José Antonio García-Diego
no one knows all the technical knowledge that his mind accumulated, and that his library and archives have disappeared. I will only say then that it seems improbable. To attribute to him a Spanish text of such characteristics is absolutely impossible; I have already mentioned his poor knowledge of this language, let alone the dialect of the Aragonese. I will add that, in my opinion, his disobeying, for years, the king's order to write a treatise on the planetary clocks, so that he would not continue to be the only person capable of making them work, came from this difficulty with the language. And the text of clockwork that was found at his death, and lost, was, in all likelihood, in Italian. As far as the places cited, those in Italy where there is less information on his trips, but what is known of him does not seem to correspond to the knowledge of as many places as are represented on the northern border of Lombardy and in the centre of the peninsula. He came from a very poor family and, as master clockmaker he only managed to open a workshop in Milan; as an engineer he did not then occupy any important position nor does it seem that they assigned him missions that would have required him to travel. For Spain things are quite clear. None of the places in which he is known to have lived or those with the slightest probability of it appear cited. The only one is Madrid which is mentioned when dealing with materials, attributing to it the following «dark stone, lightweight easy to work and resistant; it attracts all the humidity from mortar. To work it, it is soaked». It treats, therefore, of a town which I have not identified, but in volcanic terrain. The same can be said of Toledo, which does not appear, and where, in his desperate situation, it can be assumed that he had time and temper to write such a long manuscript. The knowledge of extensive zones of Aragon and Catalonia is incompatible with his already indicated work as a functionary. I believe that these are some important reasons. But, naturally I could cite many others. On the other hand it is not strange that his name appeared on the title pages; because the man became a myth. I have already written about this, and later I have found two new erroneous attributions. The first, a manuscript conserved in the library of the University of Salamanca which I cited as his first work! And I was on the point of publishing it. (As it can be seen, I am not embarrassed to recognise my mistakes.) The second is another manuscript, perhaps the first Spanish translation of Heron of Alexandria. A few years ago it was on offer in the London trade, but I do not know its current whereabouts.
The Hypothesis of a collaboration of Giovanni Francesco Sitoni In my first general introduction, I affirmed that the author had an Italian friend who provided him with facts on the differences in the hydraulic works that they 65