Dear Tony,
Many thanks for replying! "Ciascheduno" was also my first hunch, because
the otherwise unmarked switch of the grammatical subject in "pagando"
seemed a bit strange. But then I got a reply off the list from Gloria
Allaire suggesting a solution which seems preferable to me: Gloria points
out that "pagare per un diuanto[?]" might eventually (lexical confirmation
impending) mean "to pay for an advance (of money)". This meaning would in
fact match very well with the context, as I understand it:
Vno maestro ha tanti scolari che pagando 8 s per uno diuanto gli
mancherebbe a pagarne la pigione 14 lb & paghando 10 s per uno
diuanto el maestro pagherebbe la pigione & auanzarebbe 20 lb.
uo sapere quanti scolari haueua & quanto paghaua di pigione.
A schoolmaster has as many pupils that, if each of them payd 8 s.
"per uno diuanto", he would still lack 14 lb. to pay his
rent; and if each of them payd 10 s "per uno diuanto", the
schoolmaster would pay his rent and would have a remainder
of 20 lb. left. I would like to how many pupils he had, and how
much rent he paid.
I presume that "s" means "solidi" (shillings) and that "lb" means "librae"
(pounds, with one pound = 20 shillings, if Carolingian mode still applied
at the given time). In this case, the schoolmaster apparently has 340
pupils: 14 lb + 20 lb = 280 s + 400 s = 680 s, divided by the difference of
10 s - 8 s gives 680/2 = 340. If this is correct, he pays (340*8)+280 =
3000 s = 150 lb rent, which seems high, but is probably an annual rent, and
for a big schoolhouse (if it can house 340 pupils).
Now if we assume that the example is more or less realistic in content, we
may infer that 8 or 10 shillings are only a part of the sum which each
pupil has to pay for going to school, unless we believe that the remainder
of 20 pounds (which are left to the schoolmaster only if each pupil in fact
pays 10 sh. instead of 8 or, say, 9) are enough for a schoolmaster to
sustain his life for a year! For this reason (which of course is only a lot
of guesswork not based on any expert knowledge of the economical situation
at the given place and time), it seems likely to me that the 8 or 10
shillings paid "per uno diuanto[?]" are in fact only an "advance payment",
meant to enable the schoolmaster to pay the rent.
However, I have not yet been able to verify whether there was an
appropriate word like "diuanto[?]" (the print or the transcription may be
misspelled) in 15/16th Italian, allowing to translate "per uno diuanto[?]"
with "for/as an advance of money". If anybody knows of such a word, I will
be delighted to forward his reply to the original sender (Prof. Lueneburg,
Univ. of Kaiserslautern, Dept. of Mathematics, author of a book on Leonardo
da Pisa), as I have already done with Gloria's explanation.
Btw, apologies to all who, like myself, decided to study philology because
they hated mathematics!
Yours,
Otfried
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