Vintage canada edition, 1998 Copyright 1996 by Alberto Manguel

Natura Deorum, II. 2) tells of the augur Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who in 162 BC “caused the
resignation of the consuls at whose election he had presided in the previous year, basing his decision on a
fault in the auspices, of which he became aware ‘when reading the books’.”
29. William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, 1989).

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30. “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the
fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an
abomination unto the Lord.…” Deuteronomy 18: 10–12.
31. Gaspar Peucer, Les Devins ou Commentaire des principales sortes de devinations, trans. Simon
Goulard (?) (Sens [?], 1434).
32. Rabelais, Le Tiers Livre de Pantagruel, 10–12.
33. Manuel Mujica Láinez, Bomarzo (Buenos Aires, 1979), Ch. II.
34. William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, A.D. 1598 to A.D. 1867 (London, 1868).
35. Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, ed.
J.D. Crowley (London & Oxford, 1976).
36. Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (London, 1874).
37. Robert Louis Stevenson (with Lloyd Osbourne), The Ebb Tide (London, 1894).
THE SYMBOLIC READER
1. André Kertész, On Reading (New York, 1971).
2. Michael Olmert, The Smithsonian Book of Books (Washington, 1992).
3. Beverley Smith, “Homes of the 1990s to stress substance”, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Jan. 13, 1990.
4. Andrew Martindale, Gothic Art from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1967).
5. Quoted in Réau, Louis, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, Vol. II (Paris, 1957).
6. Marienbild in Rheinland und Westfalen, catalogue of an exhibition at Villa Hugel, Essen, 1968.
7. George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford, 1954).
8. De Madonna in de Kunst, catalogue of an exhibition, Antwerp, 1954.
9. The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, intr. by Frank Crane (New York, 1974).
10. Protoevangelion, ibid., IX, 1–9.
11. Mary at the well and Mary at the spinning-wheel are the most common images of the Annunciation in
early Christian art, especially in Byzantine depictions from the fifth century onwards. Before that time,
portrayals of the Annunciation are scarce and schematic. The earliest extant depiction of Mary and the
angel precedes Martini’s Annunciation by ten centuries. Painted in grubby colours on one wall of the
Catacomb of St. Priscilla, in the outskirts of Rome, it shows a featureless seated Virgin listening to a
standing man — an angel wingless and uncrowned.
12. John 1: 14.
13. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York, 1986).
14. The Letters of Peter Abelard, ed. Betty Radice (London, 1974).
15. Hildegard of Bingen, Opera omnia, in Patrologia Latina, Vol. LXXII (Paris, 1844–55).
16. Quoted in Carol Ochs, Behind the Sex of God: Toward a New Consciousness—Transcending
Matriarchy and Patriarchy (Boston, 1977).
17. San Bernardino, Prediche volgari, in Creighton E. Gilbert, Italian Art, 1400–1500: Sources and
Documents (Evanston, 1980).
18. Victor Cousin, ed., Petri Abaelardi Opera, 2 vols. (London, 1849–59).
19. Five centuries later not much seemed to have changed, as witness the sermon delivered by the
learned J.W. Burgon in 1884, on the occasion of a proposal made at Oxford to admit women to the
university: “Will none of you have the generosity or the candour to tell [Woman] what a very disagreeable
creature, in Man’s account, she will inevitably become? If she is to compete successfully with men for
‘honours’, you must needs put the classic writers of antiquity unreservedly into her hands — in other

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words, must introduce her to the obscenities of Greek and Roman literature. Can you seriously intend
it? … I take leave of the subject with a short Allocution addressed to the other sex.… Inferior to us God
made you: and our inferiors to the end of time you will remain.” Quoted in Jan Morris, ed., The Oxford