Schedel Weltchronik CCXIIII Alexander-de-Villa-Dei

Alexander of Villedieu was a French

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, who wrote text books on

Latin grammar Latin is a heavily inflected languages, inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for grammatical number, number and grammatical case, case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, cas ...

and

arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...

, everything in verse. He was born around 1175 in

Villedieu-les-Poêles Villedieu-les-Poêles is a former commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Villedieu-les-Poêles-Rouffigny.Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

, studied in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, and later taught at Dol in

Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...

. His greatest fame stems from his versified Latin grammar book, the ''Doctrinale Puerorum''. He died in 1240, or perhaps in 1250. He was a

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

and a Master of the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

. His ''Doctrinale puerorum'', a versified grammar, soon became a classic. It was composed around 1200, and was all written in '' leonine

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s''. Even after several centuries, with the advent of printing, it appeared in countless editions in Italy, Germany and France. It was based on the older works of Donatus and

Priscian Priscianus Caesariensis (), commonly known as Priscian ( or ), was a Latin grammarian and the author of the ''Institutes of Grammar'', which was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle Ages. It also provided the raw materia ...

. Alexander also wrote a short tract on

called ''Carmen de Algorismo''—''the Poem about Arithmetic'', which also achieved a wide distribution.While the ''Doctrinale'' was in leonine verse, the ''Carmen'' in

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, ...

s. Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
(Alexander de Villa Dei at end) A typical line from his Carmen de Algorismo, runs like this: :''Extrahe radicem semper sub parte sinistra'' Wherein he instructs his students: "always extract the

square root In mathematics, a square root of a number is a number such that ; in other words, a number whose ''square'' (the result of multiplying the number by itself, or  ⋅ ) is . For example, 4 and −4 are square roots of 16, because . E ...

by starting from the left". The poem is not very long, only a few hundred lines, and summarizes the art of calculating with the new style of ''Indian dice'', or Talibus Indorum, as he calls the new

Hindu-Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as c ...

References

*Dietrich Reichling editor (1893),
Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei
'.

Notes

External links

* Carmen de Algorismo
Franaut entry
* ttp://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/treasures/html/3.html Image of 1463 printed edition of the ''Doctrinale''
Bibliographical page

1170s births 1240 deaths People from Manche French Franciscans French male writers 13th-century French mathematicians {{France-poet-stub