persistent Jewish merchant trading
with both peoples then as now, always alive to the acquiring of useful
knowledge, and it would be very natural for a man like Gerbert to welcome
learning from such a source.

On the other hand, the two leading sources of information as to the life of
Gerbert reveal practically nothing to show that he came within the Moorish
sphere of influence during his sojourn in Spain. These sources {115} are
his letters and the history written by Richer. Gerbert was a master of the
epistolary art, and his exalted position led to the preservation of his
letters to a degree that would not have been vouchsafed even by their
classic excellence.[453] Richer was a monk at St. Remi de Rheims, and was
doubtless a pupil of Gerbert. The latter, when archbishop of Rheims, asked
Richer to write a history of his times, and this was done. The work lay in
manuscript, entirely forgotten until Pertz discovered it at Bamberg in
1833.[454] The work is dedicated to Gerbert as archbishop of Rheims,[455]
and would assuredly have testified to such efforts as he may have made to
secure the learning of the Moors.

Now it is a fact that neither the letters nor this history makes any
statement as to Gerbert's contact with the Saracens. The letters do not
speak of the Moors, of the Arab numerals, nor of Cordova. Spain is not
referred to by that name, and only one Spanish scholar is mentioned. In one
of his letters he speaks of Joseph Ispanus,[456] or Joseph Sapiens, but who
this Joseph the Wise of Spain may have been we do not know. Possibly {116}
it was he who contributed the morsel of knowledge so imperfectly
assimilated by the young French monk.[457] Within a few years after
Gerbert's visit two young Spanish monks of lesser fame, and doubtless with
not that keen interest in mathematical matters which Gerbert had, regarded
the apparently slight knowledge which they had of the Hindu numeral forms
as worthy of somewhat permanent record[458] in manuscripts which they were
transcribing. The fact that such knowledge had penetrated to their modest
cloisters in northern Spain--the one Albelda or Albaida--indicates that it
was rather widely diffused.

Gerbert's treatise _Libellus de numerorum divisione_[459] is characterized
by Chasles as "one of the most obscure documents in the history of
science."[460] The most complete information in regard to this and the
other mathematical works of Gerbert is given by Bubnov,[461] who consi