APRENDER A CONTAR SEGÚN EL DE COMPUTO DE RABANO MAURO

Primary school is hardly documented in the ages before the Renaissance, and in the case of Mathematics the case is even more difficult since they were learned on the abacus (either the dust board or the counters abacus) that was deleted after the operation had been completed, to reuse it again. The De Computo of Rabanus Maurus (ca. 780-856) is a handbook of Easter reckoning. However the first eight chapters offer a good insight in the primary school and in the ways by which children would have been taught to count: the different sorts of numbers (in an approximation that is more grammatical than arithmetical), the different forms of writing them and finger counting; finally the student is introduced in the study of the bizarre world of fractions, such as they were known by the Romans. Here we offer the Latin text together with the translation into Spanish of these eight chapters. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]