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The place thus decided on by accident was a town in Saxony at the farthest eastern extremity of that country on the borders of Bohemia, named Hirschfeldt, formerly the capital of Hesse Cassel, but which, after the peace of Westphalia, when it was secularized, became only a part of that principality.
If errors pointed out in language or style, in statements or grammar, have shaken the reader's faith in the authenticity of the Annals, that faith must have been still more shaken by the mysterious allusions made by Bracciolini in his letters to Niccoli about Tacitus; the conjectures I have hazarded on these must have gained additional force when references followed to an unknown monk of Hirschfeldt, with mention of copies of Tacitus in Lombard writing, parchment for transcription, and other matters denoting the completion of a literary work in those days.
Evidently the needy, ignorant, stupid monk of Hirschfeldt was not over busy in the Abbey of Fulda transcribing the forgery of Bracciolini and incorporating it with the works of Tacitus in closely copied Lombard characters of great antiquity.
"The Hirschfeldt monk has come without the book," writes Bracciolini angrily to Niccoli on the 26th February, 1429; "and I gave him a sound rating for it; he has given me his assurance that he will be back aoain soon for he is carrying on a suit about his abbey in the law-courts, and will bring the book.
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