ABACIST

, an Arithmetician. In this sense we find the word used by William of Malmesbury, in his History de Gestis Anglorum, written about the year 1150; where he shews that one Gerbert, a learned monk of France, who was afterwards made pope of Rome in the year 998 or 999, by the name of Silvester the 2d, was the first who got from the Saracens the abacus, and that he taught such rules concerning it, as the Abacists themselves could hardly understand.