vinlandmap.info: Clues 1-75, start and selling
- America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up (Oscar Wilde)
- - or to put it another way, Columbus is famous for being the LAST person who had to discover America (www.vinlandmap.info)
- Leif ... hitti hann á lönd þau er hann vissi áður öngva von í. Voru þar hveitiakrar sjálfsánir og vínviður vaxinn (Eiríks saga rauða)
- ... og sigla þetta dægur áður þeir sáu land ... Bjarni kveðst hyggja að það mundi eigi Grænland (Grænlendinga saga)
- For 10 generations or more, the unwritten Vínland Sagas were preserved as memorised bullet-points (www.vinlandmap.info)
- - but not necessarily in the right order (Eric Morecambe)
- Ferrajoli tenía amigos en todas partes, y con su encanto personal, y su conocimiento de los temas, se abría paso siempre (E.F. Clemente)
- ... the 1893 reference places the manuscripts (sans map) in La Seo Cathedral Library (John Paul Floyd)
- well, almost- items supplied by Zaragoza diocese for the 1892-3 Columbus exhibition were catalogued together (vinlandmap.info)
- ... the Map looked an unassuming document ... bound with the manuscript text of the Tartar Relation ... (Helen Wallis)
- Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry ... showed booksellers in Geneva, Paris and London ... he sold almost exclusively to the trade (Laurence Witten)
- ... summer of 1957 ... escorted by the London dealer Joseph Irving Davis ... Ferrajoli brought it into the British Museum (Helen Wallis)
- ... it was briefly examined by George Painter ... Dr Skelton ... and Dr. Schofield, Keeper of Manuscripts (Helen Wallis)
- To his eye, as an experienced palaeographer, it was so obviously a fake. (Peter Schofield, remembering his father in 1957)
- ... my father regarded his refusal to countenance the purchase of the map as one of the major contributions ... (Peter Schofield)
- September 1957 ... Geneva, where I visited ... the late Nicholas Rauch. There I encountered Ferrajoli (Laurence Witten)
- Ferrajoli and Rauch did tell me about the map and the Tartar Relation << he had been unable ... to authenticate it (L. Witten)
- Ferrajoli arranged to take me to see the owner. I saw his library ... I bought the volume (Laurence Witten, 1966)
- ... contrary to what I had said earlier I had never visited the library (Laurence Witten, 1989, reporting his 1974 confession)
- Rauch or Ferrajoli got in touch ... with Davis ... I was let in to a small degree on Davis's involvement > (L. Witten, 1989)
- > and urged to see him in Milan. A day or two later we met for coffee at the Biffi Scala (Laurence Witten, not till 1989)
- I energetically collected all the information I could find ... about fifteenth century world maps and John de Plano Carpini (L. Witten)
- ... it seemed that the only reasonably close counterpart in general form was the world map ... drawn in 1436 by Andrea Bianco (L. Witten)
- In October 1957 ... Witten ... showed to my colleague Alexander O. Vietor and myself a slim volume (Thomas Marston)
- Mr. Witten told us that he had acquired it from a private collection in Europe (Thomas Marston)
- ... two factors made us question whether the manuscript and the map belonged together (Thomas Marston)
- Both map and manuscript were slightly wormed, but the worm holes were not in the same positions on the two parts (Thomas Marston)
- A more disconcerting feature was a statement on the recto of the first leaf of the map: Delineatio 1 ps: 2 ps. 3 ps. specl'i (T Marston)
- Frankly, my red flag went up- the caution light was on (Alexander Vietor)
- Until these two factors could be satisfactorily explained, the map would remain suspect (Thomas Marston)
- It did not seem possible how these items ... got together in a relatively modern binding (Alexander Vietor)
- The volume was not offered for sale to either of them as individuals, or to Yale (Laurence Witten)
- [flashback to tweet 12, summer of '57] ... it was brought to the British Museum for comment ... (Helen Wallis)
- It was suggested that I offer the Tartar Relation to Yale, but I was unwilling to separate the two manuscript items (L Witten)
- Having come to a standstill I decided to withdraw the volume from business inventory and give it to my wife (Laurence Witten)
- I worked on the manuscripts at home ... Having collected a small dossier on the manuscript, I laid it aside (L. Witten)
- ... the Marston manuscripts, a collection formed by Thomas E. Marston (234 items) ... (Barbara Shailor)
- Marston was most enthusiastic about Western manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Barbara Shailor)
- Marston was less inspired by the elaborate decoration of a volume than by the text(s) it contained (Barbara Shailor)
- In April 1958 I received an advance copy of a new catalogue of a London bookseller (Thomas Marston, Yale Vinland Map book, 1965)
- VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS. Speculum Historiale. Manuscript on paper and vellum, 239 leaves ... South Germany, c.1450. £75 (catalogue)
- PETRUS DE CRESCENTIIS. De Agricoltura. Manuscript ... 100 leaves ... 15th century. £85 (same catalogue; £1 then = about $2.80)
- In the catalogue ... I noted a manuscript of Bruni's translation of Plutarch's lives of Cicero and Demosthenes (T. Marston)
- I glanced at the description of the Vincent of Beauvais and I thought I would buy it ... I felt I would like to have it (Thomas Marston)
- ... he had received an advance, airmail copy of a catalog from Davis and Orioli Ltd., in London (L. Witten) [yes, it was THAT Davis]
- Add. 7588 Petrus de Cescentia: De agricultura, 1472. Bought of Davis & Orioli (cat. 159/26) 10 April 1958 (Cambridge University Library)
- Recently I found out that I had bought the Vincent ... shortly before an order had arrived for it > (T. Marston, 1966)
- > from the late Professor Berthold Ullman, who was running a sort of Vincent of Beauvais school (T. Marston, 1966)
- I did not receive the catalog until May or June of 1958 (Laurence Witten)
- ... the final version of Davis and Orioli Catalogue 159 arrived at the Newberry Library only in February 1959 (Paul Saenger)
- [late April 1958?] Mr. Barry's secretary called me to tell me that the two manuscripts had arrived (T Marston)
- I had ... promised to send De Marinis details of bindings in American collections (L. Witten) [D M: an Italian researching bindings]
- Delighted to see that both were in very unusual contemporary bindings I asked Mr. Witten to examine them (Thomas Marston)
- Witten came to my office ... looked at the manuscripts, and asked if he could borrow the Vincent for a few days (T Marston)
- I think I told him that I wondered if it might not be related to the Tartar Relation (Laurence Witten)
- I left his office and ... stopped in the Bibliography Room to look up the watermark of the Speculum (Laurence Witten)
- After dinner and the children's bedtime, I took out the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation volume and my dossier on it (L Witten)
- The Vincent manuscript was the key to the puzzle of the map and Tartar Relation (Thomas Marston)
- The hand was the same, the watermarks of the paper were the same (Thomas Marston)
- ... the worm holes showed that the map had been at the front of the volume and the Tartar Relation at the back (T. Marston)
- It is still easier to produce wormholes with a hot wire or with live worms (Prof. Robert S. Lopez, Yale)
- On elaborately careful jobs they use real worms ... worm raising forms a small industry in Italy (G.B. Seybold, 1926)
- The Vincent manuscript by itself was of minor intrinsic value. Now it had suddenly become very precious (Thomas Marston)
- I became more and more convinced that the two pieces had to come under one ownership as soon as possible (Thomas Marston)
- it seemed that the cleancut way this could be done was to give the Vincent to Mrs Witten (Thomas Marston)
- I hoped ... that this generosity would give the Yale Library some element of control over the disposition of the Map (Thomas Marston)
- Ferrajoli had shown both volumes to dealers ... and no one saw any connection (Laurence Witten, 1966) vinlandmap.info
- During the following year, I worked continuously on a description of the Vinland Map- Speculum- Tartar Relation (Laurence Witten)
- I did not know of any specialist who could very greatly assist me (Laurence Witten)
- During this period, every effort was made to trace the earlier provenance of the manuscripts (Laurence Witten)
- Mr. Witten returned to the private library whence came the map and the Vincent, but an intensive search was fruitless (T Marston, 1965)
- I could only say that I did not know for sure from which library the manuscripts came (Laurence Witten confession 1974/1989)
- Spring 1959. At last Mrs Witten and I were ready to offer the manuscripts to Yale... But Yale could not buy them (L Witten)
- The price Witten placed on his find was much higher than anything the library could secure from its ordinary budget (J Ryden / C Kerr)
- we were asked, instead, to propose them with the Yale Library's blessing to an individual who might perhaps wish to buy them (L Witten)