The mystery of Sacrobosco. One of the most intriguing historical mysteries was whether Ioannes de Sacrobosco, or John of Holywood, was Irish, English or a Scot.
Ioannes de Sacrobosco was the author of a handful of widely read medieval texts on astronomy and mathematics. For hundreds of years his name was a household word to any student of the liberal arts - that is arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, logic and music.
Almost all the dates for Sacrobosco are guesses except for one: we know that on June 5, 1221, he was appointed as a master at the University of Paris and soon after became Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy.
He was one of the pioneers of introducing into Western Europe the new Arabic learning on mathematics, astronomy and medicine.
At the time he joined the University of Paris he wrote De Algorithmus in which he discussed new methods of calculation. Systems which, today, we take for granted. He then wrote Tractatus de Sphaera Mundi, regarded for a time as the major work on astronomy and the theory of planets, constellations and eclipses.
His work on the field of practical geometry (De Compositione quadrantis) has become one of the oldest examples of a graduated quadrant by which one could obtain the different hours of the day from the observation of the sun’s height. Many scholars of his day, and for some generations afterwards revered him, as an expert on time reckoning whose extensive work dealt with calendar reform.
It has been estimated that Sacrobosco died in Paris about 1256.
Some 18th Century sources refer to his grave being in the cloisters of the monastery of Saint-Mathurin in Paris, which was the headquarters of the University of Paris. A stone had carvings of an astronomical instrument with the words ‘de Sacrobosco qui computista Joannes’.
But who was de Sacrobosco?
The name translates as ‘John of Holywood’ and he is claimed by one later writer, called ‘Robert the Englishman’, as being English. English commentators argued that ‘Holywood’ was an early form of Halifax. But all records show that Halifax - which name was being recorded as ‘Haliflex’ over a century before Sacrobosco was born - meant ‘holy flax field’ and was never called Holywood.
There is another claim that the Holywood in question was in what is now Dumfries in Scotland and that it was the site of an important Augustinian abbey.
However, in 1577, Richard Stanihurst, writing his Description of Ireland stated that Sacrobosco was Norman-Irish. Stanihurst was born in Dublin in 1545. He was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and became a Jesuit after his wife's death. His work was used in Holinshed's Chronicles. He died in Brussels in 1618.
As an authority, Stanihurst is a heavyweight. He knew the work of Sacrobosco, knew the Irish background and certainly spent some time at the monastery of Saint-Mathurin in Paris looking at the now lost manuscripts of Sacrobosco.
The expert and author of The Surnames of Ireland, Edward MacLysaght, points out that Holywood, sometimes written as Hollywood, became the surname of a Norman family who first settled in Dublin and the name was found in Dublin and Oriel, where it can still be located today.
In fact, Hollywood in Fingal, north of Dublin, was then in the fee of Geoffrey de Marisco. And when we look into the records we find that the family were using the form ‘de Sacrobosco’ at this time. In 1310 Roger de Sacrobosco was summoned to attend a parliament in Kilkenny while in 1334 Henry de Sacrobosco, a Dominican friar, was sent as ambassador to The O’Conor Don, Prince of Connacht, for which service he received 40 shillings.
By the later 14th Century the family began using the de Hollywood or Hollywood form of their name and in 1401 a Christopher de Hollywood was appointed to hold convocations of prelates and magnates in Ireland.
He is not to be confused with his descendent Christopher Hollywood — a Jesuit born in the parish in1562, who became a professor at Padua. Some of his work was published in Antwerp in 1604. He returned to Ireland, under the patronage of Sir Christopher Plunket, to became head of the Jesuits for the next 23 years until his death in 1626.
That Ioannes de Sarcrobosco was born and educated in Ireland and studied in an Irish monastic school before becoming a professor of astronomy at the University of Paris is not surprising.
Dr Dan McCarthy of Trinity College, Dublin, has shown, from the astronomical observations noted in the Irish texts of the period, that the Irish monastic centres were extremely advanced in this science. A body of records of eclipses, comets, aurora and even a supernova in the Crab Nebula, emerges from the annals and, surprisingly, one third of the observations are unique to Irish records alone. They do not appear in other European records.
How do we know they are correct? Dr McCarthy, an astronomer, correlates them with the records made at the same time in China and Japan and also uses a computer to check the star movements.
Irish scholars of the period were to be found at most of the great learning centres of Europe - the universities of Bologna, Padua, Salerno, Montpelier and, of course, Paris.
Indeed, one scholar from Donegal became the personal physician to the King of France and author of several books on diseases and cures.
It was the Irish scholars at these great European centres of learning who were among the first to welcome the new Arabic learning that was infiltrating into Europe.
Professor Francis Shaw SJ in `Irish Medical Men and Philosophers' showed how the Irish scholars of the day, returning to their native land from the Continent, rendered into Irish the new Arabic works of medicine and philosophy. The astronomical work of Mess’Allah of Alexandria was translated into Irish in 1325.
There seems little doubt that Ioannes de Sacrobosco was from Hollywood in Fingal in north Co. Dublin.
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