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:
“To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Teaching creativity to your child isn’t like teaching good manners. No one can paint a masterpiece by bowing to another person’s precepts about elbows on the table.”
—Gurney Williams III (20th century)