Accidit in puncto quod non speratur in anno

In 1814, Willhelm Gottleib Tilesius von Tilenau published De skeleto mammonteo Sibirico ad Maris Glacialis littora anno 1807 effoso (“Concerning the Siberian mammoth skeleton unearthed upon the shores of the Arctic Ocean in the year 1807”), a voluminous account of the first more or less complete remains of a permafrost preserved Pleistocene-era mammoth to be collected in the name of science. The Adams Mammoth, as this creature came to be called, was discovered by a Tungus hunter, Ossip Schoumacoff, in northeastern Siberia in 1799 and subsequently excavated by the Russian naturalist Mikhail Adams in 1806/7.

Although Adams published a short account narrating his travels up the Lena River to where Schoumacoff found the mammoth, and the work it took to extract it from the frozen ground, Tilesius's De skeleto mammonteo Sibirico was the first complete and fulsome scientific study of that mammoth. An important text for the intellectual history of the early-nineteenth century, and for the history of mammoth “ice mummies,” as their permafrost-preserved remains are sometimes called, Tilesius's work remains untranslated from the original Latin. Written in a difficult idiom of Latin commonly used in scientific texts produced in early modern Europe, it presents challenges to a modern translator.

One of these challenges, beyond the text’s grammatical and lexicological eccentricities, is making sense of Tilesius’ frequent allusions to contemporary details likely to be unfamiliar to modern readers. The second chapter of the work, which catalogues previous instances of ice-age carcasses discovered in Siberia with their fur and skin preserved, is introduced by a strange (and grammatically fraught) title: Accidit in puncto quod non speratur in anno, “That which was hoped for in a year happened in one instant.” Beyond the confusing Latin syntax, what is the meaning of this title and from what source did Tilesius derive it?

Ferdinand 1, Habsburg Emperor (1531-1564)

Research eventually revealed that this expression was somehow associated with the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I, a man who appears to have been particularly fond of Latin mottos, his most famous being fiat iustitia, pereat mundus, “let there be justice though the world should perish.” According to Fanny Bury Palliser’s Historic Devices, Badges, and War-cries, an encyclopedic compendium of aristocratic mottos and heraldic symbols: “Ferdinand had a symbol of eight letters, A. I. P. Q. N. S. I. A., initials for Accidit in puncto, quod non speratur in anno, ‘That happens in a moment which is not hoped for in a year.’”[1]

Palliser did not reveal what had prompted Ferdinand to emblazon his uniform with initials representing the Latin words Tilesius later used to introduce the second chapter of his treatise on the Adams mammoth. I leave that question to heraldists and historians of the Holy Roman Empire.

A. I. P. Q. N. S. I. A., as used by Tilesius, implies that something long desired was realized suddenly. He was a keen scientific thinker who devoted a significant portion of his treatise on the Adams mammoth to polemics against scientists who stubbornly clung onto irrational explanations of the remains of ice-age megafauna discovered in Europe, such as rhinoceroses, mammoths, lions, etc. There were several common and semi-fantastic explanations that he rebuffs specifically: that the fossils were relics of the biblical flood; that they were pack-beasts of Alexander the Great’s army; or, that they were relics of existing creatures that inhabit an underground realm filled with exotic beasts.

Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenou (1769-1857)

It was clear to Tilesius (and some others) that the fossil remains of mammoths were remnants of ancient ancestors of modern elephants, and that those creatures once inhabited Europe itself and were not somehow conveyed there by ancient humans. They were not washed from Africa or India during the biblical flood, nor were they Alexander’s war-elephants, or the inhabitants of a fantastic underground realm. The proof he had long desired suddenly presented itself in the Adams mammoth.

Notes
[1] Palliser, Fanny Bury, Historic Devices, Badges and War-cries, London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston (1870), p. 89.