Pacioli, Luca

1445-1517 An Italian monk and mathematician. Although considered by many to be the "founder" of *double entry bookkeeping, Pacioli is best described as the first individual in Europe to systemically set out double entry accounting principles. His famous Italian-language treatise Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionality, (1494) dealt principally with mathematics, but it included a section devoted to accounting techniques. Very much a man of the Italian Renaissance, the multi-talented Pacioli obtained his bookkeeping knowledge from contemporary Venetian merchants’ practices. Some accounting historians have tended to exaggerate Pacioli’s standing as a major Renaissance thinker, perhaps (by extension) to enhance the standing of accounting theory itself. However, Pacioli was only a minor figure in the Renaissance, and many standard works on the subject only mention him in passing: Some Italian Renaissance histories (e.g., Stephens, 1990) do not mention him at all. Further reading: Brown (1984); Lee et al. (1996)