The Vinland Map Part IV
Vinland’s Saga Recalled Taken from Laurence C. Witten’s account of the discovery and controversy of the Vinland Map
The public controversy over the Vinland Map officially began in 1965 with Yale University’s publication of the Map. Laurence Witten’s involvement with the Map began about eight years prior when he was its owner.
First, a description. The Vinland Map is drawn on a bifold sheet of vellum, folded vertically in the center to crate two leaves. Its companion, The Tartar Relation, is a manuscript written on a single quire of sixteen leaves (eight bifold sheets) with the outermost and innermost sheets (pages one and sixteen, and pages eight and nine) of vellum. The remaining sheets (folios 2-7, or pages 2-7 and 10-15) are of paper. The text of The Tartar Relation is written in a Gothic Cursive hand, two columns per page. The comparatively modern binding covering the two documents dates from sometime between 1900 and 1957.
Witten first saw these artefacts in Geneva, Switzerland in September 1957, in the shop of his friend and colleague Nicolas Rauch, during a book-buying trip to Europe. Rauch’s shop was important to the antique book world at that time. Being in Switzerland, Rauch was in an ideal position to make banking arrangements for dealers and private collectors from other European countries, particularly foreign exchange transactions. Rauch also conducted noteworthy auctions, including one of the fifteenth-and-sixteenth century illustrated books from the library of Sylvain S. Brunschwig of New York. His shop was an important meeting place for the international book trade, particularly because Rauch gave gala dinners in his own elegant sales rooms the evening before major sales.
It was at one of these sales around 1955 that Witten met Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry, a distinguished Italian book dealer, who was in his fifties at the time. Ferrajoli had served with distinction as an Italian army officer in Abyssinia [modern day Ethiopia], and then volunteered for the Spanish Civil war, on Franco’s side, as a matter of conviction. After being seriously wounded in that war, he was nursed by a young Spanish woman, a volunteer from socially prominent, wealthy family. They married and Ferrajoli remained in Spain, though he retained his Italian citizenship. He made his living buying and selling books throughout Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, and Switzerland. Enzo Ferrajoli was of a noble family from southern Italy (several volumes of Codices Ferrajoli are among the published series of Vatican manuscripts). He had a fine classing education and wrote poetry in Italian, Spanish, Greek, French, and Latin. He also acted as a clandestine courier, carrying messages to and from Italy for the former queen of Italy who was then living in retirement in Switzerland.1 Enzo Ferrajoli was truly one of the last of a dying breed.
At the September 1957 meeting, Rauch told Witten that Ferrajoli had just arrived with a sizable lot of early printed books and manuscripts. Rauch himself was not interested but thought Witten would like to look at the lot. When Witten asked Ferrajoli the source of these books, the answer was only “from various libraries and collections”. Witten would later regret not pressing further for a more concise answer, but at the time it did not seem necessary. In today’s market of scarce antique books and extraordinary prices it is difficult to grasp that it was not always so. From the end of the Second World War, and for decades after, high quality antique books rained on the market. This flood was primarily due to the war’s disruptions, widespread hardship, and shortage of money. Many European libraries were searched for “duplicates” that could be sold, and many large and small collections were sold to gain ready cash for their owners. Books with no clear owner were salvaged from damaged buildings by passersby for the same purpose. Book dealers like Ferrajoli encouraged the custodians of libraries full of old books that had barely been touched for centuries to turn their clutter into desperately needed money. Such libraries were often so inadequately catalogued or described that owners often did not know what they had, and there was little risk to either buyer or seller. Although occasionally a book bought by a dealer was later recognized as the very copy missing from a certain library, most were sold without notice. Many hundreds of incunabula2 were sold by the Bavarian State Library in Munich, all duplicates which remained from the time when many German monasteries were secularized and their books moved to Munich. Book dealers hoped they were purchasing these volumes legally, and were normally silent or elusive about the source of their books. It was obvious to Witten that most of Ferrajoli’s inventory came from dormant collections, probably old libraries. Many of his books were in their original or at least very old bindings and were often dirty and water-stained, with their free end leaves stripped from them. This latter feature was likely done by the original sellers, as such savagery seems out of character for Ferrajoli himself.
Sometime during this meeting, Witten and Ferrajoli reached an agreement. Among the purchases from this lot was a Florentine manuscript of Archimedes in Greek (c. 1460) in the original red Morocco binding. Also, there was an early edition of the Rome Ptolemy from 1507 (mentioned in a previous publication of this series), also in its original binding. In Witten’s inventory journal from this purchase is number 1627, the slender volume containing the Vinland Map and The Tartar Relation. While purchased at the same time as the other items mentioned above, this volume was not part of the lot Ferrajoli brought to the meeting. It had been obtained by Ferrajoli at an earlier date and was on offer to Rauch, who was very interested in it as was Rauch’s junior partner Edwin Engelberts. Rauch and Engelberts wanted to show the volume to Witten since he had a reputation for being interested in medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
Rauch was not even the first customer Ferrajoli offered the volume to. He first offered it to J.I. (Irving) Davis, the proprietor of Davis & Orioli, London, one of Ferrajoli’s most important outlets. Davis held the manuscript for a time and, during that time, had taken it to R. A. Skelton for authentication. As mentioned previously, Skelton was the superintendent of the Map Room for the British Museum. At the time, Skelton was likely the world’s leading authority on the history of early cartography and had written several important publications on the subject. Without Davis’ knowledge, Skelton showed the volume to another British Museum colleague, George D. Painter in the Department of Printed Books. (Remember, all of this took place before the map was acquired by Witten. Painter later told Witten of this years later and also admitted with much amusement that he and Skelton took a tracing of the Map after promising Davis they would not do so. Academic mischief has its own peculiar charms.) Painter was a polymath, most famous now for his biography of Marcel Proust. He had a remarkable skill in languages, paleography, history, and was considered an expert on Proust, William Caxton, and Spanish incunabula. He authorized the general introduction to Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Museum. Part 10 Spain and Portugal (London 1971). These two, Skelton and Painter, would later be the principal authors of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation published by Yale University Press in 1965. While appears to be one of the interesting twists of history, Skelton was asked by Alexander O. Vietor, curator of the Map Collection in the Yale Library, to write the section on the Map for the book. Skelton then brought in Painter to edit the text of the Tartar Relation and place it in historical context.
Skelton and Painter believed at first sight that both the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation were authentic. They later told Witten and the curators of Yale of their belief. Yet in 1957 all Skelton could tell Irving Davis was the map was so remarkable and so potentially controversial that he could not vouch absolutely for its authenticity. At least not without further substantiation. This caused Davis to return the volume to Ferrajoli.
Why would a map like this one be so controversial? If it were a genuine article from the fifteenth century it provided documentary evidence that Europeans had traveled to and settled in North America centuries before Columbus. It would also be the earliest map to depict any part of the North American continent and would vie for importance with Columbus’ own sketch of the area of the Caribbean he visited in 1492.3 In 1957, scholars were still debating over this idea, and slowly accepting that Vikings traveled to the New World 500 years before Columbus. This controversy was put to rest with the discovery of L’Anse Aux Meadows in 1960 in Newfoundland.
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When the volume was then offered to Nicolas Rauch, he was wary, and gave Witten three reasons for his caution. One: There was no evidence at first sight that the Map and the Tartar Relation had originally belonged together. In their number and position, the wormholes in one did not match the other. Two: there was no certified origin to eliminate the possibility of forgery, though Rauch himself believed it was a genuine artefact. Three: the description and delineation of Vinland on the Map were so sensational they would certainly make the volume controversial and therefore difficult to sell, particularly at a price that was worthy of its value.
Witten studied the volume himself and concluded both the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation dated from the middle or second half of the fifteenth century. The handwriting was a very common Gothic Cursive, not Italianate, and he thought it originated from somewhere with a Germanic influence.4 It seemed impossible to Witten that a modern forger could produce the 41 written columns of the Tartar Relation, numbering about 1,460 lines, and particularly the 67 legend inscriptions of the Map written in a similar hand, some of which were almost microscopic.
Witten also ruled out the possibility of the volume being a forgery because every attempt at forgery of a medieval manuscript he saw was obvious to anyone with experience of genuine manuscripts. Particularly when a forger attempted to fabricate a whole text rather than a few lines. To forge such a manuscript requires access to genuine, unused parchment of the correct time period, intimate familiarity of medieval handwriting and techniques, the proper tools and ingredients to make convincing ink, perfect command of whatever language used (usually Latin) and, in addition, the genius to create a text interesting enough to be saleable. Witten stated if such a forgery possessing all of the above qualities existed, he had not seen it. Your author maintains that any possible forger of the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation would have been an unparalleled genius, both fluent in mid-15th century Latin and very familiar with obscure medieval Icelandic or Scandinavian literature.
It is worth noting that the most famous forger of medieval artefacts, a still unidentified individual known simply as the Spanish Forger, never risked manufacturing his own material. This forger always added in forged illuminations in extant genuine medieval books. This forger may have fooled a few gullible book dealers during his later 19th and early 20th century years of operation, but they were obvious fakes to anyone who was familiar with medieval manuscripts.
Witten purchased the volume from Ferrajoli for a relatively modest price, only possible because the Map could not be authenticated fully. He promised to pay more if the Map were later authenticated, but if not, no one would be any the worse off. Back in New Haven, Connecticut, Witten only told one person outside his family of his find: Thomas Marston, curator of classics in the Yale Library and a collector of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Witten set to searching the Yale Library and other libraries for 15th century world maps and information on John Do Plano Carpini’s embassy to the Great Khan. While he did locate several other manuscripts of Carpini’s mission, no other copy of the version by “C. de Bridia” was recorded anywhere, and he found no other maps comparable to the Vinland Map. The closest map comparison he found was the 1436 world map by Andrea Bianco. At Marston’s suggestion, he and Witten took the volume to Alexander Vietor along with the references Witten had collected. They all agreed little could be done without evidence of authenticity or an explanation of the wormhole discrepancy. Vietor and Marston suggested the Tartar Relation be offered to Yale on its own, but Witten was reluctant to separate the two documents. With no other options, he simply took the volume home and gave it to his wife. This was Autum of 1957.
About a year later, sometime in Autum or Winter of 1958-59, Witten received a call from Marston, calling from his office in the Sterling Library which was across the street from Witten’s own office. Marston said the bookbinder Roland MacDonald (who made cases for Marston’s manuscripts) was arriving the next morning to take some of his manuscripts. Among these manuscripts were some new acquisitions he wanted Witten to see. One item stuck out the most to Witten. A badly-worn volume, rebacked in 15th century binding of sheepskin over wooden boards, decorated with conventional small stamps, possibly originally stamped with copper in the roundels. It contained part of Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale. Witten noticed this manuscript was written in two columns on quires containing inner paper sheets and outer vellum sheets, and the handwriting was a familiar 15th century Gothic Cursive. The characteristics appeared similar to the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, and Witten asked to borrow the volume overnight to compare the two.
When he got the borrowed volume home, Witten saw the two manuscripts were of the same period and approximately the same geographic location, with similar styles of handwriting. The Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale appeared to be on similar paper watermarked with an ox’s or bull’s head, and the vellum and paper quires were assembled in the same manner. Witten knew from experience that this combination of vellum and paper was a transitional practice, common around 1375-1450 when paper was becoming widely available in Western Europe and was far less costly than vellum. The purpose of this hybridization was to save money by using less vellum but retaining some vellum in the inner and outer sheets to make the book more sturdy and the back less likely to be worn through by sewing the pages than using only paper. Upon further examination, he noticed the leaves of both volumes were the same dimension and the quires were assembled the exact same way. Both manuscripts were written in two columns with the same written space to the column in both volumes. It even appeared possible both volumes were written by the same hand. The final revelation came when Witten saw the wormholes through the Vinland Map exactly matched wormholes on the front page of Speculum Historiale, and the holes in the Tartar Relation were a perfect match to those at the end of Speculum. Witten concluded the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation had once been bound together with Speculum Historiale and were bound on either side of it. Judging from the relatively modern binding of the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, and the rebinding of Speculum Historiale, they had only been separated recently in their history.
Reunited, the different parts of the manuscript corroborated one another, and added credence to the Vinland Map. If the Map were a forgery, with a forger using blank endleaves of a genuine medieval manuscript, why would a forger then separate the manuscripts thereby removing support for its authenticity?
Later, Witten and Marston met to try assembling a sequence of events that reunited the two volumes. Marston had purchased Speculum Historiale through Davis & Orioli, J. I. Davis had purchased the volume from Enzo Ferrajoli, a fact which Ferrajoli himself later confirmed. It was without doubt that Ferrajoli obtained both volumes from the same source already separated, and was unaware they went together. While it was possible Ferrajoli himself separated the manuscripts it is unlikely. Witten judged the relatively modern binding of the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation was between 25 and 50 years old when Ferrajoli obtained them in 1957. (By this author’s calculations, the volume was rebound sometime between 1907 and 1932, using Witten’s estimate.) Rauch agreed, being an expert in book binding.
When Witten first obtained the Map, he found an abbreviated inscription on the back of one leaf (f. lr)5. In its expanded form, the inscription read: “delineatio primae partis. secundae partis. tertiae partis” but he could make no sense of the final abbreviation of the inscription: “specti”. Marston, who had more knowledge of Latin and of medieval abbreviations, saw the word was not “specti” but “specli” an abbreviation for “speculi” the genitive singular form of the Latin word “speculum” meaning “mirror”. Translated in full, the inscription reads “Drawing of the first part, second part, third part of the speculum.” The word speculum seems to be a reference to the Speculum Historiale and only made sense once the two manuscripts were reunited.
Marston gave Speculum Historale to Laurence Witten’s wife, Cora, who still owned the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation. He thought about selling it to her, but hoped the gift would guarantee Mr. and Mrs. Witten’s cooperation in trying to steer both manuscripts to Yale. And, he said, as a curator at Yale he had no right to sell the manuscript given its extraordinary circumstances.
If the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historale were all authentic medieval artefacts and had originally been bound together, it is reasonable to imagine when the volume was being repaired in more modern times, someone with little experience in medieval manuscripts might have re-bound the two more interesting pieces, the Map and the Tartar Relation, in an antique-style new binding and re-bound the less interesting Speculum Historiale in its original covers. In the midst of this process the original front and back covers were reversed in ignorance. This scenario seems particularly likely had the bookbinder either missed the abbreviated note on the back of the map or did not understand its meaning.
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To create a forgery such as the Vinland Map, a forger would need to chance upon an important but relatively unknown text, the Tartar Relation, with two available blank pages at one end. They would then “improve” this obscure text by adding a map containing both elements known in existing medieval maps, plus details based on descriptions from the Tartar Relation and the addition of an island to the west labeled “Vinland” and a description sourced from Viking sagas. If such a forger had found both volumes in the state Witten found them, separated and re-bound with the original cover reversed on the second volume, why then did this forger not re-bind the three together with wormholes aligned and the front and back covers placed correctly? Doing so would have given the manuscripts merely the appearance of a medieval volume whose binding had been repaired due to wear and tear. All of this would have made the forged document more credible than leaving the manuscripts as they were found. Considering the amount of genius it would have taken to forge an object like the Vinland Map in the first place, it seems unlikely re-binding the three together did not occur to our hypothetical forger.
After the discovery of Speculum Historiale, Marston and Vietor sent Witten to the John Carter Brown library in Providence, Rhode Island. At the time, Thomas R. Adams was head of the library, but Witten was put in touch with Adams’ mentor Lawrence Wroth, the senior scholar in early Americana and librarian emeritus. Unfortunately, Wroth was a scholar of printed works rather than written manuscripts, and Witten could not make him understand why the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale were so important.
Witten was rebuffed, but Marston and Vietor were undeterred. They turned to Herman W. “Fritz” Liebert who in 1973 would become the first librarian of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale (where Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale now reside). Through him the manuscripts were brought to the attention of a friend of Yale University. This friend is now known to be Paul Mellon of the family Mellon, Yale class of 1929. He reached an agreement with Cora Witten and purchased both volumes, then donated them to Yale and financed their publication. This publication would become The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation by R.A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter, foreword by Alexander O. Vietor.
Upon further examination from by Yale University the modern endpapers of Speculum Historiale were removed from the binding to reveal offset material from the pastedowns of the original binding. A fragment of a draft for a letter dated 1437 gave a possible age to the manuscript. (As mentioned in the first installment of this publication, it appears the paper was the discarded draft of a decision by the Council of Basle in the case of a Guillermus Martellus petitioning for an appointment as Canon of Valence in the Rhone Valley, and for rejection of claims of a rival for the position. The document bore a notarial signature of Bartholomaeus Poignare and was dated 28 July 1437. This narrows down the date of the manuscript and connects it to the Council of Basle.) The date and place match the likely origin of the paper of the Tartar Relation and the Vinland Map, which was shown by Allen Stevenson to have been made at a specific mill in Basle in 1440-1441. This examination also showed the covers of the original binding had been reversed by the modern repairer.
During the final stages of publication, Marston was struck by a car while crossing the street near the Yale Library. Because the publication deadline was near, and Marston’s recovery slow, Vietor persuaded Witten to finish editing Marston’s manuscript. This would be the last occasion that Laurence Witten would hold in his hands the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale.
Witten and his wife were unprepared for the storm of controversy which followed the publishing of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. Italians and Italian Americans the world over were incensed that anyone would dare assail the priority of Columbus’ discovery of the New World. The insult was compounded (in their view) because Yale’s announcement fell on Leif Eiriksson Day, 1965.6 Various spokesmen insisted the Map must be fake, and more than one implied Laurence Witten himself was the forger. Samuel Eliot Morison, who devoted much of his life to studying Christopher Columbus (and who could have achieved much more in this field had he been less closed-minded) pronounced the Map a fake after visiting Yale to “inspect” it, although he had already set forth his opinion in print prior to the visit. It need not be stated that Admiral Morison had little to no experience with medieval documents, and outside of his Columbus scholarship most of his historical research and published works were centered on New England and Harvard in particular. That Morison was a Harvard man and the Vinland Map was acquired by Yale may also have something to do with Morison’s scorn. Most critics lacked any willingness or competence to undertake a serious study of documents they so boldly declared to be forgeries.
Lost in the outcry was of course the Tartar Relation, whose authenticity as a genuine manuscript has never been doubted. The manuscript itself is valuable outside its relation to the Vinland Map. The account of John de Plano Carpini’s journey to Asia is largely unknown in mainstream knowledge. This particular manuscript, the one found with the Map, is quite different from two other written reports of Carpini’s mission to the Great Khan. This journey was the earliest of its kind, and predates the more famous journeys of William of Rubruck and Marco Polo by eight years and 26 years respectively.
As the controversy of the Vinland Map faded, Witten received a letter from Margarita Ferrajoli, Enzo Ferrajoli’s wife, stating Enzo had been arrested and accused of grand theft of books and manuscripts from the Cathedral of La Seo in Saragossa. Ferrajoli’s own correspondence could have proven he openly bought the items from the canons librarians he was accused of stealing. In fact, he drove his car up to an entrance and the cathedral’s porter helped him load the books into the car with the canons observing. However, Ferrajoli’s papers were confiscated by the police when he was arrested, and the porter and canons gave sworn testimony they had never set eyes on him. After Ferrajoli had been in prison a year and a half, his wife found jammed in a fold of her own writing case two letters to him from one of the canons of La Seo offering him books. Copies of these letters were hand-carried out of Spain to Witten who was doing all he could to secure Ferrajoli’s release.
During Ferrajoli’s imprisonment, Marston received a strange document which he showed to Witten. It was an anonymous printed list, preceded by a title page announcing the contents of that list were books and manuscripts “stolen” from La Seo. The list was ostensibly circulated by the Spanish government. Witten himself never received a copy of that list, and never heard if any other book dealer received it. Marston examined the contents of the list and was able to confirm no item described on that list could be a match to the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, or Speculum Historiale. Some items on the list were things Ferrajoli had purchased from Las Seo and sold to various dealers, including Witten, but Witten was never approached by any members of the Spanish government to return the allegedly stolen items. Their absence from the list can at least rule out La Seo as the source of the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale, and Ferrajoli himself later confirmed he did not purchase these manuscripts from La Seo.
After the appearance of the mysterious list, Witten received a call from one of the wire services, asking him to comment on the Spanish government’s announcement that “an Italina national living in Spain” (that is, Enzo Ferrajoli) had stolen from the cathedral library of La Seo a group of Greek manuscripts written in the late 16th century by the well-known copyist Andreas Darmarios.7 According to the announcement, the theft was discovered by a French scholar who was working on the Darmarios manuscripts at La Seo several years earlier and had returned to find them missing, and an empty space in the shelves where they had been. The canons librarians declared the manuscripts must have been stolen, and the announcement named Yale University as having purchased the stolen manuscripts-from Laurence Witten! Witten seized the opportunity and produced photocopies of the letters from the La Sao canons librarians clearing Enzo Ferrajoli. He also gave a statement with the letters that Ferrajoli was innocent and demanded he be released. Witten managed to also vindicate himself by stating the missing Darmarios manuscripts had not been purchased by him but by another book dealer in New Haven, Connecticut. Copies of the letters with Witten’s statement were published in newspapers around the world and Enzo Ferrajoli was released from prison very soon afterward.
Witten traveled to Spain in autumn 1963 to visit Ferrajoli, whom he found in terrible shape. Ferrajoli had contracted tuberculosis in prison, and the whole ordeal had aged him considerably, yet he was still described by Witten as “the stalwartly upright, erect military officer”. Ferrajoli took Witten around Barcelona and introduced him to some of his book collector colleagues. The man Witten remembered meeting most was “a distinguished man of about fifty” Don Luís Fortuný who had an interesting collection of manuscripts. Among Fortuný’s collection was several hundred patents of nobility ranging from the 15th to the 18th century, and a number of very early Spanish royal documents and decrees.8 Witten noticed that Ferrajoli acted strangely when they went to see Don Luís Fortuný, who received them in a very courtly and flattering way, and seemed to know exactly who Witten was and what he did. Witten suspected Fortuný was the source of the Vinland Map, and he later asked Ferrajoli if it was so. While Enzo Ferrajoli did not confirm he got the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation from Fortuný, he did not deny it either. On another visit to Spain in 1964, Witten tried again to get Ferrajoli to reveal the source of the Vinland Map, but Ferrjoli said he was honor-bound to not reveal his source. This is not unusual behavior for antique book dealers who are reluctant to out a source and risk losing a client who will want to sell them more books. Former owners of said books are also reluctant to publicly reveal what they have, particularly if it involves valuable objects that may be used for tax purposes.
At this time, Witten was not overly concerned about the Map’s provenance. It, along with the Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale, was being studied by Marston, Vietor, Skelton, and Painter, and he believed the puzzle would be resolved in time. Yet doubts about the Map’s authenticity refused to fade, and pressure on Yale was increased to present the manuscript to other scholars for more study. Wilcomb E. Washburn, director of the American Studies Program at the Smithsonian organized the Vinland Map Conference at the Smithsonian in Autumn 1968. The conferees were divided into two camps: one group was convinced by their various study of aspects of the manuscript that the Map legends (captions) were of interest or that the Tartar Relation was valuable. The other group was convinced the Map was too good to be true and were ready to suspect it the result of a conspiracy of booksellers who created a fake and marketed it. Those hostile to the Map’s authenticity did not reject it on technical grounds (that would come later), but rather attacked its provenance. They asked, could a bookseller show precisely where the Map and its two companion manuscripts lay hidden since they were written around 1440? Could he prove all three elements had once been together in the same volume, even though the original back, endpapers, and pastedowns of the Speculum Historiale had been removed along with any evidence of prior ownership? Witten, in the face of this hostile force and believing himself the Vinland Map was not fake, but unable to give the proof demanded, fell back onto the story Enzo Ferrajoli had given him: yes, he knew the source but had promised not to reveal it.
Yale, meanwhile, found a means to test the Map. It commissioned Walter C. McCrone Associates “a well known independent laboratory” in 1974 to take samples of the ink for spectrographic analysis. The results showed the ink contained significant amounts of anatase “a preparation of titanium only invented in 1920 and widely used since in the manufacture of many commercially available inks.” according to McCrone himself. [author’s note: anatase has been used in iron gall ink since at least the 13th century]. Shortly after Yale received the McCrone’s findings, Witten was called to appear at the office of the university librarian, Rutherford D. Rogers. There, surrounded by in inquisition of library senior staff and curators, Rogers asked Witten if he was now willing to reveal the origins of the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, and specifically from what library they had come. Witten had to admit that, contrary to what he said at the conference, he never visited the original library and did not know for certain the origin of the manuscripts. Rogers then asked Laurence Witten his wife Cora to return the purchase price to the donor of the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation [Paul Mellon]. Witten replied this was not possible because much of the money had already been claimed by Internal Revenue Service, Nicholas Rauch, and Enzo Ferrajoli [what had not gone to taxes, in other words, Witten had already put back into his business as a book dealer]. Witten did write to Paul Mellon to asked what he wished to be done in the circumstances. Mellon replied with his usual generosity that all the parties had recognized an element of risk in the purchase, and it was a pity the Map had turned out to be fake.
While McCrone’s verdict seemed to seal the fate of the Vinland Map, it had little effect on the group who originally authored their book on it. The authors of The Vinland map and the Tartar Relation remained convinced the Map was of medieval origin. This group soon learned of a group of scientists outside Yale who were also dissatisfied with McCrone’s study. In January 1985 the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale were carried by Yale’s curator, Stephen R. Parks, to the University of California at Davis to be examined by the proton milliprobe beam of the Davis cyclotron. This study of many samples of both the ink and parchment was published as “Further Elemental Analysis of the Vinland Map, the Tartar Relation, and the Speculum Historiale”. The Davis study called into question assumptions made by McCrone Associates, namely that small samples of ink tested by McCrone was truly representative of ink from the entire map. According to the Davis study, titanium was only present in trace amounts. In an expanded version of the study published by the American Chemical Society the Davis scholars concluded all the elements discovered are consistent with those found on several other medieval manuscripts also examined with the same technology by the Davis team.
A short time after the 1968 conference, Witten received a call from Josiane Matile, who had been a secretary for Nicolas Rauch. Rauch himself had passed away a few months prior, but Witten had kept in touch with his widow Lucie. Josiane Matile had also been close friends with Enzo Ferrajoli. While Ferrajoli was in Geneva trying to restart his book business, his wife called from Spain with the news their son had taken his own life. Within an hour of receiving the news, Ferrajoli suffered a massive heart attack and died. Thus passed the only man who knew the secret origin of the Vinland Map. At the time of his writing of this statement in 1989, Laurence Witten still believed the Vinland Map, Tartar Relation, and Speculum Historiale were genuine 15th century artefacts and hoped the Vinland Map had been rehabilitated by the Davis cyclotron, but he feared the Map will always remain under a cloud of controversy, as he predicted it would in 1957.
Presumably this was Marie-José of Belgium (August 4, 1906-January 27, 2001) wife of Umberto II, the last King of Italy. They were only king and queen for 34 days before Umberto was deposed in June 1946.
Incunabula are books from the early days of printing. Specifically, the term refers to books printed before 1501.
This map was in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries believed to have been drawn by Columbus. However, it has since been accepted as a later forgery. Or at best, a later copy of a map drawn by Columbus which is now lost. On the map, Columbus’ first colony is incorrectly spelled “Nativida” rather than “La Navidad”. Also, the island is labeled “La Española” which is a form of name Columbus never used himself.
Author’s note: If the volume did originate from the Counsel of Basle in modern Switzerland as is proposed by some, a Germanic influence would be expected.
f. lr. stands for folio left reverse.
Leif Eiriksson Day is October 9 and commemorates the arrival of the ship Restauration in New York Harbor in 1825 carrying some of the first Norwegian immigrants to America.
Andreas Darmarios (1540-c.1590) was a Greek scribe and manuscript dealer who spent much time in Italy and Spain from the 1560s to the 1580s. Darmarios’ main occupation was copying classic Greek manuscripts for noble patrons. He was also himself known as a forger, who attributed famous authors to anonymous works to increase their value. Several texts can only be traced back to copies he made.
Readers will remember from Part II that the Vinland Map may have been connected with a group of Columbus family documents that were auctioned by Nicholas Rauch in 1957. It was believed Luís Fortuný was the source of these documents. Also remember Luís Fortuný and Enzo Ferrajoli were both associated with the same book dealing association, Libreria Pro Libris.