3forgeries of Galileo’s treatises: This one was uncovered, ironically, by Owen Gingerich, one of the scholars who initially signed off on the Sidereus Nuncius. A couple years later, however, Gingerich registered doubt about the phases of the moon depicted in the watercolors before the authenticity of the entire treatise was suspected. See Owen Gingerich, “The Curious Case of the M-L Sidereus Nuncius,” Galilæana 6 (2009): 141–66; Nick Wilding, review of A Galileo Forgery: Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius,” Horst Bredekamp, Irene Brückle, and Paul Needham, eds., in Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2014): 1340; and Horst Bredekamp et al., “Introduction,” in A Galileo Forgery, ed. by Horst Bredekamp et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 10.
3word masterpiece was thrown around: Irene Brückle, “Final Thoughts,” in Bredekamp et al., A Galileo Forgery, 100.
3embarrassed that it took so long: Paul Needham said, “But is it a clever forgery? I am not convinced, despite being someone who managed to be fooled by both its printing and its paper. I am happier in saying this reflects poorly on me than that it reflects well on the makers.” Paul Needham, “Final Thoughts,” in Bredekamp et al., A Galileo Forgery, 95.
4through 4,200 pages of all Galileo’s known letters: Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
4“an extended undergraduate paper with no quotations”: Quoted in ibid., pulled off The New Yorker website.
5after De Caro’s crimes were uncovered: Ibid.
5replaced these authentic editions with his forgeries: Wilding, Faussaire, 47.
6“so hot right now”: See Zoolander (2001), DVD. The actual quote is “Hansel, so hot right now. Hansel.”
6studied papermaking by hand in Italy: Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
6it’s quite the opposite: Relatively speaking. Of course before paper was brought to the West—having been invented in China and introduced to Spain and Italy via trading with Muslim communities—animal-based parchment was used for books, which was tremendously more expensive.
7equal the cost of everything else combined: Cristina Dondi, “The European Printing Revolution,” in The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez, S.J., and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 87.
7“rag sermons”: Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 17. With thanks to Nick Wilding for pointing out this example.
7making their living sifting through refuse piles: See, for example, Henry Mayhew, London and the London Poor, 2 vols. (London: Griffin, Bohn and Company, 1861), 2:138–42.
9aromatic organic polymer called lignin: John Christopher Roberts, The Chemistry of Paper (London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1996), 26.
10cotton scraps . . . anachronistic red flags: Irene Brückle, Theresa Smith, and Manfred Mayer, “The Evidence of the Forged Paper,” in Bredekamp et al., A Galileo Forgery, 38.
10spell in a kitchen oven: Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
10faux aging . . . invisible fingerprints: See Brückle, Smith, and Mayer, “The Evidence of the Forged Paper,” in Bredekamp et al., A Galileo Forgery, 52.
11add lasting pigment to inks: Joe Nickell, Pen, Ink, and Evidence (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003), 40.
11female gall wasp: Ibid., 36.
11his secret formula: Janet Ing, Johann Gutenberg and His Bible (New York: Typophiles, 1988), 87.
12Soaking it in pee: Margreta De Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, “The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text,” in Shakespeare and the Editorial Tradition, ed. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen (London: Taylor and Francis, 1999), 28.
12Gutenberg’s most important innovation: Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book, trans. David Gerard (London: Verso, 2010), 50.
12you tend to avoid slicing off pieces: Brückle, Smith, and Mayer, “Evidence of the Forged Paper,” 38.
13tested acceptably high on acid: Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
14unequivocal evidence proving the fraud: See Nicholas Pickwoad, “The Evidence of the Forged SNML Sammelband Book Structure,” in Bredekamp et al., A Galileo Forgery, 61–70.
14expensive slats of wood: Barbara A. Shailor, The Medieval Book (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 56.
15morocco, made from goatskin: Modern bookbinders reading this book have now just tossed it aside in disgust. The academic and collecting world of rare books still uses the term “morocco” as a catchall for any goatskin binding, but bookbinders know it’s in fact only one specific type of goatskin. With thanks for Lang Ingalls’s comments at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in July 2016, for pointing this out.
16bound in Allen’s skin: Nicholas Basbanes, A Gentle Madness (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 154.
17cut, gilded, and gauffered at the same time: Pickwoad, “Book Structure,” 70.
17fornicating on the fore-edge: This very copy of Longfellow sold at Heritage Auctions in April 2014 for $406.25.
18most successful book forgery: As Rebecca’s Medieval Latin professor, Richard Lounsbury, used to say, does a “successful forgery” really exist? If it is successful, no one calls it a forgery. If the forgery is revealed, then it clearly isn’t successful.
18faulty capital P: The first published statement declaring the forgery focused on this detail, a misshapen P that could have occurred only through digital retouching. See Nick Wilding, “Letter to the Editor,” ISIS 103, no. 4 (2012): 760.
18uncover his masterful deceit: Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
19“a projected duel”: Ibid.
19photopolymer plates: See Wilding, Faussaire, 37–39. This is one of the key differences in modern forgeries, a technological development that has made them much more financially practical. Thomas J. Wise’s famous forgeries were, for instance, possible mainly because of his connection with a local print shop, where he had already been printing “authorized” facsimiles of rare first editions.
19“real expert” happened to be working: Nick Wilding, “Review of Galileo’s O, vols. 1 and 2, edited by Horst Bredekamp,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2012): 217–18.
19senior scholars blew off Wilding’s concerns: Wilding, “Reviewed Work,” 1338.
19the key word here being fantasy: See Needham, “Final Thoughts,” 98.
20“within about twenty minutes”: Paul Needham, “Fruitful Doubts, May–June 2012,” in A Galileo Forgery, 23.
20“not many results are worse than a refuted authentication”: Bredekamp et al., “Introduction,” 11.
20only a masterpiece could have fooled them: Wilding, “Reviewed Work,” 1338.
20seven years’ house arrest: Technically he was sentenced to seven years in prison, which was commuted to house arrest because of his health. “Biblioteca dei Girolamini, condannato l’ex direttore De Caro a 7 anni,” Napoli Today, March 15, 2013, at http://www.napolitoday.it/cronaca/biblioteca-dei-girol amini-direttore-condannato.html.
20being a thief: He was convicted for the theft of thousands of books from a library in Naples. Even considering the millions of dollars involved, the Italian government doesn’t seem to know how to handle these bibliocrimes, which are truly crimes against our intellectual heritage. De Caro still hasn’t been brought to trial for the sale of his forged Sidereus Nuncius.
Chapter 2: Forgetting Mr. Gooseflesh
21“must not be stopped because of printing”: Quoted in Noël L. Brann, The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516): The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 156. We’ve used Brann’s translations throughout when quoting Trithemius.
21differences between handwriting and printing: Ibid., 156.
22Gutenberg appears in exactly zero printed books: Ing, Gutenberg, 33.
22birthday, or birth year, or birth decade: Ibid., 27.
23common medieval derivations of “Johannes”: Douglas C. McMurtrie, The Gutenberg Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 42.
23dually libelous opinion of Gutenberg: Ing, Gutenber
g, 48–49. The theory had been tossed out by the eighteenth century in England, but Americans love conspiracies. They kept the theory alive into the nineteenth century. They were also, incidentally, first responsible for putting forth theories questioning William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon as the true author of the plays attributed to him.
24Gutenberg was remembered only as their “assistant”: Martyn Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 92–94.
24didn’t appear until 1472: Ing, Gutenberg, 33.
24rescue Gutenberg’s reputation: Ibid., 45.
24went missing for more than a hundred fifty years: McMurtrie, Gutenberg Documents, 176. It also happened to be the most important document, the Helmasperger Instrument. More on this record to follow.
25“the abuses of a stepfather”: Brann, Abbot Trithemius, 3.
26“grant you whatever you have asked”: Ibid., 5.
27“‘proud and temperamental’ character”: Paul Needham, The Invention and Early Spread of European Printing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Library, 2007), 5.
27“GRAUNT—popular poet of ancient times”: Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; Or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1869), 336.
28zombies hanging around being jerks: Okay, yes, there is a reason: the woodcut forms part of a larger Danse Macabre theme, a popular medieval trope that emphasized the ubiquity of death and how it comes for people in every station in life. The Walking Dead of the Middle Ages, if you will.
28“we know nearly nothing”: Ing, Gutenberg, 78.
30deal with Satan: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 2–6.
30Gutenberg kept printing: Paul Needham, “Johann Gutenberg and the Catholicon Press,” The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America 76, no. 4 (1982): 432.
30Gutenberg has left after his death: McMurtrie, Gutenberg Documents, 219.
30suit may actually have favored Gutenberg: Ing, Gutenberg, 31.
30Gutenberg was cast as a nosy neighbor: Ibid., 43.
31previously unknown eyewitness account: Ibid., 67.
31“earliest precise date by which we know typographic printing”: Needham, Invention and Early Spread, 17.
31a note nonchalantly scribbled: Ing, Gutenberg, 53.
31literary casualty list: See McMurtrie, Gutenberg Documents.
32liveliness to times and circumstances: Quoted in Brann, Abbot Trithemius, 151.
32marvelous and hitherto unheard of art of printing: Quoted in ibid., 145.
32O blessed art of printing: Quoted in ibid., 147.
33“Sponheim Abbey Press”: Ibid., 149.
34“I will gladly go to labors outside”: Quoted in ibid., 165.
34“writer who commends his writings to membranes”: Quoted in ibid., 151.
34reap the following rewards: Quoted in ibid., 155.
35“will be able to endure a thousand years”: Quoted in ibid., 157.
35rate of nearly two to one: Bettina Wagner, ed., Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2009), 15.
35Amazon erased illegal editions of George Orwell’s: Brad Stone, “Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle,” New York Times, June 17, 2009.
36circulation in manuscript form: See Richard B. Wollman, “The ‘Press and the Fire’: Print and Manuscript Culture in Donne’s Circle,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 33, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 85–97.
36“distinguishing their beautiful volumes”: Brann, Abbot Trithemius, 158.
37“a favorite, old blanket”: David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 113.
37papyrus with processed animal carcasses: An Egyptian would also have turned his nose up at the idea of leather competing with papyrus at all—the word parchment is rooted in the proper noun Pergamum, the ancient Greek city that produced leather for books specifically in order to compete with Egypt’s papyrus production.
38“highly favorable one”: Brann, Abbot Trithemius, 145.
38“library of two-thousand books”: Ibid., 53.
38“abounding with volumes”: Ibid., 70–71.
38different can of kerscheblotzer: A cherry cake popular in the Mainz area. Not served in a can—as far as we know.
39“indeed without glasses”: Quoted in Martin Davies, “Juan de Carvajal and Early Printing: The 42-line Bible and Sweynheym and Pannartz Aquinas,” The Library (1996).
3930 percent of editions from this period: Jonathan Green and Frank McIntyre, “Lost Incunable Editions: Closing in on an Estimate” in Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 60–61. This article also discusses the value and drawbacks of using ISTC to count incunable editions.
39Latin term coined in 1640: Bernhard von Mallinckrodt suggested the term in De ortu et progressu artis typographicae. Cf. Needham, Invention and Early Spread, 9.
39babies of print: Does this make the pamphlet wars of the Reformation its terrible twos? Cf. chapter 3.
40“are to be spat at”: Grant Uden, Understanding Book-Collecting (New York: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1982), 36.
40probably trained in Mainz: Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaidon Press, 2005), 192.
40excellent candidates for the title of first printed book: Paul Needham, “Precious Consignments from the Old to the New World: The Gutenberg Bible in America,” in Association internationale de bibliophilie: Actes et Communications, XXVth Congress, New York City, and Post-Congress, Chicago (s.l.: Association international de bibliophilie, 2011), 46.
41copyediting errors while using B42: Karl Dziatzko, Gutenbergs früheste Druckerpraxis (Berlin: A. Asher and Co., 1890). See Ing, Gutenberg, 54–57, for a summary of Dziatzko’s findings.
42“purchased without great sacrifice”: Ibid., 105, summarizing the conclusions of Eberhard König.
42170 calves or 300 sheep: Sarah E. Bond, “Sacrificial Lambs: Livestock, Book Costs, and the Premodern Parchment Trade,” Sarah E. Bond: Late Antiquity, Digital Humanities, and Musings on the Classical World, April 2016, https://sarahemilybond.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/sacrificial-lambs-live stock-book-costs-and-the-premodern-parchment-trade/.
42largest herd of cattle in the United States: Colleen Schreiber, “Mormon Church Holds Title as Largest U.S. Cow-Calf Producer,” Livestock Weekly, January 25, 2001, http://www.livestockweekly.com/papers/01/01/25/whldeseret .asp.
43started placing bids: Technically, this is also when Sir Thomas started placing bids at all; up to this point he had been sitting back like a gentleman, preferring his agent to bid. A man obviously paid for his cool temperament: this agent ceased at Sir Thomas’s planned bid. That’s when Sir Thomas stepped in himself.
43“arrest [Sir Thomas’s] mad career”: Henry Stevens, Recollections of James Lenox of New York and the Formation of His Library (London: H. Stevens and Son, 1886), 32.
43“swallowed up by the Deep Sea”: Quoted in Ezra Greenspan, George Palmer Putnam: Representative American Publisher (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010), 158.
44denied the possession of these Bibles: Needham, “Precious Consignments,” 40.
44“These people were not art specialists”: “Russia Sentences Secret Agents over Theft of Gutenberg Bible,” BBC News, June 6, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27738164.
45where Gutenberg’s print shop stood: Ing, Gutenberg, 75.
45running two separate print shops: Ibid.
45found inside the binding of an accountant’s book: Colin Clair, A History of European Printing (London: Academic Press, 1976), 16.
45church where he was likely buried was demolished: Seán Jennett, Pioneers in Printing (London: Routledge and Kegan P
aul Ltd., 1958), 21.
46monastic issues, histories, and demonology: Please thank the Oxford comma for keeping this phrase from reading, “monastic issues, histories and demonology.”
47taught him the ancient secrets of steganography: Noël L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 101.
48“offend them by various delusions”: Ibid., 136.
49branded it a work of heresy: Ibid., 172.
49demonology, “a minor current”: Brann, Abbot Trithemius, 101.
Chapter 3: Trees of Truth
52surrender his dead son’s sheet: Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (London: Faber and Faber, 2014), 99.
52“thou art accursed”: Quoted in ibid.
52“Wycliffe’s damnable works”: J. Fines, “A Post-Mortem Condemnation for Heresy of Richard Hunne,” English Historical Review 78, no. 308 (July 1963): 530.
53“plenty of blood was shed before he was hanged”: John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: With a Preliminary Dissertation by the Rev. George Townsend, 8 vols., ed. Rev. Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837–1841), 4:191.
54“the soul from purgatory springs”: This popular verse is referenced directly in statement number 27 of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.
54splinters from Christ’s True Cross to fill a ship: Erasmus, Colloquies, vol. 2, trans. N. Bailey (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878), 13.
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