A few years earlier Adelard of Bath had inveighed against a generation that considered acceptable only the discoveries made by the ancients, and in the coming century Siger of Brabant will declare that auctoritas by itself is not enough, because we are all men exactly like those we are inspired by, and therefore “why should we not devote ourselves to rational research like them?” (Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli 1987: 232). We are clearly on the threshold of modernity. But we have a long way to go as far as the concept of originality and the neurosis of plagiarism are concerned.
5.7. Tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus
The Middle Ages copied without acknowledgment because that was the way it was done and ought to be done. What’s more, a notion akin to that contained in the aphorism was anticipated by Augustine and developed by Roger Bacon, when he said that if we find good ideas in pagan texts we are entitled to appropriate them as ours “tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus,” (“as it were from unjust possessors”) because, if the ideas are true, then Christian culture has every right to them. This explains why medieval notions of forgery and what is fake are very different from our own.
True, the falsification of auctoritates is an act of critical freedom that reaffirms the principle of discovery against every kind of dogmatic constraint. But this liberation is obtained at the expense of what we would define today as “philological correctness.” If the dwarf is to see further than the giant he can and must adjust the giant’s thought to show that innovation does not contradict tradition. Non nova sed nove (“Not new things, but in a new way”). This is why medieval culture could not avoid a casual approach to philology.
Let us close with a significant example. Thomas’s choice of translations seems never to be inspired by philological considerations. His commentary on the De interpretatione follows the translation by Boethius, despite the fact that he already had William of Moerbeke’s new version available to him, and without realizing that Boethius was guilty of a misreading of considerable interpretive importance. In De interpretatione 16a Aristotle says that words are symbola of the passions of the soul, but shortly thereafter he adds that they can also be taken as semeia of the same passions, and hence as symptoms. The passage can be explained as meaning that words are conventional symbols, but they may also be interpreted as symptoms of the fact that the speaker has something on his or her mind. As we already saw in Chapter 4 on the barking of the dog, Boethius translates both Greek terms with nota (a fairly vague multipurpose expression), which leads Thomas to interpret both cases with the word signum—a choice that seriously compromises a correct reading of the text.
But note what happens with Roger Bacon, who was so convinced that, in order to snatch the truth from the infidel, “tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus,” we have to know languages, to be able to check the translations—an ideal shared by Robert Grosseteste and in general by the Oxford Franciscans (“Cum ignorat linguas non est possibile quod aliquid sciat magnificum, propter rationes quam scribo, de linguarum cognitione,” Opus Minus, p. 327). Bacon knows Greek and perhaps he realizes Boethius’s error. But even after realizing it, for reasons that have to do with his own theory of signs, he continues to see the relationship between words and things as purely symptomatic, as if Aristotle had used the term semeion in both instances (De signis, V, 166).
Bacon is aware that a translation Ob is not the equivalent of the original Oa, but he has no qualms in transforming Oa into a third text that simply turns Ob upside down. He certainly acted without any clear intention to deceive, and felt authorized to do what he did because he was convinced that in so doing he was better serving the interests of truth. But the truth was his truth, not the truth of the original text.
It is episodes like this that lead us to conclude that, though there were forgeries in the Middle Ages, what was missing was the awareness of forgery. Medieval notions of true and false attribution and manipulation of a text were not the same as ours.
5.8. Conclusions
We could say, as tradition has it, that the new philological awareness begins with Petrarch, and subsequently with Lorenzo Valla. But the fact that this awareness surfaced does not mean that European culture changed its attitude toward its sources overnight. The proof, furnished by Casaubon, of the Hellenistic origins of the Corpus Hermeticum appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but even afterward, and for a considerable length of time, most of European culture continued to believe in the text’s antiquity.
We would be better advised to reflect on the regeneration of the processes of falsification in the contemporary world. Setting aside the fabricators who continue to repeat the time-honored counterfeiting techniques (false attributions, fake genealogical tables, copies of paintings), we find ourselves faced, in the political universe and in the mass media, with a new form of falsification. Not only do we have false information, but also apocryphal documents, placed in circulation by a secret service or a government or an industrial group, and leaked to the media, in order to create social turmoil, confusion in public opinion. We speak of “false information,” without appealing to epistemological considerations, because the news is bound to be discovered as false sooner or later. Indeed we might say that it is disseminated as true precisely in order for it to be revealed as false a little time later.
Its purpose in fact is not to create a false belief but to undermine established beliefs and convictions. It serves to destabilize, to throw suspicion upon powers and counterpowers alike, to make us distrust our sources, to sow confusion.
We conclude then that the people of the Middle Ages falsified in order to confirm their faith in something (an author, an institution, a current of thought, a theological truth) and to uphold an order, whereas our contemporaries falsify in order to create distrust and disorder. Our philological age can no longer permit itself falsifications that present themselves as truths because it knows they will be unveiled in no time; and it operates instead by spreading falsifications that have no fear of philological examination, because they are destined to be unmasked immediately. We are not dealing with an isolated fake that masks, hides, and confuses, and to that end endeavors to seem “true.” It is the quantity of falsifications recognizable as such that functions as a mask, because it tends to undermine the reliability of all truth.
We do not know how the people of the Middle Ages, with their ingenuous concept of authenticity, would have judged this brash and cynical concept we have of noningenuous falsification. One thing is for sure: no historical period has the right to moralize about any other.
A revised version of “Tipologia della falsificazione” [“A Typology of Forgery”], in Setz (1988), originally given at the Internationaler Kongress der MGH, Munich, September 16–19, 1986. My theoretical (rather than historical) essay, “Falsi e contraffazioni,” was developed on the basis of this publication (see Eco 1990a). [Translator’s note: Relevant also is Eco’s entry (published in English) “Fakes in Arts and Crafts” in Eco 2004c (4:3571–3580).
- Equally unsatisfactory are the German definitions in the Brockhaus Enziklopädie (1968) (“Zweck vorgenommene Nachbildung, Veränderung oder historisch irrefhrende Gestaltung eines Gegenstandes (hierzu Tafeln), eines Kunstwerkes, eines literar. Denckmals, einer Unterschrift usf.”) or the Meyers Grosses Universal Lexikon (“der Herstellen eines unechten Gegenstandes oder das Verändern eines echten Gegenstandes zur Tauschung im Rechtverkehr—dadegen Imitation”). The following definitions are from the standard Italian dictionary of Nicola Zingarelli (Vocabolario della lingua italiana). “Falso … A agg.:… 2 Che è stato contraffatto, alterato con intenzione dolosa … SIN. Truccato. CONTR. Autentico.… 4 Che non è ciò di cui ha l’apparenza … SIN. Illusorio.… B s. m.… 3 Falsificazione, falsità … 4 Opera d’arte, francobollo, documento e sim. contraffatto.” “Falsificare … Contraffare, deformare, alterare con l’intenzione e la consapevolezza di commettere un reato.” “Falsificazione … 1 Atto, effetto del falsificare … SIN. Alterazione, contraffazione. 2 Documento o atto artificiosamente prodotto per sostutuire un originale perduto o guasto o per creare testimonianza dolosa.” “Contraffare … 2 Alterare la voce, l’aspetto e sim., spec. per trarre in inganno … 3 Falsificare.” “Facsimile … 1
Riproduzione esatta, nella forma della scrittura e in ogni particolare, di scritto, stampa, incisione, firma. 2 fig. Persona o cosa assai simile a un’altra.” “Pseudo- … primo elemento … che, in parole composte della terminologia dotta e scientifica, significa genericamente ‘falso’… In vari casi indica analogia esteriore, qualità apparente, semplice somiglianza puramente estrinseca, o qualche affinità con quanto designato dal secondo componente.” “Spurio … 1 Illegitimo … 2 Privo di genuinità, di autenticità.” “Apocrifo … 2 Detto di testo, spec. letterario, falsamente attribuito a un’epoica o a un autore. SIN. Spurio.”
- See also Haywood (1987: 10–18).
- For the terminology of this section see the chapter “Theory of Sign Production” in Eco (1979b).
- Often a minimal material or formal variant serves to characterize the object as a unicum: two dollar bills of the same value are doubles as far as their use goes, but not from the bank’s point of view, since their serial numbers are different. Even in
