• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.115-132
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• 2020

Social awareness of mathematics and academic attitudes toward the value of mathematics education has kept changing according to the intellectual, political and religious contexts. In this article, we examine how mathematics was defined and recognized in liberal arts education of the Roman Empire and early medieval Western Europe. This study analyzes how mathematics was described in encyclopedic works written in the Roman era after the mid-second century BC and in the Western European monasteries and cathedral schools after the fifth century. Ancient Greek mathematics took a clear place in liberal arts education through encyclopedia writings and prepared a mathematics curriculum for medieval universities. I hope this study will contribute to understanding the origin and context of the mathematics curriculum of medieval universities.