WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.819 OK, let's unpack this. Welcome to another deep 00:00:03.819 --> 00:00:09.099 dive. Today, we're attempting something of a 00:00:09.099 --> 00:00:11.599 historiographical high wire act. That is definitely 00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:13.300 one way to put it. Right. We're calling this 00:00:13.300 --> 00:00:17.239 one The Forgotten Palindromes of Peace, Unpacking 00:00:17.239 --> 00:00:21.039 Jodocus De Weird and Neolatin Wordplay. It's 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:23.839 a title that really sets the stage for how niche 00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:26.219 we're getting today. It really does. No, if you 00:00:26.219 --> 00:00:28.719 are drawn to the hidden corners of 17th century 00:00:28.719 --> 00:00:31.199 history, or if you just find yourself fascinated 00:00:31.199 --> 00:00:35.259 by the bizarre intersection of municipal politics 00:00:35.259 --> 00:00:38.579 and extreme linguistic constraints, you are absolutely 00:00:38.579 --> 00:00:40.539 in the right place. Because we are looking at 00:00:40.539 --> 00:00:43.079 a very specific type of mind today. Exactly. 00:00:43.079 --> 00:00:45.780 We are going to be exploring the life of a Belgian 00:00:45.780 --> 00:00:48.399 poet and syndic. He was from the Spanish Netherlands 00:00:48.399 --> 00:00:51.359 and he commemorated major political shifts, specifically 00:00:51.359 --> 00:00:53.640 the 12 Years' Truce. And he didn't just write 00:00:53.640 --> 00:00:55.619 about it normally. No, not at all. He did it 00:00:55.619 --> 00:00:58.899 through incredibly rigorous, just mind -bending 00:00:58.899 --> 00:01:01.539 neo -Latin poetry. We're talking chronograms, 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:03.899 palindromes, tautograms. The whole linguistic 00:01:03.899 --> 00:01:06.340 obstacle course. Right. And we'll look at his 00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:09.280 mysterious timeline, his publications from 1609 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:12.140 and 1626, and perhaps most interestingly, the 00:01:12.140 --> 00:01:14.939 fact that his legacy currently survives as an 00:01:14.939 --> 00:01:18.200 explicitly -pagged orphan article on Wikipedia. 00:01:18.459 --> 00:01:20.709 Which is such a a striking detail right out of 00:01:20.709 --> 00:01:23.769 the gate. It is. But here's the catch. And the 00:01:23.769 --> 00:01:26.170 reason I call this a high wire act, our source 00:01:26.170 --> 00:01:29.269 material today is not some sprawling thousand 00:01:29.269 --> 00:01:32.250 page biography. It is not a newly discovered 00:01:32.250 --> 00:01:35.049 cache of letters from the Antwerp archives. Our 00:01:35.049 --> 00:01:37.189 entire universe of facts for this discussion 00:01:37.189 --> 00:01:41.090 comes from a single remarkably brief Wikipedia 00:01:41.090 --> 00:01:44.170 stub. Extremely brief. I'm talking under 300 00:01:44.170 --> 00:01:46.290 words. When I first pulled this up, I honestly 00:01:46.290 --> 00:01:48.579 thought. I thought there had been a rendering 00:01:48.579 --> 00:01:51.000 error on my screen. I don't blame you. It is 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.420 sparse in word count, certainly, but it is incredibly 00:01:54.420 --> 00:01:56.739 dense in its implications. Yeah. And I think 00:01:56.739 --> 00:01:58.859 that's exactly why this is a worthwhile exercise. 00:01:59.219 --> 00:02:01.200 We are so accustomed today to having massive 00:02:01.200 --> 00:02:03.000 data sets at our fingertips. You really are. 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:05.500 We just expect historical figures to come with 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:07.799 exhaustive metadata. You search a name, you get 00:02:07.799 --> 00:02:10.139 their whole life story. But when we encounter 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:13.419 a textual artifact like this, a genuine digital 00:02:13.419 --> 00:02:16.759 stub, it forces us to slow down. It forces us 00:02:16.759 --> 00:02:19.300 to act almost like forensic analysts, extracting 00:02:19.300 --> 00:02:22.139 the context, the geopolitical weight, and the 00:02:22.139 --> 00:02:24.400 psychological profile hidden inside just a few 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:27.439 sentences. Taking a deep look at forgotten figures 00:02:27.439 --> 00:02:30.060 forces us to ask critical questions. Exactly. 00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:32.680 What does history remember? How does it remember 00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:36.080 it? And more importantly, what does it let slip 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:38.020 through the cracks of the digital infrastructure? 00:02:38.159 --> 00:02:40.659 Because what we see here is the collision of 00:02:40.659 --> 00:02:43.560 international diplomacy and a near -obsessive 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:46.560 dedication to linguistic puzzles. all compressed 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:49.219 into a space smaller than a modern social media 00:02:49.219 --> 00:02:51.819 post. Which is wild to think about. And that 00:02:51.819 --> 00:02:53.840 is our mission today. We are going to stress 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:57.259 -test this tiny document. We are going to extract 00:02:57.259 --> 00:03:00.539 every ounce of historical and philosophical intrigue 00:03:00.539 --> 00:03:03.439 from... Can you get wide open? Yes. And for you 00:03:03.439 --> 00:03:05.879 listening, I want you to hold a specific image 00:03:05.879 --> 00:03:08.780 in your mind as we navigate this. You're deeply 00:03:08.780 --> 00:03:11.020 familiar with the geopolitical volatility of 00:03:11.020 --> 00:03:13.879 the Spanish Netherlands in the early 1600s. You 00:03:13.879 --> 00:03:16.240 know the weight of the 80 years war. Exactly. 00:03:16.719 --> 00:03:19.240 So I want you to imagine operating as a high 00:03:19.240 --> 00:03:22.699 -level legal official in the middle of that maelstrom. 00:03:23.300 --> 00:03:26.020 In Antwerp, no less. A city that had been through 00:03:26.020 --> 00:03:29.120 absolute hell. Right. And then, choosing to spend 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:32.189 your late nights... not writing memoirs, not 00:03:32.189 --> 00:03:34.370 writing straightforward political theory, but 00:03:34.370 --> 00:03:37.409 executing extreme linguistic gymnastics in a 00:03:37.409 --> 00:03:40.069 dead language. That is the psychological baseline 00:03:40.069 --> 00:03:42.909 of Jodhikas Deweerd. It is. But before we even 00:03:42.909 --> 00:03:45.030 get into the poetry, we need to address the meta 00:03:45.030 --> 00:03:47.610 -text of the source itself, because the very 00:03:47.610 --> 00:03:49.870 first thing we are confronted with is a stark, 00:03:50.289 --> 00:03:52.909 almost melancholy administrative warning. It 00:03:52.909 --> 00:03:55.069 really sets a mood before you even read the first 00:03:55.069 --> 00:03:57.550 sentence. It does. The article is flagged as 00:03:57.550 --> 00:04:01.229 of August 2024 as an orphan. It explicitly states 00:04:01.229 --> 00:04:03.509 that no other articles link to it. Which is a 00:04:03.509 --> 00:04:05.629 fascinating concept when you stop to think about 00:04:05.629 --> 00:04:07.750 the architecture of modern knowledge. Yeah, explain 00:04:07.750 --> 00:04:09.909 that a bit more. Well, if we connect this to 00:04:09.909 --> 00:04:13.689 the bigger picture of digital archivism, Wikipedia 00:04:13.689 --> 00:04:16.069 is built entirely on the concept of the hyperlink. 00:04:16.250 --> 00:04:18.730 Right. It is a relational database modeled on 00:04:18.730 --> 00:04:21.629 human association. Its value proposition isn't 00:04:21.629 --> 00:04:24.389 just the information on a single page. It's how 00:04:24.389 --> 00:04:26.769 that page connects to the broader web of human 00:04:26.769 --> 00:04:29.490 history. It's the web itself. Precisely. So to 00:04:29.490 --> 00:04:32.230 be tagged as an orphan, is an algorithmic way 00:04:32.230 --> 00:04:35.410 of saying that, within this massive interconnected 00:04:35.410 --> 00:04:39.110 tapestry of millions of nodes, Yodokas de Weert 00:04:39.110 --> 00:04:42.509 is currently an isolated island. He exists, but 00:04:42.509 --> 00:04:44.509 there's no path to reach him unless you already 00:04:44.509 --> 00:04:47.149 know exactly what you are looking for. Which 00:04:47.149 --> 00:04:49.949 almost nobody does. But let me play devil's advocate 00:04:49.949 --> 00:04:53.009 here. Is it really that profound, or is it just 00:04:53.009 --> 00:04:55.470 a temporary failure of an indexing algorithm? 00:04:55.730 --> 00:04:57.569 How do you mean? Well, we are talking about a 00:04:57.569 --> 00:05:00.050 minor 17th century poet. The fact that someone 00:05:00.050 --> 00:05:02.490 hasn't manually gone in and hyperlinked his name 00:05:02.490 --> 00:05:05.009 from the main Spanish Netherlands page or the 00:05:05.009 --> 00:05:07.310 Antwerp page, does that actually reflect his 00:05:07.310 --> 00:05:09.670 historical irrelevance? Or is it just digital 00:05:09.670 --> 00:05:12.009 housekeeping that hasn't been done yet? I would 00:05:12.009 --> 00:05:14.870 argue it reflects a profound shift in how we 00:05:14.870 --> 00:05:16.970 validate existence. Okay, that's a big statement. 00:05:17.209 --> 00:05:20.230 Think about it. In the digital age, existence 00:05:20.230 --> 00:05:23.949 is connectivity. An unlinked page is effectively 00:05:23.949 --> 00:05:27.329 invisible to the casual browser. nobody falls 00:05:27.329 --> 00:05:29.850 down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and accidentally 00:05:29.850 --> 00:05:32.029 ends up on an orphan page. That's a really good 00:05:32.029 --> 00:05:33.829 point. You have to type his name in directly. 00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:37.209 Right. But what makes this specific orphan status 00:05:37.209 --> 00:05:41.189 so compelling, and frankly, deeply ironic, is 00:05:41.189 --> 00:05:43.490 what we find when we look at the physical bibliography 00:05:43.490 --> 00:05:45.649 at the bottom of this very same stub. Oh, the 00:05:45.649 --> 00:05:48.310 references section is wild. It is. He is digitally 00:05:48.310 --> 00:05:51.329 isolated today, yes. But historically, physically, 00:05:51.629 --> 00:05:54.290 He was the exact opposite of an orphan. Yeah, 00:05:54.509 --> 00:05:56.250 you look at the references and realize this man 00:05:56.250 --> 00:05:58.569 was tracked across centuries and across borders. 00:05:58.850 --> 00:06:01.670 The source lists four distinct authoritative 00:06:01.670 --> 00:06:03.569 references. We'll walk through them. OK, so we 00:06:03.569 --> 00:06:07.209 have an 1876 French source, the Biographie Nationale 00:06:07.209 --> 00:06:10.069 de Belgique. A major national encyclopedia. Right. 00:06:10.550 --> 00:06:13.009 Then we have a highly specific modern German 00:06:13.009 --> 00:06:16.870 scholarly work from 2019, the Floraligium Neolatinum, 00:06:17.050 --> 00:06:20.120 compiled by Walther Ludwig. which proves modern 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:22.620 academic activist in his neo -Latin work. Exactly. 00:06:23.019 --> 00:06:25.319 And going back even further, we have a much older 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:28.160 German catalog, the Algemeins Geler in Lexicon 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:32.060 from 1751. Mid 18th century. Yeah. And finally, 00:06:32.060 --> 00:06:34.779 we have the general catalog of printed books 00:06:34.779 --> 00:06:38.079 from the British Museum in London dated 1965. 00:06:38.500 --> 00:06:40.879 So look at that spread. It's massive. Between 00:06:40.879 --> 00:06:45.120 1751 and 2019, in French, German, and English, 00:06:45.860 --> 00:06:48.120 massive institutional catalogs took the time 00:06:48.120 --> 00:06:50.879 to validate his existence and document his output. 00:06:51.259 --> 00:06:53.199 This raises such an important question about 00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:55.860 the fragility of modern digital memory compared 00:06:55.860 --> 00:06:58.220 to the inertia of physical print. For over two 00:06:58.220 --> 00:07:00.540 and a half centuries across multiple European 00:07:00.540 --> 00:07:02.899 nation states, librarians, bibliographers, and 00:07:02.899 --> 00:07:05.680 scholars recognized his necessity in the historical 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:08.480 record. He crossed linguistic and national borders 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:10.819 in the era of physical typesetting. Which took 00:07:10.819 --> 00:07:13.660 real physical effort. It wasn't just a copy paste 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:16.939 job. Exactly. If you were a scholar in 1965 at 00:07:16.939 --> 00:07:19.779 the British Museum, Jodhukas Deweert was integrated 00:07:19.779 --> 00:07:21.699 into your reference system. You could find him 00:07:21.699 --> 00:07:23.420 through the card catalogs. He was connected. 00:07:23.740 --> 00:07:27.500 But in our current, supposedly hyper -connected, 00:07:27.720 --> 00:07:31.420 omniscient digital ecosystem, that chain of custody 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:33.959 has been broken. The human editors and the bots 00:07:33.959 --> 00:07:36.519 of the modern age just haven't yet woven his 00:07:36.519 --> 00:07:38.920 node into the digital tapestry. And the irony 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:41.180 of that disconnection is just staggering when 00:07:41.180 --> 00:07:43.279 you look at his actual life's work. Oh, it's 00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:45.410 almost too perfect. We're gonna get into the 00:07:45.410 --> 00:07:47.709 weeds of his poetry shortly, but the overarching 00:07:47.709 --> 00:07:51.009 theme of his literary output was the obsessive 00:07:51.009 --> 00:07:53.529 construction of hidden connections. Yes. He was 00:07:53.529 --> 00:07:56.689 writing anagrams, acrostics, palindromes. His 00:07:56.689 --> 00:07:59.050 entire artistic philosophy was about forcing 00:07:59.050 --> 00:08:01.350 disparate letters and words to link together 00:08:01.350 --> 00:08:03.970 mathematically and structurally. He was, in a 00:08:03.970 --> 00:08:07.250 very literal sense, a human hyperlink for the 00:08:07.250 --> 00:08:09.189 Latin language. That is a great way to put it. 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:11.800 He dedicated his life to the art of connecting 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:14.399 things that do not naturally connect. And now, 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:17.199 400 years later, he is sitting in a database 00:08:17.199 --> 00:08:20.000 with zero digital links connecting to him. It 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.779 is a poetic tragedy, really. And it asks you, 00:08:22.779 --> 00:08:25.959 the listener, to pause and consider the architectural 00:08:25.959 --> 00:08:28.000 stress testing of our own legacy. What do you 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.500 mean by that? Well, what artifacts from today's 00:08:30.500 --> 00:08:33.200 heavily documented society might end up as orphaned 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.919 stubs centuries from now? We generate unimaginable 00:08:36.919 --> 00:08:40.019 terabytes of data, intricately cross -referenced 00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:42.840 profiles. Every photo is tagged, every post is 00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:45.240 linked. Right, but what happens when the underlying 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:48.919 platform changes, when the context shifts? Who 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:51.600 among us, despite being validated by various 00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:54.620 institutions today, will simply become an isolated 00:08:54.620 --> 00:08:57.720 footnote? A broken link waiting for a future 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:00.519 historian to stumble upon. Exactly. The digital 00:09:00.519 --> 00:09:03.139 orphan status of Jodocus Deweard isn't just a 00:09:03.139 --> 00:09:05.500 quirk of Wikipedia. It's a mirror reflecting 00:09:05.500 --> 00:09:07.799 our own precarious relationship with permanence. 00:09:08.059 --> 00:09:10.279 That is a haunting way to frame it. Really haunting. 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:12.240 But let's move from the meta -text to the man 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:14.669 himself. Let's look at the actual biographical 00:09:14.669 --> 00:09:16.629 timeline we have, because even in the handful 00:09:16.629 --> 00:09:19.590 of dates provided, there is a distinct epistemological 00:09:19.590 --> 00:09:21.470 gap. There's a real tension in the timeline. 00:09:21.649 --> 00:09:23.990 There is. The text tells us Jodocus de Weerd, 00:09:24.070 --> 00:09:26.070 who was also recorded under the name Jossie van 00:09:26.070 --> 00:09:28.450 Weerd, by the way, was born in Antwerp circa 00:09:28.450 --> 00:09:33.029 1555 to 1560. The ambiguity there is standard 00:09:33.029 --> 00:09:35.049 for the era, but it's worth sitting with for 00:09:35.049 --> 00:09:38.129 a moment. A five year window for his birth in 00:09:38.129 --> 00:09:41.200 a major economic hub like Antwerp. That seems 00:09:41.200 --> 00:09:43.200 like a pretty wide window for someone who ends 00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:46.620 up being a major city official. It does, but 00:09:46.620 --> 00:09:49.179 record keeping in the mid 16th century, even 00:09:49.179 --> 00:09:51.100 for families that would eventually send a son 00:09:51.100 --> 00:09:54.200 to study law, could be notoriously spotty. More 00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:57.580 lost. Right, more likely. Those parishers' municipal 00:09:57.580 --> 00:09:59.960 records were lost to the sheer attrition of time, 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:02.639 fire, or the intense conflicts that defined the 00:10:02.639 --> 00:10:06.879 region. The iconic classic fury in 1566. The 00:10:06.879 --> 00:10:10.899 Spanish fury in 1576 Antwerp saw a lot of destruction. 00:10:11.379 --> 00:10:13.580 So the paperwork just goes up in smoke. Precisely. 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:16.019 But contrast that five -year ambiguity of his 00:10:16.019 --> 00:10:18.519 birth with the record of his death. The source 00:10:18.519 --> 00:10:22.840 states he died on August 4 or 5, 1625. That is 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:25.279 a sudden, sharp focal length. It is. It isn't 00:10:25.279 --> 00:10:27.860 some time in the summer of 1625. It is narrowed 00:10:27.860 --> 00:10:30.120 down to a 48 -hour window. It's a fascinating 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:32.899 juxtaposition. the wide margin of error for his 00:10:32.899 --> 00:10:35.679 arrival, and the razor thin margin for his departure. 00:10:35.759 --> 00:10:38.019 Yeah. And the physical geography of that departure 00:10:38.019 --> 00:10:42.059 is also intriguing. The text notes he is said 00:10:42.059 --> 00:10:45.100 to be buried in the Franciscan monastery in Antwerp. 00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:48.080 The phrasing there, said to be buried, always 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:51.029 catches my eye in historical texts. Why is that? 00:10:51.250 --> 00:10:53.490 Well, it implies a textual tradition that places 00:10:53.490 --> 00:10:56.750 him there, but an inability to physically verify 00:10:56.750 --> 00:10:59.669 it today. That's exactly right. It suggests that 00:10:59.669 --> 00:11:02.250 while secondary documents or historical tradition 00:11:02.250 --> 00:11:05.070 place his remains within that specific monastic 00:11:05.070 --> 00:11:07.909 enclosure, the physical grave marker itself is 00:11:07.909 --> 00:11:10.549 likely gone. Or the primary burial registry of 00:11:10.549 --> 00:11:13.629 that exact period has been lost or rendered illegible 00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:16.059 over the centuries. We have the textual ghost 00:11:16.059 --> 00:11:18.700 of his burial site, but not the physical proof. 00:11:19.179 --> 00:11:21.720 Right. But what bridges that vague birth and 00:11:21.720 --> 00:11:24.259 that highly specific death is a very distinct 00:11:24.259 --> 00:11:26.759 career trajectory. And this is where his mind 00:11:26.759 --> 00:11:28.809 really starts to take shape for us. The text 00:11:28.809 --> 00:11:31.129 establishes that he studied law in Cologne, and 00:11:31.129 --> 00:11:33.990 by 1609, he was the syndic of Antwerp. Let's 00:11:33.990 --> 00:11:36.090 explore that transition, because the leap from 00:11:36.090 --> 00:11:38.450 a law student in Cologne to the syndic of Antwerp 00:11:38.450 --> 00:11:42.629 in 1609 is immense. It's a huge jump. And for 00:11:42.629 --> 00:11:44.570 an audience familiar with the municipal structures 00:11:44.570 --> 00:11:46.970 of the period, you know that a syndic wasn't 00:11:46.970 --> 00:11:49.169 just a mid -level bureaucrat pushing papers. 00:11:49.409 --> 00:11:52.409 Far from it. This was a paramount legal and administrative 00:11:52.409 --> 00:11:56.509 role. Antwerp in 1609 wasn't some sleepy provincial 00:11:56.509 --> 00:12:00.929 town. It was a fiercely vital, complex city caught 00:12:00.929 --> 00:12:03.970 in the crosshairs of the Spanish Habsburgs and 00:12:03.970 --> 00:12:06.009 the emerging Dutch Republic. It was a pressure 00:12:06.009 --> 00:12:09.029 cooker. Exactly. To be the syndic there meant 00:12:09.029 --> 00:12:11.990 Judocus was a person of serious influence. He 00:12:11.990 --> 00:12:14.929 was the city's legal representative, its advocate. 00:12:15.419 --> 00:12:17.879 deeply entrenched in the high stakes political 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:20.419 realities of the day. And we must deeply consider 00:12:20.419 --> 00:12:23.179 the Cognacca foundation of that career, his legal 00:12:23.179 --> 00:12:25.419 studies in Cologne. Why Cologne specifically? 00:12:25.700 --> 00:12:27.639 Well, Cologne was a massive intellectual center, 00:12:27.919 --> 00:12:30.259 heavily steeped in Catholic orthodoxy and rigorous 00:12:30.259 --> 00:12:32.519 academic traditions. But more importantly, if 00:12:32.519 --> 00:12:34.559 we connect this to the bigger picture of his 00:12:34.559 --> 00:12:37.799 later poetic obsessions, this detail about studying 00:12:37.799 --> 00:12:40.440 law is the skeleton key. Legal studies in the 00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:43.659 late 16th century were not about broad theoretical 00:12:43.659 --> 00:12:46.840 interpretations of justice. They required an 00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:50.379 intense, grueling application of logic, rule 00:12:50.379 --> 00:12:53.200 -bound thinking, and an obsessive attention to 00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:56.080 the precise placement, morphology, and meaning 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:58.879 of words. Because in a legal document, words 00:12:58.879 --> 00:13:02.039 are binding. Exactly. In a legal decree or a 00:13:02.039 --> 00:13:05.460 municipal contract, a single misplaced Latin 00:13:05.460 --> 00:13:08.379 suffix could alter the economic fate of a city. 00:13:08.539 --> 00:13:10.679 It could invalidate a treaty. I see where you're 00:13:10.679 --> 00:13:12.580 going with this. You're looking at his D job 00:13:12.580 --> 00:13:15.139 not just as a source of income, but as the software 00:13:15.139 --> 00:13:18.080 that programmed his brain. That is exactly it. 00:13:18.460 --> 00:13:21.039 His legal training in Cologne wired his cognitive 00:13:21.039 --> 00:13:24.100 processes for absolute precision and structural 00:13:24.100 --> 00:13:26.379 rigidity. So when we look at his poetry, we have 00:13:26.379 --> 00:13:28.720 to strip away our modern romanticized notions 00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:31.580 of what a poet is. We absolutely do. We are not 00:13:31.580 --> 00:13:33.779 looking at a 19th century romantic wandering 00:13:33.779 --> 00:13:36.340 through a field of daffodils capturing unfiltered 00:13:36.340 --> 00:13:38.259 emotion in free verse. Right. There's no words 00:13:38.259 --> 00:13:41.879 worth here? No. We are looking at highly structured, 00:13:42.419 --> 00:13:45.220 mathematically exact, rule -bound linguistic 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:48.179 architecture. We are witnessing the mind of a 00:13:48.179 --> 00:13:51.659 rigorous legal scholar applying municipal and 00:13:51.659 --> 00:13:54.659 contractual rigidity to the art of neo -Latin 00:13:54.659 --> 00:13:58.009 poetry. The lawyer treating a poem like a hermetically 00:13:58.009 --> 00:14:00.769 sealed legal contract. Exactly. I love the clarity 00:14:00.769 --> 00:14:03.370 of that analogy. And that framework brings us 00:14:03.370 --> 00:14:06.289 directly to the first of his two known published 00:14:06.289 --> 00:14:08.590 works, which arrived in a highly significant 00:14:08.590 --> 00:14:13.000 year. 1609. Yes. The text tells us that in 1609, 00:14:13.179 --> 00:14:16.559 he published Concordiae Belgicae Panegyricus 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:18.740 Parnassicus. Just the phonetic weight of that 00:14:18.740 --> 00:14:21.940 title is magnificent. Concordiae Belgicae Panegyricus 00:14:21.940 --> 00:14:24.279 Parnassicus. It really demands to be spoken in 00:14:24.279 --> 00:14:26.299 a grand hall, doesn't it? It is. But let's break 00:14:26.299 --> 00:14:28.039 down the political context of this publication. 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:30.360 The source explicitly notes that this collection 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:32.879 celebrates the Twelve Years' Truce. A massively 00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:35.399 important event. Huge. Now, we know the Twelve 00:14:35.399 --> 00:14:38.279 Years' Truce, signed in 1609, was a geopolitical 00:14:38.279 --> 00:14:41.519 earthquake. It was the cessation of open hostilities 00:14:41.519 --> 00:14:44.120 between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic. 00:14:44.220 --> 00:14:46.379 And for a city like Antwerp, this wasn't just 00:14:46.379 --> 00:14:49.659 abstract politics. No, Antwerp had been economically 00:14:49.659 --> 00:14:51.940 and physically battered by the 80 Years War. 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.279 The Shelt River had been blocked. Trade was choked. 00:14:55.779 --> 00:14:58.519 This truce was a municipal lifeline. What is 00:14:58.519 --> 00:15:01.059 fascinating here is the intersection of his professional 00:15:01.059 --> 00:15:03.620 duty and his artistic output. Right, because 00:15:03.620 --> 00:15:07.100 of his job. Exactly. In 1609, Jodokas is the 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:09.899 syndic. He is fundamentally responsible for navigating 00:15:09.899 --> 00:15:12.179 the legal and administrative realities of this 00:15:12.179 --> 00:15:15.149 new piece for the city of Antwerp. He's the guy 00:15:15.149 --> 00:15:17.769 reading the fine print of the truce for the city. 00:15:17.970 --> 00:15:21.250 Yes. And in that very same year, he publishes 00:15:21.250 --> 00:15:25.110 this work. A panegyric is, by definition, a public 00:15:25.110 --> 00:15:27.970 formal speech or text of high praise. So the 00:15:27.970 --> 00:15:31.309 city's top legal mind is actively publicly documenting 00:15:31.309 --> 00:15:33.649 and celebrating the truce. This isn't a private 00:15:33.649 --> 00:15:36.389 journal entry hidden in a desk drawer. No. This 00:15:36.389 --> 00:15:38.889 is a civic leader planting a flag in a historical 00:15:38.889 --> 00:15:41.370 moment. But let me push back on that for a second. 00:15:41.450 --> 00:15:44.490 If he is the syndic, if his job is municipal 00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:48.450 administration, why a panegyric? Why not a straightforward 00:15:48.450 --> 00:15:50.450 legal treatise on the benefits of the truce? 00:15:50.690 --> 00:15:53.110 It's a fair question. Isn't writing an elaborate 00:15:53.110 --> 00:15:56.269 Latin poem just an exercise in political sycophancy? 00:15:56.990 --> 00:15:59.610 A way to curry favor with the Habsburg overlords 00:15:59.610 --> 00:16:02.710 by dressing up their truce in fancy mythological 00:16:02.710 --> 00:16:06.090 language. That is a fair critique and certainly 00:16:06.659 --> 00:16:08.840 Panegyric's thread history often served the function 00:16:08.840 --> 00:16:11.100 of flattering the powerful. Yeah. It was part 00:16:11.100 --> 00:16:13.360 of the political game. Right. But we have to 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.600 look at the publication details provided in the 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:18.220 source to understand the cultural weight of this 00:16:18.220 --> 00:16:21.340 specific work. The text tells us it was published 00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:24.679 by the Oficina Plantiniana, apud Ioannam Maretem. 00:16:24.879 --> 00:16:27.669 The Platim press. Under the direction of Yanaratis? 00:16:27.769 --> 00:16:30.990 Yes. Ah, okay. That changes the calculus significantly. 00:16:31.090 --> 00:16:33.870 It really does. The Plant & Press wasn't a corner 00:16:33.870 --> 00:16:35.950 print shop where you could self -publish a vanity 00:16:35.950 --> 00:16:37.850 project. It was legendary. It was one of the 00:16:37.850 --> 00:16:40.230 most prestigious, intellectually rigorous printing 00:16:40.230 --> 00:16:42.830 houses in all of Europe. They published major 00:16:42.830 --> 00:16:46.149 scientific works, polyglot bibles, high -level 00:16:46.149 --> 00:16:48.590 scholarship. So to be published by the Ophicena 00:16:48.590 --> 00:16:50.870 Plantiniana meant your work had been seriously 00:16:50.870 --> 00:16:53.710 vetted. It meant it carried significant cultural 00:16:53.710 --> 00:16:56.259 and intellectual capital. was a high -status 00:16:56.259 --> 00:16:59.340 object. The fact that Jan Maretis put his press's 00:16:59.340 --> 00:17:02.259 name on this indicates that Jodocus's poetry, 00:17:02.799 --> 00:17:04.980 regardless of how we view the genre of the panegyric 00:17:04.980 --> 00:17:07.940 today, was treated with absolute seriousness 00:17:07.940 --> 00:17:11.640 by the intellectual elite of 1609. So it's less 00:17:11.640 --> 00:17:14.259 about sycophancy and more about establishing 00:17:14.259 --> 00:17:16.619 intellectual dominance. Exactly. He is using 00:17:16.619 --> 00:17:19.299 the highest form of linguistic art printed by 00:17:19.299 --> 00:17:21.819 the premier publishing house to validate the 00:17:21.819 --> 00:17:24.299 political reality of the truth. And to validate 00:17:24.299 --> 00:17:26.519 Antwerp's place in it. Right. But that brings 00:17:26.519 --> 00:17:28.819 us to the actual mechanics of the poetry itself, 00:17:29.359 --> 00:17:31.759 which is where this story pivots from an interesting 00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:34.400 historical footnote into something bordering 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:36.730 on the avant -garde. This is my favorite part. 00:17:36.990 --> 00:17:39.970 The source explicitly remembers Jedocus for two 00:17:39.970 --> 00:17:43.309 strange collections of neo -Latin poetry. And 00:17:43.309 --> 00:17:45.569 I appreciate that the encyclopedia uses the word 00:17:45.569 --> 00:17:48.150 strange because it is perfectly justified. This 00:17:48.150 --> 00:17:49.650 is the most accurate word they could have used. 00:17:49.930 --> 00:17:52.849 The text lists the specific types of linguistic 00:17:52.849 --> 00:17:56.640 constraints he employed. We have chronograms, 00:17:56.920 --> 00:17:59.539 talendromes, which the source refers to as retrogradus 00:17:59.539 --> 00:18:02.880 acrostics, anagrams, and tautograms. This is 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:05.440 where we see the legal mind of Cologne truly 00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:08.140 unleashed upon the Latin language. It is. We 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:10.299 need to dissect exactly what these constraints 00:18:10.299 --> 00:18:13.079 entail, especially considering he was executing 00:18:13.079 --> 00:18:16.619 them in Neo -Latin, the highly polished, revived 00:18:16.619 --> 00:18:19.250 Latin used for Renaissance scholars. Let's start 00:18:19.250 --> 00:18:21.710 with chronograms, because this blew my mind when 00:18:21.710 --> 00:18:24.269 I really thought about the cognitive load required. 00:18:24.390 --> 00:18:27.549 It's intense. A chronogram is a text where certain 00:18:27.549 --> 00:18:30.049 letters, specifically those that function as 00:18:30.049 --> 00:18:34.309 Roman numeral, so I, V, X, L, C, D, M, those 00:18:34.309 --> 00:18:36.309 letters are capitalized or highlighted in the 00:18:36.309 --> 00:18:38.410 text. And when the reader extracts those specific 00:18:38.410 --> 00:18:40.549 letters from the sentence and adds their numerical 00:18:40.549 --> 00:18:43.210 values together, they spell out a specific date 00:18:43.210 --> 00:18:45.509 or number. Think about the architectural stress 00:18:45.509 --> 00:18:47.490 that places on a writer. It's almost impossible 00:18:47.490 --> 00:18:50.000 to fathom. You are writing a poem about the 12 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:53.720 years truce. The grammar must be correct. The 00:18:53.720 --> 00:18:56.240 vocabulary must be elevated and appropriate for 00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:58.440 a panegyric. The meter must hold. You can't just 00:18:58.440 --> 00:19:01.299 throw the rhythm off. Exactly. But simultaneously, 00:19:01.799 --> 00:19:04.799 you have to carefully select your words so that 00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:07.779 the sum of their Roman numeral letters equals 00:19:07.779 --> 00:19:11.119 exactly 1609. You are embedding a cryptographic 00:19:11.119 --> 00:19:14.079 hash within a poem. It is a mathematical equation 00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:16.980 disguised as literature. It's the 17th century 00:19:16.980 --> 00:19:19.339 equivalent of writing functional computer code 00:19:19.339 --> 00:19:21.630 that also happens to rhyme. That's a perfect 00:19:21.630 --> 00:19:24.329 analogy. If you use the word civilis, meaning 00:19:24.329 --> 00:19:27.450 civil, you've just added a C, a V, two I's, and 00:19:27.450 --> 00:19:30.750 an L to your math problem. That's 100 plus 5 00:19:30.750 --> 00:19:34.170 plus 1 plus 1 plus 50. That's 157 just from one 00:19:34.170 --> 00:19:36.529 word. And if you go over 1609, you have to rewrite 00:19:36.529 --> 00:19:38.630 the whole line. You have to constantly balance 00:19:38.630 --> 00:19:41.269 the semantic meaning of the word with its numerical 00:19:41.269 --> 00:19:43.990 weight. It is an excruciating constraint. And 00:19:43.990 --> 00:19:46.490 then we move to what the text calls retrogratis, 00:19:46.569 --> 00:19:49.849 or palindromes. Oh, boy. Words, phrases, or entire 00:19:49.849 --> 00:19:52.799 lines poetry that read the exact same way forwards 00:19:52.799 --> 00:19:55.099 and backwards. Now I want to pause here because 00:19:55.099 --> 00:19:57.420 writing a palindrome in English is a fun parlor 00:19:57.420 --> 00:20:01.160 trick, right? A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. 00:20:01.259 --> 00:20:04.640 Right, classic. Race car. But doing it in highly 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:07.299 inflected neo -Latin while discussing European 00:20:07.299 --> 00:20:09.579 geopolitics. It's a completely different level 00:20:09.579 --> 00:20:12.559 of difficulty. Latin relies on very specific 00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:15.500 case endings to denote grammatical function. 00:20:15.869 --> 00:20:18.730 The end of the word dictates its role in the 00:20:18.730 --> 00:20:21.829 sentence. Is it the subject? Is it the direct 00:20:21.829 --> 00:20:25.549 object? The suffix tells you. Exactly. So if 00:20:25.549 --> 00:20:28.329 you are writing backwards, the prefix of your 00:20:28.329 --> 00:20:30.710 first word becomes the suffix of your last word. 00:20:30.910 --> 00:20:33.309 The morphological gymnastics required to make 00:20:33.309 --> 00:20:36.329 a Latin sentence mathematically symmetrical while 00:20:36.329 --> 00:20:38.690 retaining coherent political meaning is just, 00:20:38.769 --> 00:20:41.490 it's a staggering level of difficulty. It requires 00:20:41.490 --> 00:20:44.390 visualizing language not as a linear flow of 00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:47.609 time but as a bi -directional physical object. 00:20:47.710 --> 00:20:49.529 Yeah, you're looking at the whole sentence at 00:20:49.529 --> 00:20:51.569 once. You're reading the flow of time forwards 00:20:51.569 --> 00:20:54.740 and backwards simultaneously. Then the text mentions 00:20:54.740 --> 00:20:57.460 acrostics and anagrams. Acrostics are a bit more 00:20:57.460 --> 00:20:59.579 familiar to most people. Right. Acrostics, where 00:20:59.579 --> 00:21:01.640 the first letters of each line spell out a hidden 00:21:01.640 --> 00:21:03.799 word or message, are perhaps the most common 00:21:03.799 --> 00:21:05.480 of these constraints. We see those in ancient 00:21:05.480 --> 00:21:08.079 literature, too. But anagrams taking the letters 00:21:08.079 --> 00:21:11.519 of a word or phrase and rearranging them to form 00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:14.420 entirely new words. Again, doing this in Latin 00:21:14.420 --> 00:21:17.180 requires a profound mastery of the vocabulary. 00:21:17.480 --> 00:21:20.900 Imagine taking the Latin name of a Spanish Habsburg 00:21:20.900 --> 00:21:24.359 general. or a Dutch leader, and rearranging the 00:21:24.359 --> 00:21:27.339 exact letters of their name to spell out a phrase 00:21:27.339 --> 00:21:30.440 praising the piece. You are literally reordering 00:21:30.440 --> 00:21:32.539 their identity to fit your political narrative. 00:21:32.740 --> 00:21:35.019 You are stripping them down to their alphabetical 00:21:35.019 --> 00:21:36.940 components and rebuilding them. That is such 00:21:36.940 --> 00:21:40.119 a power move. It really is. And finally, the 00:21:40.119 --> 00:21:42.940 text lists tautograms. A tautogram is a text 00:21:42.940 --> 00:21:44.759 where every single word starts with the exact 00:21:44.759 --> 00:21:46.680 same letter. This is where I draw a connection 00:21:46.680 --> 00:21:49.009 to something much more modern. This reminds me 00:21:49.009 --> 00:21:51.390 of the Oulipo movement in the 20th century. Ah 00:21:51.390 --> 00:21:54.230 yes, Georges Perrec. Writers like Perrec, who 00:21:54.230 --> 00:21:56.430 wrote the novel La Disperection in an entire 00:21:56.430 --> 00:21:58.970 French novel without ever using the letter E. 00:21:59.150 --> 00:22:01.829 Which is mind -boggling. It's constraint -based 00:22:01.829 --> 00:22:06.069 writing. But Jodicus is doing this in 1609. I 00:22:06.069 --> 00:22:08.589 challenge you listening to this. Sit down and 00:22:08.589 --> 00:22:11.130 try to write a coherent, politically persuasive 00:22:11.130 --> 00:22:14.190 paragraph about a current event where every single 00:22:14.190 --> 00:22:16.410 word begins with the letter P. You would give 00:22:16.410 --> 00:22:18.930 up after one sentence. You would. It strips away 00:22:18.930 --> 00:22:21.190 your natural vocabulary and forces you to hunt 00:22:21.190 --> 00:22:23.849 for obscure synonyms. You lose the rhythm of 00:22:23.849 --> 00:22:26.309 natural speech entirely. It creates a highly 00:22:26.309 --> 00:22:29.400 artificial Almost alien form of communication. 00:22:29.559 --> 00:22:31.940 It does. Which raises an incredibly important 00:22:31.940 --> 00:22:34.240 question. Parts the central question of this 00:22:34.240 --> 00:22:37.319 entire deep dive. Why do it? Yes, why do it? 00:22:37.700 --> 00:22:39.700 We have established that he is a serious man, 00:22:40.119 --> 00:22:42.720 a syndic, published by the Planton Press. He 00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:45.220 is writing about a massive geopolitical event. 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:48.740 Why choose the most bizarre, restrictive, artificial 00:22:48.740 --> 00:22:51.200 methods possible to record this history? It's 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:53.299 the core mystery of his character. I am gonna 00:22:53.299 --> 00:22:56.380 play devil's advocate again. Was he just an insufferable 00:22:56.380 --> 00:22:59.319 pedant? It's possible. Was this the ultimate 00:22:59.319 --> 00:23:02.819 ego trip? You are surrounded by the intellectual 00:23:02.819 --> 00:23:06.039 elite in Antwerp, the scholars at the Oficina 00:23:06.039 --> 00:23:09.619 Plantiniana. Is writing a tautological panegyric 00:23:09.619 --> 00:23:12.319 just a way of flexing your sheer intellectual 00:23:12.319 --> 00:23:14.599 horsepower? Like a party trick for geniuses. 00:23:14.700 --> 00:23:16.539 Yeah, like look at me. I can solve the Sunday 00:23:16.539 --> 00:23:19.220 crossword in pen, in Latin, while negotiating 00:23:19.220 --> 00:23:22.240 a municipal treaty. I think there is undoubtedly 00:23:22.240 --> 00:23:24.519 an element of intellectual exhibitionism at play 00:23:24.519 --> 00:23:26.779 here. You have to have a certain amount of ego 00:23:26.779 --> 00:23:30.220 to even attempt it. Absolutely. These works were 00:23:30.220 --> 00:23:32.759 puzzles designed to be unraveled and admired 00:23:32.759 --> 00:23:35.839 by a very specific, highly educated peer group. 00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:38.319 He wanted Jan Maraitis and the other humanists 00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:41.000 to look at it and marvel at his skill. Right. 00:23:41.140 --> 00:23:43.160 But if we look deeper into the psychology of 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:45.420 constraint, I think there is a philosophical, 00:23:45.960 --> 00:23:47.980 almost existential angle here. I like the sound 00:23:47.980 --> 00:23:49.559 of that. Walk me through it. Think about the 00:23:49.559 --> 00:23:51.819 world Judocus lived in. The 80 Years War was 00:23:51.819 --> 00:23:55.039 a period of horrific chaos. Decades of it. Cities 00:23:55.039 --> 00:23:58.720 besieged, economies ruined, political alliances 00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:02.279 shifting violently. The 12 years true since 1609 00:24:02.279 --> 00:24:05.400 was a desperately needed pause, but it was fragile. 00:24:06.140 --> 00:24:08.460 Everyone knew it was fragile. The world was messy, 00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:10.660 unpredictable and violent. So you're saying the 00:24:10.660 --> 00:24:13.099 poetry was a defense mechanism. I'm not saying 00:24:13.099 --> 00:24:15.000 you're wrong, but how does a tautogram defend 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.039 you from an army? Not physical defense, psychological 00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:22.619 defense. In a world defined by political chaos, 00:24:23.019 --> 00:24:26.069 there is something deeply psychologically comforting 00:24:26.069 --> 00:24:29.950 about forcing language into absolute unbreakable 00:24:29.950 --> 00:24:33.549 rules. A tautogram or a conogram represents total 00:24:33.549 --> 00:24:36.490 control over the raw material of reality. You 00:24:36.490 --> 00:24:38.230 cannot control the armies of the Spanish Empire. 00:24:38.390 --> 00:24:40.589 You cannot control the shifting borders, but 00:24:40.589 --> 00:24:42.910 you can control every single syllable and integer 00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:45.640 in your poem. It is the legal mind seeking an 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:47.839 airtight order that the physical world refuses 00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:50.599 to provide. Exactly. The politics of Europe were 00:24:50.599 --> 00:24:53.660 chaotic, but Jodakis's poetry was mathematically 00:24:53.660 --> 00:24:56.619 provably perfect. Seeking order and chaos through 00:24:56.619 --> 00:24:59.740 extreme linguistic constraint. That is a brilliant 00:24:59.740 --> 00:25:02.359 way to frame it. It gives him agency in a situation 00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:04.500 where he otherwise had very little. It really 00:25:04.500 --> 00:25:06.859 does, and it proves that this wasn't just a passing 00:25:06.859 --> 00:25:09.619 phase for him. It wasn't just a gimmick for 1609, 00:25:10.019 --> 00:25:12.559 because he maintained this obsession right up 00:25:12.559 --> 00:25:14.819 until his dying breath. Yes, which brings us 00:25:14.819 --> 00:25:16.980 to the final section of our source text. Right, 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.480 the section which details his posthumous sequel? 00:25:19.960 --> 00:25:22.059 The source notes a second work, published in 00:25:22.059 --> 00:25:35.259 1626. Tell us the title. So even in the title, 00:25:35.319 --> 00:25:38.160 he's basically listing all his constraints, explained 00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:40.319 through chronograms, retrogrades, acrostics, 00:25:40.460 --> 00:25:42.799 and anagrams. He's doubling down. And again, 00:25:43.299 --> 00:25:45.480 published by the Ophicena Plantiniana. Let's 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:47.259 look at the timeline intersection here, because 00:25:47.259 --> 00:25:49.819 it is crucial. The text reminds us that Judocus 00:25:49.819 --> 00:25:53.880 died in August 1625. August 4 or 5, to be precise. 00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.309 Right. But the second book covers political events 00:25:56.309 --> 00:25:59.690 in Europe from 1621 to 1625 and is published 00:25:59.690 --> 00:26:02.769 the year after his death in 1626. If we connect 00:26:02.769 --> 00:26:04.730 those dates, the narrative just writes itself. 00:26:04.849 --> 00:26:07.029 He was working on it right up to the end. Tredokas 00:26:07.029 --> 00:26:10.589 was actively drafting this incredibly complex 00:26:10.589 --> 00:26:13.529 puzzle based Latin poetry right up until the 00:26:13.529 --> 00:26:16.170 very end of his life. And consider the historical 00:26:16.170 --> 00:26:20.470 context of those specific years 1621 to 1625. 00:26:21.329 --> 00:26:24.460 The truce ended. Exactly. The 12 years truce, 00:26:24.500 --> 00:26:27.819 which he celebrated so exuberantly in 1609, expired 00:26:27.819 --> 00:26:30.920 in 1621. The region was plunged back into the 00:26:30.920 --> 00:26:33.420 violence of the 80 years war. So he is literally 00:26:33.420 --> 00:26:35.759 documenting the collapse of his own city's peace. 00:26:35.960 --> 00:26:39.000 Yes. The truce he celebrated is dead. His region 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:41.720 is back at war. His own health is failing as 00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:44.819 he approaches his death in 1625. And how does 00:26:44.819 --> 00:26:47.119 he process it? He doesn't abandon the constraints. 00:26:47.240 --> 00:26:49.900 He leans into them. He continues to process the 00:26:49.900 --> 00:26:52.619 returning chaos through chronograms and retrogrades. 00:26:52.980 --> 00:26:55.660 It speaks to a staggering level of psychological 00:26:55.660 --> 00:26:58.400 endurance, or perhaps obsession. Definitely upset. 00:26:58.420 --> 00:27:00.180 And there is a specific detail in the source 00:27:00.180 --> 00:27:03.599 about this 1626 publication that I find profoundly 00:27:03.599 --> 00:27:05.339 revealing about his character. Which he too. 00:27:05.450 --> 00:27:07.630 The text notes that this second book reprints 00:27:07.630 --> 00:27:11.009 a lightly revised text of the 1609 Penegyricus. 00:27:11.109 --> 00:27:13.190 That detail is incredible to me. It really shows 00:27:13.190 --> 00:27:15.869 you who he was. Think about the mindset required 00:27:15.869 --> 00:27:18.529 to do that. You are nearing the end of your life. 00:27:18.950 --> 00:27:22.089 Your country is at war again. The truce you wrote 00:27:22.089 --> 00:27:25.390 about is void. And you decide to go back to a 00:27:25.390 --> 00:27:28.109 poem you wrote 17 years ago to lightly revise 00:27:28.109 --> 00:27:30.940 it. You can just imagine him sitting at his desk 00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:34.299 in Antwerp in 1624. Coughing. Looking over his 00:27:34.299 --> 00:27:37.460 old manuscript from 1609 and thinking, you know 00:27:37.460 --> 00:27:39.900 that anagram in the third stanza is a bit clunky? 00:27:40.380 --> 00:27:42.759 I think I can optimize the Roman numeral math 00:27:42.759 --> 00:27:45.039 in this chronogram. I can get an extra M in there 00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:47.319 if I change this verb. Exactly. It shows that 00:27:47.319 --> 00:27:49.359 these constraints weren't just a gimmick to get 00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:52.220 published. This was his life's artistic architecture. 00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:55.680 He was meticulously curating his legacy to the 00:27:55.680 --> 00:27:58.059 very last moment. And we also see a significant 00:27:58.089 --> 00:28:00.650 in the thematic scope of his work, as mentioned 00:28:00.650 --> 00:28:03.630 in the text. Oh, so? Well, the 1609 work was 00:28:03.630 --> 00:28:05.910 fundamentally focused on the Concordiae Belgicae, 00:28:05.910 --> 00:28:08.789 the Belgian piece. It was a localized regional 00:28:08.789 --> 00:28:11.089 truth that directly affected his jurisdiction 00:28:11.089 --> 00:28:14.369 as syndic. Very focused on his immediate surroundings. 00:28:14.589 --> 00:28:18.230 Right. But the 1626 work is explicitly described 00:28:18.230 --> 00:28:20.509 as covering broader political events in Europe. 00:28:20.730 --> 00:28:24.069 So his aperture widens. Precisely. His worldview, 00:28:24.569 --> 00:28:28.119 or at least his poetic ambition, expanded. He 00:28:28.119 --> 00:28:31.299 was no longer just the syndic of Antwerp commenting 00:28:31.299 --> 00:28:34.119 on local relief. He's taking on the whole continent. 00:28:34.279 --> 00:28:36.480 He was attempting to capture the entirety of 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:38.920 the shifting European geopolitical landscape. 00:28:39.460 --> 00:28:42.000 He's processing the macro -level machinations 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:44.839 of empires through the micro -level constraints 00:28:44.839 --> 00:28:47.740 of acrostics and anagrams. It's such an ambitious 00:28:47.740 --> 00:28:50.039 project to undertake on your deathbed. It really 00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:52.940 is. So as we pull back from the intricate details 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:56.099 of Latin palindromes and publication dates, What 00:28:56.099 --> 00:28:58.980 does this all mean? The big picture. Yeah. When 00:28:58.980 --> 00:29:02.359 we look at this entire incredibly brief Wikipedia 00:29:02.359 --> 00:29:05.859 stub, what is the overarching portrait that emerges 00:29:05.859 --> 00:29:08.059 of Jodek as to weird? I think we're left with 00:29:08.059 --> 00:29:09.940 the portrait of a man who lived precisely at 00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.819 the intersection of immense historical forces 00:29:12.819 --> 00:29:15.720 and hyper -specific personal obsessions. That's 00:29:15.720 --> 00:29:18.400 a great summary. Here was a legally trained mind 00:29:18.400 --> 00:29:21.220 operating as the syndic of a major European hub. 00:29:21.390 --> 00:29:23.950 witnessing firsthand the truces and the churn 00:29:23.950 --> 00:29:26.210 of the 80 years war. He had a front row seat 00:29:26.210 --> 00:29:30.650 to history. He did. Yet he actively chose to 00:29:30.650 --> 00:29:33.470 process and record this history, not through 00:29:33.470 --> 00:29:36.390 straightforward legal prose, not through accessible 00:29:36.390 --> 00:29:40.069 diaries, but through the most rigorous rule bound 00:29:40.069 --> 00:29:43.309 linguistic puzzles available to him. He synthesized 00:29:43.309 --> 00:29:46.289 the grand chaotic scale of European politics 00:29:46.289 --> 00:29:49.230 with the microscopic mathematical scale of counting 00:29:49.230 --> 00:29:52.279 syllables and reordering letters. It is a profound 00:29:52.279 --> 00:29:55.660 testament to the diverse, sometimes inexplicable 00:29:55.660 --> 00:29:57.920 ways human beings choose to interact with and 00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:00.400 document their own historical moments. It really 00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:02.539 is. It totally challenges our assumptions about 00:30:02.539 --> 00:30:04.700 how history should be written or how people in 00:30:04.700 --> 00:30:07.059 the past experience their own eras. We assume 00:30:07.059 --> 00:30:09.160 everyone was writing grand narratives, but some 00:30:09.160 --> 00:30:11.380 people were just doing complex math with Latin 00:30:11.380 --> 00:30:14.240 suffixes. Exactly. And for you listening, I think 00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:16.539 the absolute biggest takeaway here is a lesson 00:30:16.539 --> 00:30:18.339 in historical observation. Why would I doubt? 00:30:18.420 --> 00:30:21.019 Think about what we just did. We extract... an 00:30:21.019 --> 00:30:24.160 entire universe of 17th century municipal politics, 00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:26.900 the psychology of linguistic constraint, the 00:30:26.900 --> 00:30:29.359 prestige of the plant and press, and a man's 00:30:29.359 --> 00:30:31.779 lifelong dedication to cryptographic perfection. 00:30:32.029 --> 00:30:34.529 And we did it all from a source text that is 00:30:34.529 --> 00:30:36.910 less than 300 words long. It proves that there 00:30:36.910 --> 00:30:39.410 are no superficial entries in the historical 00:30:39.410 --> 00:30:41.930 record. Only entries we haven't subjected to 00:30:41.930 --> 00:30:45.630 enough scrutiny. Exactly. Every single name listed 00:30:45.630 --> 00:30:49.309 in that German catalog from 1751 or that British 00:30:49.309 --> 00:30:53.130 Museum record from 1965 belongs to a human being 00:30:53.130 --> 00:30:57.529 who possessed a full complex, internally consistent 00:30:57.529 --> 00:31:00.250 worldview. They all had their own versions of 00:31:00.250 --> 00:31:02.410 chronograms and tautograms? Their own ways of 00:31:02.410 --> 00:31:04.869 seeking order in their specific chaos. Which 00:31:04.869 --> 00:31:07.049 brings us to a final, provocative thought to 00:31:07.049 --> 00:31:09.230 leave you with, circling back to where we began. 00:31:09.369 --> 00:31:11.529 The meta -text. Right. At the very top of our 00:31:11.529 --> 00:31:13.910 source text, the Wikipedia architecture explicitly 00:31:13.910 --> 00:31:17.089 asks its readers for help. It says, please introduce 00:31:17.089 --> 00:31:19.650 links to this page from related articles. The 00:31:19.650 --> 00:31:22.250 Cry of the Orphan Page. Johnicus de Weerd spent 00:31:22.250 --> 00:31:24.930 his entire adult life building intricate, hidden 00:31:24.930 --> 00:31:27.470 connections. He mathematically linked numbers 00:31:27.470 --> 00:31:30.230 to letters. He structurally linked the end of 00:31:30.230 --> 00:31:32.349 a sentence to its beginning. He conceptually 00:31:32.349 --> 00:31:34.250 linked the politics of the Spanish Netherlands 00:31:34.250 --> 00:31:37.369 to the morphology of neo -Latin. He was a master 00:31:37.369 --> 00:31:41.069 architect of connection. Yet today, his digital 00:31:41.069 --> 00:31:43.569 legacy remains an orphan waiting for someone 00:31:43.569 --> 00:31:46.619 to build a bridge. It is a profound disconnect 00:31:46.619 --> 00:31:49.740 between the man's art and his current digital 00:31:49.740 --> 00:31:53.099 reality. So the thought I leave you with to mull 00:31:53.099 --> 00:31:56.900 over is this. As we digitize the human experience, 00:31:57.119 --> 00:31:59.799 as we rely on algorithms to tell us who is connected 00:31:59.799 --> 00:32:03.119 to whom, what other orphaned lives are out there 00:32:03.119 --> 00:32:05.539 in the digital ether? Thousands of them, surely. 00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:08.359 What other strange, beautifully complex, constraint 00:32:08.359 --> 00:32:11.220 -bound works are just sitting quietly in a database 00:32:11.220 --> 00:32:14.000 somewhere, validated by centuries of physical 00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:16.380 print, but waiting for someone curious enough 00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:18.819 today to build a digital link? Waiting to finally 00:32:18.819 --> 00:32:21.059 connect their isolated story back to the main 00:32:21.059 --> 00:32:23.460 tapestry of human history. A question well worth 00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:25.940 considering. Absolutely. Until next time, keep 00:32:25.940 --> 00:32:27.019 digging into the footnotes.