12-09-2016, 08:04 AM
Koen,
Harking back to your first point - the historiographic problem of how much weight should be given Baresch's comments, I agree that in purely objective terms it should have been given much more weight and detailed investigation than it was: simply because it is a first-hand and direct comment and relates directly to the provenance and content of what is *in* the manuscript, as distinct from where and when it was manufactured.
It is not too difficult to explain why earlier writers should have placed so much more emphasis on what a modern historian would probably place lower down the scale of relative value - that late, indirect report of a rumour (for as Neal says, Mnishovsky couldn't have witnessed what he purports happening). It was the glamour of association with an emperor and a important Franciscan. Simple as that.
If Marci's note had said that decades ago his brother-in-law had said that the local blacksmith had bought the manuscript from a travelling peddlar for 2 ducats and that "Mr. Jones" wrote it, I doubt anyone would have made the sentence any basis for an entire, fabricated history as Wilfrid did.
So now times have moved on, I think you are quite right to re-visit this matter, and I won't pretend I haven't constantly encountered matter in the manuscript which made me add increasing weight to Baresch's seemingly hypothetical description. So best of luck.
Harking back to your first point - the historiographic problem of how much weight should be given Baresch's comments, I agree that in purely objective terms it should have been given much more weight and detailed investigation than it was: simply because it is a first-hand and direct comment and relates directly to the provenance and content of what is *in* the manuscript, as distinct from where and when it was manufactured.
It is not too difficult to explain why earlier writers should have placed so much more emphasis on what a modern historian would probably place lower down the scale of relative value - that late, indirect report of a rumour (for as Neal says, Mnishovsky couldn't have witnessed what he purports happening). It was the glamour of association with an emperor and a important Franciscan. Simple as that.
If Marci's note had said that decades ago his brother-in-law had said that the local blacksmith had bought the manuscript from a travelling peddlar for 2 ducats and that "Mr. Jones" wrote it, I doubt anyone would have made the sentence any basis for an entire, fabricated history as Wilfrid did.
So now times have moved on, I think you are quite right to re-visit this matter, and I won't pretend I haven't constantly encountered matter in the manuscript which made me add increasing weight to Baresch's seemingly hypothetical description. So best of luck.