an town of Amalfi established a factory[424] in Constantinople, and
had trade relations with Antioch and Egypt. Venice, as early as the ninth
century, had a valuable trade with Syria and Cairo.[425] Fifty years after
Gerbert died, in the time of Cnut, the Dane and the Norwegian pushed their
commerce far beyond the northern seas, both by caravans through Russia to
the Orient, and by their venturesome barks which {109} sailed through the
Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean.[426] Only a little later,
probably before 1200 A.D., a clerk in the service of Thomas a Becket,
present at the latter's death, wrote a life of the martyr, to which
(fortunately for our purposes) he prefixed a brief eulogy of the city of
London.[427] This clerk, William Fitz Stephen by name, thus speaks of the
British capital:

Aurum mittit Arabs: species et thura Sabaeus:
Arma Sythes: oleum palmarum divite sylva
Pingue solum Babylon: Nilus lapides pretiosos:
Norwegi, Russi, varium grisum, sabdinas:
Seres, purpureas vestes: Galli, sua vina.

Although, as a matter of fact, the Arabs had no gold to send, and the
Scythians no arms, and Egypt no precious stones save only the turquoise,
the Chinese (_Seres_) may have sent their purple vestments, and the north
her sables and other furs, and France her wines. At any rate the verses
show very clearly an extensive foreign trade.

Then there were the Crusades, which in these times brought the East in
touch with the West. The spirit of the Orient showed itself in the songs of
the troubadours, and the _baudekin_,[428] the canopy of Bagdad,[429] became
common in the churches of Italy. In Sicily and in Venice the textile
industries of the East found place, and made their way even to the
Scandinavian peninsula.[430]

We therefore have this state of affairs: There was abundant intercourse
between the East and West for {110} some centuries before the Hindu
numerals appear in any manuscripts in Christian Europe. The numerals must
of necessity have been known to many traders in a country like Italy at
least as early as the ninth century, and probably even earlier, but there
was no reason for preserving them in treatises. Therefore when a man like
Gerbert made them known to the scholarly circles, he was merely describing
what had been familiar in a small way to many people in a different walk of
life.

Since Gerbert[431] was for a long time thought to have been the one to
introduce the numerals into