and there he may see at the end of the long corridor, across the
quadrangle, the statue of Leonardo in scholars garb. Few towns have honored
a mathematician more, and few mathematicians have so distinctly honored
their birthplace. Leonardo was born in the golden age of this city, the
period of its commercial, religious, and intellectual prosperity.[517]
{129} Situated practically at the mouth of the Arno, Pisa formed with Genoa
and Venice the trio of the greatest commercial centers of Italy at the
opening of the thirteenth century. Even before Venice had captured the
Levantine trade, Pisa had close relations with the East. An old Latin
chronicle relates that in 1005 "Pisa was captured by the Saracens," that in
the following year "the Pisans overthrew the Saracens at Reggio," and that
in 1012 "the Saracens came to Pisa and destroyed it." The city soon
recovered, however, sending no fewer than a hundred and twenty ships to
Syria in 1099,[518] founding a merchant colony in Constantinople a few
years later,[519] and meanwhile carrying on an interurban warfare in Italy
that seemed to stimulate it to great activity.[520] A writer of 1114 tells
us that at that time there were many heathen people--Turks, Libyans,
Parthians, and Chaldeans--to be found in Pisa. It was in the midst of such
wars, in a cosmopolitan and commercial town, in a center where literary
work was not appreciated,[521] that the genius of Leonardo appears as one
of the surprises of history, warning us again that "we should draw no
horoscope; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come
to pass."[522]

Leonardo's father was one William,[523] and he had a brother named
Bonaccingus,[524] but nothing further is {130} known of his family. As to
Fibonacci, most writers[525] have assumed that his father's name was
Bonaccio,[526] whence _filius Bonaccii_, or Fibonacci. Others[527] believe
that the name, even in the Latin form of _filius Bonaccii_ as used in
Leonardo's work, was simply a general one, like our Johnson or Bronson
(Brown's son); and the only contemporary evidence that we have bears out
this view. As to the name Bigollo, used by Leonardo, some have thought it a
self-assumed one meaning blockhead, a term that had been applied to him by
the commercial world or possibly by the university circle, and taken by him
that he might prove what a blockhead could do. Milanesi,[528] however, has
shown that the word Bigollo (or Pigollo) was used in Tusc