Prague Provenance and the Bohemian Hypothesis
~ Monday, July 11, 2022 ~
The phrase “Bohemian hypothesis,” as applied to Beinecke MS 408, means several different things in different contexts, and the differences matter. In most of the writing I have read, it refers loosely to the manuscript’s Prague history — the Rudolf II claim, the Hořčický signature, Baresch and Marci. This is a provenance claim. In a smaller body of writing, it refers to a theory that the manuscript was produced in Bohemia. This is an origin claim. The two are not the same, and conflating them has produced a great deal of confusion.