4.1276 Promptuarium (3/50)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 23 Apr 91 21:49:19 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1276. Tuesday, 23 Apr 1991.


(1) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 08:35+0000 (24 lines)
From: Heberlein <Heberlein@URZ.KU-EICHSTAETT.DBP.DE>
Subject: promptuarium again

(2) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 12:54:52 EDT (13 lines)
From: Bernard_van't_Hul@ub.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 4.1260 Rs: Promptuarium; Lillabullero; ...

(3) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1991 11:10:38 -0600 (PDT) (13 lines)
From: Art Ferrill <ferrill@u.washington.edu>
Subject: re: 4.1261 Rs: Primus inter pares; S. Bernard & Dante

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 08:35+0000
From: Heberlein <Heberlein@URZ.KU-EICHSTAETT.DBP.DE>
Subject: promptuarium again

I would like to give my cordial thanks to ewveryone, who has responded
to my "promptuarium" - Query. Most of the contributions shed like on
the semantics and the history of the word, making clear, that its notion
"storehouse" had been transferred metaphorically to that "17th - century
- computer".

Meanwhile, i came across a description of promputaria by John Neper
("Rabdologiae seu numerationis per virgulas libri duo / cum appendice de
expeditissimo multiplicationis promptuario"), Edinburgh 1617, which shows
that a promptuarium is more or less the same as a "organum
mathematicum", as described by Caspar Schott, a 17th century Jesuit of
Wuerzburg, Bavaria. Such an organum was found recently in the depot of
the Bayerische Nationalmuseum, Munich.

Now i would like to put my question again in a more accurate way: Does
anyone know of any other existing organa mathematica oder promtuaria?
Are there any modern description of them?

Thanks,
Fritz Heberlein
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------21----
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 12:54:52 EDT
From: Bernard_van't_Hul@ub.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 4.1260 Rs: Promptuarium; Lillabullero; ... (5/106)

Fritz Heberlein suggests that "perhaps some Medievalist
could tell us about earlier manuscript copies of
[the *Promptuarium Parvulorum*]...."
Any library's copy of the *Middle English Dictionary*'s
*Plan and Bibliography* will yield the complete data on the
manuscript (MUCH earlier than De Woerd's edn.) of the PP-text
from which the MED DOES excerpt glosses, citing them (*passim*)
as the Middle-English instances that they are.

(3) --------------------------------------------------------------42----
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1991 11:10:38 -0600 (PDT)
From: Art Ferrill <ferrill@u.washington.edu>
Subject: re: 4.1261 Rs: Primus inter pares; S. Bernard & Dante (3/46)

[ ... ]

The expression, primus inter pares, is frequently used to describe the
position the Emperor Augustus claimed to have after "resotring" the
Republic in the settlement of 27 BC, In A History of Rome by Max Cary
and H.H. Scullard one finds this statement: Instead of a dictator
[Augustus was] a Princeps Civitatis who was primus inter pares, etc."
(p.318). I do not know the origin of the expression.