J R Coll Physicians Edinb 2015; 45: 248–50 Ex libris http://dx.doi.org/10.4997/JRCPE.2015.315 © 2015 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Agricola’s De re metallica, 1556. Part 2 In Part 11 I mentioned the Hoover vocabulary, which Agricola himself translation of De re metallica. Since this is discusses in his introduction, he did the only English translation, it is likely to what all renaissance authors did, he be the lens through which most modern used general vocabulary to give readers will view Agricola’s work and so descriptions of particular things or merits some further discussion. processes. But he went much further; he added several hundred excellent It is a good translation in that it presents woodcuts, placed in the text beside the the meaning of Agricola’s text clearly verbal account, which make his and accurately and the extensive descriptions of physical arrangements accompanying notes by Herbert Hoover very clear indeed. And in his dedicatory are illuminating. But, for those who are preface, after summarising his book, he not mining engineers or metallurgists, explains exactly why he has done this: the replacement of Agricola’s rather So I have taken up this task, and if I general descriptions by modern have not completed it because it is technical words often adds little light – so extensive, I have certainly and sometimes has the opposite effect; endeavoured to do so; for I have for example, Hoover’s ‘upper cross ex libris RCPE expended much work and labour launder’ is less helpful to a general upon it and also laid out some reader than Agricola’s ‘upper transverse De re metallica libri XII expense. Indeed, I have not only channel’ and, in any case, the woodcuts Basel, 1556 described the veins, seams, machines make his meaning crystal clear. The and, furnaces but also paid artists to Introduction and Appendices, and portray them in pictures lest matters particularly the voluminous notes, show the application of set out in words might be unclear either to those of very considerable industry and not a little scholarship as our own time or might in future cause difficulty: just well as much technical expertise. But the Introduction as many words are unclear to us which the ancients detracts somewhat from the book’s appeal. It makes a – to all of whom they were familiar – handed down good deal of the difficulties the translators encountered without explanation. (Sig. a3 v,3 my translation). and, in this process, presents some nonsense which is But our translators say no more about the woodcuts than delivered in a tone sometimes condescending, irritable that it is uncertain who made the drawings for them. and rather pompous. There is nothing of their excellent quality, nothing of the care with which they are inserted in the text nor of how THE HOOVERS ON AGRICOLA’s lANGUAGE well they are printed, or how they illuminate the text’s meaning. And nothing of how unusual this close integration As we agreed with the Hoovers in Part 1, and as Agricola of text and illustration was – and how successful it is for himself said, appropriate Latin technical vocabulary was the reader. If Agricola’s book was not revolutionary in this not available to him; here is the translators’ explanation respect it is only because Vesalius had set the model for it for this: only a few years before with his Fabrica of 1543. Though …. in using Latin, the author availed himself of a Agricola’s woodcuts do not reach the pinnacle of medium which had ceased to expand a thousand years achievement of drawing of those of the Fabrica, they are before his subject had in many particulars come into being; fine pieces of work. in consequence he was in difficulties with a large number of ideas for which there were no corresponding The translators praise Agricola’s writing as clearer than words in the vocabulary at his command (my italics, that of his contemporaries, but are nevertheless Preface, i2) remarkably condescending about it: This is nonsense. Far from ceasing to expand in about 500 Agricola’s Latin, while mostly free from mediæval AD, Latin vocabulary expanded continuously for corruption, is somewhat tainted with German considerably more than another millennium. Agricola’s construction. Moreover some portions have not the lack of technical vocabulary was not because of lack of continuous flow of sustained thought which others expansion of Latin but because authors who did not write display, but the fact that the writing of the work about mining or metallurgy had no need of such extended over a period of twenty years, sufficiently vocabulary and so did not devise it. explains the considerable variation in style. The HISTORY technical descriptions in the later books often take Though the translators do touch on this, they apparently the form of House-that-Jack-built sentences which did not see it as crucial. In response to the problem of have had to be at least partially broken up and the 248 Ex libris subject occasionally re-introduced. Ambiguities were – writing on different topics in another age, often for quite also sometimes found which it was necessary to carry different purposes and for a different audience – as falling on into the translation. short of them. The translators’ opinions on Agricola’s Agricola wrote in the mid-16th century; to speak of his Latin matter now only because they make one curious Latin as free of ‘mediæval corruption’ is akin to marvelling about why a good translation should be preceded by a that we do not find Chaucer’s cadences in Dickens nor preface so disagreeably pompous, condescending and the rhyme scheme of the Gawain Poet in Wordsworth. containing manifestly silly comments on the original Nor was mediæval or renaissance Latin, in general, author’s text. Even more extraordinary is the faintness, corrupt. Of course, some was better than others. And of almost to vanishing point, of their praise for Agricola’s skill, course there were changes in style, syntax, and in the his artists’ and that of his printer, in combining illustration range of meanings of words over a thousand years. To call and text to illuminate his material; an achievement which changes in a developing language corruption – and Latin the translators would seem simply not to have noticed. was a developing language for much more than one-and- a-half millennia – is extraordinary. Two conclusions seem THE WOODCUTS possible – that post-classical writers in Latin were semi- literate – or that those making the claim were simply The illustrations in De re metallica are its most immediately ignorant. Before deciding between these it would be well striking feature; profuse in quantity and high in quality they for a modern reader to remember that post-classical integrate with the text to illuminate its meaning. Agricola scholarly authors were brought up with Latin as their says nothing of their makers but a contemporary pastor, literary language, that they had a familiarity with it from who was fond of including remarks on their trade in his childhood that few, if any, modern scholars can match and sermons to his mining audience, attributes the drawings that it was their natural daily medium of written for the woodcuts to one Blasius Weffring of Joachimsthal.6 expression. Classical writers were, indeed, a model for Some of the blocks were cut by Hans Rudolf Manuel them – but a model and not a rigid mould. As for what the Deutsch (fl.1525–1572) who signed seven of them with Hoovers call, condescendingly, ‘House-that-Jack-built’ his monogram (Figure 1). Deutsch also illustrated books sentences in De re metallica, I confess I have not bothered by Oporinus but his best-known work is probably his to look for them. That the writing of the book took place maps for the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster first over 20 years is an assumption by the translators for published in 1544. His woodcuts have been compared, not which there is no evidence; we do not know how long unfavourably, with those of Hans Holbein the Younger. Agricola spent writing it. His ideas no doubt developed One block in De re metallica is signed by Zacharias over 20 or more years but that is quite different. What the Specklin; the cutters of the unsigned blocks – the great Hoovers describe is probably just an example of the style majority – are unknown. Woodcuts can be combined with upon which John Forrester remarks succinctly in discussing letterpress because, like it, their printed surface is in relief his translation of the Physiologia of the mid-16th century and so both can be printed together on the common physician Jean Fernel: press. To produce a good impression simultaneously from Fernel is well able to use the inflected language of letterpress and block, the latter must be carefully levelled Latin in long yet lucid periods, which English cannot on the press and it is often necessary to add padding to handle, so that syntax has to undergo substantial the frisket to adjust the pressure; the inking must also be recasting. (Introduction. p.94) careful. All of this quite exacting work was well within the These passages are very familiar to anyone who works on compass of an excellent printing house like Froben’s and, such texts – and they are sometimes found in renaissance here, the execution is excellent as we see from the clear, vernaculars as well as in Latin; the occasional ambiguity is clean, even impressions. also unremarkable. Interestingly, in his 1916 review5 of the Hoover translation, Fairclough, a classicist at Stanford whom the Hoovers had consulted, says simply ‘The Latinity of Agricola is comparatively smooth and pure…’, though he does repeat the ‘House-that-Jack-built’ comment he takes it, HISTORY apparently, as referring to the technicality of the language rather than to Agricola’s syntax.