Pedro Ciruelo

Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo (Daroca 1470 to Salamanca 1548), mathematician, theologian and, from 1510, professor at the new university of Alcalá de Henares founded by Cardinal Cisneros, was the man who brought the mathematical sciences of Paris to Spain. He had taught at Paris for a decade, and there published his commentary on the Sphere of Sacrobosco in 1498 and his Tractatus arithmeticae practicae in 1495. At Alcalá he gathered his teaching in the Cursus quattuor mathematicarum artium liberalium, arithmetic, geometry, perspective and music, printed by Arnao Guillén de Brocar and Miguel de Eguía between 1516 and 1528: the first systematic course of the mathematical sciences printed in Spain.

Ciruelo's books belong to the Spanish Renaissance at its beginning, when the printing presses of Alcalá served the Complutensian Polyglot and the university. They are rare outside Spain.

Our collection contains the Cursus and the Alcalá edition of the Sphere of 1526.