(b Aquitaine, c940; d 12 May 1003). Scholar and pope. His influence in the history of thought was such that the 10th century has been called the ‘century of Gerbert’. His importance for music lies in his comments on Boethius's De musica institutione and his treatise on the division of the monochord and the measurement of organ pipes.
In three letters dating from 986/7 to members of the abbey of Aurillac, Gerbert deals with problems relating to the organ, not as regards chant accompaniment, but the use of the instrument for didactic purposes, as did Hucbald of St Amand in his Musica. Gerbert had entered the monastery of Aurillac reformed by Odo of Cluny, c925. His primary interests lay in scholarship: he travelled to Catalonia to study under Arab mathematicians and astronomers. Adalbero, archbishop of Reims, summoned him, probably in 972, to teach the subjects of the Quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music) at the episcopal school at Reims, where he probably wrote his treatise and his letters commenting on Boethius. He was elected Abbot of Bobbio and, in 999, pope, taking the name Silvester II.
In two letters addressed to Constantinus, master of the Fleury monastic school, Gerbert comments on two passages from Boethius's De musica institutione (ii, 10; ii, 21), concerning the relationship between mathematics and music. These letters survive in anthologies of treatises, almost all of which originated in Lorraine (B-BRs, 531; Br 4499–503, f.41v; 10162–6, f.85; D-DS 1988, f.168v, from St Jacques de Liège; GB-Ob C.270, from Lorraine).
A treatise on the measurement of organ pipes is attributed to Gerbert in one source (E-Mn 9088, f.125v; ed. in Sachs, 1970, p.59), and this attribution should be accepted even though the treatise has elsewhere been attributed to Bernelinus, Gerbert's pupil. Richer, Gerbert's biographer, ascribed to Gerbert a treatise on the division of the monochord: this is the same treatise; it deals with both organ pipes and the monochord, and shows that the same method of measurement is not appropriate for both (‘De commensuralitate fistularum et monocordi cur non conveniant’). The treatise survives in five early manuscripts (E-Mn 9088, ff.125–128v; F-MOf H.491, f.81; Pn lat.7377 C, ff.44v–47; I-Rvat lat.4539, ff.85–91v; Rvat Reg.lat.1661, ff.34v–39v; ed. in GerbertS, i, 312–30 and PL, cli, 653–74, and attributed to Bernelinus).
PL, cxxxix, 85–350
P.F. Lausser: Gerbert: étude historique sur le Xe siècle (Aurillac, 1866)
A. Olleris, ed.: Oeuvres de Gerbert, pape sous le nom de Sylvestre II (Clermont-Ferrand and Paris, 1867)
J. Havet: ‘L'écriture secrète de Gerbert’, Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 4th ser., xv (1887), 94–112
J. Havet, ed.: Lettres de Gerbert (Paris, 1889)
N. Bubnov, ed.: Gerberti … opera mathematica, 972–1003 (Berlin, 1899/R)
B. Lefèvre: Notes d'histoire des mathématiques dans l'antiquité et au Moyen-Age (Leuver, 1920), 37, 83–90
M. Manitius: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, ii (Munich, 1923/R), 729–42
J. Leflon: Gerbert, humanisme et chrétienté au Xe siècle (St Wandrille, 1946)
K.-J. Sachs: Mensura fistularum: die Mensurierung der Orgelpfeifen im Mittelalter, i (Stuttgart, 1970), 59
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971), 129, n.2
K.-J. Sachs: ‘Gerbertus cognomento musicus: zur musikgeschichtliche Stellung des Gerbert von Reims (nachmaligen Papstes Silvester II.)’, AMw, xxix (1972), 257–74
C.E. Lutz: Schoolmasters of the Tenth Century (Hamden, CT, 1977), 127–47
P. Riché: Gerbert d'Aurillac, le pape de l'an mil (Paris, 1987), 51–3
P. Riché and J.P. Callu, eds.: Gerbert d'Aurillac: correspondance (Paris, 1993), ii, 686–93
M. Passalacqua: ‘Un papa e tre codici (Silvestro II ed Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek, 380; Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Misc. Class. 25; Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Hist. 5)’, Scriptorium, xlviii (1994), 147–51
C.W. Brockett: ‘The Frontspiece of Paris B.N. Ms. Lat. 776: Gerbert's Acrostic Pattern Poems’, Manuscsripta, xxxix (1995), 3–25
O. Guyot-Jeannin and E. Poulle, eds.: Autour de Gerbert d’Aurillac, le pape de l’an mil (Paris, 1996)
C. Meyer: ‘Gerbertus musicus: Gerbert et les fondements du système acoustique’, Gerbert l’européen: Aurillac 1996, ed. N. Charbonnel and J.E. Iung (Aurillac, 1997)
MICHEL HUGLO