Thierry de Chartres (Author)
Caiazzo, Irene (Editor)
Brepols
Physical Details: xii + 262 p.
Language: English
Arithmetic was one of the seven liberal arts taught in the French schools just before the middle of the twelfth century, and Boethius’s De arithmetica was the principal textbook for this art. This volume provides an edition of a commentary on the De arithmetica; the accompanying introduction identifies the author of the commentary as Thierry of Chartres, and provides a careful consideration of how the commentary reflects his philosophy. Unlike the commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and on Boethius's Consolatio philosophiae, medieval exegesis of Boethius's De arithmetica has seldom been subjected to comprehensive and systematic enquiry. Inhabiting the shifting boundary between philosophy and history of science, the De arithmetica itself has been neglected by most medievalists. Yet, from the Carolingian renaissance onward, when the scholarly curriculum came to be based on the seven liberal arts, Boethius's work soon became a canonical text for the study of arithmetic. Indeed, the growing interest in it during the twelfth century is attested by the large number of surviving commentaries in manuscript. The commentary on the De arithmetica preserved in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. math. 4° 33 and edited here for the first time can be securely attributed to Thierry of Chartres. It belongs to a phase when the Chartrian master's interests were mainly directed toward the liberal arts. We can also discern in Thierry's commentary on the De arithmetica themes and problems developed in his Tractatus de sex dierum operibus and more elaborately in his commentaries on Boethius's Opuscula sacra. Indeed, the discovery of this commentary on the De arithmetica might legitimately be said to clarify not only the more intractable passages in the theological writings but also to illuminate Thierry's philosophical project as a whole. At the heart of that vision is a developing trend in twelfth-century philosophy that places number and proportion at the heart of the physical cosmos. In this profoundly 'mathematical Platonism,' all things are based on number and follow the rule of number; or, to quote Thierry himself, “creatio numerorum, rerum est creatio.”
...MoreReview David Albertson (2016) Review of "The Commentary on the De arithmetica of Boethius". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 622-624).
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