Modern accounting is impossible to imagine without the double entry principle. For the first time this accounting method was used and put into circulation by the Italian Luca Pacioli. At the same time, in the 15th century, the term "accountant" came into use. For a long time, no one knew about the research of the Italian author - his name was for the time being forgotten.
Childhood and adolescence Luca Pacioli
Luca Pacioli was born in the Italian city of Borgo San Sepolcro in 1445. From an early age, he helped a local merchant keep business records. At the same time Pacioli studied at the workshop of the mathematician and artist Piero della Francesca.
There is evidence that Luke was the master's most talented student. Among those with whom Pacioli had a friendship was Leon Batista Alberti - a writer, architect, musician, scientist. Luca met him at the house of Federico de Montefeltro, a connoisseur of art and sciences.
At the age of nineteen, Luca moved to Venice. Here he got a job as an assistant to a wealthy merchant. In the evenings Pacioli worked with merchant children, teaching them the basics of bookkeeping. In 1470, Luke compiled a commercial grammar textbook for them - his first book. It is not known for certain whether this essay was published.
Studying with the three sons of the merchant Rompisani, Luca finds time to study on his own. But it is not the merchant business that attracts him, but the mathematical sciences. At one time, Pacioli attended public lectures by the famous mathematician Bragadino in those years.
As a result, Pacioli leaves Venice and moves to Rome. Here he meets the head of the della Rovere family, who held a high position in the Franciscan order.
The work of Luca Pacioli
In 1472, Pacioli took a vow of poverty, according to the custom of the Franciscans, and returned to his homeland. The monastic vow implied poverty, obedience, and chastity. Passing into monasticism, Pacioli acquired what, as he himself believed, he needed to deepen into pure science.
Becoming a Franciscan, Pacioli gets the opportunity to make a career as a professor. Doors open before the scientist that are closed to many others. In 1477 Luca became a professor at the University of Perugia, where they lecture in mathematics. Some of the manuscripts of his abstracts are still kept in the Vatican library.
During these years Pacioli began work on a book on the basics of arithmetic and geometry. It included a "Treatise on Accounts and Records."
In November 1494, the book was published and almost immediately made the author famous. Two years later Pacioli was invited to lecture in Milan, and then in Bologna. Here the scientist meets Leonardo da Vinci, who for a while even left his work on geometry and began to work on illustrations for the next book by Pacioli.
From 1490 to 1493 Pacioli lived in Padua and Naples. This was followed by the period of the so-called Italian wars, which also involved other European countries. Interest in science began to fade. And almost no one cared about commerce and related accounting. Over the next centuries, none of the European authors have created anything truly valuable in this area. Interest in accounts, which reflected profits and losses, reappeared by the beginning of the 19th century: this was required by the development of commodity-money relations and the bourgeois system.
In 1508 Pacioli's book Divine Proportion was published. The author has included his conversations with Leonardo da Vinci in it. Subsequently, Luca wrote several more works, including a study on the game of chess. However, during the life of the author, these works were not published.
How did Luca Pacioli spend the last years of his life? Historians still know almost nothing about this. The medieval mathematician, who became the popularizer of bookkeeping, passed away on June 19, 1517. The exact date of his death was established only in the last century, this was done by Japanese researchers. They managed to find a record of the death of the scientist in the books of the monastery of the Holy Cross, located in Florence.
Facts and conjectures
By the beginning of the 19th century, Luca Pacioli and his research were almost forgotten. However, in 1869 his treatise was found telling about accounts and records. Some considered this work to be a fake. Others accused Pacioli of shamelessly using the earlier work of other authors in his composition.
The Russian historian Golenishchev-Kutuzov argued that Benedetto Cotrulhi first described the double entry in 1458, but this work did not appear until a century later.
One way or another, Italy is considered the birthplace of the modern method of accounting. This principle was used by Italian merchants at the beginning of the XIV century, and some elements of the double entry date back to the XIII century.
However, the very term "accountant", as researchers believe, first appeared in Germany in 1498. This happened a few years after the publication of the work of Luca Pacioli.
Double entry principle
In 1869, Professor Lucini diligently prepared for a lecture on the history of accounting: he was asked to speak at the Milan Academy. In preparation for his speech, the scientist to his surprise came across a book, the author of which was unknown to him Luca Pacioli. One of the sections of the book covered the application of mathematics in the field of commerce.
Lucini found in Pacioli's work a detailed description of the double entry principle, which later found application in all systems of accounting for economic activities. The principle is clear even to those who are far from economics: one record shows where the money came from, the second - where it eventually went. After this historical find, the researchers gradually restored the life path of a person recognized as the "father of accounting."
