Twice ToldAbraham Ortelius to Dominicus Lampsonius, 27 December 1589, with Lampsonius's replies
- Language
- Latin
- Reading
- OCR, checked against the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
The Antwerp cartographer Abraham Ortelius wrote this letter to his friend Dominicus Lampsonius eight weeks after the execution. Lampsonius had sent him verses on the werewolf. He answered on the letter itself, in the margins and at the foot, on 31 January 1590, and Hessels prints those replies as notes keyed to the passages they answer. Only the part about the werewolf is given here; the rest of the letter is about a book on painting.
[Ortelius, sections 3 to 7]
Vidi versus tuos in Lycanthropon [c], qui plac[ent]. ostendi quoque eos sculptoribus nostris, at quia ea imago bis publicata typis ęneis prostet, eidem sumptus impendere minus eis consultum videtur [d]. Vis ne meum iudicium liberum de hoc Lycanthropo? Fabula [e] mihi est mera, et non historia, eamque rideo, cum Plinio 8. cap. 22. Scio eiusmodi scribere de Neuris populis Solinum et Pomponium, at scribunt tantum. Scio quoque quę dicit D. Augustinus. at dicit, non docet [f]. Hoc itaque vocamen, et nostrum Wederwolf [g], vocem sine re (ut alias quas possem proferre plures) existimo. Si ex ijs fuissem [h], qui huic facinoroso Stunp Petro iudices fuere, aut fallor, aut penitius hanc scire historiam sive fabulam quis vocet, intelligerem [i].
[Lampsonius’s replies]
[c] Si nactus essem processum de eius rebus gestis; ac de eius confessionibus; totum (inquam) de eo à principio usque ad finem, id est sententiam atque eius executionem, Processum, libêret aliquando hac de re versus facere magis serios, et plures; sed neque tamen nimis multos. nollem imitari prolixiloquentiam Lomazzi. Vidi tamen quędam obiter in eius libro non pęnitenda.
[d] ita est, nec ego huic rei miseram.
[e] Ancor io inne one resto tra’l si, e tra’l nò. Et penso à quello, che dichiarava colui. Ho gran difficolta di credere in Dio, come uolete ch’ io creda nel diauolo? Però, uaglia qui quello; Neque nihil, nec omnia. Videbo, an processum sim impetraturus à Comite Salmensi, sub cuius jurisdictione lupus hic supplicio affectus. Is Comes mihi amicissimus. petij. fortasse non negabit. Si negabit; suspicionem mihi in sinistriorem partem adaugebit.
[f] id est uti te velle puto, non probat, quia nec ita affirmat, ut credi uelit.
[g] bene.
[h] Je suis des vostres icy.
[i] Sed è processu nobis, ut dixi, de re totâ clariùs liquere posset. Ego interim, unà tecum, ἐπέχω.
Translation
[Ortelius]
I have seen your verses on the lycanthrope, and I like them. I showed them to our engravers too, but because that picture is already on sale, printed twice from copper plates, they don’t think it wise to spend money on it again. Do you want my frank opinion of this lycanthrope? To me it is a mere fable, not history, and I laugh at it, as Pliny does (book 8, chapter 22). I know that Solinus and Pomponius write such things about the Neuri, but they only write them. I know too what St Augustine says; but he says it, he does not teach it. So I take this word, and our own “Wederwolf”, for a word with nothing behind it, like several others I could name. Had I been one of the judges of this criminal, Stunp Peter, I would, unless I am wrong, understand this history, or fable if you prefer, more deeply.
[Lampsonius’s replies]
[c] If I could get hold of the trial record of what he did and what he confessed, the whole of it, I mean, from beginning to end, the sentence and its execution included, I would like one day to write more serious verses on it, and more of them. Not too many, though: I would not want to copy Lomazzo’s long-windedness. Still, I noticed a few things in his book in passing that are worth having.
[d] So it is; I had not sent them for that.
[e] I too am stuck between yes and no. I think of what that man declared: “I find it hard to believe in God, so how do you expect me to believe in the devil?” Still, let this rule hold here: not nothing, and not everything. I will see whether I can obtain the trial record from the Count of Salm, under whose jurisdiction this wolf was executed. The count is a close friend of mine. I have asked; perhaps he will not refuse. If he does refuse, it will make me more suspicious.
[f] That is, as I think you mean: he does not vouch for it, because he does not assert it in a way that asks to be believed.
[g] Good.
[h] I am with you on this.
[i] But from the trial record, as I said, the whole matter could become clearer to us. Meanwhile, like you, I suspend judgement.
Notes
- The letter opens (p. 413) “Clarissime Lampsoni”; Lampsonius’s replies are headed “Vltima Jan. id est 31. 1590” and say he received the letter with the book on 29 January 1590. Hessels prints the replies as notes a to i; the note letters here follow his.
- “plac[ent]”: Hessels notes that some letters were cut away by the binder.
- Words Hessels prints in italic are his expansions of abbreviations; they are given here in plain type. Spelling, accents and the e with a hook (ę) are as printed.
- Note [e] is in Italian, then Latin. “inne one” is printed as it stands and we cannot make sense of it; the translation leaves it out. “petij” (petii) is read as “I have asked”.
- “Stunp Petro” is the dative of “Stunp Petrus”, Ortelius’s form of the name.
- “Imago bis publicata typis ęneis”: the picture had been published twice as copper engravings by 27 December 1589. Delrio, ten years later, also mentions engravings on public sale. We have not identified which two prints Ortelius meant.
- Bedburg had been held since 1584 by Count Werner von Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck (Kaiser 2016, pp. 28, 77); we take him to be the Count of Salm that Lampsonius means. The replies do not say whether he received the record.
- Translation ours.