Cuttlefish

"Why do I use my paper, pen and ink?"

How attending a lecture about church music in 16th century England led me to better appreciate the academic research of the first Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Ezra Butler

15 Jan 2026 — 8 min read

During my time in London, I've mostly frequented the library at the Warburg Institute. Earlier this week, I noticed a seminar was being given that evening on "Religion in England between 1500-1800".

With no other information provided, I was eager to attend.

It turned out to be a thrilling lecture about "Singing, preaching, and rhetoric in early Reformation England" given by a noted musicologist, Dr. Kerry McCarthy, who happens to a leading authority on William Byrd (1540 – 1623). Note: Her talk wasn't on William Byrd, I just fell down a rabbit hole while learning more about her research afterwards.

The Byrd [McCarthy's] work portrays is certainly brave. One example: the saintly, brilliant and much-revered Jesuit scholar Edward Campion was hanged, drawn and quartered in December 1581 after an intensive manhunt. Henry Walpole—who converted to Catholicism after he was splashed by Campion’s blood at the scaffold—wrote a poem to commemorate the event. Its publisher was exiled and his ears cut off, and Walpole met the same fate as Campion. Yet the audacious Byrd reprinted the first stanza of Walpole’s poem, under the title of its first line: “Why Do I Use My Paper, Ink, and Pen?” Setting it to music, he added two verses. Without consequence.
from "Walking on Eggs", Stanford Magazine, September/October 2005

Using Ink

Back in 2024, I wrote two newsletters about ink, namely red ink and black ink, each of which resulted into metaphors and associations.

The newsletter about red ink was largely focused on the more modern functionality of red ink, namely in teaching and in late 20th century bookkeeping practices. It was the shift in accounting which led to all of the colorful metaphors like "bleeding" or "drowning in" red ink.

The newsletter about black ink was more of a comparison between the history and innovation in carbon based inks (like Chinese black), as opposed to the European usage of iron gall inks, which were ultimately corrosive in nature.

Yet, the ink would be used as a metaphor for fighting with words. In the final section, I quoted William Shakespeare (circa 1601-2):

Go write it in a martial hand ; be curst and brief ; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent, and full of invention ; taunt him with the license of ink ; if thou thou'st him thrice, it shall nor be amiss ; and as many lies as will lie on a sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set 'em down ; go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose pen, no matter: about it.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III, 2

It's immediate relevance to this newsletter was in the final quote on Dr. McCarthy's source sheet.

It was a 1551 quote from Thomas Cranmer who likens preachers and writers who have a tendency to overuse rhetoric to Pliny's description of the cuttlefish who "cast[s] out a black incke" whenever she sees herself in danger, so she can darken the waters, and take that opportunity to escape. [1]

In other words, people who feel attacked tend to waste a lot of ink.

As an aside, though a century too early, I was immediately reminded of the original untrustworthy Black Sheep, the 17th century English Puritans who used defamation and bad faith rhetoric as tools and sowing doubt and disinformation as goals.

Back to Biblical Blue, again.

Over the past few months, in addition to my Robin Hood research, I've been analyzing the early 20th century doctoral thesis of Rabbi Dr. Isaac Herzog, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. [2]

The topic of his research was on "Hebrew Porphyrology", or an exploration of the dyes which are described as "Royal Purple" commonly associated with argaman and "Biblical Blue", or tekhelet.

I've written about biblical colors and these two dyes in particular, and following the random discovery of a 1987 version of his research posthumously published by his son, and an original copy of his 1914 thesis in the Senate House library, I'm currently developing a new approach.

I must admit that I don't arrive at the same conclusions as Rabbi Dr. Herzog, but his research has caused me to have a much more nuanced approach to my language and questions. (Not sure when I'll be done.)

However, while reading the 16th century quote provided by Dr. McCarthy about the cuttlefish and the use of rhetoric, I was also reminded of perhaps a greater lesson I learned from studying Herzog's doctoral thesis. Namely, one can be both academically rigorous and a mensch.

Curious about Cuttlefish

At the end of the thesis, Herzog spent significant effort debunking the version of tekhelet (biblical blue) created a quarter century earlier by the late Hasidic rebbe, Grand Rabbi G. E. Leiner of Radzyn.

This is how Herzog introduced Leiner:

Leiner seems to have been one of the unfortunate beings who owing to the circumstances in which birth has placed them, miss the destiny appointed for them by nature. Gifted with a genius for invention and a striking aptitude for research Leiner might have accomplished much in the domain of science had he been granted the necessary opportunities.

In 1887, Leiner announced to the world that "after much toil and labour" he discovered the mollusk which was historically used to create the long-lost "biblical blue" dye. It was the Sepia officinalis, better known as the European common cuttlefish.

Leiner travelled to Italy, secured the services of a chemist, and made arrangements to acquire a supply of the mollusk from "a small island at the end of an arm of the Western sea."

The followers of the Radzin rabbi hailed the discovery with boundless enthusiasm. Tales quickly gained circulation of colossal operations carried out on the Italian coast, in quest of the [mythical] hillazon.

It was also whispered that as a result of a conversation the Hadisic leader had had with the Pope, the latter was seized with such admiration for the rabbi of Radzin that he commended him to the notice of Czar.

A quarter century later, the young Rabbi Dr. Herzog sent samples to multiple labs around Europe, and in each case discovered that it was Prussian blue, at best, mixed with Sepia secretion. In other words, Leiner had been duped.

Herzog writes:

I should hesitate very much before condemning of fraud a man of the stamp of the late G.E. Leiner. It would seem that the late Hasidic Chief was victimized by some fraudulent Italian chemist. ... Attracted by Leiner's offers of high renumeration, some clever but swindling specialist in tinctorial chemistry contrived, it would appear to concoct Prussian dye with Sepia secretion, in such a manner as to conceal the presence of the dye. [3]

Curiosity and Failure

I've written on multiple occasions about the spirit of research and experimentation in the field of color in the second half of the 19th century, and how that infectious fervor was caught by the common person as well.

At roughly the same time, in the late 1850s, that the purple aniline dye mauve was being accidentally invented by a teenager named William Henry Perkins in a laboratory in London, the young French marine biologist Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers was writing Memoire sur la Pourpre about three different mollusks he discovered in the Mediterranean which secreted purple-blue dyes; none of them being the common cuttlefish.

Recognizing Opportunity and Privilege

Reading between the lines, it seems that Herzog did not fault Leiner for his curiosity and enthusiasm. Leiner may have been completely wrong, but he was trying something.

Herzog's above lament of Leiner's "circumstances of birth" in his introduction wasn't borne out of pity or derision. It was recognizing the unique privilege of the circumstances of his own birth.

Isaac Herzog was born in Łomża, Poland, less than 350 km north-northwest of Leiner's birthplace of Izbica, Poland, a year after Leiner made his discovery. At 10 years old, he moved to Leeds, England. He then lived in Paris, London, Belfast, and Dublin, before emigrating to Palestine. He became fluent in English, French, Irish, German, and Hebrew.

This is, in addition, to his classical education from Wesley College in Dublin, the Sorbonne in Paris, and doctorate from University of London, with degrees in Law, Mathematics, Languages, Philosophy, and Science. He is said to have been proficient in 12 languages, including Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin.

Herzog understood that had his father not moved the family when he was a child, he too may have very easily ended up the product of wasted potential. And he certainly made the most of the opportunities which were provided to him.

But I would contend that had Leiner not tried and failed in his search, Herzog would have likely never even considered researching and discovering the source of the biblical blue.

To answer the title of this newsletter, Herzog wrote because Leiner failed. He wrote because he was afforded more possibilities than Leiner.

Rabbi Dr. Isaac Herzog wrote because he could.

[1] "The property of the cuttill saith Pliny, is to cast out a black incke or color when soeuer she spieth her selfe in danger to be taken, that the water being troubled and darckned therewith, she may hide her selfe and to escape vntaken. After like manner do you throughout this wholl booke, for when you see no other way to flye and escape, then you cast out your blacke colors [...] all colours of Rethorike must be sought out, all the ayre must be cast ouer with cloudes, all the water darkned with the cuttyles ynke."
– Thomas Cranmer, 1551 (An Aunswere... unto a craftie and sophisticall cauillation, London 1580, p. 19; p. 312)

[2] His son was Chaim Herzog, Israeli president from 1983 - 1993, and his grandson is current Israel president, Isaac Herzog.

[3] I should point out that this is only few years after the indigo merchants in England were up in arms about chemists passing off fraudulent synthetic dyes as indigo. The difference between the case of Leiner and the average dye purchaser, was that in the latter case, if it worked, it didn't really matter whether or not it was actual indigo.