with the Geometry of Boethius. 5S9 



the mathematical part of the Arcerian was known long before Ger- 

 bert's time. We find, for instance, a part of the problems attributed 

 to Nipsus, Epaphroditus and Vitruvius, in the Propositiones Arith- 

 meticse, said to be by Beda, but which was probably the work of 

 Alcuin*. 



In conclusion we may observe that, in the library of St. Gall 

 there is an old MS. of which the following account is given by 

 Haenel : — "830. JBoetius in perihermenias, geometriam, de diiFe- 

 rentiis, divisionibus, cognatione, syllogismis, topica Ciceronis, Ek- 

 kehardi IV. notse marginales, versus. Cod. membr. optimus, eadem 

 manu scriptus in pergameno solidof." The age of the MS. is not 

 mentioned, but as it contains marginal notes by Ekkehardus IV., 

 it cannot be later tlian the close of the tenth or the beginning of 

 the following century J. The oldest of the Berne MSS. belongs, 

 as has been already stated, to the tenth century ; and the other, 

 which came from Strasburg, was written in 1004. Here then we 

 have three MSS. almost coeval with Gerbert, and the most modern 

 of which must have been written about twenty-five years after 

 he became abbot of Bobbio, in which the work is attributed to 

 Boethius : and one of which was perused and annotated by the pupil 

 of Notker, the friend of Gerbert, and probably — for he also belonged 

 to St. Gall — by Notker himself. It is hardly possible to conceive 

 that a new forgery, the materials for which are supposed to have been 

 partially derived either from Gerbert, or taken from his work, could 

 in this short space of time have been palmed upon the world as 

 the work of Boethius. 



* Bedae Opera, i. 133, It is printed in the Ratisbon edition of Alcuin (t. ii. 

 p. 442), from a MS. belonging to the Monastery of Richenau, in which it bore 

 the name of Alcuin. In the library of Valenciennes there is a MS. of the tentli 

 century, which formerly belonged to the Monastery of St. Amand or Elnon, and 

 which contains the Podismus (p. 296 seq.), but whether it is derived from a first or 

 third class MS. I am unable to say. It is described in Pertz, Archiv der Gesell- 

 schaft fUr D. Gesch. viii. 440. 



t Haenel, Catal. MSS. 712. There is another MS. of the ninth century at St, 

 Gall (248), which contains Boetius et Beda de Computo, Mathesi, Astronomia, Geo- 

 graphia et vi selatibus raundi. Haenel, 681. Unfortunately this account does not 

 inform us which of the works are by Boethius. Is the Astronomia the same as that of 

 the old Bobbio catalogue, and the Astrologia mentioned by Gerbert, in a letter 

 written at Mantua probably in the year 972, " quod reperimus speretis, id est octo 

 volumina Boetii de Astrologia, praeclarissima quoque figurarum Geometrise, aliaque 

 non minus admiranda" ? — Ep. 8. Cassiodorus alludes to a Latin translation of 

 Ptolemy by Boethius, Var. i. 45, 



I Ekkehard was born about a.d, 980 and died about a.d. 1036. — Arx in Pertz, 

 Mon. Histor. t. ii. p. 74. Obbarius (p. xxxvii. n. 42) suggests that this may per- 

 haps be one of the two MSS. of Boethius, bequeathed to the monastery of St. Gall 

 and the abbot Ilartmulh, in the last quarter of the ninth century (Ratpert. Cas. S, 

 Gall, in Pertz, Mon. Hist. ii. p. 72, 45.). The words of Ratpert 'Boethii 5 libri philo- 

 sophies consolationis in volum. i. Item alii 5 in altero volumine' seem rather to 

 mean that he gave two copies of the same work. Compare p. 70, 33. And such 

 was apparently the opinion of Arx, the learned librarian of St. Gall j for he has not 

 noticed it among the books mentioned by Ratpert, which are still to be found in 

 their ancient repository. 



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