Michael of Rhodes: A Fifteenth-Century Mariner and His Book
The ship on the cover is a galley of the Flanders type used by Venetians during the first half of the fifteenth century for convoys to London and Flanders. It is an image (on fol. 145b) from an extraordinary manuscript—a book by a mariner who began his career as an oarsman on a Venetian galley in 1401. “Michalli da Ruodo,” anglicized as Michael of Rhodes, worked on more than forty voyages in Venetian convoys from 1401 until his death in 1445, advancing from an oarsman—a low-status position at the bottom of the ship’s hierarchy—to the highest position that a nonnoble individual could attain: armiraio. (The armiraio served as the captain and navigator of a convoy, usually made up of three or more ships.) Even more remarkable, Michael wrote a book. In fact, as we discovered, he wrote two books!1 The first, written mostly around 1435 and 1436, has only now become available for study and is the focus of this essay. The illustration of the Flanders galley is found in the section on shipbuilding within this book.2
A galley of the Flanders type, from the section on shipbuilding in the Michael of Rhodes manuscript. (Reproduced with the permission of the Dibner Institute, MIT Press, and the anonymous owner of the Michael of Rhodes manuscript.)
A three-volume facsimile edition of this manuscript will appear in 2009, published by MIT Press. The codex, which is more than 400 pages (or 200 folios) long, adds significantly to the small body of writings by nonelite persons from the early fifteenth century. It is of intense interest for other reasons as well. It contains an approximately 180-page (90-folio) treatise on commercial mathematics, and it adds significantly to the small number of medieval books on mathematics that have a Venetian provenance. It also contains the above-mentioned treatise on shipbuilding—the earliest extant treatise on the subject in the world. It contains a remarkable autobiographical service record in which Michael records each of his annual voyages. Further, it includes much calendrical and astrological material, charming illustrations of the signs of the zodiac, illustrations pertaining to shipbuilding (including the image of the fully rigged Flanders galley featured here), and other images, including Michael’s own coat-of-arms with an “M” emblazoned in the center. The colors of this coat-of-arms, gold and silver, also appear on the flag flying on the galley illustrated on the cover. Such a flag was permitted only to noble commanders, just as heraldic coats of-arms were considered the exclusive prerogative of the noble class. Michael’s transgressive individuality is much in evidence here.
Michael’s book was unknown to the world of scholarship before 1966, when the manuscript came up for auction at Sotheby’s of London. A detailed description in the Sotheby’s catalog was accompanied by reproductions of several of the manuscript’s hand-drawn illustrations.3 Scholars knowledgeable about early ships and shipbuilding immediately recognized the codex as the source for a sixteenth-century manuscript on shipbuilding located in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, the contents of which had been published in the nineteenth century.4 Michael’s book contained many other riches as well, but sadly, it did not become available for study at that time; rather, it was purchased by a private collector and again disappeared from sight.
The present edition had its beginning in the year 2000 at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. The curator of rare books at the Burndy Library of the Institute, Ben Weiss, noticed that this unique manuscript was again to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. As a fellow at the Institute that year who had worked intensively with the premodern engineering and architectural books in its library, I was asked if the acquisition would be a good one—of course, I said yes. In fact, it would have been an acquisition wonderfully consonant with Bern Dibner’s collection and with his interests in early technological and engineering writings.5 The library lost out, however, to a higher bidder. That was seemingly the end of it—this important and unique manuscript was again consigned to oblivion as far as the scholarly world was concerned. Little did I know that the new owner of the manuscript, who prefers to remain anonymous, would write to the Dibner Institute to say that although he owned the manuscript, the Institute was welcome to study it. This act of generosity is the basis of all that followed.
A process began that would never have been possible without the Dibner Institute. A team was formed of three codirectors—myself; historian of technology David McGee, who had recently been appointed director of research at the Burndy Library; and historian of medieval Venice Alan Stahl.6 In 2002, the three of us and the supportive administrators of the Institute gathered around the seminar table to discuss the study of the manuscript. We were particularly anxious that there be a facsimile edition, given that it had long been, and was still, privately owned and thus not generally available to scholars. We also decided that we needed a transcrition by an expert paleographer. In addition, we believed that an English translation was essential. And, finally, we believed we should have an additional volume of studies by specialists in each of the areas covered by Michael: medieval commercial mathematics, portolans (i.e., navigational instructions), and shipbuilding. We also needed an art historian to study the many hand-drawn and colored illustrations.
With the help of Google, we created our ideal list of who should be on the team, and we e-mailed most of them to ask if they would be interested in working with us—if, in fact, we could raise the necessary funds to undertake the project. Later, as we got further into the project, we realized that the manuscript contained many calendars and other kinds of time-reckoning material, so we brought in an expert on these.7 We also decided we should create a Michael of Rhodes website so that not only could this fascinating manuscript and its author become more widely known to the public, but also so that some of the material in the manuscript, carefully explicated, could be used in educational settings. Each of the scholars we invited to participate in the project immediately consented. The Boston public television station, WGBH, which has a web division, agreed to create the website if we could obtain funding.
The process of applying for grants, which we undertook in 2002, was an exacting one. For these applications, we argued that the creation of a facsimile edition of this unique and complex manuscript would entail much original research, both in studying the various sections and topics of the text and in understanding the ways in which the manuscript was related to other known materials. What actually was in the mathematical treatise, and how did it relate to the substantial manuscript tradition of late medieval commercial mathematics? What could we find out through a study of Michael’s highly cryptic list of his annual voyages, in which he usually listed his own position onboard as well one or two other officers? How did he produce his tract on shipbuilding, and what was its relationship to shipbuilding practice in Venice and to the Venetian arsenal? What about the large amount of material on rigging—ropes, sails, anchors, and the like? How did the charming illustrations relate to contemporary visual images? Who created these images? How could the calendrical material be described? How did the portolans in the manuscript relate to known portolans and to the actual practice of navigation? Who was Michael of Rhodes and why did he write a book? Did he write the book himself, or did a scribe write it? At the start, we knew very little about this manuscript or its author. We faced a daunting task, both in editing and translating a highly technical text and in understanding its contents. Our project became possible when our grant applications were funded—admittedly, much to my surprise.8 (I had been convinced that funding for a scholarly edition of a fifteenth-century manuscript, no matter how interesting, would receive low priority.)
With our project funded and team members established, we all set to work. Our collaborative enterprise was made possible by a web portal, set up and then managed by David McGee. This allowed us to view digital images of the manuscript, together with transcriptions and translations of each page, as they were produced by Franco Rossi and Alan Stahl respectively. Team members could insert comments or suggestions on any page. In addition, each of us studied the manuscript for our own essays that were to be published in the third volume of the project. Alan Stahl, the translator, who would also be writing a biographical essay on Michael, took a research trip to Venice to search the archives for evidence about the author’s life. Finally, in 2004, with two years of work behind us and first drafts of our respective essays in hand, we gathered together for the first time at the Dibner Institute. The manuscript itself was brought to the Institute as well so that each of its pages and the book as a whole could be examined in detail.
At this workshop, many of us were meeting for the first time, in addition to viewing the actual manuscript for the first time. As each of us discussed her/his findings, we learned in detail what our colleagues had discovered. All of it turned out to be fascinating. Franco Rossi, the paleographer in charge of the transcription and a codicological study, argued convincingly that the book was an autograph, handwritten by Michael himself, for no professional scribe would have written a book in this way. Moreover, he argued that the manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, which had been attributed to Pietro di Versi, was written in the same hand and thus was also written by Michael; he confirmed this by demonstrating that in the Marciana manuscript, Michael’s name (Michalli da Ruodo) had been scratched out and Pietro’s written over it.
Other revelations followed. The historian of medieval mathematics, Raffaella Franci, explicated the various forms of calculation that Michael had demonstrated, and convincingly argued that Michael had done the calculations himself, that he was a good mathematician, and that he was more interested in mathematical theory than pragmatic commercial mathematics. The art historian Dieter Blume argued that Michael himself had created the images in the book. Blume also explicated the wonderful coat-of arms—usually the prerogative of elite individuals—that Michael had created for himself: an “M” in the center, a turnip on each side, and a mouse eating a cat perched on the top! David McGee and Mauro Bondioli, both experts on ships and shipbuilding, provided detailed explications of the shipbuilding treatise. They addressed the issue of where Michael obtained his information, how it fit into the culture of shipbuilding, and why he might have gathered this material. Piero Falchetta, an expert on Renaissance cartography, reported his discovery that the navigational directions included so many inaccuracies that, if followed, they would bring about shipwreck or loss at sea. There appears to have been no attempt made at correction, even in cases where Michael personally would have known the route. Falchetta’s fascinating report dwelt on why such faulty navigational directions would have been included in the book. Faith Wallis reported on the calendrical material, explaining what it entailed and showing how Michael could be considered to be in the process of mastering various calendrical calculations—sometimes successfully, at other times not. Alan Stahl reported on his findings in the Venetian archive and provided a draft of his biography of Michael, which turns out to be the most extensive biography of any nonelite person of the early fifteenth century, with the exception of a few famous artists. Finally, I reported on my own research for the introductory chapter, including my findings about some of the voyages on which Michael worked, about which (because his brief statements concerning his service included precise details) I was able to discover much from other sources.
Armed with new information, critiques, in-depth discussions, and the careful study of the actual manuscript, we all returned home to continue our work. As planned, we held a public conference in December 2005 to report our findings, to which we invited a number of outside experts to examine the text pages on our working website, review our penultimate drafts, and provide feedback and comments before we completed the work.9 This intense two-day conference was immensely helpful, and we revised our work in light of these outside critiques.
All of us who worked on this project agree on one thing: that our work represents the first word about this important codex, but by no means the last. Our belief is that the availability of a facsimile edition—including a transcription and English translation with extensive notes and indexes and a supplemental volume of studies—provides what is needed for extensive further study and use in the world of scholarship, as well as in educational settings. What is eminently clear is that such a complicated task involving an international team of scholars could never have been carried out at all without the support of the granting agencies and, crucially, that of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology—nor could MIT Press have undertaken the publication of such a complicated and costly work without the support of the Institute. Miraculously, or at least at times so it seems, the book of a low-born and brilliant mariner, a book closely held by private collectors for more than 500 years, has finally made its way into the public arena.
1. The second of Michael’s two books is a manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice and is published in an edition with one Pietro de Versi named as the author. See Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ms. Ital., cl. IV, cod. 170 = 5379; and Pietro di Versi, Raxion de’ marineri: Taccuino nautico del XV secolo, ed. Annalisa Conterio (Venice, 1991).
2. The edition includes a facsimile (vol. 1), a transcription and English translation (vol. 2), and a volume of studies (vol. 3): The Book of Michael of Rhodes: A Fifteenth-Century Maritime Manuscript, ed. Pamela O. Long, David McGee, and Alan M. Stahl (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009). The Michael of Rhodes website is hosted by the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, Italy, and can be found at http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/michaelofrhodes/index.html (accessed September 9, 2008).
3. Sotheby’s, London, Catalogue of Important Western and Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures, 11 July 1966, Lot 254. Auction catalog entry by Andreas Mayer (London, 1966), 89–93.
4. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ms. Magliabechiano, cl. XIX, cod. 7 (Fabrica di galere, ca. 1510); and August in Jal, “Mémoire no. 5,” in Jal, Archéologie navale (Paris, 1840), 2:1–133.
5. The Dibner Institute closed its doors in 2006. However, the Burndy Library remains intact and is now housed in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
6. David McGee is now manager of library and information systems at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. Alan M. Stahl is curator of numismatics at the Firestone Library at Princeton University and holds a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
7. In addition to the three codirectors, the team included: Dieter Blume, professor of medieval art history at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany; Mauro Bondioli, a leading authority on early Venetian and European shipbuilding; Piero Falchetta, curator of maps and special projects at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice; Raffaella Franci, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Siena; Franco Rossi, paleographer, vice-director of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, and director of the Archivio di Stato di Treviso; and Faith Wallis, professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University and an authority on medieval chronology, calendars, and medicine.
8. In addition to support from the Dibner Institute, the Burndy Library, and the Dibner Foundation, the project was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant no. RZ-50047-03), the National Science Foundation (Grant SES no. 0322627), and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
9. The invited scholars included: Patricia Fortini Brown, John Dotson, Paolo Galluzzi, Matthew Harpster, Alan Hartley, David Jacoby, Brad Loewen, John Jeffries Martin, John Pryor, Dennis Romano, Pamela H. Smith, Peter Spufford, Glen Van Brummelen, Warren Van Egmond, Filipe Vieira de Castro, and Diana Gilliland Wright.
Copyright© 2009, the Society for the History of Technology
Filed under: Vol. 50 No. 1 (January 2009)
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