MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 138, 139, 140 ... 178, 179, 180  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Are the Anglo-Saxonists about to be disappeared?

Academics have called for the term Anglo-Saxon to be dropped because it is “bound up with white supremacy” — an idea described as “mad as a bag of ferrets” by one historian.

The term traditionally refers to groups from across the North Sea, including Angles and Saxons, who settled in Britain after the end of Roman rule, and to their descendants and their culture until the Norman Conquest.

However, it has also been used by imperialists and white-supremacists to describe white people of British origin. Hitler wrote admiringly of “Anglo-Saxon determination” to hold India. Some academics believe that the term is not only tainted by these associations but is also historically inaccurate.

The term “Anglo-Saxon” gained popularity in the 1700-1800s as a way of linking white people “to their supposed origins”

Mary Rambaran-Olm, a specialist in early medieval England, wrote this week in History…


etc

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drop-the-term-anglo-saxon-as-it-is-bound-up-with-white-supremacy-say-academics-d66dlztfj

https://medievalistsofcolor.com/race-in-the-profession/statement-of-support-for-dr-mary-rambaran-olm/

Some say the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) should be renamed to something like the International Society of Inclusive-Saxonists (ISIS). What could possibly go wrong?
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
...what interested me is Cicero being the Great Survivor. As a world record, I think that must be our next port of call.

Cicero is in a class of his own and therefore under suspicion, uniqueness being invariably a major red flag.

In 68 B.C. his letters begin, from which (and especially those to T. Pomponius A, his “second self”), we obtain wholly unique knowledge of Roman life

If they were consciously written for posterity, how to account for their variability, ranging from everyday family matters to serious treatises? It's the wide range of subjects encompassed by the Cicero letters that makes them so precious, not just to Classical historians but to the world

The period covered by the letters of Cicero is one of the most interesting and momentous in the history of the world, and these letters afford a picture of the chief personages and most important events of that age from the pen of a man who was not only himself in the midst of the conflict, but who was a consummate literary artist.


There are thirty-seven books of Cicero letters, another thirty-five books have gone missing/been lost. He is credited with having written 800 or so letters but aside from marvelling at how many survived, the odd thing about the Cicero collection is it includes letters from him as well as to him. Someone, presumably his secretary, either made copies or went and asked to have his letters back

Plutarch wrote that during Senate hearings in 65 BC relating to the first Catilinarian conspiracy, Tiro and Cicero's other secretaries were in the audience meticulously and rapidly transcribing Cicero's oration. On many of the oldest Tironian tables, lines from this speech were frequently used as examples, leading scholars to theorize it was originally transcribed using Tironian shorthand. Scholars also believe that in preparation for speeches, Tiro drafted outlines in shorthand that Cicero used as notes while speaking

According to historians, Cicero's orations and letters were copied out and thus passed on to posterity by his amanuensis, Tiro. It is probably fair to say that without Tiro there'd be no extant Cicero writings but the task may have been a bit too much for one person alone. Since Tironian notes/ shorthand have been classified as written 'in various hands' it's a reasonable assumption to say abbreviated words were quite routinely used, in Latin as elsewhere, whether a 'Tironian system' or not.

The situation is we have no original manuscripts of Cicero's speeches or letters, and no record of 'Tiro' until medieval times

There are no surviving copies of Tiro's original manual and code, so knowledge of it is based on biographical records and copies of Tironian tables from the medieval period

So from the first German publication of 1531 to the English 1620 edition ("the very scarce first complete translation into English of all 16 books of Cicero’s familiar epistles") there's a missing millennium. And more puzzling still, he is being published in the mid-nineteenth century 'from the original'

The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Comprising his Treatise on the Commonwealth; and his Treatise on the Laws. Translated from the original, with Dissertations and Notes in Two Volumes. By Francis Barham, Esq. (London: Edmund Spettigue, 1841-42).
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

We've got problems too. The Tironsensians (aka Tiron and the wondrous Latin shorthand) are a monastic order too early to be mixed up with Petrarch (presumably aka Plutarch) and the early Renaissance dudes who are in turn too early for this Anglo-German ramp.

We keep coming up against these bare-faced lies (it surely can't just be serial wishful thinking) about the 'originals'. The zillion-dollar AEL prize is still available to anybody who can produce a single one. There doesn't go my pension.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I was way out, the first publication of Cicero's work is officially dated 1465

In 1465 Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer issued De officiis with Paradoxa Stoicorum. Hexasticha XII Sapientum de titulo Ciceronis. Horatius Flaccus: Ad T. Manlium Torquatum (Car. IV 7) from Mainz. This edition, and coincidentally two other editions of texts by Cicero also printed in 1465, were the first editions of classical texts issued through the medium of printing.

Johann Fust was subsequently written 'Faust', apparently his grandson's typo! Not, we are admonished, the same person as Dr Johann Faust, the famous magician. But misspellings are as nothing compared to other goings-on in the printing business

There is no evidence for the theory that Johann Fust was a goldsmith, but he appears to have been a money-lender or banker. Because of his connection with Johann Gutenberg, he has been called the inventor of printing, and the instructor as well as the partner of Gutenberg. Some see him as a patron and benefactor who saw the value of Gutenberg's discovery and supplied him with means to carry it out, whereas others portray him as a speculator who took advantage of Gutenberg's necessity and robbed him of the profits of his invention.

Gutenberg is universally lauded as 'the inventor of printing' but how do we know?

Whatever the truth, the Helmasperger document of November 6, 1455, shows that Fust advanced money to Gutenberg (apparently 800 guilders in 1450, and another 800 in 1452) to carry on his work, and that Fust, in 1455, brought a suit against Gutenberg to recover the money he had lent, claiming 2026 guilders for principal and interest.

The suit was apparently decided in Fust's favour, November 6, 1455, in the refectory of the Barefooted Friars of Mainz, when Fust swore that he himself had borrowed 1550 guilders and given them to Gutenberg. There is no evidence that Fust, as is usually supposed, removed the portion of the printing materials covered by his mortgage to his own house, and carried on printing there with the aid of Peter Schöffer of Gernsheim (who is known to have been a scriptor at Paris in 1449), who in about 1455 married Fust's only daughter Christina.

Normal no doubt for printing /publishing families but it gives the history of printing a bad press.

Of much importance in the history of the discovery of printing is Zell's statement, preserved in the Chronicle of Cologne of 1499, that the year 1450 was the date of the beginning of printing, that the country-squire Johann Gutenberg was the inventor of it, and that the first book printed was the Latin Bible, the Vulgate.

Wiki says the first book printed was Ars Minor, a Latin grammar/rhetoric because Gutenberg 'correctly judged the market' though Cicero wasn't far behind

De Officiis was the third book to be printed—third only to the Gutenberg Bible and Donatus's "Ars Minor", which was the first printed book.[

...which is fascinating because Donatus is totally unknown except St Jerome said 'he was my tutor'. Cicero of course needed no introduction and other editions followed, apparently more or less simultaneously

About 1465 printer Ulrich ZellOffsite Link issued Cicero's De officiis from Cologne. Zell learned printing in Mainz at the shop of Fust and Schöffer, and is thought to have begun printing in Cologne as early as 1463. However, a number of his books are undated, as is this edition of De officiis. If it was issued in 1465 it is one of the three earliest printed editions of a classical text, all of which appeared in 1465.

The Romans caught up quickly

The third edition of a classical text issued in 1465 was the edition of Cicero's De oratore issued at the Abbey of Subiaco, Italy by Sweynheim and Pannartz in September, 1465.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
The Tironsensians (aka Tiron and the wondrous Latin shorthand) are a monastic order too early to be mixed up with Petrarch (presumably aka Plutarch) and the early Renaissance dudes who are in turn too early for this Anglo-German ramp.

Tironensians, if that is what they were called, may have been linked to the Benedictine order, possibly in a secretarial role which would be rendered obsolete with the introduction of printing.

Subiaco is a Benedictine abbey north of Rome, in the Lazio mountains. Founded by St Benedict, it claims to be even older than Monte Cassino and, despite being destroyed (twice) by 'Saracens', enjoyed a golden age in the 11th-12th centuries, to become a major pilgrimage /tourist destination.

When St. Benedict, at the age of fourteen (c. 494), retired from the world and lived for three years in a cave above the river Anio, he was supplied with the necessaries of life by a monk, St. Roman. From this grotto, St. Benedict developed the concepts and organization of the Benedictine Order. He built twelve monasteries, including one at the grotto, and placed twelve monks in each.

In 854 a record[citation needed] noted its renovation. In this year, Pope Leo IV is said to have consecrated an altar to Sts. Benedict and Scholastica and another to St. Sylvester. Another renovation took place in 1053 under Abbot Humbert of St. Scholastica. Abbot John V, created cardinal by Pope Gregory VII, made the grotto the terminus of a yearly procession, built a new road, and had the altars reconsecrated.

But it kept abreast of technology

At a time when several German monks had been assigned to the monastery, German printers established a printing press in the town. They printed the first books in Italy in the late 15th century.

In the course of publishing Cicero's letters the two printers, Pannarz and Sweynheim, came up with a new font type

In 1467, the two printers left Subiaco and settled at Rome, where the brothers Pietro and Francesco Massimo placed a house at their disposal. The same year, they published an edition of Cicero's letters that gave its name to the cicero, the Continental equivalent of the pica. Their proof and manuscript reader was Giovan de' Bussi, since 1469 Bishop of Aleria in Corsica.

Their venture was not a success. Few apparently wanted to read books by Classical writers.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Novels written in the form of letters, aka epistolary novels, tend to be presented as belonging to the eighteenth-century

The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749). In France, there was Lettres persanes (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), which used the epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774) (The Sorrows of Young Werther) and Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion.

but the genre was already established in the late fifteenth century, no more than two decades after the first printed books had come out

The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish "Prison of Love" (Cárcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro, belongs to a tradition of novels in which a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative.

It seems to have taken a couple of centuries for epistolary novels to gain a following in England

The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to be James Howell (1594–1666) with "Familiar Letters" (1645–50), who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women.

though whether contemporaries read the published letters as a 'novel' is moot since Howell was a historian, the royal historiographer no less

Although James Howell earned his appointment by Charles II as historiographer royal of England by a long succession of publications to be classed as historical, his enduring title to literary fame rests on his Familiar Letters (Epistolae Ho-Elianae), which can only in part be described as historical writing.

Howell's own life reads like a (picaresque) novel

Before he began his literary career, James Howell had led an active life, which had extended over some forty-five years since, to use his own phraseology, he “came tumbling into the world a grave Cadet, a true Cosmopolite; not born to Land, Lease, House or Office.” He had seen many cities and the dwellers therein beyond the limits of England and his native Wales; he had been engaged in commercial dealings in Venice and in diplomatic negotiations in Spain, besides being temporarily employed in foreign service in Denmark and in France; he had held an administrative post in York, and had thus come to sit for a time in parliament; and he had been sent on a confidential mission by Strafford from Dublin to Edinburgh and London.

It may be that some or all of the above is fiction, taken from his memoirs aka letters

Such a life might well provide abundant materials for the volume of Letters which Howell published from his prison in 1645, and which was succeeded by a second volume in 1647, and a new edition of both, with a third volume, in 1650. A fourth was added in a collected edition which appeared in 1655. The reader will not be long in discerning the fictitious character of many of these letters

One might wonder how he found time to write. The answer is he didn't but having wound up in the Fleet, the debtors' prison, he had ample time to pen letters

In 1642, before he had actually begun to perform the duties of clerk of the privy council, into which office he had been sworn, he was imprisoned in the Fleet—because of his loyalty or because of his debts, or for both reasons. During the eight or nine years of his imprisonment, he lived the laborious life of a man supporting himself by his pen, and produced a large proportion of his numerous writings.

Even though it's evident the published letters are fictitious, dismissed as “naught else than a Legend of the cumbersome Life and various Fortunes of a Cadet” by Howell himself, they are considered of historical worth despite his cavalier attitude not only in politics but to dates and places

Of the letters as we have them, some are lucid, as well as readable, summaries of the political condition and historical development of particular countries or communities—Venice, the united provinces of the Netherlands, the Hanseatic league and Spain (which he studied with particular curiosity); statements as to the distribution of different religions on the earth, of the Jews in Europe, and the like; accounts of the inquisition, and of particular episodes of recent or contemporary history.

https://www.bartleby.com/217/0811.html
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Thanks to these latest Hattian outbursts I think I am now in a position to provide a Grand Synthesis. She supplies the bricks, I design Blenheim Palace. There are three big ticket items around this time: the Renaissance, Printing and the Reformation. But the curious thing is that, apart from zeitgeist considerations, they have no connection one with another. Two of them have precise(ish) dates (1450 and 1517), the other does not -- indeed it moves around a fair bit. Two of them have a geographical link (Germany-ish), two of them are said to have a causal link (printing Bibles and tracts) but not only is that a bit thin, the theory and practice of Protestantism clearly pre-dates printing. The Renaissance seems determinedly antithetical to both Printing and Protestantism.

No. One is an artistic innovation, one is a theological innovation, one is a technological innovation. They are discrete and separable things that, if they get lumped together at all, is only via 'academic chat'. That will now cease thanks to your Uncle Mick. And the hod-carrier. And of course forgery...
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In 1467, the two printers left Subiaco and settled at Rome, where the brothers Pietro and Francesco Massimo placed a house at their disposal. The same year, they published an edition of Cicero's letters that gave its name to the cicero, the Continental equivalent of the pica.


Pietro Massimo was an apothecary, then businessman and eventually diplomat, after inheriting his father’s business

Firstborn of the rich merchant and apothecary Massimo di Lello di Cecco and of Francesca di Mancino de Lutiis (who died in 1447) [1] , he worked in his father's apothecary in Piazza della Rotonda and, after his father's death ( 1465 ) directed another commercial activity located at his home in Parione in partnership with Antonio de Personis. He had inherited from his father numerous real estate properties and numerous commercial activities, including cattle raising [2] , and financial, the most profitable of which was a bench in Campo de Fiori managed together with his brother Francesco (who died in 1471).

No information on the source of the claim that the Massimos gave house room to the two German printers. The only evidence seems to be a one-off ‘colophon’ which just happens to be in the 1467 edition of Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares. Or it may have been printed in 1470. But either way, why was the one and only colophon needed at all?

A residence owned by Pietro Massimo in Campo de 'Fiori housed the Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz typography between 1467 and 1476 , as can be seen from the colophon in Latin : " Romae in domo Petri de Maximo " (or de Maximis or de Maximis civis Romani ). In the only incunabula printed in 1470 the colophon also mentions his brother Francesco: " Romae in domo Petri & Francisci de Maximis juxta Campum Flore " (in Italian : "In Rome, in the house of Pietro and Francesco de Maximis at Campo de 'Fiori") . Probably the same house will host the typographic workshops of Eucharius Silber and Antonio Blado in the following century

So this 'house' was a printer's, not Massimo's home address?

Turns out Pietro wasn’t above falsifying his family tree. If he could forge a genealogical table, a colophon wouldn't present much difficulty

Like his father, Pietro Massimo held some public offices (Depositary of the Studium Urbis in 1471 , curator in 1480 , member of a diplomatic mission to Ferdinand of Aragon in 1482 ); he also dealt with hereditary or marital problems of family members. He left his son Domenico as heir to whom he married Giulia Maddaleni Capodiferro, an aristocrat. Thus inaugurated the operation by which a wealthy family of popular extraction through a genealogical falsification traced the origins back to characters of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome... Cicero... hmm.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
One is an artistic innovation

I wrote this hastily because I was thinking of all them Italian painters but of course what I meant to say was 'cultural and intellectual' because it was the humanist bit that had all the effect, and that was as much centred in the Low Countries as in Italy. In fact, if you think about it, there is no connection between the humanist bit and the artistic bit because one was a bunch of low class daubers and the other were a bunch of refained university types who would have no truck with the arty-farties, and very definitely vice versa.

But -- and I promise you these buts will be drawn together eventually -- not only is the artistic and the intellectual sides of the Renaissance different geographically and socially, they are distinguishable in terms of date. Not so much 'date' but in terms of 'having a date'. Those of you of an older disposition will remember that traditionally humanism was said to have been triggered by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the arrival of all those Greek scholars in the west.

Of course our own refained university types have long moved on from such a simplistic view of a complex situation, as they always do when they don't have the correct explanation, but we tend not to and 1453 is when printing started, give or take. Or as we would say, when a whole bunch of people looking for markets for their new invention had arrived in the west. You see where I'm going, don't you....?
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The term incunabula as a printing term was first used by the Dutch physician and humanist Hadrianus Iunius (Adriaan de Jonghe, 1511–1575) and appears in a passage from his posthumous work (written in 1569)

'Posthumous work' suggests 1500 wasn't specially important date-wise for Hadrianus or his contemporaries.

The posthumous book was issued by our old friend the Plantin Press

Hadrianus Iunius, Batavia, [...], [Lugduni Batavorum], ex officina Plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1588, p. 256 l. 3: «inter prima artis [typographicae] incunabula», a term ("the first infancy of printing") to which he arbitrarily set an end of 1500 which still stands as a convention

But the term 'incunabula' was first used in print in the seventeenth century in Germany by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt (1591–1664)

In 1639 he issued a pamphlet at Cologne to mark the bicentennary of the invention of printing by moveable type in Europe, defending the priority of Gutenberg; it was titled De ortu et progressu artis typographicae ("Of the rise and progress of the typographic art"), that includes the phrase prima typographicae incunabula, "the first infancy of printing". This gave rise to the term incunabula, which is still used to describe books and broadsheets printed before 1500, the arbitrary cut-off date selected by Mallinckrodt

But even historians agree it's not an accurate, never mind useful, distinction

The convenient but arbitrarily chosen end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process, and many books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to be visually indistinguishable from incunables.

So why choose 1500-ish as a turning point? Presses were ready to produce books but there were few manuscripts in existence apart from bibles and it would take several decades to collect, or as may be manufacture, texts for printing.

Many incunabula are undated, needing complex bibliographical analysis to place them correctly. The post-incunabula period marks a time of development during which the printed book evolved fully as a mature artefact with a standard format.[12] After c. 1540 books tended to conform to a template that included the author, title-page, date, seller, and place of printing. This makes it much easier to identify any particular edition.

The term post-incunable is sometimes used to refer to books printed "after 1500—how long after, the experts have not yet agreed." For books printed in the UK, the term generally covers 1501–1520, and for books printed in mainland Europe, 1501–1540.

It sounds like 'pre-1500' signals the pre-Conquest or Dark Age of printing

Many incunabula are unique, but on average about 18 copies survive of each. This makes the Gutenberg Bible, at 48 or 49 known copies, a relatively common (though extremely valuable) edition.

Counting extant incunabula is complicated by the fact that most libraries consider a single volume of a multi-volume work as a separate item, as well as fragments or copies lacking more than half the total leaves. A complete incunable may consist of a slip, or up to ten volumes.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Studies of incunabula began in the 17th century. Michel Maittaire (1667–1747) and Georg Wolfgang Panzer (1729–1805) arranged printed material chronologically in annals format

I'm so pleased Maittaire has materialised, his name has already been flagged up because

Michel Maittaire (also Michael) (1668 – 7 September 1747) was a French-born classical scholar and bibliographer in England, and a tutor to Lord Philip Stanhope. He edited an edition of Quintus Curtius Rufus, later owned by Thomas Jefferson

Quintus Curtius Rufus is only famous for writing the (only) biography of Alexander the Great. It's Asser and Alfred all over again!

The Rufus entry says

a Roman historian, probably of the 1st century, author of his only known and only surviving work, Historiae Alexandri Magni, "Histories of Alexander the Great", or more fully Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, "All the Books That Survive of the Histories of Alexander the Great of Macedon." Much of it is missing.

Apart from his name on the manuscripts, nothing else certain is known of him. This fact alone has led philologists to believe that he had another historical identity, to which, due to the accidents of time, the link has been broken. A few theories exist. They are treated with varying degrees of credibility by various authors. Meanwhile, the identity of Quintus Curtius Rufus, historian, is maintained separately.

Curtius' work is uniquely isolated. No other ancient work refers to it, or as far as is known, to him.

Maittaire himself was a major publisher of high-brow works

His major works are his Annales Typographici and other writings on the history of printing, and of editions of the classics, especially the series of Latin classics printed in duodecimo by Jacob Tonson and Watts of London from 1713 to 1719.

Pope had made Maittaire in the manuscript of the Dunciad an inhabitant of the "Kingdom of Dullness", but the lines were not printed, after a request made for their suppression by Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, a patron of Maittaire.

The Earl of Oxford's 7,660 manuscripts are a cornerstone of the British Library's collection, formerly the library of the British Museum, as has been mentioned elsewhere.

Maittaire didn't fare too badly either. The auction of his library went on for weeks, not days. How could he have made enough money from dull if presumably expensive publications to afford a personal library of such magnitude?

Over fifty years he had formed a large library, rich in early printed editions. It was sold by auction in London by Cock & Langford, the sale beginning on 21 November 1748 and lasting for forty-four evenings.

Historians of printing seem aware at least subconsciously that the 'incubation' period of printing has been tampered with but carefully refrain from comment

"Incunabula" is a generic term coined by English book collectors in the seventeenth century to describe the first printed books of the fifteenth century. It is a more elegant replacement for what had previously been called 'fifteeners', and is formed of two Latin words meaning literally 'in the cradle' or 'in swaddling clothes'.


The first printed books were faultless, seemingly in as good a condition as later editions, even though this phenomenon appears to be unique in the experience of every other technology...

The art of printing is virtually unique in the human experience in that it emerged fully formed. The works of the pioneering master printers are absolutely breathtaking in their technical and artistic perfection. They set standards for excellence that remained unrivaled until the rise of the modern "art" printing house a century ago; and yet these works are still unequaled, when it is taken into account the laborious, entirely manual processes of their manufacture. The power and the charm of Incunabula are quite as unique as their impact on human history was profound.

It may be the perfection of preserved incunabula is a little too perfect

The study and collecting of Incunabula has been actively pursued for centuries. The great majority of these early works have perished over time, victims of hard use and the incessant warfare that scourged Europe

http://www.historicpages.com/texts/incun1.htm
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Good grief. And I thought I had cracked it.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Add this to our lengthening list of confusing Youngers and Elders. It occurs to me that, if nothing else, it's a great defence. "Nah, that was one of my dad's."

Here's an intriguing case of Youngers getting confused. We might keep it up our sleeve for later

Hadrianus Junius (1511–1575), also known as Adriaen de Jonghe, was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. He is not to be confused with several namesakes (including a seventeenth-century Amsterdam school rector). He was not related to Franciscus Junius.

There's a Franciscus the Elder as well as the Younger. Franciscus Junius, also called François du Jon, is known to us through the 'Junius Codex', aka 'Caedmon manuscript', and his fingerprints are all over Beowulf and the Gothic Bible. Now Hadrianus Junius has come up rather fortuitously, in connection with early printing

The term incunabula as a printing term was first used by the Dutch physician and humanist Hadrianus Iunius (Adriaan de Jonghe, 1511–1575) and appears in a passage from his posthumous work (written in 1569)

Hadrianus Junius' first publication was printed by the leading humanist publisher of the day

Not long after his graduation, Junius left for Paris, a centre of printing. There he acted as an agent for the printer Christian Wechel, who published his first work: an edition with Latin translation of Cassius' Iatrosophista (1541).

H Junius graduated in medicine and philosophy. Physicians and apothecaries crop up quite regularly, in Junius' case no-one knows much about his medical career which they think might be 'honorary' but he was 'royal physician' for a time in Copenhagen so doubtless knew his ointments, and in England he was physician to Thomas Howard, Earl of Norfolk, as well as tutor to the earl's grandchildren.

He obtained the post of historiographer to the States of Holland and Westfrisia which may have provided him with background while writing Batavia (1588, published posthumously)

Junius was charged with collecting historical evidence for the States’ right to convene independently from central government in Brussels. Junius made plans to travel around Holland to do research for his history

Franciscus Junius also worked for a Thomas Howard (the Earl of Arundel) as his librarian, and tutor to his son. Franciscus Junius may be the link between the technological side and the artistic theory, via printing, apparently the first in this field

As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ah well, we are to some extent on familiar grounds here

Junius was charged with collecting historical evidence for the States’ right to convene independently from central government in Brussels. Junius made plans to travel around Holland to do research for his history

This is when the Dutch are in rebellion from the Spanish government in Brussels. The 'States rights' business is because the Spanish are also, as it were, Dutch (or at any rate Burgundian) and happen to be, rather inconveniently, their lawful government. 'Research for history' means, as it did for the English when they were breaking away from Rome, 'making up history'.

As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts.

'Collected ' and 'published' is to be understood as 'commissioned'. The English and the Dutch are in cahoots (against Spain) at the time so plenty of cross-fertilisation. We were the masters, they quickly became the masters. It wouldn't have fooled contemporaries -- it is all expected and pro forma and had been going on for centuries -- but it is still fooling academic historians.

In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.

This is really important though I haven't worked out why. Not only did the Netherlands take over from Italy at this time as the art powerhouse of Europe but the Netherlands split into Catholic art (and on to the Baroque) and Protestant art (and on to realism, landscapes et al). I'll try to fit it into my Grand Synthesised Theory which you keep interrupting.

He obtained the post of historiographer to the States of Holland and Westfrisia which may have provided him with background while writing Batavia (1588, published posthumously)

Batavia is the equivalent of Anglo-Saxon England i.e. an ancient Netherlands independent of the Roman and other empires. The capital of the soon-to-be Dutch Empire was named Batavia (Jakarta).
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

As Hatty has pointed out, the big problem facing the early printers was finding things to print. By definition there wasn't a mass market and printing only works on a mass scale. Even the Bible was a bit fraught since while the Vulgate was safe enough, people who read Latin were not exactly thick on the ground. Besides they already had it in manuscript form. I am not saying that Bibles-in-the-vernacular were a printing thing rather than a Protestant thing but the timing is a bit suspicious, especially as we now know (from Hatty, but I'm sure it's true) that everything pre-Reformation were 'incunabula'. Nobody seems to know what that means but everybody agrees they are exactly the same as any other printed book. Funny that.

It quickly dawned on everybody that this new technology was going to be highly disruptive which in turn meant that the powers-that-be were going to be taking a close interest. Now ... let's see ... what would people read but that the state would allow? Ah, the very thing...
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 138, 139, 140 ... 178, 179, 180  Next

Jump to:  
Page 139 of 180

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group