Michael of Rhodes

This medieval mariner left a manuscript that made him famous.

Michael of Rhodes

You can see in Amazon a book about him and his book, written by Pamela O. Long. 

From her paper we read:

"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."

"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."

"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."


Amazing, and fascinating!