Hamish Riley-Smith

PACIOLI, Luca Summa de Arithmetica Toscalano, Paganino de Paganini 1523

Part one only of two, 29.5 x 21.0cm, folio, [8] + 224 numbered leaves; very fine strapwork title-border, white on black, repeated with the first page of text; the first leaf of text with a large woodcut initial L depicting Pacioli standing with a book before him and a pair of compasses in his hand, identified in ink in a contemporary hand; full-page woodcut ‘tree of proportion’ printed in red and black, full-page woodcut showing finger symbolism for numbering, partly highlighted in contemporary colour, mathematical and geometrical diagrams in margins, and woodcuts showing instruments and methods of measuring; printed marginalia to one leaf just shaved (sense fully recoverable); title page and final leaf a little frayed, a dampmark to the gutter at the head and to the outer margin throughout, stronger at the end, scarcely entering the text; one leaf with portion of lower blank margin cut away, another with the blank lower corner torn away, two leaves strengthened in the gutter without touching the text, one or two minor marginal tears and a few small stains, marginal annotations to a few leaves (see below); in all a fine copy, attractively bound in seventeenth–century vellum, spine lettered in MS in ink, holes suggestive of clasps or chain binding to both boards,minor cracking of vellum to upper portion of lower board, modern bookplate to front pastedown; preserved in a cloth box.

Second edition of Pacioli's treatise on mathematics, an exact reprint of the first edition of Venice, 1494, containing the first printed exposition of double-entry book-keeping. Paccioli’s name heads the several dedicatory prefaces.‘The text is in two parts. The treatise, on geometry [excluded from the present copy] has separate signatures and foliation and a caption title. There is a brief colophon at the end of part 1 referring to the full colophon at the end of part 2’ (Mortimer). Given the early binding on this copy, it is reasonable to consider that this first part, complete with its own colophon, was separately available from the publisher. The treatise on double–entry book–keeping, ‘Distinctio nona, tractatus xi, De Scripturis’ which occupies leaves 197v–210v, seems to have been of particular interest to its owner; there are several manuscript marginal notes highlighting or emphasising the text, an indication, perhaps, that the book was acquired for this particular section. Certainly, the copy evidences annotation almost exclusively to section nine, ‘De Societatibus’, the divison incorporating the entry on accounting, each part of which treats of some aspect of mercantile practice, with the majority of manuscript marginalia being confined to Tractatus xi, ‘De Scripturis’.Prior to its first publication in 1494, Pacioli had been working on the Summa de Arithmetica for a period of thirty years. Pacioli regretted the low ebb to which teaching had fallen and he thought that the fault lay in the use of improper methods and in the scarcity of available subject matter. He sought to correct these faults in the Summa. He divided the material as follows: 1. Arithmetic and algebra. 2. Their use in trade reckoning. 3. Book-keeping. 4. Money and exchange. 5. Pure and especially applied geometry.‘Pacioli in Venice was putting the book-keeping section of the Summa in shape for publication towards the end of 1493, but that portion was certainly written some time before the date of publication... At no place did Pacioli claim originality for the double-entry system of book-keeping which he described. He specifically stated that he was merely writing down the system which had been used in Venice for over two hundred years...‘Pacioli recommended that all business transactions should be recorded in a systematic way consisting of the debit (debito - owed to) and the credit (credito - owed by). After the merchant takes his inventory, he uses three books, the memorandum for general information on the business transactions, from which daily such information is entered briefly in the journal using debit and credit. In Venice they used Per indicating the debtor (debitore) and A denoting the creditor (creditore). A journal entry might then be Per Cash//A Capital, the debit being first and the two lines separating it from the credit. This information could then be transferred to the ledger, the debit being placed on the left under a Cash heading and the credit to the right under a Capital heading. At a given time a total of the amounts of the debit should equal a total of the amounts of the credits, giving the book-keeper in effect a trial balance’ (R. Emmett Taylor, Luca Pacioli in Studies in the History of Accounting, London, 1956).Adams P8; Goldsmiths’ 15; ICA, p. 1; Kress 33; Mortimer, Italian 16th Century Books II 347; Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 56; not in Herwood or Montgomery.

£14500

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