Re: VMs: Marci/Kircher letter 1640

[ajb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Re: VMs: Marci/Kircher letter 1640

Hello

Rene wrote

>been away 11 days.

If it was holiday, hope you had a good time; if business,
trust it was productive.

>I will gladly include it in my web page

Anyone is very welcome to use it as they please. It may not be
a very accurate rendering into non-antique English - Bill said he
had considerable difficulty making proper sense of parts. He did
consult some relevant old (contemporaries of the letter) Latin
dictionaries the monks have in their library at Prinknash Abbey I
believe. But it is a much better effort than I could manage

Heliotrope - I was wondering if this might be a reference to a
dyeing process? The plant Heliotrope has been used for this
purpose (mauves and purples, always very difficult until the advent
of synthetic azo dyes. Very expensive -  Caesar's Murex etc.)

And the secrecy "I had not dared [to tell him this] [?] when we
first became friends and he considered enquiring into it a matter
of the utmost secrecy." and the reference "not for gold but in the
interests of medical science" made me wonder if it was indeed a
matter of value - if not hard cash maybe, perhaps a question of
favour and prestige "at the Court of His Imperial Majesty" or "the
illustrious Counts of Martinitz". 

Or I may well be barking up entirely the wrong sort of tree here (th
one in folio 49r perhaps?)

Regards

Anthony

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