The Book Switch Theory

[ReneZ]

I got a private message expressing surprise at my statement that Barschius worked at Rudolph's court.



I see that I probably used the word "court" imprecisely.  


For several years of the Mailing List era all we knew about Barschius was what we had learned from the letters in the Carteggio, which is to say practically nothing.  We though he was just an obscure alchemist who was friend of Marci, but  had no connection to Rudolph, Dee, or even to Raphael.



Some of you may remember Rafal Prinke from the mailing list (not the Rafal of this forum and of the Rohonc codex).  He was a historian in real life, and did some digging, and found more about Barschius bio, which he reported at the Frascati conference.  As I recall, for some time Barschius had some government job and worked at the Prague Castle.  Isn't that detail in Rene's site? I suppose that my "at the court" was not quite the correct term.  

You can find that information (and much more) at the biographies page that I already listed.
Court is the right term, but Rudolf's is entirely unlikely. 
In the vast amount of information that has been transcribed from Rudolf's court documentation, many hundreds of names have been found, and Barschius is not among them.

[...]
 I suppose that Barschius never met Jacobus -- 
[...]  
And I doubt that 
[...]
So I still don't think that
[...]
I don't see how such a highly valued book could have gone
[...]
all the references to Baresch we had at the time 
[...]
However I suspect that Wilfrid had soon found the name of Marci's "good friend", either from the Carteggio letters (through his Jesuit friends) or from some other source; 
[...]
 it makes sense that he would seek information 
[...]
 his interest in Jacobus would have come out of a
[...]
That investigation must have turned up Jacobus' name, 
[...]
he may even had already obtained a copy of the 

Just on the first guess: Barschius was at the Clementinum round about the same time that Horcicky was reputed to be there, so they may have known each other but we simply don't know.