Benedetto Cotrugli – prekursor nauki i dydaktyki w rachunkowosci oraz jego wybrani nastepcy. Droga podwojnego zapisu z ziemi wloskiej do Polski (Benedetto Cotrugli – a precursor of science and didactics in accounting and his chosen successors. The double-entry bookkeeping system’s journey from the Italian land to Poland)

The article focuses on historical aspects and the presentation of selected persons, who have had a key impact on reaching the principle of double-entry from Italy to Poland. It presents the history of the prevalence of the double-entry rule and thus Benedetto Cotrugli’s contribution to science and education in accounting. Cotrugli’s work was a compendium of merchant knowledge necessary to keep accounting books and the same time a basis for science and education in this field. It was Benedetto Cotrugli who made the first theoretical description of the rules of double accounting, exceeding by over 20 years the work of Luca Pacioli, who codi-fied the principles of bookkeeping in his work Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita, published in Venice in 1491. Due to the fact that the article also attempts to present the meaning of Cotrugli’s book (Book on the Art of Trade), already written in 1458, for the history of accountancy in Poland, it also refers to Ambrogio Lerici, as the first Italian who dealt with dissemination of the double-entry rules in Gda??sk.