found in Fibonacci's great work, published three centuries earlier.[1]
Perhaps the greatest result of the influx of Arabic learning was the establishment of universities. What was their attitude toward mathematics? The University of Paris, so famous at the beginning of the twelfth century under the teachings of Abelard, paid but little attention to this science during the Middle Ages. Geometry was neglected, and Aristotle's logic was the favourite study. In 1336, a rule was introduced that no student should take a degree without attending lectures on mathematics, and from a commentary on the first six books of Euclid, dated 1536, it appears that candidates for the degree of A.M. had to give an oath that they had attended lectures on these books.[7] Examinations, when held at all, probably did not extend beyond the first book, as is shown by the nickname "magister matheseos," applied to the Theorem of Pythagoras, the last in the first book. More attention was paid to mathematics at the University of Prague, founded 1384. For the Baccalaureate degree, students were required to take lectures on Sacro Bosco's famous work on astronomy. Of candidates for the A.M. were required not only the six books of Euclid, but an additional knowledge of applied mathematics. Lectures were given on the Almagest. At the University of Leipzig, the daughter of Prague, and at Cologne, less work was required, and, as late as the sixteenth century, the same requirements were made at these as at Prague in the fourteenth. The universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, occupied similar positions to the ones in Germany, only that purely astrological lectures were given in place of lectures on the Almagest. At Oxford, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the first two books of Euclid were read.[6]
Thus it will be seen that the study of mathematics was
