SECOND CASE. Someone knows that Oa does not exist, and does not believe that Ob is equivalent and interchangeable with Oa. Nevertheless, in bad faith, he insists on declaring the two objects (one real, the other virtual) to be identical, or on the authenticity of Ob, with intent to deceive. This is the case of the modern diplomatic forgery, of fake genealogical trees produced to confirm otherwise unattested pedigrees, of apocryphal documents produced with malicious intent. This is probably the case of the poem De vetula, produced in the thirteenth century, but immediately attributed to Ovid. We may suppose that the person or persons who placed the Corpus Dionysianum into circulation in the eighth century, attributing it to a disciple of Saint Paul, were instead aware that the work had been fabricated much later, but they nonetheless decided to attribute it to an uncontestable auctoritas. To this category there also belong the cases of attribution to an author by no means well-known and famous, but who becomes so when he is presented as ancient and when characteristics are attributed to him that make him an authority. This is the case with a number of nonexistent chroniclers to whom the Abbot Trithemius attributed spurious works.11
In all of these cases, in addition to the documentary forgery, a historical falsification is also committed, in other words, lies are circulated regarding events of the past. The pseudo-identification is invoked to subrogate the historical lie.
THIRD CASE. Someone is unaware that Oa does not exist and does not know that it is not identifiable with Ob. Therefore that someone has no problem considering them identical. Independently of whether or not he believes in the interchangeability of the two objects, he claims in any case that they are identical, thereby affirming the authenticity of Ob. This appears to have been the case with those who thought the Corpus Dionysianum was the work of a disciple of Saint Paul, unaware that it had been produced at a later date, and those who considered the De causis to be a work by Aristotle and not by an Arabic follower of Proclus. It is certainly the case with all those who believed and continue to believe in the authenticity of the book of Enoch, and to the men of the Renaissance who attributed the Corpus Hermeticum not to Hellenistic authors but to a mythical Hermes Trismegistus who supposedly lived before Plato at the time of the Egyptians and could probably be identified with Moses. In the modern period, we have the case of Heidegger (1915) who writes a commentary on a Grammatica Speculativa believing it to be the work of Duns Scotus, while a few years later it will be proven to be the work of Thomas of Erfurt. It goes without saying that a false attribution of this kind also leads to aberrant decoding.
A variant of this case of pseudo-identification is attribution to a pseudo-author: we have only one text Ob, whose author is unknown, and it is decided to attribute it to an author A, information about whom is uncertain. This seems to have been the case with the attribution of the treatise On the Sublime to a certain Pseudo-Longinus.
5.4. What Do We Mean by “Knowing That”?
In sketching this semiotics of falsification we have implicitly made use of an epistemic operator like “knows that” which poses a number of problems. What does it mean to say that someone knows that Oa and Ob are not identical? The only case of false attribution in which we can know that Oa and Ob are not identical is the one in which someone presents us, for example, with a perfect reproduction Ob of the Mona Lisa, when we are standing in front of the original Oa exhibited in the Louvre, and affirms that the two objects are indiscernibly the same object. This is of course an improbable event, but even if was to occur the doubt would remain whether Ob was the authentic Mona Lisa and Oa a fake maliciously (or erroneously) hung on the gallery wall. And what does it mean to know that Oa never existed? Except for the case in which there are irrefutable proofs that Oa once existed and has been destroyed (as is probably true of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the temple of Diana at Ephesus), usually the assertion “Oa does not exist” is understood simply to mean “there are no proofs of its existence.”
Modern philology has developed techniques of identification to establish whether an Ob is identical to an Oa, but these procedures presuppose that we know the properties Oa has or should have. Now, the techniques by which we establish the characteristics of Oa are the same as those by which we identify Ob. In other words, in order to say that a reproduction of the Mona Lisa is not authentic, somebody has to have analyzed and authenticated the original Mona Lisa using the same techniques used to decide that the reproduction of it is different. For modern philology the traditional evidence that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre was put there, let’s say, by Leonardo right after painting it is not enough. This fact must be proven by means of documents, but for these documents too the question of their authentication must be posed. And if there is any doubt about the documents, the presumed original of the Mona Lisa is analyzed to decide whether its material and morphological attributes lead us to conclude that it was painted by Leonardo.
Our modern culture, therefore, must assume that (i) a document authenticates traditional information and not vice versa; (ii) authenticity means historical primitivity and authorial originality (this is the only way to establish the priority of Oa over Ob); and (iii) primitivity and originality are established by considering the object as a sign of its origin, and the techniques of authentication described in section 5.2 are applied to this end.
These checks call for scientific and historical knowledge of which the Middle Ages had only a vague and ambiguous grasp, for reasons intimately connected with its concept of historical truth.
5.5. Historical Truth, Tradition, and
Auctoritas
The Middle Ages could not conceive of a document that would authenticate traditional data because the only reliable form of documentation it possessed was traditional data.
The Middle Ages could only argue based on the testimony of the past, and the past had chronological abscissas that were quite vague. The medieval procedure of recourse to authority has the form of a synecdoche: an author or a single text stands for the globality of tradition and always functions outside of any context. Le Goff (1964: 397–402) has remarked that the medieval form of wisdom is folkloristic, and is symbolized by the proverb. Feudal law and practice are sanctioned by custom.
The same Le Goff cites a 1252 lawsuit between the servants of the chapter of Notre Dame de Paris in Orly and the canons: the canons say the servants must pay tithes because tradition requires it. The oldest inhabitant of the region is consulted and he says that it has been that way “a tempore a quo non extat memoria” (“from time immemorial”). Another witness, the archdeacon Jean, affirms that he has seen certain ancient documents in the chapter which attest to the existence of the custom, and the chapter has put its faith in these documents out of respect for the antiquity of the writing. No one of course thought to check the existence, let alone the nature, of the documents: it was sufficient to hear they existed, for centuries.
For the Middle Ages, the problem of tradition, in historiography and hermeneutics, is that it does not have to be reconstructed: it is already given from the beginning; it must simply be recognized and interpreted in the proper way.
Apart from the data of tradition, only one document is recognized, and it is the text (translated) of the Holy Scriptures. Other documents are not distinguished as original and nonoriginaclass="underline" they have either been handed down or they don’t exist. If they have been handed down, they are true only insofar as they agree or can be made to agree with the truth of Scripture: “Certus enim sum, si quid dico quod Sacrae Scripturae absque dubio contradicat, quia falsum est” (“For I am certain that, if I say anything which clearly opposes Holy Scripture, it is false”) (Anselm, Cur Deus homo, 1, 18, PL 153, 38).