''Musaeum Clausum'' (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

for ''Sealed Museum''), also known as ''Bibliotheca abscondita'' (''Secret Library'' in Latin), is a

tract Tract may refer to: Geography and real estate * Housing tract, an area of land that is subdivided into smaller individual lots * Land lot or tract, a section of land * Census tract, a geographic region defined for the purpose of taking a census ...

written by Sir

Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a d ...

which was first published posthumously in 1684. The tract contains short sentence descriptions of supposed, rumoured or

lost books A lost literary work (referred throughout this article just as a lost work) is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia, produced of which no surviving copies are known to exist, meaning it can be known only through reference, or liter ...

, pictures, and objects. The subtitle describes the tract as an inventory of ''remarkable books, antiquities, pictures and rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living''. Its date is unknown: however, an event from the year 1673 is cited.

Influence from Rabelais

Like his ''

Pseudodoxia Epidemica ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths'', also known simply as ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' or ''Vulgar Errors'', is a work by the English polymath Thomas Browne, challenging and refuti ...

'', ''Musaeum Clausum'' is a catalogue of doubts and queries, only this time, in a style which anticipates the 20th-century

Argentinian Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

short-story writer

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

, who once declared: "To write vast books is a laborious nonsense; much better is to offer a summary as if those books actually existed." Browne however was not the first author to engage in such fantasy. The French author Rabelais, in his epic ''

Gargantua and Pantagruel ''The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel'' (), often shortened to ''Gargantua and Pantagruel'' or the (''Five Books''), is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It tells the advent ...

'', also penned a list of imaginary and often obscene book titles in his "Library of Pantagruel", an inventory which Browne himself alludes to in his ''

Religio Medici ''Religio Medici'' (''The Religion of a Doctor'') by Sir Thomas Browne is a spiritual testament and early psychological self-portrait. Browne mulls over the relation between his medical profession and his Christian faith. Published in 1643 afte ...

''.

Connections to the antiquarian collections

As the 17th-century

Scientific Revolution The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of History of science, modern science during the early modern period, when developments in History of mathematics#Mathematics during the Scientific Revolution, mathemati ...

progressed the popularity and growth of

antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...

collections, those claiming to house highly improbable items grew. Browne was an avid collector of antiquities and natural specimens, possessing a supposed

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

's horn, presented to him by

Arthur Dee Arthur Dee (13 July 1579 – September or October 1651) was a physician and alchemist. He became a physician successively to Tsar Michael I of Russia and to King Charles I of England. Youth Dee was the eldest son of John Dee by his third wife ...

. Browne's eldest son

Edward Edward is an English male name. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements '' ēad'' "wealth, fortunate; prosperous" and '' weard'' "guardian, protector”. History The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-S ...

visited the famous scholar

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Society of Jesus, Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jes ...

, founder of the ''Museo Kircherano'' at

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

in 1667, whose exhibits included an engine for attempting

perpetual motion Perpetual motion is the motion of bodies that continues forever in an unperturbed system. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an external energy source. This kind of machine is impossible ...

and a speaking head, which Kircher called his ''Oraculum Delphinium''. He wrote to his father of his visit to the

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priest's "closet of rarities".

Reception

The sheer volume of book-titles, pictures and objects listed in ''Musaeum Clausum'' is testimony to Browne's fertile imagination. However, his major editors,

Simon Wilkin Simon Wilkin (27 July 1790, in Costessey − 1862, in London) was an England, English publisher, literary scholar and naturalist whose main interest was entomology. Life He was the second of the three children of William Wilkin Wilkin (1762–1799 ...

in the nineteenth century (1834) and Sir

Geoffrey Keynes Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes ( ; 25 March 1887, Cambridge – 5 July 1982, Cambridge) was a British surgeon and author. He began his career as a physician in World War I, before becoming a doctor at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he ...

in the twentieth (1924), summarily dismissed it. Keynes considered its humour too erudite and "not to everyone's taste".

Status as a parody

Browne's miscellaneous tract may also be read as a

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

of the rising trend of private museum collections with their curios of doubtful origin, and perhaps also of publications such as the so-called '' Museum Hermeticum'' (1678), one of the last great anthologies of alchemical literature, with their divulging of near common-place alchemical concepts and symbols.

External links

Text of ''Musaeum Clausum''

Lost Libraries
''

The Public Domain Review ''The Public Domain Review'' is an online journal showcasing works which have entered the public domain. It was co-founded by Jonathan Gray and Adam Green. It was launched on January 1, 2011, to coincide with Public Domain Day. The ''Review'' a ...

'' {{Authority control 1684 books Fictional libraries Works by Thomas Browne Books published posthumously Tracts (literature) Parody books Books about books

Influence from Rabelais

Connections to the antiquarian collections

Reception

Status as a parody

See also

External links