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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Mick Harper
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We know that Holland was the centre of the rare book trade in the seventeenth century. Small potatoes now but back then, in newly Protestant Europe with religious paraphernalia out, costly but temporal artefacts were the best way to flaunt wealth. (And why else have it?) Once you had what everybody else had -- the pictures in the hall, the porcelain in the dining room, the exotic fruits in the orangery, the statuary in the garden -- the only truly competitive arena was the library.

Everyone had books, only the rich had rare books. Only the really rich had libraries of rare books. But the clue is in the name, there weren't many of them to go round no matter how rich you were. So, like the pious relics before them, they had to be made to order. Then, as now when the same dilemma faces art galleries and museums, nobody much minded whether they were genuine, it was how much they cost that counted. You hired yourself an antiquarian and he provided you with a library full of rare books. Where did the antiquarian go to get the books?

To Leyden University (Thysius Annexe) to visit their 'rare book' emporium to pick out whatever you fancied, and have it printed up. They guaranteed the print run would be strictly limited -- you could have the only one if you paid extra. All the books were guaranteed to be fakes, so you could never be embarrassed by the real thing turning up; and Leyden University experts on tap to pronounce them genuine. They further guaranteed nobody outside the trade would be permitted in though, being a bona fide public institution, anyone could borrow books. On application. It was win-win-win all round. The first operation of its kind in the world!
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Hatty
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The establishment in 1655 of the Thysius 'library' coincides with a great surge of interest in Old English literature kickstarted by Junius, a former student at Leiden

Franciscus Junius F(rancisci) F(ilius), that eminent seventeenth-century Dutch philologist, is perhaps best known in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, and foremost as a collector and copyist of Old English texts and manuscripts. Shortly before his death he generously bequeathed his collection to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where they have since been kept as the Junius Manuscripts.

The value of these documents has changed little in the course of time, and they serve much the same function for us today as they did for Junius, who firmly upheld the humanist principle of ad fontes. His edition (1655) of the famous Caedmon Manuscript, now Junius, for example, is the first published book of Old English poetry

Ad fontes, is 'back to the sources', though it wouldn't be until the eighteenth century that Junius' etymological dictionary was published, in 1743. There was also a competition to publish the first Anglo-Saxon dictionary among Dutch and English Anglo-Saxonists such as Henry Spelman

One of those was Johannes de Laet (1581-1649), another major Dutch Anglo-Saxonist, as we know from the auction catalogue of his library. De Laet is a typical representative of the Dutch seventeenth-century merchant-scholar. Having completed his studies at the University of Leiden in 1603, he settled in London, of which town he became a denizened citizen in 1604 upon his marrying a London girl of Dutch descent. After the death of his young wife in 1606, he moved again to Leiden in 1607, where he lived until his death. From there, he visited England at least twice, in 1638 and 1641. Not only was he deeply interested in a wide range of scholarly disciplines, he also appears to have developed some interest in contemporary English literature, especially in that characterised by religious or moral overtones.

De Laet's library was well-stocked and included, beside numerous English theological books mostly of Puritan character, Owen Feltham's Resolves (London, 1636), Francis Bacon's Essayes (London, 1634) and The Temple (Cambridge, 1634), by the metaphysical poet George Herbert. He also owned a copy of Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer of 1602, but we have no idea how de Laet appreciated Chaucer as a poet. Nor do we know whether he annotated his Chaucer copy because, after the auction of de Laet's library in 1650, all traces of this book have been lost.

Dutch interest in Old English studies is said to be to do with the Dutch claiming the English were of German (Frisian?) not 'Celtic' stock. Why did this matter? It may be to do with fostering a sense of kinship with Protestant England against Spain and France.
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Hatty
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Some of the pioneering scholars celebrated in Anglo-Saxonist circles apparently had no tangible effect though awarded full marks for effort, such as

two early Anglo-Saxonists, the Dutchman Johannes de Laet and the Englishman Sir Simonds D’Ewes, both of whom were involved, as competitors and collaborators, in the compilation of an Anglo-Saxon dictionary in the 1630s and 1640s.

Both men played a remarkable role in the growth of Anglo-Saxon studies, yet their dictionaries shared a similar tragic fate in that they never made it to the printer’s press. Hence, the lexicographical efforts of these two pioneers regrettably remained virtually without effect upon the immediately succeeding generations of Anglo-Saxonists.

So it's quite a task to find "the source material" for their dictionaries.

One way of assessing the interest that early modern Dutch scholars fostered for matters Anglo-Saxon is by analyzing the auction catalogues of their libraries. Selling private libraries at public auctions was a new phenomenon in Holland at the end of the sixteenth century, and we are fortunate that booksellers’ printed catalogues to attract potential purchasers survive. Many such auction catalogues—not infrequently annotated with the prices that the items listed had fetched—have, sometimes uniquely, been preserved in libraries throughout Europe. The ongoing project “Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic, 1599–1800,” which has made and is still making microfiche facsimiles of these catalogues, enables the interested scholar to discover online whose library was publicly sold, where a particular catalogue can be found, and whether the catalogue is available in microfiche.

The Dutch Anglo-Saxonists' research also produced a humanist who laid eyes on, and copied from, the Gothic Bible that had turned up in the Netherlands in 1654 courtesy of Isaac Vossius, formerly librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden when she was still Protestant

The first auction catalogue ever printed in the Netherlands features the library of Phillips Marnix, lord of St. Aldegonde (1540–98), a humanist scholar, militant Calvinist, and one-time secretary of William the Silent. Marnix was one of the first humanists to have seen the Codex Argenteus and to have copied the Lord’s Prayer from this sixth-century Gothic Gospel manuscript for further study and polemical material.

Another Dutch first! The earliest publication (in Leiden) of this hugely important catalogue was in 1964, more than three hundred and fifty years later so not perhaps something to write home about

Cover title: The first known auction catalogue.
Original title page: Catalogus liborum bibliothecae nobilissimi clarissimique viri piae memoriae D. Philippi Marnixii, Sancto-Aldegondij.
Facsim. reprint. Originally published: Leiden : Christophorus Guyot, 1599.
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Hatty
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...we are fortunate that booksellers’ printed catalogues to attract potential purchasers survive. Many such auction catalogues—not infrequently annotated with the prices that the items listed had fetched—have, sometimes uniquely, been preserved in libraries throughout Europe.

If the catalogues are uniquely preserved, where are the books themselves? Bonaventura Vulcanius, secretary and family tutor to Philips van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, was appointed Professor in Latin and Greek at Leiden University in 1581, where he remained until his death in 1610. Vulcanius 'had access to' the Wulfilas/ Gothic Bible, naming it Codex Argenteus, the name under which it has since been catalogued.

Printed evidence of interest in Old English among Dutch philologists is readily available in Bonaventura Vulcanius’s De lingua et literis Gothorum of 1597. In this fairly slim volume, Vulcanius, the Leiden professor of Greek and ancient history, presented a survey of specimens of Old Germanic languages in Gothic, Old High German, Old English, Icelandic, and “Runic” as well as samples of sixteenth-century Frisian and the various Scandinavian languages, and he audaciously extended his view to include Persian and even Coptic.

The text that Vulcanius had chosen to print was Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care, one of many texts, he told the reader, which King Alfred had ordered to be translated from Latin into English. Vulcanius had found this text in Matthew Parker’s Ælfredi regis Res gestae of 1574.

Vulcanius’s library was sold in two separate auctions in 1610 and 1615: Neither auction catalogue lists Ælfredi regis res gestae. In all likelihood, Vulcanius had borrowed his colleague Scaliger’s copy for the long quotation.

Scaliger is best known for 'reconstructing the lost Chronicle of Eusebius', printed in his Thesaurus of 1606.

How did Dutch printers cope with typesetting Anglo-Saxon texts submitted by Vulcanius and his ilk? Not very well it seems

For most of these languages, special typefaces had been cast, and the book’s additional purpose seems to have been to provide a showcase for the Leiden University printer, Franciscus Raphelengius, a son-in-law of the famous Antwerp printer Christopher Plantin. Immediately following the language specimens of Gothic and Old High German, Vulcanius proceeded with Old English. He informed the reader that the Old English characters differed considerably from both the Dutch (Belgica, as he called it) and the Latin ones, and that he had heard of many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts still extant in English archives and libraries.

Despite his ample stock, the printer Raphelengius apparently did not possess any Anglo-Saxon typefaces
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Mick Harper
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Selling private libraries at public auctions was a new phenomenon in Holland at the end of the sixteenth century, and we are fortunate that booksellers’ printed catalogues to attract potential purchasers survive.

Aren't we just.

Many such auction catalogues—not infrequently annotated with the prices that the items listed had fetched—have, sometimes uniquely, been preserved in libraries throughout Europe.

Are these people really this stupid? Why do they suppose such ephemera as "printed booksellers' catalogues" survive? Answer: because they're at least as important as the book in establishing provenance, dummies. And why do they think they are "not infrequently annotated with the prices that the item had fetched"? Because that's at least as important as the book for establishing the rarity value, dummies.

Tell you what, experts, why don't you take the M J Harper Challenge. You produce just one honest-to-God authentic scientifically-tested antique book which comes with a printed bookseller's catalogue (scribbly price optional) and I will crawl on my hands and knees all the way to Leiden. Or Hatty will, it depends.
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Mick Harper
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Despite his ample stock, the printer Raphelengius apparently did not possess any Anglo-Saxon typefaces

It's taken us long enough to recognise it but this is a brand new coal face.
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Hatty
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Vulcanius apologized for the fact that the text so carefully printed in Anglo-Saxon characters by John Day ... had to be substituted in his specimen by ordinary Latin characters.

Vulcanius concluded his introduction by saying that Alfred’s letter (in his printed source, that is) was provided with an interlinear translation into English “as it is used today” (quae hodie est in vsu), and that he had added a Latin translation so that “the studious Reader will be able to compare the old [Anglo-]Saxon with the English and our Dutch language”


John Day was arguably the leading printer of the (Elizabethan) day

...he enjoyed the patronage of high-ranking officials and nobles, including William Cecil, Robert Dudley, and Matthew Parker. With their support, he published the Book of Martyrs and was awarded monopolies for some of the most popular English books, such as The ABC with Little Catechism and The Whole Booke of Psalmes. Day, whose technical skill matched his business acumen, has been called "the master printer of the English Reformation".

Dutch Calvinists, such as Johannes de Laet, were on much the same mission as Archbishop Parker when promoting the newly founded Church of England, plus correspondingly 'old' texts produced by Camden and his travelling companions, and they became in effect Anglo-Saxon apologists.

during his three-year stay in London, de Laet had been introduced to some prominent English antiquaries, most notably Camden. He had also gained a solid knowledge of English and German—a rarity at the time among Dutch scholars. ... As with his slightly later compatriot Franciscus Junius, de Laet’s interest in and study of Old English (and Old Frisian) must have originated in his curiosity about the history of the Dutch language

De Laet, a Dutch geographer and lawyer, aka the Leiden polymath, lived in London for just three years, which was apparently long enough for him to compile an (unpublished) Old English-Latin dictionary. The 1650 auction catalogue of his library indicates several of de Laet's A-S books went missing, including his 1602 copy of Chaucer, or perhaps never existed

Using the combined information from his correspondence and from the auction catalogue of his library, which was sold shortly after his death in 1650, we are now able to reconstruct the printed sources de Laet will have had available in his study room (or “Museum” as he proudly called it on one occasion). His auction catalogue features over 1800 items, but it certainly does not contain all of his books. For example, there is no category “Libri Iuridici,” which is odd for someone who was often involved in legal matters since de Laet was one of the Directors of the Dutch West Indies Company. One looks in vain, therefore, for a copy of Hugo Grotius’s famous Mare librum (Leiden, 1609; 3rd ed. 1633) and for the rejoinder written by John Selden, Mare clausum (London, 1635). The latter book contained a fair amount of Old English printed in Anglo-Saxon type.

Much to my surprise, however, de Laet did possess practically all the printed books containing Old English that had appeared before his death, ranging from complete text editions to books with only a smattering of Old English words. These include the Archaionomia sive De priscis Anglorum legibus libri, William Lambarde’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws (London: John Day, 1568), which contains a useful list of Old English legal terms explained in Latin. Although the book is conspicuously absent from the auction catalogue, de Laet certainly owned a copy
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Boreades


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Hatty wrote:

Dutch interest in Old English studies is said to be to do with the Dutch claiming the English were of German (Frisian?) not 'Celtic' stock. Why did this matter? It may be to do with fostering a sense of kinship with Protestant England against Spain and France.


A sense of kinship had certainly existed for nearly a century in some maritime exploits, but it's not usually included in yer actual English History school lessons of Little England valiantly smiting all, and having the finest navy.

Truth be told, for many years the "Dutch Navy" (such as it was) was much more effective than the "English Navy" (rag tag and bobtail of various privateeers and opportunists).

Well-known protestant corsairs: In 1523, Jean Forin (or Fleury), captain of the corsair fleet belonging to the ship-owner in Dieppe Jean Ango, captured a Spanish galleon containing Moctezuma's treasure, which Cortez was sending to Charle Quint. ... Between 1536 and 1568, 152 ships were captured in the Caribbean and 37 between Spain, the Canary Islands and the Azores (although not all of them by Huguenots)... In 1573 (or 1572) another Huguenot, Guillaume Le Testut, a corsair who was a member of the Dieppe school of cartography, joined forces with Francis Drake. (They) attacked a large convoy bringing gold and silver from Peru, after having put out of action a strong Spanish escort.

Ref : Huguenot pirates in the 16th century.
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Boreades


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Not forgetting that it may be thanks to Dutch Huguenots, and their cousins in La Rochelle, that we have one of the finest exploits in English History.

Sir Francis Drake and the Huguenots of La Rochelle both took a dim view of any Spanish control of Gaztelugatxe and neighbouring sea ports. Drake attacked and sacked Gaztelugatxe in 1593 and the Huguenots did the same in 1594. This might not be a coincidence; when Drake returned to Europe, nearing the end of his famous circumnavigation, he briefly stopped in La Rochelle to unload part of his treasure of gold and silver. This part of the cargo was never included in the official quantities landed shortly after in Plymouth.
Ref : The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake

Why was that?

The mostly likely explanations are either that Drake was stashing a part of the booty out of reach of the English Crown, or that Drake was repaying his Huguenot financiers. Both things are possible without contradiction. La Rochelle had been the home of the Western Templar Fleet and their war against the Vatican Church. While the Templars were (officially) long gone, the Huguenot community was strong in that part of France. Drake had been actively working with, and fighting alongside, Huguenot naval forces for 20 years, and was well connected with them.

https://grael.uk/dracos
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Boreades


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Hatty wrote:
John Day was arguably the leading printer of the (Elizabethan) day


During the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I, many Protestant printers fled to the continent.


Ref : John Day (Wikipedia)

But:

Day stayed in England and continued to print Protestant literature. But in 1554, he was arrested and imprisoned, presumably for these illicit printing activities.


He must have been brave or foolhardy to stay in England, and then lucky(?) to survive the next four years after his arrest. In 1558 the Privy Council had passed a law that made the carrying of Protestant literature illegal, and an offence that carried the death penalty. Fortunately for Day, Mary herself did not survive much longer. Elizabeth became Queen in the November of 1558.

And it was thanks to John Day that we (English-speakers) ever learn anything about something written more than 2,000 years ago in Egypt. The first known translation of Euclid's Elements into the English language was by Sir William Billingsley in 1570.

Billingsley published his translation of Euclid's Elements The elements of geometrie of the most ancient philosopher Euclide ... The work included a lengthy preface by John Dee, which surveyed all the existing branches of pure and applied mathematics. Dee also provided copious notes and other supplementary material. The work was printed in folio by John Day, and included several three-dimensional fold-up diagrams illustrating solid geometry. Though not the very first, it was one of the first books to include such a feature. .. Day, whose technical skill matched his business acumen, has been called "the master printer of the English Reformation"

Ref : Henry Billingsley (Wikipedia)

The three-dimensional fold-up diagrams were a creative masterpiece. The connections between John Dee and John Day are not accidental and they are not coincidences.
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Hatty
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Boreades wrote:
And it was thanks to John Day that we (English-speakers) ever learn anything about something written more than 2,000 years ago in Egypt. The first known translation of Euclid's Elements into the English language was by Sir William Billingsley in 1570.

Billingsley's son, Henry, was a businessman and despite being sent to Oxford didn't choose a scholarly career. It's not certain he did study at Oxford, the records from Cambridge(!) might be referring to some other Billingsley altogether

Henry BILLINGSLEY
Approx. lifespan: 1532–1606
Matric. pens. from St John's College 1550:10MT: as Bellingsley;
Scholar 1551
Said to have studied at Oxford also.
s. of Roger BILLINGSLEY ? of Canterbury, [Kent]
An excellent mathematician.
,

According to Wiki our Billingsley didn't graduate

He was a son of Sir William Billingsley, haberdasher and assay master of London, and his wife, Elizabeth Harlowe. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1551, and also studied at Oxford, where, under the tutelage of David Whytehead, he developed an interest in mathematics. He did not take a degree but apprenticed to a London merchant. He became a haberdasher, becoming a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers by patrimony in 1560.

He went on to become sheriff of London, a customs collector, Lord Mayor of London in 1596 and, in 1603, had a seat in Parliament. But before reaching such eminence, he found the time and talent to translate Euclid in between haberdashering jobs

Though in the introduction of his Euclid he proposed to undertake other translations, he never did so.

I don't believe he translated anything because

The translation, renowned for its clarity and accuracy, was made from the Greek rather than the well-known Latin translation of Campanus.

How did he pick up the level of Ancient Greek required to translate a work by Euclid (if nothing else)?
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Boreades


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It might be going too far to suggest Euclid is a forgery(?), but as we're told:

The work included a lengthy preface by John Dee, which surveyed all the existing branches of pure and applied mathematics. Dee also provided copious notes and other supplementary material.


Is it possible that the whole thing was by John Dee, and Sir William Billingsley was the front?
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Mick Harper
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It might be going too far to suggest Euclid is a forgery(?)

Not going far enough, as far as I'm concerned. If I am offered the choice between: "Did this text survive the vicissitudes of fifteen hundred years?" and "Did the bloke responsible for this text decide putting a Classical name on the front cover was a shrewd move?" I always assume the latter is the more likely. Euclid though is a tricky proposition because 'the bloke' could hardly come up with all that at a single sitting, or even a single lifetime, so there should be antecedents out there. But that's one of the problems. The same must apply even if Euclid is a Classical figure but then Classicists just turn round and say, "Ah well, they haven't survived."

If I'm asked "Is a single chance survival of the finished article and a natural disappearance of all the antecedents by the action of time more likely than a single published finished article when the antecedents haven't been published for whatever reason", I always answer 'No' though admittedly I am seldom asked the question. It may be, for example, that John Dee = John Day = Cover Name For Anybody Working For School Of Secret Navigatorial Mathematicians Intent On National Advantage.

If it's Protestant advantage people should be on the lookout for Johannes (or variants) + Name of Light (or whatever it is). Plus or minus a 'Junior', 'Junius' or suchlike attached. And maybe a 'Doctor' or similar at the front. Can one of you learn Arabic so we've got that front covered? They're in there somewhere.
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Mick Harper
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If it's Protestant advantage people should be on the lookout for Johannes (or variants) + Name of Light

Hatty has already come up with Johannes de Laet (he says looking up the page and finding such immediately confirmatory serendipity, honest).
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Hatty wrote:
He went on to become sheriff of London, a customs collector, Lord Mayor of London in 1596 and, in 1603, had a seat in Parliament. But before reaching such eminence, he found the time and talent to translate Euclid in between haberdashering jobs ..
How did he pick up the level of Ancient Greek required to translate a work by Euclid (if nothing else)?


It looks like a case of the financier/sponsor getting their headline name on the product. Like the Emirates Stadium, the artisans who labour there get second billing(sley).

In 1570 appeared Henry Billingsley's translation of the fifteen
books, with Candalla's sixteenth, London, folio. This book has a long
preface by John Dee, the magician, whose picture is at the beginning :
so that it has often been taken for Dee's translation ; but he
himself, in a list of his own works, ascribes it to Billingsley. The
latter was a rich citizen, and was mayor (with knighthood) in 1591. We
always had doubts whether he was the real translator, imagining that
Dee had done the drudgery at least. On looking into Anthony Wood's
account of Billingsley {Aih. Occon. in verb.) we find it stated (and
also how the information was obtained) that he studied three years
at Oxford before he was apprenticed to a haberdasher, and there made
acquaintance with an "eminent mathematician" called Whytehead, an
Augustine friar. When the friar was "put to his shifts" by the
dissolution of the monasteries, Billingsley received and maintained
him, and learnt mathematics from hira. "When Whytehead died, he gave
his scholar all his mathematical observations that he had made and
collected, together with his notes on Euclid's Elements." This was the
foundation of the translation, on which we have only to say that it
was certainly made from the Greek, and not from any of the Arab ico-
Latin versions, and is, for the time, a very good one.


Ref: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_Greek_and_Roman_Biography_and_Mythology_(1870)_-_Volume_2.djvu/87

Maybe Billingsley, being a successful merchant, knew a good little earner when he saw one, and cashed in after the impecunious academic Whytehead had died?
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