Presentation of the STOQ Project
in the context of the
Workshop for Celebrating the Millennium of
Pope Sylvester II (938-1003)

May 12th 2003
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1. Sylvester II: who is him?

• The Presentation of the STOQ Project at the Lateran University was inserted in the Workshop, organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture, for celebrating the MIllennium of the death of Pope Sylvester II, "the Scientist-Pope".
• Pope Sylvester II, Gerbert d'Aurillac, was born in France, near the Abbey of Aurillac, in the region of Auvergne, in a date between 938 and 950. He died in Rome on May 12th, 1003 and was buried in the Lateran Cathedral - the Cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome -, close to the Lateran University.
• His figure is important for the historians not only because he was the first French Pope in the history of the Church, but overall because he reformed the study program of the Cathedral Schools by inserting in them the study of physical and mathematical sciences, the famous quadrivials (quadrivium arts) of the Middle Age organization of knowledge and of studies.
• In this way, he became the precursor of the Universities, effectively born from the ancient Cathedral Schools, transformed by the Sylvester reform into educational and research institutions of universal scholarship, i.e. "universities".
• Moreover - to earn the title of "Scientist Pope" -, during his personal experience of teaching as Benedictine monk in the Cathedral Schools of many Europe cities, he effectively gave great contributions to the diffusion of the scientific knowledge in the western culture. He developed indeed the experimental method in teaching mathematics and astronomy, by introducing in the Cathedral Schools the use of the abacus for the arithmetical calculations and of a particular version of the astrolabe, invented and costructed by himself,for the astronomy study, even though he personally did not make any scientific discovery.
• The STOQ Project, after one thousand years, moves toward the same direction indicated for the first time by Sylvester II mastership, re-introducing into the Pontifical Universities the integration of science and religion studies as an essential ingredient in the education of the future Church ministers.
• Effectively, Pope Sylvester II was guided in his mastership by the same principle guiding his successor after a millennium the Pope John Paul II, the first Pope from Poland, a nation of which Christianity depends originally on the pastoral action of Pope Sylvester who founded a lot of monasteries in that nation, effectively instituting its National Church.
• The common principle guiding these two Popes so distant in time, but so close in mind, is well synthesized in the first paragraph of the John Paul II Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, guiding our STOQ Project: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit raises to the contemplation of truth".
• An exhaustive presentation of the life and of the mastership of Pope Sylvester II, can be found in the opening lecture of the Workshop, given by Cardinal Paul Poupard, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and inspirer and President of the STOQ Project: "Gerbert Scientist and Pope". The written text of the original Italian version of this lecture is downloadable in this site.