Everything about Johannes De Sacrobosco totally explained
» For the crater, see Sacrobosco (crater).
Johannes de Sacrobosco or
Sacro Bosco (
John of Holywood, c.
1195 – c.
1256) was an
English scholar and
astronomer/
astrologer who taught at the
University of Paris and wrote the authoritative mediaeval astronomy text
Tractatus de Sphaera.
Although described as English, his birthplace is unknown because Sacrobosco is an otherwise unknown town or region. The traditional belief that he was born in
Halifax is now considered discredited because Halifax means 'holy hair', not 'holy wood'. He was educated at
Oxford University. According to a
seventeenth century account, he arrived at the University of Paris on
June 5,
1221, but whether as an arts student or as a
licentiate (one having a
Master of Arts degree from another university and thus qualified to teach) is unclear. In due course, he began to teach the mathematical disciplines at the University of Paris. About 1230, his most well known work,
Tractatus de Sphaera, was published. In this book, Sacrobosco discussed the
Earth and its place in the
Universe. It was required reading by students in all Western European universities for the next four centuries. Its description of the Earth as a sphere and its popularity exposes the
nineteenth-century opinion that medieval scholars thought the Earth was flat as a fabrication (See:
Flat Earth). In his
Algorismus, theorized to have been his first work, Sacrobosco showed himself to be a strong proponent of
Arab methods of mathematics, his
Algorismus being the first text to introduce
Hindu-Arabic numerals and procedures into the university curriculum.
What Sacrobosco may be most famous for is his criticism of the
Julian calendar. In his book on
computus,
De Anni Ratione (1235), he maintained that the Julian calendar was ten days off and that some correction was needed. He made no proposal to correct the accumulated error of ten days but looking to the future, he proposed to leave one day out of the calendar every 288 years. In this book, he invented the false notion that
Caesar Augustus took a day from February to give to August (see
Julian calendar).
The year of his death is uncertain, with evidence supporting the years 1234, 1236, 1244, and 1256. The inscription marking his burial place in the monastery of Saint-Mathurin in Paris described him as a computist, who was an expert on the reckoning of time.
The
lunar crater Sacrobosco is named after him.
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