Otto took 20-year-old Gerbert into his court to tutor his 16-year-old heir,
Otto II, in what was then called“mathesis.”.
As a young monk, Gerbert had traveled to Muslim-controlled Spain to study advanced science,
astronomy, and mathematics- disciplines that had been virtually lost to the Western world.
Whispers that Gerbert's math was a tool of Satan followed him into the papacy,
and though he frequently displayed his abacus skills and wrote treatises on Arabic math, he died(in 1003) without convincing either the Church or the masses to adopt Arabic numerals.