Thomasin von Zerklaere’s “Italian Guest” (Welscher Gast)…

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A recent comment by Marco Ponzi on Voynich Ninja helpfully highlighted a 2019 comment there by Linda which pretty much everyone else had overlooked. She had previously suggested visual parallels between the Voynich Manuscript’s drawings and the ones in Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsbibliothek MS B7, but when Marco (and then Koen Gheuens too) looked a little further, they found some unusually strong matches.

In my opinion, the first excellent match is Marco’s bird:

The second is Marco’s fish:

And the third is Koen’s child (from Heidelberg Cod. pal. germ. 330)

So what do we know about this manuscript?

A Welscher Gast mini-bibliography

The text of the Welscher Gast was written around 1215/1216 by Thomasin von Zerklaere (a cleric from Friuli), and is the first known code of conduct written in German. The ‘Italian Guest’ of the title is the Italian-speaking Thomasin himself, who apologizes for shortcomings in his German.

Given that numerous copies of the WG still survive today, it seems to have been a much-copied text. There is also, it has to be said, an ample secondary literature on the subject.

The great-granddaddy of this particular bibliographic tree was Heinrich Rückert, ed., Der walsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria, Deutsche Neudrucke ; Reihe : Texte des Mittelalters (1852 ; rpt. Berlin : De Gruyter, 1965), which discussed twelve versions of the text.

This was then heartily supplanted by F. W. von Kries’ “Textkritische Studien zum Welschen Gast Thomasins von Zerclaere” in Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Volker, Neue Folge, 23 (147) (Berlin : De Gruyter, 1967), which expanded the study to twenty one mss, and included a partial stemma.

Books and articles since have discussed other WG mss and fragments unknown to Rückert and von Kries, such as those given the titles Si, F, and N. For more, you might check ARLIMA’s nice long list, though anyone thinking this is even 10% of the total set of WG articles is likely to be in for a bit of a shock.

Welscher Gast Manuscripts

For clickable links, the basic starting point here is the HandSchriftencensus Welscher Gast page, which lists twenty five manuscript copies.

Helpfully, Judith-A. Davidson’s “The Contamination of MS D of Der Welsche Gast” (Dresden, Sächs. Landesbibl. M 67), A Comparative Study of Text and Illustration Cycle, nicely lists these alongside their modern Sigles:

Parchment manuscripts

  • A : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 389.
  • G : Gotha, Forschungsbibl., Membrana I 120.
  • S : Stuttgart, Wùrttemberg. Landesbibl., Cod. poet. et philol. f. 1.
  • E : New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Glazier Ms. 54.
  • H : East Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibl., Hamilton Ms. 675.

Parchment fragments

  • Gr : Formerly in Berlin, Preussische Staatsbibl., Ms. germ. 4° 978. (The MS, lost in 1945, was presumably destroyed by fire).
  • Bü : Fürstliches Ysenburg-Büdingsch. Rentkammerarchiv.
  • Pe : Budapest, National Szechenyi Library, Ms. Clmae 210 (formerly Cod. Misc. Hist. Hung, et Germ. Nr. 1559 f. lat). (The fragment was stolen, but had been published by R. M. Werner prior to the theft).
  • Wo : Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibl., 404 9 (6) Novi.
  • Wa : Watzendorf bei Coburg, Evangelisches-Lutherisches Pfarramt.
  • Erl : Erlangen, Universitätsbibl., Ms. B7.
  • Ma : Berlin, Staatsbibl. Preussisch. Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. f. 757.
  • Si : Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Rumanian State Archive, GG 3/X Tomus A.

Paper manuscripts

  • U : Munich, Bayerisch. Staatsbibl., Cgm 571.
  • W : Wolfenbuttel, Herzog-August-Bibl., Ms. 37.19 Aug. 2°.
  • a : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 320.
  • c : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 338.
  • K : Karlsruhe, Badisch. Landesbibl., St. Peter pap. 35.
  • M : Munich, Bayerisch. Staatsbibl., Cgm 340.
  • b : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 330.
  • D : Dresden, Sachs. Landesbibl., M. 67.
  • N : Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 86035.
  • F : Stift Schlierbach, Hs. 28. (Grubmüller, who identified the MS., used the sigle « C »).

Paper fragment

  • Tü : Berlin, Staatsbibl. Preussisch. Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. 2° 718.

Note that, according to Davidson (who I heavily rely on in the following), “The thirteen illustrated MSS are A, G, S, E, H, Gr, Bu, Erl, U, W, a, b and D.”

Messy Stemmas

Given that we’re specifically interested in the illustrations in the 15th century ‘Erl’ copy, what we’d really like to see now is a nice neat Lachmannian stemma, to point us at related manuscripts (and to help bracket out all the 12th and 13th century copies that are unlikely to be of interest). And here’s the stemma that Davidson gives, adapted from von Kries’ stemma (she had access to all his photographs and collations):

Yet I should caution that the whole reason for Davidson’s article is that there are problems taking too literal a view of the WG stemma. Her argument is that the D copy was “contaminated”, in that it suffers from “horizontal transmission” (von Kries also highlights that book 10 of H is similarly contaminated) between that original (left) half of the tree and the S** (right) half that branched off in the mid-13th century. Her modified sub-stemma looks like this, with an extra (lost) D* manuscript feeding in to D as well as the (lost) AD* copy:

Davidson also argues that the earliest description of the WG illustration tradition by Adolf von Oechelhäuser, “Der Bilderkreis zum Walschen Gaste des Thomasin von Zerclaere” [Heidelberg : Gustav Koester, 1890] got quite a lot of important stuff wrong. Which is important because she thinks that the illustration contamination of D there parallels the textual contamination of D.

All the same, the two obviously later manuscripts on the right hand side half of the tree to consider are b and N:

  • b : Heidelberg, Universitätsbibl., Cod. pal. germ. 330.
  • N : Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 86035. (which, annoyingly, has blank areas left for drawings that were never copied in)

Cod Pal germ 330 was made in Nordbayern (Eichstätt?) in 1420, according to the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg description. Here are its birds:

Incidentally, the Erlangen bird page in context looks like this:

Initial Thoughts

Anyone who thinks using stemmae for tracing illustrations are innately easy should have a look at the Welscher Gast. The Welscher Gast digital project has patiently catalogued all the illustrations across all the known manuscripts (though I must admit I found the ways they cross-linked things more than a little confusing at times). However, the illustrations vary so enormously that it’s often hard to see (if you discount all the easy pages, like Euclid etc) how X’s illustrations relate to Y’s illustrations.

My thoughts are therefore that the German scribal copy shops putting together all these copies had so many drawings to make that they, exactly like the Alsace scribes we have discussed before, simply copied whatever material they had at hand to get the job done. (And what a sadly banal phrase that has now become, *sigh*.)

So, whereas I went into the Welscher Gast world wondering if there might be some kind of scribal transmission of the images to pick up on, I now think that – for the very most part – the WG simply wasn’t that kind of a beast. That is, its diagrams weren’t implicitly interesting: rather, they were window-dressing the text, because this was a text-centric gig, not an illustration-centric one.

Hence I confidently predict that the bird, the fish and the child were all taken from other 1420s German manuscripts done in these and similar copy shops, and which were happily reused when these kinds of copying commissions came in. But the Welscher Gast was probably a recipient of these images, not a source.

Adelaide car thieves (1951)…

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Here’s a nice article on Trove from September 1951 that I think sets a fair level of expectation about how car thieves and car theft worked at that time in Adelaide. Enjoy! 🙂

C.I.B. WINNING BATTLE WITH JOYRIDERS

Motorists can cut car thefts

Detectives are slowly, but surely winning the battle of wits with Adelaide’s joyriders. Since January 1 this year, 232 motor cars have disappeared from Adelaide streets. CIB investigators have recovered all but six. In the same period, 550 motor cyclists reported the loss of their machines. Only 19 have not been recovered. Bicycles are not so easy to find. Of the 1,180 stolen or used illegally, 620 are still on the missing list.

Police case histories here reveal that drivers are to blame in nine stolen car cases out of 10.They rarely disappear when the owners have taken normal precautions against theft or interference. A potential joyrider or thief has to make it a rush job. It has to be quick and easy, or he won’t attempt it. Any impediment — a locked door— may deter him.

Keys in car

Make a survey of any 20 cars parked in the street. You’ll probably find the ignition key has been left in two or three of them, one or more windows will be open on others, and, in most cases, the doors will be unlocked. These cars are sitting shots for the joyrider. Open tourers are easier. An ignition system that can’t be ‘wired round’ in a few minutes is yet to be invented. Thief proof devices have been invented. Some are cumbersome, none entirely effective.They have ranged from chains and clamps on the gear lever, clutch, and brake pedal, down to the secret switch. Secret switches mean nothing to the experienced thief. He doesn’t bother to look for them, simply uses a lead and wires round the switch.

A RAA spokesman told of the driver who chained a wheel of his car to a post when he parked for any length of time. It worked well — until the day a daring thief jacked up the wheel, removed it, put on the spare, and drove away. There was a device on the market some years ago which was wired into the electrical circuit so that a siren sounded when a door was opened or the ignition system operated. This embarrassed owners who had forgotten to turn off the secret switch before using the car.

Steering lock

The most effective device of all, according to the RAA, is the combination steering and ignition lock. These are good until the key is lost or mislaid. Then it is necessary to lift-tow the car or force the lock.

The experienced car thief is a resourceful type who makes it his business to learn the peculiarities of each car. One caught recently had a pocket full of different types of distributor rotor brushes. In some countries motorists who leave cars unlocked are liable to heavy penalties. The result is that few vehicles are stolen.

Six ‘dont’s’

Here are six ways to make the task of the car thief easier: —

  • Leave body and boot doors unlocked.
  • Leave the ignition key in the lock.
  • Leave valuables on the seat.
  • Leave the number on your ignition lock uncovered — a piece of adhesive tape will do the trick. An uncovered number can be read through the window and a duplicate key made. In many cases the key will also fit the door lock.
  • Forget to have your mechanic show you how to remove and replace the distributor rotor brush.
  • Leave the car out of gear with the brake off. Cars have been pushed to a secluded spot for ‘further attention.’
PCC MODRA holding a length of wire with spring clips at each end, used by thieves to start cars without a key. This device was found in a car parked outside a Marryatville theatre on Saturday night.

…and one on Backyard Deals (1950).

This second article was from the 14 Jan 1950 Adelaide Mail.

Interstate car thieves ‘often sell in S.A.’

C.I.B. WARNS ON BACKYARD DEALS

Many cars stolen in other States were disposed of in South Australia through unlicensed ‘backyard’ dealers, Chief of the CIS (Superintendent Sheridan) said today.

Mr. Sheridan warned buyers of secondhand cars to beware of unlicensed dealers, and to trade only with reputable licensed firms whose businesses were under police supervision.

‘Interstate car thieves seek out back-yard dealers, because they know their businesses are not regularly inspected by police,’ he said.

‘Some Adelaide people, who have unwittingly bought stolen vehicles from illegal dealers, have later had the cars confiscated and thus lost their money.

No car gangs here

‘The number of stolen interstate cars recovered in SA outnumbers cars taken from SA and disposed of in other States,’ said Mr. Sheridan.

‘There are no organised gangs of car thieves here, but there are isolated cases of SA cars being stolen and driven to other States.’

Mr. Sheridan warned prospective buyers of secondhand cars to be suspicious of cars that had come from another State, unless they were completely satisfied about the car dealer’s bona fides.

Car thieves often went to great lengths to convince a prospective buyer a car was ‘genuine.’

‘Easily registered’

‘The fact that a seller can produce car registration papers doesn’t always mean the vehicle he is selling hasn’t been stolen,’ he said.

‘Thieves often register cars, after erasing the correct engine and chassis numbers, and substituting fake numbers.’

Mr. Sheridan said one interstate car thief, who reputedly made enough money through his illegal transactions to finance three trips to England, travelled all over Australia stealing cars and selling them.

‘He would steal a vehicle in one part of Western Australia, sell it in another, then fly to Queensland. There he would steal a car, drive it down to Sydney, sell it, and immediately fly to some other State and repeat the procedure,’ Mr. Sheridan said.

Many motorists made the car thief’s job easy by leaving their vehicles parked unattended in streets with the doors unlocked, and the ignition key in the dashboard, Mr. Sheridan said.

To foil prospective car thieves motorists should—

  • Always lock the vehicle and remove the ignition key when parking it in a street. Because stolen cars are often used in crimes, some US States have strict laws against leaving cars unlocked and unattended
  • Have some private, secret mark on their vehicle, which would aid in identification if the car were stolen.
  • Note any stains, dents, or parts damaged in accidents. Such features were invaluable aids to identification.

Finally, The Case Of the Baby Austin (1953)…

If that’s not enough for you, here’s a final link to a police officer’s notes on a particular interstate car crime that was detected on the streets of Glenelg (of all places), as reported in the Port Lincoln Times, 05 Mar 1953.

Chewing gum, foil wrappers, and car thieves…

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It just struck me that I haven’t seen anyone suggest that the most useful part of the Somerton Man’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum packaging might simply have been the aluminium (AKA “aluminum”, before any American readers choke on their Coke) foil wrapper around each thin stick of isoamyl-acetate-flavoured gum.

As thedude747 posted in a comment here back in Feb 2015:

I was chatting with an older relative who was in the Adelaide car trade in the 60s and 70s … […]
I shared my theory with him about SM being a car thief and without knowledge of the full tool kit SM had in the suitcase he volunteered that cars of that era could be easily started with a small sheet of alfoil. You would simply slide it behind the ignition button which was how many cars of the time were operated. It was a simple but effective and handy trick known by people in the trade. He described using the alfoil wrapper from a lifesaver packet to start his FJ when he lost the keys once.
I then told him about the sheet of soft Zinc SM had in his suitcase and he said that it would have been idea to start a car without keys provided you were able to gain entry and that a short screwdriver would have done that job no problem.
I cant think of a better reason why he would be carrying a worn out small piece of pliable alfoil or zinc than this.

Maybe this is all that anyone properly savvy needed to know his profession?

The “St George’s Convent Library” Voynich theory…

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My recent “Pax Nax Vax revisited” post led me to a new Voynich hypothesis that I don’t recall reading anywhere. Given that (as Jan Hurych helpfully pointed out) our Voynich-owning chum Jakub Hořčický (Sinapius) became capitaneus / administrator of the properties of St George’s Convent in Prague Castle in 1606, might Sinapius have simply swiped the Voynich Manuscript from the convent’s library?

It’s a decent enough question, but is it one that can be answered?

St George’s Convent

As you’d probably expect, the Czech Wikipedia page on Prague’s St George’s Convent is the place to start. And, thanks to the magic that is Google Translate, we can see the broad sweep of the convent’s history clearly enough.

Culturally, the convent’s Golden Age was at the beginning of the 14th century. Under Abbess Kunhuta (who her brother Wenceslas II had previously kind-of-forced into an unsuccessful political marriage to the Duke of Mazovia), its scriptorium (founded in about 1294) produced many beautiful illuminated manuscripts (e.g. this one).

[This was also the period when a second convent (Ducha a Milosrdenství Božího, the Spirit and Mercy of God) was founded in Prague: administration of this was passed over to St. George’s Convent in the mid-16th century.]

However, the Hussite Wars marked an abrupt change in St George’s Convent’s fortunes. When the Abbess refused to sign an agreement handing it over, “the convent was plundered, the nuns were forced to flee, and the convent’s property was sold off”.

The convent was restored to use during the 16th century: a carving above a doorway dating to 1515 depicts St George defeating his dragon. A fire in 1541 then wrecked the convent, which was followed by more rebuilding, at which point the buildings were used as an armoury. It has a nice frontage:

Nuns only returned to the convent (in the western part of the nave) in 1608-1612 under Abbess Žofie Albínka z Helfenburku. According to (Czech) Wikipedia, “During her office the monastery library was restored and most of the older texts were provided with a new Baroque binding, during which the text and paintings were often disturbed. The binding from that period gave today’s appearance to the vast majority of manuscripts.“

Can This Theory Be Tested?

Right now, I’m not sure. Even though we have indirect evidence (specifically, a hole in the vellum made by a woodworm) that the Voynich Manuscript had a wood cover at around this period in its history, I haven’t yet read of anyone going looking for tiny fragments of wood embedded in its outermost bifolios. And then they’d have to take samples from the Baroque wood covers of the Kunhuta-period manuscripts for comparison. And then they’d have to work out how to compare them in a useful way.

Similarly, the next research step would be to read the earliest history of St George’s Convent, which (Wikipedia assures us) was written in 1715 by Jan Florian Hammerschmidt at the request of Abbess František Helena Pieroniána of Galiana. I believe this is his Historia  in qua primaeva fundatio Et Institutio Regiorum Ac Antiquissimorum  Monasteriorum S. Georgii In Castro Pragensi, S. Spiritus Vulgo ad  Misericordias Dei In antiqua Urbe Pragensi Ordinis SP Benedicti  Sancti-Monialium: Cum omnibus there Pontificijs, Quam Caesareus ,  Immunitatibus, Concessionibus, per distinctos Paragraphos recensentur.  Honori  celsissimae Franciscae Helenae Pyeronianae de Galliano, Dei Gratia  Principissae & Abbatissae supra fatorum Monasteriorum dicata / and  Joanne Floriano Hammerschmidt, SS.  Theologiae  Doctore, Proto-Notario Apostolico, Comite Palatino, Auratae Militiae  Equite, Regiae, Exemptae & Nullius Dioecesis Ecclesiae SS.  Petri & Pauli in Wissehrad, & SS.  Cosmae & Damiani Canonico, pt Regiae Urbis Vetero-Pragensis BVM in Coelos Assumptae in Teyn Curato. Catchy title. 🙂

It’s online here (as a PDF), though given that it’s made up of a long series of fragments diligently copied from old documents, anyone expecting to find a single timeline will quickly be disappointed. All the same, this does cover the right period, e.g. p.88 says (my corrections to the OCR):

Annô Domini 1606. Principissae ad S. Georgium Sophia Al-
bince de Hellfenburg rebellârunt cives Trzebenicenses, ei in nullo
voluerunt obedire, vineas pro oblata solutione excolere, Pa-
rocho decimas dare noluerunt, claves illi ab Ecclesia accepe-
runt, illum ab ingressu Ecclesiae excluserunt. De qua rebel-
lione vide §. sequentem in serie Abbatissarum.

There’s more of the same on pp.107-112, but I was completely unable to find any trace of Hořčický / Sinapius there. All the same, perhaps other people’s eyes will prove to be sharper than mine. 🙂

Incidentally, the prize for Best Name In This Book surely goes to Abundantia Bukowskin dе Hustirzan.

“Pax Nax Vax” revisited…

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Back in 2010, I speculated that one of the oddly-unreadable lines of text on the Voynich Manuscript’s last page (f116v) might have originally read “pax + nax + vax”. Here’s a little bit more background on that mysterious phrase…

A Prague Nun’s Amulet

In “The Book of Grimoires: The Secret Grammar of Magic” (and in several other of his oddly-similar books), Claude Lecouteux mentions that:

During the restoration of the Saint George Basilica in Prague, a parchment strip requesting the cure of a case of trench fever for a certain Dobrozlava was found under the plaster of an alcove. The prayer ended with: “May Pax + nax vax be the remedy for this servant of God. Amen.”

Confirming this account is “STÄRKER ALS DER GLAUBE: MAGIE, ABERGLAUBE UND ZAUBER IN DER EPOCHE DES HUSSITISMUS” by František Šmahel (p.322, Bohemia Band 32 (1991)):

Einen nicht weniger seltenen Beleg stellt das Original eines Pergamentamuletts aus der ersten Hälfte des 14.Jahrhunderts dar, das die Schwester Dobroslawa aus dem Prager Benediktinerinnenkonvent des hl Georg vor dem Schüttelfrost bewahren sollte. Wurden die magischen Wirkungen des Textes in diesem Falle durch die Beschwörungsformel „pax-nax-vax” erhöht, so erfüllten im Milieu des einfachen Volkes einzelne Buchstaben oder auch deren bizarre Ansammlungen diese Funktion, wie wir sie z.B. auf keramischen Gefäßen finden.

…which Google Translate (slightly tweaked) turns into:

An original parchment amulet from the first half of the 14th century, which the sister Dobroslawa from the Benedictine convent of St. George in Prague was to protect against the chills, is no less rare a document. If the magic effects of the text were increased in this case by the incantation “pax-nax-vax”, in the milieu of the common people individual letters or their bizarre collections fulfilled this function, because we find them on ceramic vessels, for example.

Šmahel’s footnote 19 gives as his sources:

Eine Photographie aus dem St.-Georg-Kloster nebst Transkription und Übersetzung enthält Nováček, V. J.: Amulet ze XIV. století, nalezený v chrámu sv. Jiří na Hradě Pražském [Ein Amulett aus dem XIV. Jahrhundert aus der Basilika des hl.Georg auf der Prager Burg]. ČL 10 (1901) 353 f. Es bleibt zu erwähnen, daß ein Mönch aus dem Kloster Ostrov den Nonnen des St. Georg Klosters zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts das gegenseitige Beschenken mit sog. Amuletten oder Talismanen an bestimmten Tagen im Jahr vorhielt, siehe Truhlář, Josef: Paběrky z rukopisů klementinských VIII. [Nachgelesenes in den Clementinischen Handschriften VIII.]. VČA 7 (1898) 210f. Aufschriften und Buchstaben auf mittelalterlicher Keramik belegt Švehla, Josef: Nádoby a nápisy na středověké keramice z Ústí Sezimova a Kozího hrádku [Aufschriften auf mittelalterlichen keramischen Gefäßen aus Ústí Sezimovo und Kozí hrádek]. ČSPSČ 19 (1911) 10-18. Interpretationen der beschützendmagischen Funktion der Aufschriften auf mittelalterlichen Glocken (lateinisch geschriebene hebräische Ausdrücke, Buchstaben des griechischen Alphabets u.a.) finden sich bei Fiodr, Miroslav: Nápisy na středověkých zvonech [Aufschriften auf Mittelalterlichen Glocken]. SPFFBU C 20 (1973 148f.

…which Google Translate also turned into pretty good English (has GT recently been upgraded, it seems better than usual?)…

Nováček, V. J.: Amulet ze XIV. Století, nalezený v chrámu sv. Jiří na Hradě Pražském [An amulet from the 14th century from the Basilica of St. George in Prague Castle]. ČL 10 (1901) p.353 contains a photograph from the St. Georg monastery along with transcription and translation.

It should be mentioned that at the beginning of the 15th century, a monk from Ostrov Monastery reproached [the nuns for] the mutual gifts of so-called amulets or talismans on certain days of the year, see Truhlář, Josef: Paběrky z rukopisů klementinských VIII. [Manuscript fragments from the Clementinum VIII.]. VČA 7 (1898) p.210.

Inscriptions and letters on medieval ceramics are documented by Švehla, Josef: Nádoby a nápisy na středověké keramice z Ústí Sezimova a Kozího hrádku [Inscriptions on medieval ceramic vessels from Ústí Sezimovo and Kozí hrádek]. ČSPSČ 19 (1911) 10-18.

Interpretations of the protective, magical function of the inscriptions on medieval bells (Latin Hebrew expressions, letters of the Greek alphabet, etc.) can be found in Fiodr, Miroslav: Nápisy na středověkých zvonech [Inscriptions on Medieval Bells]. SPFFBU C 20 (1973 p.148

This in turn leads Google to a footnote on p.65 of Benedek Lang’s (2008) “Unlocked Books” which I mentioned in my 2010 post. Lang gives the following transcription of the charm’s text, which refers to the famous legend/story of Seven Sleepers:

+ In nomine + patris + et filii + et spiritus + sancti + In monte + Celion + requiescunt septem dormientes + Maximianus + Martinianus + Malcus + Constantinus + et Dionisius + Seraphion + et Johannes. Domine Jesu Christe liberare digneris hanc famulam Dobrozlauam a febribus quintanis. pax + nax vax sit huic famule dei remedium Amen.”

Actually, it turns out that we can do even better than this, because Nováček’s 1901 article has been placed online. Nováček describes the strip of parchment as being 10cm x 4cm, folded three times and then pierced twice, through which holes a narrow strip of the same parchment was threaded. He describes the lettering as somewhat poor, but definitely dating to the first half of the 14th century.

To my pleasant surprise, the scan included a low resolution image of the parchment charm itself:

It’s not the best scan you’ll ever see, sure, but it’s a lot better than nothing. 🙂 To my eye, a reasonable transcription would be:

+ In nomine + patris + et filii + et spirit[us] + sa[n]cti + In mo[n]te + Celion + requiescu[n]t septe[m] dormie[n]tes + Maximia[n]us + Martinianus + Malcus + Co[n]sta[n]tin[us] + et Dionisius + Seraphion + et Joha[n]nes. Dom[ine] J[esu] Ch[rist]e liberare digneris hanc famula[m] + dobrozlauam a febrib[us] quintan[us]. pax + nax vax sit huic famule dei remediu[m] a[m]en.

Dr. Čeněk Zíbrt

Finally, Nováček directs readers who would like to know more to an article by Dr. Čeněk Zíbrt entitled »Kouzla a čáry starých Čechů« in Archaeolo-gických Památkách XIV (1887), which details inscriptions found on a number of similar amulets.

Of course, I couldn’t let the minor impediment of not even remotely reading Czech stop me pursuing this a little further. 😉 So I tracked down a Czech academic website where all the volumes of “Památky archaeologické a místopisné” were digitized, and found the article in Volume XIV (1887-1889).

However, just to make life difficult, Zíbrt’s article was broken up into lots of smaller pieces: but I’ll summarize the relevant pieces below.

Zíbrt starts by confirming that he had seen written mention of such amulets in the Třeboň and Jindřichohradecký archives. For example, in 1474 the Kantor in Soběslav wrote to the Burgrave in Krumlov about a “Mrs. Makhny”. She had been instructed to wear a certain amulet around her neck for nine days, because the Burgrave of Chúsnický had said that when he wore the same thing around his neck, the disease had gone away. (Arch. Třeboň.)

Similarly, the Catholic missionary Matěj Václav Šteyr wrote in 1719 about people believing (falsely) that amulets guard against fevers. The words found on such amulets were:

  • Hax, pax, max etc
  • Arac, Amou etc.
  • Barata, Daries etc
  • Galhes Galdis etc
  • Gibel, Cor etc
  • Ira, Bira, Lira, Pira, etc (to protect against the bite of a rabid dog)

In 1564, the scholar Wierus (who wrote “De praestigiis daemonum”) wrote that he had seen “Hax pax max Deus adimax” written on an amulet to protect against rabies. Rukop. univ. knih. Pr. (17 D 4), str. 81 contains the following: “DEX PEX NOVA MXZATX VAhX PRAX ZVAX ZISX PYX IVONXAX ANIX”. [Might some of these Xs actually be crosses? NP]

The last amulet Zíbrt discusses is a Czech variant on the SATOR / AREPO / TENET / OPERA / ROTAS magic square:

Along the way, Dr. Zíbrt confesses that the article was triggered by seeing a similar series of amulet-related articles from 1880 onwards in Verhandl d. Berlin. Gesellschaft f. Anthropologie, Ethnologie u. Urgeschichte, and feeling affronted that nothing similar had been written from the point of view of the Czech archives. But I’ll leave those articles for another day, this post is already more than large enough. 🙂

Meanwhile in Vltava…

One Czech web page reports the specific wording of a formula found being used on an amulet in the Vltava region to protect against fever, as reported by Matěj Václav Šteyr:

“Ve jménu Otce i Syna i Ducha svatého Ve vrchu Kelion odpočívá sedm spících….Pane Ježiši Kriste osvoboditi ráčiž tuto služebnici od zimních pětidenních. Pax nax vax budiž této služebnici Božím lékem amen. ” [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus Christ, free this servant from the quintan fever. Pax nax vax let this servant gain God’s cure. Amen].

According to the dissertation by Mgr. Jitka Rejhonová, Matěj Václav Šteyr was the most published Bohemian missionary of the Baroque period. Anyone wishing to read more Czech is welcome to download this and find out more.

Regardless, it already seems more than clear to me that this specific charm text (combining the Seven Sleepers with pax nax vax to protect the wearer against fever) was a long-held belief in the region, from the 14th or 15th century right through to the 18th century.

Finally, f116v…

So, the question is: what does this tell us about the three-line block of marginalia on the Voynich Manuscript’s final page (f116v)?

I can certainly easily see how the middle line might (before one or more heavy-handed emenders got in on the act) have originally been “six + pax + nax + vax + ahia + ma+ria +”, so my previous suggestion that this block of text might have been the text of a charm still basically stands.

Moreover, given that it seems to have been traditional to write amulet charms on a piece of vellum (presumably because vellum is so durable), I wonder whether the reason someone wrote the charm on this sheet was because they intended to then cut it out and use it as magical protection. Perhaps, having written it, that person then realized that there was writing on the other side, and so decided (or was told) to leave it instead?

Finally, given the long-standing link between the story of the Seven Sleepers and pax nax vax, I now wonder whether the first word originally was not “michiton” but in fact “m[onte] celion“. Something to think about, anyway. 🙂

Other Pax nax vax examples…

In his (2011) “Norse Magical and Herbal Healing“, Ben Waggoner takes a close look at AM 434a 12mo in the Arnamagnæan Institute at the University of Copenhagen, an Old Norse-Icelandic medical text from circa 1500.

In his footnote 158 to the phrase “res [shape], fres †, pres †, tres †, gres †”, Waggoner notes:

The magic words are gibberish. MS Royal Irish Academy 23 D 43 uses similar words in blood-stopping charms: fres † prares † res † pax † vax † nax † (Larsen, Medical Miscellany, p. 138) and fres pres res rereres reprehex (Larsen, Medical Miscellany, p. 139). A blood-stopping charm in AM 461 has pax, vax, vax, hero, boro, iuva tartar gegimata, and another in the same manuscript has sumax pax (Kålund, Alfræði Íslenzk, vol. 3, pp. 109, 111).

MS Royal Irish Academy 23 D 43, which was written a little before 1486, is described in Henning Larsen’s 1926 article in Modern Philology (it’s in JSTOR): Larsen believes that it was assembled at Munkelif in Bergen from primarily Norwegian sources. However, the full discussion seems to be in Larsen’s ultra-rare 1931 book “An Old Icelandic Medical Miscellany” (which I haven’t seen).

Handritið AM 461 12mo is discussed here (admittedly in Icelandic): “Consummatum est, inclinato capite emisit spiritum. Pax, vax, vax, hero, boro, iuva tartar gegimata + In nomine patri et spiritus sancti”. (p.124) This same (encyclopaedic) manuscript includes an Icelandic Cisiojanus, which is nice.

My point is that the fifteenth century craze for using “pax nax vax” seems to have happened all across Europe. Anyone hoping to fix this just to Bohemia will therefore probably be fairly disappointed. Just thought I’d say!

PS: also mentioned in AM 434a is the formula where “a man writes these words in Latin letters with dog’s blood on his own wrist: “Max, píax, ríax”…” (p.48)

Pax Nax Vax’s Father, Rex Pax Nax

For the benefit of anyone trying to Google more stuff about Pax Nax Vax, I should add that it seems highly likely to me that it evolved out of a well-known earlier toothache charm, Rex Pax Nax. For example, there’s the one you can read in Edward Thomas Pettit’s critical edition of the Lacnunga (Remedies) in MS. Harley 585, f.183a, b (11th Century):

[Contra dolorum dentium]:
(Cristus) sup(er) mamoreum sedebat; Petrus tristis ante eum stabat, manum ad maxillum tenebat, et interrogebat eum D(om)in(u)s dicens:
“Quare tritis es, Petre?”
Respondit Petrus et dixit :
“D(omi)ne, dentes mei dolent.”
Et D(omi)n(u)s dixit :
“Adiuro te / migranea uel gutta maligna p(er) Patre(m) et Filium et Sp(iritu)m S(an)c(tu)m et p(er) celum et terram et p(er) XX ordines angelorum et p(er) LX p(ro)phetas et p(er) XII apostolos et p(er) IIIIor euangelistas et p(er) om(ne)s s(an)c(t)os q(u)i D(e)o placuerunt ab origine mundi, ut non possit diabolus nocere ei, nec in dentes, nec in aures, nec in pal[a]to, famulo D(e)i, ill(i) non ossa fra[n]gere, nec carnem manducare, ut non habeatis potestatem nocere ill(i), non dormiendo, nec uigilando, nec tangatis eum usq(ue) LX annos et unum diem. “
Rex pax nax in (Cristo) / Filio . Am(en) . Pater noster.

A later (and significantly cut-down) version of this from the Wolfsthurn handbook appears in the introduction to Kieckhefer’s “Magic in the Middle Ages” (p.4). There, it says that a person afflicted by toothache should have “Rex pax nax in Cristo filio suo” written on his/her jaw. (This came from the 14th century physician John of Gaddesdon, according to the Routledge History of Disease, p.56: BL Harley 2558 is online here).

Rex pax nax also appears in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1451, and San Marino, Huntington Library HM 64, and no doubt close to a hundred other medieval manuscripts. Hence my best guess is that pax nax vax started its life as a garbled / misremembered version of Rex pax nax, a formula which was still reasonably current in the 15th century.

[Incidentally, if I had money to burn, I’d now buy access to Lea Olsan’s (2003) “Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice” in Social History of Medicine, Volume 16, Issue 3, December 2003, Pages 343–366, as well as a copy of Don C. Skemer’s (2010) “Binding words: Textual amulets in the Middle Ages“. But I’ve already managed to blow half of my 2020 book budget, so I hope to return to these at a later. *sigh* ]

Nicole Oresme’s “Treatise of the Sphere”, revisited…

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In a 2017 post, I listed the copies of Nicole Oresme’s (1368) “Treatise of the Sphere” (“Traité de l’espere“) that are still extant:

* BNF MS Franc. 1350 (ff. 1r-38v) [formerly owned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683)]
* BNF MS Franc. 2240 (ff. 61r-95v) [ARLIMA description]
* BNF MS Franc. 7487
* BNF nouv. acq. 10045 (ff. 1-39) [ARLIMA description]
* BORDEAUX, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 0531 ff. 90r-127r [1454-1458]
* FIRENZE, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 1604 [end 14th century]
* LEIDEN, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Vossius gall. f° 010, ff. 1r-31v [15th century]
* OXFORD, St. John’s College, MS 164, ff. 1r-32r [around 1364-1373]
* VATICANO (CITTA DEL), Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. lat. 1337, ff. 29r-44v [last quarter of the 15th century]

According to Mackley (2012), the earliest of these is Oxford SJC MS 164, because “[t]he ornate illustrations and marginalia, as well as horoscope tables personal to Charles and his family, suggest that [this] manuscript belonged to Charles himself.” (pp.4-5).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my next challenge here is to find whether any historian has constructed a cladistic tree for these nine Treatise of the Sphere manuscripts.

Simultaneously, I’m still strongly considering my 2017 suggestion that the person most likely to have helped diffuse Oresme’s ideas out of France was Blasius of Parma (who was in Paris for a while prior to 1388). So the follow-on question there would be: can we determine which of these nine manuscripts was closest to the one copied by Blasius to take back with him to Italy? Might Blasius’ copy have in fact formed part of this tree?

Clearly, some good basic historical legwork needs to be done here.

The Importance of Oresme’s Treatise

Before proceeding any further, I think it should be said that Oresme’s treatise isn’t just yet another summary / translation of Sacrobosco’s De Sphaera (e.g. BN Lat 7267, 7363 and 7400, as Rene Zandbergen once pointed out here). Even though his treatise follows the general sequence previously set out by Sacrobosco, Oresme is quite scathing about some of Sacrobosco’s claims (e.g. his estimate of the Earth’s diameter). [There’s more technical discussion of this in “Nicole Oresme et les Voyages Circumterrestres”, by M. Lejbowicz.]

More generally, in “Heaven and the Sphaera Mundi in the Middle Ages” (2000), Edgar Laird points out that Oresme’s account marked a turning point in the history of accounts of the spheres. This is because Oresme tried to force a definitive split between that which can be physically studied and that which should be treated as simply religious speculation: (p.25)

We also expect that at this point Oresme will explain what theology can contribute to the study of the sphere, but he writes instead, ‘Then some say that above it [i.e., the ninth sphere] there is an immobile heaven, then a heaven of crystal, and then the empyrean heaven in which is the throne of Solomon, and such things as pertain to neither physics nor astronomy. Therefore it will be sufficient for us to speak only of the nine spheres mentioned above’.

Oresme’s writings therefore mark him out as something of a rationalist (though pitching him as a ‘proto-scientist’ would be a modern back-projection). All the same, despite his small treatise’s similarities to previous works, it has to be said that there is something intensely new going on in the commentaries, thoughts and glosses he stitched through it.

As always (even with Copernicus), Oresme pulls his horse up before accidentally jumping over the Heresy puissance wall. But I’m sure the direction he was heading in was clear to many of his readers at the time.

Towards a Cladistic Tree…?

Almost certainly, the definitive work here is Lillian Margaret McCarthy “Maistre Nicole Oresme, ‘Traitié de l’espere’“, critical edition, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1943.

…and unfortunately that’s where this post stops, because I can’t see how to get access to it. The University of Toronto has lots of digitized dissertations from 1950 onwards online here, but 1943 is just before their cut-off date.

So… does any Cipher Mysteries reader have any suggestions as to how I can get a copy of this?

Cameron La Follette, beeswax, the Neahkahnie Treasure, and the “Santo Cristo de Burgos”…

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“The Ghost Hunter” is a fascinating article, well-presented in long form by Leah Sottile in the Atavist Magazine. It tells the story of how a secret poet by the name of Cameron La Follette fell under the historical spell of the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a ship wrecked on the Oregon coast a little over three hundred years ago. Even today, beachcombers still find blobs of beeswax flotsam along the coastline near the Neahkahnie peak, though the wreck site itself has yet to be precisely located.

As you might expect, it was a cipher / mysterious writing angle to the story that initially caught my attention. Specifically, a stone carved with strange letters and symbols that some had interpreted as obfuscated directions to treasure that had been retrieved from the wreck and then reburied.

But even though I harbour no desire to jump on a plane to Oregon to covertly hire a night-time mini-digger (Beale Papers-style), I thoroughly enjoyed Sottile’s account. And I think you will too. Check it out! 🙂

Alice Kober vs Linear B, The World vs Voynichese…

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I’ve just finished reading @MargalitFox’s excellent book “The Riddle of the Labyrinth“, which untangles the skein of history around the decryption of Linear B to reveal the quiet (but huge) contribution made by Alice Kober.

Fox’s belief (which I largely agree with) is that Kober would, had she not died early, almost certainly have completed her decryption programme before Michael Ventris. Regardless, Ventris had spent years making a fool of himself by insisting loudly and at great length that the language of Linear B must surely be Etruscan (it was actually an early form of Greek, Δ’Ω!), and he only began making swift progress once he took Kober’s results on board.

Because Linear B was an unknown language written in an unknown script, Kober always insisted that anyone who took a theory about the language as their starting point was doomed to failure. Rather, the single route to the finishing line was, she asserted, to find the patterns and deep symmetries inside the primary texts that we have, and to work outwards from there.

Kober’s attempts to systematically comb through the Linear B texts were frustrated through the 1930s and part of the 1940s by Sir Arthur Evans’ refusal to release more than a modest fraction of them. However, she built up card indexes and added physical cross-referencing means (using carefully punched holes, she was able to optically find matching patterns, like using postcards to build her own Google search facility for Linear B ).

It is easy to draw a long list of comparisons between her sustained attack on Linear B and The World’s somewhat scattershot attacks on Voynichese. Perhaps unsurprisingly, few of these cast the latter in anything like a favourable light.

Similarities

Both Sir Arthur Evans and the Voyniches had very fixed (and, in retrospect, quite wrong-headed) ideas about the historical sources of their respective scripts / languages: and both released only a small number of images to scholars before their respective deaths.

Hence the constraints Alice Kober was working within during the 1930s and 1940s weren’t really so different from those that Voynich researchers ‘enjoyed’ for most of the 20th century. Her specific response was to make her own transcriptions, build her own analytical machinery, and construct her own decryption methodology.

If you want a direct apples-to-apples comparison, I’d perhaps suggest looking for the methodological parallels between Kober and Captain Prescott Hunt Currier (1912-1995). They both consciously and deliberately attacked their targets without a specific plaintext language in mind; discovered deep language-like patterns that nobody had either noticed or grasped the significance of; and then disseminated them openly.

Differences

The #1 difference is that while Linear B had Michael Ventris, Voynichese has had no Gary Lineker or Filippo Inzaghi hanging around on the goal-line to head Captain Currier’s critical cross into the goal.

While it’s easy to say that Ventris was brilliant, in many ways his whole approach to Linear B had been naive and self-defeating from the start. Margalit Fox concludes that Kober thought Ventris was yet another hacky Linear B amateur, far more of a research liability than a research asset: that he was so blinded by his idiotic Etruscan theory that his research would never (in fact, could never) produce anything of genuine value.

But Ventris’ key personal asset turned out to be that he had, as the famous US entrepreneur/investor Fred Wilson put it back in 2016, strong views weakly held. That is, once Ventris finally twigged that Kober had found something genuinely telling that was incompatible with his (previously strongly held) Etruscan theory, he had the strength of character to be able to jump ship completely. (Though admittedly Ventris did strongly hedge his initial description of what he had come up with by describing it as something that might be no more than a wonderful delusion.)

For me, the oddest thing about Voynichese is that even though modern researchers now know a vast amount about its inner workings (for example, you could hardly fault Torsten Timm’s diligence and persistence), they remain steadfastly unable to figure out the next step forwards.

If you can imagine a Voynichese football hanging in the air in front of goal while all the strikers are squabbling at the opposite end of the playing field, you’re not far off the truth. 🙁

Synthesis

Even though many now know about Linear B, what is less known is the story of Linear A. Also discovered by Sir Arthur Evans, the Linear A script is almost certainly a syllabary that was used on Crete to write a (now-lost) Minoan language. When the early Greek invaders came from the Mycenean mainland, they adapted Linear A as a script to write down (admittedly somewhat imperfectly) their Early Greek language.

Alice Kober realized early on that despite the many visual similarities between their sign shapes, Linear A and Linear B were writing down entirely different languages. Hence she abandoned all attempts to decrypt Linear A (because there were so few examples of it) and focused instead on the much more promising Linear B.

In many ways, we have a closely analogous situation with Voynichese, in that it comprises the two major ‘languages’ that Captain Currier identified in the 1970s. More recent research has identified even more subtlety to Currier’s A vs B division: the researcher Glen Claston (Tim Rayhel) asserted that he had identified the specific sequence by which Currier A evolved (or was actively mutated) into Currier B.

Even now, however, it remains absolutely the norm for researchers – even otherwise very good researchers – to carry out their analyses on the whole of their Voynichese transcription, i.e. all the A pages and B pages merged together into a single whole, as if they were all the same kind of thing.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that, to me, this is akin to mixing Linear A and Linear B into a single Linear corpus, superficial amateurish nonsense that Kober had nothing but disdain for in the 1930s and 1940s.

Hence if you genuinely want to be the Michael Ventris of Voynichese, I would suggest that you start by trying to learn from Alice Kober and Captain Currier:

  • Assume you know nothing at all about the unknown language(s) beneath the unknown script (because you don’t, you simply don’t)
  • Tackle one corpus at a time (say, Herbal A, Quire 13, or Quire 20)
  • Build up what you consider to be a reliable transcription for it
  • Build up contact tables
  • Begin with the patterns at the start, middle, and end of words
  • Determine the precise internal logic of the script, with the idea of working out how that might be interfering with the unknown language beneath that script

The missing Lonsdale Street nitkeeper…

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Let’s start with the original 26th Jan 1949 news story in the Adelaide News, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Geraldton Guardian, and the Age:

Melbourne.- Two prominent Melbourne baccarat players who desire to remain anonymous, believe they knew the unknown man in the “Somerton beach body mystery.”

They saw the man’s picture in a Melbourne newspaper and said they thought they recognised him as a “nitkeeper” who worked at a Lonsdale street baccarat school about four years ago. They could not recall his name.

They said the man talked to few people. He was employed at the baccarat school for about 10 weeks, then left without saying why or where he was going.

From a purely Melbourne-centric angle, the appeal for witnesses had only just appeared in the Herald (25 Jan 1949) and the Argus (25 Jan 1949). So it should be clear that the two baccarat players came forward immediately.

A few days ago, I wondered whether the man they had been thinking of might have been George Henry Newman. It’s true that Newman died in 1986, so could not have been the Somerton Man. However, given that people working at baccarat schools were generally younger than the Somerton Man, might the two baccarat players have mistaken George Henry Newman for the Somerton Man?

On balance, I think this is unlikely. Newman’s specific role in the whole baccarat ‘ecology’ was as a motor driver: that is, he would drive customers to and from the baccarat school. And he did that for years, not just for ten weeks.

So the person we’re looking for is someone quite specific and yet quite unusual (because of his age): a 40-year-old Lonsdale Street baccarat school nitkeeper circa 1945.

The annoying thing is that the Victorian police knew everything there was to know about these baccarat schools, but were unable to shut them down because of two specific factors:

  • The police had to catch punters while they were actually playing baccarat (and not other legal card games), which was actually quite a lot trickier than it sounds; and
  • The baccarat school principals bribed policemen left, right and centre to avoid the schools being shut down.

In the end, Christos Paizes’ long-running baccarat school got closed down courtesy of some kind of mealy-mouthed legal technicality, largely rustled up by Victorian politicians. And Paizes couldn’t really blame the poh-lice for that: they were too busy taking their brown envelopes to actual get him to court. Why would they ever call a halt on such a good thing?

The Missing Evidence

It seems that our well of Lonsdale Street baccarat school-related articles in Trove has now pretty much run dry. So where could we look next?

There is a ton of interesting stuff in the Victorian police archives – the NAA knows what it is, and wants to curate it, but nobody knows where it is. One day, this will come into the light, and perhaps there will be a sudden feeding frenzy from everybody with an interest in historical Melbourne crime. But… that blessed day still seems a way off just yet.

I wish I had found a list of Australian gamblers’ memoirs: anyone around Melbourne in the mid-1940s would have gone to Lonsdale Street, its baccarat Mecca. The closest I got was a series of brief articles in the Melbourne Argus of 1954, describing the memories of Melbourne baccarat school owner Robert Walker. (Incidentally, there’s a nice chapter on knockabouts in the 1986 book “Disorganized Crime”, which might still be available online.) Maybe there are more Aussie gamblers’ memoirs out there, please shout if you find any.

I therefore wonder whether the best thing to do would be to put an ad in a Melbourne newspaper – perhaps the Age, what do you think? – asking any lovely old people for their memories of Melbourne’s baccarat schools in the 1940s. Sounds like a Banker Bet to me… something to consider, anyway. 🙂

Any other suggestions for routes forward?

The difficulties of Australian archives…

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Towards the end of last year, I went through a period where I tried to finesse different ways of raking through the Australian archives to pursue the Melbourne nitkeeper research thread in the Somerton Man cold case. (Which arose because two Melbourne baccarat players came forward in early 1949 to say that they thought the man had worked as a nitkeeper at a Lonsdale Street baccarat school for about ten weeks around 1945 or so.)

Despite meticulously stepping through story after story in Trove to reconstruct what I could of the Melbourne baccarat school timeline, all I could come up with was the Romanian name “Balutz” that appeared in a single article. And when I received a nice reply from the Public Records Office Victoria helpfully suggesting I look up the (admittedly not entirely dissimilar) Greek surname Balutis, I then followed that lead as far as I could, all the way to Triantafillos Balutis and Stelios Balutis.

The pair (presumably brothers or cousins?) had arrived in Melbourne on 16 Feb 1923, both travelling in 3rd class on the RMS Ormonde: but I could find no details of what ultimately became of Triantafillos Balutis. He had lived for eight years in America (always a good box to tick for Somerton Man candidates, and the juicier the Juicy Fruit the better); had lived largely invisibly since 1930; had worked within a horse’s sneeze of the main Lonsdale Street baccarat school (which, let’s not forget, was run by the Greek Christos Paizes); and yet by around 1948 had completely disappeared from sight. No wife, no family, no funeral, no nothing.

In short, Triantafillos Balutis seemed pretty much a perfect candidate for having been the Somerton Man, if (and I know it’s very much an ‘if’) the Somerton Man had been the Melbourne nitkeeper the two gamblers claimed he was. But I was short of the last pieces of evidence that would confirm or deny it. What I needed was a cunning Aussie insider, a well-disposed researcher who would go to the Melbourne archives and ferret out the last pieces of the puzzle.

And that is indeed what happened next…

A Surreal Day Out At Shiel Street

The modern building at 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne is shared by both the National Archives of Australia and the Victorian State Archives. According to my generous (but doggedly anonymous) Melbourne mole (I’ve lightly edited their notes):

The modern bureaucracy makes visiting here quite surreal. I’ll explain why in case you have reason to go to Shiel Street in future.

The first thing to note is that there is a single reading room, and along one side of it there runs a single long L-shaped desk.  

On the shorter side of the ‘L’ is a very nice librarian who hands over the National Archives Files.  As far as possible from her, at the very top of the long side of that ‘L’ is the very nice librarian who hands over files from the Victorian State Archives.

Now, if it happens that you speak first to the NAA librarian, he or she will tell you that there is no public digital scanning facility: in fact, only the librarians are allowed to do that, and they will charge you per scan.  Otherwise you can make ordinary photocopies at about three times you’d pay elsewhere… or you can bring a camera, or use your camera-phone.

However, if you happen to speak, instead, to the very nice Victorian Archives librarian at the other end of that long desk, you will be told that there’s no charge for anything. Not only that, but they have a dedicated side room (complete with professional-looking camera) where you are free to make hi-res digital scans if you prefer.  All for no charge whatsoever. “All you need to bring is a USB stick” they will tell you over the phone.

And, oddly, neither of the nice librarians is wrong.

It seems that the commonwealth (=Federal) government won’t agree to let its records be snapped using Victorian government equipment, so if you turn up with just a USB stick for NAA docs, you’ll be out of luck.

Luckily I had both a usb and a phone… which is why I’m sending through a neat pdf of the (Victorian Archive) probate material and a whole lot of poorly-lit camera snaps of the really interesting NAA material.

Needless to say, I’m extremely grateful for the kindness this anonymous researcher hero showed.

Stelios Balutis

We can now say a little more about what happened to Stelios Balutis. In his July 1963 will, the (obviously misspelled) “Stelois Balutes” of 581 King Street West Melbourne did:

“[…] Give devise and bequeath all my Estate both real and personal unto my Trustees Upon Trust […] for my granddaughter ELEONORA ASSIKIS of Sinikismos Evangelistries Ano Skalakia Thessaloniki Greece if she attains the age of Twentyone years and if living at my death but she shall predecease me then Upon Trust for my grandson NIKOLAS ASSIKIS of the same address if he attains the age of Twentyone years and if living at my death.”

His estate amounted to $1381.15: and the notice of probate appeared in the 02 Sep 1977 edition of the Melbourne Age. The only thing I rather liked was the colour of the probate’s duty stamps (in the NAA scan):

The Victorian Archives had more about Stelios Balutis. I’ll spare you his fingerprints, but there was a perfectly nice photo of him from his 1948 passport (which I contrast-enhanced slightly for clarity):

All in all, nothing remarkable, then; but even so, more than enough to close our (admittedly small) chapter on Stelios Balutis.

Triantafillos Balutis

Because I had previously been able to access Triantafillos Balutis’ application for Australian naturalization via the NAA’s website (my attempts to do this were mainly hindered by the 20+ different spelling combinations of his first and last names), our Melbourne mole was able to find only a single page of additional information in the archives.

Luckily (or possibly unluckily, depending on your Somerton Man point of view), this was the most important page of all, because it revealed what ultimately became of him. This was from the Criminal Investigation Board, whose (small) file relating to Triantafillos Balutis’s naturalization was included separately in the NAA records.

At the end, the file noted: “Triantafillos BALUTIS appears on Passport List No. 2857 of 15/9/1949 Proceeding to Greece. CIB.”

Ships leaving Melbourne for Europe on the 15th September 1949 were (according to Trove) the Devon for London and the Port Vindex for Liverpool, or (on the 16th) the Dundalk Bay for Adelaide and Naples.

By far the most interesting one of these was the Dundalk Bay, which had just arrived from Naples accompanied by the Nelly, the two ships carrying more than a thousand migrants each from all over Europe.

The Australian archives contain nominal rolls (all nicely digitized and cross-referenced) listing all the incoming migrants for the Dundalk Bay and Nelly (in fact, these lists appear several times over). But as far as I can see, there is no sign of nominal rolls for passengers travelling in the opposite direction: presumably because nobody in their right mind would want to be going back to Europe in September 1949.

As a result, I wasn’t able to dig up anything as useful as a nominal roll for any of the three ships listed as leaving on the 15th/16th September 1949, to fully confirm the (already extremely likely) story that Triantafillos Balutis left Melbourne for Europe then.

Perhaps someone with better m4d archival sk1llz than me will be able to dig this up. But to be fair, there’s probably little point: this research strand seems to have also reached the end of its life. We’re done here, basically.

So… Back To Lonsdale Street, Then?

I’ve been thinking about this whole thing for a couple of months now, in a kind of methodological post mortem. And I think the way it all rolled out revealed weaknesses in the way I was approaching archival research. In essence, I jumped at the chance to pursue what (superficially) seemed like a substantial lead, because it seemed likely that I would be able to follow a research lead on a single person of interest right to the end line (which is indeed what happened).

Sure, this was a plausible (if slightly opportunistic / optimistic) plan, but at the same time it didn’t really amount to anything like a systematic, goal-directed attack on the archives. And in fact this was what was missing.

So, in retrospect what I should have done was try to devise ways to open up the Australian archives in respect of the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools, and particularly the Victorian police records. We know (thanks to the PROV) that there was nothing Balutz-related in the Victorian Police Gazette for 1944/1945/1946: but Balutz should only ever have been a helpful secondary angle to prise open the archival lid.

Because Christos Paizes was the big fish in the story, I now think it was Paizes’ Melbourne history that needed bringing into the light in a far more systematic way, rather than guessing and hoping.

Christos Paizes and his Henchmen…

The NAA records say that Christos Paizes was born on 5th February 1897 in Ithaca, Kionion, Greece: and that he arrived in Australia on 4th January 1914. His naturalization was in 13th August 1937, at which time his address was (the familiar-sounding address) 269-271 Lonsdale-street, Melbourne.

According to the sensational (but probably not entirely historically reliable) book “Gangland Melbourne“, Paizes (also known as ‘Harry Carillo’) allegedly had Freddie ‘The Frog’ Harrison and Norman Bradshaw ‘working’ for him. All the same, Harrison was mentioned quite openly here as having worked for Solomon’s baccarat school, so I’m not yet convinced that Gangland Melbourne completely nailed that one:

Police witnesses alleged Harrison was the constant companion of thieves, that as doorkeeper of a baccarat school in Elizabeth-street, city, he had many times given warning of the approach of police, and, that he had kept a supply of bullets in his home. Harrison said he was employed by the proprietor, Mr. Solomon, as doorman of the Rendezvous Bridge Club, until May 20. From a weekly wage of £5 he paid £3 board to his aunt, with whom he and his wife and child had been living for twelve months. He had nothing to do with the conduct of the bridge club.

He was also mentioned quite openly in this news story on Trove:

Described by detectives as former doorkeeper for a baccarat school mentioned in connection with an Elizabeth Street shooting on May 22, Frederick William Harrison, 26, of Peel Street, Windsor, laborer, successfully appealed to Judge Mitchell in General Sessions today against a three months’ gaol sentence for vagrancy.

This was the baccarat school in Fink’s Building, according to this report.

Even though Harrison was not convicted of the Elizabeth Street shooting, George Henry Newman (45) was, and in October 1947 went to jail for two years. There’s a picture of Newman in an article in the Sydney Truth, which to my eyes isn’t terrifically different from the Somerton Man:

There’s no details of when Newman was let out of jail: and Trove has no obvious further trace of him. Just sayin’, just sayin’… 😉

We know that Christos Paizes subsequently surfaced in Sydney, running (no surprises) a baccarat school there. According to the Sydney Crime Museum, (quoting the 1980 book Drug Traffic by Alfred McCoy, which – with the inevitable shipping from Australia – is currently sitting just outside my comfortable price range, though the British Library does have a copy) when casinos in the 1970s became the next ‘hot’ place for gamblers to go to:

The established Goulburn Club at 51-7 Goulburn Street, owned by George Zizinos Walker and Christos Paizes of South Coogee, simply added roulette to baccarat, recruited a bevy of hostesses, and polished up its image. 

Putting all this together: it seems to me that if the Somerton Man was in some way connected with the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools, a far better first research step would be to map out the different Melbourne schools and all the crims and thugs associated with them, and only then with that groundwork in place start to look at individuals.

Back to the Archives?

And so the actual research question finally arrives: what is the best way of using Australian archive resources to try to reconstruct the Lonsdale Street baccarat school crim network circa 1945? After all, historians now spend so much of their time mapping out social networks, why not map antisocial networks too? :-p

Hence I think it’s the NAA’s B745 series that perhaps offers us the possibility of some kind of way in. However, when our marvellous Melbourne mole specifically asked the NAA about getting access to B745, the response was:

With regards to series B745, ‘Index of offenders investigated by the Commonwealth Police’, this is a collection of index cards which the National Archives does not have in custody. Although the series is registered with us it does not appear to have ever been transferred from the Australian Federal Police. Theoretically it may still be held by them, but previous attempts to identify their whereabouts have not been successful.

And so, for a change, one research door shuts only for another to also shut. There must surely be a way of locating B745 but… it will probably take a while.