Finding Atlantis

by David King

  But even assuming for the moment that he could escape the censorship, there were some formidable economic obstacles standing in the way of his dream of completing the search for Atlantis. The self-reflection forced by the Inquisition had made the costs of his crusade all too clear. He had patently jeopardized his family’s financial security. The costs of producing Atlantica were calculated at some 9,700 daler kopparmynt, not counting his own investment of time and energy in the search. Although sales of the folio volume had picked up quite a bit in the early 1680s, Rudbeck was still dangerously in debt. Six years after its publication, Rudbeck owed some 1,560 daler kopparmynt borrowed from a “good friend” and another thousand borrowed from a student society at the university. His family silver was still pawned.

  Times were difficult, he said, and one had to advance cautiously. Again he saw his death approaching quickly, and feared that his family would have to “sigh for his grave.” Mentally and physically fatigued, he felt too shy to beg and no longer had the strength to quarrel. It was simply not possible to continue in this manner, sacrificing everything for the sake of his search. As the Inquisition tightened its grip and he felt the economic pressures, Rudbeck did not dare to “string the bow any tighter.” Atlantica looked doomed, destined to be engulfed by larger, uncontrollable forces, much like Plato’s fabled isle.

  Almost as disheartening, perhaps, Rudbeck saw many of his colleagues lured over to the Schütz and Arrhenius faction. After helping thirty-two people gain positions in the university faculties during the last two decades, Rudbeck was sad to see how little support he received from the professors as he faced the attacks from the Inquisition and the censor. Almost everyone, it seemed, was thinking only of his own career. Rudbeck compared his feelings of betrayal to the “peasant who stumbled upon a frozen snake.” Never having seen such an object, the peasant reached down, picked it up, held it to his bosom to warm it, and saved its life. But when the snake thawed, its poisonous fangs lunged for his heart.

  16

  THE ELYSIAN FIELDS

  What cared we for outward visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies?

  —MARK TWAIN, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

  ON MAY 13, 1685, the dispute over the controversial collection of reviews was finally resolved. An order from King Charles XI freed Rudbeck personally from the clutches of the censor. One of Count de la Gardie’s well-placed contacts had promised to help and did in fact manage to secure this royal exemption. Rudbeck’s merits, according to the official statement, had earned him this special privilege, as someone whose “integrity and experience assured that his work does not contain anything harmful, irritating, and offensive.” Rudbeck had won, at least the first battle. But the College of Antiquities immediately prepared another way to discredit the jolly nemesis who had invaded their turf.

  Johan Hadorph and Claes Arrhenius, the true leaders of the college, shifted from censorship to public attack. In a letter to the university council, unsigned yet bearing the official seal of the college, the scholars accused Rudbeck of belittling their antiquarian work. They followed with a second letter to the university chancellor, criticizing Rudbeck’s bad taste in publishing self-praise, a presumptuous and misleading enterprise that could, if necessary, be countered with a publication of the work’s many flaws.

  As additional ammunition, Hadorph also planned to print a peculiar historical manuscript that had long lain unfinished. Titled Dissertation on the Hyperboreans, this was a treatise penned by the esteemed poet and lethargic first president of the College of Antiquities, Georg Stiernhielm. In this work, Stiernhielm had outlined many of his arguments about the Hyperboreans, a people he believed had once lived in Sweden and had spoken the world’s oldest language. Ironically, Hadorph had never liked the work. He printed the dissertation, it seems, only to show how much Rudbeck owed to his predecessors. During the tense spring and summer of 1685, Stiernhielm’s posthumous, uncompleted, and unrevised manuscript went to press.

  Rudbeck knew this work well and had certainly been influenced by its claims about the Hyperboreans. There is even reason to suspect that Verelius had loaned him the manuscript in the early days of the search, something that would have helped him as he entered the field of classical studies. But Rudbeck had gone much further in his conclusions than Stiernhielm or other patriotic historians. His search had culminated in a spectacular vision of the lost civilization of Atlantis and in his indefatigable efforts to bring the wide variety of theories together, more or less, into one unified picture of ancient Sweden. Still, by printing this work, Hadorph hoped to deflate Rudbeck’s overblown esteem, and to show that Atlantica was not as breathlessly original as its admirers believed.

  So, if the efforts of the censor had failed, then perhaps an attack on Rudbeck’s credibility would succeed. Publication of Stiernhielm’s manuscript and the latest accusations against Rudbeck were two features of the college’s campaign to tarnish his reputation. Rudbeck was likened to the crow in the Aesop’s classic fable who pretended to be a peacock, a plain bird achieving his impressive appearance only by relying on borrowed plumage. Unfortunately, too, with his many loans, he had gotten it all wrong, producing an erroneous monstrosity. Rudbeck should have stuck to medicine, his first profession. Surely “a deeper and truer history,” Arrhenius wrote, could be written, and supported by state funds.

  The College of Antiquities, its leaders believed, was doing just that, illustrating the history of Sweden with erudite treatises that far surpassed the “fables and errors” that decorated the pages of Rudbeck’s Atlantica. Indeed, with confidence in the merits of their own work, it is not difficult to understand why the antiquarians deeply resented Rudbeck’s printing of the testimonia, particularly the letter by the priest Sithellius. How wrong this monk must have seemed, praising Rudbeck’s achievements while unfairly dismissing their own. How inappropriate it had been for him to suggest that the college’s budget be used to finance Rudbeck’s search. And printing such a letter only seemed to confirm their suspicions: Rudbeck secretly harbored designs on their funding.

  When the college filed an official complaint against this alleged scheming, Rudbeck read the charges with amazement, and wrote of his reaction, “I began, from the very first to the end, to smile, as if I had drunk the best liquor. I could never have imagined that such a letter would come from a College.”

  The antiquarians, Rudbeck charged, had distorted the words of the priest’s letter beyond all recognition, and derived meanings that were in no way intended. He did not want the college’s money, nor did he wish to hinder their work in any way. In fact, Rudbeck recalled his many services on behalf of the college, promoting its members, supporting their research travels, drawing the designs for their planned building, and even being the one who suggested the very foundation of the institution. This assertion, though, Hadorph would vehemently dispute, claiming the honor for himself, which in turn ignited yet another source of tension between the two antiquarians.

  Interestingly, when Rudbeck started to investigate matters for himself, he learned that some members of the college had no idea about the actions done in their name. Even its president, Professor Axelhielm, was surprised to hear of the attack. He claimed that he had been bypassed for years (and records show that his salary had actually been written out of the college’s budget). Given this scenario, hinting of underlying dissension and intrigue, Rudbeck asked the chancellor to request that the plaintiffs sign the accusation personally. In this way he hoped to lure the disgruntled out from hiding under the authority of the college, an institution that he felt had been hijacked by some of its most domineering personalities.

  But Rudbeck had never wanted their money, he emphasized. He wanted to claim only funds made available by the tryckeritunna, a special tax that had a complicated history. Designed as a tax on priests and parishes to raise money to publish the Swedish Bible, the famous Gustav Vasa Bible that cemented th
e kingdom’s Reformation, the tryckeritunna (literally the “printing bushels”) had been renewed in 1612 in efforts to fund another edition of the Scripture. But this time, when the Bible appeared (1618), the tax was not abolished. The king, Gustavus Adolphus, decided to use the fund for other purposes, including the publication of historical and literary works. Naturally the people paying the tax resented financing expensive books about ancient history. By the 1640s, the tax was allowed to fade away.

  As for the college, its claims on this fund were quite recent, gained just a few years before, in 1674, when the defunct tax had again been revived, thanks to the successful lobbying of Johan Hadorph. He wanted the tax to support the college, its research activities, and its library, as well as to fund a team of copyists, artists, engravers, and woodcutters. Unfortunately for the college, what looked like a new, steady source of income had quickly dried up, an early casualty of the war with Denmark. The first year of its awarding would indeed be the last, that is, until Hadorph once again succeeded in having the tenuous rights reasserted in January 1682.

  So the college’s claim was effectively only three years old, and, even then, fiercely disputed. The archbishop had in fact protested the decision to award the tryckeritunna to the college, speaking on behalf of the parishes forced to pay the very unpopular tax. Those parishes resented taxation without representation. They had much preferred to use their own money for their own purposes, such as the schools, the poor, and the Church. A comparison of the salaries enjoyed by members of the College of Antiquities and the local vicars who were forced to pay the tax made the issue even more charged with emotion. Hadorph earned about 1,600 daler silvermynt a year (officially 2,200 daler) as an antiquarian, while many vicars made only about three hundred.

  As for printing the praises of his Atlantica, Rudbeck stood by his action. He had never asked for any monetary gain, aristocratic titles, or membership in the prestigious College of Antiquities. The scholarly world’s appreciation for the discovered Atlantis was his real salary. In this light, Rudbeck also defended the monk’s outspoken comments about the relative merits of Sweden’s historical works, writing, “I can’t see that he [Sithellius] has sinned in that he desired something more to be completed of my work . . . and if he has sinned in this regard, then so have many others.”

  Sithellius was far from the only one to think in these terms, preferring Atlantica to the more obscure and dense antiquarian tomes. Privately Rudbeck confided to Count de la Gardie that he had been rather cautious, choosing not to print the more uninhibited praise he had received. He had not, for instance, published the words of the French ambassador, who, next to the Bible, preferred reading no other book than Atlantica. Moreover, less flattering portraits of the College of Antiquities could easily have been included, if Rudbeck had wanted.

  All the college’s critiques, Rudbeck concluded, essentially boiled down to an attempt to reassert its privileged position, and its desired control over the antiquarian arena. The college, on the other hand, saw Rudbeck as an author of fables unjustly maneuvering to gain its income. The judge in this dispute, it turns out, would be Count de la Gardie. Although stripped of his castles, his wealth, and most of his status, he had one position of authority left: chancellor of Uppsala University. De la Gardie would now have to decide between the competing parties: Atlantica, which he had patronized, and the college he had founded.

  Given his response, appearing in the middle of June 1685, the choice was not that difficult to make. The tone was set from the very beginning of the letter. Addressing himself to the “College in Upsala,” De la Gardie was making explicit his hurt feelings about the college’s past behavior. Immediately after the count had fallen from power, losing the chancellorship of the realm and his vast wealth in the liquidation, the College of Antiquities had sought out new, more influential patrons. It had even—without De la Gardie’s approval or knowledge—moved its headquarters away from Uppsala.

  De la Gardie proceeded to denounce how disgracefully the college had acted, “prostituting” its honor and selling itself so cheaply for the satisfaction of some private vendettas. Indeed it was not the entire college he now addressed, but rather only one or two offending scholars who had acted in its name, Hadorph and Arrhenius.

  He was now really tired of all the scandalous insults he had heard about Olof Rudbeck, “impertinent and untrue judgments” enviously spread by members of the college. At the same time, De la Gardie did not approve of how the priest Sithellius had brushed aside the antiquarian’s efforts, or of Rudbeck’s indiscretion in printing the rebuff. Rudbeck had acted without caution or better judgment, something to which the count had never quite grown accustomed over the years in dealing with the flamboyant medical doctor.

  Yet De la Gardie could not see how the printing of the letter had injured or reasonably upset the college. As a matter of fact, he hoped what the professors of the college said about themselves was true: namely that they wrote Swedish history with integrity, diligence, and industry. But despite their claims and their annual subsidies, the count added, “you cannot deny that for many years nothing has come to fruition.” The only praiseworthy antiquarian works, he added, had been written by Olof Rudbeck.

  Count de la Gardie announced his plan to go straight to the king’s advisers and seek royal protection for Rudbeck, a man the college had long blamed and pursued without good reason. He would make sure that His Majesty was well informed of their “impertinent and indefensible behavior.”

  THE COLLEGE, HOWEVER, could not take the count’s threats very seriously anymore. He was a fallen giant, humiliated and discredited. Far from distressed, Hadorph only increased his efforts to publish the catalog of errors, and wrote to his fellow antiquarian Claes Arrhenius advising him to stand firm, thereby robbing Rudbeck of the joy of feeling triumphant.

  One month after the count uttered his threat to take the matters to a higher authority, Uppsala learned the fate of its printer Henrik Curio. After the case had spent ten years festering in law courts, Sweden’s highest court, the Svea Hofrätt, rendered its judgment in the now notorious legal battle. Curio had lost his suit, and his post.

  Effective immediately, Uppsala’s printer would be turned out of office, ordered to repay the three hundred riksdaler (six hundred daler silvermynt) in loans for purchasing equipment, and forced to return all the machines in the condition in which he had received them. Even though De la Gardie’s own son was serving as chief justice, the court had upheld the council’s position completely. Curio would never see the nine hundred daler silvermynt that Rudbeck had promised, insisting that he had the university’s permission to make the offer, though the council had always denied it.

  In Rudbeck’s eyes, the university had acted shamelessly. All of Curio’s “troubles and pains” suffered on behalf of the academy were now harshly repaid. Tossed out of his position, with few prospects in a country that had only a few viable presses, Curio’s future was, to say the least, uncertain. There was little hope he could pay back the additional three hundred riksdaler that he owed the university.

  Rudbeck looked around for ways to help, hoping to arrange some agreement whereby Curio could start rebuilding his future. Perhaps he could repay the large fines with printed books, because, as Rudbeck said, “he does not have any other property.” This request, though, was refused, with one of the strongest and most outspoken opponents being Rudbeck’s nemesis, Professor Henrik Schütz.

  Denied the opportunity to pay with his only available currency, Curio was in serious trouble, and Rudbeck tried once more “to carry his friend on his back.” The plan was somehow to establish Curio as a printer and help him start working again, with the hope of earning enough income to support his family and pay the large fines to the university. The only question was how. If there was any chance of accomplishing this feat, Curio would need to hire some help. A minimum of two assistants would be needed to work the presses, a fraction of the staff at the university offices, when Curio, his wife, Disa
, five apprentices, and a servant girl had run the operation. But even here the council balked. The university treasurer, Jacob Arrhenius, flatly refused Curio’s request to hire any assistants until Curio first repaid his debts.

  Taking the setbacks personally as usual, Rudbeck now had the added discomfort of feeling partly to blame for the ugly affair. It was mainly his enemies who were taking out their frustrations on his printer, just as they would soon be doing with his translator, Anders Norcopensis, who was also subjected to censorship. Rudbeck wanted desperately to find a way to help Curio and his family.

  So one hundred copies of his Atlantica were pawned at twenty daler kopparmynt apiece, raising a total of two thousand daler kopparmynt (almost seven hundred daler silvermynt) for the cause. Curio followed suit, selling some of his stock of books to professors in town, netting an additional fifteen hundred daler kopparmynt (a fraction of their worth). Rudbeck also started selling his musical instruments. Even more generously, Rudbeck invited the printer and his family to move into the little stone house in his yard. There, Curio could hopefully open shop and work as Rudbeck’s personal printer.

  To the shock of his enemies, Rudbeck’s grand scheme looked as if it might actually work. On October 6, 1685, King Charles XI did in fact grant Curio the right to publish, no mean feat in an age when royal sanction was a heavily guarded instrument in the Crown’s efforts to control the press. Curio was also granted the right to import any new equipment from the Continent, free of the hefty customs tolls. Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie had after all been able to help, playing a large role in securing Curio the same privileges enjoyed by other printers and booksellers in the kingdom.

  And over the next few years, Henrik Curio would again work as a printer in Uppsala. For a time he even rivaled the university press, because finding a successor to him was proving more difficult than the council had originally thought. It took time and intricate negotiations, and in the end the university had to grant a higher salary and better conditions to lure a new printer to town. After ten years of bitter litigation, reaching the highest court of the land and resulting in a heartbreaking loss, Curio’s press had, in the end, only moved a few blocks away.