Forgery as decolonisation: Constantine Simonides in Liverpool

The traditional focus of research into forgeries has been on identifying the signs that allow real to be distinguished from fake. The market’s need for reliable authentication procedures has occluded broader questions about the aetiology of manuscript forgery and the practices of forgers themselves. The market-driven preoccupation with signs of inauthenticity, started up with a discourse of maintaining the integrity of the historical record, often stops short of profiling textual forgers themselves as if the life of a forgery prior to hitting the market was irrelevant. This focus on the intentionality of the forger, rather than the consequences of their act of creation, allows us to ground their actions in a historically nuanced frame. The following discussion attempts to refocus the analysis of forgeries on the intentions, methods, and contexts driving forgers and reconceives them as contributors to cultural heritage.