Victorius of Aquitaine

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Victorius of Aquitaine (Latin Victori (n) us Aquitan (ic) us ; around 457) was an Aquitanian computist of the 5th century who wrote a table work later annotated by Abbo von Fleury to facilitate multiplication and division ( Calculus Victorii ) and 457 on behalf of the Roman archdeacon and later Pope Hilary wrote a work on the calculation of the Easter date ( Cursus paschalis ).

According to his contemporary Gennadius of Marseille (De viris illustribus), he was from Aquitaine and an accurate calculator. According to a Berlin manuscript, Mommsen identified him by his name (Victorius) as the author of the calculus previously attributed to Beda Venerabilis .

There was a dispute over the Easter dates of 444 and 455 and Pope Hilary asked Victorius of Aquitaine, known as a mathematician, to clarify this. Victorius was the first in the West to recognize the 532-year cycle of the Easter date introduced in the Eastern Church by Annianus of Alexandria . He probably did not know Annianus' writing, he used the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea and its continuation by Hieronymus and Prosper . In the letter to Hilarius he does not explain how he came up with it ( he does not explicitly mention the 28-year-old solar circle , but was familiar with the lunar circle from 19 years of age), he may have found the solar circle (period of the weekdays) empirically or independently, e.g. by comparison with the Roman calendar cycles of 84 years (the African computists of the 3rd century AD Augustalis in his Laterculus, etc.) and that of Hippolytus of Rome of 112 years. Victorius sought a compromise between the Alexandrian tradition of the Eastern Church and the Roman tradition and in some cases of doubt left the choice of the Easter date to the Pope.

expenditure

  • Calculus : Gottfried Friedlein: Victorii calculus ex codice Vaticano editus. In: Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche. Volume 4, 1871, pp. 443-463 ( digitized version ).
  • Cursus paschalis : Bruno Krusch : Studies on Christian-Medieval Chronology. The emergence of today's calendar (= treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Year 1937, No. 8). Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: Weidmann 1938. (Part I: Victorius. Replacement of Mommsen's incorrect edition in the MG. )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mosshammer, The Easter Computus, 2008, p. 240
  2. ^ Mosshammer, The Easter Computus .., 2008, p. 241
personal data
SURNAME Victorius of Aquitaine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Victorinus of Aquitaine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Monk, cleric, church writer, astronomer and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH before 457
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Limoges
DATE OF DEATH after 457