George Psalmanazar
| George Psalmanazar | |
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George Psalmanazar (1679–1763)
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| Born | c. 1679 – 1684 South France |
| Died | 3 May 1763 England |
| Occupation | Memoirist, imposter |
| Known for | Formosa culture fake memoir |
George Psalmanazar (c. 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years, he convinced many in Britain, but was later revealed to be an impostor. He subsequently became a theological essayist and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and other noted figures of 18th-century literary London.
Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, he is believed to have been born in southern France, perhaps in Languedoc or Provence, to Catholic parents sometime between 1679 and 1684. His birth name is unknown. According to his posthumously published autobiography, he was educated in a Franciscan school and then a Jesuit academy. In both of these institutions, he claimed to have been celebrated by his teachers for what he called "my uncommon genius for languages." Indeed, by his own account Psalmanazar was something of a child prodigy, since he notes that he attained fluency in Latin by the age of seven or eight, and excelled in competition with children twice his age. Later encounters with a sophistic philosophy tutor made him disenchanted with academicism, however, and Psalmanazar discontinued his education around the time he was fifteen or sixteen.
In order to gain safe and affordable travel in France, Psalmanazar decided to pretend to be an Irish pilgrim on his way to Rome. After learning English, forging a passport and stealing a pilgrim's cloak and staff from the reliquary of a local church, he set off, but soon found that many people he met were familiar with Ireland and were able to discern that he was a fraud. Deciding that a more exotic disguise was needed, Psalmanazar drew upon the missionary reports of the Far East he had heard from his Jesuit tutors and decided to impersonate a Japanese convert. At some point, he further embellished this new persona by pretending to be a "Japanese " and exhibiting an array of appropriately bizarre customs, such as eating raw meat spiced with cardamom and sleeping while sitting upright in a chair.
Having failed to reach Rome, Psalmanazar traveled through the German principalities between 1700 and 1702, and appeared in the Netherlands around the year 1702, where he served as an occasional mercenary and soldier. By this time, he had shifted his supposed homeland from Japan to the even more remote island of Formosa (present day Taiwan), and developed more elaborate customs, such as following a foreign calendar, worshipping the Sun and the Moon with complex propitiatory rites of his own invention, and even speaking an invented language.
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