Re: Caramuel, Lobkowitz y Chinese

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > Marci may have heard of Jacobus but I would be surprised if 
    > Kircher knew of him at all (how about this for an unverifiable
    > statement :-) ). "Sources like Schmidl" would be Balbin (who
    > is in fact one of Schmidl's main sources), and there are no
    > letters from him to Kircher
    
But Kircher, a Jesuit, surely had easy access to Jesuit history books,
such as Balbin's and Schmidl's: if not in his personal library,
certainly within walking range.

Schmidl devotes an inordinate amount of space to Jacobus, obviously
because it was the Clementinum's finest success story ("rags to riches
thanks to Jesuit education") and a generous benefactor of the Order. I
bet that Jacobus stands out in Balbín, too; and that neither author
devotes so much attention to any other alchemist of Rudolf's time. 
So I don't think it is unikley that some Jesuit in Rome (Kircher, Beckx,
or anyone in between) who tried to identify the "bearer" would have
stumbled upon Jacobus.

    > In 'Evans' (or the Kunstkammer catalogue by Bauer & Haupt?) 
    > I read that it is virtually impossible to trace the books once
    > owned by Rudolf, so evidently no such mark [of ownership] exists.

Ok.

    > How about this one: one or two years ago I was browsing a book about
    > the 30-years war. In the index of names, near where 'Sobiehrd' should
    > have been (but wasn't) I saw 'Matthias Soop'. This is the name of
    > a retired colleague of mine (now deceased) whose office I now
    > inhabit. He was Swedish and indeed a direct descendant of this other 
    > Matthias Soop who played an important role for the Swedes at one
    > time during that war...

See? See?  8-)

All the best,

--stolfi