intractable. From the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries the 
Abacists fought the Algorists. That is, the literate fought the 
numbers people. In some places the Arabic numerals were 
banned. In Italy some merchants of the thirteenth century used 
them as a secret code. Under manuscript culture the outward 
appearance of the numerals underwent many changes and, 
says Dantzig (p. 34): “In fact, the numerals did not assume a 
stable form until the introduction of printing. It can be added 
parenthetically that so great was the stabilizing influence of 
printing that the numerals of today have essentially the same 
appearance as those of the fifteenth century.”