Horčický's books

[-JKP-]

Thanks JKP, excellent findings! How do you manage to find all this stuff?!

I am interested in the connections between people. Books were valuable in those days. They were laboriously hand-written and weren't just tossed in thrift-store donations bins, they were passed from hand-to-hand. So, for several years, I've been trying to create diagrams of who knew whom.

That's why I keep mentioning that many of the manuscripts that ended up in Lombardy/Northern Italy originated in Salerno/Naples/Bari. It was because students from the colleges and universities of London, Heidelberg, Pisa, Padua, and Paris would often take a degree and then go to the south of Italy, to the Lombardic colonies, to study medicine. When they returned home, or found a patron, they brought their "text books", such as herbal compendiums they created at the medical schools for their own later use.

I had noticed a similar pattern of human connections in the later provenance of the VMS. These guys all knew each other or knew of each other, and corresponded over long distances and "kept things within the family", as the saying goes, so I explored the idea that those connections MIGHT go back prior to Jakobi á Tepenecz, that he might not have gotten the book from Rudolph II, that it might have come from a connection within the Jesuits and maybe he had it when he moved from the Jesuit botanical garden to Rudolph's court (or that a prior connection at the Jesuit school might have been involved in his acquiring the book, or possibly in transmitting it to Rudolph, if Rudolph did, in fact have it).

Some of the information I already had in my files (I had to dig around to collect it all in one place) and some I looked up on the Web last night to fill in some of the holes.

I have seen the Runeberg reference to the Martin Wroblicius's exlibris before. But the Christie's East 1981 catalog is something new. It must refer to another book, because in the Runeberg reference it is said that the exlibris is attached (opklæbet - which I guess is rather "glued" than "clipped"?) to the inner side of the binding (Paa Bindets Inderside), while the Christie's East reference says that the exlibris is in folio 2. Interesting that both are dated to 1626.

I'm not sure whether they mean clipped or attached with glue because "klaebe" (attached/holding on to/glued) is similar to the word for "clip" (they look different in print but if you say them out loud, they are similar) and may sometimes be used imprecisely. I think the word "attached" is probably the best interpretation in this instance, since we can't be 100% certain whether the writer meant glued or clipped unless we can see an image of it (or ask the owner of the book).

About Michael and Laurentius Wroblicius I wrote above in this thread. They are surely brothers, since both of them were born in the same place. Notably, they are both listed as members of SJ...

Yes, I thought that likely also.

I would note that the incident of bad behaviour refers not to Wroblicius, but to student number 9, Matthaeus (Mathaeus) Dlugos, also from Silesia.

Ah, good catch. I hadn't had a chance yet to go over some of this material to confirm my impressions/interpretations.

But what gets more interesting is that we also find Martinus Wroblicius Mstoviensis Polonus under number 120! The town of Mstów is also situated in Silesia. So this guy is Silesian as well.

Yes, they seem to have have born and worked within a fairly narrow geographical area, at least those parts of their lives that we know of. Being the capital of the HRE, Prague was a magnet for scholars from distant regions, it was the "happening place", so the Wrobliciuses were perhaps fortunate to have been born in that general area at that time in history.

I wonder why you call him "Albertus M. Wroblicius", and not simply "Albertus Wroblicius" - any reference for that? Where is the following assumption from:


Albertus M. Wroblicius (probably born approx. 1580 to 1590 and probably still alive at least until 1642)

I'll answer this in a separate reply (I have to finish something for a deadline and then I'll check my notes).

Ab Anno 1611 ad Mensem Martium, diem 16 indictione septima. Anno 1624 hunc librum talem qualem vides inveni M. Albertus Wroblicius... Baccal parochus Maioris Bitessi.

This phrase I fail to understand. "Ab Anno 1611 ad Mensem Martium, diem 16 indictione septima" means "in the year 1611, in the month of March, on 16th day of the seventh indiction". However (as I calculated), 1611 belongs to the ninth indiction, not to the seventh one. Next, if the guy found the book in 1624, then it is not clear what is the 1611 dating about. Furthemore, it is not clear whether it was Albertus Wroblicius who found the book, or Albertus Wroblicius was the previous owner of the book found by the author of the inscription. Last, I completely fail to understand "Baccal parochus Maioris Bitessi". What is "baccal" and what is "Maioris Bitessi" (suppose it's in genitive?).

I cannot be certain, I'm as much in the dark as you, but I interpreted the last as meaning Baccal (someone with a Baccalaureate degree) Pastor of the region of greater Bitessi, in other words, his title, his position. But that is just a guess; there's not much to go on.

In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Albertus Vroblicius/Wroblicius is listed on page 374 [as a graduate?].

"Matrikel" means the list of enrolled, not of graduated.

Oh, of course, you are right. We don't use the word matriculated very often around here (we just say enrolled), so I had forgotten this.


[good background information from Anton deleted for brevity]

The current bottomline is that we still are not sure whether Wroblicius died before the death of Sinapius (Sep. 1622) or later? That is important to narrow down the range of circumstances under which Sinapius could acquire the book number 4.

Some of the historians in that area mention the surname in print once in a while, so they may have access to additional local information that's relevant. I don't know how hard it would be to ask a librarian or historian if there is more information on that name.