Four more trivial observations on number:
1: Medieval abacuses were not exclusively on the decimal system, but
could have different systems concurrently (cf. the English
Exchequer).
2: This is yet another wild generalisation, but I suspect that
medieval businessmen may actually have been rather slow to adopt
Arabic numerals - I can't talk about Italy, though - Italy may have
been different. After all merchants are still using Roman numerals
quite often in the early modern period.
3: Knowledge of Arabic numerals was for a long time in the Christian
west limited to the few people who had attained to a fairly advanced
understanding of mathematics, usually a level of education which
would not necessarily be available in the schools (at least not, I
suspect, in the 12th c. - the 13th c. was probably different) but
which would require private tuition from someone already initiated
into the system. These people were not merchants and probably had
relatively little contact with them. Education is the key to this
whole problem. Most school education in the Christian west devoted
little attention to arithmetic and would presumably have used Roman
numerals. Unlettered people would have used numbering systems (as on
tallies) not dissimilar to the Roman system.
4. Extremely useful on this subject, not least in showing how
medieval arithmetical mentalities survived quite a long time into the
early modern period, is Keith Thomas' 1986 Prothero Lecture,
'Numeracy in Early Modern England', which you will find in Trans.
Royal Hist. Soc., 5th ser., vol. 37, 1987.
Yours, arithmetically challenged as usual
Julia Barrow
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