*Ø* Blogmanac | June 23, 1626 |
Vox Piscis and the strange case of the ichthiobibliophage
Part the First
At the markets in the university town of Cambridge, England, the air was full of the sounds of expressions of amazement and wonder when a fishmonger discovered something remarkable while cleaning a cod fish caught off the coast of King's Lynn.
A certain scholar and theologian by the name of Dr Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, was taking a stroll through the markets as it was perhaps his custom to do on a Tuesday. Hearing the hubbub, he hurried over to see what the fuss was all about. His scholastic knowledge was particularly welcome amongst the many illiterate market stallholders and shoppers, for Mede could read and identify the tiny sextodecimo book that had just been cut from the belly of the cod fish.
The good doctor took a knife and carefully separated pages from each other. The fish’s digestive organs had completely consumed the pasteboard cover and many of the pages, converting them into a ‘gelly’. However, ‘the middle parts’ were reasonably intact and Mede was able to decipher the table of contents and the titles of two items, Praeparatio Crucem or Of the Preparation to the Cross and A Lettre which was Written to the Faithfull Followers of Christes Gospell.
Only an hour or two later, Benjamin Prime, who bore the title ‘the Bachelor's Bedell’, carried this unusual find to John Gostlin, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, and Master of Gonville and Caius College. Gostlin, writes a chronicler, ‘tooke speciall notice thereof’ and began an investigation into ‘the truth of the particulars’ – a truth that still eludes us today.
Half-dissolved and covered in gelatinous matter and slime, exuding a dreaful stench, the canvas-wrapped little volume (like the ichthiobibliophage, or ‘book-eating fish’ itself) became a celebrated part of literary history, the following year republished as Vox Pisces, or The Book-Fish, contayning three treatises which were found in the belly of a cod-fish in Cambridge market, on Midsummer Eve last.
Among the Cambridge scholars, and academics and clerics throughout the length and breadth of England, the Book-Fish, or rather the Fish-Book as we might better call it, aroused huge attention. One contemporary Cambridge wit wrote:
If fishes thus do bring us books, then we May hope to equal Bodlyes library.
(The Bodleian, at Cambridge’s rival, Oxford, was, and still is, one of the world’s great libraries.) Another joker said that ‘it might be found in the Code, but could never be entred into the Digest’.
Who wrote this remarkable book, and how did it find its way into the stomach of a fish? More tomorrow.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
You can receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Vox Piscis and the strange case of the ichthiobibliophage
A book found in the stomach of a cod fish
Part the First
At the markets in the university town of Cambridge, England, the air was full of the sounds of expressions of amazement and wonder when a fishmonger discovered something remarkable while cleaning a cod fish caught off the coast of King's Lynn.
A certain scholar and theologian by the name of Dr Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, was taking a stroll through the markets as it was perhaps his custom to do on a Tuesday. Hearing the hubbub, he hurried over to see what the fuss was all about. His scholastic knowledge was particularly welcome amongst the many illiterate market stallholders and shoppers, for Mede could read and identify the tiny sextodecimo book that had just been cut from the belly of the cod fish.
The good doctor took a knife and carefully separated pages from each other. The fish’s digestive organs had completely consumed the pasteboard cover and many of the pages, converting them into a ‘gelly’. However, ‘the middle parts’ were reasonably intact and Mede was able to decipher the table of contents and the titles of two items, Praeparatio Crucem or Of the Preparation to the Cross and A Lettre which was Written to the Faithfull Followers of Christes Gospell.
Only an hour or two later, Benjamin Prime, who bore the title ‘the Bachelor's Bedell’, carried this unusual find to John Gostlin, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, and Master of Gonville and Caius College. Gostlin, writes a chronicler, ‘tooke speciall notice thereof’ and began an investigation into ‘the truth of the particulars’ – a truth that still eludes us today.
Half-dissolved and covered in gelatinous matter and slime, exuding a dreaful stench, the canvas-wrapped little volume (like the ichthiobibliophage, or ‘book-eating fish’ itself) became a celebrated part of literary history, the following year republished as Vox Pisces, or The Book-Fish, contayning three treatises which were found in the belly of a cod-fish in Cambridge market, on Midsummer Eve last.
Among the Cambridge scholars, and academics and clerics throughout the length and breadth of England, the Book-Fish, or rather the Fish-Book as we might better call it, aroused huge attention. One contemporary Cambridge wit wrote:
If fishes thus do bring us books, then we May hope to equal Bodlyes library.
(The Bodleian, at Cambridge’s rival, Oxford, was, and still is, one of the world’s great libraries.) Another joker said that ‘it might be found in the Code, but could never be entred into the Digest’.
Who wrote this remarkable book, and how did it find its way into the stomach of a fish? More tomorrow.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
You can receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Pip Wilson posted item above at 4:37 PM | Permalink
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