Cover image: Philalethes, a lover of truth, in discussion with Veritas the Goddess of Truth bleeding from many wounds. Vegio, Maffeo, 1406 Or, Joannes Regiomontanus, and Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection. [Nuremberg, Johann Müller of Königsberg Regiomontanus to 1475, 1474.] Library of Congress.
Secrecy, Artifice, and the Limits of Knowledge
A conference of the Wolf Humanities Center's 2025–2026 Forum on Truth September 17–18, 2025
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum and Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Van Pelt Library
University of Pennsylvania
Cosponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Departments of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English, History, and History of Sociology and Science; Center for East Asian Studies; Program in Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies; and Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.
Organized by Julia Verkholantsev, 2025–2026 Forum on Truth Topic Director, Wolf Humanities Center; and Associate Professor of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania.
The Edges of Truth: Secrecy, Artifice, and the Limits of Knowledge brings together scholars across disciplines to explore how what we perceive as truth has been constructed, obscured, misunderstood, contested, and reimagined throughout history. The conference opens with a keynote by Michael D. Gordin, who reflects on how the boundary between institutionally recognized and marginalized knowledge has been shaped over time. The following day continues this conversation with talks on the trial and error behind invention and exploration, the practices of secrecy and deception, the art of reconstructing and visualizing the past, and the critical study of both intentional and unintentional forgeries. Together, these talks trace how imagination, quest for understanding, spirit, and artistry have continually pushed against the limits of what is accepted and known—and what is permitted. Held at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum and Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, this two-day conference probes the fragile edges of truth—and the social and intellectual stakes of who gets to define, transform, or defend it.
AGENDA
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street
5:30–7:00 pm KEYNOTE
Michael D. Gordin, Dean of the College; Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History; Professor of History, Princeton University "The Persistence of Wretched Subjects"
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025
Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion; Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts; 6th floor, Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut Street
8:30–9:00 am BREAKFAST
9:00 am WELCOME REMARKS
Ayako Kano, Director, Wolf Humanities Center; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
Julia Verkholantsev, Topic Director, Forum on Truth, Wolf Humanities Center; Associate Professor of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
9:10–10:50 am CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE: ERROR, UNCERTAINTY, VARIATION
Chair: Priyamvada Nambrath, Doctoral Candidate in South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Paola Bertucci, Professor of History and History of Medicine; Curator-in-charge, History of Science and Technology Division, Peabody Museum, Yale University "Found in Translation: Unintentional Fabrications and Origin Stories in the History of Navigation"
Eleanor Webb, Doctoral Candidate in History, University of Pennsylvania "Uncertain Signs: The Science of Physiognomy in Early Modern Italy"
Darin Hayton, Associate Professor of History of Science, Haverford College "Astrological Aphorisms and the Many Ways the Universe Worked”
11:00 am–12:10 pm
THE SOCIAL LIVES OF SECRETS: CONCEALMENT AND CONTROL OF INFORMATION
Chair: Paul Cobb, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures; Director, Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania
Benedek Láng, Professor and Head of Department of Marketing and Argumentation Theory, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
"Beyond Encryption: The Social History of Secrecy and Cryptography in Early Modern Europe"
Christopher P. Atwood, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
"What's the 'Secret' in the Secret History of the Mongols?"
12:10–1:10 pm LUNCH BREAK
Rare Book and Manuscript Display *
During the lunch break and closing reception, all attendees are invited to view a display of rare books and manuscripts in the historic Henry Charles Lea Library. The items on view, thematically linked to the speakers’ topics, include a genealogical roll of the Kings of England, a one-of-a-kind Renaissance treatise on cyphers, a portolan atlas from the age of exploration, an early work on Phrenology, and a unique Ottoman dictionary.
1:10–2:50 pm
ASSERTING AUTHORITY: THE ART OF LIES, IDLE TALK, AND TRICKERY
Chair: Ada Kuskowski, Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Julia Verkholantsev, Associate Professor of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"Royal Rogues: The Truth about Trickery and Deception in Polish Legendary Narratives"
Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Ottoman Pleasantries: Idle Talk, Lies, and Rivalries among the Early Modern Ottomans" *
Pawel Maciejko, Associate Professor of History and Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Chair in Classical Jewish Religion, Thought, and Culture, Johns Hopkins University
"Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz and the Jesuit Art of Lying"
3:00–4:10 pm
VISUALIZING HISTORIES: IS ALL TRUTH THAT MEETS THE EYE?
Chair: Lynn Ransom, Curator of Programs, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Penn Libraries
Zoë Opačić, Associate Professor of History and Theory of Architecture, Birkbeck College, University of London "Seeing and Believing: Visualizing the Late Medieval and Early Modern City"
Emily Steiner, A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania "History on a Roll: Legends, Lies, and Politics in the Medieval Genealogical Roll Chronicle"
4:20–5:30 pm
THE VALUE OF THE FAKE: FORGERY AS HISTORICAL TESTIMONY
Chair: Nicholas Herman, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Curator, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies; Medieval Studies Librarian, Penn Libraries
Balázs Nagy, Associate Professor; Department of Medieval and Early Modern European History, Eötvös Loránd University "Forged Medieval Documents as Authentic Historical Sources? Some Case Studies from Central Europe"
Kenneth Lapatin, Curator of Antiquities, J. Paul Getty Museum "Learning from Forgery"
5:30–7:00 pm
CLOSING RECEPTION
Rare Book and Manuscript Display *
* In-person only; will not be live-streamed.
September 17, 5:30–7:00 pm
KEYNOTE
Michael D. Gordin
"The Persistence of Wretched Subjects"
George Sarton, the founder of the modern discipline of the history of science, once characterized the study of ancient astrology as a waste of a time—a “wretched subject”—sparking decades of responses. Princeton historian of science Michael D. Gordin speaks about the persistence of the notion of wretched subjects, in three senses: first, the impressive and growing body of research on the borderlands between what counts (both in the past and in the present) as legitimate or illegitimate knowledge; second, the ubiquitous denigration by scholars and the public of both fringe subjects and the people who devote their time and energy to them; and, finally, the persistence of the fringe itself, which is an ineradicable part of the chaotic, nonlinear, and uncertain quest for expanding knowledge, in the sciences and outside of them.
Michael D. Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Professor of History, and Dean of the College at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of the modern physical sciences and Russian, European, and American history. He has written on a variety of topics, such as the introduction of science into Russia in the early 18th century, the history of biological warfare in the late Soviet period, the relations between Russian literature and science, the life and chemistry of Dmitrii I. Mendeleev, the history of nuclear weapons and intelligence, science and pseudoscience, and more. His most recent book, co-authored with Diana Kormos Buchwald, is Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein (Oxford, 2025), which is a compact study of the life and work of the scientist.
September 18, 9:10–10:50 am
CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE: ERROR, UNCERTAINTY, VARIATION
Priyamvada Nambrath (CHAIR)
Priyamvada Nambrath is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation research focuses on the applied practice of mathematics and astronomy in the sociocultural life of medieval and premodern Kerala. More broadly, she is interested in the intellectual and scientifc history of India with a focus on cultural encounters, archaic modernisms, patronage and pedagogy. Language and literature, textual culture, and visual art constitute additional related areas of focus around her project. She is also interested in folk traditions of art and knowledge in South India, and ocean-facing histories of the region. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Scholarship program, the American Philosophical Society and the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Her papers are forthcoming in Puṣpikā: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions: Contributions to Current Research in Indology and the Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Paola Bertucci
"Found in Translation: Unintentional Fabrications and Origin Stories in the History of Navigation"
Who invented the navigational compass? According to a longstanding historical tradition, this consequential scientific instrument was introduced at the beginning of the 14th century by an Italian navigator from Amalfi, Flavio Gioia. A monument dedicated to him is at the center of a homonymous square in Amalfi, and scores of early modern authors celebrated his role in the history of navigation. Flavio Gioia, however, most likely never existed. A translation mistake by an early commentator created the man and originated the myth. The paper discusses the existence of this unintentional fabrication over centuries of European historical works and its role in the emergence of nationalistic narratives centered on conquest and colonial power.
Paola Bertucci is a professor in the Department of History and in the History of Science and Medicine Program at Yale University. Her research focuses on science, technology, and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mostly in Europe. She is the author, among many other publications, of Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2017), winner of the 2019 Louis Gottschalk prize for best book in Eighteenth-Century Studies, and In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023), winner of the 2025 Paul Bunge prize for best book on the history of scientific instruments. She has also collaborated on several museum exhibitions both in Europe and the United States.
Darin Hayton
"Astrological Aphorisms and the Many Ways the Universe Worked”
The Centriloquium was a collection of 100 astrological aphorisms attributed to Claudius Ptolemy. It circulated widely in various languages in premodern Europe, in both manuscript and print. Each aphorism purports to be a concise statement of truth, an account of the way the universe works. Yet different copies of the Centiloquium often include significant variations in the content of the aphorisms themselves, usually
attributing the same effects to different planets or signs. After surveying common differences, this paper concentrates on a few examples of the Centiloquium, drawn from Latin, Greek, and vernacular copies, to recover how early modern scholars accommodated contradictory knowledge claims. The case of Ptolemy’s Centiloquium also offers us a chance to reflect on historical practice. What we, as scholars, are doing when we insist on appending pseudo- to an author’s name, or when we correct a particular knowledge claim.
Darin Hayton is Associate Professor of history of science at Haverford College. He works on the history of astrology and related divinatory practices in pre-modern Europe. His first book investigates the many roles for astrology at the Holy Roman Court during Emperor Maximilian I’s reign. He is currently working on two related projects: a study of the Greek tradition of Ptolemy's Centiloquium, a collection of astrological aphorisms, and its afterlives in European vernaculars, including a fascinating collection of aphorisms by the Leipzig professor Conrad Töckler. Darin is also working on a study of the family of divinatory practices often called “The Sphere of Petosiris.” This set of practices circulated widely in Greek, Latin, and European vernaculars well into the 19th century. He is also the co-editor of a series on the history of science, “Refractions,” published by Lever Press, an open access press.
Eleanor Webb
"Uncertain Signs: The Science of Physiognomy in Early Modern Italy"
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several renowned Italian scholars, including Gerolamo Cardano and Giovanni Antonio Magini, composed lengthy treatises on metoposcopy. A sub-branch of physiognomy, both disciplines involved interpreting physical “signs” on the face and head to deduce internal health, character, and even predict behavior, often with reference to astrology and the influence of celestial movements on the material world. The surviving manuscript treatises are tomes of observational study—one containing over 2000 diagrams with accompanying commentary—that purport to provide comprehensive and empirical handbooks for the “science” of physiognomy. In the context of Catholic censorship and shifting epistemological paradigms, these authors sought, with considerable success, to transform the discipline of physiognomy from one associated with uncertain astrological predictions to one of certain scientific validity. At the same time, they framed physiognomy as an intellectual tool to detect deception and dissimulation on the part of friends, family and colleagues. These works therefore offer compelling insights into the perceived boundaries of truth and falsehood in this period, and into the contested boundaries between legitimate knowledge and superstition.
Eleanor Webb is a seventh year Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work explores the history of scientific thought, the politics of knowledge production, and the linguistic and literary cultures of education. Her current dissertation project studies sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italian academies and their relationships with university learning. In this work, she is interested in how intellectual communities, patronage networks and institutional preoccupations shaped the development of ideas, especially about what constituted “legitimate” knowledge at a given time. Her next project will investigate the social and political history of astrology in the seventeenth century, and focus on the use of astrological knowledge in facilitating episodes of cross-cultural encounter.
11:00 am–12:10 pm
THE SOCIAL LIVES OF SECRETS: CONCEALMENT AND CONTROL OF INFORMATION
Paul Cobb (CHAIR)
Paul M. Cobb is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Islamic History in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Middle East Center. His areas of interest include historiography, Islamic relations with the West, animal studies, and travel and exploration. He is the author of numerous studies, including Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades (Oneworld, 2005); The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (Penguin Classics, 2008), and The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is also the co-editor (with Wout van Bekkum) of Strategies of Medieval Communal Identity: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Peeters, 2003) and (with Antoine Borrut) of Umayyad Legacies: History and Memory from Syria to Spain (E. J. Brill, 2010).
Christopher P. Atwood
"What's the 'Secret' in the Secret History of the Mongols?"
The most important history of the Mongol empire has come down to us with an odd name: The Secret History of the Mongols (Mongġol-un ni’uca tobciyan). The title appears, however, only in a late-fourteenth century Chinese transcription and translation—the work in its original format has been lost. Readers and scholars have wondered, was this the original title? And if so, what exactly was so “secret” (ni’uca) about this history that it became the Secret History of the Mongols? Given the loss of the original book format and all the meta-data implicit in it, these questions can only be answered speculatively. By placing the work in its original historiographical context and considering what passages in it might have been considered so secret, several potentially sensitive issues emerge. Whether it was embarrassing details about the family history of Chinggis (“Genghis”) Khan, precise counts of the number of Mongol soldiers, or partisan interventions into the succession struggle, weighing the precise ramifications of secrecy illuminates how information was controlled in the Mongol empire.
Christopher P. Atwood (Ph.D. 1994, Indiana University) is a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches the history of Mongolia and the Inner Asian borderlands of China. His research ranges from the Mongol empire to the early twentieth century, with a focus on ethnicity, religion, and historiography. His most recent works include two books of translations: Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources (2021), and a new translation of Secret History of the Mongols in the Penguin Classics series (2023).
Benedek Láng
"Beyond Encryption: The Social History of Secrecy and Cryptography in Early Modern Europe"
The presentation provides a social history of cryptography, focusing on the diverse applications of secrecy and encryption in early modern Europe. It highlights the gap between theoretical cryptographic methods and their practical use, revealing challenges such as outdated techniques, miscommunication, and misuse of tools. The study expands beyond traditional diplomatic contexts to explore secretive and cryptographic
practices in religion, science, everyday life, and artisanal traditions, demonstrating the varied social and emotional contexts in which encryption was applied. The findings underscore the importance of integrating external social and cultural factors into the study of cryptography, revealing its broader applications and limitations in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
Benedek Láng is a historian and medievalist (Ph.D., Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2003). He is currently Professor and Head of Department at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His research focuses on the history of science, with particular specialisation in two areas: late medieval manuscripts concerning learned magic, and early modern practices of secret communication, including artificial languages and cipher systems. His major publications include Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe (Penn State University Press, 2008); Real Life Cryptology: Ciphers and Secrets in Early Modern Hungary (Amsterdam University Press, 2018); and The Rohonc Code (Penn State University Press, 2021). His work engages with a wide range of sources spanning several centuries and genres, from personal diaries and magical treatises to enigmatic, as yet undeciphered texts.
1:10–2:50 pm
ASSERTING AUTHORITY: THE ART OF LIES, IDLE TALK, AND TRICKERY
Ada Kuskowski (CHAIR)
Ada Kuskowski is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests focus on cultural histories of legal knowledge in France and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. Her book Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France (Cambridge, 2023) traces the impact of transformations in writing, language, manuscript culture on customary law in medieval France. She is currently developing two book projects, ‘Laws of Conquest: Legal Cultures of the Crusader States in European History’ and ‘Legal Truth: A History of Law and Uncertainty.’ Her research interests include legal literatures, notions of authorship, material cultures of law, and colonial law.
Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
"Ottoman Pleasantries: Idle Talk, Lies, and Rivalries among the Early Modern Ottomans" *
This talk will focus on stories about lies, accusations of idle talk, and tales of rivalry and misdeeds among early modern Ottomans. It will argue that with the emergence of new genres, such as works of literary criticism, biographical dictionaries (tezkire), histories, and compilations of humorous anecdotes and other pleasantries (letaifnameler), the Ottoman urban and educated elite of the sixteenth century discussed, amplified, and challenged others and their life stories and fame in an increasingly competitive environment. The purpose of this talk is two-fold: first, to raise questions about how Ottomans engaged through everyday practices and storytelling with truth. Second, to show that this engagement occurred not only in philosophical, spiritual, or legal texts, but also in practices of storytelling that were central for the making and unmaking of social and political networks at the time.
Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano (History Department, University of Pennsylvania) is a historian of the early modern Ottoman world. His research focuses on intellectual and cultural history and its connections to literature, poetry, and bureaucracy. His current book project, A Sea of Gossip: Truth and Imagination in the Early Modern Mediterranean, is a history of various forms of informal exchange of information that today we refer to as gossip, anecdote, or rumor, as they shaped and transformed the early modern Mediterranean. Aguirre-Mandujano’s first monograph, Occasions for Poetry: Politics, Literature and Imagination Among the Early Modern Ottomans (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2025), is a history of how Turkish poetry became the preferred mode for communicating, debating, and shaping the Ottoman political and social experience after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Aguirre-Mandujano is co-organizer of the Baki Project, a Digital Humanities project that aims to develop new digital tools for the study of Ottoman manuscripts.
Pawel Maciejko
"Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz and the Jesuit Art of Lying"
The controversy around Jonathan Eibeschütz, one of the most celebrated rabbinic authorities of the 18th century, has been termed “the most contentious Jewish debate of the past three hundred years.” It has been deemed the pivotal moment in Jewish history, and even, if perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly, the “Jewish French Revolution.” The controversy erupted in early 1751, when Eibeschütz, who served at that time as the chief rabbi of the Triple Community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck, was accused that the amulets he had been dispensing for the past twenty years contained references to the discredited messiah-claimant, Sabbatai Tsevi. This paper will examine strategies of dissimulation and equivocation deployed by Eibeschütz in his defense, and argue that most of these strategies are based on the techniques of mental reservation, which the rabbi learned during his interactions with the Jesuits in Prague in the 1720s.
Pawel Maciejko is Associate Professor of History and Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Chair in Classical Jewish Religion, Thought, and Culture at Johns Hopkins University. Born and raised in Poland and educated at Oxford, Maciejko moved to Israel in 2004; between 2007 and 2017 he served on the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement (University of Pennsylvania Press 2011), won the The Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in Humanistic Disciplines, The Salo Baron Prize for the Best First Book in Jewish Studies, and The Jordan Schnitzer Book Award for the Best Book in Modern Jewish History, and was translated into a number of languages. He is also the author of a critical edition of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz’s Kabbalistic tract Va-Avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayyin, and Sabbatian Heresy: Writings on Mysticism, Messianism, and the Origins of Jewish Modernity (Brandeis University Press, 2017) and co-editor of two collected volumes in Jewish History.
Julia Verkholantsev
"Royal Rogues: The Truth about Trickery and Deception in Polish Legendary Narratives"
The use of etymologia—a truth-seeking epistemological method in premodern historiography—allowed historians to reconstruct the legendary past through the interpretation of names. The case study this paper will discuss focuses on how this method gave rise to several stories about legendary Polish dukes, who are portrayed as
liars and tricksters. Their deceptions range from cheating in a competition, to tricking an army of Alexander the Great, and even to murdering a brother and claiming credit for his victory over a dragon. By exploring the creative impulses behind the invention of such motifs of deception and trickery – above all the etymological interpretation of names – this talk will consider why lying appeared predestined and inherent to these figures, and why such stories endured and evaded censorship or redaction, despite their unflattering portrayal of royal protagonists.
Julia Verkholantsev is a scholar of medieval and early modern literature, linguistic culture, religion, and intellectual history. Her publications and research focus on the cultural space of Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe. She is the author of several books, and is currently completing a book on the role of etymological commentary and storytelling in historical discourse, provisionally titled The Etymological Method and Historical Writing in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. She also founded and serves as editor of two book series, Medieval Textual Cultures of Central and Southeast Europe with MIP, Kalamazoo, and Medieval Library of Rus, Ruthenia, and Muscovy with NIUPCornell, both dedicated to making primary sources on the early history of these regions available in English translation for teaching and research. At Penn, she founded and directed the interdisciplinary program in Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2017–2024) and served as Director of the Undergraduate Humanities Forum at the Wolf Humanities Center in 2022–2023 and 2024–2025. She is honored to serve as the Wolf Humanities Center's Topic Director for 2025–2026, leading the exploration of the theme Truth.
3:00–4:10 pm
VISUALIZING HISTORIES: IS
Lynn Ransom (CHAIR)
ALL TRUTH THAT MEETS THE EYE?
Lynn Ransom is the Curator of Programs for the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at Penn Libraries where she also oversees the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts and serves as a co-editor of the journal Manuscript Studies. Before coming to Penn, she has held positions in the manuscript collections at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. Since 2016, she has served on the Board of Directors of Digital Scriptorium, a growing consortium of North American institutions with collections of global premodern manuscripts, and has led the redevelopment of the Digital Scriptorium Catalog, an online platform for a national union catalog of premodern manuscripts held in North American collections.
Zoë Opačić
"Seeing and Believing: Visualizing the Late Medieval
and Early Modern City"
From early medieval panoramas to the birth of modern cartography, city-views were born of desire to describe, measure and index urbanised worlds of increasing complexity. By the 16th century city views are legion, most famously those in Hartmann Schedel’s 1493 Weltchronik which combined idealised views and those accurately observed, the latter frequently used by scholars as the earliest, truthful record of their medieval appearance. These views present a real shift in accurate and topographical representation of late medieval and early modern world. From linear views of urban horizons punctuated
by recognisable landmarks whose precise spatial relationships remained vague, to the more graspable and all-seeing ‘birdseye’ views, representations of cities advanced with optical and mathematical tools such as perspective and surveying. By contrast other examples, such as Vicke Schorler’s 19-metres-long view of Rostock, place value on the personal, subjective ‘lived’ experience over the scientific and objectivised. Using a range of examples this paper will question to what extent are city views ever a neutral record of the factual reality or whether they create urban simulacra—imaginary worlds and a constructed reality.
Zoë Opačić is Associate Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture at Birkbeck College University of London, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Council Member of the British Archaeological Association. She specialises in medieval art, architecture and urbanism in Central Europe with a particular focus on the development of late medieval cities. As a visiting Fellow (2020-2021) of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies (University of Erfurt), she worked on the project entitled Architecture, Spectacle and Ritual in the Late Medieval City, which explored the urbanistic transformation of Krakow, Prague, and Vienna in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Her current project is Vicke Schorler’s remarkable view of 16th-century Rostock in the Rostock City Archive.
Emily Steiner
"History on a Roll: Legends, Lies, and Politics in the Medieval Genealogical Roll Chronicle"
Emily Steiner and Eleanor Webb, with help from other students and staff, have transcribed, translated, annotated, and digitized FLP MS Lewis E.201 (c.1461-64), an amazing 19-ft genealogical roll chronicle from 15th-century England, which is now being put in digital conversation with another, even longer roll in Penn’s collection, LJS MS Roll 1066. Dozens of these rolls survive—many more are yet to be discovered—and were part of the Lancaster vs. York propaganda machine of what is now called the Wars of the Roses. These rolls work to persuade readers—through their intricate designs, their cunning redactions of biblical, classical, and medieval histories, and their commentary at key junctures—to support one royal faction (Henry VI or Edward IV) over the other. At the same time, they work to persuade readers to believe big historiographical “lies,” such as simultaneity, continuity, linearity, and succession. Or, in other words, they aim to convince readers that history itself is true. This paper will use MS Lewis E.201 to address the following questions: Which truths do rolls tell and which do they conceal? How does the presentation of history in the genealogical roll chronicle "trick the eye"? How do medieval information technologies like the roll chronicle support political claims, and how do certain political claims necessitate historiographical innovations like the roll chronicle? And finally how do the mechanics of the roll—rolling and unrolling— enable readers to accept broader principles behind the craft of historical writing?
Emily Steiner is the A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BA from Brown University and her Ph.D. from Yale. She is the author of three single-authored books, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Reading 'Piers Plowman' (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c.1400 ( Oxford University Press, 2021). She has co-edited several collection of essays, The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary
Production in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2002), with Candace Barrington, Thinking Historically About Historicism (Chaucer Review, 2014), with Lynn Ransom, Taxonomies of Knowledge: Information and Order in Medieval Manuscripts (2015), and with Jennifer Jahner and Elizabeth Tyler, The Cambridge History of History Writing: England and Britain, 500-1500 (2019). Her articles have appeared in The Yearbook of Langland Studies, New Medieval Literatures, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Representations, New Literary History, and Exemplaria, among many other journals. She is presently writing a book on animals in premodern literature and culture (Reaktion Books), editing a volume on medieval English prose for Oxford University Press (with Sebastian Sobecki), and editing several volumes on medieval Jews and Judaism (with Samantha Seal). With Tekla Bude and Michael Calabrese she is working on a translation of Piers Plowman. Her research interests extend to natural history and the history of information, law and literature, drama and ritual performance, and JewishChristian relations in the Middle Ages. Her teaching interests include Old English literature, Chaucer, Arthurian literature, alliterative poetry, and poetry of all periods.
4:20–5:30 pm
THE VALUE OF THE FAKE: FORGERY AS HISTORICAL TESTIMONY
Nicholas Herman (CHAIR)
Nicholas Herman is the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Curator at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at Penn Libraries. Nicholas received his doctorate in 2014 from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation focusing on the French Renaissance court painter, Jean Bourdichon. Prior to arriving at Penn in 2016, he has held fellowships at the Université de Montreal, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 2007 to 2010, he worked in the department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. He has contributed to numerous catalog and exhibition projects and has published articles in Word and Image, Burlington Magazine, Journal of the History of Collections, Manuscripta, and Gesta. His books include Le livre enluminé, entre représentation et illusion (2018), Making the Renaissance Manuscript: Discoveries from Philadelphia Libraries (2020), and, co-written with Anne-Marie Eze, Bourdichon's Boston Hours (2021).
Kenneth Lapatin "Learning from Forgery"
Embarrassed by failures of judgement, museums and collectors regularly relegate forgeries to deep storage, for such objects cannot provide reliable evidence for the periods, cultures, or creators they purport to represent. When recognized, interrogated, and interpreted, however, forgeries offer significant insight into histories of taste and the construction of the past. This paper, therefore, presents some examples of forgeries as valuable testimony to the desires and beliefs of individuals and groups at the time at which they were created.
Kenneth Lapatin is curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Trained as a classical archaeologist at Berkeley and Oxford, he has been awarded fellowships at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the American
Academy in Rome, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History, as well as monographs, exhibition catalogues, and articles on diverse aspects of ancient art and its modern reception. His research interests, in addition to forgery, include the materials, techniques, and functions of ancient art, the cities buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, luxury, and historiography.
Balázs Nagy
"Forged Medieval Documents as Authentic Historical Sources? Some Case Studies from Central Europe"
The paper examines various forms of document forgery in medieval Central Europe. Although forged documents have survived from the earliest period of literacy, there were periods when their proportion increased significantly. The motivations behind the production of forged documents varied widely—from straightforward attempts at financial gain to cases where falsified documents recorded authentic and legally valid transactions. This paper proposes a typology of forgeries, aiming to shed light on the underlying causes of falsification. In doing so, it will explore the circumstances in which forgeries are created, including the role of the issuing institutions. Through an analysis of selected case studies, from Bohemia, Poland, Austria, and Hungary the paper seeks to understand how contemporary actors perceived the authenticity and authority of written texts and how these perceptions influenced the use—and misuse— of documentary evidence.
Balázs Nagy is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Medieval History at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He completed his studies in Budapest and undertook extended research stays in Edinburgh, Toronto, Leuven, and Wassenaar (Netherlands). He is a founding board member of the Medieval Central European Research Network (MECERN). He has published widely on the economic and commercial history and networks of medieval Hungary and Central Europe, with particular attention to trade networks and cross-regional connections. His recent research focuses on the impact of the Mongol invasions on Central Europe in the thirteenth century and their broader Eurasian context.
