Related to my previous post on the Kircherian metal codex, I serendipitously found another reference to ancient lead codices (which goes on to cite Montfaucon and Bonanni):
Was there a lead codex described by Fabricius in 16thC? (citation in https://t.co/oegivxIQLe) http://t.co/9zoGiDwiFM pic.twitter.com/b5CQ98KOcL
— Ryan Baumann (@ryanfb) February 17, 2015
“Fabricius” here is Georg Fabricius, and “Antiquit. Rom.” is most likely this book. However, I can find no mention of “codices plumbeos” or “sepulcris” in any entry related by Hadrianum Guilielmum.1
More thorough searching turned up the probable actual source of Huth’s quote, Fabricius’s De metallicis rebus:
If anyone has any further information about this artifact, I would love to hear it.
One confusing aspect to even locating these sorts of things is the wildly varying orthography of latinized names. As it turns out, Gulielmi (or Guilielmum, or Gulielmus) is most likely Adriano Guglielmo Spadaforo of Naples, apparently an antiquarian and conservator in the Naples archives. Not to be confused with the Hadrianus Guilielmi (Adriaen Willems) known to Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon, who in any case was born after Fabricius died!
Footnotes
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I find entries related by Gulielmi on pp. 11, 27, & 46. ↩
