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Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries (British History)
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Mick Harper
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I bet he’d like to “get his mitts on the blokes” (“bloke” is one of his favorite words) down at the Pig and Pickle, or wherever, who refused to write good things for him to put on the cover of the book; the only quotes on the cover of this book are about a different book, “unusual,” “mind-blowing,” and “fascinating.”

Doesn’t he know you can’t put puffs about the current book because it hasn’t gone out yet? As for the bloke (I must watch that) in the pub, he doesn't mention that I actually say who made the comments and where they said it. It's in the public record. This is beyond unfair, it is actionable.

The last is from Norman Cantor, but the famous Norman Cantor was already dead when the Searing expose´ . . . was published! Is “Mick the Trick” as he was known in the schoolyard trying to fool us?

He can’t have it both ways. Cantor said this about a previous book when presumably he was alive. Though I admit his handwriting was a bit shaky. Still, to be accused of forgery (which I think I am being) when writing a book about forgery is more ironic than insulting.

I would actually agree about applying all three of these adjectives to the book but not for reasons the author would like. It’s “unusual” to have a book which deals a lot with the history of pictures in books to have no pictures itself, except for the one on the cover which in keeping with Harper’s obscurantist attitude, isn’t identified; more about it later.

Sort of fair. But there were technical problems.
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Mick Harper
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It’s “mind-blowing” to describe the decoration of the Book of Kells as “doodling,”

This is important. Everyone goes on about the artistic mastery of gospel book illustrations but they are actually not great. Only old. Allegedly old.

and it’s “fascinating” to be told that language can’t be written down.

Again important. I said natural languages can’t be written down in alphabets because there are too many sounds that need to be represented. It is interesting the dude doesn’t understand this. None of them do. They think everyone was prancing around talking in Latin and Greek.

“You’d be amazed at how much tripe there is out there,” says Mick, and Urp-up Press – I forget the exact name of the publisher – has contributed more than its share with this book. And when your own publisher compares what you’re writing to frying fish it doesn’t sound good!

The blurb says
The answer to all these questions is ‘No’ but you should still read this book. The author has bigger fish to fry.

Let's be charitable and assume he's not familiar with the idiom.

But then remember Mick isn’t a scholar like his schoolyard enemy that bloke Chris de Hamel who got a much bigger picture-filled book published and praised by reviewers who are actually alive.

A cat may not look at a queen.

It seems Mick might have found someone in the schoolyard to at least say “this book is really easy to carry; the one Chris wrote is so heavy,” or, from an “A” student, “this book has a really complete index – it even includes de Hamel, but I couldn’t find duh Harper.”

I wish I knew what this was all about. Can anyone enlighten me?
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Mick Harper
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I mentioned earlier that Mick says that “language can’t be written down,” and considering that he has written a lot about language elsewhere it’s hard to believe he so obviously misuses it. Anyone who knows what the word “language” means knows language can be written down. If he seriously thinks his book does not contain written language, he’s spent way too much time at that Pig and Pickle again.

When people disagree with you, but don't have anything specific, they willfully misrepresent you.

Harper’s use of the word forgery is also suspect and I’m pretty sure he’s using it just for the sake of making some of his claims seem more astounding.

I’m pretty sure I was using it to mean ‘forgery’. I wrote a whole book on the subject.

For example, he says, “Most of history before 1300 is forgery”

Yup.
and “The more remarkable the object the more likely it is to be a forgery.”

Yup.
So according to this, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Macbeth are likely forgeries.

If they are alleged to have been written before 1300, yup.

This claim is made right at the beginning of his expose´ - do you really want to read past page 2?

Couldn’t see it on page 2

O.K, if you do, he also says “if you believe a manuscript written in 604 will still be around in 1175 . . . you’ll believe anything.”

Yup.

So this means we shouldn’t believe Codex Vaticanus is legit? Or the Ambrosian Iliad? Or the Dead Sea Scrolls? Even the Codex Amiatinus written about 700 one would think suspect based on what he says, but a picture from it is on the cover of his own book, but not, as I mentioned earlier, identified!

Yup.

Given the amount of effort required to make something like the Gospels of St. Augustine, let alone the Book of Kells, what can have been the motive to create these alleged forgeries? The essence of Harper’s position is that real estate information of the later Middle Ages, c. 1200, was incorporated into the forgeries of impressive earlier texts to fortify the claims being made – to establish their antiquity.

Since real estate was the be-all and end-all of medieval wealth, I would have thought it well worth forging a coupla books.
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Mick Harper
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What Harper says about these two books is very like the kind of thing he accuses academics of writing – a lot of, as he calls it, “higgledy-piggledy” stuff. The bottom line though is the bottom line; when the conclusion to an argument is unacceptable you don’t need to look at the reasons for it. If the conclusion is that Santa Claus lives at the South Pole, you don’t need to look at the argument.

What he means is “When you find the conclusion to an argument is unacceptable, it is better to misrepresent the argument than to look at the argument.” This is true!

One thing which Harper does point out that is puzzling is the fact that apparently neither the Gospels of St. Augustine nor the Book of Kells has been “scientifically” dated, and I assume he means by the use of some kind of radiocarbon technique.

Steady on. We are in agreement for the first time. Are you going to run with it?

Other manuscripts have been dated using “scientific” methods

Actually they haven’t, old chap. Is that why you haven't mentioned any?

and the thing is, if these were used to help date the books in question, I think more than an “itsy-bitsy loosey-goosey” thread might stick out of his badly woven book.

They would indeed. I wouldn’t have been able to write any kind of book. But they haven’t been.

The best argument for the Book of Kells being a forgery, however, has nothing to do with any property records inserted in it; it is simply that human beings couldn’t have made it at all. If this seems like an unacceptable conclusion, just take a close look at it.

I’m not quite sure what he’s saying. That it was divinely inspired? A very suitable note to end this on. I'll do some summing up and stuff after a bit of a lie down. Even the great Mick Harper can suffer from a fit of the vapours after an adverse review. But always remember, kiddiewinks, a bad review is better than no review.
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Mick Harper
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The critic is James Hadley who makes quite good but relentlessly orthodox Youtubes. 128 of them under the general title of James Hadley Program Series as, it would appear, some form of distance learning concerned with (his words) 'the history of Euro-Med civilization'. So an OK, if obscure, dude despite him riding a Vespa when, as is well known, real dudes ride Lambrettas.

The first thing to ask then is 'Why did he bother?' Writing 1200-word critiques of books you think are rubbish and never sold in more than double figures is not something given to many of us. Actually the bigger question is why he bothered reading it. An even bigger question is how he came by it in the first place but these are the maunderings of a cry-baby author. We must get on to Lessons Learned.
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Mick Harper
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In the new book I write

It should not need pointing out in this day and age but Wikipedia is far and away the finest, best curated, most comprehensive, most trustworthy, most up-to-date encyclopaedia money need not buy. [Feelings of guilt have prompted me to start sending them twenty pounds a month, and so should you.] When it comes to basics, if Wiki has got it wrong, everyone has got it wrong.

I had to include this because a focus group (hah!) I organised before Christmas was unanimous that Wiki is untrustworthy. "Anyone can write anything they want on Wiki" being the most frequent complaint. They just wouldn't listen when I went through the supervisory hoops that have to be got through before anyone can post anything on Wiki. (Or at any rate have it survive very long when they do.)

But academics are even more sniffy. They seem to be offended that their precious sources, that used to be their sole preserve, are now arrayed in all their glory for hoi polloi mincers. Interestingly they would let pass a citation from, say, the Britannica, but if you compare any entry from any general encyclopedia you will find it poor stuff compared to Wiki. Though they will agree in so far as they have common material.

The ultimate, as nearly voiced by James Hadley about me, and is hurled at Hatty with great regularity on Facebook and Twitter, is, "You just got that from Wiki." We did indeed. Most of the time, it's all you need.
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Wile E. Coyote


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For balance there is a review of the same book here.

https://geoffjward.medium.com/those-crafty-medieval-monks-forging-their-way-through-history-b498e6d97c6
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Mick Harper
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In medium.com as well! Pity it got only four claps and no responses.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Given the amount of effort required to make something like the Gospels of St. Augustine, let alone the Book of Kells, what can have been the motive to create these alleged forgeries? The essence of Harper’s position is that real estate information of the later Middle Ages, c. 1200, was incorporated into the forgeries of impressive earlier texts to fortify the claims being made – to establish their antiquity.

It's a fair question. No?

Let's try a different answer. It's a thirteenth century shopping catalogue for those who are buying real estate, and then want to decorate with evocative religious pieces, some of these inscribed with quotes from the gospels, you pick your style.

"I want a zoomorphic wall covering featuring a bit of vulgate from Luke...."

"I will get the catalogue for you to choose" "By the way I have number of artisans offering reasonable prices who I can recommend, let's take a look and let me make a note......"

It's a glossy brochure

online wrote:

gloss (n.1)
"glistening smoothness, luster," 1530s, probably from Scandinavian (compare Icelandic glossi "a spark, a flame," related to glossa "to flame"), or obsolete Dutch gloos "a glowing," from Middle High German glos; probably ultimately from the same source as English glow (v.). Superficial lustrous smoothness due to the nature of the material (unlike polish, which is artificial).

gloss (n.2)

"word inserted as an explanation, translation, or definition," c. 1300, glose (modern form from 1540s; earlier also gloze), from Late Latin glossa "obsolete or foreign word," one that requires explanation; later extended to the explanation itself, from Greek glōssa (Ionic), glōtta (Attic) "language, a tongue; word of mouth, hearsay," also "obscure or foreign word, language," also "mouthpiece," literally "the tongue" (as the organ of speech), from PIE *glogh- "thorn, point, that which is projected" (source also of Old Church Slavonic glogu "thorn," Greek glokhis "barb of an arrow").

Glosses were common in the Middle Ages, usually rendering Hebrew, Greek, or Latin words into vernacular Germanic, Celtic, or Romanic. Originally written between the lines, later in the margins. By early 14c. in a bad sense, "deceitful explanation, commentary that disguises or shifts meaning." This sense probably has been colored by gloss (n.1). Both glossology (1716) and glottology (1841) have been used in the sense "science of language."
.


You can't put a price on Wile's eager enthusiasm to provide explanations.
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Mick Harper
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I think both of you have got slightly the wrong idea. First of all, there's no question of putting stuff into existing books. There are no existing books. Where's the Bishop of Mumbleton going to get an early medieval gospel book? The whole production -- four gospels, frontispieces, semi-precious cover, illustrations (if required), blank spare pages, charters written into the margins -- is one seamless whole.

As for cost vs reward, there's equally no doubt. A monastic estate capable of supporting a dozen monks and maybe fifty 'lay-brothers' is worth squillions in today's money. As for the cost of, say, the Book of Kells, what are we looking at? Half a dozen monks, a few dozen otherwise worthless male calves and a year should do it. Oh yes, and a coupla vats of urine.
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Mick Harper
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One sidelight. I have just had lunch with my brother -- Bloomsbury south Indian vegan but I persuaded him to give me his watch (mine's battery had run out) so I was ahead by the end -- and we had a riotous time reading Hadley's review. It turned out that 'bloke' in America denotes a Britisher. At least that's what Pete said quoting this recent exchange with one of his American students:

"What do you think of Mussolini?"
"Nasty bloke, all in all."
"No, I'm pretty sure he was Italian."
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Wile E. Coyote


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https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/02/the-lindisfarne-gospels-carpet-pages.html

Each carpet page has a cross pattern embedded in its design. It seems likely that these pages were designed to serve as a sort of interior treasure binding to ornament each Gospel as a mirror of the ornate exterior one that once was ‘bedecked with gold and gems’, according to the colophon. Certainly the affinities with surviving contemporary precious metalwork such as the Sutton Hoo treasure are readily apparent in the carpet page panels, with their interlace patterns, intertwined sinuous and elongated twisted bodies and stylized birds’ and beasts’ heads.


Or to sell carpets.
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Mick Harper
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Carpets are interesting forgery-wise. I've had not one but two 'valuable' Persian carpets in my time (three, maybe four, figures valuable that is) and it was all explained to me. They are all 'genuine' in the sense of being made individually by skilled craftsman (more likely women), they are all 'authentic' in the sense of keeping strictly to traditional patterns, but only become forgeries when people try to pass them off as 'antique'.

Apparently the difference is only tenuously observed on both sides, seller or buyer. Shades of 'classical sculptures' being turned out by Italian workshops for English gentry on Grand Tours in the eighteenth century.
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Hatty
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A photo of the 'oldest carpet in the world' was posted on Twitter this morning. It's not clear how or if it has been scientifically dated but the rug is 'thought to be' two thousand+ years old. Wiki says "the origin of the rug is unknown". It is now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg so presumably acquired in the 18th or 19th century

Made over 2,000 years ago, the Pazyryk rug, itself probably the result of generations of tradition, was made with the same knotting techniques and incorporates many of the motifs that are familiar to us through examples from the middle ages and which can be seen in the museums of the world. Even today's hand knotted rugs have changed little and can clearly claim direct descendance from those of the Pazyryk era and earlier.

The first recorded carpets, or Turkey work, in Britain belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, apparently a gift from the Venetian ambassador. Or not. Could have been a Tudor pun/invention based on the Cardinal's name. According to Wiki woven carpets were introduced in the sixteenth century by 'Flemish Calvinists fleeing persecution'.
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Mick Harper
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They won't be able to use expert opinion to establish this carpet's authenticity if even the experts admit nothing has changed in two thousand years. As if that would stop them.
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