1. 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.”
2. See also Haywood (1987: 10–18).
3. For the terminology of this section see the chapter “Theory of Sign Production” in Eco (1979b).
4. 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 a case of perfect reproduction, the token that received the number first is considered theoretically “original.” Hence the interesting question whether we are to consider authentic a fake bill printed (with fraudulent intent) on authentic watermarked and security-threaded stock, with the plates of the Mint, by the director of the Mint in person, who assigns it the same number as another bill legally printed a few moments earlier. If it were ever possible to determine the priority of its printing, only the first bill would be authentic. Otherwise one would have to decide to arbitrarily destroy one of the two bills and consider the other the original.
5. The modern concept of the work of art as an unrepeatable unicum privileges its originality and its formal and material complexity, which, taken together, constitute the concept of authorial authenticity. Naturally in the practice of critics and collectors the notion of originality often prevails over the presence of relevant structural features. As a result, even a perfect copy of a statue, which reproduces, using the exact same materials, every aesthetically relevant feature of the original, is downgraded only because it is denied recognition of the privilege of originality. Problems of this sort crop up for the plastic and figurative arts but not for written texts, since any reproduction, be it printed or manuscript, of the same poetic text is assumed, for critical purposes, to be a perfect double of the original type (see the distinction between autographic versus allographic arts in Goodman 1968). They do, however, occur among bibliophiles, where in fact value is placed on the particular material consistency which renders one token (a copy of a rare book) something unique compared with other copies of the same book (evidence of possession, state of preservation, width of the margins, etc.).
6. A recent phenomenon is that of commercial facsimiles of precious illuminated manuscripts, in which the colors, the tactile feel of the gold leaf, the wormholes, and the transparency of the parchment are all reproduced with absolute fidelity, though the manuscript is not reproduced on real parchment but on paper (though it contrives to imitate the consistency of the original parchment). Even the reproduction of real parchment would display, when submitted to chemical tests, characteristics different from the antique original. And even if the reproduction were to be printed on recovered ancient parchment the same tests would demonstrate that the characters printed on it were made by mechanical means. And in any case the ancient parchment used for the reproduction would not be the original parchment of the manuscript.
7. In the same way we do not have false identification in texts written under a pseudonym when A (usually a famous person or someone otherwise known) produces O but would have it believed that it was produced by an unknown B (the identity of two objects is not an issue in such a case); in cases of plagiarism, in which B produces an object Ob which he presents as his own work, but using wholly or in part an object Oa produced by someone else (where B however does all he can to ensure that Ob will not be identified with Oa); or in cases of aberrant decoding, in which a text O, written according to a code C1, is interpreted as if it were written according to a code C2. Examples of this last practice are the oracular reading of Virgil as a Christian author in the Middle Ages, in the Baroque period the false interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the part of Athanasius Kircher, in modern times the reading of Dante as if he were writing in the secret code of the so-called sect of the Fedeli d’Amore (see Pozzato 1989). But in this kind of exercise there is no question of identification between two physical objects.
8. This continuing ascendency of logic over grammar in the thirteenth century was accurately described by Gilson (1952) in the chapter of his Philosophie au Moyen Age entitled “L’exil des belles-lettres.”
9. http://www.logicmuseum.com/authors/aquinas/superboethiumq2.htm.
10. In the De pulchro et bono, another case of false attribution—to Thomas Aquinas—and this time not just on the part of the Middle Ages but all the way down to our own century (see Chapter 8 in this volume). For a discussion of kalon, see the introduction by Pietro Caramello to the Marietti edition of the De divinis nominibus.
11. This of course is also the case with artistic fakes, like the fake Dutch masters painted fifty years ago by the extraordinarily talented contemporary artist Han van Meegeren.
12. See Grabmann (1906–1911, esp. Part IV of the first volume, devoted to the transmission of traditional knowledge), and Chenu (1950: 128–129). On how anthologies may give rise to a series of misunderstandings concerning originals that no one reads any more, see Ghellinck (1939: 95 and 105).
13. “Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et in remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine aut eminentia corporis sed quia quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantes” (“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness”), Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4. Translation from Henry Osborn Taylor The Mediaeval Mind ([1911]1919) vol. 2, p. 159. See Jeauneau (1967: 79–99) and Merton (1965).