Science in Early England. 15 



Two other works of Bede's were written to elucidate 

 questions connected with Easter, this feast having at all 

 times presented problems of a most thorny kind. Charac- 

 teristically enough, Bede believed that the world in his 

 day was old, decrepit, worn out, and in its sixth stage, and 

 that it would shortly come to an end. 



Towards the end of the 7th century (in 668 to be 

 very precise), Theodore, a native of Tarsus, was made 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, and taught astronomy and 

 arithmetic in the schools, while Albert, Archbishop of York, 

 also diffused the higher branches of knowledge. Under 

 the system of the schools, learning was divided into seven 

 arts, the "Trivium," comprising grammar, logic, and 

 rhetoric, and the "Quadrivium," namely, arithmetic, geo- 

 metry (probably mensuration or surveying, not Euclidean 

 geometry), astronomy, and music. The number of arts 

 was, however, sometimes expanded to ten by the inclusion 

 of astrology, medicine, and mechanics, though these 

 occasionally replace grammar, logic, and rhetoric, instead 

 of supplementing them. 



After these we have Gerbert, born about 950, better 

 known in later times as Pope Sylvester II., and his 

 followers, Ethelwold of Winchester (925-984), and Dunstan 

 of Glastonbury (925-988), the latter of whom subsequently 

 became Archbishop of Canterbury. Gerbert, though not 

 an Englishman, may be introduced as having made 

 Europeans acquainted with the Indian numerals, and 

 algebra, and with various mechanical inventions, such as 

 the clock pendulum. He had studied at Cordova and 

 Toledo, and acquired a great reputation, not unmixed with 

 obloquy, as a dabbler in forbidden arts. Ethelwold was 

 famed as an ingenious mechanic, and a treatise by him on 

 the quadrature of the circle is in existence at the Bodleian 

 Library. Dunstan fell under the same imputation as 

 Gerbert, and is recorded to have possessed a magic harp 



