The Digital Ark: Early Modern Collections of Curiosities in England and Scotland, 1580-1700
[Stirn, Travel Diary]
A List of Minerals giuen to the Royal Society, on Feb: 18: 1685/6 by Doctor (now Sir Hans) Sloane (Diary)
British Library, London, England, Europe
Date:1638 Author (in assoc. with a ms or print source)Georg Christoph Stirn (1616-1669) Collector (minor)Oxford Anatomy School (-) VisitedJohn Tradescant, the Younger (4 Aug 1608 [bap.]-22 Apr 1662) Annotation:In German. In a few instances, printed material or drawings are inserted as illustrations."Another early reference to the curiosities preserved in the Anatomy School occurs in the manuscript diary of a German traveller, G. Christof Stirn of Nurnberg. After he had visited the Bodleian Library, in 1638, and had found it 'in general not so excellent as is reported', and had been shown the West Indian idol, the Egyptian idol, the portraits of learned men, the University arms on the ceiling, an astronomical compass or calendar made of pure gold, a portrait [of Queen Elizabeth] in feather-work, and Joseph's coat 'which he was wearing when he was sold to the Egyptians', he went down to the Anatomy School, where he saw 'in a lower room some skeletons, a human skin, a basilisk, a piece of the pillar of salt (? Lot's wife), two feet of a man who had been hanged with only two toes on each, a huge shell of a tortoise, and many similar objects'" (Gunther 3: 253).
Translations of the portions relevant to the collections of John Tradescant the Younger, the Anatomy Theatre at Oxford, and the Tower of London are provided in H. Hager's review of K. H. Schaible's Geschichte der Deutschen in England (op. cit.).
A. Neubauer makes the case for Stirn's authorship of this unattributed manuscript (632).