 I'm going to welcome you to MSU Library's Child and Salmoned lecture. We do this as a public lecture for you, as you know. I'm Tamara Miller, dean of the library. And this series of lectures is offered to you through the generosity of a number of donors who choose to remain anonymous. So I won't bother embarrassing you. They know who they are. The Bud, the Lake Trout and Salmoned initiative supports these lectures and also a collection, I should say a preeminent collection, of manuscripts, books, now almost 8,000 volumes or more, on all aspects of the study and enjoyment of travel. This was the brainchild of the former dean, Emeritus Bruce Morton, who is with us tonight. And I encourage all of you, if you have not done so, to come to the library, visit the collection, use the collection. The initiative honors Bud Lilly, some of you may know Bud, who couldn't be with us this evening. But Bud has been a tireless supporter of the library and the collection. And as many of you know, he is an advocate and friend of trout and the preservation of their waters. This evening's lecture will be followed by a reception, which you all walk and pass, including trout cookies on my dad. As well as I think something called salmon chateau wine. And we encourage you to stick around after the lecture, enjoy the refreshments and continue the conversation. Tomorrow we will have an informal gathering with Dr. Hoffman in the library for students. So those students among us here tonight are going to invite your friends 10 o'clock in the Special Collections Reading Room. And as an enticement, light refreshments will also be offered there. I want to take a moment to thank the people who make this possible. This event is the result of some hard work by Robin Francis, Pamela Schultz, Sandra Feidey, Patricia Eason, and Michael Hodges, all of the library staff. So thank you very much. I especially want to thank Paul Schiller. Paul is a noted historian, the author of many books. And we are honored in the library to have him as our very first and only scholar in residence. Paul's roles are many, but he is invaluable to us in growing and improving our Yellowstone collections and our proud Salmona collection. So I invite Paul to the podium to introduce our speaker. I just noticed that Richard's talk is right here and just tempts you. Thank you, Cameron. This is a real treat. It's great to see Richard here and it's really my honor to get to introduce him. I'm going to try not to repeat what your program already tells you about Richard. He earned his PhD in medieval studies at Yale in 1970 and began his career-long association with York University in Toronto, where he is now a professor emeritus and senior scholar in the Department of History. He's also a continuing member of the Graduate Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Richard's work, I have to just sort of reinforce some things that are in the little description on the program. Richard's work as a medievalist has ranged broadly across intellectual, economic and ecological realms better to understand the human relationship with this very use of thing we call nature. And what a wealth of information and ideas he's delivered in the interdisciplinary portrayals of how even a thousand years ago in Europe we began to overhaul entire continental ecosystems with dramatic and complex consequences that we still struggle to comprehend. Among many other projects, Richard is currently completing an environmental history in medieval Europe to be published by Cambridge University Press. Among the honors that Richard has accumulated for this extraordinary body of work are the Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, a York University Dean's Award for Outstanding Contributions in Teaching and Herbert Baxter Adams Prize awarded by the American Historical Association. But what matters for fishermen, especially the fishermen among us here tonight, is Richard's service to the study of angling history. In the past 30 years, almost as a sideline to his major work in environmental history, Richard has produced a milestone series of articles and book chapters and most remarkable book that have done more to shape our understanding of the cultural origins of our sport than anyone else ever. When we try to put Richard in perspective this way, on those treasure shells of the Trout and Salmon collection that Tamara mentioned, there are thousands of splendid books about fish and fishing, including some of mine that I'd like to think are fairly splendid, but only a small, very small handful of these texts exemplify the most rarefied level of very addition. That finest above and beyond level of scholarship that comes along so rarely. I have, in my own personal mental list, I have four titles of that quality. I waffle about others, but there are four that I'm sure of. The first is Thomas Westwood and Thomas Satchel's Magnificent Bibliotheca Piscatoria. Richard's really good at Latin if you want to hear that said there. It was published in London in 1883. The second is William Radcliffe's Fishing from the Earliest Times, published in London in 1921. The third is John McDonald's The Origins of Angling, published in New York in 1963. And the fourth is Richard Hoffman's Fisher's Craft and Letter of Art. And I have to note here it says, wait a book around. It's a visual thing. Which was published in Toronto in 1997. Of these four, Richard's is by far the best model for the student who wishes to learn how to think and write deeply, creatively and importantly about fishing is a vital element of human culture. So please join me in welcoming tonight's buddhilly, proud and salmone lecture, Dr. Richard Hoffman. I think Tamara Miller, Paul Schillery, Tamara's staff and the buddhilly chair of the proud and salmone bibliography. For this opportunity to revisit with you some puzzles left unresolved in my earlier work on the history of Angling. This I do now in light of more general research into how our creative European ancestors, predecessors, have operated in their natural world, and especially with aquatic ecosystems. Shio Natterlander, with a feather on her feet, Ashen and Ferchen, he will see it last. Shio Natterlander, fisher with him on her feet, Da erspont o ozen blanken benen, Dorth die kühle in lütersnillen Barthe. About 12, 17, and 12, 20 years era. Epic poet Paul von von Feschen Bar, depicted a fictive noble youth. Shio Natterlander, a sign of the Grail dynasty, on an outing with his girlfriend, Siebunen, cousin to King Arthur. While she sat on the bank, reading and playing with a dog, he waited bare-legged in a cool, clear stream to catch trout and grailing with a feather on her, medieval term for an artificial fly. This may be the oldest depiction of a leisure, fly-fisher catching trout. The scene of Shio Natterlander pangolin poses a curious historical problem of understanding, not in our terms, which is deceptively easy, but in terms of medieval culture, the evolving behaviors and ideas of Europeans between the 6th and the 16th centuries. What is going on here? In shaping an answer, we start from three essential components, fly, play, trout, and then move out to the broader histories of medieval fisheries and concepts of outdoor sport. I want there to observe two historic phenomena. How the knowledge of the natural world embodied in Shio Natterlander's fishing drew on now nearly a face traditional experience of nature by people who fished for a living as work. And secondly, I want to see how in last medieval centuries some selected parts of this knowledge began to be moved from storage and memories and transmission by voice to texts, written, soon printed, meant-to-define play. Of the fly, we can say nothing for much of our millennial period, as no known mention of soul fishing occurs in the thousand years after Roman essayist alien circa 172-30 current era who provided a now well-known but unique hearsay description of Macedonians binding red wool and wax-colored feathers to a hook to catch speckled fish that were eating a certain insect. Then, a thousand years after that, a full-from-sudden portrayal of the sporting young fly fishery of Shio Natterlander and that same author's initiated the slow rise of medieval references to fly fishing. From then on, the artificial flying had been thought a reasonably well-documented practice for catching trout and gravid in at least four European regions up in Central Europe, England, Northern Italy, and Spain. Medieval fly fishing in Central Europe is next after full-from, so far traceable through passing references in legal and political records, such as the Right Confirmed in 1360 to a household in Koppel in Lombach of the Trout in Upper Austria to fish with the fly even outside their regular license of the local abbey's waters. A political tract falsely attributed to the late Holy Roman Emperor Cikismund circulated in 1439 at the reformist church council of Basel. It called for free access to small waters for passage and poor fishing with the fader on it. When I told the legal historian who ferried it out these references argues, I think, cogitly that fly fishing was here understood as the ultimate right of access for common people to fish to their lord's private water or a subsistence meal. But some later ordinances of Swiss and Austrian origin also put the artificial fly in the repertoire of people making a living from fishing. Since the 1490s, moreover, the collections of fish-catching advice include recipes for making fader as well as other kinds of baits. Within a century, those German sources now know provide nearly a hundred different fly patterns and even explicit statements of imitative theory. Pioneering Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner reported in two passages of his 1558 Latin body month fishes what he had found in a sadly now lost German manuscript booklet. Certainly skillful fishers, said Gessner, fabricate diverse kinds of worms and lead insects from feathers of birds in various seasons of the year and place such bait on the hook for grilling. And trout, they received chiefly by sentences placed on the hook, which very nearly recall was flies or insects in which all fish take delight. They are however changed for the various seasons of the year. The booklet offers six flies of the month covering April through September for each of the two species. Unlike the German, the next oldest run of evidence for medieval fly fishing, that in English, comes exclusively from such manuscript and eventually printed advice with the late 15th century date. Besides various natural repair and magical baits for trout and other species, a trout called Menachina Piscule in Medicine's Proficiency on an Oxford bodily manuscript anticipates the thinking of Gessner's booklet. And if he fished for him in the leaping time, he must double your hook with the feathers of a pig hook or with the feathers of a parrot rich or with the feathers of a wild dog. And he must look what color that the fly has that he probably left the leaping after. And the same color must the feathers be and the same color must the silk be of what to bend the feathers to your hook. Similar views are differently expressed in the currently contemporary tract in British Library Manager, currently 2389. Like others without fly fishing, these mid-century English tracts are both older and independent of other English textual traditions which eventuate in the well-known anonymous treatise The Fishing with an Angle, printed by Wink into Bird in 1496. The dozen named Paddersford Dubs there, recommended for trout and fraily, not to point out found in earlier manuscripts, remained until 1620 the last new English references to the artificial plot. While modern ethnography makes a long tradition of indigenous fly fishing in northern Italy, highly likely, just across the Alps from the lands of the Federone, neither records for practice nor manuals of advice establishes its medieval historicity. This rests for now on a single work of art, a triptych altarpiece, Jacopo de Bazzano, painted for the parish church of Borgo Delta Rapa near Treviso in the Veneto in 1538. A terrible photo of that killer print. Sorry, we're still trying to get into this church. The later well-known Venetian artist was reared and trained and still lived in nearby Bazzano, the town of the Galicia Alta and Federera Beretta. One panel of his altarpiece depicts San Zeno, a late Roman missionary and bishop of Verona. Because a part of Zeno's subsequent legend he had to catch fish to feed the poor, his late medieval iconography customarily shows him with a fish as a professional staff. Jacopo, however, whose realism is commonly acknowledged, depicted the saint in full pontificals holding a long thin rod with a line from which dangled three artificial flies, one with a grayling still attached. You can see the grayling. The flies are almost impossible to see, but the people who actually worked on this really is there. Sadly, the well-known lack of Italian scholarship in medieval early modern rural life means no one will be able to make a living of the historical legal records or manuscript collections for traces of the same sort of evidence we have from England and the German-speaking lands. Somebody could do that, be a really neat Renaissance history project. Finally, what was plainly a well-established Spanish tradition for fly fishing for trout, burst into the historical record with Fernando Bassoff with Dio Molo, a literary discussion between a noble hunter and a commoner in the ecological and cultural aspects of Bassoff's work elsewhere, my concern at the moment is simply his clear portrayal of fly fishing for trout. Having in the practical section of the dialogue treated tackle baits and other species. The fisher tells how he had caught trout using natural insects and then goes on to their imitations in translation I'm quoting. The feather of the capon or dock of another bird called a boonyow is a very excellent bait for trout in the months between April, May, June, July and August in clear water and swift streams. But note that the feather by itself is worth nothing. If it is not tied to the bottom of some flies made of the same color or silk, at times yellow, at times brown, at other times black, because these are the colors of the same flies that the trout eat in the streams evening and morning. And you should know that in different months there are different flies in the streams. And to find out in those rivers where the right trout, you must put yourself on a stream and look at the color of the flies and flies there and take it alive. With the feather one was fished as I said in swift streams without lead and without float, but with the feathers alone throwing down the stream and going up the stream with reasonable speed. So the feather goes to the top of the water, the upper part of the stream for in such an manner the trout eat real flies and so we fool them with artificial ones. And that's wuzkas artificialus. I mean there's a way to talk about it. In a technical sense this considerable medieval record of fly fishing established in three and perhaps four European linguistic cultures, thus achieves its epitome in these explicit and independent statements of imitative theory found in Medici Napiscian in parly 2389 and the printed books Laipas Orgo and Yesen. Nothing in that record however ever offers fly fishing as a novelty or invention. On more than purely literary grounds then we may surmise that the technique practiced by Geo Nautilander was known to at least some early 13th century audiences. But I think yes fishing as a recreational activity, one being practiced by individuals who like Geo Nautilander plainly did not need to fish for a living as a broader of obscurity collected history throughout the corally documented centuries before and the ever better reported ones after 12 1. Emperor Louis the Pipe, son of Charlemagne, set aside governmental affairs in summer of 831 and again 834 to enjoy hunting and fishing around Remiremon in the Beauge. A fairy tale prince broadly, whose romance survives only in mid-11th century fragrance, twice went with friends to a lake to go fishing 4.1. Ludoth aqua yocarentor, those are the words for play. The later fictive characters caught their fish with a seemingly magical powder called bugroza, but in fact well recorded for an herb with chemical properties paralyzing the fish. A real mid-12th century young noble the perhaps reluctant cleric D. of Bazouche, wrote home to his mother that he was dedicated to his games and studies in Paris at Pro-University. It was somewhat later that he wrote to friends that having left Paris through the scandal, he had just spent more than a year at his uncle's small world castle near Ruecky where he alternated devotion to his studies with what he calls play in the out-of-doors at library games namely hunting, following and fishing. When the season is right he pleases quote to fool fishes by various means. He used hook and line nets of the sea to take several local fish varieties and so refresh a mind weary from the world and intellectual effort. You can skip over some other high medieval aimers and point out that by the late 1300s an association of fishing with the elite court society on the continent, oh, sorry, this is more as the temporary was with D. de Bazouche. Funny little man, little gloss of the manuscript. By the late 1300s an association of fishing with the elite court society on the continent is further visible in the predictions and reports of high-ranking actual high-ranking men and women enjoying the activity. Sketches in palace murals dating between the 1360s and 1410s some of them no longer extant in Verona, the castle at Pavia and a castle Rompolo which is near Bozzano in the south Tyrol. Show men and women in their own costume angling and catching fish in nets. So did a tapestry commissioned in 1402 by Queen Isabel at the helm cleaning of the Court of Holland on the Eamland outing. The Queen Dowager of Argonne fished for shed at Tortusa in 1382 and as a Donia Blanca in front of Navarre traveled to Valladolid in 1440 to wet the air to the throne of Castile, the Count of Tyrol entertained her for three days with jousting, hunting and fishing in a pond he had specially stopped with large and marble former pleasure. Exceeding all of the aforementioned both global rank and enthusiasm for fishing was the Emperor Maximilian I, 1493-1519. Concerned for the aquatic resources of his lands, in 1504 he instructed his hunting office to assemble reports of his fishmeister marking trips to compile a fisheries boat for Tyrol and Lorenzo so he could evaluate both such fisheries regarding use and pleasure. The finished product was organized by reagents of Bottas of Water and embellished with six illustrious scenes of Max and his court hunting and fishing. Each of the many entries identifies the fisheries available in the water and indicates whether it might better serve the Emperor's table or his pleasure. The lake at Ambras, with its pipe, carp, brim and inch, was mustinger merrier because its vicinity residents meant it could be fished with a net it's a pastime while you were hunting deer it's an original cat for blast. The heather spot had eased by Rinn Poe has good trout and the Prince may have funded their fishing with a small hand net and an angling rod. Tyrolian officials plainly thought their ruler would enjoy fishing with everything from sails and traps to rod and line and for species from gudgeon and minnow to a grayling trout and pike. Angling however is mentioned only as a means to preserve lust. Courtiers shown with rod and hand wave it over the water without weight on the line as speckled fish leap about. Maximilian further displayed his own lust for fishing in his autobiographical Vice-Colonial where Woodcutt's stushly commission for his personal copy show the Emperor Angling in the midst of other fishing activities. Maximilian, she another lunder and some other nobles may have enjoyed catching trout and other fishes but many other medieval Europeans also had some familiarity with this particular fish. Present day taxonomists endlessly debate the lumping resplendent of the many highly variable and diverse European members of genus Salvo Nassar as today speakers of medieval vernaculars confronted with swatted torpedo shaped fresh water which is employed at Nors sub-period on the local word for trout. We shall here do the same. The bigger ones are the three key sub-species of Salvo Trota, the sea trout the brook trout as the Germans would call them and the lake trout, the the others are some important other sub-species and particularly call attention to the Salvo or not your right which is Salvo Trota Carpena which is indigenous only to Lake Garda in northern Italy but it's going to become part of our story later on. It's worth noting that for early medieval texts rarely differentiate among generic Pisces in this insouciance of biodiversity could long linger. Nevertheless we can quickly illustrate the broad utilitarian utilitarian categories of food objects, economic resources and rare rooted references of what they call the trout. Medieval Europeans ate trout all across the fish's wide range. Trout bones occur when the food remains and food wastes, fish remains and food wastes from sites of early and central medieval date in northern Italy along the southern Baltic coast in the Tintorland, northwestern France at the Pluniac Abbey in La Chèrette-sur-Guard central England and several monastic and lay sites in Ireland even from the 13th to the 15th centuries on which less than two archaeologists have been done, trout remains have turned up in latrines of castles from English county Durham to the Danube of Vienna and urban sites from Otranto on Italy's hill to Orléans in central France. This is despite the elevated vet content of salmone bones which reduces their survival in most archaeological context and secondly the difficulty of salmone bones to the specific level which inclines archaeologists just to label large specimens salmon and small ones trout. When they get in central Europe where there's no salmon there are probably people in the state who decide not to get brought up. Written records agree for instance as early as the 6th century a great trained physician was advising the Frankish king Tudorik that trout and perch were the fishes most suitable for human food. The king Tudorik was a young soldier who in 1395 prepared for his young wife the home-making menu called the Menagerie de Paris included a buying guide and recipe for trout. Trouts. Their season begins in May correction their season is from March until September but white ones are good in winter they're red in summer the best of the trout is the tail and of the carp is the head there are plenty of red wine which ought to be eaten with camalina which is a spicy sauce and served in portions of two-finger sauce on meat days served trout as pate on large trips of bacon sounds very good knowledge of trout is a resource to be exploited and protected is implicit in the estate survey in 862 for the monastery of Bobio which received rent payments and trout yield from fishery in Lake Garda Garda had been famous for Roman times for large endemic lake well in Carpione sometimes called Salmo Grotta Carpio if you get Italian Carpione they aren't carp they're lake well in specific trouts Bobio had been coming in his rents in 862 probably for a thousand years there the right of ordinary citizens to catch trout in particular was guaranteed at several 11th 13th century royal charters for self-powering communes in northern Castile special but plainly also pragmatic appreciator of this distinctive animal comes through a Florentine Statute to 1450 restricting fishing in the Cosantino Mountain District southeast of the city where in the rivers and waters there present are procreated inmate those fish which are called trout deck and truly noble fishes they are it will perplex only those unfamiliar with the curious gap between the medieval experience of the natural world in the writing of many medieval intellectuals to observe the learning references to trout are not rare we have little to say early companion of natural history offer only a homological and palachorical and dietary remarks even in the 13th century Dominican theologian and Christianarist and human and natural philosopher Alfred the Great whose section on fishes in his circa 1260 encyclopedic De Animali was on animals and finds classical references and acute observation of more than 100 aquatic creatures still some disappoints the trout hunter True tide are river fish living in the fast caves in the mountains they have scales in reddish flesh in summer like the salmon but are in winter white and less tasty on the back are yellow, red and black spots not wrong in certain fields we must await the pioneering theologist of the early 16th century Conrad Gessner among them for thorough discussion of the biological as well as cultural features of European fishes nevertheless it is plain that for more than a millennium diverse Europeans were well aware of trout as one sort of fish dwelling in certain habitats in subject to human capture and consumption so how did these three widespread if sparsely recorded traditions knowledge of an aquatic creature a form of social play and a peculiar capture technique co-exist and connect immediately European country the rest of this talk will try to establish some links first a brief narrative of evolving immediately European fisheries will reveal people whose work in the natural world will generate deep familiarity with local aquatic life trout included in ways to capture them then I'll discuss how the traditional knowledge those people one possessed flowed into an evolving concept of sport among medieval literate elites I'll not hear it now on how the practice he worked in western Christianity would forbid consumption of meat on a weekly and seasonal basis about 135 days 35% of the year but permitted fish as a meat substitute this custom shaped regular and patterned consumption of fish by all who could afford it the archeological written record confirms medieval Europeans ate fish throughout with locally available varieties meaning overwhelmingly fresh water and diagram species dominant everywhere into the 11th century and thereafter peace field increase in consumption of marine fishes in durably preserved form where possible however everyone always preferred fresh fish and for most of that meant those like trout taken in local fresh water changing medieval patterns of effective demand for fish motivated three successive institutional forms of fisheries subsistence, small scale artisanal and later of our scale commercial while the land revolved in a marine environment irrelevant to our present discussion subsistence in artisanal fisheries where the primary modes of exploitation on inland waters inhabited by trout with another fresh water species their growth occurred within a larger pattern of medieval socio-economic development in the earlier Middle Ages into the 12th, 13th centuries subsistence fisheries predominated and some remained locally important well into modern times the subsistence fishery the catch fed the household of the fishery whether he was his patriarchal head we call that direct subsistence or a servant supplying a larger establishment in direct subsistence records of fishing activities of fishes consumed indicate that fishing for the consuming household exploited local waters and fish populations everywhere direct subsistence fishing was a part time seasonal activity of peasant households and communities who had access and not always formerly legal to local aquatic resources indirect subsistence fed locally deep households of the Lord's resources increasingly conceived as his property using the labor of subordinates whether servile peasants or household servants fishing part time or full time specialist fishers what we can learn about subsistence fisheries of both types establishes their deep empirical familiarity with local organisms ecosystems a direct subsistence fishery was for example practiced by households in an early 11th century settlement of peasant knights on lapoledrudes in the Alps north of granola this lake contained and contains trout and char as well as secretance perch and plank annual rings and scales and vertebrae recovered from middens by apple the fish in the 11th century were taken in spring and about a third of them in full and a welcome surprise by recorded archaeologists also found bronze hooks, mercury spears and cork floats plus stone and ceramic weights for nets so wide choice of equipment for different situations patrons say heavy and each century foundation in the Bavarian Alps acquired by 1291 full orchard and the entire fishing rights over the 72 meter deep 3 by 7 kilometer dimensions lake its tributaries and its helpers already in the 11th century and still in the 15th and 16th they have employed a half dozen full-time fishers to fish the lake for a lake trout, now that's safer now it's the lake well in ground white fishes and supernates using boats and various specialized nets and traps those fishers knew in December and January for instance how to find the schools of white fishes spawning at certain bottom locations in 10 to 20 meter depths and these guys don't have depth finders other subjects who paid a license fee could go catch crayfish trout at Sculpin and sell them to the monastery at set prices 100 trout ankle from Brooks received 34 corks or in four loaves of abbey bread 100 from the large amongthall river earned 43 corks and 4 breads any fish longer than a 4-hour had to be offered for sale to the monks who for trout, pike, grayling hook and more barbel paid 4 corks of the pellet one record from the economic manager's office indicates where the trout were thought best around Witsundee which almost always falls in May when certain flowers bloomed and long bugs appeared in the lake the term is longamooka that translates as long bugs when the right bugs are in the surface that's when you go after the trout the trout started to spawn around St. Bartolomew late August and remained in Brooks up to martini it's the end of November abbey officials heavily finding people from villages in the next valley who covertly crossed the poach lake trout that were spawning in upper reaches in the main tributary I mean and these are fish like that there's a lot of stuff that's no whiter than this it's only about that deep in August that you can see so these guys people went into the spears to cook abbey didn't like that at all management clerks also complied likely between 1497 and 1505 a book of fishing advice which contained besides many recipes for natural and prepared base baits paste baits for local fishes more than 50 patterns for a fader arm about in the 10th century records from several European regions also began to show people catching fish for sale to nearby consumers so practicing the kind of small scale commercial fishing we known called artisans local markets for fish were integral in the often precocious element in the early rise of exchange sector which expanded during the left in 12 centuries artisan fishers first appeared in the coastal sites with access to consuming centers especially emerging towns such as Ravenna Lincoln or Worms from their people described as making their living from fishing spread to lesser places well documented later cases confirmed that especially specialist providers indirect subsistence to wards found other people prepared to pay for fish to wards thought surplus financial consumers of cash in their purses were mainly townsfolk not farmers artisan fishing was one household enterprise among others rarely the predominant speciality of whole settlements like subsistence fishers artisans targeted familiar local fish varieties with their selection from a common inventory of basic capture techniques from small scale baited hooks or pot gear oops ah two large rears and cruise served nets big seasonal captains they kept alive in tanks cages or ponds or preserved with simple short run methods both groups likewise remained subject to constraints from any ward and or their community village bylaws regulated access to aquatic as the other commons and often for bad sale outside the community or at least insured first refusal rights for local consumers early on professional fishers from the counter region formed as the other crafts associations of mutual interest it was the collective corporation of fishers who negotiated in 943 with the Bishop of Ravenna a monopoly on market access and so to all the fishers of war who in 1106 provided whole salmon each year to the bishop and count in return for control over that fish market such kills then regulated themselves under municipal or territorial authority fishers had tuned on the Danube for instance could each employ only one helper and had each Christmas to declare for the coming year whether they would fish or they'd say a trap net or open what the 32 fishmeister on the lower crown themselves declared their ordinances in 1418 including a ban on taking small pike hook and hook between 24 April and the 13th of October like subsistence fishing artists who had supplied markets provided fresh catches from nearby waters that only slowly also animals taken in more distant times or places but even well into the 1200s the trial area of Sargene's kept to eat later mostly came for fishers home waters and were consumed in quantity only if you swore a lot of words away the learned villanese Juan de la Riva wrote to praise his think of city he remarked how fishers in the area who specialized in lake, river or stream fishing brought to its market every manner of fish trouts, lake trouts, chub, kinch, grayling, eel and lempre while crayfish were especially appreciated during lent other fishers eventually did reach markets across wider spaces as the marine varieties which fast tech trade relays got from Norman ports to 13th century Paris in some 36 to 48 hours farther than that roughly 150 kilometers however pre-industrial tech knowledge could not move a fresh product slow boats very grind-carrying, dry caught or barreled sound salmon up the scent to the Paris market city fishwangers typically organized such transport to pool regional catches and balance seasonal abundances of different varieties many also maintained live storage facilities and some helped capitalize fishers by advance purchase of their catches MSU Library Salmon collection has recently acquired an early addition of the booklet on roman fishes de romanes pisquipos tiberos where in humanist physician Paolo Jovio described the fish market among the 43 varieties available fresh Jovio provides air-dive knowledge of ancient salmon ancient admiration for trout in a remarks of the diverse phenotypes that were present in his own time this kind of speckles, that kind of spots that sort of stuff those trout came salted too among which the more discerning pellet especially enjoyed in Cartagena from Lake Garda processed in the open air and once man's fishes have markings and taste but no known habits habitat or means of capture they come in the market and above them over time increases in human numbers and economic development changed parameters for medieval relations with aquatic systems purposeful and unintended anthropogenic pressures and water quality and bio-diversity and people cleared woodlands for permanent arable fields of large areas of Europe they destabilized many hydraulic regimes about 1300 an acute Alsatian chronicler commented on the appearance within his own lifetime of more erratic seasonal stream flow in the board barrier dams built to drive water mills on lower order streams fragmented riverine habitats contemporaries observed by other fishers in Atlantic Seven Rivers and elsewhere as for example the River Sarka in 1210 where most likely trout or shad were being barred access by dams from Lake Garda and the local com-ordered there accelerated erosion salutation episodes coincided with phases of regional arable expansion self-sufficiency changes and land use are visible from Europe and France eastward to Poland so dense many urban populations can be detected archeologically on the boat side beside Lake Medieval Places contemporary observers in the low countries, in Tuscany and in Central Europe blame fish kills on toxic effulents from for instance processing camping flags or washing metallic ores while such insults harm natural productivity rising human numbers and wealth increased pressures of demand though fish never provided cheap calories rising prices indicated demand in excess of traditional supply and motivated both more fishing effort and competitive conflicts over resource access keep filled before the fraps of 1289 bemoaned the depletion of each and every river and water side of our realm large and small while the best independent confirmations of the King's diagnosis refer to anadromous and estuarine salmon sturgeon some local populations of the more widespread trout also suffered the rich resources the Pitten's Govers others ate high in the Salzburg Alps attracted a group of harnesses they contracted with the archfisher to pay him 27,000 white fish 18 lake trout a year for the right to take smoke and sell still more I should point out these are planktonic eating white fishes to run about that big that are characteristic of some of the coragons in the alpine beds absolutely after one human generation of white fish catch collapsed and replacement stockings of pike ate nearly all the trout so the fishing community determined to rest the lake for three years and then to fish only with far fewer nets in a limited season and a restricted area highly medieval Europeans could thus be well aware of insecurity and shortfalls to fish and consider counter measures over centuries and under different circumstances there are several responses including privatization and public regulation of fishing rights and methods purposeful manipulation of aquatic systems and stepwise expansion of fisheries on Europe's maritime frontiers privatization of the Aline fisheries resources both inland and coastal accelerated from the 12th and 13th centuries more strictly enforced privatization of fishing rights constrained subsistence used by local communities and imposed greater economic grant on artisanal users sub senior also respected the methods allowed on their private waters one on the Eiffel demanded fishers keep one foot in the bank at all times local conflicts over access between common eventually generalized and demands by revolutionaries in the German presidency of 1525 for free access by the common man who fished for non-commercial purposes in large public regulation of fish 13th century hundreds was often articulated in terms of conservation and sustainability asserting a need to protect the fishery Sicilian, French, Scottish and other authorities set minimum size limit seasonal closures and restrictions on gear they assigned enforcement to specialized officials or those generally responsible local and regional public order the law's not only suggested some groups with political clout perceived change in states through the fishes there are locally specific and detailed provisions to indicate practical expertise experience of fish populations habitats and habits besides banning search and capture methods on the sovereign water and the sand French royal laws of 1268, 1289 and 1291 repeatedly adjusted the size limits for eight essential species in that lowland river a pavia ordinance of 1399 forbade cutting vegetation in the polar geno to protect young fish 1433 regulations from Lake Garda spent special closed seasons for Cartagena when Emperor Maximilian whom you met ordered consultation among his fishmeister, local officials and holders of fishing rights on the Austrian Danube and its primaries in 1506 to join together to graph regulations tailored to each region his proclamation used full color pictures of eight principal species to ensure unambiguous discussion of that thing is really about two thirds the size of what the way you see it set up huge of the judge from known instances of productive human fishies which did last until the 19th even 21st century both private and public ones should totally affect it natural productivity however remained limited and the total of traditional fresh water estuarine and coastal resources diminished in the face of rising demand immediately Europeans further intervened in several levels with intent to manipulate their aquatic systems local stocking and species transfer was always an option one advised the state management manuals and to be seen as signals from Sicily to Lagoons to Yorkshire rivers from the latest in 1279 the self governing commune of Chavrugia which had lucrative trade to Rome and Florence and fishes from Magna Prasimeno was actively stocking several species including travel if 19th century reports on a now lost manuscript can be believed about 1400 one French landowner knew to record these experiments with artificial spawning travel as pond managers were by then controlling reproduction of warm water fishes the story is not impossible indeed aquaculture was a major area of medieval innovation with development perhaps first 11-12th century France a ways to manage fish stocks and water together to rear especially to print its pike and other still water species purposeful large scale enterprises spread eastwards wide after 1300 now specializing in production of fast growing exotic harts to ensure elite inland consumers with their fresh hatching Chavrugia rarely mentioned its objects of these large scale fish farms that is an artificial fish farm it's not the biggest in Southern Olympia for Moravian church when young Bravius in the 1530s prepared the first comprehensive work where an afterthought reared for the delicate tasting department treats not for profit they required co-running water onto hard sand to grab the substrates and supplemental feeding with carp fry, leek or other little fishes those given liver or other meat taste badly again so briefly summarizing key aspects of medieval inland and coastal fisheries and much over representing trout in my illustrative examples I had meant to make two essential points the people who then really know about fishing in general and trout in particular gained this knowledge through work but the fishers, fishmongers and pond masters experienced in pursuing, catching, keeping even herring fish they stored in memory and passed on by word of mouth we now call such information traditional ecological knowledge this understanding which included local habitats animal behavior, capture techniques and the value of conservation measures passed orally through generations of illiterate medieval fishers we now know for instance the names of multi-generational families of expert fishers under Zorkatze and likewise, how individuals of the employee of Tegrenzee Abbey advanced over the years from helping old fishers to running their own boats yet their contemporaries who possessed literate skills mainly professional churchmen long saw literate reason to apply their letters to such mundane matters what changed to encourage transfer of fishing traditional ecological knowledge into the literate elite in the earlier Middle Ages and notably up to the 12th century prevalent attitudes of unordinary learned Europeans alive saw the natural world as hostile as a place to struggle for survival against antagonistic material and even demonic forces both rooms judged the meaning of the physical work required and the dominant etiologic position of the clerical elite made labor both a shameful consequence of mankind's fall into sin and at best barely supportive of an essential journey of the body carrying the soul of salvation while some religious work they did so as an act of penance and self-discipline thanks to some mix of improved material circumstances and deep cultural changes affecting the European belief system a more favorable view of this world the sacral of the Wentz-Arward sectarian began with the 1100s to emerge among some articulate Europeans andcipient changes affected attitudes for the natural world and for its physical work men who were later called philosophies philosophers and theologians at emerging centers of learning in northern France articulated notions of benign nature even portraying it as an entity meant to be collabed to collaborate with humans to achieve divine plans for a better world a parallel development saw a willingness among new social groups students, courtiers and especially townspeople to consider the natural world a place for relaxation the poetry of wandering scholars and troubadours reflects this energy and so perhaps through the skating outings reported at 12th century Londoners on the frozen Thames that we shared this view as the 14th century Florentines depicted in vocatures to camera as enjoying riding, hunting, games and even fishing and country villas what medievalist David Hurley called a recreational attitude toward nature was evidently cultivated by people who not themselves compelled to struggle with the material world in a broadly similar context the canon you'll see Victor who led a community of learned and secure priests offered in his disconning a new approach to human knowledge grouping what he called arts into the theoretical, practical, dispersive and mechanical all of them needful for human life he was thus recruited the first western thinker not to condemn but indeed to value physical work for its own sake among the seven mechanical arts defined as imitating nature by making useful objects he classified food preparation agriculture and hunting the latter including fishing with for example nets, lions, wolves and spears later medieval educational and moral writers widely circulated his ideas in both Latin and certain vernactures some generations later Thomas Aquinas said subsequent 13th century theologians now considering how Christians are best to live in their societies extended use thinking to include physical play as have the potential pedagogical moral and social values a virtuous game brought relief to the soul but what games and activities were this certainly not gambling sexual flirtations nor for at least some writers violent nightly tournaments the evolutionist played as calling for knowledge and proper behavior and actually begun somewhat earlier with Paul Connery culminating in the day after the art of hunting with birds the art of hunting with birds which infrared the second himself was a series of completed in the 1240s the hunt was on a similar track by 1200 we can see that in the great text by the 14th century in France the chase of certain kind of art had reached the level of formal written instruction which was soon copied and related elsewhere these texts and teachings set out rules by behavior by social participants in selected and approved forms of art such themes of thought converged in educational and moral advice from secular religious writers of 15th century Italy prominent humanist Alberti urged his fellow foreign teens in formal it is widely read four books on the family to benefit from the fresh air, pure water and spiritual satisfaction available in the rural states a younger contemporary a dynamic revival as Francis can preach emphasized the need to ease tensions in the spirit and of the body having identified physical activity called recreation and bodily solace as an appropriate remedy Jacques de Maume amplified Saint Thomas discussed by listen play as avoiding excess under the circumstances in Italy neither leading to mortal sin coming before God and religious duties harming neighbors causing scandal, encouraging lust occurring in prohibited places nor be undertaken for grief whether in cities or the outdoors proper recreation brought moral and physical benefits when done according to certain rules but when it came to hunting and fishing the knowledge and skills to enjoy nature were already possessed by people who worked at it the written record from the later Middle Ages documents transmission of traditionally theological knowledge from an oral to a literate culture the letter dedicatory to the first printed book on fishing the Heidelberg Book of 1493 indicates Johann Ritterst Wolfen Tom Kirk at Leuchttad on a Carp had gathered its recipes among local fishers of Rhine Triveders and a few years later the caverns of compilation of fishing advice names one informant that alludes to another the diction and style of both reveals strong oral qualities so to do the mid-century English manuscript of cracks and the printed treatise of 1496 itself in a passage absent from the earlier manuscript the letter of author pleads unfamiliarity with fishing for Carp but recommends beats and I have heard say of persons critical as well as some different source the 1577 art of anguish the second such printed work in English also makes cryptic reference to a local probably church warden as jealous of his expertise in catching the trout maybe that's why there's no flies the Spaniard Bessorto explains his practical advice is taken from the experience of many great fishers and from my own they contributed the knowledge of fly fishing he obtained from his German booklet as originating with certain skillful fishers on some of these late medieval occasions moreover traditional ecological knowledge of fishing can finally be seen to pass from those who experienced fishers trout among them through work to those who understood their activity as late cultural currents of knowledge transferred sport come together in two texts with special though not exclusive enthusiasm for fishing the fly for trout what could not yet have been even implicit and she another letters is now playing in the 1496 treatise and in Bessort goes 1539 dialogue both now echo the moralists secular and religious to establish the value of anguish as sport the treatise begins with a solomonic proverb that a glad spirit makes a flowering age and a glad spirit comes from good and honest the sports of games dismissing hunting, hawking and fouling as much as the laborious leaves the sport in game of angling as the best for a long happy life this says the treatise, unlike other kinds of fishing brings no cold discomfort other than self-inflicted grief the text promises to prevent the latter from showing how to do it right and even if the waters fail to yield the desired fish the angler should enjoy his wholesome walk in nature the whole body of goods who is already rising and therefore to all of you that have been virtuous gentle and free born a greater and negative simple treatise following by which you shall have the full craft of angling to disport you at war also following the practical instruction the final two printed pages which are lacking in the manner prepared students actively recall the sporting purpose with a charge to either can angle and take fish at war pleasures do not coach in privately owned water don't break or loose fish traps break gates or leave them open don't use this crafty to sport for material gain don't go angling with a crowd remember your prayers but angling avoids the vice of items do not take too many fish which you could do with all of the vice printer went into word added his own editorial note where the treatise published as a separate pamphlet some idle person lacking in moderation might destroy the sport of fishing can see as compiling into a second edition of a larger book directed to gentle and noble men for gentle and noble men social distinctions, moral values rules throughout the debate between hunter and angler which frames the circus practical instruction the Spanish author articulates a well-developed sporting philosophy for an indigenous Spanish tradition of recreational angling the supply of angling goats from Spanish and Christian literature illustrate the age of fisher confronts the noble young hunter with the social and moral hazards of the chase hunting heat continues as a human activity for the recreation of the body though also for its danger and fishing is divine and human divine in that it saves the soul and human in that it pleases the body in three pose angler than most of the offensive established the superiority of this sport in its balance and its lack of excess since the fisherman follows a simple solitary and contemplative pursuit even hearing mass in the morning before setting out he does no offense to God to his neighbors or to himself against the jive of nobody that I've heard of princes or nobles of fish the angler replies with still better precedents and price apostles who fish even after their call thus not only is fishing a recreation superior to hunting includes the angler the simple pleasures of angler will purify the noble soul for its rank, task, or struggle against the enemies of justice, religion and spate itself it almost as if a sort of checking off items of jacobo delamarca's district balance, no excess, no loss click click click all this is present for you in fishing angler for a sort of fishing is individually a sport not an occupation angler and hunter of light call it exercio delete pleasure its purpose is to give recreation to the body as well as benefit to the soul the old fisherman explains in his long practice of it as guarded him against those vices which are both his enthusiasm is unfounded especially for the patient concentration which the sport demands of which obliterates the world of care of the practitioner he forgets fatigue lack of sleep whether he is slack even his beloved in fact that very feature of the past that poses its own dangers against which it's fanatics monthly born yet in truth it's not unreasonable to advise those who work that they should not go fishing at all fishing types because they're absolutely felt in their households nor should clerics go every day at least not before finishing with what they owe god and saying they're massively reciting their hours nor should lawyers for the harm that they will do to those who have losses for though this exercise may be it's not that in the hands of the man who can give it up when fortune comes along only in the context of the evil cultural re-evaluations of the natural world of human work and of human play could one form of so common mundane and laborious and bacteria's fish be so redefined as an art and acquire moral value secular or spiritual that would secular and spiritual that would justify active transfer of its essential knowledge of aquatic nature from those who experience it through work to those who encounter it through their play my guess when it comes to crowd and flies the latter describes most of us in this room who thus stand at the end of a long and evolving cultural heritage thank you very much thank you to use that we go out to our reception following although Dr. Hoffman is perfectly willing to stay and answer questions I thank you all for your attendance and if you've got questions, now is the time to ask they should be asking them a whole crowd here's the answer yes in the very beginning you were talking about some of the earliest learning of the concerns logic and I didn't point at the catch that it went a little fast sorry about that in 1217 1217-1220 what exactly what exactly was that written progress that is in early sections of an incomplete very large birth of Romance literature by called the Teter Role and it's setting up the story is that a term? yeah it's a term I don't in fact think there's at least an English translation of the Teter Role he is the same author that did the greatest work of medieval German literature with the parts of all the great old story all that stuff and this is the later where he died before he completed it was then completed by a much more pedestrian author who also refers to the Peter on a couple of times a nice metaphors of something most pretty but has a and so he is setting up this rural hill of this young nobleman with his girlfriend and she's sitting on the bank and reading a book and there's a dog futzing around and will turn into the Teter turning into a tragic he is, precisely as described standing in the water without his shoes on and his bare legs in the running clear water fishing with the fader catching he's not really fishing, he is catching traveling greatly with the artificial fly both of them themselves hanged out around some of the Bavarian parts and also has connections up to the Perigro model I have actually fished on a river that I could imagine both of them put themselves with fish to Bavaria and stuff for airplay we know he spent some time here for well the family is the Vera W.E.R.R.A these rivers come out of some of those low mountains that occupy portions of the center of Germany most of them still have droughts and some of them still have railing if the cormorants haven't got and this is again one of the places where we can subsequently document these recipes for how to make gratitude supplies so we have this in a sense we have four or five references to the fader on itself in this literary stuff and we have these lines describing somebody actually doing it and nobody has done anything like that for a thousand years the only earlier reference we have is Eileen who is this weird Roman writer who says I have a funny story about some strange things that people do with fish and one of the things is these people on some river Macedonia when he gives a name for it when they fish are eating these bugs and they put the bugs in and hope they don't work so they take wax colored feathers and red wool and put them on a big fish Eileen doesn't probably don't have any idea what he's talking about but he does give us this report and then for a thousand years we have absolutely none there's somebody who finds some great and will publish it and he will make a big name for himself and so then we have just after 1200 we have Wolfram's report Wolfram's references and then within another couple of human generations we started to get the run of these various kinds of legal and other records in South Germany where reference of the fader on the fader should be the line with the fly on the end of it are being used and by the time we get to the age of Maximilian and you've seen there are probably 75 or so known references and it would be more if somebody wanted to publish that but they're scattered all over the place and the problem is nobody's done that kind of research frankly for England so we only have these other doing treatises and nobody's that kind of research for Italy so we only have that eating and nobody's really done that kind of research for the four of a sort of Spain we do have stuff south with the sort of Spain including the so called the program manager which contains some 47 fly patterns from Northern Spain that are written down in a city under here lower south slopes of the Pyrenees in 1624 so we got lots of that kind of stuff but in terms of our record we start with Wolfram yes what is the origin of the word angling which is very insufficient I never could understand it and when did it come into use it's an English belt in both an English word the German word is the same column in both instances it derives really from the hook in England it tends to transfer over to the rod and in both instances we start seeing that verb being employed in my tasting of these 15th century fixtures I don't know that's right two related questions for most American fly fishers casually only casually familiar with the history of fishing and it might be because of the practices I wonder if there's a similar practice all of your records as you do up here no, there's much even stuff in there you're in including okay is there any historical reference to any kind of fly from the eras in Japanese the Indians to my knowledge there's nothing in classical to my knowledge I'm not going to do things so that kind of play I don't know that kind of play comes through that way there may be something in Japanese but the question of what's going on is very very hard to answer the Chinese situation is one with some potentially greater possibilities but then again working with early sources from traditional China requires very specialized color skills which I have not they started to come in packages that are largely defined in terms of the language of the archives that they work in I would be able to work in a world in which modern day packages in Europe are quite fit and so many of us become sort of polybots and so I'm quite happy to chase around the burden of material anywhere where people were working with Latin characters don't go outside if you don't use Latin characters somebody else can work on you I know there are some studies in other areas both there's another very important substantive response to this and that is the tradition of fly fishing and sport fishing that we are part of it grows out of the European tradition grows out of a variety of European traditions I grew up in Wisconsin those of you who may have one time Pennsylvania connections you know that your uncle used the future in all sorts of weird interesting ways that's actually part of Central Europe in other words we do have a body of traditional ways of handling fish both recreationally and in commercial ways that derive from European traditions with a little tiny bit of Native North American traditions added with possibly a little tiny bit of African tradition but none of that is really a question I mean this is this is who we are and I'm that's what I work I would be very, very happy to have some synologists come along and do the Chinese stuff I asked the question because I visited in Hokkaido many years ago and fish and a local fisherman showed me a very old fish yes that seems the tension never comes to the surface the bubbles come to the surface from tension recreational fishing fishing has an activity not intended primarily for school is certainly present we know this will be present and will change in Japanese culture the fly side we also know for the Japanese stuff that in the 19th century that needs to pick up a whole lot of European stuff because it modernized, civilized all that kind of stuff. Just as in the 19th century, you will get English fly fishing and showing up in Germany. And even writing books will say there's no fly fishing in Germany. When, in fact, inside the book, they were saying I was out on the river and I ran in this guy and he was fishing with a fish. But it's not his unique form of fly fishing, so it doesn't count. It doesn't exist. There's a really unique Englishman named Horace, who wrote this, he calls it the first book on how to fly fishing in Germany. That's because he really never gave much attention to Germany. He married a woman in Weimar after having served for a couple of years in British Army in the 1940s. The funny story about him is he's in Weimar, and he's an outpourster. Seems like he's also a residence man. Seems very good at work. And he is teaching his grandson to shoot. And they live on the third floor of an apartment building in downtown Weimar. And he sets up a target in the window and starts shooting at it. He practically kneels to the artist who's running the art class in the first floor around the street. And he didn't apologize, because the artist really did not have it. So there is an English prejudice that says nobody else really does it. And they go, oh, why not? But our tradition grows out of our practices grow out of what started out as European culture. And that is what I wear. Because if we did, that is what I wear. Do you want to follow up? Mm-hmm. And send it to a lot of women. Yes. I've got a piece that's sitting in the form of a blue folder with a bunch of notes in it that is someday going to be in peace with a lot of women in the fishing. There's a whole lot of strange association with very high-ranking women in the 14th, 15th century. I only gave you a couple of examples. There's one of Beatrice Estes, she's the wife of one of the sorts of books in Milan. And she's out at a country place. And she runs the net and catches a whole bunch of fish. And then they do a picnic. And the court is having these world-wide fish. And I can't figure it out. That's to say, if we've got some possibility into this in England, and we've got self-associated with the French queen, she happens to be a Bavarian. That Dutch court is actually the business box that's a Bavarian connection. Some of the other stories are just over the Alps and it's for role. A thrower isn't preparing to necessarily get along. But the culture is much the same. But then it flows down into Northern Italy. And whether it's all associated with some of these high court women, very hard to tell. Some of the wall pictures that were known, which is the late 19th century, no longer exists anymore. There's another one in which all I've got is a photograph done in the 1920s, or something like that, where the past group was peeling off. And I looked at it and said, no, why aren't you showing these people? You all even believe you did that? Yeah. There's something there I don't know what it is. Because over on the working side, women are very rarely engaged in artisanal fishing. They are very commonly engaged in the marketing side. And that's a pretty clear gender-visioning favorite there. On the subsistence side, women and children are the principal users of the fishing budget sites. But you do in the summertime, you use these verbal things. Water levels are downstreams are flowing very slowly. And you take a big any pool where it's not moving around at all, and you put this stuff in. And then you stand down a little and take out the fish. And it works. I mean, these are toxicological products. Material in certain plants, this will work. Now, don't try it around here. It's tiny and equal. I'm not going to tell you what's a magical one, because they involve herring bones, which is also tiny and equal. But I want to test those. So yeah, women should be around. There's nothing wrong with the notion of women fishing. I still cannot figure out where it fits because so much of the evidence is just odd. 80 different types of fish. And it reports about the scheme itself. Probably people want to do it, but take one more. You have your chance. OK. Well, you and I, when they call on you, if nobody else needs to come in. Anybody else? Otherwise, he gets a second shot and then we get to do it. Go ahead. All right. I've got a little bit about the focus of St. Albans. Of course, we have to take the second edition. Supposedly, written by the proprietor of Abbey, whose each record is done with this and her. She is a mythical beast. OK. Then who is that person and who wrote those books? OK. Focus of Albans encourages true editions. The first one doesn't have any fishing net. Right. The second one does. In the first one, there is a track on hunting, which is about 100 years old by the time it appears in that book. And there there is a passing reference to a Giuliani. There is no reason to believe this person ever particularly existed. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that any person of this sort compiled the trade as a fish. She is a mythical beast. She really only is constructed 150 and more years later, partly because Tudor's steward period antiquarians are disconfident by anonymous works. So there's a lot of construction of authors for words. Modern-day medievalists are quite comfortable with the idea that a work is anonymous. It's fun to try to find the person who it might be who put it together. But we don't have any trouble talking about a texture which we do not have a model. We also have lots of texts in which there is a author that we know is false. And so there's Tudor Albert and Tudor this and Tudor that. What we have to do is work with the evidence we got. The evidence we got is that there is kind of a moving around of traditions moving out of oral into manuscript in England. They seem to break down into a couple of different families. And one of the families of those manuscripts ends up being much of the text, but not all, that ends up making the word print. And so we can say the treatise that was printed in 1496 has a prehistory in a certain sense. But those manuscripts are not the only elements of tradition that are floating around in mid-15th century England. And none of those have any real names in them, certainly as authors. And this is not surprising. Many of this, much of this material, particularly the little tracks with which things start wherever, there might be three or four big recipes and then maybe a couple of flypads, will be written in the flyleaf of some kind of a book that we know we can date by hand. They're household manuals. They're tracks on medicine. And there's a couple of blank leaves toward the end of the codex. And somebody wrote stuff in the back. And we can usually date the hands fairly well, or we know the binding or whatever. And we can tell from, let's say, the dial-up, teleography, that these things are at a certain date. Some of my theater and local recipes from Germany, from Germany, England, crop up in three or four otherwise quite dependent manuscripts. I believe in that case, it's because this is in oral knowledge that it's been passed around orally. And then somebody in Saxony writes it down, and somebody in Bavaria writes it down, and somebody somewhere else writes it down. And they're more or less the same thing. What do you think of originally the mother line? No, I don't think so. No, no, no. One of the things about it is none of it. There are some record sources about people doing this stuff that is in Latin. But none of the manuscript tradition is in Latin, it's all of the vernacular. And as those vernactuaries emerge, as written languages, of course, of their villages, it becomes much, much more difficult for a knowledge to cross because not there's a linguistic barrier. When everything that was written was written in Latin, you could get somebody living up on the Baltic who could read something written by somebody in Rome. But if the guy in Rome is writing in Italian and the guy in the Baltic knows German and Polish, there's no knowledge in history. And all this fishy stuff of how we do it is in sort is in the vernacular languages. With one very strange exception, the stretch material has never been pursued in Europe. Somebody can do that. There is one, the earliest printed book on fishing in French was printed in 1540 something. And the people who originally were working with it, all these very strange, strange, interesting, wonderful books, and there are these weird words we don't understand. They must be Sagoyard dialects. They're not, they're actually German. This book is a translation of the tract that was printed in Heidelberg in 1493. And somebody from German who wasn't very good turned it in this weird version of French. Witt tells us that a very acute reader knew that he had a market for a boat for how to catch fish, and he didn't know about any books in French. So he got somebody to translate this thing into French so he could flog it. And in the first chapter of the Fisheries Craft and the Letter of Art, I take the multiple printings of this tract and look at how they grow out of one another and where they are and how they show us these printers as really pretty sharp-cut nerves of tailoring that can change the text over and over again for their purposes. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't do much of the same thing. And he certainly added that conclusion. But we can't tell. We can talk about how the world around here is working, but then we understand. Whoa. And what's before it, we piece together some fragments. There's no rate-long collection of documents about medieval fishing, except in my database. You have to do the research, which is what the history's all about. I think we're supposed to go be truckers. Thank you. Thank you.