Reading Luca Pacioli's \textit{Summa} in Catalonia: an early 16th-century Catalan manuscript on algebra and arithmetic (Q2490946)

Even if the second printed commercial arithmetic in Europe, Francese Santcliment's \textit{Summa de l'art d'arithmètica}, was published in 1482 in Barcelona, it was not until 1552 that the first known Spanish algebra treatise, Marc Aurel's \textit{Libro primero de Arithmètica Algebràitica} was printed in Valencia. The manuscript ms.~71 of the Monastery of Sant Cugat (Barcelona) described in this paper, proves however that algebra was cultivated in Catalonia already before the publication of Marc Aurel's book. The manuscript, written in Catalan between 1500 and 1530, contains a wide range of material on arithmetic and algebra. Docampo Rey's examination shows that about half of it, in particular the algebra section, is drawn from Luca's Pacioli's \textit{Summa} (1494) the first printed book which contains algebra. The remainder is a collection of materials on commercial arithmetic of unknown origin but Decampo Rey puts in evidence a close connection with the Catalan commercial arithmetic published by Joan Ventallol in 1521 titled \textit{Pràtica mercantivol}. Docampo Rey limits his analysis to the algebra section putting in evidence the close connection with Pacioli's treatment of the same subject, but he also remarks the use of different and noteworthy kind of diagrams to build the equations and to perform the operations with polynomials.