Talk:Codex Escalada

The alleged tests and reliable sources

Bellarmino (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC) It's hard to satisfy you when you appear to be happy with open sarcasm from Brading, and refuse any factual characterisation of his comment. It is a claimed, published, fact that the Codex is authentic, and the sole "evidence" against it is that people who are already committed to a theory incompatible with it make fun of it. I am finding it difficult to see how anybody would think that Brading's comment is anything but an embarrassment to himself and his school of thought.

I've raised the issue of the reliablility of the Texas Catholic Herald, which is the official publication of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, at WP:RSN[1]. At the moment, all we have is what is basically a 'house organ' and we need to be able to verify this. In particular, we need to know who did the tests, what the tests are, and what the exact results were. Also, this is a WP:REDFLAG issue. Our policy (note, not just a guideline) says:

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources

See also: Wikipedia:Fringe theories

Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim:

• surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources;
• reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, embarrassing, controversial, or against an interest they had previously defended;
• claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them.

Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality sources.If such sources are not available, the material should not be included. Also be sure to adhere to other policies, such as the policy for biographies of living persons and the undue weight provision of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.

Dougweller (talk) 08:43, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I recently made some suggestions relative to the Codex in Talk under the article Juan Diego; see especially my para [4]. Since I have now undertaken to re-write that article, it looks as if it might be sensible for me to re-write this article too? Ridiculus mus (talk) 18:23, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Charles Dibble

Let's try to make a few things clearer about the role of Charles Dibble in the investigation of this document.

Contrary to the statement appearing in a prior, just-reverted version of this article, Dibble did not in any way "coordinate" the investigations. He was not part of the "team" assembled by Escalada SJ. Instead, he was only brought into the picture after one of those, Mario Rojas Sanchez, interpreted one of the signatures as possibly Sahagun's. Given Dibble's expertise on Sahagun, it was arranged to request his opinion and a photostat copy of the signature was sent to him for examination. After reviewing (the copy, note, not the original), Dibble wrote back in June 1996 with his assessment:

'I have received a copy of codice 1548. I have studied the signature, and I believe it to be the signature of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. I base my conclusions on the indications of three crosses; the form of the "Fray", the "d"and the "b". In my opinion the signature is not the same as, that is not contemporaneous with the 1548 date of the codice. I would assign the signature to the 50's or the 60's. [full text of letter as reproduced in appendix to Enciclopedia Guadalupe]

Thus, based (only) on the copy he studied, he believed the signature matched Sahagun's, but at the same time noted it did not match with the purported 1548 date written on the codex, attributing it instead to a decade or two afterwards. So not at all a ringing endorsement of the codex's authenticity, despite the inference made in that Vatican article.

That's the full extent of his involvement, and to the best of my knowledge Dibble has never issued any statement or opinion about the authenticity of the codex itself, which as noted he never examined directly and was not called upon to do. Any statement to the effect that Dibble "authenticated" the codex would be quite incorrect. It would also be misleading and unsubstantiated to imply he supported any finding of authenticity for the codex such as the one Escalada wrote up, in the absence of any available, documented opinion expressed by him on that score. --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Reluctant to get into an unnecessary spat over what can fairly be deduced from the presentation in the L'Osservatore Romano article, I must however object that it offers no basis for your saying it implied Dibble had given a "ringing endorsement of the codex's authenticity". All the article said was that the results of all the tests were "favourable", and so they were. The error a previous edit made as to Dibble's role was understandable, for the English translation of the L'Osservatore article reads "the Codex has been studied by about 20 specialists in various subjects, coordinated by the Physics Institute of the UNAM and also by Dr Ch. E. Dibble". A comma after "UNAM" was required. Once again, I must point out that Dibble did not suggest his opinion was vitiated in any way by the lack of direct access to the codex. Dibble must be given credit for precisely what he did say, no more and no less. I am resisting any move on the part of wikipedia editors to devalue or down-grade Dibble's opinion on the basis of an objection he did not make. He noted that he had studied a copy of the signature, and nevertheless gave an unqualified opinion - yes, an opinion (not a guarantee) but an unqualified one. Ridiculus mus (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

If there was any translation mishap then the fault would lie with L'Osservatore, since the english-language edition is issued by them (along with versions in half-a-dozen other languages). Unless there's been some transcription error made in the transfer to the online version of the article that circulates at a couple of sites...always a possibility, the version over at EWTN site seems to be missing some sentences and is very oddly formatted (scare quotes all over the place), makes one doubt it's an exact reproduction. In any case, it may better to use sources such as Fidel González and Eduardo Chavez directly to represent the pro-Guadalupan view, more so than this L'Osservatore article (which takes most of its content from these two anyway).

Understandable or not, saying the investigations were "coordinated by the Physics Institute of the UNAM" is still not correct. They were directed by Escalada and his inner circle, not the physicists at UNAM.

Likewise, I am keen that we represent Dibble's contribution and opinion accurately for what it was, 'no more and no less'. This also includes explicit mentioning of his qualifying opinion that the signature is not contemporary with the 1548 date, but is from some later period. I feel it is also pertinent to mention the study was from a copy -- this does not in any way devalue Dibble's scholarship, but rather makes clear the natural limits around what Dibble could physically examine, and what conclusions he could draw. As Rafael Tena comments on this point:

:"En este punto, conviene advertir que es indispensable comparar las firmas en documentos originales y no en simples copias o reproducciones, pues lo importante para dictaminar sobre la autenticidad de una firma no es el dibujo, que puede simplemente copiarse, sino comparar la velocidad y la presión con que fueron trazadas las firmas: la que consta ser auténtica y la que se quiere dictaminar."

Hopefully this way we can avoid the pitfalls of some other published commentaries on this codex, and not misleadingly attribute 'codex authentication' to Dibble when his remit and opinion did not actually go half as far. --cjllw ʘ TALK 14:37, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Projected article re-write

As I noted in Talk under Our Lady of Guadalupe (cross-heading "Specialists"), I have been working on replacing the current article with something more substantial, but hesitate simply to replace the existing article without giving room for comments and contributions beforehand. I therefore add here the lede to my re-write, and invite others to review it (references are left embedded in the text, for now). If the feedback is generally positive, I will add another few paragraphs for the same process to repeat. My projected headings are: description; iconography; circumstances of publication, ownership and location; provenance; authentication. Lede follows:-

"Codex Escalada, formerly known as Codex 1548, is not a codex as the term is generally understood, but a single sheet (approximately 13.3 by 20 cms or 5¼ x 8 inches) of parchment roughly prepared from what is probably deerskin on which there have been drawn, in ink in the European style, images (with supporting text) depicting a Marian apparition, namely that of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego which is said to have occurred on four separate occasions in December 1531 on the hill of Tepeyac 6 kms north of the main plaza of Mexico City. If authentic, and if correctly dated to the mid-16th century, the document supplies a gap in the documentary record as to the antiquity of the tradition regarding those apparitions and the image of the Virgin venerated at the Basilica of Guadalupe which is associated with the fourth apparition. The fortuitous convergence of data on the parchment is still regarded with suspicion in some quarters.<Brading; Poole (2002); Peralta> Other scholars have reserved judgement pending a yet more extensive codicological examination.<e.g., Tena>" Ridiculus mus (talk) 00:18, 12 January 2011 (UTC)