Re: Why not Dee?

[Karl Kluge <kckluge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rafal writes:

> Karl Kluge wrote:
> 
> > The entries for 1586 cover roughly a single page of text, and I could 
> > find no trace of an entry mentioning "630 gold doucats." 
> 
> Oops! I am sorry - I have omitted the reference. It is in Casaubon's
> edition of _True and Faithful relation_ on p. 447-448.
> 
> > The memorandum quoted on Rafel's page in is Latin and does not
> > include the phrase "630 gold doucats." 
> 
> It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".

This *may* be what Brumbaugh was refering to, but it seems odd that he or his
source would confuse what is normally called Dee's "diary" with the _True
and Faithful Relation_, would spell "ducats" as "doucats" in translating
the phrase from Latin to English, and would put a translated phrase in
quotation marks without so indicating, making it appear to be a direct quote.

> Another argument that I have just thought of: suppose the MS that 
> Arthur remembered was indeed VMS. Then why Dee and Kelley don't
> ask Angels for help with its decipherment? 

I agree that this is a good point.

> But at the same time a printed (!) herbal published in Cracow had
> the price of 100 ducats - so the prices were very relative. 
> My point was that 600 was not that much for Dee and that he really
> did not like to part with his books.

My impression is that Dee was constantly in financial difficulty (probably to
an extent because of his book collecting) -- if you look at Dee's diary for
1585, you'll see that the Queen had to send him money so he could serve a
proper dinner to the visiting Lasky.

> Of course - there are many other candidates. And on the other hand 
> - we only have Rafael Misovsky's word (and even that is second-hand)
> for the fact that VMS was in Rudolf's collection. I do not mean to
> say it wasn't (after all, I should trust a name-sake <g>), but 
> really certain history of VMS starts with the elusive Georg Baresch.

Rafael Misovsky was born in 1580, so he could have had first hand knowledge.
If the info is wrong, then the specifics given by him (including the price)
cry out for explanation. *Someone* (I just realized while reading the Marci
letter, it's not clear whether Raphael or Rudolph) thought the Mss was by
Roger Bacon, supporting an English source. Of course, Marci is writing his
letter 22 years after Rafael's death, but Marci's recall of GB's
correspondence with Kircher 27 years earlier is accurate.

Given the persistent Jesuit links of the apparent owners, it seems likely that
the transfer of ownership from Jacob Tepenece (d. 1622) to Baresch (writes PUG
557, f353 in 1639) through any intermediate owner(s) was relatively orderly
and unaffected by the political chaos in Bohemia at the time. We can at least
hope to fill the gap. Are there any surviving collections of papers or
correspondence by Tepenece? Do we know who he left his books and mss. to?

Karl