The influence of Amatino Manucci and Luca Pacioli

Abstract

Luca Pacioli (1494) published the first printed treatise on double entry bookkeeping. Amatino Manucci, as a partner in a Florentine company with branches in the south of France, kept a complex system of accounts (1299–1300) which are thought to be the earliest known to conform to double entry usage. The author considers the work of these two figures in its historical context, and thus their place in the history of double entry bookkeeping. The article was first delivered as a talk at Gresham College on 25 April 2008 as part of the BSHM–Gresham College History of Financial Mathematics meeting.

Notes

¹His first biographer was Bernardino Baldi (1589); see Baldi (1998). More modern studies are Ricci (1940); Biggiogero (1960); Jayawardene (1974). R E Taylor's biography (1942) is lively but imaginative.

²A useful outline is also given in http://www.courses.vcu.edu/INFO465-gs/SMSU_Pacioli.htm

³‘Pero molti tengano li loro libri doppii. Uno ne mostrano al conpratore e l'altro al venditore.’ ff. 200v

⁴‘Chi non fa non falla, e chi non falla non impara’ f. 203r.