vinlandmap.info: Clues 1-75, start and selling

  1.   America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up (Oscar Wilde)
  2.   - or to put it another way, Columbus is famous for being the LAST person who had to discover America (www.vinlandmap.info)
  3.   Leif ... hitti hann á lönd þau er hann vissi áður öngva von í. Voru þar hveitiakrar sjálfsánir og vínviður vaxinn (Eiríks saga rauða)
  4.   ... og sigla þetta dægur áður þeir sáu land ... Bjarni kveðst hyggja að það mundi eigi Grænland (Grænlendinga saga)
  5.   For 10 generations or more, the unwritten Vínland Sagas were preserved as memorised bullet-points (www.vinlandmap.info)
  6.   - but not necessarily in the right order (Eric Morecambe)
  7.   Ferrajoli tenía amigos en todas partes, y con su encanto personal, y su conocimiento de los temas, se abría paso siempre (E.F. Clemente)
  8.   ... the 1893 reference places the manuscripts (sans map) in La Seo Cathedral Library (John Paul Floyd)
  9.   well, almost- items supplied by Zaragoza diocese for the 1892-3 Columbus exhibition were catalogued together (vinlandmap.info)
  10.   ... the Map looked an unassuming document ... bound with the manuscript text of the Tartar Relation ... (Helen Wallis)
  11.   Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry ... showed booksellers in Geneva, Paris and London ... he sold almost exclusively to the trade (Laurence Witten)
  12.   ... summer of 1957 ... escorted by the London dealer Joseph Irving Davis ... Ferrajoli brought it into the British Museum (Helen Wallis)
  13.   ... it was briefly examined by George Painter ... Dr Skelton ... and Dr. Schofield, Keeper of Manuscripts (Helen Wallis)
  14.   To his eye, as an experienced palaeographer, it was so obviously a fake. (Peter Schofield, remembering his father in 1957)
  15.   ... my father regarded his refusal to countenance the purchase of the map as one of the major contributions ... (Peter Schofield)
  16.   September 1957 ... Geneva, where I visited ... the late Nicholas Rauch. There I encountered Ferrajoli (Laurence Witten)
  17.   Ferrajoli and Rauch did tell me about the map and the Tartar Relation << he had been unable ... to authenticate it (L. Witten)
  18.   Ferrajoli arranged to take me to see the owner. I saw his library ... I bought the volume (Laurence Witten, 1966)
  19.   ... contrary to what I had said earlier I had never visited the library (Laurence Witten, 1989, reporting his 1974 confession)
  20.   Rauch or Ferrajoli got in touch ... with Davis ... I was let in to a small degree on Davis's involvement > (L. Witten, 1989)
  21.   > and urged to see him in Milan. A day or two later we met for coffee at the Biffi Scala (Laurence Witten, not till 1989)
  22.   I energetically collected all the information I could find ... about fifteenth century world maps and John de Plano Carpini (L. Witten)
  23.   ... it seemed that the only reasonably close counterpart in general form was the world map ... drawn in 1436 by Andrea Bianco (L. Witten)
  24.   In October 1957 ... Witten ... showed to my colleague Alexander O. Vietor and myself a slim volume (Thomas Marston)
  25.   Mr. Witten told us that he had acquired it from a private collection in Europe (Thomas Marston)
  26.   ... two factors made us question whether the manuscript and the map belonged together (Thomas Marston)
  27.   Both map and manuscript were slightly wormed, but the worm holes were not in the same positions on the two parts (Thomas Marston)
  28.   A more disconcerting feature was a statement on the recto of the first leaf of the map: Delineatio 1 ps: 2 ps. 3 ps. specl'i (T Marston)
  29.   Frankly, my red flag went up- the caution light was on (Alexander Vietor)
  30.   Until these two factors could be satisfactorily explained, the map would remain suspect (Thomas Marston)
  31.   It did not seem possible how these items ... got together in a relatively modern binding (Alexander Vietor)
  32.   The volume was not offered for sale to either of them as individuals, or to Yale (Laurence Witten)
  33.   [flashback to tweet 12, summer of '57] ... it was brought to the British Museum for comment ... (Helen Wallis)
  34.   It was suggested that I offer the Tartar Relation to Yale, but I was unwilling to separate the two manuscript items (L Witten)
  35.   Having come to a standstill I decided to withdraw the volume from business inventory and give it to my wife (Laurence Witten)
  36.   I worked on the manuscripts at home ... Having collected a small dossier on the manuscript, I laid it aside (L. Witten)
  37.   ... the Marston manuscripts, a collection formed by Thomas E. Marston (234 items) ... (Barbara Shailor)
  38.   Marston was most enthusiastic about Western manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Barbara Shailor)
  39.   Marston was less inspired by the elaborate decoration of a volume than by the text(s) it contained (Barbara Shailor)
  40.   In April 1958 I received an advance copy of a new catalogue of a London bookseller (Thomas Marston, Yale Vinland Map book, 1965)
  41.   VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS. Speculum Historiale. Manuscript on paper and vellum, 239 leaves ... South Germany, c.1450. £75 (catalogue)
  42.   PETRUS DE CRESCENTIIS. De Agricoltura. Manuscript ... 100 leaves ... 15th century. £85 (same catalogue; £1 then = about $2.80)
  43.   In the catalogue ... I noted a manuscript of Bruni's translation of Plutarch's lives of Cicero and Demosthenes (T. Marston)
  44.   I glanced at the description of the Vincent of Beauvais and I thought I would buy it ... I felt I would like to have it (Thomas Marston)
  45.   ... he had received an advance, airmail copy of a catalog from Davis and Orioli Ltd., in London (L. Witten) [yes, it was THAT Davis]
  46.   Add. 7588 Petrus de Cescentia: De agricultura, 1472. Bought of Davis & Orioli (cat. 159/26) 10 April 1958 (Cambridge University Library)
  47.   Recently I found out that I had bought the Vincent ... shortly before an order had arrived for it > (T. Marston, 1966)
  48.   > from the late Professor Berthold Ullman, who was running a sort of Vincent of Beauvais school (T. Marston, 1966)
  49.   I did not receive the catalog until May or June of 1958 (Laurence Witten)
  50.   ... the final version of Davis and Orioli Catalogue 159 arrived at the Newberry Library only in February 1959 (Paul Saenger)
  51.   [late April 1958?] Mr. Barry's secretary called me to tell me that the two manuscripts had arrived (T Marston)
  52.   I had ... promised to send De Marinis details of bindings in American collections (L. Witten) [D M: an Italian researching bindings]
  53.   Delighted to see that both were in very unusual contemporary bindings I asked Mr. Witten to examine them (Thomas Marston)
  54.   Witten came to my office ... looked at the manuscripts, and asked if he could borrow the Vincent for a few days (T Marston)
  55.   I think I told him that I wondered if it might not be related to the Tartar Relation (Laurence Witten)
  56.   I left his office and ... stopped in the Bibliography Room to look up the watermark of the Speculum (Laurence Witten)
  57.   After dinner and the children's bedtime, I took out the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation volume and my dossier on it (L Witten)
  58.   The Vincent manuscript was the key to the puzzle of the map and Tartar Relation (Thomas Marston)
  59.   The hand was the same, the watermarks of the paper were the same (Thomas Marston)
  60.   ... the worm holes showed that the map had been at the front of the volume and the Tartar Relation at the back (T. Marston)
  61.   It is still easier to produce wormholes with a hot wire or with live worms (Prof. Robert S. Lopez, Yale)
  62.   On elaborately careful jobs they use real worms ... worm raising forms a small industry in Italy (G.B. Seybold, 1926)
  63.   The Vincent manuscript by itself was of minor intrinsic value. Now it had suddenly become very precious (Thomas Marston)
  64.   I became more and more convinced that the two pieces had to come under one ownership as soon as possible (Thomas Marston)
  65.   it seemed that the cleancut way this could be done was to give the Vincent to Mrs Witten (Thomas Marston)
  66.   I hoped ... that this generosity would give the Yale Library some element of control over the disposition of the Map (Thomas Marston)
  67.   Ferrajoli had shown both volumes to dealers ... and no one saw any connection (Laurence Witten, 1966) vinlandmap.info
  68.   During the following year, I worked continuously on a description of the Vinland Map- Speculum- Tartar Relation (Laurence Witten)
  69.   I did not know of any specialist who could very greatly assist me (Laurence Witten)
  70.   During this period, every effort was made to trace the earlier provenance of the manuscripts (Laurence Witten)
  71.   Mr. Witten returned to the private library whence came the map and the Vincent, but an intensive search was fruitless (T Marston, 1965)
  72.   I could only say that I did not know for sure from which library the manuscripts came (Laurence Witten confession 1974/1989)
  73.   Spring 1959. At last Mrs Witten and I were ready to offer the manuscripts to Yale... But Yale could not buy them (L Witten)
  74.   The price Witten placed on his find was much higher than anything the library could secure from its ordinary budget (J Ryden / C Kerr)
  75.   we were asked, instead, to propose them with the Yale Library's blessing to an individual who might perhaps wish to buy them (L Witten)