Part 28 (1/2)
Your news about the messenger-golem find is stunning. I don't know what to make of it. I'll tell you WHY I don't know what to make of it.
You've found mobile golems.
I've lost the Angelotti ma.n.u.script.
- Anna * * *
Message: #50 (Longman) Subject: Ash mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 02 . 38 p.m.
From: [email protected] I don't understand. How can you LOSE the Angelotti text? It's in four major world collections! Explain!
- Pierce * * *
Message: #66 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 02 . 51 p.m.
From: [email protected] Pierce - No. It isn't.
I wanted to check on this 'forgotten invasion' of yours for myself.
If you weren't out in Tunis with Dr Grant - if this turns out NOT to be golems - I'm pulling the book. I mean it. THERE IS NO ANGELOTTI Ma.n.u.sCRIPT!
The problem isn't that a 'Visigoth invasion' seems to have been swept under the historical carpet.
The PROBLEM is that since I wanted to check the Angelotti text myself, I phoned the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Glasgow Museum.
The Glasgow Museum no longer hold a copy of the Latin text attributed to one 'Antonio Angelotti' .
Both the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum now cla.s.sify it as Mediaeval Romance Literature. As FICTION, Pierce!
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?.
Message: #54 (Longman) Subject: Ash/Angelotti mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 04.11 p.m.
From: [email protected] Anna - I contacted Bernard at the Glasgow Museum. He tells me he doesn't know where their Angelotti text is, they may no longer shelve it, or it 'may' be out on loan to some other inst.i.tution. He asked me why I wanted to study something so patently useless to the historian, since it's a presumed 17th century FAKE.
I don't understand what is happening!
Both Charles Mallory Maximillian and Vaughan Davies had no doubts whatsoever about the veracity of this ma.n.u.script! In 1890 and 1939 it was catalogued as an ordinary 15th century doc.u.ment. When I consulted it, it was in the CATALOGUE under that designation! This is not like anything else that has ever happened to me in my academic career! They CAN'T have recla.s.sified it in the past six months!
I can't get anyone to talk to me on-line, and I CAN'T leave here. If I go off-site, I won't be allowed back on again. You're going to have to take this on for me. For our book.
- Pierce * * *
Message: #69 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, texts Date: 10/11/00 at 04.22 p.m.
From: [email protected] Pierce - Jesus Christ Pierce what next? If one of your ma.n.u.scripts is a fake, but the golems are real?
I'll do what I can on-line, and by phone. I really don't understand this.
Give me a list of doc.u.ments to check.
Okay, I can understand that maybe Victorian historians weren't so rigorous as modern ones. There are such things as faked ma.n.u.scripts. But there've been two editions besides yours: if Charles Mallory Maximillian was lax, surely Vaughan Davies should have spotted something?
- Anna * * *
Message: #55 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash, texts Date: 13/11/00 at 00.45 a.m.
From: [email protected] Anna - Yes, Vaughan Davies should have discovered if any of the doc.u.ments were invalid. You are kind enough not to say it, but, so should I.
This is a list of the princ.i.p.al authenticated doc.u.ments that I have been working from: The WINCHESTER CODEX, c.1495, Tudor English translation of mediaeval Latin original (1480s?). Ash's childhood.
The del Guiz LIFE, c.1516, withdrawn, expurgated and reissued 1518. German original. Plus a version by Ortense Mancini, 17c playwright, in which she mentions that it is translated from a 16c Latin ma.n.u.script - we have no trace of this. Covers, Ash's life 1472-1477.
The CARTULARY of the monastery of ,St. Herlaine, c.1480, translated from the French. Brief mentions of Ash as a novice c.1467-8.
'PSEUDO-G.o.dFREY', 1478 (?), a German text of dubious value, found in Cologne in 1963; original paper and ink, but possibly a contemporary forgery, cas.h.i.+ng in on the popularity of the 'Ash' cycle of legends. Ash's life c. 1467-1477.
The ANGELOTTI ma.n.u.script, Milan, 1487; appended at the end of a treatise on armour owned by the Missaglia family. Ash during the period 1473-1477.
'FRAXINUS ME FECIT', possibly autobiography of Ash, therefore written down no later than 1477; if a biography, between 1477 and 1481(?) . Covers summer 1475 (6?)-autumn 1476.
The two previous editions of the 'Ash' material are:- Charles Mallory Maximillian (ed.) ASH: THE LIFE OF A FEMALE MEDIAEVAL MERCENARY CAPTAIN, J Dent & Son, London, 1890, reprinted 1892, 1893, 1896, 1905.
This contains translations of all the above, excluding 'Pseudo-G.o.dfrey' (and, of course, 'Fraxinus'). CMM does include the 17th century poems by Lord Rochester supposedly based on episodes from the del Guiz LIFE; later research indicates this is unlikely. CMM was a widely read and reputable scholar of his period, holding the Mediaeval History Chair at Oxford.
Vaughan Davies (ed.) ASH: A FIFTEENTH CENTURY BIOGRAPHY, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939. Not reprinted. Plates lost.
Contents as CMM. There was also rumoured to be a pirated paperback edition, a facsimile reprint done by Stars.h.i.+ne Press in San Francisco (1968) , but I have not seen it.
This original 1939 edition itself exists only in incomplete form in the British Library. The publisher's warehouse was bombed during the war, destroying stocks, and cutting short a popular vogue for Vaughan Davies's book - after all, it is not every history book that is written by a man with his scientific, as well as historian's, credentials.
That's all I have on file, I think there may be one or two confirmatory mentions in contemporary letters, but I don't have the data with me.
I've now completed the next translation of the del Guiz/ Angelotti 'Ash' material, and will send it to you after this.'
Isobel, of course, is insisting that I IMMEDIATELY finish 'Fraxinus me fecit' for her, and she wants the translation done meticulously - so, I think, do I; but she knows that.