Chapter Fopling Flutter to Forgers and Forgeries of F by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(5) Apostolic Constitutions (The). A collection of ecclesiastical laws attributed to St. Clemens, a disciple of St. Peter, but pronounced to be forgeries by the Council of Constantinople in 690.

(6) Bertram (Dr. Charles Julius), professor of English at Copenhagen. He gave out that he had discovered, in 1747, in the library of that city, a book entitled De Situ Britanniœ, with the “Di aphragmata” (or Itinerary), by Richardus Corinensis. He published this with two other treatises (one by Gildas Badonicus, and the other by Nennius Banchorensis) in 1757. The forgery was exposed by the Rev. J. E. Mayor, in his preface to Ricardi de Cirencestria Speculum Historiale.

It is said that the style and Latinity of Bertram’s book are inconsistent with the time of Richard of Cirencester. He may possibly have based his forgeries on some chronicles and itineraries; but he has mutilated them, and falsified them by variations and additions of his own.

(7) Boece (Hector), in his Scotorum Historia (1520), has forged the names of forty-five Scottish kings, with which he interpolated the Irish list of the Dalriadic rulers (that is, the kings of Argyllshire).

(8) Cagliostro (Count of). Alexandro de Cagliostro was certainly the most unblushing literary impostor that ever lived (1745–1795). He stole the novels of John Potocki, a Polish count, and published them as his own. The National ferreted out this and all his other impositions. His name has become a by-word of literary quacks.

(9) Chasles Forgeries (The). M. Chasles, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, gave out that he had purcha sed 27,000 MSS. for £5000; but he refused to tell where he bought them, lest (as he said) “others migh t go and spoil the market.” Amongst these MSS. were: “A correspondence between Alexander the Great and Aristides” ; several “letters of Attila” (king of the Huns); a letter from the “widow of Martin Luther;” several letters from “Judas Iscariot to Mary Magdalene;” others from “Lazarus to St. Peter.” In regard to England, he produced a faded yellow MS. which purported to be letters from Pascal to sir Isaac Newton, to prove that Newton had pilfered his system of gravitation. This MS. he asserted belonged to the abbey of Tours, came into the possession of comte de Boisjourdain, who in 1791 was wrecked on his passage to America. The MS. was sold, and the buyer gave it to M. Chasles. Another letter was from Galileo, and stated that the law of gravitation was known and taught by him. A committee examined into these matters, when it was discovered that the whole was the forgery of a poor tool named Vrain Lucas.

(10) Christian Forgeries (The) of Brahmanic writings, printed in French at Yoerdun, in 1778, imposed even on Voltaire. A Carmelite missionary justifies the forgery, as the object is laudable.

Similarly, the manifest forgeries in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandistes are justified. Probably many of these were invented by the “readers” appointed to distract the attention of their fraternity at meal- times.

(11) Church Forgeries. Mosheim says, “Acts of councils, records, epistles, and whole books were forged by zealous monks, in order the more easily to rob and plunder the credulous on whom they imposed their glaring absurdities.” Certainly some of the things told by the Bollandistes amply justify this startling indictment. Witness that of the “pilgims of Compostella,” told in the Acta Sanctorum, repeated by Mgr. Guerin, the pope’s chaplain, in 1880, by Udal, in his Tour through Spain and Portugal, by Patrick, in his Parables of the Pilgrims (vol. xxxvii. 430, 431), and by many others. The short and long of the tale is that two roast chickens, a cock and a hen, were served at an alcaid’s table, and, in order to testify to the truth of a statement told to him, jumped up alive, and all their feathers flew into the room and covered them with plumage. The two fowls were sent to Compostella, where every year they generated exactly two fowls, a cock and a hen, and then died. Pilgrims still go to Compostella to see these wonderful fowls, and, no matter how many pilgrims, each receives a feather, but the tale of feathers is not diminished. Marineus Siculus says, “Hæc Ego testor, propterea vide et interfui” (Scriptores, vol. ii. p. 805); and in allusion to this extravaganza St. Dominic of Calzada, in 1169, was represented with a cock and hen in his right hand. The axiom was, the more improbable the tale, the greater the miracle.