny, and Thietmar of Merseburg cooperated in these creations. With the greater access by modern readers to new edited volumes of these works and their availability via electronic means, it is possible to undertake new analysis and come to understandings not previously conceivable.

Heriger and the Study of Philosophy at Lobbes in the Tenth Century

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 307-317
Author(s):  
Robert G. Babcock
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Clear Indication ◽  
First Time ◽  
Gerbert Of Aurillac ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Peri Hermeneias

In a recent article on the study of Boethian logical works during the Middle Ages, Osmund Lewry discusses the revival of logical studies at the end of the tenth century, focusing on the period after ca. 970 when Abbo of Fleury and Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) renewed the teaching and study of dialectical works, and when Notker Labeo translated some logical texts into German. To this small group of tenth-century scholars known to have been concerned with dialectic and philosophy may be added the name of Heriger, schoolmaster and abbot (990–1007) of the Belgian monastery of Lobbes. The present study begins with the identification of quotations by Heriger from dialectical and philosophical works, then discusses Heriger's use of dialectic in theological argumentation, and finally considers the influence of his philosophical teaching at Lobbes. Heriger's interest in dialectic is revealed by quotations in his Vita Remacli from Boethius' In Topica Ciceronis and Apuleius' Peri Hermeneias. These quotations are identified for the first time in the present study. The application of dialectical learning to theological questions, specifically his use of logical principles in his tract De corpore et sanguine domini (PL 139.179–88), indicates that Heriger's quotations from logical texts reflect more than bookish antiquarianism; the study of dialectic was useful to him in theological argumentation. The evidence of Heriger's philosophical pursuits provides the first clear indication that Lobbes was one of the important Lotharingian centers for philosophical studies.

Mediterranean Troughs, 600–900

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Aegean Islands ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Fundamental Unity ◽  
Mass Murderer

By the sixth century, the unity of the Mediterranean had been shattered; it was no longer mare nostrum, either politically or commercially. There have been attempts to show that the fundamental unity of the Mediterranean as a trading space, at least, survived until the Islamic conquests of the seventh century (culminating in the invasion of Spain in 711), or even until the Frankish empire of the incestuous mass-murderer Charlemagne acquired control of Italy and Catalonia. There have also been attempts to show that recovery began much earlier than past generations of historians had assumed, and was well under way in the tenth or even the ninth century. It would be hard to dispute this in the case of the Byzantine East, which had already shown some resilience, or in the case of the Islamic lands that by then stretched from Syria and Egypt to Spain and Portugal, but the West is more of a puzzle. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that some historians observe decline at the same moments as others detect expansion. To this one can sensibly answer that there was enormous regional variation; but the question remains when and whether the Mediterranean lost, and then recovered, its unity. Just as in antiquity the integration of the Mediterranean into a single trading area, and subsequently into a single political area, had taken many centuries, from the Dark Age of the tenth century BC to the emergence of the Roman Empire, so in the era of the ‘Third Mediterranean’ the process of integration was painfully slow. Full political integration was never again achieved, despite the best efforts of invading Arabs and, much later, Turks. The loss by Byzantium of so many of its mainland possessions to the Slavs and other foes did leave the empire with several remarkable assets. Sicily, parts of southern Italy, Cyprus and the Aegean islands remained under Byzantine rule, and the empire drew wealth from gold and silver mines in several of these lands. Even Sardinia and Majorca were under Byzantine suzerainty, but it is unclear whether a functioning network of communication across the Mediterranean still existed.

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