mma.Frater Luca Bartolomes Pacioli was born about 1445 at Borgo San Sepulcro in Tuscany. He was a "Renaissance man" acquiring an incredible knowledge of diverse technical subjects - religion, business, military science, mathematics, medicine, art, music, law and language. Around 1482, after completing his third treatise on mathematics, Pacioli - like many of his time who sought preferment as a teacher - he became a Franciscan friar. He traveled throughout Italy, lecturing on mathematics, and in 1486 he completed his university education with the equivalent of a doctorate degree. Pacioli never claimed to have invented double entry bookkeeping. Thirty-six years before his monumental treatise on the subject, Benedetto Cotrugli wrote Delia Mercatura et del Mercante Perfetto (Of Trading and the Perfect Trader), which included a brief chapter which described many of the features of double entry. Although this work was not published for more than a century, Pacioli was familiar with the manuscript and credited Cotrugli with originating the double entry method. Pacioli was about 50 years old in 1494 - just two years after Columbus discovered America - when he returned to Venice for the publication of his fifth book, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportion). It was written as a digest and guide to existing mathematical knowledge, and bookkeeping was only one of five topics covered. The Summa's 36 short chapters on bookkeeping, entitled De Computis et Scripturis (Of Reckonings and Writings) were added "in order that the subjects of the most gracious Duke of Urbino may have complete instructions in the conduct of business," and to "give the trader without delay information as to his assets and liabilities." (All quotes from the translation by J.B. Geijsbeek, Ancient Double Entry Bookkeeping: Lucas Pacioli's Treatise, 1914)De Computis begins with some basic instructi...
