Summa De Arithmetica
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PACIOLI, Luca Summa de Arithmetica… Folio, part one of two, 295 x 210 mm, [8] + 224 numbered leaves; very fine strapwork title- border, white on black, repeated with the first page of text; the first leaf of text with a large woodcut initial ‘L’ depicting Pacioli standing with a book before him and a pair of compasses in his hand, identified in ink in a contemporary hand; full-page woodcut ‘tree of proportion’ printed in red and black, full-page woodcut showing finger symbolism for numbering, partly highlighted in contemporary colour, mathematical and geometrical diagrams in margins, and woodcuts showing instruments and methods of measuring; printed marginalia to one leaf just shaved (sense fully recoverable); marginal annotations to a few leaves (see below); overall a fine copy, attractively bound in seventeenth-century vellum, spine lettered in ink; preserved in a cloth box. Toscolano [Toscolano Maderno, Brescia, N. Italy], Paganino de Paganini, 1523. “Is this the most influential work in the history of capitalism?” ‘The earliest printed book to treat algebra comprehensively, and the first to contain double-entry book-keeping’ (Honeyman). ‘Luca Pacioli, is revered as the “Father of Ac- counting” because his instructional treatise (Thompson 1991, 588) on double entry book- keeping, published in print in 1494, spurred the adoption of the method across Europe, standardized its use, and established the foundations of modern accounting (Cameran and Pettinicchio 2010, 91-2).’ (Sangster “Pacioli’s lens”, The Accounting Review, 2018). This is the second edition of Pacioli’s treatise on mathematics (first Venice 1494)., con- taining the earliest printed exposition of double-entry book-keeping. ‘The text is in two parts. The treatise on geometry [excluded from the present copy] has separate signatures and foliation and a caption title. There is a brief colophon at the end of part 1 referring to the full colophon at the end of part 2’ (Mortimer). This copy com- prises the much more significant arithmetical first part: given its early binding, and the evidence of separateness cited by Mortimer, it is reasonable to consider that the Arith- metica, complete with its own colophon, was separately available from the publisher. This makes more sense when combined with the fact that in 1515 the arithmetic part alone ‘was translated or, more accurately, used as the basis for a book in Spanish [Andrés de Saragossa, 1515]’ (Sangster). Tim Harford, in a piece for the BBC series 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41582244), asked “Is this the most influential work in the history of capitalism?” He quotes Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list: “Find a master of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner.” “Draw Milan.” “Learn multiplication from the root from Maestro Luca”. ‘Leonardo was a big fan of Maestro Luca, better known today as Luca Pacioli. Pacioli was, appropriately enough, a Renaissance Man: educated for a life in commerce, but also a conjuror, a chess master, a lover of puzzles, a Franciscan Friar, and a professor of math- ematics. Today he is celebrated as the most famous accountant who ever lived. ‘… Amidst this colossal textbook, Pacioli included 27 pages that are regarded by many as the most influential work in the history of capitalism. It was the first description of double-entry bookkeeping to be set out clearly, in detail… Pacioli’s book was sped on its way by a new technology: half a century after Gutenberg developed the movable type printing press, Venice was a centre of the printing industry. ‘His book enjoyed a long print run of 2,000 copies, and was widely translated, copied, and plagiarised across Europe…’. The treatise on double–entry book–keeping, ‘Distinctio nona, tractatus xi, De Scripturis’ which occupies leaves 197v–210v, seems to have been of particular interest to its owner; there are several manuscript marginal notes highlighting or emphasising the text, an indication, perhaps, that the book was acquired for this particular section. Certainly, the copy evidences annotation almost exclusively to section nine, ‘De Societatibus’, the divi- sion incorporating the entry on accounting, each part of which treats of some aspect of mercantile practice, with the majority of manuscript marginalia being confined to Tracta- tus xi, ‘De Scripturis’. Prior to its first publication in 1494, Pacioli had been working on the Summa de Arith- metica for a period of thirty years. He regretted the low ebb to which teaching had fallen and he thought that the fault lay in the use of improper methods and in the scarcity of available subject matter. He sought to correct these faults in the Summa. He divided the material as follows:1. Arithmetic and algebra. 2. Their use in trade reckoning. 3. Book- keeping. 4. Money and exchange. 5. Pure and especially applied geometry. ‘Pacioli… was putting the book-keeping section of the Summa in shape for publication towards the end of 1493, but that portion was certainly written some time before the date of publication… At no place did Pacioli claim originality for the double-entry system of book-keeping which he described. He specifically stated that he was merely writing down the system which had been used in Venice for over two hundred years… ‘Pacioli recommended that all business transactions should be recorded in a systematic way consisting of the debit [debitore – owed by] and the credit [creditore – owed to]. After the merchant [records] his inventory, he uses three books, the memorandum for general information on the business transactions, from which daily such information is entered briefly in the journal using debit and credit. In Venice they used Per indicating the debtor (debitore) and A denoting the creditor (creditore). A journal entry might then be Per Cash//A Capital, the debit being first and the two lines separating it from the credit. This information could then be transferred to the ledger, the debit being placed on the left under a Cash heading and the credit to the right under a Capital heading. At a given time a total of the amounts of the debit should equal a total of the amounts of the credits, giving the book-keeper in effect a trial balance’ (R. Emmett Taylor, “Luca Pacioli” in Studies in the History of Accounting, London, 1956). Alan Sangster has made a very close study of the early printings of Pacioli: see particu- larly his article online at www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/volume- 34-number-1 which he summarises thus: ‘In 1494, Luca Pacioli’s 615-page compendium Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Summa) was published in Venice. It was written primarily for merchants [Strathern, 2001]. However, its influence spread far beyond that audience – it is said to have laid out the program for Renaissance mathematics [Rose, 1976], and it has been credited with having led to the development of probability by Pascal [Strathern, 2001], The arithmetic part of Summa was seen as be- ing of sufficient importance that only 21 years after Summa was published, it was trans- lated or, more accurately, used as the basis for a book in Spanish [Andrés de Saragossa, 1515]. The 27-page treatise on bookkeeping contained within Summa, the first known published work on that topic… laid the foundation for double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) as it is practiced today.’ Pacioli’s work is very rare on the market: just seven copies of either the 1494 or this 1523 edition appear in records of book auctions for the last forty years (four copies of the 1494 first printing range in price from £9500 in 1980 to £470,000 in 2005 for the exceptional coloured copy from Macclesfield Castle; the Honeyman copy that had sold for £9500 in 1980 appeared again in 2002 when it made £135,000. In that 2002 sale a copy of this 1523 edition, with both Arithmetica and Geometria parts, the last copy to appear on the market, made £32,450). The literature on Pacioli is enormous: these are the references cited by Sangster Andrés de Saragossa, J. (1515), Sumario Breue d[e] la Pratica dela Arithmetica d[e] Todo el Curso de Larte Marca[n]tiuol Bien Declarado: El Qual se Llama Maestro de Cuento (Valencia: Iuan Ioffre). Antinori, C. (1980), An Anomalous Edition of the “Summa,” 1494 by Luca Pacioli (Parma: Palatina Editrice). Bernstein, J.A. (2001), Print Culture and Music in 16th Century Venice (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press). Boncompagni, B. (1862-63), “Intorno ad un Trattato d’Aritmetica Stampato nel 1478,” Atti dell’ Accademia Pontificia de’ Nuovi Lincei 16, Anno 16. Brown, H.F. (1891), The Venetian Printing Press (London: John C. Nimmo). Brown, R.G. and Johnston, K.S. (1963), Pacioli on Accounting (New York: Mc-Graw Hill). Business Historical Society (1926), “The Oldest of Treatises on Accounting,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, Vol. 1, No. 4: 9-12. Cachey, T.J., Jr., Jordan, L.E., Hesburgh, T.M., and Dupont, C.Y. (1993), Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629), available at: www.nd.edu/~italnet/Dante/text/Incunabula.html. Accessed, May 6, 2006. Carter, R.A. (1995), The History of International Book Publishing, in Altbach, P.G. and Hoshino, E.S. (eds.), International Book Publishing: An Encyclopedia, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities; Vol. 1562 (New York: Garland): 156-163. Clarke, D.A. (1974), “The first edition of Pacioli’s “Summa de Arithmetica” (Venice: Paganinus de Paganinis, 1494),” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, Vol. 1974: 90-92. Conterio, A. (1994), “Luca Pacioli. Trattato di Partita Doppia: Venezia 1494,” In Conterio, A., Yamey, B.S., and Belloni, G. (eds.) Luca Pacioli Trattato di Partita Doppia: Venezia 1494 (Venice: Albrizzi Editore): 51-122.