Water-Marks

The manufacture of paper in Europe seems to have been fostered especially by the Albigenses, as they were known in France and Spain, or WT aldenses in the Alpine provinces, one of the purest of Christian brotherhoods appearing in history, as well as the most unfortunate.

Claiming to be direct descendants of the early disciples who secluded themselves in the Alpine valleys to escape the fury of Nero and Diocletian, their aim was to exemplify in their own lives the simple truths taught by Christ, and to extend their benefits to others.

The Italians called them Cathari, signifying the pure. They were altruists in the highest sense of the term, making industry and usefulness to fellow-men inseparable rules of life.

In Bacon’s Advancement of Learning of 1605, he uses clusters of grapes. Such clusters are found in the Shakespeare Folios of 1623, and in 1632, though printed by different printers. Of their signification Bacon thus speaks: “Other men, as well in ancient as in modern times, have in the matter of sciences drunk a crude liquor like water, either flowing spontaneously from the understanding, or drawn up by logic, as by wheels from a well.

Whereas I pledge mankind in a liquor strained from countless grapes, from grapes ripe and fully seasoned, collected in clusters, and then squeezed in the press, and finally purified and clarified in the vat. And therefore it is no wonder if they and I do not think alike.” 1

Besides the pot the Bacons used the crescent, fleur-de-lis, double candlesticks, a hand, horns, a shield, and a mirror. It is proper to say that these were sometimes of ancient date, were varied in form, and combined with other symbolic figures according to the fancy of those who used them, and it seems probable were not always used with design.

It is interesting to note some of the works, not published under Bacon’s name, in which cryptic emblems used by him appear. In the First Folio of the Shakespeare plays appear crowns, clusters of grapes, the fleur-de-lis, and, in the Second Folio, one like that in Bacon’s History of Life and Death.
In Marlowe’s works, published in 1613, twenty-one years after his death, the watermarks comprise bar and grapes the same as in the Shakespeare Folio of 1623, except a change in letters; the pot, hand, crown, and crescent.

Ireland [the great Shakespearean forger of the seventeenth century] tells us that in preparing his forgeries he at length gleaned the intelligence that a jug was the prevalent watermark of the reign of Elizabeth.

The most striking watermarks, however, appear in Spenser’s Faerie Queene of 1596. Here are the pot and grapes of Bacon, the F. B. reversed: B, and A. B. All this is curiously suggestive, but, unfortunately, in our present state of knowledge regarding symbolical emblems, it is unsafe to base theories upon them.

In a recent letter to the present writer Mr. Smedley says: “The earliest use of the design with a light A and dark A which I have found is in a work entitled Hebraicum Alphabethum Jo Bovlaese published in Paris in 1576. The book ends with the sentence Ex Collegio Montis-Acuti 20 Decembris 1576. So the date of the publication was probably between January and March, 1576, which according to our present method would be 1577. I have a copy of this work bound up with a book bearing the title: Sive compendium, quintacunque Ratione fieri potuit amplessimum, Totuis linguae, published in Paris, 1566. Both are interleaved and altered and amplified in Francis Bacon’s hand writing for a second edition. The latter contains the equivalent of the Hebrew in Greek, Chaldaeic, Syriac, and Arabic. So far I have been unable to find that a second edition of these works was published. But these manuscripts bear evidence of young Bacon’s command of languages in 1 576. I believe that just as Philip Melancthon was working for Thomas Anshelmus, the Printer, when at Tubingen University at seventeen or eighteen years of age, so Francis Bacon was employed in Paris as early as 1576. This head-piece not only appears in the Shakespeare and Bacon Works, but those of Marlowe and Spenser, as well as the so-called King James version of the Bible. The King was inordinately proud of his knowledge of Latin, and the translators, when they had completed their work, submitted it to him for criticism, and it remained in his possession for some time.” 2

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