Works and Teaching
Gerbert, as a scientist, was said to be far ahead of his time. Gerbert wrote a series of works dealing with matters of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), which he taught using the basis of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). Walid Amine Salhab asserts that Gerbert's reintroduction of the emphasis on these liberal arts in Europe was inspired by the educational institution of Cordoba in Islamic Spain. In Rheims, he constructed a hydraulic-powered organ with brass pipes that excelled all previously known instruments, where the air had to be pumped manually. In a letter of 984, Gerbert asks Lupitus of Barcelona for a book on astrology and astronomy, two terms historian S. Jim Tester says Gerbert used synonymously. Gerbert may have been the author of a description of the astrolabe that was edited by Hermannus Contractus some 50 years later. Besides these, as Sylvester II he wrote a dogmatic treatise, De corpore et sanguine Domini—On the Body and Blood of the Lord.
Read more about this topic: Pope Sylvester II
Famous quotes containing the words works and/or teaching:
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 28:19,20.