The so-called ‘Vinland map’ seems to possess an innate capacity for creating confusion and misunderstandings. Released by Yale University (with unfortunate timing) on the eve of Columbus Day 1965, the map at once caused a public outcry, both here and abroad, unusual for any historic document—let alone an object of that most intricate technical discipline, the history of cartography. There can be no doubt that the public storm was provoked by a misunderstanding, and the attendant world-wide curiosity therefore was aroused for the wrong reasons—even though it may have involved a vague feeling for the real (and very considerable) intrinsic interest which the map represents. Extensive comments were heard from such diverse sources as the Foreign Minister of Italy, Amintore Fanfani; Harvard's Samuel Eliot Morison; and Vladimir Nevsky, a Soviet geographer, who pronounced the map to be a clever fake.

Among Renaissance Platonists, the texts ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus provoked both adulation and controversy. Scholars variously considered the texts precious repositories of ancient wisdom; labeled them frauds; or, more cautiously, suggested they were partly corrupt, partly wise. The first step towards enlightenment came in 1614, when Isaac Casaubon challenged the authenticity of the hermetic texts. Except by ignoring Casaubon, no one thereafter could believe (as William Baldwin could in 1555) that ‘of all the Philosophers’ Hermes was ‘not onely the most excellent, but also the most auncient.’

No longer coeval with Moses, no longer indeed assured of personal existence, Hermes came in the seventeenth century to occupy an equivocal position. On the one hand, Casaubon's argument was far too convincing to be denied; on the other, the traditional reputation of Hermes, in Marsilio Ficino's influential words, ‘Primus… Theologiae Autor,’ was far too popular to die a swift and decisive death.