Communities of Print: Books and Their Readers in Early Modern Europe 2021035401, 2021035402, 9789004448919, 9789004470439, 9004448918

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures, Tables and Graphs
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part 1 Networks of Books
Chapter 1 Selling Luther: Printing Counterfeits in Reformation Augsburg
Chapter 2 Market Realities: Christopher Plantin’s International Networks in an Ever-Changing World
Chapter 3 ‘Far Off from the Well-Head’: The Production and Circulation of Books in Early Modern Yorkshire
Chapter 4 ‘For the Edification of the Common People’: Humphrey Chetham’s Parish Libraries
Part 2 Reading Together
Chapter 5 Friars and Friends: Books as Private or Shared Belongings in Early Modern Religious Communities
Chapter 6 Teachers of Christ’s Church: Protestant Ministers as Readers of the Church Fathers in the Dutch Golden Age
Chapter 7 Print, Friendship and Voluntary Devotional Communities in North West England, c. 1660–c. 1730
Part 3 Different Readers
Chapter 8 Rural Readings of Sacred History: The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Lancashire Readers
Chapter 9 Reading Medieval Wales: David Powel’s Historie of Cambria (1584) and Its Readers
Chapter 10 Poetic Failure, Communal Memory, and George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs
Chapter 11 Micrography in Later Stuart Britain: Curious Spectacles and Political Emblems
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Communities of Print

Library of the Written Word volume 99

The Handpress World Editor-in-Chief Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) Editorial Board Ann Blair (Harvard University) Falk Eisermann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preuβischer Kulturbesitz) Shanti Graheli (University of Glasgow) Earle Havens ( Johns Hopkins University) Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford) Alicia Montoya (Radboud University) Angela Nuovo (University of Milan) Helen Smith (University of York) Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool) Malcolm Walsby (ENSSIB, Lyon) Arthur der Weduwen (University of St Andrews)

volume 79

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lww

Communities of Print Books and Their Readers in Early Modern Europe Edited by

Rosamund Oates Jessica G. Purdy

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover Illustration: Detail from Liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg, 1493). © Chetham’s Library, Manchester. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Oates, Rosamund, editor. | Purdy, Jessica G., editor. Title: Communities of print : books and their readers in early modern  Europe / edited by Rosamund Oates, Jessica G. Purdy. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Series: Library of the  written word, 1874-4834 ; volume 99 | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021035401 (print) | LCCN 2021035402 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004448919 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004470439 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Book industries and trade—Europe—History—16th century. |  Book industries and trade—Europe—History—17th century. | Book  industries and trade—Europe—History—18th century. | Books and  reading—Social aspects—Europe—History. | Community  life—Europe—History. | LCGFT: Essays. Classification: LCC Z291.3 .C66 2022 (print) | LCC Z291.3 (ebook) |  DDC 381/.450020940903—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035401 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035402

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1874-4834 ISBN 978-90-04-44891-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-47043-9 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

For Michael Powell (1955–2019) A wonderful friend, supervisor and librarian

⸪

Contents List of Figures, Tables and Graphs ix Notes on Contributors xi Introduction 1 Rosamund Oates and Jessica G. Purdy

part 1 Networks of Books 1

Selling Luther: Printing Counterfeits in Reformation Augsburg 17 Drew B. Thomas

2

Market Realities: Christopher Plantin’s International Networks in an Ever-Changing World 39 Julianne Simpson

3

‘Far Off from the Well-Head’: The Production and Circulation of Books in Early Modern Yorkshire 62 Rosamund Oates

4

‘For the Edification of the Common People’: Humphrey Chetham’s Parish Libraries 79 Jessica G. Purdy

part 2 Reading Together 5

Friars and Friends: Books as Private or Shared Belongings in Early Modern Religious Communities 99 Flavia Bruni

6

Teachers of Christ’s Church: Protestant Ministers as Readers of the Church Fathers in the Dutch Golden Age 116 Forrest C. Strickland

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Print, Friendship and Voluntary Devotional Communities in North West England, c. 1660–c. 1730 136 Michael A.L. Smith

part 3 Different Readers 8

Rural Readings of Sacred History: The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Lancashire Readers 157 Nina Adamova

9

Reading Medieval Wales: David Powel’s Historie of Cambria (1584) and Its Readers 178 Kathryn Hurlock

10

Poetic Failure, Communal Memory, and George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs 194 Catherine Evans

11

Micrography in Later Stuart Britain: Curious Spectacles and Political Emblems 215 Tim Somers Bibliography 239 Index 245

Figures, Tables and Graphs 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3.1 4.1 5.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 10.1 10.2 11.1 11.2

Figures An edition from Wittenberg and its Augsburg counterfeit 28 The original Wittenberg edition and the Augsburg counterfeit with copied border 32 The original Wittenberg edition and the Augsburg counterfeit 33 The original Wittenberg border with Steiner’s and Ulhart’s copies 34 The original Wittenberg border with the Augsburg copy lacking the Luther rose 35 ‘Bilanse du cahier de franckfurt signé B de l’an 1566 de la foire d’April’ 46 Sales Figures for the year 1566 50 Sales Figures for the Spring Frankfurt Fair, 1566 51 Sales Figures for the Spring Frankfurt Fair, 1579 52 Reynaert de Vos, number of copies sold, 1566–1568 54 Valerius Flaccus (16mo), number of copies sold, 1566–1568 55 Valverde, Anatomia, number of copies sold, 1566–1568 56 Biblia Regia number of copies sold, 1572–1603 57 Journal entries, 2–20 November 60 ‘The South Crosse of York Minster’ in Daniel King, The Cathedrall and Conventuall Churches of England and Wales 65 The Gorton Chest in the Reading Room of Chetham’s Library, Manchester 85 Poggio Bracciolini, De miseria humanae condicionis 114 Hartmann Schedel, Nuremberg Chronicle 159 Thomas Gudlawe’s signature 163 A fragment of Gudlawe’s marginalia showing his way of structuring quotations 172 “Sunday” produced by the Religious Tract Society 198 Frontispiece from Wits Recreations: Selected from the finest fancies of modern muses 208 John Sturt, The Effigies of King William and Queen Mary (1693) 217 John Sturt, The Effigies of King George (1719) 218

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Tables

6.1

Median number of books by language listed in ministers’ book auction catalogues 120 6.2 A comparison of the average formats of books in ministerial catalogues and the average format of the 997 books by the Church Fathers identified in fifty-five library catalogues 123 6.3 The twenty most popular theological authors as listed in ministers’ library catalogues 127 8.1 The identified sources, quoted by Thomas Gudlawe in his marginalia 166

4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3

Graphs Breakdown of the genres of the books in the Gorton Chest Library 89 Distribution of books in the Servite Province of Lombardy 102 Distribution of books in the Servite Province of Tuscany 102 Scope of individual collections in the Servite Province of Lombardy 103

Notes on Contributors Nina Adamova is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at St Petersburg State University. Having worked on early modern religious transatlantic migrations and ideas of exceptionalism for her PhD (2015, Russian Academy of Science), she currently focuses on the history of reading of religious texts in Reformation Europe. In 2018, she was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, researching early modern English readerships of sacred history. Flavia Bruni is a specialist librarian at the Central Institute for the Unique Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographic Information (ICCU), and an Honorary Research Fellow in Book History at the School of History, located at the University of St Andrews. She has an MA in the History of the Reformation from the Sapienza University of Rome, an MA in Early Printed Books from the University of Siena, a PhD from the University of Bologna, and a Diploma from the Vatican Library School. From 2009–2015, she worked as a Research Assistant for the Universal Short Title Catalogue project at the University of St Andrews, and has held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Rome, Sapienza and Udine. Since 2001, she has worked on sixteenth-century booklists of Italian religious houses as part of the Ricerca sull’Inchiesta della Congregazione sell’Indice (RICI) project team, and is currently working on her second monograph on censorship in Counter-Reformation Italy. Catherine Evans is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include early modern religious literature, book history, women’s writing and the philosophy of time. She was awarded her PhD by the University of Sheffield in 2019, and has held fellowships at the Huntington Library, the John Rylands Library, and UCLA-William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Kathryn Hurlock is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and an expert on the religious history of medieval Wales. She has published works on Wales and the Crusades, 1095–1291 (2011) and Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage c. 1100–1500 (2018), as well as several articles on aspects of British lay religious history and medieval chronicles.

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Rosamund Oates is a Reader in Early Modern History at Manchester Metropolitan University, specialising in the culture of the post-Reformation Church. Her monograph, Moderate Radical: Tobie Matthew and the English Reformation, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. She currently runs the international network, ‘Communities of Print’ (www.communitiesofprint.wordpress.com), which regularly features blogs on print history. She also publishes on Sacred History, preaching culture and the history of deafness in early modern Europe. Jessica G. Purdy is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her thesis, ‘Reading the Reformation: Parish Libraries and the Practice of Reading in Early Modern England, 1558–1709’, examines the foundation, uses and impact of parish libraries in early modern England. Her work focusses specifically on the reading practices of the ‘middling’ sorts of people and the impact these readings had on the popular experience of the Reformation. Her general research interests include the history and physicality of the book and reading, the courts of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, and the roles of women in power in the medieval and early modern periods. Julianne Simpson is Rare Books and Maps Manager at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. She has worked in London, Oxford and Melbourne and completed an MA in the History of the Book at the University of London in 1997. She has previously used the Plantin archives in her research on the sales and distribution of the Biblia Regia, the polyglot Bible published by Christopher Plantin between 1568 and 1573. Her research interests include the international book trade in the sixteenth century, early modern private libraries and the study of provenance and annotation in early printed books. Michael A.L. Smith is an early career researcher who received his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2017. Michael works on the history of emotions and religious culture in the early modern period, and attempts to read emotions back into the religious cultures of England between 1649 and 1745, where narratives of a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ have otherwise dominated the historiography. Tim Somers is a PhD graduate from Queen’s University Belfast. His thesis was titled ‘John Bagford and the Collection of Cheap Print in Later Stuart Britain’. He has

Notes on Contributors

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published on the role that tradesmen played in later seventeenth-century scientific and antiquarian culture, as well as the concept of impartiality in print culture. Forrest C. Strickland is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews and the 2018 Arminius Fellow at Leiden University. His thesis is entitled ‘The Devotion of Collecting. Ministers and the Culture of Print in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic’. He is the author of the forthcoming Protestant Ministers and their Books in the Dutch Republic, 1607–1700 (2 volumes, Brill). Drew B. Thomas is a postdoctoral research assistant for the Universal Short Title Catalogue at the University of St Andrews. His PhD thesis was on the growth of the Wittenberg printing industry during Martin Luther’s Reformation, drawing on quantitative analysis of local print production and the design elements adopted by printers to market Luther’s works. Most recently, he was awarded an Early Career Research Fellowship Grant by the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester.

Introduction Rosamund Oates and Jessica G. Purdy Communities of Print situates the experiences of individual readers within the communities of writers, readers, and publishers who shaped the consumption of print in early modern Europe. This collection of essays has come out of the Communities of Print project, which was developed in conjunction with Manchester Metropolitan University, John Rylands Library and Chetham’s Library in Manchester, to explore diverse approaches to book and reader history. In a series of conferences, lectures, and blog posts from 2016 to 2019, rare book specialists, librarians, and academics from History and English Literature analysed the connections fostered by the reading, writing and publishing of printed books in early modern Europe. They then asked how these developments affected the consumption of books and printed material.1 The materiality of texts was a constant theme throughout the project, with contributors using the physicality of printed texts as a way to connect reader history with larger economic, social, and cultural developments. The results of some of those conversations are collected here, with particular emphasis on the work being done by a younger generation of academics. This collection of essays uses the term ‘communities of print’ to link reader and producer, bookseller and collector. Writing in 2003, Kevin Sharpe and Stephen N. Zwicker called for a book history that explored the ‘continuous transactions between producers and consumers’ as a series of negotiations between a ‘myriad of authors, texts and readers’.2 This collection of essays embraces that challenge, analysing readers’ interactions with their books in a broader cultural and economic setting. How people read shaped the production and dissemination of books, which in turn determined how readers could identify, acquire and consume books. Even if a book was consumed by a solitary reader (often not the case in early modern Europe), then the production and 1 Essays, blogs and details of the project may be found here . The Communities of Print project also led to an exhibition of different annotated copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle from the UK, Russia and New Zealand (2019– 2020) . 2 Kevin Sharpe and Stephen N. Zwicker, Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 3. A series of essays looking at the social contexts of reading and writing is Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (eds), Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2001).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_002

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selection of the text, as well as the intellectual framework of the reader, were the result of multiple, connected forces rooted in a reader’s social and cultural hinterland. In this volume, authors have addressed that dynamic, asking how writers and readers perceived themselves as part of a larger community of producers and consumers of books – however dispersed – and analysing some of the changes that occurred over the period from 1500 to 1800. This collection has three main strands, teasing out those connections through a series of case studies exploring the production and consumption of printed texts over the period from 1500 to 1800. The first strand explores networks of production, analysing the publication and dissemination of printed material in this period. The second strand looks at how print created communities of readers, brought together by common reading material and shared reading practices. The third strand explores different readings of the same texts through annotations and publication strategies, highlighting changes and continuities in reading practices over the period. Using the idea of ‘communities’ to analyse print culture allows us to shift our gaze from the individual reader to focus instead on the complex network of relationships and influences surrounding book consumption and production in this period. However, both the word and the concept of ‘community’ raise interpretive challenges. As Peter Burke has noted, although the term ‘community’ is ‘indispensable’ when writing about early modern cultures, it is also ‘dangerous’ in its ambiguity.3 In their introduction to Communities in Early Modern England, Alexandra Shepherd and Phil Withington demonstrate that the ‘conceptual vagueness’ and the ‘rhetorical warmth’ of the term ‘community’ has seen it co-opted by diverse political groups, historians, and social commentators from the seventeenth century onwards. The concept of ‘community’ has been used variously to describe highly-politicised plebian cultures in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe; as a way of critiquing the emergence of a stratified society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and to explain complex social processes of conflict and resolution in early modern Europe. When the term is used in these different settings, it can accrue layers of implied meanings that can be hard for historians to ignore.4 However, despite these drawbacks, ‘community’ is still a useful term of analysis, capturing some 3 Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 5. 4 Alexandra Shepherd and Phil Withington (eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place and Rhetoric (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 2–5; Beat Kümin, The Communal Age in Western Europe c. 1100–1800 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013); Alan Everitt, ‘The Local Community and the Great Rebellion’ in R.C. Richardson (ed.), The English Civil Wars: Local Aspects (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), pp. 15–36.

Introduction

3

of the myriad ways in which early modern people saw themselves interacting with each other. In fact, Shepherd and Withington argue that it is the malleability of the term that makes it a powerful tool of analysis, claiming that the ‘polyvalence, appropriability, and capacity for synonymy’ of ‘community’ reflects the complexity of early modern society.5 Certainly, its use throughout this collection reflects the multiplicity of ways in which communities could be constructed and constituted, as well as the diverse experiences of belonging (and exclusion) that communities entailed. One of the dangers of using the term ‘community’ is that it is has often been used to imply some degree of unity or homogeneity, particularly in those communities that are imagined rather than real. However, the authors in this collection have followed the example of those historical works that stress that in early modern Europe, communities could be porous, multifaceted, and were often overlapping. Recent urban histories, for example, have drawn on the ‘spatial turn’ to show that early modern people conceived of themselves as being part of multiple communities, even when those communities might appear incompatible.6 Early modern actors simultaneously belonged to religious, linguistic, occupational, and neighbourhood communities, perhaps foregrounding one identity or community in different settings.7 Print played an important role in both constructing these communities and providing pathways between them. Rosa Salzberg’s work on renaissance Venice, for example, demonstrated how the production and consumption of print connected divergent groups in the city, crossing social, political, and religious structures to create unexpected and fluid connections and groupings.8 In this volume, communities of print have been conceived as sometimes intersecting, sometimes close-knit, and almost always permeable. Communities could take many different forms, and the authors in this volume have addressed some of these different manifestations in their work. Some explore an ‘imagined community’ of readers, as in the work of Kathryn 5 Shepherd and Withington, Communities in Early Modern England, p. 2. 6 For example, see the discussions in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, revised edn. 2006); Michael J. Halverson and Karen E Spierling (eds), Defining Community in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008), pp. 22–24. 7 Burke, Language and Communities, p. 6. Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey, Connecting Centre and Locality: Political Communication in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 2–3; Robin Briggs, Communities of Beliefs: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3–4. 8 Rosa Salzburg, Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Roger J Crum and John T Paoletti, Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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Hurlock and Nina Adamova on early modern annotations, or in Catherine Evans’ discussion of George Herbert’s poetry and proverbs. Others address the constantly changing communities of readers brought together by shared access to books, for example Jessica Purdy and Michael Smith’s discussions of reading practices in Manchester and beyond from 1600 to 1800. Still others explore communities of commerce and the complex network of trade that facilitated and ultimately shaped publication practices, as in Julianne Simpson’s discussion of Christopher Plantin. Throughout the volume, micro-histories shed new light on how print facilitated the emergence of communities, and the ways in which interactions between communities of consumers and producers shaped the consumption of print. Histories of production link consumer, printer and writer, and analyses of the dissemination of printed material in this period have highlighted the dominance of certain towns and cities in the intellectual life of Europe. By looking at networks of print distribution through the lens of a relationship between the centre and peripheries, Andrew Pettegree foregrounded an important dynamic in the early modern book trade.9 Trade routes established to facilitate manuscript production were developed by printers, cementing networks of dissemination that crossed Europe, while printing itself was often centred in a few major towns. Those towns or cities were also central to the intellectual life of early modern Europe, with close connections between the writers and the presses that published their works.10 Contemporaries recognised this, and some used it to their advantage: as Drew Thomas demonstrates in this volume, printers in sixteenth-century Augsburg used false imprints when they printed Lutheran material, claiming they were printed in Wittenberg. Bookselling also tended to be concentrated in a few major towns and cities. London dominated the Tudor and Stuart print trade, for example, as both the source of printed material and as a conduit for imported books.11 Recent work on early modern Spain, France, and England, however, has shown the importance of small towns in the dissemination of printed material, adding nuances to our perception of the print trade as largely a process of distribution from the 9 10

11

Andrew Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18 (2008), pp. 101–128. Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery’, p. 109; Joad Raymond, ‘The Development of the Book Trade in Britain’ in Joad Raymond (ed.), The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Volume One: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 67; Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, ‘Current Trends in the History of Reading’, in Books and Readers p. 7. Alan B. Farmer, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Foreign Books in Early Modern England’, Shakespeare Studies, 35 (2007), pp. 58–59; James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 7.

Introduction

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centre to the peripheries. Historians have shown that the book trade provided a network of distribution that might connect consumers and producers horizontally as well as vertically.12 Sixteenth-century readers in provincial France sometimes by-passed the local bookseller and his distribution network, and bought directly from Paris, while local presses emerged to print ephemeral texts for a local audience.13 By contrast, in early modern England, the second-hand book trade allowed buyers and sellers to circumvent the London market, dealing directly through local bookshops. Furthermore, as Rosamund Oates shows in this volume, the catalogues produced by big European book producers (most notably the Frankfurt Book Fair) encouraged readers in Europe’s provinces to interact directly with each other. Jane Stevenson has recently highlighted those interactions, showing how some English and Scottish authors dealt directly with publishers in continental Europe. Stevenson reminds us that an overreliance on the English Short Title Catalogue means that it is all too easy to focus on domestic printing of English-language authors, and points to the influence of writers like Lewis Bayly and William Perkins who were translated into several different languages and sold abroad. This work not only modifies our accounts of London as the centre of the book trade, but also – along with nearby Oxford and Cambridge – as the intellectual heart of early modern England.14 A recurring theme throughout this volume is the extent to which communities were constituted by printed texts, whether through the production, dissemination or consumption of books (and indeed, sometimes by all three). Historians of early modern Europe have highlighted the role of printing in sustaining and creating communities, particularly marginal or oppressed groups. Books and printed pamphlets underpinned a shared discourse, whether they were produced by English Royalists in exile or by secret Catholic presses in the sixteenth century. The circulation of these texts, as much as their content, 12

13 14

Benito Rial Costas (ed.) Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing and the Book Trade in Small European and Spanish Cities (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Malcolm Walsby, Booksellers and Printers in Provincial France (Leiden, Brill, 2020). Malcolm Walsby, ‘The Vanishing Press: printing in Provincial France in the Early Sixteenth Century’, in Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp (eds.), The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 105. Rosamund Oates, Moderate Radical: Tobie Matthew and the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 163–166; Jane Stevenson, ‘Centres and Peripheries: Early-Modern British Writers in a European Context’, The Library ser., 7, 21:2 (2020), pp. 156–191; Ian Maclean, Learning and the Market Place: Essays in the History of the Early Modern Book (Leiden, Brill, 2009), pp. 316–317; John Barnard and Maureen Bell, ‘The English Provinces’ in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain IV: 1557–1685, ed. John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 665–686.

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helped to keep alive ‘virtual communities’. The arrival of the French printer, Pierre de Vingle, in the Swiss city of Neuchâtel, provided exiles influenced by the Swiss Reformation an opportunity to successfully disseminate their works in France during the 1530s. Two decades later, the leader of Antwerp’s Reformed Conventicle, Gaspar van der Heden, distributed ‘heretical’ texts from Emden to members of the local Reformed community to counter attempts at repression.15 Acquiring, sharing, and distributing these texts relied on networks of dissent, and work on Catholic recusants in early modern England, for example, has shown the importance of print in sustaining the community when they faced the toughest persecution. In these accounts the dissemination of print, as much as the content of those books, was a significant binder of the recusant community.16 In the early modern period, the materiality of the text could be as significant as its content. Differing attitudes towards books could mark out different communities as surely as their response to the text itself. Protestantism in particular encouraged an intense relationship with the text that sometimes imbued the object of the book with spiritual and emotional significance. Seventeenth-century Puritans sometimes marked themselves out through their relationship with the physical object of the book: in England, for example, it was claimed Puritans could be identified by the habit of carrying a bible on their belts.17 It was not only Protestants, however, who appreciated both the physical object of the book as well as the information inside it. The inscription ‘et amicorum’ (examined by Flavia Bruni in this volume) highlights the importance that contemporaries placed on particular copies of books that were read and shared by friends. The ownership, and often marginal notes, transformed 15

16

17

Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-century France (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 31–34; Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 176. Alexandra Walsham, ‘Preaching without Speaking: script, print and religious duties’ in Alexandra Walsham and Julia C. Crick (eds), The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 211–34; Alexander Stoetaert, ‘Catholic refuge and the printing press: Catholic exiles from England, France and the Low Countries in the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai’, British Catholic History, 34:4 (2019), pp. 532–561; Mark R.F. Williams, ‘The Devotional Landscape of the Royalist Exile, 1649–1660’, Journal of British Studies 53: 4 (2014), pp. 909–933; Margaret Sena, ‘William Blundell and the networks of Catholic dissent in post-Reformation England’ in Shepherd and Withington (eds) Communities in Early Modern England, pp. 54–75. Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 293–5; Andrew Cambers, ‘Demonic Possession, Literacy and “Superstition” in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 202 (2009), pp. 3–35.

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the printed text from one of many into a unique – and especially meaningful – item. Natalie Zemon Davies has further shown the significance of the materiality of books in her account of books as gifts in sixteenth-century France.18 Contemporaries appreciated both the object and the act of giving or acquiring that lay behind the gift. Relationships were maintained and built through the shared consumption of books, many of which bear the marks of their acquisition. Recent work on the Winthrop family, for example, has shown how collecting, sharing and reading of books sustained a network of family members and friends that criss-crossed the Atlantic, England and Ireland in this period.19 Reading was often a communal endeavour in this period, creating new relationships, re-affirming existing bonds or an opportunity to share thoughts and experiences. The inscription ‘et amicorum’ referred to reading, as well as the physical sharing of books, reflecting humanist ideas of friendship and intellectual exchange.20 There were many different manifestations of communal reading. Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine showed that Gabriel Harvey read his Livy with friends including Sir Philip Sidney, arguing that marginal notes of men like Harvey often record the ‘social circles they inhabited’ as much as their responses to the text.21 Reading could also be a way of constituting communities: Andrew Cambers, for example, has argued that the collective Bible-reading of English Puritans was a ‘ritual of separation’.22 Shared reading was often a feature of communal living. Heidi Brayman Hackel, for example, has demonstrated how women often read aloud to a household, while Georgianna Ziegler has shown that Lady Anne Clifford directed others to read to her.23 Hearing, as well as seeing the word, was a form of reading, creating 18 19 20 21

22 23

William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 18; Natalie Zemon Davies, The Gift in Sixteenth Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 76–81. Richard Calis, Frederic Clark, Christian Flow, Anthony Grafton, Madeline McMahon, Jennifer M Rampling, ‘Passing The Book: Cultures of Reading in the Winthrop Family, 1580–1730’, Past & Present, 241 (2018) pp. 69–141. Geoffrey D. Hobson, ‘Et amicorum’. The Library, 5th ser., 4 (1949), pp. 87–99. For a recent attempt to capture transnational intellectual exchange in this period, see ‘Mapping the Republic of Letters’ . Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy’, Past & Present, 129 (1990), pp. 30–78; Anthony Grafton, ‘John Dee reads books of Magic’ in Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Elizabeth Walsh and Susan Scola (eds.), The Reader Revealed (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2002), p. 32. Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England 1580–1720 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 24. Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Georgianna Ziegler, ‘Lady Anne Clifford reads John Selden’ in Katherine Acheson (ed.), Early Modern English Marginalia

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shared experiences. Jennifer Richards has recently demonstrated that oral reading was part of the training of highly literate men, who were expected to think of writing as a potential oral performance from a young age. Therefore, men as well as women engaged in vocalising and listening to texts as a form of reading that supported family, household or friendship communities. The seventeenth-century minister, John Rastrick, for example, read aloud in order to bring together his family, and ‘godly servants, boarders, and visitors in his household’. Eighteenth-century French priests recorded that rural households still gathered together (but only on winter evenings) to listen someone in the family reading aloud from saints’ lives, the bible, or other religious books.24 Histories of reading and work on marginalia tend to privilege the individual reader and his (or more rarely, her) engagement with the text. Sometimes these are remarkable readers, like Gabriel Harvey or John Dee; sometimes they are remarkable texts, like Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.25 Even within these single reader/annotator engagements, however, it is possible to identify a larger intellectual community that a reader speaks to when he or she makes notes in their texts. The literary critic Stanley Fish argued that it was ‘interpretive communities, rather than either the text or reader that produce meanings’. And while his model of ‘interpretive communities’ has been refined and challenged, his work reminds us of the importance of seeing individual readers in the context of their friendships and their wider cultural and social concerns.26 As Kathryn Hurlock and Jessica Purdy argue in their chapters, annotators are trying to establish dialogue with future readers, with marginal notes intended to shape later reading experiences. Sometimes the imagined reader was an older version of the annotator, returning to the text with different experiences or determined to focus on one or two passages. Sometimes, those readers were unknown abstracts, but nevertheless it was an engagement that shaped the

24

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26

(Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 134–154; Julie Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading, or, How Margaret Hoby Read Her de Mornay’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73 (2010), p. 194. Jennifer Richards, Voices and Books in the English Renaissance: A New History of Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England’, The Historical Journal, 47 (2004), p. 894; Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 226. William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); Fred Schurink, ‘“Like a Hand in the Margine of a Booke”: William Blount’s Marginalia and the Politics of Sidney’s Arcadia’, Review of English Studies, 69:238 (2009), pp. 1–24. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The authority of interpretive communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 14.

Introduction

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reading and annotating of books.27 Occasionally, annotators spoke directly to their imagined audience. In this volume, for example, Nina Adamova shows how in Elizabethan Lancashire, Thomas Gudlawe repeatedly addressed a ‘gentle reader’ as he and his secretary wrote annotations in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Perhaps one of the more obvious manifestations of communities of print in this period is the library, whether the quasi-public libraries of the parish church, or the semi-private libraries of clerics, gentlemen and noble families.28 Increasingly in early modern Europe, collections of books were seen to have a coherent identity, one which rested in their dual claims to be complete repositories of knowledge and the relationship that the books were expected to have to each other. Collectors celebrated their libraries through comprehensive catalogues. Konrad Peutinger, a humanist, jurist and counsellor of Maximillian I, had around 6,000 printed items in his Augsburg library (along with many manuscripts) and prepared and wrote at least two catalogues. Increasingly, in the early modern period, private collections and libraries were used to signal the owner’s breadth of knowledge and depth of perception. The Jacobean cleric, John Favour, for example, praised another Protestant cleric as being a ‘library of learning’ and when the dean of Canterbury Cathedral, John Boys, died in 1625, his monument portrayed him at work in his library.29 And those libraries had an integral identity that resulted from the curatorial skills of its owner. Another seventeenth cleric, William Crashawe, had a book collection that he claimed was ‘one of the most complete libraries in Europe’. Though valued at over £2000, he refused several offers from booksellers who intended on breaking up the collection, making plans for it to stay together after his death.30 One of the most significant features of a library was that it facilitated conversations between texts. Books were not meant to be read in intellectual isolation, and readers expected to use different books to inform and shape their readings of multiple texts. The Ramellian book wheel – allowing several books to be consulted at once – has become an icon of early modern reading, and while few 27 28

29

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H.J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 87. Mark Towsey, ‘Book use and Sociability in Lost Libraries of the Eighteenth Century: Towards a Union Catalogue’ in Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (eds.), Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 414–438; Roger Chartier, ‘Libraries without Walls’, Representations, 42 (1993), pp. 38–40. John Favour, Antiquitie triumphing over Noveltie (London, 1619), p. 235. Hans-Jörg Künast, ‘Augsburg’s Role in the German Book Trade in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century’ in The Book Triumphant, p. 322. The tomb of Dean John Boys (1571–1625) is on the south wall of the Dean’s chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. David Pearson, ‘The English Private Library in the Seventeenth Century’, The Library, 7th ser., 13:4 (2012) pp. 379–99.

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owned such an item, many read multiple books at the same time.31 Marginal notes illustrate the results of those encounters, highlighting how even solitary reading engages in larger conversations. Anthony Grafton and William Sherman, for example, have shown how two renowned Hellenists – Thomas Smith and Isaac Casaubon – read their copies of Flavius Josephus very differently, drawing on different works to critique and interpret the text.32 In early Stuart England, the Archbishop of York, Tobie Matthew, wrote notes on an Edwardian defence of clerical marriage from a seemingly unconnected series of texts, including polemical attacks on Cardinal Bellarmine. The reception and dissemination of texts was grounded in the wider social, intellectual and cultural life of the reader.33 These are just some of the different ‘communities’ that shaped the production and consumption of books and printed material in this period. Throughout this collection, the term ‘communities of print’ is deliberately open to interpretation, designed to shift the focus from the individual reader or writer to the complex networks of influence that surrounded them. The history of reading foregrounds the reader’s interaction with the text, and by locating this interaction in a wider community of print, it is possible to de-centre book history, and address the many different interactions between producer and consumer, writer and reader that sustained print culture in early modern Europe. This volume is divided into three parts to reflect its three thematic strands. In the first part, the networks of the printers, sellers and consumers who sustained the early modern book trade are explored. Drew B. Thomas examines the consequences of the desire for authenticity in Martin Luther’s works by readers in early modern Augsburg. Thomas demonstrates that in order to achieve this sense of authenticity, almost a dozen of Augsburg’s printers resorted to producing counterfeit texts, thus highlighting the early importance of branding in the publishing world. Thomas documents the processes through which many of Augsburg’s printers produced these counterfeits, examining the false imprints, false colophons and numerous copied title page borders that suggest a network of counterfeit activity. Julianne Simpson makes use of Christopher Plantin’s account books to illustrate the complex web of circulation, distribution and printing that covered much of Europe in the sixteenth century. In this chapter, Simpson explores the day-to-day realities and difficulties that Plantin 31 32 33

John Considine, ‘The Ramellian Bookwheel’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 1:4 (2016), pp. 381–411. Anthony Grafton and William Sherman, ‘In the Margins of Josephus: Two Ways of Reading’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 23: 3(2016), pp. 213–238. Oates, Moderate Radical, p. 185.

Introduction

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faced in developing and sustaining his networks as he attempted to meet the demands of the market and the requirements of his sponsor. Simpson also successfully highlights Plantin’s achievements in treading the fine lines between economic necessity and survival by foregrounding them against the backdrop of the religious conflicts and political upheavals that rocked France and the Netherlands in this period. Rosamund Oates examines the provincial book trade in early modern England, focussing on early modern Yorkshire to explore how readers in Yorkshire acquired their books. Oates demonstrates that readers in early modern Yorkshire purchased books locally, bought them from London, and employed agents to buy from the Frankfurt Book Fair. In doing so, Oates shows that provincial readers in Yorkshire were not passive consumers of a print culture emanating from London, but that they were fully engaged in an international community of print in which local clerics knowledgably and successfully responded to Italian and French polemicists. In the final chapter of part 1, Jessica G. Purdy recovers some of the reading done by the ‘middling’ sorts of people in early modern England, namely people with limited means to buy books who instead relied on the parish libraries established in England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Purdy’s examination of the Gorton Chest parish library, a chained library from the 1650s that survives in its original chest, asks how readers approached the theologies, sermons and works of practical divinity that were chosen for the library. In order to answer these questions, Purdy examines the surviving marginalia and others marks of readership in numerous volumes from the collection to demonstrate readers’ interest in topics such as the importance of Scripture, godly living and preparation for death and salvation. Part 2 of this volume looks at how readers came together to read their books and created these ‘communities’ that were formed out of common reading material and interests. Flavia Bruni demonstrates that despite an injunction against book ownership, mendicant friars in sixteenth-century Italy not only owned books, but bequeathed them to their colleagues and even, on occasion, shared books with friends outside the cloister. Bruni analyses inscriptions inside some of the mendicants’ books, particularly the familiar ‘et amicorum’, and argues that marks of ownership could tie a book to both its present and future owners. In her examination of the books owned by these mendicant friars, Bruni demonstrates that the practices employed by the friars were not vastly dissimilar to those employed by the contemporary humanists from whom the mendicants sought to distance themselves. In his chapter, Forrest C. Strickland explores the sharing, sale and use of books in another spiritual community – that of the Dutch Reformed ministers of the seventeenth century. Using some of the surviving catalogues of ministerial libraries, Strickland shows the

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predominance of patristic texts in clerical libraries in this period and links this possession to the robust knowledge of the teaching of Church Fathers attained by Dutch ministers. Strickland further demonstrates how these ministers employed this knowledge in pastoral teaching and counsel, in sermons, in devotional and prayer books, and in polemics within the Dutch Church. In the third and final chapter of part 2 of this volume, Michael A.L. Smith combines scholarship on early modern friendship, material culture and the history of emotions to examine the impact of printed material upon the interior emotional lives of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century English Protestants. To do so, Smith compares the reading activities of two men from very different confessional backgrounds in seventeenth-century Lancashire: one a nonconformist, the other a High Churchman. Despite their differences, and the unease of the Anglican Church over informal reading groups, Smith demonstrates that both men’s social lives revolved around reading and sharing devotional texts with like-minded friends. The third and final section of this volume uses publication strategies, reading practices and annotations to explore how different people read the same text, prolonging the afterlives of the written word through adaptation and copying. Nina Adamova looks at the rich afterlife of a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, now in Chetham’s Library in Manchester. Adamova examines one owner’s prodigious annotations, exploring their reading practices and the ways in which their marginalia interacted with the printed text it surrounded. Adamova also demonstrates how the annotations reflect the changing religious politics of Elizabethan Lancashire to offer some insights into the fluctuations of local confessional identities. Many of these annotations were addressed to a ‘gentle reader’, and Adamova asks who the imagined reader may have been. Kathryn Hurlock examines the readership of another seminal work, David Powel’s Historie of Cambria (1584), the first printed history of Wales that, significantly, was printed in English. Hurlock compares different readings of Powel’s text, showing how the Welsh origins of Henry Tudor prompted an interest in Welsh genealogy among the English gentry and nobility. One famous reader of this text was Edmund Spenser, who drew on Powel’s Historie when he was writing the Faerie Queene, mining the history for Welsh historical figures to populate his epic poem. Catherine Evans, in the penultimate chapter of this volume, seeks to restore the negative reputation of two of George Herbert’s poems, Sunday and The Church Porch. In so doing, Evans explores different readings of both of these works, in addition to some of Herbert’s proverbs. Evans demonstrates that by Herbert’s use of common-placing techniques, he was able to provide his audience with guidance through his poetry and proverbs that

Introduction

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readers could apply to their everyday lives. In her close examination of the afterlife of Sunday, Evans argues that later readers and editors transformed the work from a critical discussion of a fractured parish into a depiction of a pastoral idyll. In the final chapter of this volume, Tim Somers analyses early modern micrography as evidence of a different type of response to the intensification of print culture in later Stuart Britain. He shows how the trend of micrography towards the end of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth provided a new way of reading at a glance. He also explores the relationship between image and text in popular micrographic versions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Book of Common Prayer.

Michael Powell

This book is dedicated to Michael Powell, whose death from cancer towards the end of this project was a great loss both personally and professionally. From 1984, Michael was the Librarian of Chetham’s Library in Manchester, the oldest free public library in the English-speaking world. It was Michael’s enthusiasm for the Chetham’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle that led to the project on readers of the Chronicle, undertaken by Nina Adamova and Rosamund Oates and supported by the British Academy. Michael was an integral part of the Communities of Print network, and all our meetings and conferences have been held at Chetham’s with the support of both Michael Powell and Fergus Wilde (currently acting Librarian). Michael was a friend and colleague, and he was also co-supervisor of Jessica Purdy’s PhD. Before he died, we were able to tell Michael that we were planning to dedicate this volume to him, and so it is with much gratitude, affection and some sadness that we do so now.

Acknowledgements

The editors of this volume owe a great debt of thanks to many different people who have supported this project throughout its lifetime. Firstly, thanks go to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University, which sponsored the Communities of Print conferences in 2016 and 2017. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan also co-sponsored a collaborative doctoral project between the History department at Manchester Metropolitan University and Chetham’s Library, leading to Jessica Purdy’s PhD project. Successive conferences from 2015 to 2019 were also supported by the

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Bibliographical Society, which allowed postgraduate students to play a significant part in the conferences and so in this volume. The Bibliographical Society also assisted with some of the research expenses of the articles in this volume. The British Academy has assisted this project in two ways. An International Fellowship awarded to Nina Adamova in 2018 allowed her to work from Manchester Metropolitan University on annotated copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle in the UK. A British Academy grant in 2019 supported the dissemination of our research, including talks in Russia and the UK; a conference at Chetham’s Library called ‘Reading the Reformation’; and an online exhibition of different readings of the Nuremberg Chronicle from around the world, https://nurembergchronicle.co.uk. The fruits of this research may be seen in Nina Adamova’s chapter, and also in the wider discussions that frame this volume about reading, sharing and consuming books. The Communities of Print network was established to explore the life of books as material objects, and draws on the expertise of historians, book historians, English scholars and librarians. The network runs a blog at https:// communitiesofprint.wordpress.com and particularly encourages blog posts by PhD students and Early Career Researchers. This present volume has tried to reflect our commitment to academics in the early stages of their careers, and our interest in gathering together a diverse set of perspectives on the history of print and reading. Thanks are due to all the contributors to the volume, all of whom have provided engaging and stimulating discussions about the use and production of books in this period. Thanks go to the librarians who have been involved in this project, with particular thanks to Julianne Simpson (Rare Books and Maps Manager at John Rylands Library) and Fergus Wilde and Michael Powell of Chetham’s Library. Thanks, too, to Andrew Pettegree, who has provided support and advice throughout the compilation of this volume. Rosamund Oates would particularly like to thank her family (Ralf, Eloise, and Freya Boddington) for their constant love and support. And thanks too to Jessica Purdy for all her hard work and assistance on this volume, her editorial eye is unerring and always perceptive. Jessica Purdy would like to thank her parents, Ian and Jill, and her sisters, Molly and Sophie, for their unwavering love and support throughout the editing of this volume and all of her projects. Jessica would also like to thank her co-editor, Rosamund Oates, for her invaluable expertise and unfailing encouragement.

part 1 Networks of Books

⸪

chapter 1

Selling Luther: Printing Counterfeits in Reformation Augsburg Drew B. Thomas In 1514 Jakob Fugger, the patriarch of the wealthy Augsburg banking family, made a loan to Albert of Brandenburg, allowing him to pay for the dispensations required for his appointment as the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz. This made Albert one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Little did the Fuggers know, but this loan would have enormous consequences for the Augsburg printing industry. In order to repay his debts, the new Archbishop and Elector received permission from Rome to divert a portion of the funds collected from the indulgence campaign intended for the reconstruction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It was this very indulgence that riled the Augustinian friar Martin Luther to pen his Ninety-Five Theses against the sale of indulgences, helping ignite the Protestant Reformation, and it was to Albert of Brandenburg that he sent a copy.1 The evangelical movement grew quickly, leading to a surge of printing across the Empire, including in Augsburg, where printers published more pamphlets by Luther than in any other city except Wittenberg. This chapter briefly examines the growth of the Augsburg print industry in the 1520s and the tactics used to support it. Members of the printing community in Augsburg followed the same strategies as they sought to provide Luther’s works to eager readers quickly. While many workshops re-printed Luther’s pamphlets, several printers in Augsburg went a step further by falsely stating that their pamphlets were from Wittenberg, the home of Luther’s movement. This was a widespread practice used by dozens of printers across the Empire; but in Augsburg, it reached its height. At first this might seem like a tactic to evade local censorship prohibitions, but the practice continued even after Augsburg’s ministers joined the evangelical movement. At a time * All images are in the public domain or used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license and attributed in the captions. 1 Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), pp. 73–74. Reinhold Kiermayr, ‘How Much Money Was Actually in the Indulgence Chest?’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 17, no. 3 (1986), pp. 306–308.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_003

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when humanist communities were increasingly concerned with the origins of their texts, it mattered to readers where their books came from. Books from Wittenberg were important because readers could be assured they represented Luther’s true thoughts.2 In response, Augsburg’s printers published more counterfeits of Wittenberg books than any other city in the Empire and produced them to such a high quality, that no reader browsing a bookstall would suspect the deception. In addition to identifying counterfeits, this chapter will also describe the woodcut title page borders used in Wittenberg that were copied in Augsburg. Several were used by more than one printer, providing evidence of the business relationships within the printing community. The result is a new understanding of the growth of the Augsburg book industry during the polemical pamphlet campaigns of the 1520s, and the ways in which printers sought to sustain it. Augsburg’s strategic location just north of the Alps made it an important commercial hub connecting the trade routes between the Italian states and northern Europe. The town was also a Free Imperial City that hosted several Imperial Diets throughout the sixteenth century. It was during the Diet of 1518 that Martin Luther travelled to Augsburg for questioning by the papal legate Cardinal Thomas Cajetan.3 By 1521, Urbanus Rhegius, the cathedral preacher, was promoting Luther’s movement; in 1525 pastors started marrying and serving communion in both kinds.4 The embrace of evangelical reform continued despite a riot by the city’s weavers the previous year over the city’s banishment of their preacher, Hans Schilling, which ended only after imperial troops arrived to restore peace.5 The city council adopted a neutral policy towards the Reformation. They would tolerate, but not officially endorse, the movement; they would publish, but not strictly enforce, imperial decrees against the Reformation.6 This policy helped the council balance its competing interests, 2 See Arrey von Dommer, Lutherdrucke auf der Hamburger Stadtbibliothek, 1516–1523 (Leipzig: Fr. Wilh. Grunow, 1888), pp. 77–78. 3 Daniel Olivier, The Trial of Luther (London: Mowbrays, 1978), pp. 48–53. Bernd Roeck, ‘Rich and Poor in Reformation Augsburg: The City Council, the Fugger Bank and the Formation of a Bi-Confessional Society,’ in Bridget M. Heal and Ole Peter Grell (eds.), The Impact of the European Reformation: Princes, Clergy and People, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 69. 4 Philip Broadhead, ‘Politics and Expediency in the Augsburg Reformation’, in A.G. Dickens and Peter Newman Brooks (eds.), Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens (London: Scolar, 1980), p. 55. 5 Broadhead, ‘Popular Pressure for Reform in Augsburg, 1524–1534’, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Robert Scribner, and Peter Alter (eds.), Stadtbürgertum und Adel in der Reformation: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der Reformation in England und Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979), pp. 81–83. 6 Ibid., p. 81.

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as they did not want to risk revolt among those city inhabitants calling for religious reform. However, the city was surrounded by Catholic territories, including the Duchy of Bavaria and Habsburg lands, which Augsburg depended upon as its food source and for the trade routes that were so vital to its economy. The city was thus forced to balance internal calls for reform against external pressure to remain faithful to Rome.7 This policy also applied to the city’s printing industry. Censorship was weakly enforced, as is evidenced by the flood of evangelical pamphlets issued by Augsburg’s presses, much to the advantage of the city’s printers. Across the Empire, production increased rapidly during the early years of the Reformation and thus Augsburg quickly became one of the leading centres for printing Luther’s works. 1.1

Reformation Printing in Augsburg

Before the Reformation Augsburg was already a pioneer for books printed in the German vernacular, publishing more than 1,100 books in German, the most of any city.8 But closer examination reveals that in the years leading to the Reformation (1501–1517), German vernacular books occupied less press time, accounting for forty-seven percent of publications compared to fifty-eight percent over the entire pre-Reformation period.9 Although this was a higher percentage than in other cities, it must be noted that Strasbourg’s printers published more books in German; they just occupied a smaller percentage of Strasbourg’s total output.10 In comparison, in Leipzig, the Empire’s largest book manufacturer during this period, only seven percent of publications were in German. As with several of the Empire’s major print centres, the industry’s pace surged with the rise of interest in the Luther affair. During the first three years of the movement, 1518–1520, Augsburg’s printers published more than 400 editions – over fifty percent more than they published in the previous seventeen years

7 8 9

10

Ibid. Hans-Jörg Künast, ‘Getruckt zu Augspurg’: Buchdruck und Buchhandel in Augsburg zwischen 1468 und 1555 (Walter de Gruyter, 2013). Consult the graph on page 296 for printing in pre-Reformation Augsburg by language. The earliest known book printed in Augsburg is from 1468. USTC 743550. Reske also lists 1468 as the beginning of Augsburg’s printing history, but the earliest printer listed is Johann I Schönsperger, beginning in 1481. Reske, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, pp. 27–28. Between 1501 and 1517 printers in Augsburg printed 346 editions in German (47%) compared to the 432 editions printed by printers in Strasbourg (32%). Data from the USTC.

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combined.11 One in three books published in Augsburg between 1518 and 1520 was by Luther, a testament to how quickly he rose to the top of the German book market.12 Although not having been published in Augsburg until 1518, by 1520 he was the most published author in the history of Augsburg’s printing industry. This growth only continued throughout the 1520s. The total number of editions printed during this decade would not be matched during the rest of the century. Augsburg’s printers finally surpassed their peers, printing more editions in the 1520s than anywhere else in the Empire. German language books were now dominant, accounting for nearly ninety percent of all editions, ninety-six percent if only looking at Luther’s works.13 While over a dozen printers were active in Augsburg during the decade, four stood out above the others. Melchior Ramminger, Heinrich Steiner, Philipp Ulhart and Silvan Otmar each published more than 200 editions. Although Augsburg achieved great growth during the 1520s, a different picture emerges when looking at production volumes instead of only analysing edition totals. Production volumes are based on the number of sheets of paper required per book. When looking at edition totals, a Bible and a pamphlet are treated equally, but when looking at total sheets, each book is given its proper weight.14 In terms of editions, Augsburg’s production continues to rise during the first half of the 1520s. But following the riot by the city’s weavers in 1524 and the Peasants’ War ending in 1525, publishing levels dropped significantly. This was not unique to Augsburg alone, as printing across the Empire dropped after the end of the polemical pamphlet campaigns.15 But when looking at total sheets, production had already begun decreasing during the early 1520s 11 12 13

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Although the beginning of the Reformation is commemorated as having begun in 1517, Luther did not publish his Ninety-Five Theses until the end of October 1517. 1518 was the first full year of Reformation printing. According to the USTC, there were 412 editions published in Augsburg between 1518 and 1520, of which 132 were by Luther, accounting for 32 percent. Between 1520 and 1529, the USTC records 1,832 editions printed in Augsburg, of which 1,635 were in German, accounting for 89 percent. Of the 467 editions by Luther during that period, 450, or 96 percent, were in German. Unlike other cities that had a local university creating demand for Latin literature, Augsburg was not a university town. To calculate sheet totals, you divide the foliation of a book by its format number. So a quarto with 32 pages (16 leaves) requires four sheets of paper per copy. If it was an octavo, it would require only two sheets. Of the 1,832 editions in the USTC for Augsburg between 1520 and 1529, I was able to calculate sheet totals for 96% of the editions. Richard G. Cole, ‘The Reformation Pamphlet and Communication Processes’, in HansJoachim Köhler (ed.), Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit : Beiträge zum Tübinger Symposion 1980 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), p. 151.

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before increasing in 1524 and 1525. Furthermore, although printers published more editions during the 1520s than at any time in Augsburg’s printing history and more than they would at any other time during the sixteenth century, Hans-Jörg Künast has shown that in terms of sheets, printing in the 1520s did not outpace the incunabula period, demonstrating that the early Reformation was not a period of record growth in the Augsburg printing industry.16 Looking at volumes of production also changes perceptions of local competition between printers. In terms of editions, Ramminger and Steiner top the list with over 330 each, but when looking at total sheets, Ramminger is no longer a leading printer. Steiner, however, was by far the most active printer in Augsburg during the 1520s. With a sheet total of over 2,800, he printed at least forty percent more than his closest competitor, Silvan Otmar. When looking at editions, Otmar printed fewer books than both Ulhart and Ramminger, but in terms of sheets he printed over eighty percent more than his closest competitor. Steiner and Otmar were the two dominant printers in Augsburg. The enormous growth in editions published in Augsburg during this period was due to the many pamphlets accompanying the religious debates. This was a medium Luther easily adopted and perfected. Printers loved this type of work because they could be printed quickly and cheaply.17 This also made them easier for reprinting in other cities. When Jörg Nadler reprinted Luther’s Sermon on Indulgences and Grace in Augsburg in 1520, it required only one sheet of paper per copy.18 Of the 1,800 editions printed in Augsburg in the 1520s, over 70 percent were pamphlets.19 In 1522, one in three pamphlets published was by Luther. His preference for writing short works is made apparent by the fact that the average number of sheets per copy required for one of his works was five. In contrast, the average length for a work by Luther’s Catholic foe and fellow opponent at the Leipzig Debate, Johannes Eck, was sixteen sheets. As Mark Edwards has noted, it was difficult for Luther’s Catholic opponents to engage in pamphleteering, as it was a genre dominated by vernacular writing, a practice for which they often chastised Luther.20 Of the more than 1,300 pamphlets published in Augsburg in the 1520s, fewer than a hundred were in Latin. And

16 17 18 19 20

Künast, Getruckt zu Augsburg, p. 298. Pettegree, Brand Luther, p. 20. Luther, Ain sermon von dem ablasz unnd gnade (Augsburg: Jörg Nadler, 1520). USTC 610381. For the purposes of this chapter, I am defining a pamphlet as any edition requiring five or fewer sheets of paper per copy. Once you move beyond that amount, the necessary time, money and risk increases for the printer. Mark U. Edwards Jr., Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 57–58.

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although the average length of one of Luther’s works required only five sheets of paper, sixty-five percent of his pamphlets required only one or two sheets. The Reformation was Europe’s first mass-media event. Luther would share his opinions in a pamphlet that was usually printed first in Wittenberg, and then reprinted in several cities throughout the Empire. Because everyone was printing Luther’s works, including more than one printer in the same town printing the same works, it was difficult for a printer to stand out. Why should a reader buy one edition over the other? After all, the texts were the same. Or were they? Authors, including Luther, complained about the poor quality of many publications.21 But readers could be sure of the authenticity of Luther’s works if they knew the edition came from Wittenberg, where it had passed under Luther’s watchful eye. Printers picked up on this at the very beginning of the movement. Before long, pamphlets claiming to have been printed in Wittenberg were appearing throughout the Empire at unprecedented rates. 1.2

Printing Counterfeits in Augsburg

The year 1520 was one of Luther’s most active. He wrote three of his most famous works that year: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian.22 It was also the first year of a new phenomenon in Luther publishing. In 1520 books from other cities appeared on the market claiming to be from Wittenberg. At least nine printers in Augsburg, Basel, Halberstadt, Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Vienna published books with ‘Wittenberg’ in the imprint. False publication information was nearly as old as Gutenberg’s printing press, although many instances were simply careless errors, rather than deliberate attempts at deception.23 When it was deliberate, it was often to circumvent another printer’s privilege. In 1499 the Italian printer Bernardinus de Misintis 21

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Luther complains about the poor quality of reprints in the preface of his Auslegunge der Episteln und Evangelien von der heyligen drey Koenige fest bis auff Ostern gebessert (Wittenberg: Melchior II Lotter for Lukas I Cranach & Christian Döring, 1525). USTC 613951. Also, see Jane O. Newman, ‘The Word Made Print: Luther’s 1522 New Testament in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Representations, no. 11 (1985), pp. 102–103. See also Cole, ‘The Reformation pamphlet and communication process’, p. 144. Luther, An den Christlichen adel Deutscher nation (Wittenberg: Melchior II Lotter, 1520). USTC 632430, 632433, 632434; De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae (Wittenberg, Melchior II Lotter, 1520). USTC 629101, 629102; Tractatus de libertate Christiana von der freiheit eines Christenmenschen (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1520). USTC 651552. Curt F. Bühler, ‘False Information in the Colophons of Incunabula’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 114:5, (1970), pp. 398–399.

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printed ‘Florence’ in the imprint of his copy of Politan’s Opera, even though his workshop was in Brescia. Florence, being outside the Venetian lands, would have been outside the privilege granted to the famed Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius. The deception was discovered, and Aldus formally complained to the Venetian senate.24 Aldus is probably the best-known example of a printer being the target of counterfeiting. Printers in Lyon even went to the extraordinary lengths of copying his italic typeface.25 Authors were also the target of unauthorised reprinting. Other than Luther, Erasmus was probably the most prolific author to have his works counterfeited. It was Johann Froben’s unauthorised re-prints of Erasmus’s works – specifically, one first published by Aldus – that attracted the humanist to Basel.26 Wittenberg was unique because it was the first instance that a place of publication was the target of such a widespread fraud by so many printers in so many cities. Books with false Wittenberg imprints were printed every year from 1520 until Luther’s death in 1546. Printers in all the major publishing centres across the Empire produced them.27 Between 1522 and 1524 nearly half of all books with a Wittenberg imprint were counterfeit. With more than 250 counterfeits in circulation, the number of counterfeits nearly matched the entire publication output of Wittenberg. In total, over seventy printers in more than thirty cities used false Wittenberg imprints.28 The southern strongholds of the German printing industry, Strasbourg, Nuremberg and Augsburg, were responsible for more than half of the counterfeits, of which more than eighty percent were books by Luther. But printers in Augsburg led the way, publishing more than 150 editions with false Wittenberg imprints. Although counterfeit editions of works from Wittenberg were printed throughout the rest of Luther’s life, all but two of the counterfeits from Augsburg were printed during the 1520s. The vast majority, over eighty percent, were printed 24 25 26

27

28

Ibid., p. 401. David J. Shaw, ‘The Lyons counterfeit of Aldus’s italic type: a new chronology,’ in Denis V. Reidy (ed.), The Italian Book 1465–1800: Studies Presented to Dennis E. Rhodes on his 70th Birthday (London, 1993), pp. 117–133. Valentina Sebastiani, Johann Froben, Printer of Basel: A Biographical Profile and Catalogue of His Editions (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p. 39. Eileen Bloch, ‘Erasmus and the Froben Press: The Making of an Editor’, The Library Quarterly, 35:2, (Apr. 1965), p. 109. Also, see Percy Stafford Allen, ‘Erasmus’ Relations with his Printers’, The Library, 1, (1913), pp. 297–322. For an in depth analysis looking beyond the Augsburg industry of the many ways printers produced counterfeits, see Drew B. Thomas, ‘Cashing in on Counterfeits: Fraud in the Reformation Print Industry’, in Shanti Graheli (ed.), Buying and Selling: The Business of Books in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 276–300. Ibid., p. 295.

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during the pamphlet campaigns from 1520 to 1524, leading up to the Peasants’ War. This corresponds to the trend for all pamphlets, not just counterfeits. It also highlights that the production of counterfeits was very much a pamphlet phenomenon, accounting for over three quarters of the counterfeits. This means it was also a quarto phenomenon, the format most preferred for pamphlets. Only eleven counterfeits in Augsburg were octavos. Although longer works were sometimes adorned with a false Wittenberg imprint, printers rarely omitted their names from larger, more complicated works, which demonstrated their quality and skill.29 Ten printers in Augsburg used false Wittenberg imprints in their works: Heinrich Steiner, Melchior Ramminger, Jörg Nadler, Philipp I Ulhart, Sigmund Grimm, Hans von Erfurt, the heirs of Erhard Oeling, Silvan Otmar, Simprecht Ruff and Johann II Schönsperger. Four of them, Steiner, Ramminger, Nadler and Ulhart, produced over eighty percent of all counterfeits published in Augsburg. Steiner printed thirty-seven editions, Ramminger printed thirty-three, Nadler printed thirty-two and Ulhart printed twenty-five. The remaining printers all printed six or fewer. Following are brief summaries of the four leading counterfeiters and examples of counterfeit publications. 1.2.1 Heinrich Steiner Heinrich Steiner began his printing career as a journeyman for Johann II Schönsperger.30 By 1521, he was operating independently, printing mostly Reformation pamphlets and later classical works.31 Steiner also used several woodcuts in his works and employed many artists, including Hans Burgkmair, Jörg Breu and Hans Schäufelein.32 He is credited with publishing the first emblem book in 1531, which became a popular genre over the following two centuries.33 29 30 31

32 33

This is based on observations from ongoing research examining the relationship between sheets and imprints. Christoph Reske, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachgebiet: auf der Grundlage des gleichnamigen Werkes von Josef Benzing, Beiträge zum Buch- und Bibliothekswesen, v. 51, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), p. 34. For an example of Steiner’s classical prints, see his 1531 edition of Cicero’s De Officiis (BSB München, 2 A.lat.b. 271; USTC 679342). For more on Steiner’s classical printing, consult Lawrence S. Thompson, ‘German Translations of the Classics between 1450 and 1550’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 42, no. 3 (1943), pp. 343–363. Reske, Die Buchdrucker der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, p. 34. Karl A.E. Enenkel, ‘Illustrations as Commentary and Readers’ Guidance. The Transformation of Cicero’s De Officiis into a German Emblem Book by Johann von Schwarzenberg, Heinrich Steiner, and Christian Egenolff (1517–1520; 1530/1531; 1550)’, in Karl A.E. Enenkel (ed.), Transformations of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 167.

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Ursula Rautenberg called Steiner the “most significant printer of high-quality illustrated and printed Volksbuch”.34 Of the four dozen pamphlets by Luther that Steiner printed, twenty-seven were counterfeits. Although he was one of the most active printers in Augsburg, his career was not without hardship. He was brought before the city council on more than one occasion for censorship violations.35 His debts eventually caught up with him and he was forced to pawn his house, property and printing equipment. In 1547/48 he declared bankruptcy, just prior to his death in March or April 1548.36 1.2.2 Melchior Ramminger Melchior Ramminger started printing in 1520. Prior to becoming a printer, he was listed in the Augsburg tax register as a bookbinder.37 Ramminger printed more pamphlets by Luther than any other printer in Augsburg during the 1520s, printing more than seventy. Following the Augsburg riots of 1524 his production declined, leading him to return to bookbinding.38 It was during the early 1520s that he printed most of his works with false Wittenberg imprints. He printed nearly three dozen, representing just under half of all his works by Luther printed in those years. He died in 1543 and his son Narziß took over his workshop.39 1.2.3 Jörg Nadler Jörg Nadler was an established printer and bookbinder in Augsburg by the time Steiner and Ramminger set up their presses. Reske states that Nadler’s first print was a Buchlein of Johannes Pfefferkorn printed in 1508, which identifies Nadler in the colophon: ‘getruckt zu Augsprg [sic] durch Jörgen nadler’.40 There are also other works from 1508 that identify Nadler in the colophon along with Wolfgang Aittinger and Erhard Oeglin.41 According to the Universal 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

A Volksbuch is a collection of folktales. See Ursula Rautenberg, ‘New Books for a New Reading Public: Frankfurt “Melusine” Editions from the Press of Gülfferich, Han and Heirs’, in Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins (eds.), Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 90. Reske, Die Buchdrucker der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, p. 34. Ibid. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 31. Johann Pfefferkorn, Ich heyss ain buechlein der Juden peicht (Augsburg: Jörg Nadler, 1508). USTC 668758. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 20.T.81. For example, see Johannes Stamler, Dyalogus. Johannis stamler. Augustn. De diversarum gencium sectis et mundi religionibus (Augsburg: Wolfgang Aittinger, Erhard Oeglin and Jörg Nadler, 1508). USTC 641834.

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Short Title Catalogue (USTC) and the German national bibliography (VD16), Nadler printed around 170 editions before he died in 1525. Most of those editions, about 150, were printed during the pamphlet campaigns from 1520 to 1524, suggesting Nadler focused more on bookbinding than printing during his pre-Reformation years. To put into perspective just how much Nadler’s press relied upon Luther, he printed eighty-four editions by him compared to only five works by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, the author with the next highest number of editions. Nadler used a false Wittenberg imprint for at least thirty-two editions, of which all but three were by Luther. 1.2.4 Philipp I Ulhart Like Steiner, Philipp Ulhart started off as a journeyman in the shop of Johann II Schönsperger.42 His earliest works in the USTC and VD16 date from 1523, a year in which he printed over forty editions. Like the others, he printed Luther the most. However, Ulhart also printed several Anabaptist works, including a 1527 edition by Hans Hut, an Anabaptist who was later arrested and executed.43 Many of Ulhart’s works by Luther had false Wittenberg imprints. In total, he printed twenty-five such editions. He kept printing until his death in 1567, bequeathing a large sum to his heirs. His son, also named Philipp, continued to operate the press for a further thirteen years.44 1.2.5 Counterfeit Production Printers produced counterfeits in several ways. Many used a false Wittenberg imprint on their title pages but printed their name or the true city in the colophon at the end of the book. Although nearly thirty printers published over a hundred editions this way, it was not a popular practice in Augsburg. Only two such editions were printed in Augsburg, both octavo editions printed by Steiner in 1524. The first was Luther’s German translation of the Psalter. According to VD16 there are copies in Munich and Stuttgart. I have not been able to view the copy in Stuttgart and the copy in Munich has been severely damaged. The title page transcription lists the title as: ‘Der Psal=||ter || deutsch.|| Martinus || Luther.|| Wittemberg.||’.45 Without seeing the physical title page and the layout of the type, it is unclear whether ‘Wittenberg’ is acting as an imprint or

42 43 44 45

Reske, Die Buchdrucker der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, p. 36. Kat Hill, ‘Anabaptism and the World of Printing in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, Past & Present, 226, no. 1 (February 1, 2015), pp. 79–81. Reske, Die Buchdrucker der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, pp. 36, 41–42. USTC 634177. VD16 B 3280.

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simply identifying where Luther is from.46 Regardless, the colophon identifies both Augsburg as the place of publication and Steiner as the printer. The other edition is a Betbüchlein by Luther.47 It lists Wittenberg and the year at the bottom of the title page and it is not directly following Luther’s name, indicating its role as an imprint. However, the colophon clearly identifies Augsburg as the place of publication and Steiner as the printer. Both of these were longer works, each requiring around twenty sheets of paper per copy. It was thus a larger investment on behalf of Steiner. Including his name in the colophon made sure that he was still given credit for the quality of work. The most popular type of counterfeit in Augsburg were editions that listed ‘Wittenberg’ in the imprint without listing any truthful publication information in the colophon. In 1522 Ramminger published a copy of Luther’s An Earnest Exhortation for All Christians, Warning Them Against Rebellion and Insurrection.48 It has a simple title page with the title arranged in decreasing type sizes. After some whitespace ‘Wittenberg’ is printed in the middle of the page.49 This closely followed the layout of the original Wittenberg edition by Melchior II Lotter.50 An edition with a similar layout was a German edition of the Magnificat published by Jörg Nadler in 1521. It also has the title at the top arranged in a decreasing line width, followed by ‘Wittenberg’ near the middle of the page.51 This re-print also copied the original Wittenberg title page by Lotter, including the same line breaks in the title (See Fig. 1.1).52 Although many of the early pamphlets from Wittenberg had simple title pages with little or no decoration, they were soon adorned with woodcut title page borders. Printers in Augsburg picked up on this and started decorating their pamphlets with borders as well. In 1524, Ramminger published Luther’s Von kaufszhandlung und wucher.53 It has a short title at the top of the page and 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

However, given that the work is an octavo with a woodcut title page border, there is usually little space for type. The title, author and imprint usually follow one another with minimal whitespace. Luther, Ain betbuechlin und leßbuechlin (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1524). USTC 609679. Luther, Ain trewe Ermanung zu allen Christen. Sich zu verhüten vor auffrür unnd emberung (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Melchior Ramminger, 1522). USTC 610433. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 Th.u. 103,VII,23. USTC 656725 and 656726. Luther, Das magnificat Uerteütschet vnd auszgelegt (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1521). USTC 627722. Luther, Das Magnificat Vorteutschet vnd auszgelegt (Wittenberg: Melchior II Lotter, 1521). USTC 627728. Luther, Von kaufszhandlung und wucher (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Melchior Ramminger, 1524). USTC 703974.

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Figure 1.1 An edition from Wittenberg (left) and its Augsburg counterfeit (USTC 627728, SBB Berlin, Luth. 1611; USTC 627722, BSB Munich, Res/4 Th.u. 104,IV,10)

at the very bottom an imprint stating ‘Wittemberg. M.D. XXiiij’. The title page is adorned with a floriated woodcut border. In 1522, Steiner published a copy of Von menschen leren zu meyden. The title is at the top of the page and the imprint with ‘Wittenberg’ and the year are in tiny type at the bottom. The title page is also decorated with a single-piece floriated and historiated woodcut border.54 In these two examples ‘Wittenberg’ is in a small type that does not stand out on the title pages. However, there are other examples where printers clearly sought to falsely promote that these texts were from Wittenberg. In a 1522 pamphlet on relics, Nadler printed ‘Wittenberg’ in the middle with the largest typeface on the page which, combined with the surrounding whitespace, became the focal point.55 In an edition of Luther’s Sermon on the Holy Cross, Ramminger decorated the title page with a large woodcut of a crucifix with Mary on the left and Moses on the right. ‘Wittenberg’ is printed on the lower half of the page with the vertical beam of the cross splitting the word in two. It is printed with the largest typeface on the page.56 One last example is another 54 55 56

Luther, Von menschen leren zu meyden (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1522). USTC 700162. Luther, Ain. Sermon von den hayltumben und gezierd mit üiberfluß vom Hailigen Creütz in den kirchen (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1522). USTC 610484. Luther, Ain sermon von dem hayligen Creütz (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Melchior Ramminger, 1522). USTC 610267.

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1522 pamphlet printed by Nadler. The title page includes both a border and a woodblock. Beneath the woodblock, but within the border, ‘Wittenberg’ is printed in large type.57 Its location at the bottom of the page, separated from all other printed information, leaves no doubt it is meant as an imprint. In many such examples, ‘Wittenberg’ often received more prominence on the title page than Luther’s name. It was not Luther that was unique – everyone printed him. What set these works apart was that they were from ‘Wittenberg’. On some occasions books from Augsburg had a false Wittenberg colophon. In 1522 the heirs of Erhard Oeglin printed an edition of Luther’s work on Bulla cene domini. There is no imprint on the title page but the colophon states it was printed in Wittenberg: ‘Getruckt zü Wittemberg’.58 In 1520, Jörg Nadler printed an edition of Luther’s Warumb des Bapsts with a false Wittenberg imprint.59 The title page layout is an exact copy of the Wittenberg edition by Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, including the error in the Roman numeral year, printed as ‘D.M.xx.’ instead of ‘M.D.xx.’.60 Nadler copied the line-breaks throughout and even copied the colophon, which also listed Wittenberg as the place of publication. It is clear the compositor had a copy of Rhau-Grunenberg’s edition in hand while setting up the type. This would have sped up production as the compositor did not have to calculate questions of imposition. A little over fifty of the counterfeits printed in Augsburg were works by authors other than Luther. There were five counterfeit editions by Melanchthon and four by Karlstadt. In 1522, Nadler printed a counterfeit of a work by Johan Eberlin von Günzberg. The title is within a four-piece woodcut border and above an illustration of Christ teaching. There is no space between the title and Eberlin’s name. Beneath the border, ‘Wittenberg’ is printed in letters larger than any other typeface on the page.61 By highlighting Wittenberg on works by authors other than Luther, readers could presume these books dealt 57 58

59 60 61

Luther, Ain Christliche und vast wolgegründe beweysung von dem Jüngsten Tag und von seinen zaychen das er auch nit ver meer sein mag (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1522). USTC 609701. Luther, Bulla cene domini das ist die bulla vom abentfressen des allerheyligisten Herren des Bapsts verteütscht (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: heirs of Erhard Oeglin, 1522). USTC 617353. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 20.Dd.278. However, the copy at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München (Res/4 Th.u. 103,V,3) is assigned to the same VD16 record (K 264) as the copy in Vienna, but it is a different state of the same edition, as it has a false Wittenberg imprint added at the bottom of the title page. Luther, Warumb des Bapsts und seyner jungeren bucher (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1520). USTC 706083. USTC 706088. Johann Eberlin von Günzburg, Ain fraintliche trostliche vermanung an alle frumen christen zu Augspurg am lech darinn auch angezaigt wirt vazu der Doct. Mar. Luther von Got

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with Luther’s evangelical movement. This was similar to the practice at the beginning of the Reformation, when printers often included ‘Wittenberg’ after Luther’s name to indicate the content dealt with the religious affair in Saxony, as he had not yet achieved name-recognition. However, in addition to adding a false Wittenberg imprint to attract customers, some printers took the practice a step further. Many printers also targeted the woodcut borders decorating the title pages of Wittenberg books. 1.3

Copying the Borders of Lucas Cranach the Elder

When Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 there was only one commercial printer in Wittenberg. It was soon apparent that this would not accommodate Luther’s increased literary output. Taking advantage of the situation, the Leipzig printer Melchior Lotter sent his son to Wittenberg where he set up a press in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, court painter to the Elector of Saxony. In addition to creating the woodcut illustrations for Luther’s 1522 German translation of the New Testament, Cranach also created dozens of title page borders for Wittenberg’s printers.62 Because including woodcuts in any project increased production costs, they were traditionally reserved for larger jobs. Using them to adorn Luther’s pamphlets was an innovation. It was the first time woodcut borders were used on such a large scale for such short, cheap items and they soon came to symbolize Reformation pamphlets as printers all across the Empire used them. Many used whatever borders they had on hand, but others specifically commissioned copies of Cranach’s borders and used them for their books with false Wittenberg imprints.63 In Augsburg nearly one in five counterfeit editions included a copied woodcut border from Wittenberg, more than any other city that produced counterfeits. Moreover, Augsburg’s printers used more copied borders from Wittenberg than any other city. This was largely due to Heinrich Steiner who used at least ten copied borders, evidence of a clear campaign to imitate the pamphlets

62 63

gesant sey (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1522). 609821. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Cu 1941. For examples of Cranach’s illustrations and borders, see: Jutta Strehle (ed.), Cranach im Detail: Buchschmuck Lucas Cranachs des Älteren und seiner Werkstatt (Wittenberg: Drei Kastanien Verlag, 1994). For an overview of title page borders in Reformation pamphlets, see Johannes Luther, Die Titeleinfassungen der Reformationszeit (Leipzig: Rudolf Haput, 1909). For descriptions of woodcuts and borders used during this period, see Dommer, Lutherdrucke auf der Hamburger Stadtbibliothek.

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originating in Wittenberg. The following is an attempt to document at least one instance of each copied border used in editions with false Wittenberg imprints and to compare it to its Wittenberg model. Steiner used copied Wittenberg borders in thirteen editions with false imprints.64 The earliest border dates to 1522 in his edition of Vom mißbrauch der Messen.65 The border features Wittenberg’s coat of arms at the bottom and a blank shield at the top, presumably to be filled in by readers with their own, should they have one.66 This book looks nearly identical to Rhau-Grunenberg’s Wittenberg edition (see Fig. 1.2).67 The layout of the type is nearly the same, however Steiner expanded the abbreviation of Luther’s name and corrected an error in the Roman numeral date.68 Even the initial used at the beginning of the title is similar. There are very few differences in the borders, but one can spot a difference in the shading of the man’s money purse on the left. Johann Schönsperger also used this border in 1522 for a copy of Luther’s Vom eelichen leben.69 The layout is also a near-identical copy of Rhau-Grunenberg’s Wittenberg title page.70 Steiner began his career as one of Schönsperger’s journeymen, so he may have received the border from him. According to D. Georg Buchwald’s Luther-Kalendarium, Vom eelichen leben was published at the end of September.71 At the end of the preface of Vom mißbrauch der Messen, Luther states he wrote it on St Catherine’s Day, which is 25 November. So it could be that the border ended up in Steiner’s shop after first having been used by Schönsperger. To date, I have no evidence Schönsperger ever used it again. In 1524, Steiner used two more borders copied from the Cranach workshop. In his Das siebent capitel S. Pauli zu den Chorinthern he used a border featuring ornate square columns with angels at the top.72 This was a border used by Melchior Lotter in Wittenberg for at least ten editions, including his edition of

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Steiner also used copied borders for which no instance with a false imprint has been identified. Luther, Vom mißbrauch der Messen (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1522). USTC 700033. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 3b. USTC 700034. It appears the title was actually wooden type created to mimic the Wittenberg title page. Luther, Vom eelichen leben (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Johann II Schönsperger, 1522). USTC 700025. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XII,7. USTC 700024. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Res/4 Polem. 1867 a. Georg Buchwald, Luther-Kalendarium (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1929), p. 27. Luther, Das siebent capitel S. Pauli zu den Chorinthern (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1523). USTC 628025. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 58a.

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Figure 1.2 The original Wittenberg edition (left) and the Augsburg counterfeit with copied border (USTC 700034, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Ib 3676 a (4); USTC 700033, BSB Munich, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XIV,10)

the same text (see Fig. 1.3).73 The other border was one featuring a shield with an image of the brazen serpent at the bottom, which would later become a symbol adopted by Philipp Melanchthon. Although the border was first used by Lotter in Wittenberg in 1520, Steiner used it two years later for his edition of a sermon by Luther on the Gospel of Mark.74 In 1524 Steiner printed a copy of a letter from Luther to the Elector of Saxony. He copied the same border used on the Wittenberg edition, which featured angels and two stags at the bottom.75 The layout of the title page is identical to the Wittenberg edition.76 However, Steiner was not the only printer in Augsburg who copied this border. Philipp Ulhart also used a copy of this border in a counterfeit edition of one of Luther’s sermons on the sacraments. Steiner

73 74 75 76

USTC 628020. Luther, Ein sermon auff das Ewangelion Marci am letsten do die aylf zu tysch Sassen offenbart sich in der Herr Christus und sohalt iren unglauben und irs hertzen hertigkait (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1522). USTC 646974. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 12a. Luther, Eyn brieff an die Fürsten zu Sachsen von dem auffrurischen geyst (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1524). USTC 655866. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 43a. USTC 655865.

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Figure 1.3 The original Wittenberg edition (left) and the Augsburg counterfeit (USTC 628020, BSB München, 4 Exeg. 492; USTC 628025, BSB München, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XVII,3)

and Ulhart were not sharing the border, as the two borders have differences, notably, the lack of stones on the ground in Ulhart’s version (see Fig. 1.4).77 The last two borders Steiner used in counterfeits were in 1527 and 1528 respectively, long after the pamphlet campaigns ended. One was for Luther’s exegesis on Jeremiah.78 The border depicted a faun and his family, a design that was used in Wittenberg as early as 1522 and was still being used when Steiner employed his copy.79 The other was a copy of a Wittenberg border depicting the famous ‘Luther rose’.80 This was the coat of arms granted to Luther by the Elector of Saxony. It was incorporated in title pages used in Wittenberg as a mark of authenticity to combat the proliferation of counterfeits.81 It was used in at least seventeen editions in Wittenberg between 1526 and 1530. Steiner used

77 78 79 80 81

Luther, Ain sermon von der frucht unnd nutzbarkait des hayligen Sacraments (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Philipp I Ulhart, 1524). USTC 610370. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 43b. Luther, Ain Epistel ausz dem Propheten Jeremia vonn Christus Reich unnd Christlicher freyheit (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1527). USTC 609790. J. Luther, Titeleinfassungen, 14b. Ibid., 42a. Thomas, ‘Cashing in on Counterfeits’, pp. 289–90; Hans Volz, ‘Das Lutherwappen als “Schuzmarke”’, Libri, 4, no. 3 (January 1954) pp. 216–25.

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Figure 1.4 The original Wittenberg border at top with Steiner’s and Ulhart’s copies (USTC 655865, BSB Munich, H.ref. 748 u; USTC 655866, BSB Munich, Res/4 Th.u. 103,IV,23; USTC 610370, BSB Munich, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XXVI,23)

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Figure 1.5 The original Wittenberg border (left) with the Augsburg copy lacking the Luther rose (USTC 706495, BSB Munich, H.ref. 751 d; USTC 702195, BSB Munich, Res/4 Th.u. 103,III,8)

it for Luther’s treatise on the Eucharist, Vom Abendtmal Christi bekendtnis.82 The border is identical to the one used in Wittenberg, except instead of the Luther rose, there is a blank shield in its place (see Fig. 1.5). Luther’s initials were still included on either side of the shield. Although Steiner used this border only once, Ulhart used it for at least ten editions with false Wittenberg imprints between 1524 and 1528. As Steiner’s edition was also in 1528, Ulhart either loaned the border to Steiner or Steiner acquired it from Ulhart.83 The last printer in Augsburg who also used a copied border with a false imprint was Jörg Nadler. In a copy of Luther’s Von der beicht ob die der Bapst macht hab zugepieten, he used a border depicting the symbols of the Evangelists in the corners, Peter and Paul at the top and bottom, and the doctors of the Church on the sides.84 Joseph Klug used this border in Wittenberg for at least seventeen editions between 1525 and 1540. However, Nadler’s usage predates 82 83 84

Luther, Vom Abendtmal Christi bekendtnis (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Heinrich Steiner, 1528). USTC 702195. Both the USTC and VD16 infer Steiner as the printer of USTC 702195, but it is unclear why. My suspicion is that the woodcut initial ‘G’ at the beginning of the work belonged to Steiner, but I have been unable to match it to a confirmed edition. Luther. Von der beicht ob die der Bapst macht hab zugepieten (Wittenberg [=Augsburg]: Jörg Nadler, 1521). USTC 700119.

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Klug’s, suggesting earlier unknown uses by Klug or that Klug was copying a border from Steiner. The Klug border is more sophisticated in execution and is a mirror image of the Steiner composition. Silvan Otmar also used a copy of this border in Augsburg, but none have been identified with false imprints. He used his border for five editions during the same time as Steiner. Although the borders are the same composition, they are separate woodcuts, as Otmar’s was a multi-piece border. In one of his editions, he reverses the top and bottom pieces, placing Paul at the top and Peter at the bottom.85 Printers in Augsburg used more copied borders from Wittenberg than any other city. By combining them with false Wittenberg imprints, it would be difficult for a reader browsing a bookstall to recognise that they were not in fact from Wittenberg. This was especially true for the several instances when printers in Augsburg also ensured the layout of the type on the title page was as close to the Wittenberg originals as possible. Many printers tried to reprint Luther’s works quickly in order to get their edition out before the markets were flooded. Copying woodcuts cost precious time. But once they were created, they could be deployed quickly for other editions as well, both counterfeit and non-counterfeit alike. 1.4

Conclusion

In July 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, condemning Luther’s teachings and threatening him with excommunication.86 It also banned the printing or publishing of his works. However, this was only effective if local authorities enforced the prohibitions. In Wittenberg, Luther burned a copy of the papal bull and the presses kept printing his works. In neighbouring Leipzig, the Duke strictly enforced the prohibitions against evangelical printing, much to the detriment of the local industry.87 Printers in Leipzig resorted to counterfeiting so they could circumvent the prohibitions against printing Luther’s works. This was not the case for counterfeits produced in cities accepting of the Reformation, as there were no enforced prohibitions to circumvent. 85 86 87

Luther, Ain sermon auf das Evangeli Johannis VI. Mein flaisch ist die recht speiß und mein blut ist das recht tranck et’c. (Augsburg: Silvan Otmar, 1523). USTC 610309. Leo X, Bulla contra errores Martini Lutheri & sequacium (Rome: Giacomo Mazzocchi, 1520). USTC 837884. For an analysis of the collapse of Leipzig’s industry, see Drew B. Thomas, ‘Circumventing Censorship: The Rise and Fall of Reformation Print Centres’, in Alexander S. Wilkinson and Graeme J. Kemp (eds.), Negotiating Conflict and Controversy in the Early Modern Book World (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 13–37.

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The situation in Augsburg lies between these two extremes. Although Urbanus Rhegius began preaching evangelical ideas in 1521 and priests were getting married and serving communion in both kinds by 1525, the city did not officially adopt the Reformation until 1534.88 As mentioned, Augsburg officials tried to have it both ways by adopting a policy of neutrality. Even before the Diet of Worms, the council was careful not to foment unrest. Johannes Eck wrote to the council demanding they confiscate Luther’s works, but he did not receive a reply.89 Augsburg’s reputation for Reformation printing even reached Rome, as Pope Hadrian VI sent the council a letter in 1522 asking them to enforce the prohibitions.90 The council’s fears of insurrection if they strictly prohibited evangelical ideas were realised during the weaver’s riots of 1524. On 16 October, the council published a mandate against possessing or distributing Luther’s writings.91 Despite this, printers continued publishing Luther’s works. Steiner was taken to court on a few occasions for censorship violations, but he too continued printing evangelical works.92 In the late 1520s, Augsburg’s authorities did arrest and execute a number of Anabaptists, during which time, Ulhart was printing works by the Anabaptist Jakob Dachser. Even though Dachser was imprisoned, this did not deter Ulhart from continuing to print his works.93 One of the authors Ulhart printed, Hans Hut, was even executed, yet he still printed Anabaptist works.94 The council could have strictly enforced the bans if they wanted. After the Schmalkaldic War, when the council was eager to show its support to the Emperor, censorship was strictly enforced. Such a change from past policy caused printers to misjudge what was appropriate to print and many were punished.95 However, in the 1520s Augsburg’s printers calculated that the risks were worth the reward and the chance of severe punishment was slim. By publishing the mandates against Luther’s writings, the council appeased their Catholic allies, but with its lax enforcement, they supported the local print industry and averted urban unrest. Using false Wittenberg imprints gave Augsburg’s authorities the opportunity to look the other way. It allowed the council to deny that the prohibitions against printing Luther’s writings were not being 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Broadhead, ‘Politics and Expediency in the Augsburg Reformation’, pp. 55 and 69. Künast, Getruckt zu Augsburg, p. 201. Ibid., p. 203. Roeck, ‘Rich and Poor in Reformation Augsburg’, p. 71. Reske, Die Buchdrucker der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, pp. 34–35. Hill, ‘Anabaptism and the World of Printing in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, pp. 104–105. Ibid., pp. 79–81. Michele Zelinsky Hanson, Religious Identity in an Early Reformation Community: Augsburg, 1517 to 1555 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 150–151.

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followed. But such a denial was unnecessary as the council was aware that both Rome and the Emperor knew the bans were not being strictly enforced.96 Besides, this could have been done easily without using a false Wittenberg imprint. Printers could have simply omitted their names and the place of publication, as they did on numerous occasions. Instead, printers made the active decision to keep ‘Wittenberg’ on their title pages. Readers wanted books from Wittenberg and seeking to stand out in a crowded field, Augsburg’s printers gave readers what they wanted. 96

The Venetian envoy Carlo Contarini wrote to Rome that Luther’s writings were everywhere in Augsburg. See Künast, Getruckt zu Augsburg, p. 203; Thomas Kaufmann, Die Mitte der Reformation: Eine Studie zu Buchdruck und Publizistik im deutschen Sprachgebiet, zu ihren Akteuren und deren Strategien, Inszenierungs- und Ausdrucksformen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), p. 428. In 1530, the Imperial Diet was in Augsburg. On seeing that the council could not enforce the prohibitions, Charles V offered to send imperial troops. See Broadhead, ‘Popular Pressure for Reform in Augsburg’, pp. 83–84.

chapter 2

Market Realities: Christopher Plantin’s International Networks in an Ever-Changing World Julianne Simpson Le 4 de Novembre 1576 fult par assaut pillée, et bruslée la ville d’Anvers par les Espagnolz soldats lesquelz y faysoynt aussi aultre outrages, grands meutres, etc. Dieu par sa divine grâce doint que n’advienne plus sembable ni à ceste ni àz aultre ville et que puissons nous amender toutz.1 [On 4 November 1576 the city of Antwerp was pillaged and burned by the Spanish soldiers who also committed other outrages and many murders, etc. May God through His divine grace grant that more of the same does not come to pass in this nor any other city and let us amend all.]

⸪ This note, in Christopher Plantin’s account book for the year 1576, betrays a moment when the reality of religious conflict in the Low Countries intrudes even into the matter-of-fact records of shipments, balancing of accounts, profit and loss. The rich archives now preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp enable us to investigate the day-to-day realities and difficulties of developing and maintaining international networks that were vital for a publisher like Christopher Plantin, in order to reach his main market of an educated elite across Europe, the international ‘Republic of Letters’. They contain substantial raw sales data, largely untapped, that can be harnessed to map the 1 Abbreviations: MPM: Museum Plantin-Moretus; CP: Max Rooses and Jan Denucé (eds), Correspondance de Christophe Plantin (Antwerp, 1883–1920). 9 vols.; PP: Leon Voet and Jenny Voet-Griselle, The Plantin Press (1555–1589): A Bibliography of the Works Printed and Published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden. 6 vols. (Amsterdam: Van Hoeve, 1980–1983). Currency: 1 florin (fl.) = 20 stuivers (st.). MPM Arch. 54.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_004

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international networks of the early modern European book trade. This would help us in better understanding a widely dispersed community of print where collaboration, trust and co-operation were just as important as competition. Plantin’s success was by no means certain and his achievements, and the success of the international book trade more generally, must also be considered against the background of religious conflict and political upheaval in Europe throughout the early modern period. From the very first years after the invention of printing in Europe, there was an imperative to create an international market. The new product required significant initial capital, technical skills, equipment and supplies, but with limited local demand and generally slow return on investment.2 This was particularly true for trade in learned and theological books where Latin was the dominant language, shared across Europe. In the fifteenth century, the book trade adopted established commercial networks and trading routes, leading to the dominance of commercial hubs such as Strasbourg, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Lyon, and most especially Venice. The connection between flourishing centres for commerce and the international book trade remained strong throughout the following centuries. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Low Countries were at the centre of European trade and Antwerp became one of the most important commercial cities on the Continent. Merchants from England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and many other places came to buy and sell products from all over Europe and its new colonial possessions. Antwerp was a principal node in an extensive commercial and banking network that extended across Europe from London to Venice. The Antwerp market benefited from a number of commercial innovations – chiefly the establishment of the first stock exchange in 1532, the introduction of trade in bills of exchange and the influx of capital from German and Italian bankers.3 The economic growth was closely linked to a rising population, and by the mid-sixteenth century, Antwerp was one of the five largest cities in Europe.4 2 John Feather, ‘Book Trade Networks and Community Contexts’, in Historical Networks in the Book Trade (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 19. 3 The standard work in English is Hermann van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy: (Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries), 2 vols. (Louvain: Bureaux du Recueil, Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1963). More recent research on the Antwerp market is especially active within the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp (CSG). See also Donald J. Harreld, ‘Foreign Merchants and International Trade Networks in the Sixteenth Century Low Countries’, Journal of European Economic History, 39/3 (2010), pp. 11–31. 4 W.P. Blockmans, ‘The formation of a political union 1300–1588’ in J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts (eds.), History of the Low Countries, new ed. (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006), p. 121.

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During this period of growth in the first half of the sixteenth century, the city also became the main centre for the book trade in the Low Countries. From the 1520s onwards Antwerp increasingly dominated book production, producing titles not just for a local audience but a wider international market – in particular classical and humanist texts and schoolbooks. Printers also took advantage of the relative religious freedom in these decades to produce Protestant works for a wide clandestine distribution, most notably for the English market.5 Publishers and booksellers benefited from the well-established overland routes to Cologne and Frankfurt – the biannual Frankfurt fair was vital for the international trade of books.6 Plantin explains his preference for Antwerp, where he had moved from Paris in the late 1540s, in a letter to Pope Gregory XIII in 1574: I preferred Belgium (Belgica regio) and this city of Antwerp, however, before all others as a place in which to establish myself. What chiefly inspired this choice is that in my judgement no other place in the world could furnish more convenience for the trade I wished to practise. This city is easy of access; one sees the various nations congregating in the market-place, and here all the materials necessary for the practice of my craft are to be obtained; workers for all trades, who can be taught in a short time, are easily found …7 The political crises from the 1560s onwards had a critical impact on Antwerp and resulted in less favourable conditions for international trade. By the end of the century, especially with the continuing blockade of the river Scheldt, markets moved northwards to Emden, Hamburg, Amsterdam and the new Dutch Republic.8 Yet this decline was not inevitable and in between the many disasters there were interludes of relative calm and recovery. There is not space here to outline all the circumstances of the Dutch Revolt, its impact on Antwerp and on Plantin’s career, but it is essential to keep this context in mind when 5 For English printing in Antwerp see Dirk Imhof, Gilbert Tournoy and Francine de Nave (eds.), Antwerp. Dissident Typographical Centre: The Role of Antwerp Printers in the Religious Conflicts in England (Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus Museum, 1994) and Antony Allison and David Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640: An annotated catalogue. 2 vols. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989–1994). 6 John L. Flood, ‘“Omnium totius orbis emporiorum compendium”: The Frankfurt Fair in the Early Modern Period’, in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote (eds), Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007), pp. 1–42. 7 CP IV, letter 566, pp. 158–63. 8 Van der Wee, Growth of the Antwerp Market, vol. 2, p. 256 ff.

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considering the development and success of his business.9 This can be divided into roughly three phases – first foundation, followed by expansion, and finally consolidation. At every stage, this development was heavily influenced by external events and punctuated with moments of crisis. 2.1

Career Summary

After printing his first title in 1555, Plantin quickly established himself as a successful publisher with a developing international network. He faced his first major crisis in 1562, encountering for the first time the dangers for a publisher in an age of religious conflict. In February 1562 the Spanish authorities launched an investigation into the printing of a Calvinist work, Briefve instruction pour prier, which they believed had been printed by Plantin.10 He was away in Paris at the time and three of his journeymen were identified as the culprits and arrested. As master-printer, Plantin could still be held legally responsible for all editions produced in his printing house. He felt the best course was to remain in Paris until it seemed safe to return, which would not be until June 1563. On his return he was questioned over another allegedly heretical work, Instruction chrestiene by Pierre Ravillian, but managed to escape any criminal punishment.11 Financially the episode was a severe blow. In his absence he was declared bankrupt and his goods were sold at auction in the Vrijdagmarkt (28 April 1562), where today the Plantin-Moretus Museum extends along the whole of the western side.12 In order to raise the essential capital to restart his business, Plantin entered into a partnership in November 1563 with Cornelis and Karel van Bomberghen, Joannes Goropius Becanus and the Venetian merchant Jacopo de Schotti (brother-in-law of Cornelis). The partnership lasted for four years, during which time the business recovered and Plantin was soon able to expand its scale. Following increased unrest and the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566, the southern Netherlands was effectively occupied by Spanish troops, led by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba. Plantin was able to secure the support of the Spanish authorities, and ultimately Philip II. This culminated in his appointment as chief printer (architypographus) to the southern Netherlands, 9 The two authors who have published the most authoritative work on Christopher Plantin are Max Rooses and Leon Voet, both Directors of the MPM. See Max Rooses, Christophe Plantin 2nd ed. (Antwerp, 1896) and Leon Voet, The Golden Compasses 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Van Gendt & Co, 1969–72): . 10 PP 1452. 11 PP 2130. 12 Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, pp. 35–40.

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the publication of the Biblia Regia polyglot bible (1568–1573) and a lucrative commission to print liturgical books for the Spanish market. Even with the escalating crisis Plantin was able to expand his business so that by 1574 he was running sixteen presses with approximately eighty direct employees.13 Following the disaster of the Spanish Fury in November 1576, as we have already seen described in a Plantin account book, the political tide turned against the Spanish. In the period from 1577 to 1585, Antwerp came under Calvinist control and Plantin was appointed printer to the States General. However, the continuing upheaval had an impact on the business and its activities were considerably reduced. By 1582, Plantin was looking to move his business north to Leiden, entering into an agreement with the new university, before moving himself in 1583. Yet he was still able to convince the Spanish authorities of his loyalty after their recapture of Antwerp in August 1585 and he returned there after all. He died on 1 July 1589. Although at the end of his life Plantin was disheartened that the publishing house would never again reach the heights of the early 1570s (he signed many letters at this time ‘from our once flourishing press’), his was nonetheless a remarkable achievement – to establish a publishing dynasty that prospered well into the seventeenth century and lasted until the nineteenth century.14 2.2

Sales Accounts

The enduring fame of the press rests on the nearly 2,450 editions published in Plantin’s lifetime – scholarly editions of classical authors, scientific works and erudite works of Biblical scholarship, as well as popular religious and secular titles. The extraordinary wealth of the surviving archives offers us much more, providing an unparalleled resource for many aspects of book trade history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The archives have been mined for details on type production, working practices, activities of printmakers, proofreaders and more. The focus of the present research are the less well studied accounts that cover the sale and distribution of Plantin’s publishing output across Europe (as well as books resold from other publishers). These record sales to other members of the trade in many different countries, individuals 13

14

Including 32 printers, 20 compositors, three correctors and one apprentice. Some piece work was contracted out such as bookbinding, design and cutting of woodblocks and engravings, intaglio printing, red ruling and hand colouring. Raymond De Roover, ‘The Business Organisation of the Plantin Press in the Setting of Sixteenth Century Antwerp’, De Gulden Passer, 34 (1956), pp. 104–120, especially table p. 113. Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, p. 117, n. 2 for many instances and variations on the theme of the ‘once flourishing press’.

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who visited Antwerp or lived more locally, and institutions such as monasteries and Jesuit colleges.15 These accounts have been used as the basis for studies of Plantin’s exchanges with other booksellers in the Low Countries, his exports to Spain, England, Scotland and France, and for the sale and distribution of individual titles. However, these are still relatively narrow and limited in scale when set against the sheer size and complexity of the surviving evidence.16 The earliest sales accounts date from 1555, when Plantin transitioned from bookbinder to printer, but these are rather fragmentary, inconsistent and often very difficult to decipher.17 The situation changes with the creation of the business partnership in 1563 when more comprehensive financial accounts were needed for the partners. It was the Venetian merchant Jacopo de Schotti who was responsible for keeping the accounts for the partnership, which included a detailed record of all revenues and expenses related to the operation of the press. Unfortunately, the detailed cost accounting was abandoned after the dissolution of the partnership in 1567. Though only recorded for a relatively 15

16

17

Jan Denucé, Musaeum Plantin-Moretus. Inventaris van het Plantynsch archief. Inventaire des archives Plantiniennes (Antwerp, 1926): . Christian Coppens, ‘The Plantin Moretus archives: an index to Jan Denucé’s inventory of 1926’, De Gulden Passer, 76–77 (1998–99), pp. 333–360. A very helpful chart of the firm’s surviving ledgers is provided by Kristof Selleslach in ‘How to transfer the Officina Plantiniana to the next generation’ De Gulden Passer, 98/2 (2020), opposite p. 237. See especially Frans M.A. Robben, ‘Jan Poelman, boekverkoper en vertegenwoordiger van de firma Plantin-Moretus in Salamanca 1579–1607’, De Gulden Passer, 71–72 (1993– 94); Colin Clair, ‘Christopher Plantin’s Trade-Connexions with England and Scotland’, The Library, 5th Series, 14 (1959), pp. 28–45; Zanna van Loon, ‘Crossing the North Sea for Books. An Overview of the Scottish Book Trade with the Officina Plantiniana between 1555 and 1589’, The Library, 7th Series, 20 (2019), pp. 172–204; Malcolm Walsby, ‘Plantin and the French Book Market’, in Matthew Maclean and Sara Barker (eds.) International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World, Library of the Written Word, 51 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 80–101; Denis Pallier, ‘Pierre Porret, Ami et Agent de Plantin’, De Gulden Passer, 94/2 (2016), pp. 219–262; Denis Pallier, ‘Recherches sur le cercle Plantinien en France: amis, appuis, familistes’, De Gulden Passer, 96/1 (2018), pp. 7–72; Julianne Simpson, ‘Selling the Biblia Regia: The marketing and distribution methods for Christopher Plantin’s polyglot bible’ in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote (eds.), Books for Sale: The Advertising and Promotion of Print since the Fifteenth Century (London: British Library, 2009), pp. 27–56; Renaud Milazzo, Le marché des livres d’emblèmes en Europe. 1531–1750. PhD thesis (Université Paris-Saclay, 2017). See Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, pp. 17–21. For the period 1555–1562 there is a single ledger for all transactions: MPM Arch. 38 (Libraires et autres 1555–1562); and three journals with lists of books dispatched: MPM Arch. 34 (Livre de vente 1556–1559), MPM Arch. 35 (Journal de toutes mes affaires 1558–1561), MPM Arch. 36 (Journal de Christophle Plantin 1561–1562).

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short period, such complete information on production costs is extremely rare and still deserves further study.18 Although the cost accounting method was dropped, the expanding activity of the business still necessitated more detailed accounts. From 1565, Jan Moretus (Plantin’s future son-in-law) took over the main responsibility for keeping the accounts, bringing to the task a much more practical and methodical approach than had previously been the case with Plantin. Moretus had visited Venice in 1562–3 and probably received some training in bookkeeping from Jacopo de Schotti.19 Starting in 1566 an annual Journal records the daily transactions, including lists of titles, usually with prices, entered for each order (from booksellers, general merchants and individuals). These form an almost-complete record of sales activity in the publishing house right through to the mid-eighteenth century.20 From this period the surviving separate ledgers cover accounts with booksellers, other customers and retail sales in the Antwerp shop. Later in the 1570s, the ledgers for booksellers were divided into Antwerp and foreigners (Libraires étrangers).21 In addition, many other loose papers have survived that reveal a mixture of supplementary information – bills of exchange, receipts, inventories of stock and much else. These were collected together and bound into volumes in the nineteenth century.22 A previously overlooked document in one of these volumes contains an early glimpse of Plantin’s business in Frankfurt. This is a single page headed ‘Bilanse du Cahier de francfort signé B de l’an 1566 de la foire d’April’ with a list of booksellers from all across Europe and the balance of their account at the end of the fair.23 The fair at Frankfurt was an essential meeting point for anyone involved in the long-distance book trade across Europe and Plantin almost certainly began attending regularly from 1557. Unfortunately, the accounts for the Frankfurt fair have significant gaps for the first few decades of the business. Prior to 1565 18

19 20 21 22 23

De Roover, ‘Business Organisation’, p. 108. See in particular MPM Arch. 4 (Grand livre des affaires 1563–1567); For current work on these accounts see Mark McConnell, ‘Publishing Risk and the Capital Intensity of Early Modern Printing: An Examination of Christophe Plantin’s Operations’, De Gulden Passer, 98/2 (2020), pp. 129–182. Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, pp. 151–152. MPM Arch. 44–75 (1566–1598), 171–180 (1599–1608), 216–258 (1609–1650), 401–416 (1651– 1666), 382–400 (1667–1688), 365–378 (1689–1754). MPM Arch. 40 (Libraires A), MPM Arch. 37 (Débiteurs I), MPM Arch. 43IV (Vente à la boutique). See MPM Arch. 98 (Pièces de famille 1549–1589), MPM Arch. 116 (Imprimerie 1555–1585) and MPM Arch. 117 (Imprimerie 1585–1599). MPM Arch. 116, pp. 87–88.

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Figure 2.1 ‘Bilanse du Cahier de francfort signé B de l’an 1566 de la foire d’April’ (MPM Arch. 116, p. 87)

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there is only a single list of books shipped on 11 March 1557 (1558).24 The record improves from 1566 as the journals detail lists of books shipped for each fair, but we have little evidence for their onward distribution from Frankfurt across Europe. We can deduce from what does survive that also from 1565, around the same time as the Antwerp series of journals and ledgers started, new ledgers were introduced for the Frankfurt business. These Frankfurt accounts were in three parts – the rough balance of account for each lent and autumn fair (carnet), an equivalent to the annual journal with lists of books bought and sold (cahier) and a ledger. However, only a few of the volumes in these series from the 1560s to the 1580s have survived.25 The missing accounts mean that we are unable to see the full picture of Plantin’s activities, especially in these crucial early years as he was establishing his international business. The information recorded in the list, a balance of accounts at the end of the spring 1566 fair, is very similar to summary lists in the later carnets (of which the earliest surviving is from 1571), and might well be an earlier version of this type of record. When compared to the later accounts, the names that appear indicate a certain longevity in business relations. Many are familiar to us from their publishing activities – Oporinus, Froben and Episcopius from Basel; Birckmann and Gymnich from Cologne; Rihel from Strasbourg; Feyerabend and Egenolph from Frankfurt; Willer from Augsburg. Other names are not so immediately recognisable and do not appear in standard book trade directories, perhaps as they were more entirely focused on bookselling and have left fewer traces in imprints and available sources. One such example on the list is Sebastian Rosenblat(t) from Augsburg who, at 77 fl. 15 st., is the second largest debtor, after his compatriot Georg Willer. What is most noteworthy is that the majority of names mentioned appear consistently through to the later Frankfurt accounts, even after several decades. Despite its wide geographical spread, the European book trade was clearly a tightly interconnected network. The success of this network relied a great deal on building strong relationships and developing trust and goodwill. This was not always guaranteed, and the Frankfurt accounts highlight one of the main risks for those involved in long-distance trade – the problem of outstanding debts. A few names in the April 1566 list recur in later lists of debtors, many left unpaid for several decades and eventually written off. These include Wolfgang Courard(?) 24 25

MPM Arch. 34, p. 22. Contemporary correction to 1558. The earliest surviving Frankfurt cahier for Lent 1579 is signed Ee. This suggests that the first in the series would have been for autumn 1565. Carnets: MPM Arch. 849–961 (1571– 1644, with numerous gaps from 1571–1587); Cahiers: MPM Arch. 962 (Lent 1579), 963–1052 (1586–1639); Ledgers: MPM Arch. 43I (1586–1596).

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from Tübingen, Walter Hesis from Mainz, Hans Swan from Gorlitz and Wolff Encke from Jena, who seems never to have settled his debt from April 1566.26 While the sums from each individual were relatively small, these could add up to a big cash flow problem. The longstanding debts from just these four amounted to 134 fl. 16 st. At Plantin’s death in 1589 the total business debts were 16,350 fl. This was twice the assessed value of the books stored in the warehouse at Frankfurt.27 Now bound together in the same volume as the 1566 Frankfurt list are several other documents which also contain additional detail missing from the main accounts. These include inventories of shipments to Paris from 1566 to 1574 and similar occasional lists of Parisian debtors. After his move to Antwerp Plantin maintained close links with the Parisian book trade – visiting there often, sending large, regular shipments and publishing a number of titles specifically aimed at the French market.28 In 1566, Plantin established his own bookshop and warehouse in Paris, managed by his close friend Pierre Porret and Gilles Beys, previously an assistant in the Antwerp bookshop (and later son-in-law).29 This Parisian branch lasted until 1577 when Plantin, forced to consolidate after the Spanish Fury, sold all his Paris stock to Michel Sonnius, a leading Parisian bookseller.30 There is evidence from the accounts that during this period, just as for Frankfurt, there was a separate ledger for the Paris branch that has not survived. A new ledger was started in 1564, alongside the accounts being kept for

26

27 28

29

30

Debtors are listed in the Frankfurt carnets from 1571 onwards and included in the later ledger from the 1580s, MPM Arch. 43I, ff. 2 & 48. A later seventeenth-century local history of Jena describes Encke as ‘eine verdorbener buchführer’ (a corrupt bookdealer), Adrian Beier, Architectus Jenensis, Abbildung der Jenischen Gebäuden (Jena, 1681), p. 712. Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, pp. 165–167. MPM Arch. 116, pp. 175–178, 283–290. Shipments to Paris are recorded in the earliest accounts from 1556: MPM Arch. 34, ff. 1–3 (Martin Le Jeune and ‘envoye a Paris’) and following. Although it is generally accepted that some Plantin titles were aimed specifically at a French market further evidence is needed to verify such market segmentation, see further below. Henri Stein, ‘La succursale plantinienne de Paris’, Bibliographie moderne, 1920–21, pp. 34– 57; Denis Pallier, ‘“A Paris. Au Compas d’or, Rue Sainct Jacques”: La succursale parisienne de Plantin, Première partie: sources, organisation, approvisionnement, réseau’ De Gulden Passer, 98/2 (2020), pp. 17–128. Pallier also notes later similar lists from 1574–1577 in MPM Arch. 98, pp. 255–295. Sonnius, originally from Geldrop in Brabant, had been apprenticed to Guillaume de Boys in 1559. After marrying Boys’s daughter he took over the business on his father-in-law’s death in 1565 and become one of the most important publishers in Paris. Denis Pallier, ‘Recherches sur le cercle Plantinien en France’, pp. 38–41.

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the partnership.31 The increasing size and complexity of the business must have become quickly apparent and the following year the series expanded. Most entries in the 1564 ledger have a note pointing the user to the sequential entry in new ledgers. Some of these refer to ‘au livre nouveau signé I’, others to ‘au livre nouveau des libraires signé A’.32 For the Parisian booksellers the note points to a different ledger – ‘au livre long des libraires de Paris signé B’.33 We might assume that this lost ledger went to Paris and the loose accounts that have survived are extracts from it.34 2.3

Mapping the Accounts

The sales accounts will, and should, continue to be mined for detailed case studies of regional trade networks and for individual works or genres. What we do not yet have is the systematic representation of the geographical distribution of sales and networks that could be extracted from the records. The simplest approach, although still by no means straightforward, would be to record and map the names that appear in the ledgers along with the sums for their accounts. The outputs may never be exact – often there are discrepancies between the amounts recorded in the journals and ledgers, there will be discounts applied at different rates, books returned later for credit and, as we have seen above, longstanding debts that were never settled. Despite these caveats, this has the potential to provide us with unique data on an international trade that was vital to the transmission of knowledge around Europe in the sixteenth century. To some extent, this demonstrates much of what we already know or assume. While local sales are a very substantial proportion (about forty percent), Plantin had established key outlets via Frankfurt (twenty-five percent) and Paris (twenty-one percent). At this time, there are also significant sales to England, a relatively much smaller market (eight percent). We can get some sense of this from the data presented by Leon Voet in his appendices to the second volume of The Golden Compasses. His figures in 31 32 33 34

MPM Arch. 39 ‘Pour les libraires A’. Now MPM Arch. 37 and MPM Arch. 40. Note also above that the Frankfurt series probably started in the same year, for the autumn 1565 fair. Or sometimes ‘de Fra[nce]’. There is one exception, Jacques du Puis, who is first entered in the ‘nouveau livre A’ and then transferred on 21 August 1565 ‘au livre des libraires de Paris signé B’, MPM Arch. 40, f. 1. A few of the Parisian booksellers start to reappear in the next ledger, eg Michel Sonnius from 1575 in MPM Arch. 17, ff. 363 & 483 (‘libraires signé B’).

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Figure 2.2 Sales Figures for the year 1566 (Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 2)

Appendix 2 in particular are based on a thorough study of the sales journal for the single year of 1566, supplemented by bookshop sales and other information in the partners’ ledger.35 I have extracted this data, entering the sales figures for each town/city into a spreadsheet that has then been plotted on a series of maps. A single year, or even a single fair, still reveals only a snapshot for the ebb and flow of the international trade but we can begin to see some patterns emerging. For this single fair there is still some overlap with direct sales from Antwerp (especially Paris, Lyon, Augsburg and Venice) but the main focus is to the German speaking territories (eighty percent). When compared with the data extracted and mapped from Voet’s Appendix 4, for the two Frankfurt fairs in 1579, the proportions are very similar.36 As Voet himself remarks in his notes to Appendix 2, a more detailed breakdown of sales for the large numbers of books sent to Frankfurt and Paris is not possible as the accounts have not survived. However, we can supplement his data with that recovered from the other loose extracts in the archive, which he did not use. I have identified, located and mapped the booksellers in the Frankfurt April 1566 list. 35 36

Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 2, pp. 470–478. MPM Arch. 44, 43IV and 3. Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, pp. 500–506.

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Figure 2.3 Sales Figures for the Spring Frankfurt Fair, 1566 (MPM Arch. 116, p. 87)

Despite well-established commercial routes, it was still the case that longer distances meant an increase in risk, such as the loss of goods in transit, slow returns on large investments or defaults on payments. Even with is a slight increase from 1566 to 1579, the numbers of books being sent further east (Leipzig, Wittenberg, Prague, Görlitz and Poznań) remain relatively small at around one percent. We see very low figures for direct sales from Antwerp to Italy (between one and two percent) but if we consider the figures for distribution via Frankfurt this rises to a much more substantial ten percent.37 Although there were very close commercial links with Italy only a few Italian orders came directly to Antwerp, while more trade was done in Frankfurt – highlighting again the significance of the fair for the book trade. The country that is certainly missing from these figures is Spain. This changed dramatically in the next few years after Plantin secured the support of Philip II, and in the early 1570s Spain became the chief market for Plantin – between 1571 and 1576 he dispatched books worth nearly 100,000 fl. to Spain. A similar analysis of the accounts beyond a single year would provide us with an even better view of Plantin’s international networks and basis for further study of early modern European book trade networks. 37

All the Italian sales in this sample are to Venice but there is evidence elsewhere in the accounts of sales to Milanese booksellers, eg. Pietro and Francesco Tini, MPM Arch. 17, f. 154.

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Figure 2.4 Sales Figures for the Spring Frankfurt Fair, 1579 (Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 5)

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Mapping Individual Titles

Another approach to the data in the sales accounts is to examine the distribution of individual titles and editions, providing valuable information for the analysis of textual transmission across Europe. While some publishers specialised in particular genres or segments of the market, most scholarly publishers such as Plantin ranged across many categories.38 Evidence from the archives reveals that he understood the potential markets and likely competition very well, gathering information underpinned by his extensive international network. In one surviving volume is a list of about 20,000 titles published between 1530 and 1595.39 This information would have been vital for Plantin in deciding what titles to publish and where to sell them. As might be expected the majority of sales are within the Dutch-speaking region (ninety-seven percent), with just eleven copies out of 608 going to Cologne and six to Heidelberg. The 16mo scholarly edition of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, edited by the Flemish scholar Luis Carrion (at the precocious age of just eighteen), had a wider reach.40 Only twenty-three percent of 341 copies were sold in the Low Countries, with just four in Antwerp itself but fifty-seven in Leuven. There were 182 copies sent to the Frankfurt fair, thirty-five copies went to Paris and thirty-three to London. The third title was Plantin’s most ambitious project thus far, an illustrated anatomical treatise based on the Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius and another work by Juan Valverde, with forty-two copperplate engravings.41 This time the largest number of copies went to Paris: a total of 129 out of 331 copies sold in the three year period.42 38 39

40 41 42

Ian Maclean, ‘Labor, Impensa, Emolumentum: The Publisher of Learned Books’ in Scholarship, Commerce, Religion: The Learned Book in the Age of Confessions, 1560–1630 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 97–133. MPM Arch. M296. Classified by countries, cities and printers, it includes the title of the book, the name of the author, the format, the number of sheets used for printing and in most cases, the price in local money of account. The data from it now forms part of a database of European book prices constructed by the Early Modern Book Trade project: . Valerius Flaccus, C. Valerii Flacci Setini Balbi Argonauticon lib. VIII. Locis innumerabilibus anteà à Ludouico Carrione ex vetustiss. exempl. emendati. 16mo (1566), PP 2409: 341 copies sold from a print run of 1,000. Vivæ imagines partivm corporis hvmani æreis formis expressæ. Fol. (1566), PP 2413: 331 copies sold out of a print run of 600. There was a large purchase of 25 copies in 1567 to the Heidelberg (later Mainz) bookseller Erasmus Crolbach. This was part of a shipment totalling 705 fl. which included the six copies of Reynaert de Vos mentioned above and 12 copies of the 8vo edition of Argonautica, MPM Arch. 45, ff. 206–207.

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Figure 2.5 Reynaert de Vos, number of copies sold, 1566–1568 (Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 7)

The various patterns of distribution for works of different genres and languages can be demonstrated with a few examples, again using the data tabulated by Voet in The Golden Compasses. He provides tables on the sales of three different titles published in 1566, covering the years 1566 to 1568.43 The first is Reynaert de Vos, which was an illustrated popular novel in Dutch and French.44 While this presents a more complete picture for the European distribution of a single edition there are still gaps, most particularly with the nearly twenty percent of copies that were shipped to Frankfurt before 1586. Recovering accurate data for this task is also not straightforward – some sales do not appear in the journals but rather are recorded directly into the ledgers, books might be later returned, and many editions take years, even decades, to sell out. The data on edition size is also patchy. For his three examples, Voet was able to use information on number of copies printed from the partners’ ledger, but after 1567 the information on edition sizes is much more 43 44

Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, pp. 519–521 (Reynaert de Vos); pp. 521–523 (Valerius Flaccus); pp. 523–525 (Valverde). MPM Arch. 44, 45 and 46. Reynaert de vos. Een seer ghenouchlicke ende vermakelicke historie in franchoyse ende nederduytsch. 8vo (1566), PP 2139: 608 copies sold from a print run of 1,600. Private customers have been excluded from the figures as Voet does not give information on their location.

Market Realities

Figure 2.6 Valerius Flaccus (16mo), number of copies sold, 1566–1568 (Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 7)

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Figure 2.7 Valverde, Anatomia, number of copies sold, 1566–1568 (Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, Appendix 7)

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Figure 2.8 Biblia Regia number of copies sold, 1572–1603

scattered.45 Another, more complete, example can be supplied from data on sales of Plantin’s polyglot bible, the Biblia Regia supported by Philip II.46 My own figures, extracted from the accounts over a period of thirty years, show the distribution for a total of 969 copies from a print run of 1,200. This figure excludes the eighty-three copies delivered directly to Philip II and 143 copies sold to private customers, which is unusually high in comparison to the sales figures recorded by Voet for the other three titles (private sales are around seven percent compared to nearly twenty percent for the Biblia Regia). Both of these approaches to the Plantin sales accounts (the extraction of data to investigate book trade networks or the distribution of individual titles), have their own merits and are by no means mutually exclusive. The archives can offer us the macroscopic view on the international trade of books in the sixteenth century but equally can be mined to expose the small-scale, human story of the everyday harsh realities of a city in the midst of a bitter struggle. On both levels, they open a window onto this challenging and frustrating world. 45 46

Information on print runs for specific editions can be found in the correspondence and also in payment books for workers. See for example MPM Arch. 788 (Ouvriers 1583–1589), f. [4]. I am grateful to Kristof Selleslach for this reference. Biblia Sacra Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece, & Latine pietatis concordiae. Isaiae, II Philippi II Reg. Cathol. pietate, et studio ad Sacrosanctæ Ecclesiae vsum. 8 vols in folio (1568–1573), PP 644. See Julianne Simpson, ‘Selling the Biblia Regia’.

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Market Realities

Plantin had managed not only to survive the disruptions in the early years of the Dutch Revolt but also to enlarge his business. The accounts show vividly the impact of the ongoing crisis in the following years. The first significant interruption to trade occurred in the late summer of 1566 after rising tensions led to the Iconoclastic Fury that began on the evening of 20 August and lasted for several days. Even with these signs of trouble, there had not yet been any obvious effect on the business. Earlier that same day Jan Moretus had been busy overseeing a large order (107 fl. 8 st.) being dispatched to Venice for Luc’Antonio Giunta.47 However, Plantin had already voiced his concerns over the possible troubles ahead in a letter to Andreas Maes on 8 August. I pray God to give wisdom and understanding to our governors that they may know how to make use of the example of our neighbours and conduct themselves according to it, beginning this play with the solution that our neighbours have employed, lest it should finally become a tragedy in which not the death of a few people brings tranquillity but a wrathful fury causing the destruction of thousands of good people, as many on the one side as on the other. For to give my true opinion, I foresee that unless these floodwaters are channelled off, they will so devastate the arable lands that the inhabitants will not enjoy the fruits of anything that grow there. And if the farmers who are tilling the land think (as they seem to have decided) to throw back this flood by force, I fear that this will only be done with grave harm to and loss of the possessions, bodies and souls of many thousands of persons who might be spared to us and saved forever by God’s good grace.48 The disorder continued for several days with riots, looting and the destruction of images in many Antwerp churches. Inserted into the journal is a list of outstanding debts from seventy different booksellers dated 26 August. The total was 4,307 fl. 17 st.49 The drawing up of this list indicates that Plantin must have been concerned at this moment about the impact on his finances. However, order was gradually restored: foreign booksellers are again present in Antwerp from October and in December Plantin was writing to Gabriel de Çayas about his new plan to publish a polyglot bible. Nevertheless, these 47 48 49

MPM Arch. 44, ff. 113–114. CP III, letter 336, pp. 8–10. Translation by Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 1, p. 135. Bilanse du livre des libr[aires] signé A faict ad 26 Aug[u]st 1566, MPM Arch. 40 (insert).

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upheavals were just the beginning. On 22 August 1567, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba, marched into Brussels at the head of 10,000 troops. While this escalation brought with it new concerns there were also opportunities. It appears that even a Spanish army needed its own bookseller as there is an entry in the ledger for 1568 which shows Plantin selling books to ‘Jaques d’Affrique libr[aire] etc.’ (also called ‘reliure’ in the journal entry) ‘au Camp de Mons[ieur] le Duc d’Alba’. The account included twenty-five ‘cartillas’ or primers and twenty-eight assorted books of hours.50 While the 1570s saw Plantin’s business expand and flourish, the threat from Spain was ever-present and in November 1576 his worst fears were realised. On 4 November Spanish troops, having retreated to the fortress on the southern edge of Antwerp – isolated and angry at fighting against the rebels without rest or pay – stormed the city. Thousands of citizens died, the town hall and the surrounding blocks of houses were set alight, storehouses and homes were plundered. We have already seen above the note written by Jan Moretus in the journal for 1576 recording the disastrous event. Many citizens, including Plantin, were forced to pay large ransoms to protect their lives and property. Much of this money was supplied by his friend and business associate, the Spanish merchant Luis Perez – the sum of 2,867 fl. was entered against his account in the ledger.51 Transactions in the accounts start to recover only in early December. Business resumed within a few days but the entries in the journal confirm that it took some time to return to anything like normal. There are just a couple of entries for the following days, then a week-long gap to the next series of entries. These are mainly books for Frans Raphelengius, another of Plantin’s sons-in-law whom he had recently set up in his own bookshop near the cathedral. The next entry is dated 20 November, followed by a large shipment of books to Paris on 22 November.52 Plantin was determined to revive the firm and was able to secure the loans and credit he needed to continue, including 9,600 fl. from his old business partner Karel von Bomberghen. While the setback put an end to his expansion, Plantin continued to print on a relatively large scale (in January 1583 he had ten presses operating with thirty-five workmen). Against the backdrop of the continuing struggle sales recovered, with customers from the new authorities 50 51 52

MPM Arch. 17, f. 74. ‘Luiz Perez doibt avoir ad ult. Novembris- [1576] 2,867 fl. 8 st., cest pour aultant que par compte faict il a debourse pour Christophle Plantin pour payer sa ranzon aux soldatz entrez audit mois par assault en la ville d’Anvers’ MPM Arch. 19, f. 103. MPM Arch. 54, ff. 165–167.

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Figure 2.9 Journal entries, 2–20 November (MPM Arch. 54, ff. 165–166)

replacing the old.53 The final blow for Antwerp came in 1585 when, after a twelve-month siege, the city was recaptured for the Spanish by Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma. The Dutch fleet continued to block the river Scheldt, cutting off the city’s access to the sea and finally bringing to an end its dominance in international trade. On 21 August 1585 Jan Moretus was ordered by the city magistrate to ‘print and publish abroad the treaty of reconciliation concluded between His Highness the Duke of Parma and this city, both in the French and the Brabant 53

See MPM Arch. 18, ff. 310, 311, 362 & 410 for orders from the City of Antwerp between 1579 and 1582, many commissions for handbills and MPM Arch. 18, f. 376 for orders of books by ‘Messrs des fortifications’.

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tongues’.54 Life carried on, orders were received and dispatched – the business survived. In several letters, Plantin expressively compares himself to a mariner seeking to bring his frail craft to a safe harbour over a turbulent, reef-strewn sea: In such a way that we are forced to roam at the mercy of impetuous winds, and as the waves throw us from here to there. The spirit, however, remaining firm and quiet in God, in whom I pray to have mercy on us and finally bring us back to the true safe harbour.55 2.6

Conclusion

We know that the international community of scholars in the early modern world – the ‘Republic of Letters’ – relied on a series of interconnected networks: social, institutional and commercial. The international book trade played a crucial part in the transmission of ideas, both through the publication and distribution of texts but also as important nodes of exchange and contact for social networks.56 In turn the trade itself relied on the establishment of networks: social, kinship and commercial. The surviving business accounts in the Plantin archives contain extraordinarily rich data that offer a new perspective on the geography of the early modern book trade and, more broadly, scholarly networks and the transmission of texts. The models offered here demonstrate the potential for wider analysis that might include several distinct strands, all of which are closely connected, with results from one endeavour informing the others. There are the raw economics of Plantin’s international trade and its geography, recording both spatial and temporal elements to encompass the changing political and commercial contexts. A focus on textual transmission would identify individual editions and map their distribution. This could be further divided geographically though it might risk the misapplication of present-day national boundaries onto a much more fluid early modern geography, for example where a common language might characterise a particular market segment. These macroscopic approaches must also be supported by the granularity of detail contained in the accounts, of which a few illustrations have been provided here, to remind us of the human and the personal even in the most dispersed and distant community. 54 55 56

CP VII, no. 1037. CP VII, no. 959, letter to Gabriel de Çayas, 3 November 1581. This has already been recognised with the inclusion of the published Plantin correspondence in Early Modern Letters Online: .

chapter 3

‘Far Off from the Well-Head’: The Production and Circulation of Books in Early Modern Yorkshire Rosamund Oates In 1609, the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar, sent a large bundle of books that he had picked out from London’s booksellers to his old friend in York, Tobie Matthew. As archbishop of York, Tobie Matthew now spent most of his time in the northern province and only made occasional trips down to London. Matthew found his distance from the heart of the book trade frustrating, complaining about a sense of intellectual isolation under the ‘freezing skies’ of northern England. Matthew particularly missed the ability to keep up-to-date with the latest publications by visiting the booksellers gathered in and around St Paul’s Churchyard. Writing a warm letter of thanks for his books to Julius Caesar, Matthew noted how jealous he was of Caesar’s ability to browse London’s booksellers: ‘such is your advantage that live there’, wrote Matthew, ‘in comparison to our occasions, that breathe so far off from the well-head’.1 Booksellers were curators of the printed world. They were the main source of information about what was being published, as well as providing access to print culture. London was at the heart of the English book trade, home to printers, booksellers and the distribution point for books imported from continental Europe. Yet, although Matthew complained about his distance from the ‘well-head’ of London’s book trade, he was nevertheless able to amass a large library during his lifetime (c. 1545–1628), much of it spent in northern England. This chapter explores the different ways in which provincial readers acquired books and kept abreast of recent developments in the world of print, examining an interconnected community of readers, writers and booksellers in early modern York who engaged directly in international debates about the future of the Church. The book trade was one important source of both information and texts, with booksellers in York stocking a range of new and second-hand books as well as book fair catalogues. Yet, readers in Elizabethan and Jacobean York – the centre of northern government – had a range of different ways of acquiring 1 British Library, London (BL) Lansdowne MS 161 fo. 275. Rosamund Oates, Moderate Radical: Tobie Matthew and the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_005

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books. Archbishop Tobie Matthew himself made his library of c. 3000 volumes available to clerical and lay friends, and they in turn shared their book collections with colleagues, friends and family. Northern readers employed a further range of strategies to identify, borrow or buy the books they wanted, from building up credit with a local bookseller to asking friends travelling abroad to hunt down books. As a result, this chapter nuances the models of centre and periphery that are familiar to historians of print culture in this period. London – the centre of book production in England – played a pivotal role in the provision of foreign and domestic books to York, but this trade route north was just one of several means by which readers acquired their books. Furthermore, many of those Yorkshire readers became writers too, shaping national and international conversations about the Protestant and Catholic Churches. Integrating reading into an account of the book trade modifies our understanding of the relationship between London and the provinces, showing that the book trade not only allowed the dissemination of ideas but also opened up a conversation and facilitated intellectual exchange. The clergy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Churches knew that reading brought them into a larger community of readers, imagined and real, international and local. Sharing books helped to create bonds among friends, it also enabled the production of books whose impact was felt far beyond early modern Yorkshire.2 Although Archbishop Tobie Matthew may have been ‘far-off from the well-head’ in Yorkshire, he was fully connected to international communities of print. 3.1

The Book Trade in Early Modern York

York had an active book trade throughout the early modern period. It was the centre of the northern government and saw a population increase throughout the period: York had around 8000 inhabitants in 1540, rising to c. 12,000 by 1640.3 York was also the local market town for a large surrounding area, and so it was an ideal place for book traders. Under Henry VIII, there were 2 Andrew Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18 (2008), pp. 101–128. Benito Costas Rial (ed.), Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing and the Book Trade (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Matthew McLean and Sara K. Barker (eds.) Intellectual Exchange in the Early Modern Book Trade (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Andrew Pettegree and Matthew Hall ‘The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration’ Historical Journal, 47:4 (2004), pp. 785–808. 3 Chris Galley, The Demography of Early Modern Towns: York in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998), pp. 43, 48.

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several printers, bookbinders and stationers at work in the city, with at least some working in the precincts of York Minster. Throughout the period, ecclesiastical and civil government created a ready market for books, paper and writing material in the city. The clergy, staff and students at York Minster were reliable customers for the Latin texts and service books that local booksellers carried. Gerard Wanesford, a Henrician stationer with a bookshop in the Minster Close, for example, stocked 650 missals and breviaries, while the rest of his stock consisted of hymnbooks and school textbooks. An inventory of 1538 shows that another bookseller, Neville Mores, mainly stocked continental books to be used by the clergy and the lawyers who worked in the local ecclesiastical courts.4 After the accession of Elizabeth I, officials deliberately encouraged the local book trade, aware of the importance of print in supporting the regime. In addition to the established booksellers and traders, six new stationers and parchment makers were admitted as freemen of the city between 1559 and 1603. There were also many more stationers who were active in York in this period but chose not to become freemen, working instead in the liberties surrounding the Minster – in particular in Minster Yard, a prime spot for stationers and those involved in the book trade. Many of the booksellers’ best customers lived and worked around York Minster. As well as the Dean and members of the Chapter, several prominent laymen who needed books, paper, and stationery lived in the houses around Minster Yard. These included the secretary of the Council of the North, whose main residence functioned as the centre of administration for the Council, and was situated opposite the Minster’s west end from 1580 to 1640. In addition, Minster Yard was also busy with both lay and clerical visitors to the Minster.5 The Dean and Chapter encouraged these booksellers, binders and stationers to set up shops around the Minster, reflecting the bibliocentric nature of Protestantism. There is even some evidence that there was a small bookstall within the Minster itself, but this may have been lending – rather than selling – liturgies, devotional books and bibles. By the 1560s, there were four or five booksellers in the Minster Close, and work was underway to build more 4 D.M. Palliser and D.G. Selwyn, ‘The stock of a York stationer, 1538’, The Library, 5th ser, 27:3 (1972), pp. 207–219. William K. and E. Margaret Sessions, Printing in York: From the 1490s to the Present Day (York: William Sessions, 1976), pp. 4–16. Stefania Merlo Perring, ‘The Cathedral Landscape of York: The Minster Close, c. 1500–1642’ (University of York: Unpublished PhD, 2010), p. 263. 5 Francis Collins, Register of the Freemen of the City of York 1559–1759, Surtees Society, 102, (Durham: Andrews & Co, 1900), pp. 5–47. Perring, ‘The Cathedral Landscape of York’, pp. 62–4, 263–5.

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Figure 3.1 ‘The South Crosse of York Minster’ in Daniel King, The Cathedrall and Conventuall Churches of England and Wales, (London, 1656)

shops attached to the Minster itself. In around 1572, the stationer, bookbinder and bookseller, Anthony Foster rented out one of these shops by the south door of the Minster. His ‘newly builded shoppe’ had two floors, a large window and counters to display his goods. (see Fig. 3.1). Foster’s shop was in an excellent position, reflecting the importance that local officials placed on access to printed texts: Foster had five shelves to display books next to one of two

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main entrances to the Minster. The Dean and Chapter continued to encourage the local book trade, and in 1597 they purpose-built a bookshop next to the other main entrance, the west door, for the London stationer, Thomas Gubbin. This area around the Minster was so popular with traders attached to the book trade, that it became known as ‘bookbinders alley’, and by 1616, there were at least six separate stationers at work in Minster Yard, in addition to a chapbook seller and drapers who also sold books.6 York’s booksellers received much of their stock – domestic and foreign – from London booksellers, illustrating the importance of London in the English book trade.7 Booksellers based around St Paul’s Churchyard imported continental texts, which were sent to York along with English books that were mainly published in London. Few texts were published in York before 1642, and those that were, were printed in London or abroad for resale in York. In 1626, for example, John Grismand, a London stationer, printed Edmund Deane’s Sapdacrene Anglica for Richard Forster, who had a bookshop by the Minster Gates.8 London played a pivotal role in the supply chain. An investigation into the book traders of York in 1567 revealed that most of their stock came from a few well-established London stationers. The York booksellers John Gowthwaite and Thomas Wraithe received books from London printers and booksellers including Thomas Marsh, John Wight, and Gerard Dewes, on whom they relied to provide them with foreign books along with English publications. Gerard Dewes imported books as well as printing them: between January and September 1568, for example, he received five different shipments from Antwerp, each containing twenty reams of unbound books, valued at £2.9 York’s booksellers often relied on their London contacts to choose which books to send north – not always successfully. Gowthwaite complained that Dewes had sent him several 6 Perring, ‘Cathedral Landscape of York’, pp. 64, 267–8. John Barnard and Maureen Bell, ‘The Early Seventeenth Century York Book Trade and John Foster’s Inventory of 1616’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 24:2 (1994), pp. 3–4, 15. 7 John Barnard and Maureen Bell, ‘The English Provinces’, in J. Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (eds.), Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, IV: 1557–1695 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 665–677. 8 Edmund Deane Spadacrene Anglica Or the English Spaw-Fountaine, Being a briefe treatise of the acide or tart fountaine in the forest of Knarreborow (London: J Grismand for R Forster Yorke, 1626) USTC 3012617. This reflected, in part, the Stationers’ Company control of printing, James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 70–71. 9 Brian Dietz, (ed.), The Port and Trade of Elizabethan London Documents (London: London Record Society, 1972) pp. 45, 54, 78, 102, 133. Robert Davies, A Memoir of the York Press (York: Ken Spelman, 1988), pp. 30–32.

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books (mainly Latin primers) over the last few years that he neither wanted, nor had sold. Gowthwaite also claimed that Dewes had tried to get him to take several copies of Thomas Dorman’s attack on John Jewel, A Proufe of Certayne Articles, published in Antwerp in 1564. York customers did, however, have an appetite for some imported books. Another major bookseller based in St Paul’s Churchyard, John Wight, had provided ‘twelve grammars printed in Geneva’ to Gowthwaite, who managed to sell nine copies by 1567. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the trade networks for new books remained relatively unchanged over the period, with London traders continuing to be the main source of texts. Nearly twenty years later, another York bookseller, Richard Brett, was buying books from Thomas Marsh – the same London bookseller who supplied Gowthwaite and Wraithe. Second-hand books, however, came from a wider range of sources. As well as getting stock from the second-hand booksellers in London, books were bought and sold locally: for example, Thomas Wraithe picked up an old missal using the York Rite from a stationer in Lincoln.10 The booksellers and stationers gathered around the Minster tended to focus on selling stationery and English books, with less appetite for books that were printed abroad. Anthony Foster’s shop outside the south door of the Minster sold paper, ink and service books to the church but most of his money came from book sales, supplemented by an expertise in bookbinding. Foster passed the shop on to his cousin John in c. 1610, and John continued to stock best-selling classics as well as newly published books. An inventory of 1616 shows that the majority of their texts were published domestically, with only seven percent of their stock coming from abroad. English books were the backbone of Foster’s regular trade, appealing to the widest possible audience. In 1616, for example, Foster was selling the recently published Workes of Benjamin Johnson, as well as a host of catechisms, ABCs and almanacs. There were also sermons and pastoral works that appealed to both local clerics and their congregations. Copies of sermons by Lancelot Andrewes and Edwin Sandys were available alongside Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety and Thomas Becon’s The Government of Virtue. Foster’s lay customers included local officials, like Sir Edward Stanhope, sheriff of York, as well as York residents like the recently-married woman, Tomisin Watterworth.11

10 11

Barnard and Bell, ‘The English Provinces’, p. 676. Davies, A Memoir of the York Press, pp. 30–32. Benjamin Jonson The Workes of Benjamin Jonson (London, 1616) USTC 3007070, 3007069 or 3007071. Barnard and Bell, ‘John Foster’s Inventory’, appendix 2.

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In 1616, two thirds of Foster’s debtors were clerics, showing both their appetite for books and their limited incomes. Although the majority of his trade was in English books, Foster did offer some access to books printed abroad. Continental books – the mainstay of the scholarly trade – formed a small part of Foster’s stock in 1616, but these books were disproportionately expensive, consisting of nineteen percent of the value of the stock.12 The large investment needed to stock continental books meant that Foster’s customers could not rely on browsing the bookshop to find out about recently published texts from overseas in the same way that they might with English books. To meet this demand, and to provide the option of ordering scholarly books, John Foster stocked the biannual catalogue from the Frankfurt book fair, extending the intellectual reach of his bookshop beyond what the York market could sustain. Another way of acquiring expensive Latin books was to buy them second-hand, often from local sellers. Anthony and John Foster both stocked second-hand editions of the Latin texts needed by students, scholars and clerics. In 1585, for example, a local cleric (later dean of Ripon), Anthony Higgin, bought a copy of Athanasius’ collected works, published in Basel in 1564, from Anthony Foster. He also bought a copy of Van der Lindt’s Panoplia Evangelica (Paris, 1564) and Erasmus’ Enarratio in Psalmum XXXIII (Basel, 1531). In the latter, Higgin wrote: ‘Liber Anth. Higgin emptus a biblopola Eborecensi, Forstero’.13 The local authorities took an interest in the book trade that went beyond censorship. Successive deans and archbishops recognised the importance of York’s booksellers in disseminating pro-government works, like Richard Mocket’s Deus et Rex, and as a resource for local clerics who wrote and preached in defence of the Church of England. Preaching at an ordination in Bishopthorpe, Archbishop Matthew told the newly appointed clerics: ‘he that will be an Evangelist and preacher of the Word must first read diligently … whereby he may bring unto his treasure, things fit and necessary for his uses’.14 It is not surprising therefore that many of the clergy patronised by Matthew were also regular customers at Foster’s bookshop. They included Anthony Higgin, who left a library of 758 books to his relatives, and the vicar of Leeds, 12 13

14

Barnard and Bell, ‘John Foster’s Inventory’, pp. 22, 39. Athanasius, Athanasii Opera (ed.), Wolfgang Musculus and Petrus Nannius (Basel, 1564), Leeds University, Ripon Cathedral Library (hereafter RCL) XXII.C.17q. USTC 613803. William Van der Lindt, Panoplia Evangelica (Paris, 1564), RCL XII.G.10. USTC 682484. Desiderus Erasmus, Enarratio Pia Juxta Ac Docta in Pslamum XXXIII (Basel, 1531), RCL XVIII.C.12. USTC 650046. J.E. Mortimer, ‘Library Catalogue of Anthony Higgin, Dean of Ripon’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society X: I (1962), p. 4. Barnard and Bell, ‘John Foster’s Inventory’, appendix 2. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Add. MS A 89 fo. 153 r.

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Alexander Cooke, whose books were valued at over £100 at his death in 1632.15 Books were a key weapon in the armoury of the Church, providing inspiration in the struggle to follow a godly life and ammunition to defend the Protestant regime. Therefore, Matthew not only encouraged his clergy to read books, but to write them too, directly engaging in an international conversation about the Protestant Church. As a result, alongside his other books, Foster stocked polemics, histories, spiritual guides and sermons written by local authors including Thomas Bell, Richard Bernard, Edmund Bunny and Alexander Cooke – all of whom were encouraged to write by Archbishop Tobie Matthew.16 3.2

Catalogues, Knowledge and the International Book Trade

The importance of the stationers gathered around York Minster went beyond the provision of books. The booksellers of Minster Close were gatekeepers to the world of print, shaping the literary conversation through their choice of stock, catalogues and displays of texts. Booksellers were the main way for early modern readers to find out what was available and what the latest publications were. Browsing was an essential information-gathering activity as well as an absorbing pastime, and it was the ability to browse London’s bookshops that Matthew missed most. When Matthew travelled to London for parliament, he eagerly anticipated spending time looking through the stock of the booksellers of St Paul’s Churchyard and choosing new books. Shop fronts were increasingly used to display new or exciting publications and as Kevin Sharpe has argued, how these displays were laid out shaped customers’ understanding of what was available and texts’ relationship with each other. And indeed, this was one of the ways in which Matthew chose his books. In 1594, Matthew wrote to his former student, William Camden, and asked him to pick up some books for him in London. Matthew was maddeningly vague in his description, facing a problem familiar to regular bookshop browsers. Matthew remembered seeing a book he wanted ‘in two or three volumes’, but admitted ‘I have forgotten the author’s name, only this I remember, it was a mixed work of divinity and laws, canon and civil’.17 15 16 17

Borthwick Institute of Archives Abp Reg. 31 fo. 238v; BIA Archbishop Register 32 fo.32 r. Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 163–167. Barnard and Bell, ‘John Foster’s Inventory’, pp. 50–52, 99–103. BL Julius MS C V fo, 53 r. John Harrington, Nugae Antiquae (London: Vernor and Hood, 1804), vol 2., p. 256. On the importance of bookshops see Raven, Business of Books, p. 6. Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 45–46. Andrew Cambers, Godly

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Browsing York’s bookshops as a way of finding out what had recently been published was, however, of limited use as the majority of books were English and local booksellers only stocked a selection of available texts. There were attempts to catalogue printed books, providing a guide for collectors. One of most well-known, was Conrad Gesner’s Bibliotheca Instituta, covering continental publications. Tobie Matthew had a copy of this in his library, and a copy was acquired for the parish library established in Halifax in the seventeenth century. Another popular resource was Thomas James’ catalogues of the books in the Bodleian Library, printed in 1600 and 1620, and Matthew acquired a copy of James’ first catalogue and kept it in his library in York.18 Attempts were also made to catalogue the evolving state of the English market. In 1595, Andrew Maunsell of St Paul’s Churchyard published the First Part of the Catalogue of English Books, followed by the Second Part later that year. The First Part included books of divinity, but excluded Catholic books, while the Second Part listed printed books on maths, astronomy, music and martial arts. Reflecting the changing nature of the market, it was published with blank leaves for readers to make notes and additions, and indeed many did. One reader, for example, added a list of Catholic books into the First Part, writing a ‘catalogus libro[rum] prohibito[rum] Protestantiu[m]’.19 The best way, however, to keep up to date with the scholarly book trade was through trade catalogues, particularly the Frankfurt book fair catalogues. Collectors used these catalogues to buy books, but also to keep themselves abreast of what was being published. From 1615, the curators of the Bodleian Library decided to meet within a week of the July Frankfurt catalogue coming out in order to plan their future spending.20 In the inventory of 1616, Foster had twenty-five ‘catalogues of the Martes’, presumably from the Frankfurt Book Fair, in his York bookshop. These catalogues allowed Foster’s customers to order continental books, and they also provided a comprehensive overview of the state of publishing and newly printed texts. Another Latin catalogue that circulated widely in the seventeenth century was the catalogue produced by

18

19 20

Reading: Print, Manuscript, and Puritanism in England 1580–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 189–210. Conrad Gesner, Johannes Jakob Frisius, Josias Simler, Bibliotheca Instituta Et Collecta (Zurich, 1583), York Minster Library (YML), Shelfmarks VIII. E. 4 and SC 24–5. USTC 616745. Thomas James, Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis,(London, 1600), YML shelfmark XVI.C.16(1)–(2) USTC 514814. Andrew Maunsell, ed. First Part of the Catalogue of English Books (London, 1595) Trinity College, University of Cambridge VI.3.60. USTC 512900. Raven, Business of Books, p. 58. Julian Roberts, ‘Importing Books for Oxford, 1500–1640’ in James P Carley and Colin G C Tite (eds.) Books and Collectors 1200–1700: Essays Presented to Andrew Watson (London: The British Library, 1997), p. 329.

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the Dutch Elzevier firm, which seems to have been used primarily as a source of information rather than as a sales catalogue. Despite the popularity of the catalogues, Bonaventure Elzevier is only recorded as importing one load of books to England in this period.21 Back copies of book fair catalogues were also kept as a record of what had been published – acting as a directory or catalogue of printed material. It seems likely that Foster’s large number of ‘catalogues of the Martes’ included past editions of the Frankfurt catalogue, containing valuable information about what had been produced as well as current publications. Collectors kept out-of-date catalogues in their libraries. The dean of Lichfield, Griffin Higgs, for example, brought Elzevier catalogues he picked up in The Hague back to England, and kept them as part of his library.22 John Dee, Tobie Matthew and Archbishop James Ussher had several different copies of the Frankfurt catalogue in their libraries, and Robert Burton kept a number of catalogues from 1602 to 1628 with his extensive book collection.23 Although almost all scholarly texts in early modern England were bought using the Frankfurt book fair catalogue, surprisingly few copies of the catalogue survive. Some of the best preserved belonged to Tobie Matthew, and his entire run of catalogues from 1599 until 1623 are now in York Minster Library. Matthew used these catalogues to keep up-to-date with recent publications, to identify which polemics needed answering, and which publications his clergy needed to read. His marks and annotations reveal how important the catalogues were as a source of inspiration and information, connecting provincial readers directly with the international book trade.24 This was, of course, in addition to using the catalogues in the way that they were intended: to buy books. After Tobie Matthew became bishop of Durham in 1595, he started receiving catalogues from the Frankfurt book fair. Matthew also employed an agent to import books for him, enabling him to make his library as up-to-date and well-stocked as possible. From 1599, Matthew was using Ascanius de Renialme, a London bookseller, to buy foreign books. Ascanius was one of the main importers of continental books in England, making large purchases directly from Christopher Plantin as well as regularly visiting the Frankfurt book fair. Ascanius de Renialme bought for a number of clients at the fair, including the enthusiastic book collector, Henry Percy, ninth earl of Northumberland. 21 22 23 24

Julian Roberts, ‘The Latin Trade’ in Cambridge History of the Book 1557–1695, p. 164. P.S. Moorish (ed.), Bibliotheca Higgsiana: A Catalogue of the Books of Dr Griffin Higgs (1589–1659) (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1990), p. iv. Julian Roberts, ‘Importing Books for Oxford’, p. 328. Nicholas Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1988). Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 162–165.

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Ascanius sent manuscript lists, or ‘catalogues’, to some of his clients, but he sent Matthew a printed version of the Frankfurt catalogue to choose his books.25 Although Matthew used the Frankfurt book fair catalogue to order the books he wanted, he evidently relied on the judgement of his agent too. In 1602, Matthew highlighted the recently published Tractatus Duae by the Calvinist legal scholars Regner Sixtus and George Obrecht, in the printed catalogue. His agent found this for him, and sent it to Matthew along with a companion piece, he thought that Matthew might like: Sixtus’ Tractatus De Regalibus, also published in 1602. Inside, the agent wrote a note assuring Matthew that although ‘a leaf is lacking in all copies, we shall receive it at the next fair’.26 Matthew later moved his custom to John Bill and James Norton, two established importers of continental books. In 1617, Matthew received a copy of the Frankfurt catalogue printed in England by John Bill in place of the usual Catalogus Universalis from Frankfurt. This was a move by Bill to prevent a group of stationers establishing a monopoly over the Latin trade in books, and it was successful. From then on, Matthew relied on John Bill and James Norton to acquire the books that he wanted. This may have reflected Norton’s reputation, since several major collectors, including the Bodleian library and Henry Percy, used Norton to import continental books. When Bill and Norton started publishing a catalogue of English books, Matthew collected this too, annotating books that he wanted as well as authors he was interested in.27 Agents and the Frankfurt book fair were not the only source of continental books. Occasionally Matthew went beyond his usual book buyers if he was particularly keen to get new publications quickly. Matthew’s Frankfurt catalogues of 1618 to 1620 are covered with notes highlighting books and pamphlets that 25

26

27

Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis vernalibus 1599 (Frankfurt, 1599). YML XV. L. 76 (1). USTC 619991. G.R. Batho, ‘The Library of the ‘Wizard Earl’: Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632)’, The Library, 5th ser., 15:4 (196), pp. 256–7. Roberts, ‘Latin Trade’, pp. 157–9. ‘Hoc folium deest in omnibus exemplarius, quod proximis nundinis recipiemus’, Sixtus Regnerius and George Obrecht, Tractatus Duae prior de regalibus D Regneri Sixtus posterior de iurisdiction 4 imperio D Georgii Obrecht (Frankfurt, 1602) YML XVII/2.G.26. USTC 2052426. Sixtus Regnerius, Tractatus de regalibus ex sacri Romani imperium constitutionibus (Frankfurt,1602) YML XVII/2. G. 2. USTC 2026382. Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis vernalibus 1602 (Frankfurt, 1602) YML XV. L. 76 (3), sigs. B2v–B3v. USTC 21117457. After Ascanius de Renialme’s death in 1600, his business passed on to James Rime and Adrian Marius and, like Percy, Matthew may have briefly switched to them. Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis Francofurtensibus vernalibus de anno 1622 (London, 1622), YML XV. L. 78 (8), sig. D4r. USTC 3010451. Gadd, Norton, John (1556/7–1612), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 rev. January 2008).

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reported on the Synod of Dort, and explored the positions of the Arminians and Counter-Remonstrants. Matthew was fascinated by this intra-Protestant conflict and was eager to get his hands on texts exploring the different positions. An old friend of Matthew’s, Samuel Ward, was chosen to attend the Synod of Dort, and in 1618 and again in 1619 Matthew wrote to Ward begging him to choose and send to him a selection of relevant works. He urged Ward to be quick, asking him to ‘take some speedy course to convey the books unto me’. Matthew suggested that a colleague from York, Henry Wickham, could come to Ward and pick up any unbound books – taking them to bookbinders in London or Cambridge before returning North with them.28 This demonstrates how far the catalogues were an important as a source of information about recent publications, as well as a way to buy books. 3.3

Patronage and Print

In the catalogue of 1622, Tobie Matthew highlighted a book written by his friend, ‘John Favour, Doctor of the Laws and Vicar of Halifax’. Matthew had no intention of ordering this book – Favour had composed much of it in York with Matthew’s encouragement, using Matthew’s library. However, it illustrates how Matthew’s book buying and the development of his library acted as a bridge between centres of print and provincial readers and writers. Through his support (and by using his books) local writers were able to engage in an international conversation, shaping polemical debates that crossed the continent. While the book trade facilitated intellectual exchanges between centre and periphery, this existed within a complex network of borrowing, sharing and lending.29 The number of clergymen who were in debt to the bookseller John Foster on his death in 1616 show the expense and difficulty of keeping up with the latest publications. Ministers who could not afford to buy new books felt their lack keenly. Elkannah Wales, a Puritan minister who had a very poor living in Pudsey, West Yorkshire, bemoaned his ‘small lybrary’ in his will. His brother, Samuel Wales, with a living nearby in Morley, also complained about his lack of books. He thought that the collection of sermons he prepared for print in 28 29

BL Tanner MS 74 fos. 188, 217. Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis Francofurtensisbus vernalibus de anno 1619, YML XV. L. 78 (4) sigs., A2–B1r. USTC 3008699. Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis Francofurtensibus vernalibus de anno 1622 (London, 1622), YML XV. L. 78 (8), sig. D4r. USTC 3010451. John Favour, Antiquity Triumphing Over Novelty (London, 1619) I. USTC 3008766. Gadd, Norton, John (1556/7–1612), ODNB.

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1627 would be better if he ‘had some men’s libraries’, but regretted that he had ‘few books, [and] small means or hopes to increase them’.30 It was a problem Tobie Matthew hoped to remedy with his own book collecting. When Matthew was bishop of Durham, he was given a copy of Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon – a celebration of book collecting by a fourteenth-century bishop of Durham, re-issued by the future librarian of the Bodleian, Thomas James.31 Matthew underlined Richard de Bury’s argument about the importance of making texts available to younger scholars who could not afford to buy books. Lending books was, de Bury claimed, one of ‘the good offices of piety [that] would most please the Almighty, and would be most beneficial to the Church Militant’, allowing clergy and scholars to escape the ‘poverty of their circumstances’ and become ‘champions and athletes of the faith’.32 It was a sentiment that Matthew embraced, and so he bought books with a sense that – like Richard de Bury – he was collecting a ‘great a store of books for the common benefit of scholars, and not only for our own pleasure’.33 The archbishop made his library available to local ministers who supported his vision of the Protestant Church and regime, particularly if they could be persuaded to publish. While he was curate of Leeds, Alexander Cooke used Matthew’s library to produce A Dialogue Between a Protestant and a Papist manifestly proving that a woman called Joane was Pope of Rome, after Matthew spotted a new Catholic work disproving the myth of Pope Joan in 1609. Thomas Bell, a former Catholic priest turned informer, published several anti-Catholic polemics between 1593 and 1610. He was patronised by Matthew, and wrote at least one of these texts using the books in Matthew’s collection. John Favour, vicar of Halifax, also used Matthew’s library to write Antiquity Triumphing Over Novelty in 1619, noting how Matthew liked to offer feedback throughout the process. Many of these books by local authors – all published in London – were stocked in Foster’s bookshop and several were advertised in the Frankfurt catalogues, showing the extent to which print offered northern clerics the opportunity to engage in much larger conversations about the future of Protestantism.

30 31 32 33

J.A. Newton, ‘Puritanism in the Diocese of York (excluding Nottinghamshire) 1603–1640’ (University of London, PhD thesis, 1955), p. 347. Richard du Bury, Philobiblon (Joseph Barnes, Oxford, 1599), YML I. L. 24. USTC 513890. Bury, Philobiblon, sigs. A1v–A2r. ‘Quid inter diversorum generum Pietatis official, primo gradu placeret Altissimo, professetque potius Ecclesiae Militanti….’, ‘postea promovendos, & Pugiles Fidei & Athletas’. Bury, Philobiblon, sigs. G4v. ‘quod tantum librorum ad communion profectum scholarium, non solam ad propriam voluntatem’.

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Sometimes, as with Alexander Cooke’s Pope Joane, they were so popular abroad that they were re-issued and translated (in Cooke’s case, into French).34 Print could be at the heart of a sustained campaign to defend the Church – as with Tobie Matthew’s promotion of the anti-Catholic Oath of Allegiance. The Oath was introduced by James I the year after the Gunpowder Plot, and was widely attacked by Catholic authors, many of whom were based on the continent. Matthew noted some of these texts in successive editions of the Frankfurt catalogue, paying particular attention to works by Robert Bellarmine and Martin Becanus. He bought some of their books along with Protestant polemics that criticised Bellarmine and Becanus. In the 1609 catalogue, for example, Matthew highlighted a work by the Lutheran Samuel Huber that attacked Robert Bellarmine, and then purchased all three volumes. Matthew also received books on the Oath from friends and colleagues. In 1609, he received a copy of James I’s recently published Apologia Pro Iuramento Fidelitatis from a local nobleman, the Earl of Shrewsbury.35 In 1610, Matthew made his book collection available to one of his chaplains, Thomas Ireland, so that Ireland could write a sermon defending the Oath of Allegiance to be preached at a synod in York. After Ireland delivered this sermon, Matthew then asked him to publish it, which Ireland dutifully did with a London publisher. In this way, Matthew’s books allowed local clergy to contribute to a larger conversation about national and international politics. Booksellers – supported by Matthew – also played an important role in facilitating access to essential books. Many of the important texts about the Oath of Allegiance were also available in Foster’s bookshop for local clergy and laity to buy. Foster stocked the popular defence of the Oath by Richard Mocket, Deus et Rex, and had copies in both English and Latin. Foster also stocked some of those Catholic authors who attacked the Oath, like Robert Bellarmine.36 There was a rich cross-fertilisation between Matthew’s private book buying and the purchases of his clerics, which in turn affected the stock that John Foster kept in his shop. This may be seen in the stock of Catholic books that Foster had at his death in 1616. Although these Catholic books were forbidden, they were needed by local clergy engaged in anti-Catholic polemics. One of Foster’s customers, the Puritan Alexander Cooke, for example, had a Rheims bible and a Douai bible when he died in 1632. He had used both when he was 34 35 36

Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 198–90. Lambeth Palace, Tenison MS 3203 fo. 576. Samuel Huber, Antibellarminu (Goslar, 3 vols., 1607–09) YML XIII.E.17–19. USTC 2027471, 2105870, 2080055, Catalogus Universalis pro nundinis vernalibus 1609 (Frankfurt, 1609) YML XV. L. 76 (7) USTC 2106030. Thomas Ireland, The Oath of Allegiance (London, 1610), USTC 3004156. Barnard and Bell, ‘Foster’s Inventory’, appendix 2.

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writing one of his anti-Catholic polemics: Worke, More Worke and a Little More Worke for a Mass Priest (1628). Not all of Foster’s stock, however, was necessarily for anti-Catholic purposes. Despite being the centre of the northern Church, early modern York also had a significant Catholic population. At least one of Foster’s debtors in 1616 was from a recusant family, and his stock included pastoral Catholic works, for example: ‘One Rosary of Prayers’.37 Local ministers were an important part of the complex network of early modern print culture. John Favour, vicar of Halifax, used Matthew’s library to write his own books and he also bought books in London and Yorkshire. On one trip to London for parochial business, he noted that he had spent £6 and 15s. on books. Favour also shared books with friends. He borrowed a book by Thomas Holland from Halifax landowner, Sir Henry Savile, which he promised to return ‘swiftly’. He thanked Savile for another book that he had lent Favour, which the minister had read closely: not only ‘verbatim’ he wrote but ‘syllabatim’.38 Anthony Higgin, dean of Ripon, was also an enthusiastic book collector, recording around 750 books in a catalogue of his library he made before his death. Higgin bought books from booksellers in London, York and Cambridge. He also bought them from colleagues, an example being a work of Theodore Beza’s that Higgin purchased from Griffin Briskin, prebend of York. Many of Higgin’s books were gifts from like-minded colleagues, friends and patrons. William Crashawe, another devoted book collector who worked with Higgin at Ripon Cathedral, gave Higgin a copy of his own book, Rhomish Forgeries (1606). John Favour gave Higgin a copy of Theodoret’s, De Selectis Scripturae Divinae Quaestionibus Ambiguis, published in Paris in 1558. Sir Henry Savile of Bank near Halifax was source of books for many of the local clerics. As well as lending books to Favour, he gave Higgin works by Bonaventura and Duns Scotus in 1593. Savile, cousin of the mathematician, was a renowned scholar in his own right, and Anthony Higgin appears to have been flattered by this gift, noting in the inside of the Duns Scotus that: ‘Henricus Savil generosus, de ipsis literis et litteratis optime meritus, hunc librum dedit, Antonio Higgin’.39 37 38 39

John Barnard, ‘A Puritan Controversialist and his Books: The Will of Alexander Cooke’, The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America, 86 (1992), pp. 82–6. Barnard and Bell, ‘Foster’s Inventory’, appendix 2. BIA Abp Reg. 31 fo. 238r; Abp Reg, 32, fo. 32. Edward Johnson Walker and Walter James Walker (eds.) Chapters on the Early Registers of Halifax Parish Church (Halifax: Whitely and Booth, 1885) pp. 88–89, 94–95. Johann Beckenhaub, Index alphabeticus in scripta divi Bonaventure super quattoue libris Sententiarum (Lyon, c. 1515). RCL XVIII.E.21. USTC 144444 John Duns Scotus, Sententiarum antea vitio impressorum depravatum (Lyon, 1520), RCL XV III. F. 20. USTC 145318. Mortimer, ‘Catalogue of Anthony Higgin’, pp. 4–5.

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Although the cost of books was falling, the number that well-read clergy needed was rising. By the seventeenth century, enthusiastic book collectors started to establish libraries, making their books accessible to a wider circle of readers and putting the borrowing and lending of books on a more formal footing.40 Shortly before his death, Anthony Higgin started making a catalogue of his books, perhaps preparing the collection for public use. When Higgin died in 1624, he left his library of around 2000 books to two relatives: his nephew ‘Mr Lumley’ and William Cleabourne, a cousin who was a fellow prebend in Ripon Cathedral. He did so on the condition that when they died, they ‘shall give them to the church of Ripon for a library’.41 Robert Clay, who succeeded John Favour at Halifax, also had a large collection of books. He left two particularly prized books to Merton College and Magdalen Hall in Oxford, and the rest he left to be divided between his sons if either or both went to university. He also left money for a catalogue to be drawn up so that his children could navigate the collection, ‘when they have discretion to use them’.42 Between 1624 and 1628, Clay set up a library in Halifax parish church, donating his own books and encouraging others to contribute too. As well as standard texts like Ambrose, Clay also donated recently published anti-Catholic polemics, such as Thomas Morton’s The Grand Imposture of the Church of Rome. By 1659, the library had forty-three volumes that were being borrowed by members of the laity as well as being used by the clergy.43 3.4

Conclusion

The book trade was essential in facilitating intellectual exchanges between the centre and peripheries, ensuring that York was part of an international literary conversation. However, we need to add important nuances to accounts of the provincial book trade, by locating the selling of books in the context of the 40 41

42 43

Arnold Hunt, ‘Clerical and Parish Libraries’ in Elizabeth Leedham-Green and Tessa Webber (eds), Cambridge History of Libraries :1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 400–419. BIA Abp Reg, 31 fo. 238v. Leeds University Brotherton Special Collections, GB 206 Ripon Cathedral MS 35. Around 1250 volumes survive as part of Ripon Cathedral Library, now in the Brotherton: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/participant/ 50592 . BIA Abp Reg, 31. fos. 273r–274r. Desiderius Erasmus (ed.) Divi Ambrosii … Omnia Opera (Basel, 4 vols., 1527) YML SC 25-43-5/6. Thomas Morton, The Grand Imposture of the (now) Church of Rome (London, 2nd edn., 1628), YML XXX. J. 4. USTC 640428. J. 4. Linda Jean Parr, ‘The History of Libraries in Halifax and Huddersfield’ (University of London, PhD thesis, 2003), pp. 79–85.

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borrowing, sharing and lending that sustained the print culture of early modern Yorkshire. The libraries established by northern clerics offered an alternative vision of the printed world, challenging the hegemony of booksellers as curators of the publishing world. Tobie Matthew’s book collection, for example, was not just about providing access to books. His library was recognised as providing a corpus of texts that contained all the significant books needed by his local clergy. This was a book collection that not only outstripped the possible use of its owner, but aspired to a corporate identity that could claim to be both comprehensive and carefully curated. Matthew seems to have decided to leave his large library to York Minster approximately a decade before he died. In part, this was because his own children were a disappointment: of his surviving sons, one was mired in debt and the other had become a prominent Catholic priest. It was also a natural extension of Matthew’s own belief in the importance of providing access to books, seen in his support for Bristol public library. In the year following Tobie Matthew’s death, his widow, Frances, gave Matthew’s books to York Minster, effectively re-establishing the library there. In the following decades, successive clergy and noblemen added to the ‘public library’ at York Minster while other ministers established libraries in local churches including Ripon and Halifax.44 The experiences of the clergy in early modern Yorkshire throws more light on the provincial book trade and the culture of print in this period. London was home to publishers and importers of books and therefore a central point for all printed material. Yet the relationship between centre and periphery was one of exchange, not just dissemination. Northern writers wrote books that were published in London, and bought books in York’s bookshops. They were also part of a much larger international conversation thanks to their ability to browse the Frankfurt book catalogues and to access resources like Tobie Matthew’s library. Northern officials, principally successive deans and archbishops of York, recognised the power of print in promoting the Protestant regime and in particular the role that the book trade played in opening up access to that world. While York’s booksellers may not have stocked the range of English or continental books available in London, they did provide access to that world through the book fair catalogues. And as the example of Matthew shows, the Frankfurt book fair catalogues were more than a mere shopping opportunity, they were a source of information and inspiration: a snapshot of the world of print. So, despite Matthew’s grumbling that he was ‘far off from the well-head’, he and his clerics were integrated into a community of print and were part of a larger world of intellectual exchange, facilitated by the book trade. 44

Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 173–177.

chapter 4

‘For the Edification of the Common People’: Humphrey Chetham’s Parish Libraries Jessica G. Purdy When Manchester merchant and philanthropist Humphrey Chetham died in September 1653, his will provided funds for three charitable establishments, to be overseen by twenty-four trustees. The first establishment was a school for forty poor boys, for which purpose Chetham desired that ‘the great house, with the buildings, outhouses, courts, yards, gardens and appurtenances, in Manchester aforesaid, called the College or the College House, may be purchased’. Space in the College House was also apportioned to Chetham’s second charitable establishment: a public library for the use of scholars and the well-educated.1 For the buying of books to stock this library, Chetham bequeathed £1000, which the trustees used to purchase approximately 3000 titles, primarily in Latin and principally theological in nature, between 1655 and 1700.2 The third charitable establishment was £200 to found five parish libraries for, in Chetham’s own words, ‘the common people’. These parish libraries were to be placed in the churches of Manchester and Bolton, and in the chapels of Gorton, Turton and Walmsley.3 The distinction between users of the public library and of the parish libraries was dictated by their contents: the scholarly nature and Latin language of its books meant that they would be inaccessible to the general populace of the town who were unable to read Latin. The parish libraries, however, were for the religious instruction of the local population and thus filled with books in English by Reformed authors of various confessional identities within Protestantism.4 The books in both the public library and the five parish libraries were originally chained for security, but as the public library collection expanded and the presses grew taller, 1 Chetham’s Library, Manchester, Will (uncatalogued). The term ‘public’ in this sense does not allude to the public sphere as understood in the eighteenth century, but rather to Chetham’s view of the library as a public service in promoting learning and knowledge. For more information and a definition of ‘public library’ in this context, see Matthew Yeo, The Acquisition of Books by Chetham’s Library, 1655–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 4–5. 2 Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 4, 71–79. 3 Chetham’s Library, Manchester, Will (uncatalogued). 4 Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 5, 19.

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chaining became impractical and existing chains were removed. The static collections of the parish libraries, of which only Gorton and Turton now survive, remained chained, probably because they were more easily accessible by a larger number of people. Numerous annotations and marginalia are contained within the volumes of the Gorton parish library – the best-preserved of the five original benefactions – that demonstrate readers’ interest in the key themes of Scriptural authority, sin, and godly living and dying. This chapter will focus primarily on the Gorton parish library as a repository of vernacular religious texts aimed at providing its readers with an understanding of Scripture as an antidote to superstition and unnecessary ceremonies.5 In addition, it will examine the sorts of books in the library and analyse the annotations and marginalia within them in order to suggest how the library users’ interpretations of these texts fit within the wider narrative of religious belief and practice in seventeenth-century England. 4.1

Parish Libraries, 1558–1709

The term ‘parish library’ did not appear until the late seventeenth century.6 Modern historians have struggled to agree on a definition of the term due to the great variety in the ‘size, scope, location, origin and character’ of different parochial libraries from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.7 However, these variations do have the benefit of demonstrating the breadth of the opportunities for religious (and, to a lesser extent, secular) education available to post-Reformation clergy and laity alike. Building on definitions and descriptions of parish libraries offered by Sarah Gray and Chris Baggs, John Fitch and David Williams, this chapter defines a parish library as a collection of books that was both spiritual and secular in content, housed in a parish church or chapel, and intended for use by both the clergy and the laity.8 5 Lucy E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 22. 6 Sarah Gray and Chris Baggs, ‘The English Parish Library: a Celebration of Diversity’, Libraries & Culture, 35 (2000), p. 418. 7 Michael Perkin, ‘Parochial Libraries: Founders and Readers’ in Peter Isaac and Barry McKay (eds) The Reach of Print: Making, Selling and Using Books (Winchester, 1998), p. 191. 8 Gray and Baggs, ‘The English Parish Library’, pp. 414–415, 430; John Fitch, ‘Historical Introduction’ in Suffolk Parish Libraries: A Catalogue (London: Mansell, 1977), p. ix; David Williams, ‘The Use and Abuse of a Pious Intention: Changing Attitudes to Parochial Libraries’, Proceedings of the Library Association Study School and National Conference, Nottingham, 1979, pp. 21–28.

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The English parish library was a post-Reformation concept that, despite similarities in educational intent, differed in terms of users and content from pre-Reformation libraries. Housed in churches, pre-Reformation libraries contained service books, liturgical works, and manuals written in Latin that were intended to instruct the Catholic clergy in their liturgical, pastoral and sacramental duties, and provide them with a spiritual education. The nature of the books suggests that the laity ‘were generally not expected or allowed to use the volumes’, and even if they were, the books were unlikely to be of much interest to any but the most learned of the laity.9 The fate of these libraries varied as a result of the Reformation. ‘Incalculable’ numbers of books were removed from monasteries and parish churches during the Reformation, and many were presumably destroyed, though others survived.10 Arnold Hunt has demonstrated that small amounts of this religiously conservative literature made its way into post-Reformation parish libraries via the collections of parish clergymen. Other volumes were rescued by former monks like Edward Skelton, who later donated three books from Grosmont Abbey, his former house, to his parish church of Egton, North Yorkshire, in 1565.11 By no means an isolated incident, actions such as these explain the reasons for the theological and confessional diversity of some post-Reformation parish library collections. One hundred and sixty-five parish libraries (that is, ones housed in churches and chapels for use by clergy and parishioners) were founded in England between the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558 and the passing of the Parochial Libraries Act by Parliament in 1709, which provided security for parish libraries against unauthorised destruction and dispersal.12 Post-Reformation parish libraries reflected the bibliocentric nature of Protestantism, and they were intended to provide the laity with a Protestant education.13 Laymen of the ‘middling’ sorts 9 10

11 12 13

Stacey Gee, ‘Parochial Libraries in Pre-Reformation England’, in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. by Sarah Rees Jones (Belgium: Brepols, c. 2003), pp. 199, 201, 209, 213. Gray and Baggs, ‘The English Parish Library’, p. 417; C.B.L. Barr, ‘Parish Libraries in a Region: the Case of Yorkshire’, Proceedings of the Library Association Study School and National Conference, Nottingham, 1979, p. 33; Perkin, ‘Parochial Libraries: Founders and Readers’, p. 191. Arnold Hunt, ‘Clerical and Parish Libraries’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries, Volume I: To 1640, ed. by Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 405. Michael Perkin, A Directory of the Parochial Libraries of the Church of England and the Church in Wales (London: Bibliographic Society, 2004), pp. 36–37, 60–63; Gray and Baggs, ‘The English Parish Library’, p. 419. Perkin, ‘Parochial Libraries: Founders and Readers’, p. 192; Barr, ‘Parish Libraries in a Region’, p. 33.

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were responsible for founding many parish libraries in the early half of the seventeenth century, and Andrew Cambers has suggested that these libraries were ‘godly in character’ and ‘designed to foster such a form of religious culture’ in both the clergy and the laity.14 This argument is borne out by the parish libraries founded by Humphrey Chetham in the 1650s. 4.2

Humphrey Chetham and the Foundation of Five Parish Libraries

Humphrey Chetham was born in 1580 at Crumpsall Hall in Manchester, the sixth child of Henry and Jane Chetham.15 As a member of a reasonably wealthy mercantile family, Chetham attended Manchester Grammar School, where he met children of other merchant families with whom he began to establish the social and business networks that would serve him so well in later life.16 As an adult, Chetham’s various appointments to administrative offices reflected his position and standing within society. These appointments included High Sheriff of the County Palatine of Lancaster in 1634 and again in 1648, and High Collector of Subsidies granted to the king by Parliament in 1641. In 1643, he was appointed Treasurer of the county and given responsibility for collecting money to maintain the army, before being appointed receiver-general of assessments in Lancashire in 1647.17 From the earliest days of the Civil War in 1642, Chetham had set himself firmly on the parliamentarian side, and continued to provide the parliamentarian army with substantial amounts of money, food and other provisions throughout the course of the war.18 By the time of his death on 20 September 1653, Chetham had amassed a considerable fortune through his business dealings as a cloth merchant and moneylender.19 The charitable bequests left in Chetham’s will, already discussed, demonstrate his philanthropic disposition. Chetham was seemingly the first benefactor to provide more than one parish library. The collections 14 15 16 17

18 19

Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 138–139, 141. Alan G. Crosby, ‘Chetham, Humphrey (bap. 1580, d. 1653)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5243. S.J. Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653: Fortune, Politics and Mercantile Culture in Seventeenth-century England (Manchester: The Chetham Society, 2003), p. 15. Francis Robert Raines and Charles William Sutton, Life of Humphrey Chetham, founder of the Chetham Hospital and Library, Manchester, Volume I, printed for the Chetham Society (Manchester: James Stewart, 1903), pp. 72–74, 132, 137–138, 158; Crosby, ‘Chetham, Humphrey (bap. 1580, d. 1653)’. Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, pp. 221–222, 237. Raines and Sutton, Life of Humphrey Chetham, Volume I, p. 113.

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of Gorton and Turton numbered approximately fifty volumes, whilst the Manchester and Bolton parish libraries contained around ninety books apiece before their dispersal in the mid-nineteenth century.20 The collection at Walmsley was never completed and the fifteen books purchased for that library were sent instead to Turton.21 These collections were of medium size in the mid-seventeenth century, as parish libraries ranged from a handful of books to repositories of several hundred or even a thousand volumes, though this was rare and most consisted of fewer than 200 books. The wording of Chetham’s will demonstrates his vision for the parish libraries. It includes references both to the sorts of texts he wanted in their collections, and to his intended users. Chetham’s will referred to the ‘godly English books, such as Calvin’s, Preston’s, and Perkins’s works, [and] comments of annotations upon the Bible or some parts thereof’, that he wanted in the libraries, along with ‘such other books … most proper for the edification of the common people’, as opposed to those ‘well-affected’ users of the separate public library in Manchester.22 Chetham’s will also stipulated the locations for these parish libraries; all were places to which he had a personal connection.23 The recipients of Chetham’s beneficence were the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Manchester, St Peter’s Church in Bolton, St James’s Church in Gorton, St Anne’s Church in Turton, and Christ Church in Walmsley. The Chetham family already had a long history of association with Manchester’s Collegiate Church by the time of Humphrey’s baptism on 10 July 1580, and it continued throughout his lifetime.24 In 1621, Humphrey Chetham purchased a family pew in the church and in 1622, he bought the lease of its tithes. By cementing his familial links to the church in this way, Chetham also secured both his social standing and his financial security, as the unfolding crisis in the textile trade meant that the market was becoming increasingly unstable.25 Thus, Chetham’s decision to bequeath a library to the church was likely a result of these lifelong connections, and simply the last in a long line of bequests and benefactions bestowed on the church by the Chetham family. Chetham established a parish library 20

21 22 23 24 25

Perkin, Directory of the Parochial Libraries, p. 280; Edward Baines, History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Volume III (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1836), p. 64; Gilbert J. French (ed.), Bibliographical Notices of the Church Libraries at Turton and Gorton, bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham (Manchester: Charles Simms and Co. for the Chetham Society, 1855), p. 4. Perkin, Directory of the Parochial Libraries, pp. 376–379. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, Will (uncatalogued). Chetham’s Library, Manchester, Will (uncatalogued). Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, pp. 170–171. Raines and Sutton, Life of Humphrey Chetham, Volume I, p. 35; Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, pp. 53, 70.

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in St Peter’s Church in Bolton, a town he visited regularly to conduct much of his business as a merchant. Many of those within his professional network, both debtors and creditors, were the godly cloth merchants who were intrinsically associated with the nonconformity prevalent within the parish, which was renowned for its strong Puritanism.26 Chetham bequeathed books to the parishes of Turton and Walmsley because he held land and property in Turton, which was a sub-district of Bolton that also encompassed the town of Walmsley. His status in the local area undoubtedly influenced his decision to bequeath libraries to these two parishes, and Chetham had godly connections within these communities that may have spurred him to provide these libraries for the sorts of people with whom he was frequently interacting.27 The parish of Gorton was the location for Chetham’s fifth and final bequest. Here again, Chetham owned property, having purchased Clayton Hall in conjunction with his brother George in 1620. The Clayton estate had no chapel of its own, and Chetham was known to have attended parish churches in the surrounding area. On one of these visits, Chetham met Richard Johnson, the godly minister of St James’s Church in Gorton, after the latter’s appointment to the living in 1628.28 Chetham and Johnson built a close personal friendship, evidenced in over twenty surviving letters, which may be attributable in part to the library’s placement in Gorton parish.29 4.3

The Gorton Chest Library

The Gorton Chest Library is just one of two of Chetham’s parish libraries that still survive, almost in their original condition. Originally in St James’s Church, the Gorton Chest was removed in 1984 and rehoused in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, where it remains. Built in the almery style of a book chest or cupboard supported on wooden legs, elevated off the ground to a height comfortable for sitting and reading the 26 27 28 29

Manchester, Chetham’s Library, CPP/3/18; Manchester, Chetham’s Library, CPP/3/19; B.G. Blackwood, ‘Parties and Issues in the Civil War in Lancashire’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 132 (1982), p. 111. Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, p. 184. Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, pp. 183–185; Joseph Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses, Volume II (Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1891), p. 815. Guscott, Humphrey Chetham, 1580–1653, p. 185. Over twenty letters between the two men survive: twelve are dated between 1634 and 1636, the remaining eight are dated 1648 or 1649 and concern Chetham’s second appointment as High Sheriff of Lancashire, see Chetham’s Library catalogue for the full list of Chetham’s and Johnson’s letters.

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Figure 4.1 The Gorton Chest in the Reading Room of Chetham’s Library, Manchester Image reproduced with the kind permission of Chetham’s Library, Manchester

books it contained, the Gorton Chest Library originally had a ledge attached to it, just below the books themselves, for the books to rest on whilst they were in use. The almery chest (or cupboard) had been a popular storage choice for books since the Middle Ages, owing to their security, and books continued to be housed in these chests even as books became more numerous and specific rooms were allocated to house them.30 A library in a similar style was donated to Bolton School by James Leaver in 1694, demonstrating the continued popularity of the style.31 The Gorton Chest was altered in the mid-nineteenth century after the removal of the reading ledge. The legs of the chest were shortened and the hinges were moved from the sides to the bottom of the doors, in order for them to open out horizontally and form a makeshift ledge for reading.32 30 31 32

Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Chained Library: A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1931), pp. 3–4. Richard Copley Christie, The Old Church and School Libraries of Lancashire (Manchester: Charles E. Simms for the Chetham Society, New Series, 7, 1885), pp. 114–115. Hillman Streeter, The Chained Library, pp. 302–303; Gilbert J. French (ed.), ‘A Catalogue (with the title pages in full and illustrative extracts) of Books from the collection

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Humphrey Chetham appointed twenty-four men as executors of his will, but entrusted only three with provisioning the parish libraries: Richard Johnson, Richard Hollinworth, and John Tildsley. These three men exemplified the confessional variations within Protestantism: Johnson was a Calvinist, Hollinworth and Tildsley were both staunch Presbyterians. By selecting these three men – ‘a close friend, an influential divine and a member of his extended family to choose books for the Library’ – Matthew Yeo has demonstrated that Chetham had a ‘plan for religious and political reconciliation’ in post-Civil War Lancashire.33 Richard Johnson was Chetham’s close friend and a Fellow of Manchester Collegiate Church.34 An Oxford-educated Calvinist, Johnson was deprived of both his Fellowship and his living during the Lancashire Presbyterian experiment in 1646, and was subsequently imprisoned. Upon his release, he moved to London and later became Master of the Temple Church. His residence in London brought him into contact with the city’s book trade, which might explain why Johnson took on the responsibility of purchasing the books for Chetham’s parish libraries.35 Johnson returned to Manchester in 1659 having left the Temple Church after reports of discontent with his sermons by other members of the Temple’s parliament. Johnson then took up a position as the first librarian of the public library now known as Chetham’s Library.36 Richard Hollinworth was a noted religious author and leading Presbyterian who was Chaplain and Fellow of Manchester Collegiate Church.37 The collections of the parish libraries for Manchester Collegiate Church and St James’s Church in Gorton were originally Hollinworth’s responsibility, but he died in 1656, just three years after Chetham’s death and before the libraries were complete. In the 1640s, Hollinworth had played a significant role in the implementation of the Presbyterian experiment in Lancashire that had cost Johnson his living. The situation had the potential to cause friction between the two men in their capacities as co-executors of Chetham’s will, but Johnson was residing in London at the time of Chetham’s death, and was still there at the time

33 34 35 36 37

bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham to the chapel of St Thomas, Gorton, 1655’ in Bibliographical Notices of the Church Libraries at Turton and Gorton, bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham, printed for the Chetham Society (Manchester: Charles Simms and Co., 1855), p. 107. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, p. 34. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 34 and 37. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 34–38. Minutes of Parliament of the Middle Temple, Volume III (London: Butterworth & Co., 1905), p. 1138; Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, p. 38. John Venn and J.A. Venn (eds) Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part I, Volume II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), p. 396.

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of Hollinworth’s death in 1656.38 This separation did not stop disagreements from arising between all three trustees that were sometimes documented in the Accessions Registers for Chetham’s libraries.39 The third executor responsible for choosing the books was John Tildsley, the Presbyterian vicar of Deane in Bolton and the husband of Chetham’s niece, Margaret. His education at the University of Edinburgh centred on the philosophical and intellectual elements of Puritanism, which were reflected in his choice of books by Richard Baxter, Robert Bolton and Arthur Hildersham for the Bolton, Turton and Walmsley libraries.40 A surviving letter that Tildsley wrote to Hollinworth details his desire to avoid ‘erroneous’ and ‘Independent’ authors in his collections.41 In October 1654, over a year after Humphrey Chetham’s death, several of his trustees finally met to divide and allocate the £200 to the five parish libraries; Hollinworth attended the meeting but neither Johnson nor Tildsley were present. To the parish library of Manchester Collegiate Church, the trustees allocated £70. They gave £50 for books for Bolton parish library, £30 each for the Gorton and Turton libraries, and to Walmsley library they allocated the remaining £20.42 Funds were evidently apportioned to the libraries based on the size of their intended church: the bigger the church, the higher the funds. The majority of this money was spent in the bookshops of two prominent London-based booksellers, John Rothwell and Robert Littlebury. Rothwell specialised in theological texts, with shops located first in St Paul’s Churchyard and then in Goldsmith’s Row, Cheapside.43 Littlebury’s print shop was located at the Unicorn in Little Britain, one of the London streets where booksellers congregated.44 There is no direct evidence to explain why the trustees chose these booksellers, but both of their shops were approximately a mile from the Temple Church where Johnson had been Master. It is possible that Johnson either asked Littlebury to supply the Temple Church with Bibles or that he personally was a customer of Littlebury’s, which may have led him to trust Littlebury with providing books for the parish libraries.45 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses, Volume II, p. 815. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, (Chet/4/11/1), Accession Register, 1655–1880; Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, p. 34. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, (Chet/4/5/2), Invoices of Books, 1655–1685, f. 58r. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, (CPP/2/141), Letter from John Tilsley to Rev. Hollinworth at Manchester. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, (Chet/1/2/1), Minute Book, 6 Dec 1653–16 Apr 1752. Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667 (London: Blades, East and Blades, 1907), pp. 157–158. Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, London 1: The City of London (London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 534. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 84–86.

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Robert Littlebury was a principal practitioner in London’s thriving secondhand book trade that centred on several key sites in the city, including St Paul’s Churchyard and Paternoster Row.46 Littlebury acquired much of his stock of second-hand books from post mortem valuations and sales of estates; he may have supplied Johnson, who was working on a limited budget, with these comparatively cheaper volumes for the parish libraries.47 Less than a third of the titles in the Gorton Chest Library, placed in St James’s Church in 1658, were printed in that decade. The vast majority of its books were published over a seventy-year period between the 1580s and the 1640s. By purchasing the books second-hand, the trustees were able to purchase a higher number of books to provision the parish libraries, and in some cases, they were also able to acquire the best edition available, which was not always the most recent edition.48 The fifty-one surviving volumes in the Gorton Chest Library contain sixty-five individual titles of exclusively religious literature, reflecting the popularity of the genre in the seventeenth century as it became the chosen reading material of all serious and righteous readers.49 The trustees chose mostly Calvinist, Presbyterian and Puritan authors for the majority of the volumes in the library, which included expository works of doctrine, general theology, books of practical divinity, and printed sermons. These authors reflected the trustees’ own confessional identities and physically represented the attempt at religious reconciliation that Chetham had made in appointing Johnson, Hollinworth and Tildsley as his executors. The general popularity of printed sermons in early modern England is reflected in the Gorton Chest Library collection. Ian Green has argued that early modern sermons took two main forms that constituted either an open-ended exposition, lectio continua, of a short passage of scripture teasing out all the useful lessons it contained, or a series of sermons on a selection of texts chosen to illuminate a single theme, such 46 47

48 49

James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850 (London: Yale University Press, 2007) p. 106. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 41, 87; Ian Mitchell, ‘Old Books – New Bound? Selling Second-Hand Books in England, c. 1680–1850’ in Jon Stobart and Ilja Van Damme (eds) Modernity and the Second-Hand Trade: European Consumption Cultures and Practices, 1700–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 139–140 and 153. Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, pp. 53–56. David L. Gants, ‘A Quantitative Analysis of the London Book Trade, 1614–1618’, Studies in Bibliography, 55 (2002), p. 187; James Rigney, ‘Sermons into Print’ in Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 204–205.

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Sermons General Theology

BOOK GENRE

Doctrine Commentaries on the Bible Christian Life Church Histories Christian Apologetics Catechisms 0

5

10

15

20

NUMBER OF BOOKS

graph 4.1 Breakdown of the genres of the books in the Gorton Chest Library

as faith and righteousness, reassurance, or putting on the whole armour of God.50 These formats are visible in the sermons contained in the Gorton Chest Library: Arthur Hildersham’s CVIII Lectures upon the Fourth of John or his CLII Lectures upon Psalm, LI, for example, focus on specific sections of Scripture and its messages. CVIII Lectures upon the Fourth of John covers topics such as affliction, baptism, certainty of salvation, conversion, faith, prayer, and repentance. These are all important sentiments in Protestantism that are echoed in Hildersham’s CLII Lectures upon Psalm, LI, some of which focus, for example, on the importance of seeking pardon for sin ‘above all things … without delay, and earnestly’ (Lecture Eighteen), the power and goodness of God that is demonstrated in conversion (Lecture Sixty-Nine), and the idea that ‘true saving grace is durable and everlasting’ (Lecture Eighty-Seven).51 Robert Bolton’s Last and Learned Work of the Four Last Things concerned eschatology, and provided its readers with descriptions of the joys of heaven and the pains of hell

50 51

Ian Green, ‘Preaching in the Parishes’ in Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 140. Arthur Hildersham, CVIII Lectures upon the Fourth of John, 3rd edition (London: Moses Bell, 1647), USTC 3043316; Arthur Hildersham, CLII Lectures upon Psalm, LI (London: J. Raworth for Edward Brewster, 1642), USTC 3052352.

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as motivation for their preparation for death and the final judgement.52 The inclusion of these printed sermons in the Gorton Chest complemented the works of practical divinity and texts on living a Christian life, such as Richard Rogers’s Seven Treatises and the collected works of William Perkins in three volumes, that were a feature of the library. Their messages were reinforced in theological and doctrinal works in the collection, which included Anthony Burgess’s The True Doctrine of Justification, in two parts, Zacharius Ursinus’s The Sum of Christian Religion, and Jean-Francois Salvard’s An Harmony of the Confessions of the Faith of Christians and Reformed Churches.53 Through these and other works, the library trustees as a collective outlined the religion that they sought to perpetuate throughout Lancashire, in order to fulfil Chetham’s desire to edify the ‘common people’.54 4.4

Readers and their Interests

Interacting with texts and an intention to apply their messages to everyday life characterised early modern reading habits. Reading was undertaken for a particular reason, in order to fulfil a specific purpose or achieve a pre-determined goal.55 It appears that the goal of clerical and lay readers of the Gorton Chest Library was to find information that reinforced their belief in the importance of Scripture, provided grounding and support for their anti-Catholic sentiments, and demonstrated the necessity of godly living and a good death to salvation. To this end, readers of the works in the Gorton Chest Library annotated their 52 53

54 55

Robert Bolton, Mr. Bolton’s Last and Learned Work of the Four Last Things (London: George Miller, 1633), USTC 3016539. Richard Rogers, Seven Treatises, 3rd edition (London: Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1610), USTC 3004233; William Perkins, The Works of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, The First Volume (London: John Legatt, 1626), USTC 3012639; William Perkins, The Works of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, The Second Volume (London: John Legatt, 1631), USTC 3015392; William Perkins, The Works of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, M. William Perkins, The Third and Last Volume (London: John Haviland, 1631), USTC 3015389, USTC 3015390; Anthony Burgess, The True Doctrine of Justification, in two parts (London: A.M. for Tho. Underhill, 1655), this edition is not listed on the USTC; Zacharius Ursinus, The Sum of Christian Religion (London: James Young for Stephen Bowtell, 1645), USTC 3060885; Jean-Francois Salvard’s An Harmony of the Confessions of the Faith of Christians and Reformed Churches (London: John Legatt, 1643), USTC 3049712. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, Will (uncatalogued). H.J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 82; Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy’, Past & Present, 129 (1990), p. 30.

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books as part of accepted and important early modern reading practices.56 The second-hand nature of the books in the Gorton Chest Library makes it difficult to determine whether the surviving marginalia were written by library users, or previous owners of the books. Whichever the case may be, these annotations are suggestive of the ways in which library users read these volumes. Any interpretation of early modern readers’ marks by later readers and modern historians is, of course, subjective, but in this chapter, written marginalia, non-verbal marks and annotations, and folded corners, are considered marks of readership.57 The subjects of the passages and pages that these marks relate to have therefore been analysed in order to infer which topics were important to early modern readers. The necessity of adhering to Scripture to achieve assurance of grace and salvation is reflected in numerous annotations in the books of the Gorton Chest. A reader of the third volume of the copy of William Perkins’s Works now in the collection, annotated Perkins’s assertion that ‘Scripture is profitable to teach, improve, correct, [and] instruct in righteousness’, with two short diagonal lines in the margins to draw the attention of other readers, and to highlight the importance of this statement.58 One reader of John Dod’s A Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments underlined the importance of ‘the Word and Sacraments, [as the place] wherein Christ Jesus offers himself’.59 Other theological works in the Gorton Chest Library also offered their readers guidance on how they could be certain of the truth of Scripture. For example, a reader folded the corner of a page from John White’s Workes in which he elucidated the ways in which Protestants know Scripture to be the Word of God through ‘the illumination of God’s Spirit’, and by the ‘virtue and power that shows itself in every line and leaf of the Bible’.60 56

57

58 59 60

William H. Sherman, ‘What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books?’, in Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (eds) Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 121; Yeo, The Acquisition of Books, p. 68. Non-verbal marks and annotations include short diagonal lines, asterisks and other symbols in the margins of the page. Folded corners have been judged to be deliberate rather than the cause of general wear and tear owing to the cleanness, crispness and depth of the fold. In some cases, the page is folded almost in half diagonally. Perkins, Works, The Third and Last Volume, p. 492, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.15. John Dod, A Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London: Felix Kyngston, 1614), USTC 3005942, p. 35, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.1.13(1). John White, The Works of that Learned and Reverend Divine, John White (London: Richard Field, 1624), p. 26, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.1. This edition is not listed on the USTC.

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Anti-Catholicism was a recurring feature of marginalia in the books in the Gorton Chest Library; the corruption of the Catholic Church, idolatry and the veneration of images were some of the most hotly contested issues highlighted in those annotations. Most Protestants believed that the pope was the Antichrist prophesied in the Book of Revelation and that, as one reader underlined in Francis White’s A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, the Roman Catholic Church had ‘degenerate[d] and depart[ed] from the right Faith’.61 Some believed that God’s destruction of the Catholic Church was a result of its failings, which were constituted by numerous actions.62 For a reader of Francis White’s A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, who underlined the assertion that ‘the Church wherein the Apostles taught and governed, was the ground and pillar of Truth, fully, entirely, and in all things’, assurance of grace and everlasting salvation could only be achieved within the true Church, and not through Catholic innovations.63 These innovations, moreover, included the practices of praying for the dead and assigning God’s holiness to food and days of the calendar. A reader of John Dod’s Exposition of the Ten Commandments underlined a sentence in which the author asserted that Catholics had ‘defiled the whole worship of God … as by praying for the dead, putting holinesse in meates and daies, &c.’.64 Reformed Protestants perceived Catholic veneration of images and saints as a manifestation of the latter Church’s corruption, believing instead that they needed only to look at themselves and their fellow godly if they wanted to see a true image of Christ, because they were born from Christ and contained his spirit.65 Dod’s discussion on idols inextricably linked the internal spiritual representation of Christ within a Christian during the Eucharist and the external worship of that same God, and posited that no true Christian would allow the worship of an idol, as a reader underlined: ‘have you felt him [Christ], and received his body and blood in the Sacraments? If you have beheld his excellent beauty in these means, you will abhor an idol, as an ugly thing’.66 This annotation proposes the impossibility of loving an idol for those who had truly seen God and Christ through the revelatory sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 61 62 63 64 65 66

Francis White, A Reply to Jesuit Fisher’s Answer to Certain Questions Propounded by His Most Gracious Majesty, King James (London: Adam Islip; 1624), USTC 3011511, p. 4, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.1.27. John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim, ‘Introduction’ in John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 2; White, A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, p. 63. White, A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, p. 4. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, p. 74. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, p. 67. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, p. 72.

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The large number of godly men and women who were uncertain of their assurance turned to works of practical divinity for instructions on godly living.67 Within the works of practical divinity, marginalia consistently featured next to descriptions of sinful emotions and behaviours and exhortations to repentance, and advice on how best to live a godly life and die a good death in preparation for salvation. Covetousness, greed, envy, and lust were four sinful emotions discussed in Dod’s Exposition of the Ten Commandments that readers underlined. Covetousness and greed could lead a man away from God, as one reader underlined: ‘give a covetous man wealth enough, and an ambitious man honour enough, and you may lead them whither you will’.68 Similarly, covetousness and greed could also lead to envy, which is, as one of Dod’s readers underlined, ‘a bitter affection, against the prosperity and the pre-eminence of another’.69 Lust was another of Dod’s targeted sins that drew the attention of his readers, one of whom underlined Dod’s assertion that ‘he that would not have sin born, must not let lust conceive’. Lustful thoughts broke the law of God, which Dod believed ‘was not only given to reform and rule the outward manners, but the soul also’.70 Repentance of these (and all) sins was a complicated process, and the nature of the sin determined the degree of repentance required. God gave his pardon only to the most repentant sinners, and, as one reader underlined in White’s A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, ‘full assurance of remission of sins succeeds repentance, faith, obedience and mortification’.71 Once repentance had been undertaken, sin could no longer separate the godly from God.72 Difficult times often arose as people struggled to resist worldly temptations, but these difficulties were an accepted part of a godly life, and important markers on the road to salvation. One reader of Isaac Ambrose’s Media folded a corner of a page that described how, by avoiding worldly possessions and fleshly lust, true Christians would also avoid ‘the dismal thoughts of an accusing, tormenting conscience everlastingly’, and the ‘everlasting burnings’ of hell.73 John 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Michael P. Winship, ‘Weak Christians, Backsliders, and Carnal Gospelers: Assurance of Salvation and the Pastoral Origins of Puritan Practical Divinity in the 1580s’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 9 (2001), p. 465. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, pp. 52–53. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, p. 261. Dod, Exposition of the Ten Commandments, pp. 284–285. White, A Reply to Jesuit Fisher, p. 162. Hildersham, CVIII Lectures, pp. 88–89, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.5(2). Isaac Ambrose, Prima, Media & Ultima: The First, Middle and Last Things (London: T.R. and E.M., 1654), part 2, p. 112, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.1.6(1). This edition is not listed on the USTC.

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Dod, in his Ten Sermons Tending Chiefely to the Fitting of Men for the Worthy Receiving of the Lords Supper, offered a more nuanced interpretation of the need to avoid worldly goods, which was annotated by a reader in a vertical series of large dots of ink in the adjacent margin. Dod asserted that the godly were not expected to ‘sell all his substance, and earthly possessions, and commodities: but only that he should withdraw his confidence from these’. Thus, the desire for eternal life should render earthly possessions and valuables meaningless to the godly.74 For many godly people in early modern England, hard times and suffering were signs of God’s favour and their own elect status. William Perkins, in the first volume of his Works in the Gorton Chest Library, wrote that ‘misery and affliction’ had a dual purpose. His reasoning was underlined by one of his readers, alluding to its importance to that reader: ‘the first [reason for misery and affliction is] that God is well pleased with us, and that we are reconciled to God in Christ: the second [reason is], that all our miseries shall in the end turn to our good and everlasting salvation’.75 A reader also underlined Perkins’s suggestion that the patience that stemmed from their faith in God should be enough to bring Protestants to ‘contentation [contentment] in any estate’.76 For Perkins, and for the readers who underlined his words, suffering was a sign of God’s love because the Devil was attempting to drive them into sin: ‘spiritual temptations … are rather a sign of God’s love, because the Devil’s hatred is most towards them whom God loves best’.77 Similarly, a reader folded the page of Richard Baxter’s The Saints Everlasting Rest on which Baxter asserted that ‘labour and trouble’ were the means by which God made clear to the faithful the differences between Heaven and Earth, and argued that these needed to be endured before eternal rest was granted.78 The difficulties endured by the godly in their lifetimes were the best possible preparation for a good death. Both Perkins and Hildersham, who were students together at Christ’s College, Cambridge in the 1570s, advocated thinking 74 75 76 77 78

John Dod, Ten Sermons Tending Chiefely to the Fitting of Men for the Worthy Receiving of the Lords Supper (London: T.P. for Roger Jackson, 1621), USTC 3009792, p. 149, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.1.13(2). Perkins, Works, The First Volume, p. 481, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.13. Perkins, Works, The First Volume, p. 481, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.13. Perkins, Works, The Third and Last Volume, p. 144, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.15. Richard Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest, or, a Treatise of the Blessed State of Saints (London: Thomas Underhill and Francis Tyton, 1656), part 3, p. 252, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.1.1. This edition is not listed on the USTC.

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about death during life.79 Folded corners of Hildersham’s CVIII Lectures, in which he pronounced the benefits of thinking about death to include the reduction of bitterness in life’s trials and tribulations, suggest the importance at least one reader placed on these ideas.80 Similarly, Perkins stated that Protestants’ afflictions were just another form of preparation for death. As one reader of his Works underlined, ‘every affliction is (as it were) a pettie death, and if we do in it subject ourselves to the hand of God, we shall the better obey him in the great[est] death of all’.81 Perkins encouraged his readers to integrate their preparations for death into their daily lives and, in the second volume of his Works, outlined three important preparations for death that were marked for future reference by a reader. Perkins’s assertion that Protestants should be ‘esteeming of every day as the day of his death’, was linked to his second point about disarming death by avoiding sin, and most importantly, finding some semblance of eternal life in their temporal one. A reader noted three dots meaning ‘therefore’ in the margin at the point at which Perkins moved from one statement to the next, signifying the interconnectivity of the actions Perkins described.82 Death was not the end, but the start of eternal life. The signs of grace that came from their belief in God gave to Puritans the assurance of salvation that they so desperately sought for themselves and their families. The numerous annotations on the subject of practical divinity found in the books of the Gorton Chest clearly demonstrate the level of trust that the godly placed in these books as instruction manuals on living a life pleasing to God, in the hope of obtaining His grace and being assured of their salvation. 4.5

Conclusion

Chetham’s Protestant trustees succeeded in providing repositories of religious education for use by the ‘common’ people. They co-operated despite their religious differences and ensured that their different confessional identities were represented within the collections. The interest of the Gorton Chest’s readers in the importance of Scripture, anti-Catholicism, godly living and making a good death, reflected in marginalia and other annotations, suggest these were 79 80 81 82

Bryan D. Spinks, ‘Hildersham [Hildersam], Arthur, (1563–1632)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13256. Arthur Hildersham, CLII Lectures upon Psalm, LI (London: J. Raworth, 1642), USTC 3052352, p. 241, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.5(1). Perkins, Works, The Second Volume, p. 37, annotated copy in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, shelfmark GC.2.14. Perkins, Works: The Second Volume, p. 34.

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some of the key religious concerns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Whilst the Gorton Chest Library provides a useful microstudy of early modern reading practices, just how widely these practices were replicated in other parish libraries needs further research in order to be fully understood. Whilst detailed studies of other parish libraries of the early modern period have been undertaken, including that of Grantham in Lincolnshire, Oakham in Rutland, and More in Shropshire, these tend towards examinations of the contents of these libraries’ collections, and rarely include in-depth discussions of marks of readership and usage.83 If the marginalia, annotations and the other signs of readership in these and other surviving parish library collections were analysed in more detail, it may be possible to build a more comprehensive understanding of religious belief and interest at a parish level during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This, in turn, would provide a deeper insight into the important role that parish libraries played in the religious education of parish clergy and the laity in early modern England, and explain their later development. Just as they themselves had grown out of pre-Reformation book collections, post-Reformation parish libraries ultimately became precursors to the lending libraries that grew in prominence throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As part of a flurry of educational developments in the early years of the eighteenth century, the clergyman Thomas Bray and his associates, who eventually formed the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), advocated for lending libraries to be placed in every deanery in England. The initiative was undoubtedly successful in improving the provision for religious education by these means, and the shift from reference libraries to lending libraries engendered interesting changes in the nature of readership.84 83 84

Angela Roberts, ‘The Chained Library, Grantham’, Library History, 2 (1971), pp. 75–90; Anne L. Herbert, ‘Oakham Parish Library’, Library History, 6 (1982), pp. 1–11; Conal Condren, ‘More Parish Library, Salop’, Library History, 7 (1987), pp. 141–162. W.M. Jacob, ‘Parochial Libraries and their Users’, Library & Information History, 27 (2011), p. 213. For more information on book collecting and ownership, and lending libraries in this period, see, for example, Mark Towsey, ‘Book use and Sociability in Lost Libraries of the Eighteenth Century: Towards a Union Catalogue’ in Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (eds.), Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 414–438; David Allan, ‘Book-Collecting and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 45 (2015), pp. 74–92.

part 2 Reading Together

⸪

chapter 5

Friars and Friends: Books as Private or Shared Belongings in Early Modern Religious Communities Flavia Bruni One of the first chapters of the Speculum perfectionis, an anonymous work on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi written a century after his death, tells the story of a novice who wanted to keep a copy of the Psalter for his own use. In contrast to the Minister General, who had agreed to this request, Saint Francis firmly disapproved of his brother’s desire for books and knowledge: Once you got a psalter of your own, you will want a breviary. And once you got a breviary, you will sit on a cathedra like a solemn priest and ask your brother: “Bring me my breviary”…. Brother, I experienced myself the same temptation to own books; but … for as many of us who crave knowledge, blessed will be the ones who will make themselves illiterate for the love of God.1 This anecdote is especially relevant in this chapter not only for such an apparently unflattering estimation of literate culture, but because of the specific reference to the ownership of books. In the sixteenth century, the Rule of Saint Francis still formally prevented members of the Franciscan Order and other Mendicant friars from owning books. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the book inventories sent to the Roman Congregation of the Index of Forbidden Books between 1598 and 1603, together with the inspection of books coming from dispersed collections of Mendicant Orders, seems to prove a quite 1 Anonimo della Porziuncola, Speculum perfectionis status fratris Minoris. Edizione critica e studio storico-letterario, edited by Daniele Solvi (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2006), pp. 7–8, De novitio volente habere psalterium de licentia eius: Alio quoque tempore quidam frater novitius qui sciebat legere psalterium, licet non bene, obtinuit a generali ministro licentiam habendi ipsum. Sed quia audiverat quod beatus Franciscus nolebat fratres suos esse cupidos de scientia et libris non contentabatur illud habere sine licentia beati Francisci. … ‘Postquam habueris psalterium, concupisces et voles habere breviarium. Et postquam habueris breviarium sedebis in cathedra tamquam magnus prelatus et dices fratri tuo: ‘Apporta mihi breviarium’. … Frater, ego similiter tentatus fui habere libros sed … tot sunt qui libenter ascendunt ad scientiam quod beatus erit qui se fecerit sterilem amore Domini Dei’.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_007

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different scenario.2 This chapter will focus on the relationship with books, and especially on the contradiction between the rule and vow of poverty of the Servite Order and de facto practice, shown by books and inventories within the Order of the Servants of Mary.3 5.1

Inventories

The Order of the Servants of Mary originated in the fourth decade of the thirteenth century and was formally approved at the beginning of the following century by Pope Benedict XI.4 Its sixteenth-century constitutions never mention books, except for an article requiring the authorisation of the Prior General or Provincial before any book sale: friars were allowed to use books, but formally prevented from owning and selling them.5 The story, quoted in the 2 My research on this topic developed within the RICI (Ricerca sull’Inchiesta della Congregazione dell’Indice) project, on which see my ‘The book inventories of Servite authors and the survey of the Roman Congregation of the Index in Counter-Reformation Italy’, in Malcolm Walsby and Natasha Constantinidou (eds), Documenting the Early Modern Book World: Inventories and Catalogues in Manuscript and Print (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 207–230; see also Rosa Marisa Borraccini, Giovanna Granata and Roberto Rusconi, ‘A proposito dell’Inchiesta della S. Congregazione dell’Indice dei libri proibiti di fine ’500’, Il capitale culturale, 6 (2013), pp. 13–45 (online: ), for a comprehensive bibliography on the project updated to 2013. In this chapter I will refer to the database of the project, Le biblioteche degli Ordini regolari in Italia alla fine del secolo XVI, online: (henceforth RICI). I am grateful to Edoardo Barbieri, Monica Bocchetta, Rosa Marisa Borraccini, Emanuele Carletti, Odir J. Dias, Lorenzo Mancini, Francesco Nocco, Angela Nuovo, Andrea Ottone, Andrew Pettegree, Roberto Rusconi and Alessandra Toschi for the many suggestions received at this stage of my research. A previous Italian version of this contribution is available: Flavia Bruni, ‘Ad usum fratrum et amicorum: ordinamento mendicante, Rinascimento e Controriforma nelle raccolte librarie dei Servi di Maria’, in Libri e biblioteche: le letture dei frati mendicanti tra Rinascimento ed età moderna (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2019), pp. 301–325. All online resources quoted in this chapter were last accessed on 31 August 2019. 3 On the so-called survey of Congregation of the Index in the Order of the Servants of Mary see Roberto Rusconi, ‘Le biblioteche dell’Ordine dei Servi alla fine del XVI secolo’, Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, 54 (2004), pp. 155–163, and Roberto Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale nell’Ordine dei Servi: libri e biblioteche alla fine del XVI secolo’, in I Servi di Santa Maria nell’epoca delle riforme (1413–1623), proceedings of the conference (Rome, 7–9 October 2010), Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, 61–62 (2011–2012), pp. 307–339, esp. pp. 316–331. 4 See Servi di Maria, in Enciclopedia cattolica, vol. 11 (Florence: Sansoni, 1953), cols. 410–411. 5 ‘Constitutiones recentiores fratrum Servorum S. Mariae 1503–1766’, Monumenta OSM, 6 (1903–1904), pp. 5–158; and 7 (1905), pp. 5–69: dating from 1503, 1548, 1556, 1569 and 1580. The profit gained from a book sale had to be reinvested in the purchase of more books. See

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introduction, of the friar who wanted to keep a prayer book for himself perfectly captures the spirit of the Mendicant Rule, which prevented formal ownership of books, as of any other goods. Nevertheless, indirect evidence shows that individual collections were in fact tolerated. Servite constitutions reveal the crucial role ascribed to education within the Order, in spite of the Mendicant Rule, especially in connection with preaching. This is further confirmed by the inventories of Servite libraries in the same period. The Servants of Mary were able to comply sufficiently with the task of drawing up detailed lists of all the books held in shared libraries or personally kept by friars, and sending these reports to the Congregation of the Index.6 Quite surprisingly, the number of individual collections is significantly higher than that of cloister libraries. In the Province of Lombardy, 120 out of 130 inventories refer to collections that belonged to individual friars.7 Only seven inventories referenced the 248 books found in cloister libraries, accounting for less than five percent of the 4,409 books surveyed in the province of Lombardy (see Graph 5.1). These 248 books were distributed in five different cloister libraries each comprising between thirty and seventy books, with a further ten books found in two other convents.8 The province of Tuscany reported 8,857 books. A third of these represented the holdings of eleven conventual libraries, while the remaining two thirds were part of seventy-five individual collections also Flavia Bruni, « Erano di molti libri proibiti »: frate Lorenzo Lucchesi e la censura libraria a Lucca alla fine del Cinquecento (Rome: Marianum, 2009), pp. 22–27: La cultura all’interno dell’Ordine; and Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale’, p. 308. 6 These Servite lists are now collected in three Vatican manuscripts, two of which (Vat. lat. 11321, 538 leaves; and Vat. lat. 11270, 404 leaves) entirely comprise inventories of Servite libraries, while a third one (Vat. lat. 11286) includes only a few Servite inventories among some miscellaneous material. The few book inventories of Servite friars found in Vat. Lat. 11286 (ff. 154r–159v) are entirely available in Flavia Bruni, ‘Una inquisitio nel convento servita di Lucca: i libri nella cella di fra Lorenzo’, in Rosa Marisa Borraccini and Roberto Rusconi (eds), Libri, biblioteche e cultura degli ordini regolari nell’Italia moderna attraverso la documentazione della Congregazione dell’Indice, proceedings of the international conference (Macerata 30 May–1 June 2006) (Vatican: Vatican Library, 2006), pp. 473–523, at pp. 496–523, and through the RICI database (lists 4021–4032, 4059–4066, 5100, 6509–6510); the report of an investigation run in the room of Lorenzo from Lucca, a Servite friar who acted as a censor for the bishop of the Republic of Lucca, included in the same manuscript (ff. 28r–47r) is available in Bruni, « Erano di molti libri proibiti », pp. 59–150, and through the RICI database (list 6285). See also Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale’, pp. 319–322. 7 Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 2r–169r (former 1r–177r). 8 Licciana Nardi (66 books; RICI list 626); Scandiano (65 books; RICI list 620); Tradate (40 books; RICI list 1536); San Martino in Rio (36 books; RICI list 1520); Turano Lodigiano (36 books; RICI list 1542); Vogogna (8 books; RICI list 1558); Galliate (2 books; RICI list 622). I am grateful to Odir J. Dias for his help in the identification of the cloisters.

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248

Individual (120 collections) Cloisters (7 collections)

4161

graph 5.1 Distribution of books in the Servite Province of Lombardy

3309 Individual (75 collections) Cloisters (11 collections) 5548

graph 5.2 Distribution of books in the Servite Province of Tuscany

(see Graph 5.2).9 The manuscript Vat. lat. 11270 comprised 260 lists of books of individual friars, and thirty-one referred to cloister libraries in the Servite provinces of Mantua, Patrimonio, Genoa, the Venezie and the March of Treviso.10 The size of individual collections varied. They originated from scholarly needs and were likely to grow steadily over the years, thanks to donations and 9 10

Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 184r–538r (former 1r–277r). See Rusconi, Le biblioteche dell’Ordine dei Servi, p. 159. The Servite provinces did not exactly match with civil States or regions.

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Friars and Friends 500 450 400

Number of books

350 300 250 200 150 100 50

1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69 73 77 81 85 89 93 97 101 105 109 113 117 121

0

Individual collections

graph 5.3 Scope of individual collections in the Servite Province of Lombardy

other forms of acquisition. In the province of Lombardy, forty-seven personal libraries comprised between two and ten books; fifty-seven held between eleven and fifty volumes; and a further nineteen libraries housed between fifty-one and a hundred items. Five libraries were found to have even a larger number of books. Agostino Galli from Milan, Provincial of Lombardy, had an impressive collection of 476 books (see Graph 5.3).11 The inventories of these individual collections are usually introduced by a genitive expression, such as ‘List of books of ’, and closed by another formula, such as ‘These books are to be found next to the aforementioned father’. Expressions such as ‘Books for the use of’ or ‘to be used by’ are typically camouflaged ownership inscriptions, that were tailored to comply with the Mendicant ban on private possessions. These expressions only occasionally replace the possessive ‘Books of’, which seems not to have been treated as an issue. According to the Mendicant Rule, friars were not allowed to bind the fate of their books through testamentary wills or donations. Servite constitutions from 1556 onwards stated that, after the death of a friar, his books should join 11

Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 62r–68v (RICI list 634).

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the library of the cloister to which he belonged.12 Nevertheless, both inventories and books provide evidence that books occasionally passed on from one friar to another. A later hand amended the ownership inscription on the initial flyleaf of the copy of Francesco Giovanetti’s Pontificum Romanorum liber now at the library Città d’Arezzo by adding that the book, once owned by friar Apollonio Piunio, was then (‘now’) a possession of friar Agostino Gorucci ‘et amicorum’.13 Inventories seem also to demonstrate that books were not usually relocated from individual rooms to a shared library. The ‘books that were in the room of father Eliseo and friar Giovanni, and are now [kept] by friar Filippo Maria from Florence’ seem to have still been in the room once inhabited by Eliseo and Giovanni at the time it was taken over by Filippo Maria from Florence.14 Friars moving from one convent to another might even decide whether to bring their books with them. When taking over the role as Prior of the convent of Reggio Emilia, friar Christofano picked seven books from his collection and left the largest part in the cloister of Siena, his former affiliation.15 It was not 12

13

14

15

Flavia Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo ad Arezzo: tracce per una ipotesi ricostruttiva’, in Rosa Marisa Borraccini (ed.), Dalla notitia librorum degli inventari agli esemplari: saggi di indagine su libri e biblioteche dai codici Vaticani latini 11266–11326 (Macerata: EUM, 2009), pp. 179–203, at pp. 191–193; and Bruni, « Erano di molti libri proibiti », pp. 26–27; Rusconi, ‘Le biblioteche dell’Ordine dei Servi’, p. 161, and Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale’, p. 314. Arezzo, Biblioteca Città d’Arezzo, B.142: Francesco Giovanetti, Pontificum Romanorum liber ex veteribus Germanis desumptus authoribus … (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1570; EDIT16 – Censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo, online: , henceforth EDIT16, CNCE 21047; OPAC SBN – Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale, online: , henceforth SBN, RMLE004204; USTC – Universal Short Title Catalogue, online: , henceforth USTC, 832926). See also below, note 35. For the expression ‘et amicorum’ see below, Sharing Books with ‘Friends’. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 374r–378r (125 books; RICI list 7271): ‘libri ch’enno in camera del padre maestro Eliseo e di fra’ Giouanni et che al presente si ritroua fra’ Filippo Maria da Fiorenza’. Friar Eliseo is perhaps Eliseo from Treviso, possibly the author of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Piero Scapecchi, ‘L’Hypnerotomachia Poliphili e il suo autore’, Accademie & biblioteche d’Italia, 51 (1983), pp. 286–298 and Piero Scapecchi, ‘Giunte e considerazioni per la bibliografia sul Polifilo’, Accademie & biblioteche d’Italia, 53 (1985), pp. 68–73; see also Agostino Contò, ‘Per alcuni fantasmi di meno. Nota su Giovanni da Colonia, fra Eliseo da Treviso, Paolo da Castello’, in Stefania Rossi Minutelli (ed.), Il bibliotecario inattuale. Miscellanea di studi di amici per Giorgio Emanuele Ferrari bibliotecario e bibliografo marciano (Padua: Novacharta, 2007), pp. 227–240. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, f. 136v: ‘Lista de’ libri del p. maestro Christofano da Siena che portò da Siena quando fu fatto prior di Reggio’ (7 books; RICI list 1499); ff. 269r–274r: ‘Lista de’ libri concessi a uso di fra’ Christofano da Siena de l’Ordine de Serui dalla religione’ (61 books; RICI list 5796).

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unusual for friars to keep a small number of books in another location, in addition to a main collection safely shelved in the cloister where they were based. In addition to the 550 books he shared with Anton Zanobi Baglioni in the convent of Florence, Lelio Baglioni also had a second library of twenty-eight items in the convent of Pisa.16 The case of the 221 ‘books of the library of S. Bernardo for the use of master David Bianconi’ is also remarkable, as the inventory implies that a friar borrowed so many books from the common library that it amounted to a considerable personal library.17 Inventories suggest that some of these collections were shared between two friars. Carlo from Milan and Leonardo from Turano shared fourteen books in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Cavacurta, in the current province of Lodi.18 In the same convent, Valeriano and Paolo shared a more substantial collection of seventy-four books.19 Lanfranchino and Giovanni from Milan shared twenty-one books in the convent of Magnago, in the current province of Milano.20 Similar shared collections were even larger in Florence: Alessandro Maria and Giulio Antonio shared eighty-nine books, and Lelio Baglioni shared 550 books with Anton Zanobi Baglioni.21 Arcangelo Giani, who was later the author of the seventeenth-century masterpiece on the history of the Order of the Servants of Mary, had seventy books of his own in Florence, and shared 165 more books with a lesser-known friar named Deodato.22 These examples 16 17 18 19 20 21

22

Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 454v–455r: ‘Libri del p. reverendissimo maestro Lelio che ha in Pisa’ (RICI list 6289). See Bruni, ‘The Book Inventories’, p. 211. For the books shared with Anton Zanobi Baglioni see below, note 21. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 150r–158r: ‘Libri della libraria di S. Bernardo a uso di maestro Dauid Bian{con}i’ (RICI list 1528), dated to the year 1600; the convent was that of San Bernardo, in Lezza. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 9v–10r: ‘Lista de’ libri di fra’ Carlo da Milano et fra’ Leonardo da Turano insieme, conventuali al presente in Cavacurta’ (RICI list 435). Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 14r–16r: ‘Lista de’ libri del padre baccalauro Valeriano e del padre frate Paolo da Cauacurta insieme’ (RICI list 442). Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 98rv: ‘Questi libri sono appresso del p. f. Lanfranchino et f. Giovani da Milano’ (RICI list 661). Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 304r–305r: ‘Lista de’ libri di f. Allexandro Maria e di f. Giulio Antonio fiorentinj’ (RICI list 7270); and ff. 502r–517v: ‘Lista de’ libri che stanno a uso per il p. reverendissimo maestro Lelio Baglioni de’ Serui e del padre maestro Anton Zanobi Baglioni da Fiorenza’ (RICI list 6287). See also Bruni, ‘The Book Inventories’, pp. 211–215. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 477v–480v: ‘Lista de’ libri concessi ad uso del r. padre maestro Archangelo Giani fiorentino’ (RICI list 6264); ff. 288r–291v: ‘Lista de’ librj del p. maestro Archangelo Gianj fiorentino e dj f. Deodato suo fratello de l’Ordine de’ Seruj’ (RICI list 6288). On this list see also Bruni, ‘The book inventories of Servite authors’, at pp. 215–219; for the suggested identification of Deodato with Deodato da Pistoia see p. 219, note 50. An earlier inventory, recording four books belonging to Arcangelo Giani

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suggest that sharing books was in some instances the result of sharing a room, as in the case of the ‘books that were in the room of father Eliseo and friar Giovanni’ mentioned above. Despite being one friar’s possessions, books were perhaps registered under the name of both occupants at the time the inventories were drawn up. This could also provide a reason for the otherwise inexplicable uncertainty as to who owned eighteen books in the convent of Pistoia, ‘belonging to Christofano from Pistoia, Prior, or to master Giovanni from Prato’.23 A letter found in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provides further evidence of the consideration of books as personal property. On 17 April 1600, Paolo Pelegri asked for extra time for the survey of books he was conducting in the province of Lombardy in his role as Prior Provincial. In his apologies, Pelegri explained that the survey had been occasionally delayed by the absence of friars who locked their rooms before leaving the cloister, preventing access to their libraries even to their superiors.24

23

24

in the convent of Cortona where he was Prior from 1598 to 1600, is in Vatican Library, Vat. Lat. 11286, f. 158r: ‘Nel convento de’ Serui di Cortona ci sono questi libbri ad uso di maestro Arcangelo fiorentino priore’ (RICI list 6509); on this list see Bruni, ‘Una inquisitio’, pp. 512–513. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 448v–451r: ‘Lista de’ libbri del reverendo p. f. Christofano da Pistoia priore o di maestro Giouanni da Prato’ (RICI list 7269): the second part, ‘or to master Giovanni from Prato’ (italic mine), looks like a later addition by the same hand, after a full stop, on the next line. Vatican, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Index, III/2, Epistolæ archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, inquisitorum tomus II, f. 409r: letter from Paolo Pelegri da Como, Prior Provincial of Lombardy of the Order of the Servants of Mary, to Cardinal Simeone Tagliavia d’Aragonia, dated Parma, 17 April 1600: « Illustrissimo e reuerendissimo monsignore padron mio colendissimo s. Il nostro p. generale di buona memoria, d’ordine della Sacra Congregatione dell’Indice, mi fece un precetto per sue lettere date in Roma alli 29 di genaio e da me riceuuto in Cauacurta, diocese di Lodi, il dì 9 di febraio, ch’io per tutto questo corrente mese facessi ch’in Roma, nelle mani del nostro p. procurator dell’Ordine, fusse la nota e l’indice di tutti e’ libbri greci, latini, etc. che si ritrouassino in ciascun conuento e luogo di questa mia prouincia di Lombardia. Io non ho mancato d’usare ogni diligenza per ubbidire, scriuendo a tutti i priori e vicarij della prouincia a mandare in Milano al mio p. socio la detta nota de’ libri tutti acciò si riscriuessino in un libbro con lettera intelligibile, con indice alfabetico. Ma non sarà possibile illustrissimo signore, alla fine di questo, che tutte le liste sieno n’anche fatte, non che riscritte, non ch’il libbro habbia in tal tempo d’essere in Roma. La cascione perché, quando io riceuei il precetto, di già s’erano assentati diuersi predicatori in luntani paesi, con le chiaui de’ loro studij, né sono ritornati in prouincia se non appena in tempo di uenire qua al capitolo prouinciale che si farà domani … Il perché vorrei pregare e supplicare v. s. illustrissima e reuerendissima a restar seruita, bontà sua, di prolungare il tempo almeno per tutto maggio prossimo, che ne riceueremo gratia singolare restandogliene con obligo grandissimo. Ispedito il capitolo, questi padri ritornati subbitamente alle sue stanze, attenderanno al

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Clearly book collections were managed as private and individual possessions, with exclusive access, even if, according to the Order’s rule, such possession appears contrary to the nature of its vow of poverty. 5.2

Ownership Inscriptions

The opportunity to match an inventory with the books it records can provide further information about the history of libraries in former religious houses, as is the case for some 350 books now in the special collections of the municipal library of Arezzo, which originally came from the Servite convent of San Pier Piccolo.25 Three inventories dating from the end of the sixteenth century, the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the mid-nineteenth century respectively enable us to track the history of the library of San Pier Piccolo up to the time it was dispersed during the dissolution of religious houses carried out by the newly-created Kingdom of Italy. The first inventory comprises some 1,580 entries, proving San Pier Piccolo to have been the largest Servite library recorded in the survey of the Congregation of the Index.26 Some of these books have been densely annotated. Inscriptions and marginalia reinforce the impression, already brought about by the cursory examination of inventories described in the first part of this chapter, that private collections were, in fact, tolerated within the Order of the Servants of Mary despite the Mendicant Rule. Several books carry what can be described as individual ownership inscriptions on title pages, flyleaves and pastedowns. Such inscriptions are meant to tie an object to an individual for both the present and the future. Books might appear to have been destined ‘to the use’ (‘ad usum’) of a certain friar without mentioning his cloister. Occasionally thick marginalia

25

26

fare dette liste … », quoted in Andrea Ottone, Fisionomia culturale degli ordini regolari e circolazione libraria: la provincia certosina del Regno di Napoli, Università degli studi di Napoli “Federico II”, 2008 (doctoral thesis in History of European Society, supervisors Anna Maria Rao and Roberto Rusconi), p. 57, nota 170; and in Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale’, appendix 1, pp. 332–333 (transcription by Alessandro Serra). See Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’; Flavia Bruni, ‘How to untangle historic libraries: illuminating collections through inventories’, Quaerendo, 46, 2–3 (2016), pp. 165–177; and Flavia Bruni, ‘From inventories to signs on books: evidence for the history of libraries in the modern age’, The International Journal of the Book, 8, 4 (2011), pp. 51–60. Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 221r–267r; 273r–274r: ‘Indice de’ libri del conuento e’ padri di San Pietro Piccolo d’Arezzo. Frati de’ Seruj’ (RICI list 4845). In my previous publications I erroneously only referred to nearly 1,550 items recorded in the ff. 221r to 267r; we must add to them those listed in two more leaves (273r–274r), interfoliated, which at first I did not recognise as the final part of the inventory of San Pier Piccolo.

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seem to prove that this use was intended as exclusive. The books of Agostino Gorucci and Stefano Bonucci are excellent examples. Agostino Gorucci, originally from Monte San Savino in the province of Arezzo, was prior of the province of Tuscia from 1597 to 1600. Skilled in Hebrew and Greek, he taught theology in Florence and Siena.27 A number of books now in the Arezzo city library bear his ownership inscription on their title pages. The second and third part of Antoninus of Florence’s Chronica printed in Lyon by the Huguetan brothers in 1543 shows his ownership inscription in Latin and Italian.28 Stefano Bonucci was Prior of the province of Tuscia from 1554 to 1557, Prior General from 1570 to 1573, Bishop of Alatri from 1572 and, from 1574, of Arezzo. He led the Servite Studia of Padua and Bologna and took part in the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1547. In 1587, two years before his death, Bonucci was made a Cardinal and given the title of Santi Marcellino e Pietro.29 His bookplate, usually glued either on the recto or verso of the title page, shows his family coat of arms surmounted by a cardinal’s hat and, below, the inscription ‘F. Steph. Bonuccius Card. Aretinus’. As a Cardinal, Bonucci was excused from obedience to the Mendicant Rule and bequeathed his book collection to the convent of Arezzo.30

27

28

29

30

See Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’, p. 192; Ubaldo M. Forconi (ed.), Chiese e conventi dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria – Quaderni di notizie, vol. 1 (Viareggio: L’Ancora, 1972), p. 16; Fasti teologali ovvero Notizie istoriche del collegio de’ teologi della sacra università Fiorentina dalla sua fondazione fino all’anno 1738. Raccolte da Luca Giuseppe Cerracchini (Florence: Francesco Moücke, 1738) (available online: ), pp. 292–293. Arezzo, Biblioteca Città d’Arezzo, I° 268, 2–3: Antonino da Firenze, Chronica Antonini. Prima [-tertia] pars historiarum domini Antonini archiepiscopi Florentini, in tomis tribus discretarum, solertiorique studio recognitarum, triplici cum eiusdem indice nunc luculentius dito & a mendis expurgato (Lyon: Gilles & Jacques the Younger Huguetan, 1543; SBN BVEE021653; USTC 140797): ownership inscription in Latin ‘F. Augustini Goruccij servitae a Monte Sancti Savini Aretini’, and in the Italian vernacular ‘Di maestro Agostino dei Servi dal Monte Santo Savino frate d’Arezzo’ respectively. See Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’, p. 192 (the transcription I provided in that article was partially wrong). See Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’, pp. 192–194; Boris Ulianich, ‘Bonucci, Stefano’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 12 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1971), pp. 457–464 (online: ); Forconi (ed.), Chiese e conventi, p. 16; and Davide M. Montagna, ‘Chiusura del convento dei Servi a San Pier Piccolo d’Arezzo (1387–1987)’, Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, 23 (1987), pp. 195–202, at p. 198. See Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’, pp. 192–193, note 34.

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Sharing Books with ‘Friends’

The expression ‘et amicorum’ is believed to have originated in Greek (‘καὶ τῶν φίλων’), likely in Byzantine circles, in the 1420s. The first scholars to have used this expression in Western Europe seem to have been the Venetian nobleman Leonardo Giustinian and the humanist from Tolentino Francesco Filelfo.31 Filelfo might have seen the Greek expression while he resided as a notary and a chancellor to the Baile of the Venetians in Constantinople, and later on brought it over to Venice. The Latin motto ‘et amicorum’ spread from Venice to other cultural centres of Italy and Europe. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, several scholars throughout Europe placed this expression beside their own name on the title pages of their books: to mention just a few, the humanist Angelo Poliziano, the naturalist Ulisse Adrovandi, and Jean Grolier, secrétaire du roi and later Treasurer-General of France, who even had it impressed and gilded on the bindings of some dozens of his books by Étienne Roffet, the first official royal binder.32 After reaching its peak in the sixteenth century, the use of this expression appears to decline in frequency of use in the seventeenth century.33 31

32 33

Leonardo Giustinian was born in Venice between 1381 and 1386, and died there in 1446; see Franco Pignatti, ‘Giustinian, Leonardo’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 57 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2001), pp. 249–255. Francesco Filelfo was born in Tolentino in the March of Ancona in 1398 and died in Florence in 1481; see Paolo Viti, ‘Filelfo, Francesco’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 47 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1997), pp. 613–626 (online: ). For an updated survey of Grolier stamped bindings see Isabelle de Conihout, On Ten New Groliers: Jean Grolier’s First Library and His Ownership Marks Before 1540 (New York: The Grolier Club, 2013). Geoffrey D. Hobson, ‘Et amicorum’, The Library, ser. 5a, 4 (1949), pp. 87–99; Angela Nuovo, ‘« Et amicorum »: costruzione e circolazione del sapere nelle biblioteche private del Cinquecento’, in Borraccini and Rusconi (eds), Libri, biblioteche e cultura, pp. 105–127; Donatella Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda, ‘Letture e circoli eruditi tra Quattro e Cinquecento: a proposito dell’ex-libris « et amicorum »’, in Caterina Tristano, Marta Calleri and Leonardo Magionami (eds), I luoghi dello scrivere da Francesco Petrarca agli albori dell’età moderna (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2006), pp. 375–394, pp. 376 and 389; Christian Coppens, ‘Et amicorum: not just for friends’, in Dirk Sacré and Jan Papy (eds), Syntagmatia. Essays on Neo-Latin literature in honour of Monique Mund-Dopchie and Gilbert Tournoy (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), pp. 9–17. See also Maria Cristina Bacchi, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi e i suoi libri’, L’Archiginnasio. Bollettino della Biblioteca Comunale di Bologna, 100 (2005), pp. 255–366, esp. p. 285. On the use in Eastern Europe see Monok István, ‘« Ex libris Nicolai Bethlen et amicorum » Az « et amicorum » bejegyzésről és a közös könyvhasználatról’, in Tünde Császtvay and Judit Nyerges (eds), Szolgálatomat ajánlom a 60 éves Jankovics Józsefnek. Humanizmus és gratuláció (Budapest: Balassi

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The inspirational ideal of a community of peers outside the constraints of time and space conceived by Renaissance thinkers was also a strategic plan to build a system for the sharing of knowledge. The members of such a community were supposed to share their erudition and thoughts as well as the source of their knowledge: their books. Books embodied the statement of this programme through the words ‘et amicorum’. This expression neatly summarises Renaissance values. It came into use before the invention of printing, when a well-equipped library constituted a luxury. Sharing individual collections, even if only within a limited circle of wealthy peers, was a way to grant access to a large number of books whilst showing one’s considerable fortune, as well as an attachment to humanist ideals. The presence of the words ‘et amicorum’ on books belonging to friars and priests seems not to have been a one-off case. Two sixteenth-century examples of the use of ‘et amicorum’ in religious collections can be found in a copy of Saint Vincent Ferrer’s Sermones estivales de tempore now at the Biblioteca Città d’Arezzo, originally from the library of San Pier Piccolo,34 and in that of Francesco Giovanetti’s Pontificum Romanorum liber also at the Biblioteca Città d’Arezzo, originally from the collection of the aforementioned Agostino Gorucci.35 In 1662, the friar minor conventual Giuseppe Paci included ‘omniumque amicorum’ in his ownership inscription on the title page of his copy of the Advento of Maurilio da San Brizio, now at the municipal library of Sarnano.36 Sometime between the late seventeenth century and 1730, Cardinal Marco Antonio Ansidei (1671–1730) included his ‘friends’ in the ownership inscription on the title page of the first volume of the Statutes of his hometown Perugia, now at the Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti of the University of

34

35

36

Kiadó; MTA Irodalomtudományi Intézet, 2009), pp. 266–276. I owe this last reference to Edoardo Barbieri. Arezzo, Biblioteca Città d’Arezzo, XV.155: Vicente Ferrer, Sermones estiuales de tempore … (Lyon: Benoît Bonyn, 1525; SBN BVEE020965; USTC 121188): it is the second volume of the collection of Vincent Ferrer’s sermons published in Lyon by Benoît Bonyn in 1525 in three volumes: Vicente Ferrer, Sermo. sancti Vince. Beati Vincentij natione Hispani … (SBN BVEE020964). Ownership inscription on the recto of the initial flyleaf: ‘nunc fratris Augustini Goruccij et amicorum’. This was added as an integration to a previous ownership inscription by a different hand: ‘Fratris Apollonij Piunij etc.’. For further details on the edition and copy see above, note 13. Sarnano, Biblioteca comunale, Antico.Sei.215: Maurilio da San Brizio, Aduento … (Milan : stampa Archiepiscopale, 1661; SBN UM1E001334); ownership inscription on title page: ‘ad usum mei f. Iosephi Sarnani omniumque amicorum 1662’. See Monica Bocchetta, ‘Un diario tra le pagine. La raccolta libraria del magister e predicatore Giuseppe Paci da Sarnano OFMConv (1629–1697)’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia (Università di Macerata), 40–41 (2007–2008), pp. 245–279, p. 272.

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Bari.37 The Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database records twenty-six incunabula showing ownership inscriptions of friars ‘et amicorum’.38 The many owners likely to be members of religious orders whose identity remains unknown should also be considered: the use of the motto by someone called Pietro Francesco Romano suggests that he was keen on sharing with friends his copy of the Bible printed in Venice by Lucantonio Giunta the Elder in 1519, now at the municipal library of Sarnano; or by the owner, whose name has been carefully covered in ink by a later owner, of Alessandro Rho’s Consilia printed in Venice by Giacomo Antonio Somasco between 1595 and 1596, now at the Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti of the University of Bari.39 So many ownership inscriptions by friars and other religious that refer to the sharing of books suggest the fascinating scenario in which cloisters might have functioned as hubs at the core of communities that extended far beyond the cloister walls.40 Friars were able to manage books as private possessions to the point of being able to share them with people outside the cloister and to openly declare this to contemporaries and to posterity within the books 37

38

39

40

Bari, Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti del Dipartimento di giurisprudenza, ZA.16/a-d: Primum volumen Statutorum Auguste Perusie magistratuum ordines & auctoritatem aliaque egregia ciuitatis ordinamenta continens nuper emendatum auctum & impressum ad publicam vtilitatem (Perugia: Girolamo Cartolari, August 1526; EDIT16 CNCE 23860; SBN BVEE015621; USTC 847661); ownership inscription on title page: ‘Marci Antonii Ansidei et amicorum et soluit iulios uiginti et unum’. See Francesco Mastroberti, Angela Trombetta, Francesco Nocco (eds), La Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti del Dipartimento di giurisprudenza: incunaboli e cinquecentine (Bari: Cacucci, 2017), p. 199: 307. On Marco Antonio Ansidei see Salvador Miranda, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, online: as per author correction>. MEI – Material Evidence in Incunabula, online: : currently 136 copies of incunabula with an ownership inscription ‘et amicorum’, 26 related to friars. I owe this reference to Angela Nuovo. See also Francesca Nepori, ‘Et amicorum et MEI’, Vedi anche, 24 (2014), 1, pp. 23–28, where, in addition to the (at the time) 37 records of the MEI database, some of which related to friars, Nepori reported of two more copies of incunabula recorded in the online catalogue of the Biblioteche Liguri (CBL) . Sarnano, Biblioteca comunale, Antico.Cinque.479: Biblia cum concordantijs Veteris et Noui Testamenti et sacrorum canonum … (Venice: Lucantonio Giunta the Elder, Oct. 1519; EDIT16 CNCE 5783; SBN BVEE019791; USTC 800228); ownership inscription, partially faded, on the recto of the initial flyleaf: ‘Petri Francisci Romani et amicorum’. See Bocchetta, ‘Un diario tra le pagine’, p. 260. Bari, Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti del Dipartimento di giurisprudenza, R.6.10/I-II: Alessandro Rho, Consiliorum siue responsorum et decisionum … liber primus [-secundus] … (Venice: Giacomo Antonio Somasco, 1595–1596; EDIT16 CNCE 32302; SBN SIPE006480; USTC 852377); ownership inscription ‘et amicorum’ partially deleted on title page of both volumes. See Mastroberti, Trombetta, Nocco (eds), La Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti, p. 206: 326. See also Bocchetta, ‘Un diario tra le pagine’, p. 272.

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themselves.41 Even if the ‘et amicorum’ expression lost much of its original meaning in later centuries and continued to be used merely due to habit and fashion, it nevertheless proves the assimilation and intentional imitation of Renaissance stereotypes within a clerical and even monastic context between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.42 It is widely acknowledged and often repeated that book ownership is not evidence of readership.43 Nonetheless, both the quantity and variety of volumes held in a collection provide reliable clues about the intellectual position of its owner. The 20,000 books recorded in Servite libraries for the survey of the Congregation of the Index reveal lively and up-to-date cultural interests. Several copies of editions of works of Cicero, Lorenzo Valla, Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino were laid on the shelves next to the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides and Seneca. Works of poetry by authors such as Dante and Petrarch, as well as by contemporaries such as Ludovico Ariosto, Giovanni Battista Guarini, Giovanni Battista Leoni, Luigi Groto, Cosimo Galletti, Marco Antonio Mazzone and Angelo Faggi show horizons of reading that were far from being limited to the scope of preaching according to the Mendicant rule. Art and architecture were represented through the works of Andrea Palladio, Sebastiano Serlio and Leon Battista Alberti, as well as through the Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects and other works of the Italian painter, architect and historian Giorgio Vasari.44 The cloister walls were not thick enough to stop the breeze of the Renaissance. The integration of humanist thought into religious culture must have happened spontaneously and smoothly in Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance.45 The library of the Servite cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence was the result of this assimilation. At the end of the sixteenth century, one third of 41 42 43 44

45

Donatella Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda noted that, in the humanistic age, such inscriptions changed their nature from simple ownership marks to individuality confirmation statements: Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda, ‘Letture’, p. 375. The expression ‘et fratrum christianorum’ was used in Hungary and Transylvania by both Catholics and Protestants: see Monok, ‘Ex libris Nicolai Bethlen et amicorum’, pp. 271 and 273–276. The inspection of books can occasionally provide evidence of reading, such as marginalia, underlinings, manicule etc.: see Bruni, ‘La biblioteca di S. Pier Piccolo’, pp. 197–200. See also Rusconi, ‘La preparazione culturale’, p. 327. The edition of Euripides’s tragedies Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis was that printed in Lyon by Sébastien Gryphe in 1540, including the Latin translation by Erasmus (SBN BVEE017347; USTC 122491). I am currently in the process of editing the complete transcription and providing a closer examination of the inventories of Servite libraries drawn up for the survey of the Congregation of the Index, which will be published by the Vatican press. See Hobson, ‘Et amicorum’, pp. 90–92, for the use of this expression in Florence.

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its holdings was made up of manuscripts.46 This proportion is outstanding if compared to the limited number of manuscripts registered in the lists from the survey of the Congregation of the Index, and especially in those of Servite collections.47 A manuscript comprising a work of the renowned humanist Poggio Bracciolini is quite an extraordinary finding among the former holdings of the Annunziata.48 It is written in a humanist minuscule hand, very similar to that of Bracciolini himself, with rubricated and filigree initials, including a decorated initial in gold leaf on the first recto (Fig. 5.1). The presence of one of the main figures of the Renaissance in a religious collection should not be surprising in the context of a cloister that has been defined as a ‘humanistic sanctuary’ in relation both to its building, which had been restored by the Renaissance sculptor and architect Michelozzo in 1451, and to its considerable holdings, which already comprised 187 manuscripts in 1422.49 46

47

48

49

Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, ff. 483r–501r: ‘Lista di libbri del conuento della Nonziata di Firenze’ (RICI list 7274): 131 out of a total of 385 items are described as manuscripts. A few more might emerge by matching inventory entries with manuscripts coming from the Annunziata now in the National Central Library of Florence. The results of this study I am carrying on are forthcoming. See Roberto Rusconi, ‘« O scritti a mano »: i libri manoscritti tra inquisizione e descrizione’, in Borraccini (ed.), Dalla notitia librorum, pp. 1–26. Rusconi (p. 3, footnotes 7 and 8) stressed that just a few manuscripts were listed in two of the largest Servite collections, those of the cloisters of Arezzo and Pisa. In his ‘La preparazione culturale’, p. 329, Rusconi also remarked the scarcity of manuscripts in Servite libraries as pictured in the lists of the survey of the Congregation of the Index in comparison with those referred to other religious orders. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. soppr. B.VIII.1660: Poggio Bracciolini, De miseria humanae condicionis. The manuscript is listed among those items officially selected from monastic collections for joining the Magliabechiana library: Indice dei manoscritti scelti nelle biblioteche monastiche del dipartimento dell’Arno dalla Commissione degli oggetti d’arti e scienze, e dalla medesima rilasciati alla pubblica Libreria Magliabechiana (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Sala Mss. Cat. 2, f. 123r). A transcription of entries referred to manuscripts formerly at the Annunziata is available in Pellegrino Soulier, ‘Inventarium codicum manuscriptorum monasterii SS. Annuntiatae de Florentia’, Monumenta Ordinis Servorum sanctae Mariae, 6 (1903–1904), pp. 159–189, at p. 175. The manuscript is listed in the inventory of the Annunziata from the survey of the Congregation of the Index: Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 11321, f. 497r: ‘Poggij Florent. De miseria condictionis lib. 2. Manuscript.’ (RICI item 336713). On this work and its author see Emilio Bigi and Armando Petrucci, Bracciolini, Poggio, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 13 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1971), pp. 640–646 (online: ). The definition of the library of the Annunziata as a ‘humanistic sanctuary’ (‘santuario umanistico’) is by Eugenio Casalini, ‘La Biblioteca della SS. Annunziata di Firenze nel sec. XIX e le soppressioni degli Ordini religiosi’, in Elsa Zampini (ed.), Copyright 1984–1985. Miscellanea di studi in onore di Clementina Rotondi (Rome: Istituto poligrafico e Zecca

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Figure 5.1 Poggio Bracciolini, De miseria humanae condicionis, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. soppr. B.VIII.1660, f. 1r. With permission of Ministero della Cultura, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Any further reproduction in any form is strictly prohibited.

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In anticipation of a more comprehensive study, this chapter has provided some insights into the scope of early modern Servite collections, whose role seems to have gone beyond that of mere confessional erudition or support in preaching.50 Far from a sterile and legalistic approach limited by ideological boundaries, a reconsideration of religious libraries cannot avoid acknowledging their fundamental contribution to the cultural and social framework of the early modern period. A thorough analysis of religious libraries in early modern Italy suggests that many sixteenth-century cloisters were not a world apart from that of the contemporary, avant-garde culture of the Renaissance. On the contrary, both religious and private libraries together played a crucial role in the development and transmission of culture in the early modern world.51

50 51

dello Stato, 1985), pp. 81–96, at p. 81. On the library of the Annunziata see also Raffaele Taucci, ‘Delle biblioteche antiche nell’Ordine e dei loro cataloghi’, Studi storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, 2 (1934–1936), pp. 145–250, at pp. 207–214. The transcription of the inventory drawn up in 1422 of all the mobile and immobile goods found in the cloister of the Annunziata is available in Eugenio Casalini, La SS. Annunziata di Firenze. Studi e documenti sulla chiesa e il convento (Florence: Convento della SS. Annunziata, 1971), pp. 71–133: ‘Un inventario inedito del secolo XV’, esp. pp. 107–112 for the inventory of manuscripts (also in Taucci, ‘Delle biblioteche antiche’, pp. 169–190). I am planning to devote a more detailed study to the library of the Annunziata in the next few years. On the topic of forbidden books in Servite collections see also my forthcoming « Caute Lege ». Books of Friars in Early Modern Italy. On the definition of ‘private’ for collections implying such a real and intense exchange through loans and agreed purchases, and thus perhaps not entirely appropriate, see Nuovo, ‘« Et amicorum »’, pp. 107–108.

chapter 6

Teachers of Christ’s Church: Protestant Ministers as Readers of the Church Fathers in the Dutch Golden Age Forrest C. Strickland Balthazar Lydius (1577–1629) epitomized the ideal Reformed minister in the seventeenth century. He came from a family with impeccable Protestant pedigree. His grandfather was a Protestant minister, who along with his family fled to Heidelberg from Overijssel to remain true to their faith and to avoid capitulating to Philip II’s suppression of Protestants. Balthazar’s father, Martinus, returned to the Netherlands, known then as the Dutch Republic, as a well-respected minister in Amsterdam and later professor of theology at the University of Franeker. Both of Balthazar’s brothers became ministers in the Netherlands, as did his son and many of his nephews and grandsons. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a French-born scholar in the Netherlands, said of the Lydius family, ‘Perhaps no one family has furnished more ministers than this’.1 Upon becoming a minister in Dordrecht (Dort) in 1602, Balthazar Lydius set himself to shepherding his flock in the way he knew best: preaching. The sermons Lydius delivered often brought his congregation to tears.2 One of his theological opponents, Johannes Wtenbogaert said they sounded more like the ‘howling of hyenas’.3 When the Synod of Dort convened in 1618, Lydius was asked to give the invocation for God’s blessing on the international gathering of Reformed theologians.4 Lydius devoted himself to the spiritual good of his congregation. To that end, he encouraged his congregation to not only grow in their understanding of the Bible, but to learn from the theologians he considered the greatest to have ever lived – the Church Fathers. Christelijcke Gebeden, Om in verscheyden 1 ‘Il n’y a peut-être point de famille qui ait fourni plus de Ministres que celle-la’. Pierre Bayle, Dictionaire Historique et Critique (3 vols., Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1697), III, p. 334. 2 G.D.J. Schotel, Kerkelijk Dordrecht, eene Bijdrage tot de Geschiecenis der Vaderlandsche Hervormde Kerk, sedert het Jaar 1572 (2 vols., Utrecht: N. van der Monde, 1841–1845), I, p. 265. 3 Johannes Wtenbogaert, Johannis Wtenbogaerts leven, kerckelijcke bedieninghe ende zedighe verantwoording (s.l: s.n., 1645), USTC1034832, p. 259. 4 Donald Sinnema, etc. (eds.), Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618–1619), vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), p. 190.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_008

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soo Geestelijcke als lichamenlijcke nooden ende swarigheden te ghebruycken [Christian Prayers, to be used in various spiritual and physical needs and troubles] was written as a guide to praying well: how Christians should understand what they are doing when they pray and how to pray.5 Lydius offered his readers spiritual guides in the form of pre-written prayers. He designated many of them according to topic. One is a prayer for a widow.6 Another is a prayer for times of war, followed shortly after by a prayer of thanksgiving for victory.7 Most were written by Lydius, but a few were taken from other sources. Several were quotations from the Bible.8 A few, though, were directly taken from the Church Fathers. To encourage his reader to call upon God as their soul’s comfort, Lydius offered these words from Augustine’s Confessions: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, my only hope, rule and establish my life, yes also determine my life that I may sleep in peace and rest in you’.9 He also quoted a prayer from Augustine’s Soliloquy.10 Implicit in Christelijcke Gebeden is that Lydius thought that the spiritual lives of his congregants were improved by reading works by these historical figures. In the introductory letter, Lydius acknowledged that the primary audience for the Christelijcke Gebeden were the members of Dordrecht’s Reformed church and similar readers throughout the Netherlands, so Lydius intended to encourage those readers – brewers, seamstresses, sailors and other ordinary folk – with words from a theologian who had long been dead. He wanted to impress upon his congregation and readers that their Reformed faith had historical credibility, responding to the Roman Catholic argument that Protestantism was a novel system of belief. The Church Fathers, those theologians who lived within the first eighthundred years of the Christian faith, were central to Dutch ministers’ theological discussion a millennium later.11 Why would a Dutch minister in the seventeenth century value the Church Fathers to the extent that he would encourage his congregants to repeat prayers written by the Fathers? For Protestant Dutch ministers during the Golden Age, the Church Fathers were both a polemical 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Balthazar Lydius, Christelijcke Gebeden, Om in verscheyden soo Geestelijcke als lichamenlijcke nooden ende swarigheden te ghebruycken (Dordrecht: Dirck Dircksz., 1648), USTC 1023070. Regionaal Archief-Dordrecht, GAD 489, inv. 18.040. Ibid., p. 91. Ibid., pp. 110, 119. Ibid., pp. 105–110. ‘Heere Jesu Christe, mijn eenige hope, geeft my mijn leven alzo te regeren ende aen te stellen, ja oock te eyndigen, dat ick in vrede magh ontslapen ende in u rusten’. Ibid., p. 177. ‘om berouw ende boetveerdigheyt’. Ibid., pp. 198–199. On dating the patristic era, see ‘Patristics’, in F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 1233.

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tool to wield against one’s theological opponents and examples of the pious Christian life. This chapter will consider surviving auction catalogues of ministers’ book collections to reveal which works were most readily available to them: which Fathers were most commonly read during the era, in what languages, and for how much works by the Fathers would resell. The theological world in which Balthazar Lydius served was one in which ministers and theologians self-consciously built on what came before, while acknowledging the diligent labours of many of their contemporaries. They studied books written by figures throughout Church history; and in their publications, they recycled arguments from other authors, reused references from other works found in books by their contemporaries and established a theological environment with a distinct culture – one with its own system of figures of speech and points of debate. The theologians who lived and worked in the eight-hundred years after the death of Christ remained influential and helped shape the religious world in which Dutch ministers served during the seventeenth century. In so doing, the Church Fathers helped to form a community amongst ministers in the Netherlands. Debates over the Fathers helped to solidify partisan theological conflicts, as groups formed and became entrenched in their camps. In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, the ministry was a reading profession. Ministers consistently acquired and read books. The ideal minister was one who built a library that was useful to his calling. In their books, they encouraged reading amongst other ministers and the laity, and a minister who did not acquire a library could even be reprimanded by church authorities.12 Professors of theology encouraged their students to read books in addition to those required in their formal studies, and consistories expected ministers to continue studying while in the ministry.13 There are 457 known seventeenth-century auction catalogues of ministers’ libraries that indicate the importance of acquiring personal libraries for

12

13

‘Visitations of Reformed congregations around Dordrecht, 1589’, in Alastair Duke, etc., (eds.) Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1610: A Collection of Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 194; G. Groenhuis, De Predikanten: De sociale positie van de gereformeerde predikanten in de Repuliek der Verenigde Nederlanden voor ± 1700 (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1977), p. 165. Heinrich von Diest, De ratione studii theologici necessari instructio (Harderwijk: Nicolaes van Wieringen, 1634), USTC 1510759; Gisbertus Voetius, Exercitia et Bibliotheca Studiosi Theologiae (Utrecht: Willem Strick, 1644), USTC 1029459.

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pastoral purposes.14 The 261 catalogues of their libraries that survive give the clearest indication of which books Protestant ministers valued and which books were constantly in circulation because they were in-demand.15 I have transcribed fifty-five of these surviving catalogues.16 On average a ministerial library in this corpus of 261 contains an average of 1,138 books per catalogue. On average, at least ten percent of ministers’ collections were books by the Church Fathers. Books by the Church Fathers are listed at least a thousand times in fifty-five catalogues, which is approximately eighteen times per catalogue in the transcribed dataset. Many ‘editions’ of the Church Fathers included commentaries, translation notes, and philological apparatuses. Why did Dutch ministers read the Fathers with such intensity? One contributing factor is knowledge of the Fathers was crucial to being qualified and licensed for ministry in the first place. Nevertheless, that does not explain why Dutch ministers continued to read and reference the Fathers long into their ministries. The Church Fathers were read and used in two primary ways in the daily life of a Dutch minister during the Golden Age: polemical manoeuvering and encouraging more historically informed Christian devotion.

14

15

16

At the time of a minister’s death the executor of his will would sometimes contact a printer to liquidate the deceased book collection. If the library was large enough to warrant a sale (typically over 100 books), the printer would compose an auction catalogue listing the books to be sold. That list would then be circulated throughout the printer’s network. Auction catalogues are the most common means by which any knowledge of an individual’s library is available, as catalogues made during the owner’s life were far more rare. The majority of surviving catalogues are reproduced on Book Sales Catalogues Online. Known catalogues are inferred from advertisements for sales with accompanying catalogues or municipal records of book auctions. Book Sales Catalogues Online – Book Auctioning in the Dutch Republic, ca. 1500–ca. 1800., advisor: Brill, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015 . Auction catalogues of a personal library were not intended to be collectors’ items; they served a utilitarian purpose. This purpose contributed to their being lost or discarded. Therefore, they tend to survive in very poor numbers. The process by which I chose these particular catalogues was based on three criteria: first certain catalogues were chosen because of the stature of their owner. Second, other catalogues were chosen because the printer included good descriptions for the books. Third, these two criteria were then filtered to provide geographic and chronologic diversity. I choose to transcribe catalogues whose owners resided in a wide range of places in the Netherlands throughout the century. Furthermore, the catalogues I transcribed includes Reformed, Remonstrant, Lutheran, and Mennonite ministers. For the purposes of this study, if a multi-volume set of works is listed in one lot, it is considered one ‘book’.

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Table 6.1 Median number of books by language listed in ministers’ book auction catalogues. As these are not percentages or an average using the mean, the combination of the individual figures will not equal the total.

Language

Median number

Latin Dutch French Biblical languages, Aramaic, etc. English German Italian Spanish Median size of a minister’s auction catalogue

720 141 34 28 3 2 1 0 1,138

6.1

Inheriting the Fathers

Authors were not expected to cite their sources during the early modern era, so when they did cite their source, readers could be sure there was a motive at play. Ministers in the seventeenth century Netherlands cited books by the Church Fathers to lend added weight to their argument. This was a common aspect of theological writing in the sixteenth century and earlier. The first Protestant theologians cited the Fathers in similar ways. Anthony N.S. Lane noted that ‘Calvin’s use of the fathers (especially in the Institutio and in the treatises) is primarily a polemical appeal to authorities…. Calvin cites the fathers primarily as witnesses for the defense, as authorities to which to appeal’.17 This resonated with Dutch ministers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1578, the Acts of the Synod of Dort addressed the sources ministers should reference in their sermons, asking Whether it is seemly for the ministers in their sermons to cite from the ancient Fathers and to refer listeners to the works of recent writers like Luther, Calvin and such? Answer: the articles of the Christian doctrine should only be confirmed in sermons with the testimony of the Holy 17

Anthony N.S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 3.

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Scriptures. But the testimonies of the Fathers may be used in moderation, chiefly in order to convict Papists of their stubbornness. But the names of the recent authors should be omitted entirely from sermons.18 These ‘ancient Fathers’ were some of the most commonly read amongst ministers during the seventeenth century. This reading was primarily done from expensive academic books, as evidenced by the auction catalogues composed for their libraries. Catalogues for ministerial libraries typically list works by the Fathers that were sixteenth century Latin folio Operae. Folio works in ministers’ libraries tended to be older than the rest of their collections. The primary reason why that is the case is the popularity and enduring value of the Church Fathers’ collected works. By the 1520s, the print industry had emerged from a season of contraction, and in Protestant centres, print was booming thanks to Martin Luther and his contemporaries.19 During that time, printers like Froben in Basel could afford to devote the large amount of capital needed to over-seeing multi-volume sets through the press. The steady editorial hand and translating skill of the humanist scholar Erasmus combined with Froben’s distinguished print quality certainly helped these volumes become common features in libraries owned by ministers in the Netherlands and remained so even nearly two hundred years later in 1700. Protestant Dutch ministers continued to acquire Erasmus’ editions, translations, and commentaries of many of the Church Fathers and other early sixteenth century editions, not only for the polemical value, but because they were readily available and accessibly priced. Of the fifty-five auction catalogues (92,184 items) in my corpus, 52,273 are listed with a date of publication. When publication date is listed in the lot, fifty percent of all folios were published prior to 1600. For comparison, just under twenty-five percent of all quartos and twenty-two percent of duodecimos were published before 1600. Octavos were the closest in age to folios, with forty-six percent being printed before 1600. Of the 997 works by the Church Fathers in my corpus, 574 are listed with a 18

19

‘Of het oorbaer is dat de dienaers in haren predication de oud evaders allegieren ende de toehoorders tot de schriften der nieuwer scribenten wijsen als Lutheri Calvini etc.? Antdw. Men sal de artykelen der christelicker leere in de predication met gheen andere dan alleene met ghetuyghenisse der Heyligher Schrifture bevestighen. Maer de ghetuyghenissen der vaderen sal men matelick ghebruycken moghen voornemelick ter plaetsen daer men de papisten van harer hartneckicheyt moet overtuyghen. Maer de namen der nieuwen schribenten sal men in de predication gheheel nalaten’. W. van ‘t Spijker, ‘Acta Synode van Dordrecht (1578)’, in D. Nauta and J.P. van Dooren (eds.), De Nationale Synode van Dordrecht 1578 (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn/Bolland, 1978), p. 179. On the causes of the contraction and later expansion of the print industry, see Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther (New York: Penguin, 2017), pp. 10–12; idem, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 91–129.

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year of publication. Over sixty percent of these with a year of publication were pre-1600 editions. Meaning, works by the Church Fathers in folio tended to be older than folios by authors from other eras. Latin multi-volume collections of patristic texts and commentaries were auctioned for some of the highest prices of any books in ministerial catalogues during the seventeenth century. The average price of a book that was auctioned in my data set was between one and two gulden. The collection of the chaplain to the Ambassador to Venice sold in 1636 in Delft. His collection contained 104 books, and it sold for about 110 gulden.20 Guilielmus Fabius in 1677 owned 449 books, of which 441 had listed prices that were written in manuscript in the margin.21 The collection sold for just under 550 gulden. The price of books could vary significantly, however. Small books usually sold for a few stuivers. When one analyzes the prices for which works by the Church Fathers were auctioned, the average price is significantly higher than the price of other books. They sold for an average of twelve gulden.22 They were books that retained their value despite being used for several generations of readers, often reselling for as much as they could have been bought twenty or thirty years prior.23 In 1649, a two-volume Antwerp edition of the Opera by Dionysius the Areopagite sold for eighteen gulden and five stuivers; nearly forty years later in 1689 the Paris edition sold for fourteen gulden, fifteen stuivers.24 In 1649, 1679 and 1688 three copies of John Chrysostom’s eight-volume Opera sold for forty-seven gulden and ten stuivers, forty-three gulden and ten stuivers, and thirty-two gulden and ten stuivers, respectively.25 Two copies of Gregory the Great’s Opera sold 20 21 22

23 24

25

AC Wilhelm Merwy 1636 (Delft: Jan Pietersz Waelpot, 1636). The titles for all ministerial auction catalogues available at Book Sales Catalogues Online (BSCO) have been shortened to AC followed by the owner’s name and the date of sale. AC Guilielmus Fabius 1677 (Delft: Cornelis van Heusden, 1677). All prices mentioned in this article were written in manuscript in the margin of the auction catalogue. This figure is derived from the database of fifty-five ministerial auction catalogues I have transcribed. Of the 92,184 items listed, 11,353 are listed with a price. Of the Church Fathers works I have identified in those fifty-five catalogues, there are eighty-eight listed with their own prices (i.e., not sold in a lot with other books). On the age of folios and for how much they could be expected to sell, see Forrest C. Strickland, ‘The Devotion of Collecting: Ministers and the Culture of Print in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic’ (PhD Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2019), ch. 2. These price comparisons are not to minimize the fluctuation in price inflation and deflation, which did vary over time. Nevertheless, they serve to demonstrate the central point that books could retain substantial value over the years. AC Fredrick Spanheim 1649 (Leiden: Severus Matthysz., 1649, USTC 1435659); AC Jacobus Gaillard 1689 (Leiden: Johannes du Vivié, 1689). John Chrysostom, Opera (Eton, 1612–1613), USTC 3005371. AC Fredrick Spanheim 1649; AC Jacobus Gaillard 1689; AC Abraham Heidanus 1679 (Leiden: Felix Lopez de Haro & widow and heirs Adrianus Severinus, 1679).

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for just over eight gulden at two auctions in 1646 and 1649.26 The price of some of the works by the Fathers could range from average to extravagant. At that same 1646 auction, Chrysostom’s two volume Opera, printed in Leiden, sold for thirteen gulden, and a set of Augustine’s ten volume Opera (Basel, 1528) went for eighty gulden.27 A day-laborer earned between 200 and 300 gulden a year.28 When Abraham Heidanus’ 3,493 books were sold at auction in 1679, a copy of Origen’s Comment in S Scripturas raised seventeen gulden and five stuivers.29 Heidanus’ two-volume Opera Omnia of Gregory of Nazianzus sold for twenty-four gulden and ten stuivers in 1688.30 The higher price that books by the Church Fathers raised at auction is certainly due in part to the size of the books. Nearly half of all books by the Church Fathers are listed in ministerial catalogues as folios. Of the 997 books by the Church Fathers in my dataset, 392 are folio volumes. It is uncommon for books to be listed without format. The size of the book certainly influences the cost to a large extent, but part of the increase in price is also related to demand. Many folios sold for far less than the average of over ten gulden for folios in ministers’ libraries: 122 folios sold for less than one gulden, about the same price of a moderately priced devotional book in far smaller formats. Table 6.2 A comparison of the average formats of books in ministerial catalogues and the average format of the 997 books by the Church Fathers identified in fifty-five library catalogues

Format

Church Fathers

Whole collection

Folio Quarto Octavo Duodecimo

41.95% 20.2% 30.7% 7.3%

13.51% 21.28% 39.46% 23.52%

26 27 28 29 30

AC Fredrick Spanheim 1649; AC Adrian Smoutius 1646 (Leiden: Severyn Matthysz, 1646), USTC 1122092. USTC 625902. A. Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland, trans. Maarteen Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 7. AC Abraham Heidanus 1679. AC Jacobus Gaillard 1689. It is likely that books that included Greek sold for higher prices, but contemporary observers may not be able to deduce this, as one complicating factor with the prices listed in auction catalogues is the presence of books that are listed with Latin titles, but that also contained the Greek original.

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Ministerial library catalogues during the seventeenth century primarily listed Latin books. About sixty-five percent of their books are listed as Latin works. Latin was the language that dominated theological discussions and was used in the academy. By reading in Latin and Greek, a minister could turn to a primary source unmediated by translation. And with books by the Church Fathers, they did so more often than not. Few vernacular translations of books by the Church Fathers are listed in ministerial library catalogues from the seventeenth century. Only one vernacular translation of a work by John Chrysostom is recorded, a volume entitled 8 Sermons, listed in the catalogue for Johannes van Dijk.31 But Van Dijk likely owned this book as a novelty item; 8 Sermons was not part of a larger body of English vernacular works within Van Dijk’s catalogue. He was a Mennonite minister in Amsterdam, whose catalogue only listed two English books, a Bible and the 8 Sermons. Basil the Great is listed only twice in vernacular languages, once in German in the catalogue for Carolus Niellius and once in Dutch in the catalogue for Rogerius Blanckhart.32 In addition to being the most popular Church Father listed in ministerial library catalogues during this time, vernacular translations of Augustine’s works are the most commonly listed in their catalogues as well. The discrepancy between the popularity of his Latin works and their vernacular translation is illuminating, however. Of the 225 instances when works by Augustine are listed, fourteen of them are in vernacular translations – Dutch (ten), French (three) and German (one). Despite being listed 129 times, the famous chronicler of the Early Church, Eusebius Pamphilius, is only listed seven times in vernacular translation. In their reading of the Church Fathers, ministers turned to more academic sources – folio volumes in either Latin or Greek. And they paid significantly more for books by the Fathers than they did almost all other works. 6.2

The Fathers Controversial

The dominance of large folio editions of the Church Fathers in Latin and Greek could give the indication that ministers’ reading of the Fathers was a scholarly, detached endeavor. It was not. The way ministers read and used the Church Fathers in the Dutch Golden Age was not an academic exercise divorced from 31 32

AC Johannes van Dijk 1685 (Amsterdam: Widow of Johannes van Someren, 1685). For the German translation, see AC Carolus Niellius 1653 (Amsterdam: widow Joost Broersz, 1653); the Dutch translations was Onderhout der Armen, listed in AC Rogerius Blanckhart 1689 (Rotterdam: Barent van Santbergen, 1689).

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polemical aims. The more educational, detached quality of the works by the Fathers that were in their libraries gives way to the frenzy of how these works were actually used. The Fathers became tools not only in the building up of the reader’s faith, but as a counter weight against theological opponents. No translator of the Fathers was more popular amongst Protestants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than Erasmus. Erasmus was reviled by officials within the Roman Catholic Church, and Erasmus recognized that his editions of the Church Fathers, and especially his edition of Augustine, would be used in the battle between Protestants and Roman Catholics.33 Protestants appropriated Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings; while Roman Catholics embraced the anti-Donatist writings. Augustine (354–430), Bishop of Hippo, was an unavoidable voice in every theological debate after his death. He was chief among the ‘ancient Fathers’. He was the most respected theologian in the Western Church after the Apostles, and was even given the status of preserver of the truth.34 During the medieval era, two of the most influential theologians, Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), exhorted the church in their times to return to Augustine.35 Augustine’s conviction that human beings are mired in sin and cannot escape it but by gracious intervention from God, was a fundamental conviction of the first Reformers. Luther’s theological breakthrough was his belief in precisely this doctrine. Luther concluded that the sacraments of the Church could not free a sinner from the shackles of sin.36 Calvin’s Institutes cites Augustine more than any other author after the Apostles.37 The Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield famously wrote ‘it is Augustine who gave us the Reformation. For the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church’.38 The Church Fathers were crucial to the theological controversies that shaped the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Theologians not only debated how to interpret biblical passages, but they fought to demonstrate which side were the true heirs to the Fathers, and Augustine in particular. The battle between 33 34 35 36 37 38

Arnoud Visser, ‘Reading Augustine through Erasmus’ Eyes: Humanist Scholarship and Paratextual Guidance in the Wake of the Reformation’, Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 28 (2008), p. 67. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 106–114. MacCulloch, The Reformation, p. 110. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012). Lane, John Calvin. B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Press, 1956), pp. 321–322.

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Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants was framed as a revival of Pelagianism versus Augustinianism. When the Synod of Dort gathered in 1618, it did so out of the expressed desire to settle the international conflict that spread from Leiden to the rest of the Netherlands. In question was the authority of the confessional documents ministers voluntarily ascribed to when taking their pastoral oaths. This debate, however, partially emerged as a proxy war about the Church Fathers. Both sides – those who hoped to redress the confession (the Remonstrants) and those considered the issue settled (the Gomarists) – turned to their understanding of the Patristic tradition to better establish their own side. This debate was seen especially in the flurry of historical surveys on Pelagianism that surrounded the Synod. Two competing works indicate this especially: one by a leading theologian of the day and Remonstrant sympathizer, Gerardus Vossius; the other by Johannes Laertius.39 Both works claimed to establish their position from Church history. The Gomarists claimed to be the inheritors of Augustine and that the Remonstrants were the inheritors of the Pelagians; the Remonstrants held that their position was acceptable within the Church as history demonstrated. Aza Goudriaan stated, ‘The antagonism between Calvinism and Arminianism too was framed in terms of the dichotomy between Augustine and the followers of Pelagius’.40 The Synod was not merely a debate about the meaning of the Bible or the authority of the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism: it was a competition for the inheritors of the true Christian faith as received from the Church Fathers. It is no surprise, therefore, that Augustine was the Church Father most commonly printed in the early modern era and that he is the Church Father most commonly listed in the book auction catalogues of ministers’ libraries during the Dutch Golden Age, with 226 listings in fifty-five catalogues.41 Dutch ministers acquired works by Augustine with equal fervor to books by some of the most popular contemporary theological authors of the day – William Perkins, Philip Melanchthon, Lambertus Danaeus and Hugo Grotius.

39 40

41

Johannes Laertius, De Pelagianis et Semipelagianis commentariorum ex veterum patrum scriptis, libri duo (1617); Gerardus Vossius, Historiae de controversiis quae Pelagius eiusque reliquiae moverunt libri septem. Aza Goudriaan, ‘“Augustine Asleep” or “Augustine Awake”: Jacobus Arminius’s Reception of Augustine’ in Th. Marius van Leeuwen, Keith D. Stanglin and Marijke Tolsma (eds.), Arminius, Arminianism, and Europe: Jacobus Arminius (1559/60–1609) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 51. Exact numbers on the printing of works by Augustine cannot be derived from the USTC for the moment. His name has not been standardized in the database as of July 2019.

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Teachers of Christ ’ s Church Table 6.3 The twenty most popular theological authors as listed in ministers’ library catalogues. All but Augustine worked in either the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Of the early modern authors, Erasmus and Bellarmine were the only non-Protestants. These figures are derived from my transcription of fifty-five ministerial auction catalogues.

Author

Count of author

Author

Count of author

John Calvin Theodore Beza Franciscus Junius Desiderius Erasmus André Rivet Johannes Cocceius Jerome Zanchius Conrad Vorstius William Ames Heinrich Bullinger

612 420 375 339 326 304 288 287 275 272

William Perkins Philip Melanchthon Martin Luther Augustine Lambertus Danaeus Hugo Grotius Roberto Bellarmini Wolfgang Musculus Zachary Ursinus Peter Martyr

247 228 227 226 209 201 198 186 179 178

The contentious nature of how the Church Fathers were used and read in the Dutch Golden Age extended even to individual readers. Jacob Arminius (1560– 1609), professor of theology at the University of Leiden, was an avid reader and acquirer of works by Augustine. He owned nine of Augustine’s works. For comparison, five books by Luther are listed in Arminius’ catalogue, and nine by Martin Bucer. Arminius heavily referenced Augustine on three topics: the authority of the Bible, original sin, and human will.42 Arminius was not afraid to disagree publicly with Augustine. He made clear when he agreed and disagreed with him. At one point, Arminius quoted the Church Father by saying, ‘what was said by Augustine in a beautiful way’, but in another he questioned him: ‘Where is your acumen, Augustine?’.43 Along with other ministers and theologians at the time, Arminius made clear that Augustine was not an

42 43

Goudriaan, ‘“Augustine Asleep” or “Augustine Awake”: Jacobus Arminius’s Reception of Augustine’, pp. 53–54. ‘… quod ab Augustino pulchra dicitur …’ Jacob Arminius, Examen modestum libelli Perkinsi, in his Opera theologica (Leiden: Godefridus Basson, 1629), USTC 1011718, p. 726. ‘Ubi tuum acumen Augustine?’ Jacob Arminius, Dissertatio de vero et genuine sensu capitis VII Epistolae ad Romanos, in his Opera theologica, p. 929.

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authority by which someone should swear. Arminius concluded flatly, ‘We do not rest in his authority’.44 Arminius’ disagreement on some points of Augustine’s views placed ammunition in the hands of his theological opponents. His interpretation of certain parts of the Bible was the centre of contention, but the error of his position was made clear in his antagonism towards Augustine. The controversy surrounding Arminius began in earnest when Arminius began preaching a series of sermons on Romans 7. Arminius argued that the person spoken of in Romans 7:14 was unregenerate: ‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin’ (Romans 7:14).45 His opponents argued that not only did Arminius misunderstand the biblical teaching on predestination, but that he failed to transmit the true teachings of the Church Fathers. Part of Arminius’ error was his dissension from the anti-Pelagian writings of Augustine, at least that was the allegation made by Jacob Trigland, one of Arminius’ fiercest rivals.46 Trigland, a minister in Amsterdam and later a professor of theology in Leiden, published a volume on Church history, especially the events leading to the Synod of Dort in 1618.47 In it, Trigland sought to demonstrate how the victors at the Synod of Dort preserved the true faith as inherited from the Church Fathers.48 Trigland extracted a record from the Church council that met to address Arminius’ interpretation of Romans 7. The extract claimed Arminius was contemptuous in his addressing of Augustine. The council allegedly rebuked Arminius, citing the high authority that was given to Augustine. ‘Are not these wonderful arguments of such a Church Father, to whom people are devoting much attention nowadays, and did he not in a wonderful manner defeat the Pelagians herewith, and stop their mouth?’49 The same council report stated that Arminius 44 45

46 47 48 49

Jacob Arminius, The Works of James Arminius, eds. James Nichols and W.R. Bagnall (3 vols., Auburn; Buffalo: Derby, and Miller; Derby, Orton and Mulligan, 1853), III, p. 460. English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001). In this chapter, all quotations from the Bible are derived from the English Standard Version. Cf. Keith D. Stanglin, Arminius and the Assurance of Salvation: The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603–1609 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 73–92; Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 94–140. Charles H. Parker, ‘To the Attentive, Nonpartisan Reader: The Appeal to History and National Identity in the Religious Disputes of the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 28 (1997), pp. 57–78. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Al shy het sevende Capittel Uytleyde, soo schreef, hy den natuyrlijcken ende on-herboren mensche alles toe, ‘t welck den Apostel Paulus aldaer schrijft van den weder-geboren mensche, wederleggende de bewijs-redenen die de Kercke Godts tegen de Pelagianen ghebruyckt, ende onder anderen stelde hy seer verachtelijck voor de argumenten des Out-vaders Augustini, seggende: En zyn dat niet heerelijcke bewijsredenen van soodanigen

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preferred Greek Fathers and did not hold Augustine in high regard. Even Johannes Wtenbogaert, Arminius’ most competent and able defender, acknowledged that the inheritance of the Church Fathers played a role in Arminius’ condemnation by the Reformed. In his chronicle of the events that led to the Synod of Dort, Wtenbogaert stated, ‘Because of this explanation [of Romans 7] he was reprimanded by some brethren, his colleagues, who said that most Reformed teachers understood this passage in another way, and that his explanation implied two Pelagian errors’.50 Dutch ministers, Arminius included, did not blindly follow the words of the Church Fathers. They noted when the Church Fathers disagreed with one another and even sometimes when an ancient theologian disagreed with himself. They openly admitted when they dissented from the teachings of the Fathers as well. Augustine, through his debate with theological opponents, was forced to clarify his beliefs on various theological topics. In time, this meant the older Augustine explained theological issues in different ways than the younger Augustine. The process of clarification was what took place in Augustine’s understanding of predestination. As he debated Pelagius, he leaned more towards views with which the Reformed were more inclined to agree centuries later. Arminius, on the other hand, sided with the young Augustine. He argued that Augustine did not condemn the views he held as a younger man. Arminius wrote ‘I have Augustine, in his former view, agreeing with me’.51 At least thirty-seven works by the Church Fathers are listed in the book auction catalogue for Arminius’ library. Noteworthy in his collection of the Church Fathers are two sets of Operae by John Chrysostom. Arminius owned

50

51

Out-vader, van den welcken men hedens-daechs soo veel werckes maeckt, en heft hy daer mede niet wel heerlyck de Pelagianen overwonnen, ende den mondt ghestopt?’ Jacob Trigland, Kerkelycke geschiedenissen, begrypende de sware en bekommerlijcke geschillen, in de Vereenigde Nederlanden voor-gevallen, met derselver beslissinge (Leiden: Adriaen Wijngaerden, 1650), USTC 1028934, p. 283. ‘Over dese uytlegginge wiert hy van Eenige sijn mede-Broederen, of mede Dienaren, berispt; die seyden, Dat de meeste Gereformeerde Leeraers die plaetse anders verstonden, ended at die sijn uytlegginge mede bracht twee Pelagiansche doolingen’. Johannes Wtenbogaert, De Kerkelicke Historie, vervatende ghedenckwaerdige saken, in de christenheyt voor-gevallen, van het iaer Vier hondert af, tot in het Iaer Sesthienhondert ende Negenthien, voornamentlick in dese Geunieerde Provintien (s.l., 1647), USTC 1034761, part 3, p. 103. ‘… ego habeo Augustinum in priore sententia mihi consentientem …’ Jacob Arminius, De Vero et genuine sensu capitis VII. Epistolae ad Romanos Dissertatio, in his Opera theologica, p. 898. Cf. Goudriaan, ‘“Augustine Asleep” or “Augustine Awake”: Jacobus Arminius’s Reception of Augustine’, pp. 58–59.

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an eleven-volume set of Chrysostom’s Opera and a five-volume set.52 He owned a six-volume set of Augustine’s Opera. Arminius’ use of this set of Augustine’s Opera was not without its complications, however. In his published works, Arminius cited volumes seven and ten of a set of Augustine. Based on this, Aza Goudriaan suggested, ‘The auctioneer probably did not offer the complete set that Arminius owned – or Arminius must have found these quotations elsewhere’.53 In addition to Goudriaan’s suggestions, there are two other distinct possibilities for why Arminius’ catalogue does not list volumes seven and ten, yet he is able to cite them. First, Arminius may have given the books away before he died, a common phenomenon in ministerial culture at that time. Second, it was also common for writers to cite sources they had not personally consulted.54 Therefore, it is just as probable that Arminius did not own volumes seven and ten at the time of his death, or there was a mistake in the printed catalogue. When Arminius and those who disagreed with him cited Augustine and the teaching of the Fathers, they did not do so out of a position of ignorance. Arminius’ opponents had similar access to works by the Church Fathers. Franciscus Gomarus, Arminius’ most capable opponent and professor of theology at Leiden, owned a remarkable collection of the Fathers. The auction catalogue for his library listed 2,783 books, of which at least forty-five were by the Fathers. Among them were a five-volume set of Augustine’s works, twelve works by John Chrysostom, six by Gregory of Nazianzus and four each by Cyril of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa. It is clear, therefore, that Arminius and Gomarus owned works by many of the same Fathers. Their disagreement was thus not one that stemmed from a lack of physical access to books by the Church Fathers, but a conflict over the Fathers whose works they had both read. 6.3

An Ancient Devotion

Dutch ministers hoped to demonstrate the truthfulness of their own theological positions by calling to the witness stand theologians who were respected 52

53 54

For the five-volume set, the catalogue suggests it was printed in Venice in 1563. The ‘6’ is written in manuscript. As of yet, I have not been able to identify this work. A five-volume set was printed by the Froben press in Basel in 1539. AC Jacob Arminius (Leiden: Thomas Basson, 1610), p. 10. Goudriaan, ‘“Augustine Asleep” or “Augustine Awake”: Jacobus Arminius’s Reception of Augustine’, p. 71. Lane, John Calvin; Riemer A. Faber, ‘Scholastic Continuities in the Reproduction of Classical Sources in the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae’, Church History and Religious Culture, 92 (2012), pp. 561–579.

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by all those writing at the time. Dutch ministers were convinced that theirs was the true Church from a theological and ecclesiological perspective, and that they could demonstrate positive evidence of that through the history. They sought to impress upon their congregations that the true Church had been preserved in accordance with Jesus’ promise to the Apostle Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16:18). Dutch ministers made special efforts to demonstrate the antiquity of their faith for the spiritual good of other believers. Like Lydius’ use of Augustine, this can be seen even in unlikely places. In his Disputatio Theologica de Vocatione Ministrorum in Ecclesiis Reformatis, et de Jure Patronatus [Theological Disputation on the Calling of Ministers in the Reformed Church, and concerning the advocate of the law], the Utrecht professor of theology Gisbertus Voetius took up the question of who had the authority to call ministers to Reformed Churches: the churches themselves or the State. Voetius grounded his disputation in numerous biblical references, but he was eager to demonstrate the antiquity of his position. Rather than establishing a magisterial system or a system in which the secular authorities confirmed ministers, Voetius argued that churches, confirmed by classes, ought to have final authority in selecting their ministers. Voetius began with a brief address to the Christian reader, explaining why he preferred the thesis for theological education and exhorting the reader to consider the antiquity of his position. In the address to the Christian reader, he questioned, is it not better to follow the ‘primitive and pure way of antiquity’ rather than the novel? He concluded, ‘then, finally, to return to the primitive simplicity of sacred letters, to which we return as the sole source of wisdom for safety. Today, we see the scornful disdain of some who prefer novelty’.55 In defense of his case, Voetius cited John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Pope Gregory the Great, Ambrose of Milan, Leo the Great, Theodoretus and others. Voetius thought that ‘the pure way of antiquity’ was the path to greater godliness, and he encouraged his students to embark upon it. Voetius wrote TA AΣKHTIKA, sive Exercitia Pietatis in usum Juventutis Academicae [On Asesticism, or Pious Exercies for the Use of Young Academics] as a guide to a pious, Reformed academic life that a young student of theology should pursue 55

“is sciat aliter haec sacra non constare, tum quod primava & puriore antiquitate ne umbra quidem novellarum electionum aut patronatuum compareat” and “tum denique quod ad primigeniam simplicitatem sacrarum literarum, quae solae alioquin sapientes nos redderent ad salutem, hodie sic satis fastidire videntur nonnulli, qui qualiscunque antiquitatis seu mavis novitatis admirationes se ostentant” Gisbertus Voetius, ‘Christiano Lectori’, in his Disputatio Theologica de Vocatione Ministrorum in Ecclesiis Reformatis, et De Jure Patronatus (Utrecht: Wilhelm Strick, 1643), USTC 1020452, f. A1r.

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during their studies, and afterwards when they were called formally to the pastorate.56 The study of theology, Voetius thought, ought to be pursued in unity with spiritual discipline and piety (pietas). To defend his case, Voetius turned to Augustine. Voetius reminded his students that it was Augustine, not only their professor, who upheld the importance of shedding visible tears when praying.57 Voetius recommended to his students several historical examples of the pious life, especially the exemplary life of Augustine. Voetius gave Augustine a title – ‘respectable man of God’ – that he had only given to one other theologian, Martin Luther.58 Voetius echoed the advice the delegates at the 1578 Synod of Dort gave on citing authorities in sermons. In a disputation on preaching, he discouraged citing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians; instead, preachers should reference the testimonium patrum in order to win over any Roman Catholics and Remonstrants (Arminians) who may be listening.59 For this, the original sources were preferred. He discouraged the use of compendia of quotations of the Fathers. Instead, Voetius thought, they should use the original sources.60 Voetius exhorted his students to revere the Church Fathers and, above all, to turn to Augustine. It was advice he followed, regularly offering quotations from Augustine and other Fathers in his printed sermons. In one sermon, he quoted Augustine, Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus.61 Voetius owned many works by the Church Fathers. When Voetius’ library sold, at least fifty-two works by the Church Fathers were listed in the auction catalogues composed for the sale. He owned 5,535 books.62 Augustine was Voetius’ favorite Church Father, but Voetius’ affinity for Augustine does not mean Augustine was the most popular Church Father in his book auction 56 57 58 59

60 61 62

Gisbertus Voetius, TA AΣKHTIKA, sive Exercitia Pietatis in usum Juventutis Academicae (Gorinchem: Paulus Vink, 1664). Ibid., p. 279. C.A. de Niet, ‘De kerkvaders in Voetius’ TA AΣKHTIKA, sive Exercitia Pietatis (1664)’, in J. van Oort (ed.), De kerkvaders in Reformatie en Nadere Reformatie (Boekencentrum: Zoetermeer, 1997), pp. 126–134. Gisbertus Voetius, ‘De publica Verbi Divini Tractatione’, in his, Politicae Ecclesiastica (4 vols., Amsterdam: Johannes à Waesberge and Johannes Janssonius à Waesberge, 1663– 1676), I, pp. 598–631. Cf. John Exalto, ‘Orating from the Pulpit: The Dutch Augustine and the Reformed Godly until 1700’, in Karla Pollmann and Meredith J. Gill (eds.), Augustine beyond the Book: Intermediality, Transmediality, and Reception (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 197–201. De Niet, ‘De kerkvaders in Voetius’ TA AΣKHTIKA’, p. 134. Johannes van Oort, ‘Augustine’s Influence on the Preaching of Gisbertus Voetius’, Augustiniana, 41 (1991), pp. 997–1009. AC Gisbertus Voetius 1677 and 1679 (Utrecht: Willem Clerck, 1677 and 1679).

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catalogue.63 Augustine is listed six times, while other Church Fathers are listed as often or more: Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus were listed five times each; Theodoretus was listed six times; John Chrysostom was listed eight times. Of Theodoretus, the two catalogues list versions of his De Providentia Graece five different times, four times in the original Latin and once in French translation. The other work by Theodoretus was his Opera (1592). Godefridus Udemans was a minister in Zierikzee who similarly upheld the Church Fathers as guides to Christian devotion. He encouraged readers of his Practycke, Dat is, Werckelijcke oeffeninghe van de Christelijcke hooft-deuchden, Gheloove, Hope, ende Liefde [Practice, that is, the genuine exercise of the high Christian virtues] with the teachings of the Church Fathers, albeit with a fair measure of polemical gamesmanship. His Practycke was a broad guide to the Christian life, surveying what was considered the foundations of the Christian faith: The Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. Udemans was firmly Reformed, and in his general work on the Christian life, he took the liberty to dissuade his readers to abandon any hints of their former Roman Catholic beliefs. He cited the Church Fathers to reinforce his argument against praying to the Saints. ‘Witnesses such as Epiphanius, Ambrose, and Augustine defended the foundation of truth with great zeal. In Panarion, Epiphanius fought with great zeal against those who prayed against Mary, the mother of the Lord, or to any other Saint’.64 In his defense of predestination, Udemans cited the authority of Augustine: ‘The mystery of how God uses evil for good is clearly and concisely explained by Augustine’.65 Godefridus Udemans was a Reformed minister who had been deeply influenced by English Puritanism. He hoped to see his understanding of the Reformed faith inform every aspect of Dutch society, from governmental policies to daily life. Chief among Udemans’ criticism was dancing. He denounced dancing as ‘the bellows of indecency and instruments of frivolity’. To support his case amongst his ordinary readers, Udemans cited two sets of authorities: medical doctors and the Church Fathers. ‘Medical doctors show us that the violent shaking of the body is dangerous, particularly after a meal. Many dancers come down with pleurisy, blood diseases, or other illnesses because of exhaustion that results from dancing’.66 If the judgement of medical doctors was not enough, Udemans claimed that the most revered theologians in the history 63 64 65 66

This not due to Augustine’s works being scarcely printed compared to other Church Fathers. Augustine was one of the most popularly printed authors at the time. Godefridus Udemans, The Practice of Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Annemie Godbehere, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), p. 172. Udemans, The Practice of Faith, Hope, and Love, p. 53. Ibid., p. 365.

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of the Church agreed with him: ‘Teachers of Christ’s church, such as Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, and Cyprian, with one accord, disapproved of dancing’.67 Udemans based his opinion of the Church Fathers on the collection of their works that was listed in his library auction catalogue. Of the 1,449 books that are listed in the auction catalogue the library Udemans collected, at least twenty-five were written by the Church Fathers. It lists the Opera of Epiphanius, six works by Augustine, Cyril’s Opera and four works by Chrysostom including his five-volume Opera. 6.4

Teachers of Christ’s Church

Dutch ministers desperately strove for peace and concord within the Church, despite there being almost constant controversies between them. Debates, which would often transform into embroiled quarrels, not only involved questions of biblical meaning; other sources were almost as hotly contested as interpretations of particular passages of Scripture. Supreme amongst these debated sources were the Church Fathers. Ministers in the Netherlands were eager to demonstrate their lineage from the ‘ancient Fathers’, such that they eschewed mentioning works by the Reformers in their own writing. ‘They found continuity with the Church Fathers more important than explicit references to the Reformers, because of their view of the catholicity of the Reformed church’, Henk van den Belt stated.68 These ancient teachers of the Christian faith helped mold the theological community of the Dutch Golden Age, as they were read and debated endlessly. Further research on readership and appropriation of the Church Fathers would enable even greater clarity in our understanding of the Dutch Protestant ministers as readers of the Church Fathers. Were there minor, yet illustrative distinctions in the ways Lutheran, Mennonite and Reformed ministers read the Fathers? What of Catholic priests in the Netherlands? What was the practice of Protestant ministers in other geographic contexts? Did readership of the Fathers shift throughout the decades as different pastoral needs arose? Dutch ministers during the Golden Age devoted significant portions of their theological training and their personal libraries to understanding the Church 67 68

Udemans, The Practice of Faith, Hope, and Love, p. 363. Henk van den Belt, ‘Luther in Dutch Reformed Orthodoxy: A Bag of Worms against the Lutherans’, in Herman J. Selderhuis and J. Marius J. Lange van Ravenswaay (eds.), Luther and Calvinism: Image and Reception of Martin Luther in the History and Theology of Calvinism (Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2017), p. 427.

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Fathers and their world. Reformed ministers read and taught the Bible after years of sitting at the feet of the Fathers. In the battle for hearts and minds and the struggle for a more Christian society, referencing the Church Fathers was necessary, and ministers’ library catalogues indicate the important role these theologians played in Dutch religious life. These ‘teachers of Christ’s church’ were some of the most commonly listed authors in ministerial library catalogues during the Dutch Golden Age.

chapter 7

Print, Friendship and Voluntary Devotional Communities in North West England, c. 1660–c. 1730 Michael A.L. Smith On 25 July 1712, after a hard day’s work, Manchester wig-maker Edmund Harrold wrote in his diary: ‘I observe yt every one hath some object … yt is delightfull to bestow their[s] on. Mine is b[oo]ks, for I would [sooner] lay it out on ym yn any thing for diversion or recreation, nay yn meat or drink extraordinary’.1 Harrold was particularly attached to reading materials, which he also traded for profit. His dedication to reading was all the more notable given his otherwise High Church sympathies. The High Church faction of the Church of England put a strong emphasis on the ordinances of the Church and was suspicious of extra-parochial activities. This included some reservation about informal reading groups and communities of print, which were often associated with godly (puritan) culture. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, this faction was the most hostile to any accommodation with English Presbyterians and to the toleration of other dissenters, for whom extra-parochial reading was a cornerstone of their piety.2 The High Church faction championed the return of the established Church as it was constituted under Charles I. Its supporters in the Cavalier Parliament (1661–1679) ensured the passing of the somewhat misnamed Clarendon Code that precipitated the ejection of some 2,000 ministers. These ministers were mostly ‘Presbyterians’ and had hoped for some accommodation within the established Church. They could not, however, bring themselves to perform services according to the Book of Common Prayer in its entirety. The legislation essentially outlawed dissent from the Church of England. This animosity continued into the eighteenth century, when movements under Queen Anne sought to bar nonconformists from acting as schoolmasters, and clamp down on nonconformists gaining public office by occasionally taking communion in the Church of England. Harrold’s commitment to his own communities 1 Edmund Harrold, The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712–15, Craig Horner (ed.), (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008), p. 22. 2 Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2011).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_009

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of print was, therefore, all the more remarkable. Despite his High Church sympathies, he enthusiastically embraced a reading culture that was typical of Interregnum and nonconformist practice. A culture that his party in the Church of England often disdained. Harrold’s diary demonstrates a preference for the Collegiate Church in Manchester. He had a choice as St Ann’s Church, founded by the erstwhile Presbyterian Lady Ann Bland, had opened in 1712. Unlike St Ann’s, which became the church preferred by Manchester’s Low Church fashionables, the Collegiate Church was the centre of High Church piety in Manchester. Harrold also expressed sympathy for the High Church controversialist Henry Sacheverall and his opinions. Despite this, he was no bigot. Two of Harrold’s wives were nonconformists (though Ann Horrocks, his third wife, conformed when they married and the couple split their time between the Collegiate Church and St Ann’s as a result). Harrold also read widely, taking in both conformist and nonconformist authors, apparently without prejudice or preference. In many ways, Harrold’s reading activities were typical of those explored by Andrew Cambers in Godly Reading. Cambers has argued that reading was an inherently social exercise among godly (or puritan) communities between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. He has shown how the exchange and distribution of godly reading materials was instrumental in constructing communities of devotion. Cambers recognised that the reading practices he explored were not exclusive to the godly. He nonetheless understood them as sitting uneasily with the conformist establishment after 1662.3 Similar to Harrold’s experience, this chapter suggests that print was central to English parochial and extra-parochial faith communities in the period between 1660 and 1730. Despite the conflicts among different expressions of English Protestantism, the exchange and discussion of religious print culture was a practice shared beyond the boundaries of conformity to the Church of England. This chapter will compare the practices of Edmund Harrold (1678– 1721) and local ministers involved with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), with that of Roger Lowe (d. 1679), a nonconformist apprentice based in Ashton-in-Makerfield in Lancashire. Lowe was of very different circumstances to Harrold and Harrold’s circle of friends. Despite this, Harrold and Lowe had very similar approaches to devotional texts. This similarity challenges the prevailing historiographical interpretation that the varieties of

3 Harrold, Diary of Edmund Harrold; Cambers, Godly Reading, pp. 39–51, 70. For worship at St Ann’s, see pp. 112–130, 182–186.

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English Protestantism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were cultures increasingly alien to one another.4 The texts that circulated in the four counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland, explored here, demonstrated a deep concern for the internal piety of their audience. That is to say, these texts focussed on the individual’s personal and immediate relationship with God. They understood this relationship as inherently emotional or, more properly for the period, affective. Similarly, the diaries of Harrold and Lowe exhibit the centrality of feeling to their own devotional practices, including reading. Friendships and voluntary religious associations often centred around the exchange of devotional texts. The personal devotions conducted by Harrold, Lowe and others, as solitarily as they could, involved reading and meditating on the materials they had received from friends and associates. They also read and discussed these texts with their friends and in voluntary religious communities, that is, social religious practices that were both extra-familial and extra-parochial (or, in Lowe’s case as a nonconformist, extra-congregational). The affective piety recommended in many of these texts coloured the friendships and associations that Harold, Lowe and others made. Their bonds of friendship and affection were tied up with the devotional affections of the materials they read and exchanged. As such, this chapter revises how the prevailing historiography has characterised the nature of religiosity between 1660 and 1730.5 Even the texts that were circulated by divines of the Church of England, through the SPCK, promoted an intensely emotional faith. Narratives of a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ have been persistent in the histories of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century English Protestantism. Historians have often downplayed 4 Christopher Haigh, “‘Theological Wars’: ‘Socinians’ v. ‘Antinomians’ in Restoration England”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 67:2 (2016), pp. 325–50; Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment; Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008), pp. 16, 45–6; Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780, Vol. I. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000); John Spurr, ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, The Historical Journal, Volume 31, Issue 01. (March 1988), pp. 61–82. 5 Grant Tapsell, ‘Introduction: the Later Stuart church in context’, in Tapsell (ed.), The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714 (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2012), p. 2. John Walsh, ‘“Methodism” and the Origins of English-Speaking Evangelicalism’ in Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, George A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1994), p. 22; John Spurr ‘“Rational Religion” in Restoration England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec., 1988), p. 564; G. Williamson, Seventeenth-Century Contexts (Faber: London, 1960), ch. ix, and M. Heyd, ‘The Reaction to Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of Modern History, 53 (1981), pp. 258–80.

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the role of feeling in the religious culture of England following the Restoration. This is in direct contrast to recent assessments of the piety of the Reformation and post-Reformation. Alec Ryrie has interpreted Reformation Protestantism as explicitly emotional in character; his edited collections with Natalie Mears and Jessica Martin have shown the affective dynamism of public and private devotions of the period immediately preceding the Restoration.6 Many of the works circulated by the SPCK in the four counties promoted holy living and moral action. Yet, these texts also sought to inculcate in their audiences an affective piety. The evidence explored here suggests that this faith was not limited to a ‘framework of imminence’ or the ‘social utility’ that Brent Sirota has suggested was typical of the organisation’s approach to faith.7 The works explored in this chapter demonstrate a commitment to an affective internal piety. The materials and characters explored here offer a challenge to the prevailing historiographical narrative that the culture of English Protestantism was characterised by a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ between 1660 and 1730. Sirota’s characterisation of the efforts of the SPCK as ultimately concerned with instilling a civil piety is challenged here. Sirota has argued that the ‘soteriological imperatives’ of the initial outburst of Church of England revivalism in the 1680s waned in favour of a more secular focus.8 This chapter, however, demonstrates that the focus on salvation and strong internal piety was maintained well into the eighteenth century. The strong experiential piety promoted by the works of divinity in the period aided the construction of discrete communities of voluntary association. They did so in very practical ways but were also essential to the religious lives of the individual. The price and availability of texts of practical divinity meant that exchange of such materials by those wishing to cultivate their faith was both essential and desirable. In turn, these practices constructed discrete communities that shared affective and religious bonds, and which used these texts in private devotional practice, and at times of crisis in their lives. This chapter will show how texts served as talismans of friendship, and were central to the SPCK’s missionary agenda. 6 Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2013) p. 9; Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds.), Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Ashgate: Farnham 2013); Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie (eds.), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain (Ashgate: Farnham, 2012). 7 Brent Sirota, The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730 (Yale University Press: London, 2014), p. 9; see also Peter Clark’s inclusion of the SPCK in British Clubs and Societies, 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000). 8 Sirota, Christian Monitors, p. 9.

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The SPCK and the Circulation of Devotional Texts

The exchange of devotional materials played a significant role in the mission of the SPCK and it is clear that they also conceived of this action as constructive of communities by encouraging attendance at church and the Eucharist. Formed on 8 March 1699 by Thomas Bray, a Church of England clergyman, and four of his lay friends, the SPCK was dedicated to propagating Christian teaching at home and abroad. The organisation encouraged the establishment of libraries and charity schools; it also circulated materials of practical divinity. For the greater part, its mission was to spread works such as the Church’s catechism, the Book of Common Prayer, and other religious treatises to those who could not otherwise afford them. The SPCK worked together with local clergymen, with whom they exchanged letters. The letters to and from the central organisation of the Society exhibited the importance they placed on devotional texts in supporting the religious life of the parish.9 The Abstract Letter books, currently held at Cambridge University Library, list the communications that the central organisation of the SPCK at Lincoln’s Inn, London received from the provinces, and the central leadership’s responses. They also list the number of books dispersed in a given year. Scott Mandelbrote has argued that the SPCK’s role in the printing and distribution of Bibles was modest, with the SPCK distributing ‘slightly fewer than 1,000 Bibles, together with a couple of hundred New Testaments, each year’ in the 1720s and 1730s.10 An entry in the letter books, for 1709, however, recorded under ‘Books & Papers Bought & printed at the charge of the Society [during] the 2 last Quarters’ some ‘3500. Dr. Moss’s Sermons and Account of Schools’; ‘200 Bibles, Testaments & Comon prayer Books bound’; ‘700 Discourses concerning Baptismal & Spiritual Regeneration’; ‘200 Husbandmans Manual in Welch’. ‘In all 12100 not including Bibles & Comon Prayr. Books’.11 These numbers also included texts about the Society and its support of charity schools. Nonetheless, the number of materials distributed by the SPCK in their own records bore 9

10 11

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Abstract Letter Books, Cambridge University Library, SPCK MS D2/3, SPCK Correspondence 1699–1701 [Abstract Letter Book]; Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Abstract Letter Books, Cambridge University Library, SPCK MS D2/3, SPCK Correspondence 1708–1709 [Abstract Letter Book]; Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Abstract Letter Books, Cambridge University Library, SPCK MS D2/3, SPCK Correspondence 1708–1711 [Abstract Letter Book]. Scott Mandelbrote, ‘The English Bible and its Readers in the Eighteenth Century’, in Isabel Rivers (ed.) Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (Continuum: London, 2001), p. 52. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Abstract Letter Books, Cambridge University Library, SPCK MS D2/3, SPCK Correspondence 1708–1709 [Abstract Letter Book], p. 321.

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witness to their Christian mission and the role of texts in supporting voluntary and parochial devotional communities around the country. In spite of this benevolent activity, voluntary religious societies such as the SPCK and their encouragement of extra-parochial religious devotions drew suspicion, and even censure. Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe have noted that: in Restoration England, voluntary religion was not the broadly acceptable marker of a reform movement from within the Church that it had once been. When it exceeded the elastic and contested bounds of domestic piety, it was an illegal conventicle, prohibited by the Clarendon Code.12 The correspondence between the organisation in London and the localities demonstrated some of this uneasiness. This was partly due to the fact that Societies for the Reformation of Manners (SRMs) often sprang up in tandem with regional SPCK groups. The SRMs were more closely associated with dissenting piety and seem to have aroused the concern of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England, particularly where lectures, in the form of sermons given by conformist and nonconformist preachers, were held. In a letter dated 18 April 1700, a Mr Gilpin of Sealby feared that fissures might appear within the established Church should the SPCK and the SRMs interact. Gilpin noted that the archdeacon of Carlisle had taken a dislike to the SRMs, charging ‘all those Societyes as contrary to the Laws both Civil and Ecclesiastical and of most pernicious consequence to Church and state’.13 The archdeacon’s opinion was also shared by other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy including John Sharp, archbishop of York. Sharp had similarly advised against the setting up of an SRM in Brampton, Cumberland, refusing (as he had done in advice sought of him from Nottingham) to allow interdenominational preaching for fear of breaking the law.14 Despite some opposition, other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the established Church in the region offered support to both societies. Where they were supportive, print was central to the societies’ mission to build devotional communities. The ‘resolute, High Church Tory’ Dr Hugh Todd, Vicar of 12 13 14

Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, And Evangelical Identity In Late Stuart England’, The Historical Journal, 47 (2004), p. 882. SPCK MS D2/1, Abstract Letter Book, p. 20, no. 87. A Tindal Hart, The Life and Times of John Sharp, Archbishop of York (London, 1949), pp. 181– 3; The letter to Nottingham Society for Reformation of Manners, dated ‘February 2d 1697– 8’ is reproduced in Thomas Sharp, The Life and Times of John Sharp D. D, Vol. 1. (C. and J. Rivington: London, 1825), 174–8; the letters to Archdeacon Nicholson dated ‘“Feb. 27th, 1699.”’ and ‘“March 5th, 1699”’ are reproduced pp. 182–189.

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Penrith and Prebendary of Carlisle Cathedral, was supportive of both societies and understood their activities as mutually supportive. On 8 September 1701, Todd wrote that the ‘many Thousand Books distributed in that Diocese’ had brought ‘a Communicant to church more than usual &. that there is a Visible Reformation of manners everywhere’.15 Nicholas Stratford, bishop of Chester, was also a strong supporter of the societies. Though a High Churchman, particularly regarding the ceremonies of the Church, Stratford sought the assistance of Matthew Henry, a leading Presbyterian divine, in support of the SRMs in Chester.16 On 18 July 1701, Stratford informed the central administration of the SPCK that he would stay at Wigan until September to finish his visitation of his diocese, and had recommended that his clergy erect ‘Societies of discreet, sober & pious Persons for the Reformation of Manners; & in the great & populous Towns for setting up Charity Schools’.17 The bishop appeared to have some success: Mr. Taylor of Wigan informed the SPCK on 6 September 1700 that the monthly lecture set up by Stratford ‘two years since … to supress prophaneness and Imorality’ seldom drew ‘lesse than 20 Clergymen and some times 30’.18 On 3 October 1707, Jonathan Blackmore of Warrington wrote of ‘ye good Effects’ of the efforts ‘wch are yt such as were addicted to swearing begin to leave it off & Lastly yt a great number of yeomen sort are much Reclaimed’.19 The letters bore witness to how effective the SPCK’s circulation of devotional texts was to its mission to support parochial worship, particularly attendance at the Lord’s Supper. It is clear that the literature circulated by the SPCK had some positive impact on church attendance and conformity, even at times at the expense of nonconformist congregations. For example, John Bradshaw, the rector of Nantwich, thanked the Society on 13 December 1708 for their parcel of books and requested ‘Mr Busket’s Book to preserve from the infection of Anabaptism the professors of wch. he believes were supported by a Fund from London as well as the Presbyterians’.20 Similarly, Mr Taylor of Wigan sought a copy of the ‘Address to those of the Roman Comunion &c to the chief Popish ffamilyes 15 16 17 18 19 20

David J.W. Mawson, ‘Todd, Hugh (c. 1657–1728)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, ; SPCK MS D2/1, Abstract Letter Book, p. 143, no. 342 underlining author’s own. Henry D. Rack, ‘Stratford, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1707)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­ graphy, Oxford University Press, 2004 . ‘July 18, 1701’, W.O.B. Allen and E. McClure, Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898 (Creative: New York, N.Y. 1971), p. 86. SPCK MS D2/1, Abstract Letter Book, p. 44, no. 159. SPCK MS D2/1, Abstract Letter Book, p. 149, no. 351. SPCK MS D2/3, Abstract Letter Book, 1708–1709, p. 71, no. 1524.

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[sic] in England’ from the SPCK on 6 September 1700.21 Archdeacon Entwistle at Chester wrote to the SPCK, informing them that ‘the Bp. has dispers’d great numbers of Bugg’s small pieces [anti-Quaker polemics]’.22 The attack upon popery and Quakerism sat in line with SPCK practice more generally. It also demonstrated a lack of complacency among the clergy of the region. Despite the entrenchment of Roman Catholicism, there was a desire to use print as a means to bring Catholics and Quakers to the Church of England. The price and availability of these texts were important here. They facilitated exchange and ownership of these texts by those who otherwise lacked means or appropriate social connections. The SPCK’s mission to those on the fringes of society (in religious terms at least) was mediated through printed materials. Overall, while there was some opposition from members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it is clear that the texts circulated by these voluntary associations were important to developing the spirituality of the people of the north west of England. They were tools in encouraging conformity to the Church of England, conducive not only to the construction of voluntary devotional communities but also the public devotional community of the parish. The literature itself, while focussing on church attendance and moral action, also clearly sought to inculcate affective piety within its audience. Much has been made within the historiography of the period of the greater focus on the more straightforwardly practical faith of the Restoration Church, witnessed in the Church’s promotion of plain-style preaching (or at least the teaching of practical lessons).23 As William J. Bulman has argued, this approach was not exclusive to any one party of English Protestantism, departing from ‘puritan enthusiasm, but also from the Senecan, witty and florid styles of many Jacobean and Laudian conformists’.24 Yet, this has often worked to obscure the affective religiosity that practical divinity of the period offered. Many of the titles circulated by the SPCK in the region encouraged their readers to engage in a lively religious faith.

21 22 23

24

SPCK MS D2/1, Abstract Letter Book, p. 45, no. 159. Allen and McClure, Two Hundred Years, pp. 65, 66. Jean Le Clerc, Five letters concerning the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures translated out of French (n.pub.: London, 1690), p. 70; David Appleby argues that ‘plain style’ preaching did not mean lack of complexity or artfulness Black Bartholomew’s Day: Preaching, Polemic and Restoration Nonconformity (Manchester 2012), pp. 64–5. William J. Bulman, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2015), p. 171.

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Affective Piety in Practical Divinity

A sample of letters exchanged between the London headquarters of the SPCK and the four counties from 1699 to 1711 included requests for thirty different titles.25 Among the regular requests for bibles, the Book of Common Prayer, catechisms and primers, were titles such as John Rawlet’s Christian Monitor, from which Brent Sirota drew the title of his work. Rawlet’s text was intimately concerned with preparing his audiences for weekly devotions at public worship and instilling them with a sense of Christian moral duty; yet it also sought to develop the internal piety of his audience. Christian Monitor promoted an experiential piety mediated by feeling. Rawlet drew upon dualistic discourses of God and the Devil, similar to those of the moral reform movement, which emphasised their ‘real existence … and the real nature of the struggle between the two’.26 Rawlet asked: ‘Do not the temptations of the Devil, the allurements of the World and the Flesh many times prevail more with you than the Commands of Almighty God and the voice of your own Conscience?’ The Devil ‘has his instruments to draw Men to wickedness, one ill man tempting another, so Ministers are sent from God to draw you to righteousness and holiness’.27 Rawlet’s description of heaven sought to raise the affections of his audience. In that ‘glorious Kingdom’, the Christian would enjoy the ‘fulness of joy for evermore’. They would be ‘satisfied and ravished with the beholding of his Glories and the enjoyment of his love; always delighted with the most pleasant and agreeable society of Angels and Saints’.28 The role of the heart was promoted by several of the texts circulated by the SPCK. The heart was significant in these discourses because, as an organ of the body, it was understood as mediating feeling. Despite some developments in medical theory (most notably the emergence of chemical medicine, Cartesian dualism and William Harvey’s contributions to understanding the circulation of blood), older models of physiology persisted in the late seventeenth and 25

26 27 28

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Abstract Letter Books, Cambridge University Library, SPCK MS D2/1, SPCK Correspondence 1699–1701, [Abstract Letter Book]; SPCK MS D2/2 SPCK Correspondence [Abstract Letter Book] 1699–1701; SPCK MS D2/3 SPCK Correspondence [Abstract Letter Book] 1708–1709; SPCK MS D2/4 SPCK Correspondence [Abstract Letter Book] 1708–1711. T.C. Curtis, and W.A. Speck, ‘The Societies for the Reformation of Manners: A Case Study in the Theory and Practice of Moral Reform’, Literature and History, (1976), p. 48. John Rawlet, The Christian Monitor containing an earnest exhortation to an holy life, with some directions in order thereto: written in a plain and easie style, for all sorts of people (n.pub.: London, 1686), pp. 6, 14. Rawlet, Christian Monitor, pp. 11, 24, 25.

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early eighteenth centuries. This was especially true in Christian writers who understood, mostly along Aristotelian lines, that the exciting of the affections and desires was essential for preaching and praying. These affections, situated in the soul, stirred in and were mediated by the heart, which was in turn understood as essential for the promotion of action.29 William Beveridge advocated ‘truth and sincerity of heart in the using of’ the Book of Common Prayer in his treatise concerning its efficacy.30 Thomas Bray’s recommendations for family religion employed similar discourses of the heart: ‘here [we are] met, to join our hearts and Voices, in Celebration of thy Praises’.31 Morning prayer was dedicated ‘For thy Mercies sake in Christ Jesus, in whose words we present the earnest desires of our Souls and Hearts, both for our selves and our Brethren, saying, Our Father, &c’.32 Evening prayers confessed the ‘Grief of our Hearts, that we have in the least offended Thee’. The family asked God that, ‘after the Refreshment of a quiet Sleep this Night, we may feel them lively, and powerful in the Morning; and with renew’d Joy, we may still devote our selves to thy faithful Service’.33 The Husband-man’s Manual included a prayer beseeching God for his influence upon their feeling: ‘But do thou O my God, give me a softer Heart, and a more ingenuous Frame of Mind, that thy Mercies may lead me to Repentance’.34 Even texts such as Le Clerc’s Five Letters (1690), which otherwise promoted a greater role for reason by denying that the Bible was wholly divinely inspired, embraced feeling. In denying the spiritual or mystic element of much of the Bible, Le Clerc associated the ‘Spirit of God’ and ‘Spirit of Holiness’ with ‘a disposition of Spirit conformable to the Commandments of God’, or indeed the ‘Spirit of Iealousy, the Spirit of Stupidity, the Spirit of Fear, the Spirit of Courage, the Spirit of Meekness, &c’. Here, prophecy and revelation were aspects of affect.35 The anonymous A pastoral letter from a minister to his parishioners 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

Thomas Dixon, From Passion to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), pp. 72–81; Susan Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2010), p. 249; Elena Carrera, ‘Anger and the Mind-Body Connection in medieval and Early Modern Medicine’, in Carrera (ed)., Emotions and Health, 1200–1700 (Brill: Boston, 2013), pp. 115–129. William Beveridge, A sermon concerning the excellency and usefulness of the common prayer preached by William Beveridge … 27th of November. 1681 (n.pub.: London, 1682), p. 17. Thomas Bray, An appendix to the discourse upon the doctrine of our baptismal covenant being a method of family religion (n.pub.: London, 1699), n.p. [p. 23]. Bray, Appendix, n.p. [p. 29]. Bray, Appendix n.p. [sigD2r, p. 30], italics in original. Edward Welchman, The husband-man’s Manual (n.pub.: London, 1706), p. 10. Welchman, Husband-man’s Manual, pp. 50–1, italics in original.

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(1699) also recommended a strongly affective piety: ‘if you will but lay these things to Heart, your Reason and your Interest will both direct you how to behave yourselves’.36 The text recommended to its readers ‘a lively Faith in the Mercies of God through Christ’, where God ‘warmeth our cold Affections, and enflameth our Hearts with Devotion’.37 Despite persistent narratives within the historiography of a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ dominating the religious culture of the period that followed the Restoration, the texts explored here demonstrate the centrality of feeling in the piety they recommended.38 The SPCK and the practical divinity of the period have been understood as advocating a fairly straightforward moralistic faith; one that was dedicated to attending church as a good act in and of itself, and developing a faith that was conducive to creating an orderly and polite society. The discourses of the heart and the affections in these texts suggest that the role of feeling in this religiosity needs a greater focus and some revision. 7.3

Friendship, Textual Exchange and Internal Piety

The texts that were circulated by the SPCK demonstrate that voluntary religious associations, and voluntary religion itself, often played a subordinate role to public worship in the economy of devotion for English Protestants of the period. The texts present these practices and groups as a means of supporting attendance at church and the Eucharist. Voluntary religion could also be a source of practical materials, mostly in the form of treatises of practical divinity, which influenced the performance of personal and public devotions. Drawing its members from among the more committed of both conforming and nonconforming congregations, voluntary religion was often practiced as a means of enhancing the reception of sermons and the sacraments.39 It is also clear that friendships and more formal associations were discrete, affective devotional practices in their own right. Mutual prayer sought to instil affective appreciation of God through collective worship outside Lord’s Day 36 37 38 39

Anon., A pastoral letter from a minister to his parishioners being an earnest exhortation to them to take care of their souls, and a preparative in order to render all his future methods of instruction more effectual to their edification, 3rd edition (n.p.: London, 1702), pp. 18–19. Pastoral letter, p. 7. See fn. 4. For an extended discussion of voluntary religion and its relationship to other devotional practices see Michael A.L. Smith, ‘The Affective Communities of Protestantism in North West England, c. 1660–c. 1740’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017), pp. 152–196.

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congregations and was often of soteriological importance. The texts circulated by the SPCK demonstrate this well. Print was often essential to these voluntary practices and devotional friendships among both conformists and nonconformists. The diaries of Manchester-based Edmund Harrold (1678–1721) and Roger Lowe (d. 1679), a nonconformist apprentice in Ashton-in-Makerfield in Lancashire, demonstrate how their social lives were mediated by print. Harrold’s High Church sympathies and Lowe’s nonconformity were suggestive of significant ecclesiological and theological differences between the two men. Yet, they had similar relationships with print culture. In very practical ways, their internal piety was dependent upon their friendships and social connections. The exchange and sharing of print culture influenced their internal piety, and intimately involved them in the lives of their friends. The material dimensions of devotional texts were key to these communities. These texts instructed their audiences in the practice of their faith. While such religious texts abounded, they remained a significant expense. The materials referenced in Edmund Harrold’s diary varied in price from 2 pence to 3 shillings; prices that represented a considerable proportion of the incomes of ordinary working people. Even for middling sorts such as Harrold, the greater part of their experience with print was with second-hand books. They recognised the value not only in exchanging books but also in repairing them.40 Harrold took one book to be mended at the expense of 12d.41 The desire to access a number of new printed devotional materials, combined with their expense, meant that the exchange of books was essential to those who, like Harrold and Lowe, were dedicated to godly reading. Exchanging such texts also made social connections all the more important and thus one’s personal devotional affect was inherently tied to one’s social group and friendships. Family ties were similarly influential. The Nicholson family, merchants based in Liverpool in the early eighteenth century, frequently wrote to their sons at the Strand School in Pilkington, requesting, among other things, preaching bibles for their ministerial friends.42 For Harrold, the book trade was intermittent but also, at times, lucrative. Credit was essential to 40

41 42

Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. xxv; Ian Mitchell, ‘“Old books – New Bound?”: Selling Secondhand Books in England c. 1680–1850’, in J. Stobart and I. Van Damme (eds.) Modernity and the Second-Hand Trade: European Consumption Cultures and Practices 1700–1900 (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2010) pp. 139–57. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. xxv. Manchester, John Rylands Special Collections (JRULSC) Eng. MS 1041 (box 1), 1658–1811, Nicholson Papers: Family Letters and Papers, (1658–1811), ‘20 Letters to his sons, Robt, James, Samuel, John at Strand School 1721–35 (Copies)’, Matthew to Samuel Nicholson “Leverpoole 25 [torn] 1733” (15).

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many of his transactions and he appears to have bought, exchanged and sold to a small group of people. Such exchanges were expedited by social interaction and many of his deals were orchestrated and completed in the tavern.43 Lowe similarly frequented alehouses and taverns as part of his religious sociability.44 To a modern audience, religious discussion in the alehouse might seem unusual, given godly ministers’ censure of the immoral behaviour they associated with such establishments. Yet, there is little evidence of alternative venues in the region for such discussion before the 1740s.45 Moreover, historians such as Mark Hailwood, Andrew Cambers and Peter Clark have questioned the difference in comportment between the coffeehouse and the alehouse, and have shown how these were often important venues of socialisation, for both those who were sympathetic to and those who were opposed to the regime.46 It is likely that expediency and discernment (avoiding particular alehouses and taverns with a bad reputation) allowed the godly to embrace the alehouse as a scene of exchange of printed devotional treatises and discussion of them. This was conducive to the creation of extra-parochial devotional communities. Edmund Harrold’s social life revolved around the exchange and discussion of devotional treatises. He and a number of his friends frequently exchanged religious books. For example, on 19 October 1712, Harrold recorded that he ‘Brought fro[m] Mary Hill my Expo[sitions] [and Newcombe’s] Church Catechism’. Hill said ‘she will have 2 b[oo]ks on me, Esop and Ladys New Y[ea]rs Gift and 12d’.47 Craig Horner has identified these texts as Ezekiel Hopkins’ An exposition on the Ten Commandments: … (London, 1691); Peter Newcome’s A catechetical course of sermons for the whole year … (London, [1700]); The fables of Esop, in English … (London, 1628); and George Saville’s The ladies

43 44 45

46

47

Diary of Edmund Harrold, pp. 25, 41, 43, 82. Roger Lowe, The Diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire 1663–74, William L. Sasche (ed.), (Yale University Press: London, 1938), pp. 15, 52, 59. The rising of Jacobite volunteers was conducted at the ‘old coffee-house’ on 9 December 1745. No other evidence of Manchester coffee houses that pre-date this reference; Samuel Hibbert, John Palmer, William Robert Whatton, J. Gresswell, History of the foundations in Manchester of Christ’s College, Chetham’s Hospital, and the Free Grammar School, Vol. 2. (T. Agnew and J. Zanetti: London, 1834), p. 106. Cambers, Godly reading, p. 183; Mark Hailwood, Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England (Boydell & Brewer: Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 63,105–6; Patrick Collinson, ‘From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation’, in Peter Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500–1640 (Arnold: London, 1997), p. 283; Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200– 1830 (Longman: London, 1983), p. 237. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 40.

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New-Years-gift: or Advice to a daughter under these following heads, viz. Religion, husband, house and family … (Edinburgh, [third edition, 1688]).48 Later in the same entry, Harrold noted that he ‘read a sermon in Norris, 2d vol[ume] on natural and morrall vanity. Tis extraordinary indeed [that] I see it verified every day by experience’.49 On 1 August of the same year, he had borrowed from John Brook ‘his Norriss, 1st voll’ which Horner identified as possibly being John Norris’ An Essay towards the Theory of the ideal or intelligible World (London, 1701), of which the second volume appeared in 1704.50 Harrold’s own reading was thus dependent upon and linked with that of his friends and the group that he had drawn around him to share devotional materials. His own piety was practically contingent on his friendships and social connections. Harrold also discussed these books with his friends and thus the affective bonds of friendship were united with devotional practice and religious discussion.51 In this, the central role of friendship and its promotion of an affective piety bore some relation to the effort, as examined by Thomas Heilke, of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists to emulate the life and virtues of the Early Church.52 The diarists explored here followed Aristotelian notions of perfect friendship defined by spiritual bonds of mutual benefit.53 Given the central role of feeling in much of the practical divinity of the period, the exchange of such texts among friends saw them contribute to one another’s internal piety. Harrold’s social life was often mediated by his reading of devotional treatises. On 31 July 1713, he noted ‘at night I put my self in ye books to be asked wth Claricus Davis. Dr. Redford wth me, told Mrs [Horrocks?] on’t. Stay’d till 48 49 50

51 52

53

Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 40. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 40. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 26, n.9. Notably Horner supposed the Norris text that Harrold recorded on 19 October 1712 as Norris’ Practical Discourses upon several Divine Subjects (n.pub.: London, 1691), this book going into 15 editions by 1740. However, given the proximity of the references I have supposed them to be of the same work, Diary of Edmund Harrold, pp. 31–2. Diary of Edmund Harrold, 29 October 1712 p. 42; 31 July 1713, pp. 82–3. Thomas Heilke, ‘From Civic Friendship to Communities of Believers: Anabaptist Challenges to Lutheran and Calvinist Discourses’, in Daniel T. Lochman, Maritere López and Lorna Hutson (eds.), Discourses and Representations of Friendship in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 (Ashgate: Farnham 2011), pp. 225–238. Stella Achilleos, ‘Friendship and Good Counsel: the Discourses of Friendship and Parrhesia in Francis Bacon’s The Essayes of Counsels, Civill and Morall’, in Albrecht Classen, Marilyn Sandidge and Walter de Gruyter (eds.), Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (Walter de Gruyter: Berlin, 2010), p. 646.

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12 past’.54 On 5 August 1712 after working ‘till 8’ he ‘went to John Brook for ‘sermon of: Use and not abuse ye world, by B[isho]p Daw[e]s. In Lent, tis a curious piece indeed. I sp[e]nt 3d wth Greg[sons] [and?] Broxflocks. Came home and read ye sermon’.55 On 26 October 1712, after hearing sermons on 2 Corinthians 2:11 and 1 Corinthians 11:28, Harrold noted that he had ‘Finished Almost Christian. Saw 2 friends, swapt with Mary Hill b[oo]ks. Sp[e]nt 2d, read Newcombs Funerall over at [the Pack] Horse. Sold it R G[ibson] 2d’.56 Later the same week, on 29 October, he spent ‘2d with John Whitworth [at the] Crown and S[c]eptor, discourse on books etc.’.57 While the exchanging of books was something of a necessity for Harrold and indeed provided him with some income, this exchange of devotional texts underlined his friendships. He used the texts they gave him in his personal devotional practice (reading, prayer and meditation) shaping his internal piety. Roger Lowe maintained a number of close spiritual friendships, including those with local ministers. These friendships often revolved around the sharing of texts. On 1 February 1664 (a Sunday), Lowe went: att night to Mr. Woods’ and we being some younge people that som times associeted togather, and providence seeming to make a breach amongst us, we ware sore discomforted, some in their removall far of and I my selfe in thoughts of being removed out of towne.58 He recorded going again the next day with Thomas Smith to ‘spend the night to the edification of one another’. In the same entry Lowe recorded his fear that his friend John Chadoke, an apprentice also yoked to Lowe’s master, was going to leave Ashton soon.59 The unstable nature of life for young people is well demonstrated in these extracts. Clearly it was a significant wrench for these friends, who were dedicated to a body of voluntary religion, to be lost to one another by the courses that their lives took. Nights spent in ‘the edification of one another’ combined friendship with fervent spirituality. Mr Woods being a nonconformist minister, these meetings would later in the year become illegal, though Lowe’s diary mentions none of

54 55 56 57 58 59

Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 82. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 25. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 42. Diary of Edmund Harrold, p. 42. Roger Lowe, The Diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire 1663–74, William L. Sasche (ed.), (Yale University Press: London, 1938), p. 49. Diary of Roger Lowe, p. 49.

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the restrictive legislation of the period.60 It may have been something of an alternative to worship at the Church of England but Lowe’s witness suggested that it was more akin to the extra-parochial exercises that the godly had long engaged in. Such close friendships were also frequently mediated by print. Mr Woods lent Lowe reading materials such as ‘An healing receit for a diseased liver’.61 Lowe shared Harrold’s weakness when it came to the tankard; as such, the Galenic rhetoric of the text, playing upon dual understandings of ‘liver’ (referring both to the organ and personal comportment) perhaps hit close to home. The text required the believer to: take a quart of repentance of Ninivah, and [p]ut nine handfulls of faith in the bloud of Christ with as much hope and charitee as you can get, and put it in to a vessel of a clean conscience. Then boile it on the fire of love so longe till you se by the eyes of faith a black scumm of the love of this world … When this is done, put in the pouder of patience; then straine altogather in the cupp of a humble hart; then drinke it burneing hot next thy heart, and cover thee warme with as many clothes of amendment of life as God shall enable thee to bear, that thou maist sweat out all the poyson of wantonesss, pride, whoredome, idolatrie, usury, swearing, lyeing, with such like … Then take the oyle of good works and anoint therwith eyes, eares, heart, hands, that thou be readie and nimble to minster to the poor distressed members of Christ.62 Much like Harrold, Lowe’s personal spiritual exercise and readings were predicated on his social interactions. The appeal to feeling within the text further augmented the confessional and spiritual relationship Lowe had with Woods. However, it is clear that, much like Harrold’s experience, Lowe’s friendships and the attendant exchange of print followed notions of spiritual self-improvement and support. These friendships were a significant support to their internal piety. Historians studying early modern gift culture have emphasised the continued presence of the giver in the object of the gift. While Felicity Heal’s focus is political, her assessment that ‘the bond between the giver and receiver could also be displayed in the afterlife of the gift’ and that such exchanges ‘embedded 60 61 62

Diary of Roger Lowe, pp. 19, 35–36, 51; Samuel S. Thomas, Creating Communities in Restoration England: Parish and Congregation in Oliver Heywood’s Halifax (Brill: Leiden 2012), p. 138. Diary of Roger Lowe, p. 17; 9 April 1663. Diary of Roger Lowe, p. 17.

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the gift in the language of social bond, valorising mutuality of affect’ was instructive here.63 The gift of this treatise involved Woods in Lowe’s spiritual progression (as the exchanges among Harrold’s networks did too) and maintained the ‘dialogue between giver and recipient’.64 The gift demonstrated Woods’ care for his friend and tied him to Lowe’s management of his affections as a devotional practice. On 21 December 1666, Lowe went into ‘old William Haselden’s in Ashton; his wife was sicke and I read in the Practice of Pietie, and as I was reading she gave up the ghost’.65 Here, Lowe’s role at the sick bed of his neighbour was likely a product of either his friend’s illiteracy or their poverty (or indeed a combination of the two). Bayly’s work was no small tome and so its price may have limited the access among provincial apprentices and farm labourers. While it is unclear where Lowe obtained the book, we know that he received others through his friendships with local ministers. He may, therefore, have been gifted the text. The Haseldons, like Lowe, were nonconformists and the resolutely Calvinist Practice of Piety perhaps spoke to their theological sympathies (sympathies that may not have been indulged by local conformists). Nonetheless, material concerns, including the expense and availability of the text, interacted in this episode with literacy and community to structure Lowe’s interaction with the Haseldon family at this crucial moment in the lifecycle. Death-bed comportment was understood as a moment of great spiritual jeopardy; dying well and submitting to God’s will was essential.66 Bayly’s text contained prayers for those at the edge of death as well as ‘consolations against the feare of death’. Such practice bound Lowe in affective and spiritual bonds with his friends, the internal piety of Mrs Haseldon at this crucial moment being wholly dependent upon her friendship with Lowe and his access to texts of practical divinity. Despite their theological and ecclesiological differences, Lowe’s friendships, like Harrold’s, were structured around sharing printed materials of religious instruction. Books such as the Practice of Pietie involved these life-writers in one another’s lives and devotional practices. They constructed the friendships upon which their spirituality depended by exchanging books and including their networks in their edification and spiritual development. 63 64 65 66

Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2014), pp. 119, 110. Heal, The Power of Gifts, p. 36. Diary of Roger Lowe, p. 109. Ralph Houlebrooke, ‘The Puritan Death-bed, c. 1560–c. 1660’, in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (eds.), The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (Macmillan: Basingstoke, 1996) pp. 54–75.

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Conclusion

The evidence explored here from the diaries of Harrold and Lowe, as well as the letters and treatises of the SPCK in the region, demonstrates that communities of print in the north west of England were affectively devotional. The exchange and circulation of texts encouraged attendance at public worship but were also generative of discrete communities of voluntary religion. This role played by devotional reading materials transcended the boundary of conformity to the Church of England. As such, this chapter offers some challenge to dominant historiographical discourses about the religiosity of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The evidence explored here suggests that there was a limited cultural rift between conformists and nonconformists, in contrast to the current emphasis in the historiography. Moreover, it challenges simplistic narratives about a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ dominating the religious culture of the period. The texts of practical divinity distributed by organisations such as the SPCK and exchanged by individuals among friends and neighbours, both conformist and nonconformist, often recommended an intense affectivity. Such discourses encouraged their readers to animate their affections and enflame their hearts. Dualistic narratives of the battle between good and evil similarly heightened the jeopardy inherent in their devotional practice.67 These challenges to the existing historiography, therefore, call for more work to be done on the extent to which the rejection of ‘enthusiasm’ in the period was merely a polemical device. The evidence of this chapter suggests that there needs to be a reassessment of those narratives that have argued that the religious culture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was characterised primarily by a ‘reaction against enthusiasm’, particularly where this is contrasted with the apparent emotionality of Evangelical religiosity. Most recently, such arguments have been used to suggest that the efforts of the SPCK and others sought to inculcate a piety limited to the cultivation of a polite and ordered society. The texts explored here demonstrate, in contrast, that their authors were deeply concerned with the internal piety of their readers. The strength of the affectivity in these texts had significant implications for the role communities of print played in facilitating voluntary religious associations and friendships between believers. The practice of exchange and discussion involved English Protestants in one another’s personal devotions, especially at key moments in the lifecycle. The affective piety prescribed in such materials bound them in devotional communities guided by feeling. As such, the ‘reaction against enthusiasm’ might not be best understood as a 67

Sirota, Christian Monitors, p. 9.

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narrow proscription of all feeling. Further reflection on what impact this ‘reaction’ had on the relationship between feeling and faith is needed. The gifting of devotional materials explored in this chapter suggests that it was constructive of social bonds, bonds that emphasised mutuality of affect. Moreover, use of these texts, even in private and personal devotions conducted alone, constructed pious communities subscribing to the affective devotional practice contained within these religious treatises. Despite their differences concerning conformity, Lowe and Harrold shared in their associates’ spiritual experiences by exchanging materials with their friends and neighbours. Printed materials were thus constructive of communities of devotion. While beyond the scope of this work, the extent to which geographic provinciality (particularly distance from London) played in this culture is another potential area of fruitful research. Similarly, exploration of the role of these texts in family religion and personal devotional practice would undoubtedly further demonstrate the central role such materials played in constructing communities of affective devotion.

part 3 Different Readers

⸪

chapter 8

Rural Readings of Sacred History: The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Lancashire Readers Nina Adamova Sometime in 1595, Thomas Gudlawe, a Lancashire gentleman and lawyer, prepared to dictate something to his secretary. The secretary prepared a folio piece of paper, on one side of which he had earlier copied a long poem upon his master’s request. This leaf and others were intended to serve as additional pages in Gudlawe’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a printed illustrated encyclopaedia on sacred and secular history, published in Nuremberg a century earlier. Thomas Gudlawe began: NOWE GENTLE READER seeinge I have breeflie discoursed and runne over the historicall accidentes of the tymes from the beginninge of the world untill these ages, and yet noe perfecte mencion made success[fully] of the discente of the right Church of Christe from the Appostles unto this age, Anno domini 1595… Wherefore I (the simplest of all other yet with the zeale of a Christian Conscience) intende by goddes grace as breefely as may be to coate [quote] oute (of the best approved lerned ecclesiasticall history that I can fynd in these dayes) the newe discente and peedegree therof.1 This scene illustrates one of the numerous ways in which Thomas Gudlawe read and annotated his copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). In the episode described above, Gudlawe dictated the extracts from John Foxe’s Acts and 1 Hartmann Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle [Liber Chronicarum] (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493). USTC 748763. Chetham’s Library (Mun.I.8.2.) f. 309v. This research is funded by the British Academy’s Visiting Fellowships Programme under the UK Government’s Rutherford Fund. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Rosamund Oates, who supported me as a research supervisor and as a friend; to the staff of Chetham’s Library, especially to the late Michael Powell, who supplied me with material, as well as with encouragement and inspiration; and to a family historian, Patricia Adam, a descendant of the protagonist of this chapter, who kindly shared valuable results of her research. Finally, I am grateful to Manchester Metropolitan University and St Petersburg University for creating comfortable conditions for research.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_010

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Monuments (‘the best … ecclesiasticall history’), in order to complement the Nuremberg Chronicle’s narrative on sacred history, which seemed to Gudlawe to be insufficient.2 The overall result of Gudlawe’s reading efforts was most impressive. He and his secretary copiously annotated almost all the margins and blank spaces of his 600-page, folio-sized Chronicle. Moreover, having run out of space for his annotations, Gudlawe extended the Chronicle with thirty-four additional manuscript leaves. Thus, Thomas Gudlawe’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, now in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, provides one of the most striking examples of extensive early modern marginalia (Fig. 8.1). Gudlawe’s intensive reading reflected an increasing interest in secular and ecclesiastical history in Renaissance Europe, shared by men and women of diverse social status and confessional identities. By the end of the sixteenth century, the books on history were abundant, including both pre- and post-Reformation editions, which often suggested their own Protestant or Catholic narratives of sacred past.3 Many early modern readers compared, marked, and annotated books on history, sometimes projecting their latter-day reformist agenda on the pre-Reformation texts. Their marginalia provide historians with the opportunity to analyse the public reception of ‘sacred histories’ and confessional identities of individual readers.4 This chapter will discuss the structure, meaning, and purpose of Thomas Gudlawe’s annotations in his Nuremberg Chronicle. His seemingly unusual marginalia, when set in the local contemporary context and compared to other annotated copies of the Chronicle, do reflect general tendencies in reading, such as a profound interest in encyclopaedic knowledge. Gudlawe’s reading of sacred history also provides insights into the blurred confessional identity of a Protestant, living in one of the most Catholic counties of Elizabethan England.

2 It is likely that Gudlawe dictated the text: while it is written in a scribe’s handwriting, it includes phrases characteristic of Gudlawe, together with paraphrased quotations from John Foxe’s The Actes and Monumentes (London: Printed by John Daye, 1576), USTC 508189. 3 On writing about sacred history, see: Anthony Grafton, ‘Church History in Early Modern Europe: Tradition and Innovation’, in Katherine Elliot Van Liere etc. (eds.), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 4–8. 4 On reading sacred history, see: D.R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Rosamund Oates, ‘“For the lacke of true history”: Polemic, Conversation and Church History in Elizabethan England’, in Adam Morton and Nadine Lewycky, (eds.), Getting Along?: Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 133–152; Jonathan Green, ‘The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Readers: The Reception of Hartmann Schedel’s “Liber Cronicarum”’ (PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003).

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Figure 8.1 Hartmann Schedel, Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493), Chetham’s Library (Mun.I.8.2.), ff. 99v–100r

8.1

The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Early Modern Readers

The Nuremberg Chronicle is a lavishly illustrated history of the world and the Church, with topographical descriptions of European cities. It was published in 1493 by the renowned Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger, having been commissioned by humanist merchants Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister. The text of the Nuremberg Chronicle was compiled from other histories by Nuremberg physician and humanist Dr Hartmann Schedel. He relied most heavily on such contemporary publications as Jacobus Phillipus Foresti da Bergamo’s Supplementum Cronicarum, Werner Rolewinck’s Fasciculus Temporum, and Bartolomeo Platina’s Liber da Vita Christi et pontificum, as well as on many other medieval and humanist historical works.5 Schedel’s Chronicle placed historical events from the creation of the world until the Apocalypse within a framework of biblical and ecclesiastical history. Therefore, contemporaries and historians have rightfully regarded the Chronicle not only as a 5 Hartmann Schedel and Stephan Füssel, The Book of Chronicles: The complete and annotated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 (Köln: Taschen, 2001), pp. 7–18.

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humanist, secular, and topographical historical narrative, but also as a ‘sacred history’ – a widespread genre in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. What distinguished the Nuremberg Chronicle from other incunabula was its neat structure and the lavish illustrations it contained. There are over 1800 woodcut images, made by over 600 woodblocks that were created by Michael Wohlgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, who were prominent artists in Nuremberg.6 A contemporary advertisement for the Nuremberg Chronicle especially praised the illustrations, guaranteeing potential customers that they would think they were not just reading but seeing history ‘with their own eyes’.7 Finally, the production rate of the Chronicle was also unprecedented: about 1400 copies of the first Latin edition were printed by Koberger, and 700 copies of the German translation by same printer followed later the same year.8 Early modern readers apparently enjoyed this comprehensive and beautiful book. Some of them left lengthy annotations (Thomas Gudlawe’s marginalia in his copy of the Chronicle are, however, exceptionally extensive) and others only underlined a couple of words, but it is difficult to find a copy lacking any traces of readers’ involvement.9 Annotated copies of the Chronicle in both Western and Eastern European libraries indicate that these books were read, used, carefully kept, sold, and resold for centuries after their production. Who were these readers, and what attracted them to the book? Creators of the Chronicle specifically targeted it at ‘scholars and all men of learning’.10 Indeed, historians and theologians did use the book as a source for historical information, at least until the second half of the sixteenth century.11 For example, sixteenth-century English historians Robert Fabyan, Thomas More, and Richard Grafton all cited the Chronicle, while English secular and ecclesiastical leaders, such as Thomas Cromwell and Archbishops Matthew Parker, John

6 7 8

9 10 11

Schedel and Füssel, The Book of Chronicles, pp. 8, 16, 32. Schedel and Füssel, The Book of Chronicles, p. 9. The advertisement: Commendatio operis noui cronicarum cum ymaginibus temporum et Europa Enee pii (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493). ISTC: ik00028700. Schedel and Füssel, The Book of Chronicles, p. 32. However, success of Koberger’s editions was hampered by an Augsburg printer Johann Schönsperger, who issued three ‘pirated’ reprints in 1496, 1497, and 1500. They were smaller in size, poorer in quality, and cheaper than Koberger’s books. I have looked through 102 copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle in libraries in the UK, Russia, Germany, and Canada, and none of them lack at least some traces of reading. See Koberger’s advertisment for Liber Cronicarum: Schedel and Füssel, The Book of Chronicles, p. 9. On declining interest to the genre of the chronicle, see: Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, pp. 11–78; Green, ‘The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Readers’, 202–3.

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Whitgift, and Richard Bancroft hunted for copies for their libraries.12 However, the readers of the Nuremberg Chronicle were not confined only to professional scholars and statesmen with an interest in history. As Jonathan Green’s detailed analysis of copies of the Chronicle in Bavarian libraries has demonstrated, most German owners of the book belonged to urban elites, secular clergy, and religious communities.13 My own preliminary survey of thirty-five copies with early English provenance has also evidenced a wide circle of readers, ranging from clergy and scholars to gentry and nobility.14 Many early modern readers paid special attention to the Chronicle’s account of ‘sacred history’. They eagerly expressed their agreement or disagreement with the Chronicle’s narrative, often turning the margins of the book into confessional battlefields. In the post-Reformation period, Protestant readers often censored mentions of the Pope, whilst in England particularly, Thomas Becket, the most venerated Catholic saint, was another victim of such censorship. In their turn, Catholics frequently erased or blotted the portrait of Pope Joan, a legendary female Pope, as her story was considered a blasphemous myth. In a more peaceful way, some readers searched the Chronicle for information about the origins of the Church, religious rites and decrees, while others used its pages as a devotional space, writing prayers and moral quotations inside the book.15 Interestingly, it is often unclear whether these readers knew enough Latin to understand its text, or if they were just ‘reading’ the pictures and reacting to them. 8.2

The Nuremberg Chronicle in Chetham’s Library

Chetham’s Library’s Nuremberg Chronicle is one of the most outstanding copies with English provenance, partly due to its extensive marginalia, and also 12

13 14 15

R.J. Schoeck, ‘The “Cronica Cronicarum” of Sir Thomas More and Tudor Historians’, Historical Research, 35 (1962), pp. 84–86; M.T.W. Payne, ‘Robert Fabyan and the Nuremberg Chronicle’, The Library, 12:2 (2011), pp. 164–69. Fabyan’s copy of the Chronicle in Guildhall Library, London (SAFE) contains his copious annotations. On Cromwell’s, Whitgift’s, and Bancroft’s copies, see: James P. Carley, ‘The Libraries of King Henry VIII: An Update of the Westminster Inventory of 1542’, The Library 16:3 (2015), p. 289. Green, ‘The Nuremberg Chronicle and Its Readers’, p. 221. I am currently working on an article on English readings of the Nuremberg Chronicle, based on 79 copies I have explored in the UK libraries (35 of which have confirmed sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English provenance). Some examples of readers’ marks are demonstrated in the online exhibition: Nina Adamova and Rosamund Oates, “Reading the Nuremberg Chronicle”, .

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because we can trace its circulation within Lancashire families.16 As the ownership inscriptions in the Chronicle state, Edward Watmough possessed this book in 1560. By 1590, the book had passed from Watmough to Thomas Gudlawe.17 Watmough and Gudlawe both belonged to large Lancashire families, though the connection between the two was initially unclear.18 The first identified owner of this copy of the Chronicle, Edward Watmough (d. 1580), was a cleric and, from 1564, the rector of two small parishes in East Sussex.19 Little else was known about Watmough, until his will was discovered.20 In it, Watmough mentioned his collection of Latin books and specifically named the Nuremberg Chronicle: I geve unto … George [Eltonhead], all my lattine bookes … except on[e] booke callyd the Chronicle of chronecles, the which I geve to my wife to use at her will & pleasure.21 Thus, Watmough’s will introduces another owner of the Chronicle – his wife Jane. Moreover, her ownership of the volume reveals the connection between Edward Watmough and Thomas Gudlawe: Jane was sister to Thomas. Jane married Edward Watmough in 1570, and afterwards actively participated in the social life of her husband’s parish – often being a godmother and probably even baptising children as a midwife.22 Unfortunately, it is not clear how Jane ‘used’ the Chronicle ‘at her will & pleasure’; whether she could read the Latin text or if she simply enjoyed the illustrations. There are no readership marks 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle. Chetham’s Library (Mun.I.8.2.) (hereafter Chetham’s Library NC). Chetham’s Library NC, title page. I am immensely grateful to a descendant of Thomas Gudlawe, a family historian Mrs Patricia Adam for discovering this missing link and the traces of the Chronicle in East Sussex, and kindly permitting me to use her findings. Parishes of East Hoathly and Maresfield. ‘Edward Watmough (CCEd Person ID 76265)’, The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835 . ‘Edward WATMOGHE [Watmore] of Maresfield, Clerk; Registered Will with Grant of Probate’ (1580), PBT 1/1/7/195C, East Sussex Record Office. I am grateful for the permission to use this document to Patricia Adam and East Sussex Record Office. ‘Edward Watmoghe [Watmore] of Maresfield, Clerk’. George Eltonhead was a priest in Kent and a Gudlawe’s relative. ‘Parish of Maresfield: General Register (1538–1598)’ (1570), fol. 48, PAR 420/1/1/1, East Sussex Record Office. Several entries in the Maresfield parish register state that some baptisms were performed by Jane: Ibid, fol. 67. On the baptisms by midwives, which, however, were rarely approved by ecclesiastical authorities, see: Yudha Thianto Tjondrowardojo, ‘Stories Baptismal Registers Told: Private Baptism in Seventeenth-Century England’, History, vol. 95, no. 2 (318) (April 2010), pp. 189–190.

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Figure 8.2 Thomas Gudlawe’s signature Chetham’s Library Nuremberg Chronicle, preliminary matter, without foliation

by Jane in the book, except a partly blotted inscription on the title page, ‘Jane Gidlawe’.23 Upon the death of her husband, Jane married again in 1581 and stayed in Sussex.24 After her remarriage, traces of both Jane and the Chronicle disappear. By 1590, the volume was in the hands of her brother Thomas, whose signature can be seen in Fig. 8.2.25 Thomas Gudlawe the elder (d. 1606) was a gentleman living in Aspull in the parish of Wigan, Lancashire. The Gudlawes had lived there since the thirteenth century, and were heavily interconnected with other local families.26 Thomas Gudlawe was a lawyer: he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1562/63, appointed as a coroner in the county of Lancashire in 1571 and again in 1585, and he also 23

24 25

26

Jane Watmough’s choice of her maiden surname Gidlawe is puzzling. Such cases are usually interpreted as an evidence of possession prior to the marriage. See, for example: Emma Smith, ‘Marital marginalia: The Seventeenth Century Library of Thomas and Isabella Hervey’, in Katherine Acheson (ed.), Early Modern English Marginalia (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 155–72. I am thankful to Patricia Adam for this information. Interestingly, Thomas Gudlawe himself ignored his sister’s possession of the Chronicle. He offered an ‘alternative’ explanation in Latin of how he acquired the book: ‘The said Edward gave [the book] to Mr Thomas Gudlawe the elder. By virtue of his death I, aforesaid Thomas, am now possessing it. 1590’. William Farrer and John Brownhill, The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster, vol. 4 (London: Constable, 1911), p. 120.

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served as an attorney in several court cases.27 Thomas actually produced a dynasty of lawyers: at least one of his sons and a grandson were admitted to Gray’s Inn.28 Thomas had finished rebuilding his manor house, Gidlow Hall, by 1574 and in 1581, he was granted a coat of arms.29 In the 1580s and 1590s he was endlessly litigating with his neighbours over the property, lands, and various rights,30 which was probably the reason why Gudlawe’s cousin William Gerard called him a ‘troublesome man’.31 Thomas Gudlawe’s copy of the Chronicle disappears from view for sixty-five years after his death in 1606. The Gudlawe family fortunes were in gradual decline over the course of the seventeenth century, and they repeatedly pawned, and finally sold, all of their Aspull property in 1650/51.32 At some point, they must have sold the Chronicle as well because it eventually found its way to Robert Littlebury, a London second-hand bookseller and printer. In 1670, Littlebury supplied it to the growing Chetham’s Library in Manchester, one of his major clients.33 Since then, the Chronicle has stayed at Chetham’s, returning to Lancashire by a twist of fate. 8.3

The ‘Laborous Cotations’ of Watmough and Gudlawe

Edward Watmough and Thomas Gudlawe’s compilation skills were as good as Hartmann Schedel’s, author of the Nuremberg Chronicle, himself. Almost 27

28

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The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, vol. 1. Admissions from 1420 to 1799 ([London]: Lincoln’s Inn, 1896), p. 71; ‘Transcripts of Charters [Relating to] Lancashire, by Christopher Towneley, Lettered “GG.”’ ([1571/1570]), no. 1608, 1617, ff. 228v, 229v, Add MS 32107, British Library. I am grateful to Patricia Adam and Judy Lester for help in translating and interpreting these documents. William Gudlawe was admitted in c. 1590s: ‘Gudlawe v Singleton’ ([1596]), C 2/Eliz/G12/62, The National Archives, Kew; Thomas Gudlawe was admitted in 1617/18: Joseph Foster (ed.), The Register of Admissions to Gray’s Inn, 1521–1889 (London: Hansard Pub. Union, 1889), p. 149. Richard St. George and Francis Robert Raines, (eds.), The Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, Made in the Year 1613 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1871), p. 50. John Caley etc. (eds.), Ducatus Lancastriae. Pars Quatra. Calendar to the Pleadings from the Fourteenth Year to the End of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. III (London, 1834), pp. 212, 218, 256, 374, 375, 399. ‘Gerrard v Gydlowe’ ([1579–1587]), C 3/210/84, The National Archives, Kew. I am grateful to Patricia Adam for kindly showing me her transcription of the document she discovered. ‘Gudlawe Hall Sale’ ([1650/51]), DD/LEI/ADD/17/1/1, Wigan Archives. ‘Accession Register’ (1655–1880), f. 30v, Chet/4/11/1, Chetham’s Library; See also: Matthew George Yeo, ‘The Acquisition of Books by Chetham’s Library, 1655–1700: A Case Study in the Distribution and Reception of Texts in the English Provinces in the Late Seventeenth Century’ (PhD thesis, The University of Manchester, 2009), pp. 95–106.

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all of their marginal annotations were, to use Thomas Gudlawe’s own term, ‘Laborous Cotations’ – quotations taken from contemporary English books.34 Edward Watmough left only about thirty notes in the Chronicle.35 All except one were verbatim quotations from the same Latin-English dictionary compiled by Sir Thomas Elyot (1548).36 This bilingual dictionary had a strong ‘encyclopaedic bias’. It not only offered translations of Latin words, but also provided biographies of historical and mythological figures, and described the histories of various cities and countries.37 The entries, which Watmough chose to copy into the margins of the Chronicle, reveal his strong interest in sacred history. Two thirds of his notes concerned biblical prophets, Church Fathers, and Church councils, while the rest dealt with early Christian theologians labelled by the dictionary (and Schedel) as heretics, such as Arius, Basilides, and Donatus. We can only guess why Watmough chose these entries – whether he was looking for references for preaching as a rector of Maresfield parish, or perhaps providing translations for his wife Jane. The extensive annotations by Thomas Gudlawe are drawn from much more diverse sources. Gudlawe arranged his marginalia in a specific way, writing down his quotations in one of five formats. First, Gudlawe commented on the topics discussed in the text of the Chronicle, writing his notes into the margins of the relevant pages. Secondly, Gudlawe provided concise histories of the nations, countries, and events from sacred history, entitling such pieces of text as ‘Residium histor[iae] de …’.38 These were inserted into the Chronicle arbitrarily, regardless of their relevance (or irrelevance) to the printed text. Thirdly, Gudlawe equipped the Chronicle with an extensive alphabetical glossary of names, places, and historical events, running through the margins of the whole book. Fourthly, Gudlawe created a peculiar ‘introduction’ and ‘conclusion’ to the Chronicle. They were written on additional leaves bound into the volume at the beginning and the end of the Chronicle and contained poetic and prosaic addresses to the reader.39 Finally, Gudlawe compiled four different indexes to 34 35 36 37 38 39

Chetham’s Library NC, [preliminary matter, without foliation]. Watmough’s handwriting is easily distinguished from Gudlawe’s: it has characteristic curves (especially the letter t) and it is identical to Watmough’s records as a clerk in the Maresfield parish register. Thomas Elyot, Bibliotheca Eliotae = Eliotis librarie (London: In the house of Thomas Berthelet, 1548), USTC 504035. Gabriele Stein, The English Dictionary before Cawdrey (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1985), pp. 143–44. For example, Chetham’s Library NC, f. 19v, 45v, 142v, 162r, 228r, etc. The leaves in the ‘introduction’, bound into the Chronicle’s preliminary matter, are not foliated. ‘Conclusion’: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 304r–v, 307v–313r.

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Table 8.1 The identified sources, quoted by Thomas Gudlawe in his marginalia

Year

Title

? (1546, 1551, 1560) 1560 1563 ? (1565–1568) 1568

Polydore Virgil and Thomas Langley, An abridgemente of the notable worke of Polidore Virgile Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper, Coopers chronicle, USTC 505779 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, USTC 506152 Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae André Thevet and Thomas Hacket, The new found worlde, or Antarctike, USTC 506850 Richard Huloet and John Higgins, Huloets dictionarie newelye corrected, amended, set in order and enlarged, USTC 39482 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, USTC 508189 Edmund Spenser, The shepheardes calender

1572 1576 ? (1579, 1581, 1586, 1591) 1581 1581 ? (1585, 1590–1592, 1594, 1598, 1599) ? (1592, 1593, 1595) 1592

David Lindsay, A dialogue betweene Experience and a courtier, USTC 509336 Konrad Lykosthenes and Stephen Batman, The doome warning all men to the Judgemente, USTC 509327 Robert Parsons, The Seconde Parte of the Booke of Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution.

Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the divell Adam Hill, The defence of the article: Christ descended into Hell, USTC 512127

help with finding information in his marginal notes as well as searching for the names in the alphabetical glossary. Gudlawe borrowed almost all of his annotations from various English publications. In most cases, he left no references to the sources he quoted, but a thorough examination of contemporary chronicles, historical works, and dictionaries has enabled the identification of thirteen books that Gudlawe relied on (see Tab. 8.1). The books that Gudlawe quoted in the margins of his copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle were diverse in their genres (chronicles, treatises, poetry, dictionaries), but they also had much in common. They were written in the vernacular, by

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authors who were either Protestant, or at least critical of the Catholic Church, and they concerned the issues of sacred and secular history – the reason why Gudlawe defined them all as ‘our histories’.40 Like Edward Watmough, Gudlawe drew quotations from encyclopaedic entries. He used a later edition of the same Latin-English dictionary that Watmough used, which now had an innovative structure: all encyclopaedic entries were moved to a separate section at the end of the dictionary.41 This peculiarity inspired Gudlawe to create his own glossary by simply copying this entire section of the dictionary (comprising almost 200 pages) in the margins of his Chronicle. Later Gudlawe complemented this list with entries from another Latin-English dictionary, edited by poet and lexicographer John Higgins.42 Besides the dictionaries, Gudlawe’s chief source for information on historical events was a chronicle compiled by the chronicler Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper, the bishop of Winchester and another lexicographer.43 Typically for medieval and Renaissance chronologies, including Schedel’s book itself, Coopers text provided concise descriptions of historical events. The brevity of Cooper’s Chronicle’s narrative was an evident advantage for Gudlawe, allowing him to compress short outlines of certain topics into the Nuremberg Chronicle’s margins. To comment on the topics concerning the history of the Church, Gudlawe relied on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments – a 2000-page history of Christian and Protestant (particularly English Protestant) martyrs. Working with this enormous book must have forced Gudlawe to improve his skills of abstracting: instead of copying the whole text, he often extracted the names of martyrs from Foxe’s lengthy recitations.44 Gudlawe used two editions of the Acts and Monuments – the first (1563) and the third (1576).45 The price of these editions raises a question as to whether Gudlawe could have owned both of them. It is likely that he rather consulted at least one of the editions elsewhere: at a 40 41 42 43 44 45

For example, Chetham’s Library NC, f. 7r, 13v, 14r, 29r, etc. Thomas Cooper and Thomas Elyot, Thesaurus Linguae Romanae & Britannicae (London: in aedibus Thomas Berthelet for Henry Wykes, 1565), USTC 506338. Richard Huloet and John Higgins, Huloets Dictionarie (London: In aedibus Thomae Marshii, 1572), USTC 39482. On this dictionary, see: Stein, The English Dictionary before Cawdrey, pp. 181–193. Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper, Coopers Chronicle Conteininge the Whole Discourse of the Histories as Well of This Realme, as All Other Countreis (London: late Thomas Berthelettes, 1560), USTC 505779. For example: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 241v, 242r. Foxe, Actes and Monuments. Gudlawe called the 3rd edition of 1576 the ‘ultimate’, thus not knowing about the 4th one (1583), but realising the difference between the first and the third.

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church library, many of which held a copy of Foxe’s book, or at the libraries of his neighbours or fellow-lawyers.46 Gudlawe also drew information on sacred history from an abridgement of De Inventoribus Rerum by Italian and English humanist scholar Polydore Vergil, and Gudlawe even provided the synopsis of the whole book, occupying the margins of almost a hundred pages of the Chronicle.47 Finally, to comment on legends, marvels, and portents, Gudlawe heavily relied on an illustrated volume, The doome warning all men to the iudgemente, compiled by Alsatian humanist Conrad Lycosthenes, and translated and enlarged by Stephan Batman.48 Interestingly, Lycosthenes himself largely drew material from Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, which had probably inspired him to create an illustrated chronology.49 However, Gudlawe did not seem to recognise any specific resemblance between Schedel’s text and that of Lycosthenses and Batman. Gudlawe also quoted non-historical books. For example, he used two purely theological works – Adam Hill’s sermon, Christ descending to Hell, and the second edition of a guide on devotion, written by the Jesuit exile Robert Parsons, and later adapted for Protestants.50 Gudlawe even drew material on sacred history from poetry, namely from the English translation of a Scottish poet Sir David Lindsay, whose lengthy poems were copied in Gudlawe’s manuscript ‘introduction’ and ‘conclusion’ to the Chronicle.51 The poems Gudlawe chose to copy reflect his interests: one of them described a protagonist’s descent to hell, while another advertised usage of ‘vulgar speech’ by preachers and scholars. Moreover, throughout the whole body of his marginal annotations, Gudlawe referred to Lindsey’s poem on the creation of the world and ancient history as a source of information as reliable as any other ‘history’.52

46 47 48 49 50

51 52

On dissemination of Foxe’s editions, see: John N. King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 270–284. Polydore Vergil, An Abridgemente of the Notable Worke of Polidore Virgile (London: By John Tisdale, 1560), USTC 505809. Konrad Lykosthenes and Stephen Batman, The Doome Warning All Men to the Judgemente (London: Imprinted by Ralphe Nubery assigned by Henry Bynneman, 1581), USTC 509327. See: Anthony Grafton, ‘Chronologies as Collections’, in Anja-Silvia Göing etc. (eds.), Collectors’ Knowledge: What Is Kept, What Is Discarded (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 149–58. Adam Hill, The Defence of the Article: Christ Descended into Hell (London: [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, 1592), USTC 512127. Robert Parsons, The Seconde Parte of the Booke of Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution (London: Printed by Iohn Charlwoode and [i.e. for] Simon Waterson, 1590), USTC 511617. David Lindsay, A Dialogue Betweene Experience and a Courtier (London: By Thomas Purfoote, 1581), fol. 7v–10r, USTC 509336. For example: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 12v, 18r, 142v, etc.

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169

Reading and Writing a Historical Encyclopaedia

Thomas Gudlawe spent around five years from 1590 to 1595 immersed in annotating his Nuremberg Chronicle, and he continued to revise his marginalia probably until his death in 1606.53 Why did Gudlawe, a middle-aged Lancashire gentleman who worked as a coroner and was constantly embroiled in litigation with his neighbours, undertake this ‘laborous’ task? Gudlawe’s reading and writing reflects the early modern practice of creating commonplace books – compilations of quotations and reading notes.54 Although these notes were usually written down in separate notebooks, sometimes readers recorded ‘common places’ in the margins of their printed volumes.55 Annotations by the early Tudor historian Robert Fabyan, may serve as an example of such practice. Fabyan used the margins of his Nuremberg Chronicle as a repository for lists of English and French monarchs, whose biographical details he acquired elsewhere.56 Gudlawe similarly used the margins of his Chronicle as a store of information, consciously structuring his quotations in a visually representative layout. However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Gudlawe’s way of commonplacing does not appear to reflect any ‘practical’ goal, such as proving political or religious ideas through historical argument, or collecting material for a specific scholarly subject.57 53 54

55

56 57

This estimation stems from the dates Gudlawe mentioned in his marginalia. He claimed his ownership in 1590 and mentioned the year of 1595 in his manuscript ‘conclusion’ in a summarising paragraph. Geoff Baker, Reading and Politics in Early Modern England: The Mental World of a Seventeenth-Century Catholic Gentleman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 121; Fred Schurink, ‘Manuscript Commonplace Books, Literature, and Reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73 (2010), pp. 453–69; Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Cases of commonplacing in the margins of the books on religion: Rosamund Oates, Moderate Radical: Tobie Matthew and the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 184; and on history: Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, pp. 90–93. Hartmann Schedel, Liber Cronicarum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493). Guildhall Library, City of London (SAFE). For examples of purposeful commonplacing, see: Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy’, Past & Present, 129 (1990), pp. 30–78; Lisa Jardine and William Sherman, ‘Pragmatic readers: knowledge transactions and scholarly services in late Elizabethan England’, in Patrick Collinson etc. (eds.), Religion, Culture, and Society in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 102–24; Georgianna Ziegler, ‘Lady Anne Clifford Reads John Selden’ in Katherine Acheson (ed.), Early Modern English Marginalia (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 134–54.

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While annotating his Nuremberg Chronicle, Gudlawe seems to have been equally interested in all ‘historical accidents’, and did not prefer any subject areas over others. He rarely corrected anything in Schedel’s text. What Gudlawe did do, was to find relevant material in his English books (a process which Gudlawe described as ‘picking out’ and ‘coating out’ ‘historyes, coutacions, and addicions’) and then insert it in the right place in the margins of the Chronicle.58 Gudlawe often started his quotations with the phrase: ‘as it seemeth by our histories’, thus consciously regarding himself as a compiler and humbly fashioning himself as a ‘simple traveller in these affayres’.59 Gudlawe also differentiated between his ‘histories’, considering some of them to be more ‘approved’ than others, with the Bible and Foxe deemed the most credible. Finally, Gudlawe did not usually add anything beyond the scope of the books he relied on. Therefore, as most of his ‘histories’ were quite dated, Gudlawe almost never discussed at length any events in English history occurring after the 1550s, like accession of Elizabeth I or the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Gudlawe usually copied extracts quite mechanically, but sometimes he demonstrated critical thinking. Indeed, as a lawyer, Gudlawe must have been trained to ‘digest the cases of the lawe’, ‘abstracting and summarising’.60 When Gudlawe did notice a discrepancy between his English sources and Schedel, he would compare both opinions and state his verdict.61 However, Gudlawe applied his critical approach only to minor inconsistencies. Even though his Protestant books often contradicted Schedel’s Catholic interpretation of sacred history, Gudlawe almost never highlighted the difference. What is also striking about Gudlawe’s annotations is that he tailored them to be read and used. Quite extraordinarily for a commonplace book, Gudlawe always addressed his notes to a ‘gentle reader’, asking him or her to ‘note’ and to ‘understand’ his stories, sometimes up to five times on the same page.62 Gudlawe also explained that he developed the indexes and cross-references to help the readers of his own marginalia – ‘for the speedy fyndinge out of your descyre therof’.63 However, it is not clear whom Gudlawe actually expected 58 59 60

61 62 63

For example, see: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 29r. Ibid., the first page of Index. Wilfrid Prest, ‘Legal Education of the Gentry at the Inns of Court, 1560–1640’, Past and Present, 38 (1967), pp. 23–24. Analysing a commonplace book of a lawyer Sir Julius Caesar, William Sherman concludes that ‘It is no coincidence that what may well be the period’s fullest surviving commonplace book was produced by a lawyer. William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 142. For example: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 24v. Ibid., f. 17v. Ibid., [preliminary matter, without foliation].

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to read his notes. Gudlawe could have intended his work to be an educational device for his family, although there is no evidence confirming this supposition. Alternatively, the address ‘gentle reader’ could also have been a mere figure of speech. This formula was very popular at the time, and Gudlawe’s most-quoted authors, such as Foxe and Lindsay, used it frequently.64 In this regard, this mode of address allows us to see how Gudlawe imagined his ‘ideal’ or ‘model reader’ – as interested in history, and being eager to learn.65 Thus, Gudlawe might have been meaning himself. Finally, another remarkable feature of Gudlawe’s annotations is that unlike most contemporary readers of the Latin edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle, he wrote only in the vernacular. To stress this linguistic preference, Gudlawe opened his manuscript ‘introduction’ with Lindsay’s satirical poem that promoted ‘the wrytinge of vulgare speeche’ and explained that the poem ‘alluded to the readinge of the laborous cotations in this volume conteyned’.66 It may have been that Gudlawe’s relatively poor command of Latin, which was probably insufficient for extensive writing, necessitated this preference for English. Equally, Gudlawe could have been inspired (probably with the help of Spenser’s Kalendar) by the popular Protestant rhetoric of bringing knowledge to the common people in a language they could read. The same reason could be applied if Gudlawe’s purpose was to adapt the Chronicle for his family, either for educational purposes, or for, as the previous owner of this volume, Watmough, wrote in his testament, to use at their ‘will & pleasure’. Thus, it seems that Gudlawe was consciously and purposefully creating a vernacular encyclopaedia on secular and sacred history in the margins of his Latin Chronicle.67 He also customised the Chronicle to make it convenient for use, by equipping it with complex indexes and systems of cross-reference, an introduction and conclusion, and an address to the learned English-speaking gentle readers.

64 65 66 67

For the concept of ‘gentle reader’, see: Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England, p. 71. On ‘model readers’, see: Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (London: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 15–16. Chetham’s Library NC, [without foliation]; Lindsay, A Dialogue, pp. 7v–10r. On application of the term encyclopedia to early modern practices of condensation of knowledge and note-taking, see: Anja-Silvia Goeing, Anthony Grafton, and Paul Michel, ‘Questions framing the research’, in Anja-Silvia Goeing, Anthony Grafton, and Paul Michel (eds.), Collectors’ Knowledge: What is Kept, What is Discarded (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 11.

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Figure 8.3 A fragment of Gudlawe’s marginalia (f. 94r) shows his way of structuring quotations: a glossary is in the right margin; a story of prodigies from Batman’s The Doom warning is in the bottom of the page; an excerpt from Cooper’s Chronicle is near Mary’s portrait

8.5

Reading Sacred History within Local Confessional Communities

Gudlawe’s choice of books not only speaks of his encyclopaedic enthusiasm, but also hints at his confessional identity. Indeed, the authors he quoted at large – Foxe, Cooper, and Batman – pursued Protestant agendas, while the others like Polydore Vergil and David Lindsay also expressed anti-Catholic sentiments. However, a suggestion that Gudlawe was a Protestant is not as natural as it may seem. Lancashire was one of the most Catholic counties in Elizabethan England, and the deanery of Warrington, where Gudlawe’s parish was located, was a centre of local recusant activity.68 Some of his neighbours in Aspull and 68

Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 316–18.

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Ince had been reported for avoiding church services in the 1580s and 1590s.69 Moreover, there were recusants in Gudlawe’s immediate family circle. His cousins Myles, Thomas, and Alexander Gerard harboured Catholic priests, including the notorious Thomas Bell; and Gudlawe’s own grandson, Thomas, would later be accused of recusancy as well.70 It is clear, however, that having recusant relatives did not necessarily make a person a Catholic. Still, given the impact of family networks in recusant communities, we may wonder what role his reading played in establishing Gudlawe’s religious views.71 Did he acquire or read his English Protestant books because of his Protestant sympathies? Or did his reading influence his beliefs? The way Gudlawe read his Nuremberg Chronicle as a sacred history differed significantly from how staunch Protestants generally treated this book. There are no emotional outbursts in Gudlawe’s marginalia: he did not censor the text, and he made only a couple of corrections to it.72 Gudlawe seemed to be insensitive even to Schedel’s insults to the key figures in the history of the Church, such as Jan Hus or John Wycliffe. For example, in a short introductory passage to the Chronicle’s entry on Wycliffe, Gudlawe spoke quite respectfully of the text that condemned Wycliffe as a poisonous heretic.73 The only place where Gudlawe visibly stressed his confessional affiliations in his marginalia are the notes in his ‘introduction’ and ‘conclusion’. These notes were written later than the other marginalia – between 1592 and 1595 – and in a different hand (probably by a scribe), with Gudlawe’s corrections and two of his signatures (Fig. 8.2).74 There, Gudlawe attacked Catholicism, which he considered to be a threat to the Christian faith. However, this attack was performed in his usual way – by quoting relevant books. He used Robert Parsons’ Christian Directory against atheism; Adam Hill’s pamphlet and David Lindsay’s poem, both of which supported the doctrine that Christ descended to hell; and, finally, Foxe’s anti-Catholic preface to the third edition of the Acts and Monuments. For the first time, Gudlawe criticised the Nuremberg Chronicle itself by mentioning that its text was ‘reported by the popes awne 69 70 71 72 73 74

For example, the Houghtons, Lowes, Singletons, etc. J. Stanley Leatherbarrow, The Lancashire Elizabethan recusants (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1947), pp. 100–109. Alexandra Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 62–63. Baker, Reading and Politics in Early Modern England, p. 5. Gudlawe inserted the article about idolatry to the woodcut of the Tables of Testament (f. 33v) and probably crossed out the portrait of Pope Silvester III (f. 188v). Chetham’s Library NC, f. 238r. In these parts, Gudlawe quoted the books first printed in 1592, and mentioned 1595 as the current year.

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historiographers’, who support ‘the papistes (adversaries to the sayde right Church)’.75 Gudlawe further stressed his Protestant loyalty by praising the queen – ‘our deffence Appointed by god Almightye’, ‘whom the same god with all securetye preserve’, and added the prayers to ‘her Majestie & subjectes’ in his synopsis of Foxe’s preface.76 It is remarkable that Gudlawe’s manuscript introduction to the Chronicle also included anti-puritan sentiments. Referring to a minor controversy between the moderate Protestants and puritans over the question as to whether Christ had descended to hell, Gudlawe expressed feelings of ‘shamefull disproof’ to the opponents of the doctrine, calling them ‘precyse martenise’.77 Here Gudlawe apparently referred to the puritan pamphleteer Martin Marprelate, who sarcastically criticised the idea of material hell.78 Revising his own notes later, Gudlawe added the words ‘and puritans’ to the sentence, near ‘martenise’, thus disparaging them all for rejecting this doctrine. Gudlawe’s relative conservatism also manifested itself in the distinction he made between his sources. Despite his admiration for the work of David Lindsay, Gudlawe eventually called him a ‘cunninge clark’ and a ‘profane writer’, together with Thomas Nashe and Edmund Spenser.79 Gudlawe instead recommended that everyone should read the Scriptures and the Acts and Monuments in order to receive accurate knowledge about Christ and hell. The change in Gudlawe’s attitude to current confessional controversies in his annotations and his criticism of both Catholicism and Puritanism might have been triggered by increasing religious tensions in his immediate environment. In 1592, following the surrender of the Catholic priest Thomas Bell, who gave away information about local Catholics, a successful anti-Catholic campaign took place in Lancashire.80 As a result, many Catholics were temporarily arrested, including Gudlawe’s cousins Myles, Thomas, and Alexander Gerard.81 In addition, Gudlawe experienced the Puritanism of his local rector of the parish of Wigan, Edward Fleetwood. Fleetwood had had a puritan 75

76 77 78 79 80 81

Chetham’s Library NC, f. 309v. Mentioning ‘Pope’s own historiographers’ Gudlawe might have been pointing at Bartolomeo Platina, whose book had been widely used by Schedel. However, as Gudlawe never showed any knowledge of Schedel’s sources, as well as of any other Latin books, it is far more likely that the Gudlawe’s word ‘historiographer’ was meaning Schedel himself. Chetham’s Library NC, f. 310v. Foxe, Actes and Monuments, sig. *iij recto. Hill, The Defence of the Article. On this controversy, culminating in the 1590s, see: Peter Marshall, ‘The Reformation of Hell? Protestant and Catholic Infernalisms in England, c. 1560–1640’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 61 (2010), pp. 279–98. Chetham’s Library NC, [preliminary matter, without foliation]. Ibid. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, pp. 288–89. Ibid, pp. 326–27.

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profile since 1587: he actively persecuted recusants, suppressed ‘ungodly enormities of Sabbath’, and in 1589 and 1592 was charged for refusing to wear the surplice.82 However, it is also possible that Gudlawe’s sudden religious zeal stemmed rather from reading new books that he acquired in the 1590s – particularly those written by Thomas Nashe and Adam Hill, which both attacked puritans. Such anti-puritan reading, combined with a permanent interest in Foxe’s anti-Catholic texts, might have made Gudlawe pursue his own ‘via media’ between the two religious extremes of recusancy and puritanism. Gudlawe’s rather impartial reading of sacred history, with only occasional emotional eruptions in his introduction and conclusion, may also indicate a degree of indifference to confessional debates. If so, Gudlawe’s case supports Alexandra Walsham’s observation that local tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Lancashire have been previously overestimated.83 Confessional identities were blurred on both sides and they easily fluctuated depending on the dynamics of politics, while the local conflicts were often caused by much more profane reasons. Gudlawe’s relations with his neighbours may exemplify this assumption. From 1590, he was litigating with the Lowes over the right to install his own pew in Wigan church in place of a former chancel.84 However, this conflict apparently had nothing to do with religion: acquiring the right to both sit in, and be buried in, a prestigious place in the church was a way to improve one’s social position in the local community.85 8.6

Gudlawe’s Reading Practices

Gudlawe’s active reading also provides insights into his day-to-day reading and writing practices. His notes in the Chronicle differ in shape, probably being written with different quills, on a different surface, and under different light. Gudlawe re-read his own comments, to correct them or to provide cross-references. We can also spot the shifting level of Gudlawe’s concentration: sometimes he was scrupulous enough to notice the discrepancies

82 83 84 85

Farrer and Brownhill, The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster, 4, pp. 63, 65. Leatherbarrow, The Lancashire Elizabethan recusants, pp. 110–12. Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain, 92–99; Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, 326–27. ‘Wigan church seats’ (14 May 1591), DDKE/acc. 7840 HMC/10, Lancashire Archives. The litigation had lasted at least for ten more years. See, for example, ‘Goodlowe & Lowe concerning title to a pew in the chancel’ (1599), EDC 5/1599/17, Cheshire Archives. On social hierarchy and church seats, see: Christopher Marsh, ‘Order and Place in England, 1580–1640: The View from the Pew’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 3–26.

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between his English sources, and sometimes he was more absent-minded and would repeat the same paragraphs twice on the same page.86 Gudlawe’s marginalia also indicate that he engaged in communal reading. His marginalia reveal at least two, if not three, hands, one of which perhaps belonged to a professional secretary, but the meaning and the style of all the notes are identical throughout.87 Gudlawe must have employed a scribe to write down some of his notes, a practice that was not uncommon among early modern readers, especially lawyers and attorneys.88 However, Gudlawe’s reading might have been even more communal: there is a possibility that in addition to a scribe, Gudlawe also had a companion in his reading and writing. Moreover, the language of the notes also implies the interaction between Gudlawe, his assistants, and his imagined ‘gentle reader’. Gudlawe not only ‘read stories’, but ‘spoke of’, made ‘discourse’, ‘reported’, or even ‘brefly declared’ his ‘histories’.89 His reader was also supposed to ‘note’ information not only by ‘seeing’, but also by listening to his text: ‘gentle reader, thou hast heard how …’.90 Overall, Gudlawe’s language demonstrates this communal speaking, discoursing, hearing, and noting, which was a common practice, as historians of reading have demonstrated.91 8.7

Conclusion

Gudlawe’s way of annotating the Nuremberg Chronicle was unusual due to the scope of his marginalia. Otherwise, his reading, non-scholarly in its essence and purposes, is an example of reading habits and intellectual interests characteristic of the educated gentry. Many cases of early modern reading demonstrate that sharing an interest in history, using note-taking methods taught at the Inns of Court, and exchanging or acquiring books within local or legal communities were quite common ways of spending time for an Elizabethan gentleman.92 The circulation of Gudlawe’s Chronicle also exemplifies a diversity of readers 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

See, for example: Chetham’s Library NC, f. 25r, 27v. I am most grateful to William Sheils for his kind help in this question and identification of the hand of a professional scribe. Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 79, 183; Ziegler, ‘Lady Anne Clifford Reads John Selden’, p. 137. Chetham’s Library NC, f. 12v, 27v, 18r. Ibid., f. 238r. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, pp. 80–87; Oates, Moderate Radical, pp. 178–92. F.J. Levy, ‘How Information Spread Among the Gentry, 1550–1640’, Journal of British Studies, 21 (1982), pp. 11–34.

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of Latin books at least within one Lancashire family, as it passed from a vicar, to his wife, and then to a lawyer’s library. Finally, Gudlawe’s reading provides an example of the subtle confessional fluctuations of a Protestant in Elizabethan Lancashire, who remained generally indifferent to confessional debates. Furthermore, Gudlawe’s annotations of the Chronicle illustrate what Daniel Woolf labelled as an early modern ‘historical revolution’, which manifested itself in a changing attitude towards reading history. In the long-term, Woolf argued, history was turned ‘from the minor pastime of a small number of monastic chroniclers and civic officials into a major area of study and leisurely pursuit of university students, lawyers, aspiring courtiers, and ordinary readers …’.93 In this regard, we can consider Gudlawe’s reading as the leisurely enterprise of a rural gentleman. Typically for the period, it combined old and new: manuscript and print, an interest in chronicles and Renaissance histories, and reading in Latin and writing in English. Finally, Thomas Gudlawe’s reading of the Nuremberg Chronicle exemplifies the argument that has been repeatedly stressed by historians of reading: early modern readers did not passively receive information from their books. On the contrary, they were active participants and creators of a dialogue between different texts.94 Indeed, what Thomas Gudlawe did, was to transform the Nuremberg Chronicle into a new encyclopaedia in the vernacular, with an English Protestant agenda and a humanist passion for knowledge. He probably intended the Chronicle to be something like a Wikipedia, compiled from vernacular sources by a diligent and gentle but an ‘unlearned’ reader – to be read and used. 93 94

Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, p. 7. Jardine and Grafton, ‘Studied for Action’, p. 30; Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, p. 90; Baker, Reading and Politics in Early Modern England, p. 119.

chapter 9

Reading Medieval Wales: David Powel’s Historie of Cambria (1584) and Its Readers Kathryn Hurlock In 1584, David Powel (1522–98) published the Historie of Cambria, now called Wales. This work was the first printed history of Wales, and it was written in English so that it could reach a broad audience. Powel’s book was based on a work begun by the Welsh MP, antiquarian, and writer Humphrey Llwyd (d. 1568), from the Welsh chronicles and other sources.1 Powel added to the work from additional sources, such as the unidentified ‘records in the Tower’ that he was given access to by Lord Burghley. Powel’s Historie largely followed the work of Llwyd for the history of Wales up to 1282, when Edward I conquered what was left of independent Wales, correcting as and when he saw fit, and then continued it to cover the post-conquest English princes of Wales, and the Tudor kings and queens. In so doing, Powel merged Welsh history into a wider British history so that by the sixteenth century the two were indivisible. The result was one of the most important early modern books on Welsh history, and it remained the standard text (running through several reprints) certainly until the nineteenth century, and arguably until the publication of J.E. Lloyd’s History of Wales in 1911.2 The Historie of Cambria forms the focus of this current chapter, which looks firstly at the reasons for the publication of the Historie in 1584. It will then consider the readers’ responses as written in copies of this work between its publication in 1584 and the end of the seventeenth century. It will consider how readers interpreted the work, and in particular focus on readers with a close association with Wales and their responses to claims about how and why the Welsh should be ruled by the English.3 This 1 Humphrey Llwyd, Cronica Walliae, Ieuan M. Williams and J. Beverley Smith (eds.) (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). 2 J.E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest (London: Longmans, Green, 1912); Gwyneth Tyson Roberts, ‘“An account obtained from authentic documents”: Jane Williams (Ysgafell) as a Historian’, in Neil Evans and Huw Pryce (eds.), Writing a Small Nation’s Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850–1950 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 83–84. 3 The copies held by Sion College Library and Lambeth Palace Library, for example, show no engagement with, or particular interest in, the subject of the books. Lambeth Palace Library B45.4/L77; Lambeth Palace Library [ZZ] 1584.23. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_011

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is the first time that responses to the earliest printed history of Wales have been analysed, and as such this chapter sheds new light on responses to the history Powel sought to record, and ideas about the impact of the history of Wales on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century perceptions of Wales and the Welsh Marches. The impetus for Powel’s Historie came from his patron, Henry Sidney (1529– 86), Lord President of the Council in the Marches of Wales, who was interested in Welsh history and collected many sources relating to it. One of the key themes of the work – rule – was intended by Sidney to show how the unruly Welsh could, and should, be governed by the English. This was a theme close to Sidney’s heart, as in his capacity as Lord President, a role he held from 1560 until his death in 1586, the matter of effectively ruling Wales was one which had a particular relevance for him, the Council having judicial powers to exercise crown authority in Wales and the Marches.4 Moreover, it flattered Sidney: the Welsh, if well governed, were a peaceful people and, as Wales was largely peaceful in the late sixteenth century, Henry Sidney must naturally have been a good ruler.5 This latter point was a particularly important one for him to make, as in the years before the work was published his influence over the Council was waning. In part this was because Sidney was often absent from the Council on business in Ireland, but also because he faced strong opposition from other council members like Bishop John Whitgift and Sir James Croft. He was therefore keen to make the point that the fact that the Welsh remained peaceable during these times reflected the strength of his personal control, using it as a ‘poster-child for successful Anglo-British imperialism’.6 In the opening description of Wales and the Welsh included in the Historie but actually written by Sir John Price (d. 1555), secretary of the Council in the Marches from 1540 until his death, Price stated: there was never anything so beneficial to the common people of Wales as the uniting of that country to the crown and the kingdom of England, whereby not only the malady and hurt of the dissention that often

4 Philip Schwyzer, ‘“A happy place of government”: Sir Henry Sidney, Wales, and the Historie of Cambria (1584)’, Sidney Journal 29 (2011), pp. 209–17. 5 For the state of Wales, see Penry Williams, ‘The Welsh Borderland under Queen Elizabeth’, Welsh History Review 1 (1960), pp. 19–36. 6 Willy Madley and Philip Schwyzer, ‘The Sidneys and Wales’, in Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, Mary Ellen Lamb (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500–1700: volume 1, Lives (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), p. 192; Philip Schwyzer, ‘“A happy place of government”: Sir Henry Sidney, Wales, and the Historie of Cambria (1584)’, Sidney Journal 29 (2011), p. 215.

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happened between the princes of the country, while they ruled, is now taken away, but also a uniformity of government established.7 Another of Sidney’s concerns, and one that no doubt drove his patronage of Powel, was to establish an historical precedent for the authority and remit of the Council in the Marches, because when it had been established to rule over Wales and the March by Edward IV in 1471 on behalf of his infant son, the reach of its influence, in terms of geographical spread and legal organisation, was ill defined.8 Sidney sought to establish control of four English counties under his remit – Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire – parts of which were west of the River Severn and could hardly be considered part of the Welsh March, but were within the eastern limit of the Council’s authority as claimed by Sidney.9 He had already lost control of Bristol and Cheshire, and Worcester had tried to rebel against the idea of the Council’s control in 1574, so he was keen to show historical precedent for the extent of the Council’s control.10 In order to bolster Sidney’s position over Wales and the March, the Historie also gave him Welsh descent from Gruffydd ap Cynan (d. 1137), prince of Gwynedd, in order to cast him in the role of protector of Wales, something for which Gruffydd was famed as he resisted Anglo-Norman interference in Gwynedd.11 Philip Schwyzer comments: It is legitimate to speculate that the History of Cambria [sic] helped shape the political future, providing an historical underpinning for the

7

8

9

10 11

Powel, Historie of Cambria, preface. Prise was a keen collector of monastic manuscripts and in his will, made in 1555, asked his son Richard to publish some of the medieval writers in his library. F.C. Morgan, ‘The Will of Sir John Prise of Hereford, 1555’, National Library of Wales Journal 9.2 (1955), 255–61. Its remit was extended in 1473, but was still unclear. Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV and Henry VI, 1467–77 (London: H.M.S.O., 1900), pp. 283, 365, 366; Penry Williams, The Council of the Marches of Wales Under Elizabeth I (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), p. 27. Philip Schwyzer, ‘A map of Greater Cambria’, in Andrew Gordon and Bernard Klein (eds.), Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 35–44. The counties were still struggling to extricate themselves from the authority of the Council in the first decades of the seventeenth century. See R.E. Ham, ‘The Four Shire Controversy’, Welsh History Review 8 (1977), pp. 386–99. Jason Nice, Sacred History and National Identity: comparisons between early modern Wales and Brittany (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009), p. 75; Schwyzer, ‘“A happy place of government”’, p. 215. Nice, Sacred History, p. 93; C.P. Lewis, ‘Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Normans’, in K.L. Maund (ed.) Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 61–78.

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Council’s jurisdiction in the Marches and thereby contributing to its successful preservation.12 As if to underscore the work’s aim to be a definitive history of Wales, and thus lend its claims authority, the text was illustrated with wood-cuts depicting the various Welsh princes reused from the 1577 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland which, as the title indicates, did not treat Wales separately.13 J.E. Lloyd and Victor Scholderer believed that they were used because it was more economical than creating new images as the publisher had taken over the stock used to print Holinshed’s work, but Schwyzer argued that they were chosen to make a deliberate statement. He argues that Powel, and Llwyd before him, was aiming to write a history not just for the Welsh, but for the British, that is all of the people of Britain, and as a result these images were chosen as they ‘underwrote the work’s claim to the status of national history’.14 Indeed, the Historie of Cambria offered the missing Welsh information from Holinshed’s Chronicles, thus completing the history of Britain.15 Grace Jones argues otherwise. She believes that Powel’s work contributes to an historical narrative that gives Wales and the Welsh a separate identity from England in the sixteenth century.16 Rather than demonstrating the Tudor right to rule, and the idea of absorption and continuance, she believes that Powel was resisting Tudor efforts at control; this, of course, would have been in direct opposition to the aim of his patron, Sir Henry Sidney. Sidney’s interest in the authority of the Council and history of the Marches was not just confined to this work, as in c. 1570 he also commissioned an armorial roll of eleven of the owners of its seat, Ludlow Castle, down to the time of (and including) Elizabeth I, showing the arms of the President of the Council down to his own time, as well as members of the Council.17 It was based on a heraldic display

12 13 14 15 16 17

Humphrey Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain, with selections from the History of Cambria, Philip Schwyzer (ed.), (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2011), p. 22. R. Holinshed, The Firste volume of the chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (London, 1577). John Edward Lloyd and Victor Scholderer, ‘Powel’s “Historie” 1584’, National Library of Wales Journal 3 (1943), pp. 15–18; Philip Schwyzer, Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 40. Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain p. 24. Grace Jones, ‘Early Modern Welsh Nationalism and British History’, in Stewart Mottram and Sarah Prescott (eds.), Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), p. 22. I am grateful to Hugh Wood and Richard Hurlock for bringing the Ludlow Castle Heraldic Rolls to my attention when it was acquired by the Mortimer Society, and for sending me images for analysis in advance of its gifting to Ludlow Museum.

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which he had previously commissioned for the castle chapel.18 What Jones’ disagreement shows, however, is the different ways in which the book could be read and its political messages interpreted, in order to support conflicting ideas. The Historie covered other aspects of Welsh history which supported the political outlook of the Tudor regime. The link between Welsh royal genealogy and that of England’s rulers, for example, chimed with what the Tudor monarchs themselves sought to promote: Henry VII’s interest in his Welsh ancestry is well documented, and David Powel was aware of the outcome of the king’s commission to examine the pedigree of Henry’s father Owen Tudor.19 Powel’s work also incorporated an account of the winning of Glamorgan at the end of the eleventh century, written by Sir Edward Stradling (d. 1609) of St Donat’s, the greatest Welsh bibliophile of the time. It is perhaps not surprising that a damaged copy of the Historie survives from the Stradling family library at St Donat’s Castle, signed by Thomas Stradling (d. 1738).20 Edward Stradling’s account was used by sixteenth-century men who wanted to trace their ancestry to Wales, most notably William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who wrote to Edward asking him to provide a pedigree which (erroneously) traced him back to one of the conquerors of Glamorgan.21 Associations with Welsh lineage had become fashionable in the sixteenth century as the Tudors claimed descent from the princes of Wales, and men like Lord Burghley were keen to show that they too shared this Welsh heritage. Powel’s work was also responsible for disseminating the tale of Prince Madoc’s alleged discovery of America in 1170, which had no earlier roots than Llwyd’s Cronica Walliae of 1559.22 The story gave historical foundation to Welsh rule over territory in America and, since the Tudor kings and queens of 18 19 20

21

22

Robert Commaunder’s ‘Book of Heraldrye’, BL Egerton 2642. Commaunder was chaplain to Sir Henry Sidney. Sidney Anglo, ‘The British history in Early Tudor Propaganda, with an appendix of Manuscript Pedigrees of the Kings of England, Henry VI to Henry VIII’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (1961), p. 24. G. Thomas had reconstructed the Stradling library at St Donat’s from works known to have belonged to the Stradling family, as the library was broken up and sold after the death of Thomas Stradling in 1738. This copy of the Historie of Cambria was not included in his list: G. Thomas, ‘The Stradling Library at St Donats, Glamorgan’, National Library of Wales Journal 24 (1986), pp. 402–19. Rice Merrick, Morganiae archaeographia: a book of the antiquities of Glamorganshire, Brian Ll. James (ed.), (South Wales Record Society, Volume 1, 1983), p. 150; Peter Roberts, ‘Tudor Wales, national identity and the British inheritance’, in Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and Identity: the Making of Britain, 1533–1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 27–8. Llwyd, Chronica Walliae, p. 168.

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England claimed Welsh descent, they could claim to be inheritors of lands in the New World. Indeed, in the same year that Powel’s work was published, the English explorer Richard Hakluyt (d. 1616) used the story of Madoc to justify the expansion of English interests in New Spain.23 Powel appears to have had his own motives for agreeing to write the work, one of which was the rehabilitation of the image of the Welsh as portrayed in medieval sources, which he suggested had misled the English in their views of his compatriots. Indeed, he may not have fully appreciated Sidney’s ‘more pragmatic agendas’, believing that he was only interested in Welsh history for its own sake.24 This was part of the wider aims he had in publishing at this time, as in the following year he produced the first printed Latin edition of Gerald of Wales’ (c. 1146–1223) Itinerarium Kambriae and his Descriptio Kambriae, editing out the more negative descriptions of the Welsh.25 In doing so he was helping to rectify the injustice identified by Humphrey Llwyd that ‘the inhabitants of England, favouring their countrymen and friends, reported not the best of Welshmen’.26 In his account of the lineage of various Welsh princes, he highlighted the strength of Welsh rule and the ability of the Welsh to rule themselves, a claim at odds with Henry Sidney’s thinking. Elsewhere though, the Historie’s discussion of the English treatment of the conquered Welsh arguably provided its sixteenth and seventeenth century readers with ‘a model of how the English should deal in Ireland’.27 The idea that Wales had been absorbed successfully by the English state by the seventeenth century was reflected in the lack of the emergence of any political tradition that could be called distinctly Welsh. It can also be seen in the ownership records and surviving marginalia from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in several copies of the Historie, most of which were owned by individuals interested in the history of Wales and the Welsh March. The level of annotation and marginalia varies in each one. Most contain comments on Welsh history, genealogy and heraldry; some include large pieces of text taken from medieval chronicles, poems, or laments; one includes a laundry list and another a thirteenth century didactic treatise on philology stitched

23

24 25 26 27

Richard Hakluyt, Discourse on Western Planting, written in the year 1584, Leonard Woods and Charles Deane (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1877) p. 118–19; see also Gwyn A. Williams, Madoc: the Making of a Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 40; Llwyd, Chronica Walliae, pp. 167–68. Schwyzer, ‘A Happy Place of Government’, p. 213. Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain, p. 149. Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain, p. 70. Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain, pp. 29–30.

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into the binding; in several the blank armorial shields have been decorated.28 The marginalia in Powel’s work are interesting for what they tell us about early modern responses to the version of history he presented. As the comments and marks made in the copies of his book were responding to its contents, and in many cases those copies were intended to be lent out, it can also indicate debates the annotators perhaps wished to stimulate, and the ideas that they either wanted to reinforce or challenge. Writing directly on the text meant, after all, that the ideas of the reader would be permanently associated with the text.29 Annotators must have written for someone’s benefit – their own (perhaps as a mnemonic enterprise, bringing in information from other texts they owned or borrowed), the author’s (even if long dead), or another reader’s, so the comments they provide suggest ways in which they wanted others to engage with and understand Powel’s words. If Powel’s work was intended to promote the idea of English rule in Wales, then it certainly drew the attention of several readers to the idea. Powel’s Historie was used by Edmund Spencer as a source for his Faerie Queene, and his annotated copy of the book is held by the John Rylands Library in Manchester.30 In Spencer’s own work he used the biography of Griffith ap Conan (Gruffydd ap Cynan) ‘for the pre-shadowing of the Tudors’ similar restoration’ of British (that is Welsh) rule prophesised by Merlin.31 In addition to using Gruffydd, he utilised the biographies of Rhodri Mawr (d. 878), king of Gwynedd, and Hywel Dda (d. 948), king of Deheubarth, to ‘correspond to three themes which are significant to the British past and his Elizabethan present: defence of Britain, law-making, and continuation of the Trojan bloodline’.32 On the top of the frontispiece of his edition, Jasper Gryffyth (c. 1560–1614), a Welsh clergyman and collector of books and manuscripts, wrote in Greek: ‘It seems that the goodness of a citizen is in his ability to rule and be ruled well’.33 In choosing this quote Gryffyth was commenting on two aspects of the Historie: that Henry Sidney was a good ruler, and that the Welsh were at their best when they were firmly ruled by the English. The theme of English rule in 28 29 30 31 32 33

The treatise can be found in the copy owned by Jasper Gryffyth, National Library of Wales (hereafter NLW) Peniarth PB4. H.J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 81, 88. John Rylands’ Library, Manchester 6124. X. Cong, ‘Spencer’s Welsh Kings’, Notes & Queries 65 (2018), p. 36. R.B. Gottfried, ‘Spencer and the Historie of Cambria’, Modern Language Notes 72 (1957), pp. 9–10. I would like to thank Dr Owen Rees for identifying and translating the text for me. Aristotle, Politics 3.1277a.

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Wales and the March was commented on by others. In his copy of the Historie, William Maurice of Llansilin (c. 1619–80), highlighted the opening statement about English rule that had originally been written by Sir John Prise, secretary of the Council, rather than by Powel.34 So too did the annotator of the copy once owned by Thomas, Viscount Bulkeley of Cashel in Co. Tipperary, which perhaps came from the library of his father Richard Bulkeley (1533–1621) of Beaumaris in Anglesey, whose annotations these appear to be. Richard was knighted in 1577 on the eve of his second marriage, and rose through the ranks of the local gentry, acting as constable and mayor of Beaumaris, then MP and High Sheriff for Anglesey. Nia Powell described him as ‘the wealthiest gentleman in north Wales’.35 In 1602, Elizabeth I elevated him to membership of the Council in the Marches, so the arguments of the Historie would have been familiar to him. Sir Richard has been portrayed in the past as a champion of Welsh national rights, but the reality is probably that he was a man who served his own interests first and foremost with an eye on his own advancement: this was a man who tried to frame his step-mother for murder, disinherit his own son for marrying a cottager’s daughter, and regularly intimidated juries and witnesses.36 His approach to his compatriots was, if his marginalia is anything to go by, wholly pragmatic. In one passage where Powel justifies English rule of the Welsh, Bulkeley comments that this was ‘by cause [because] they wolde nott be obedyente’, while in another section where Powel asked what right the early Anglo-Norman settlers had to lands in Wales, he argued ‘no more than the Brittaines had’.37 At the end of Powel’s account of native Welsh rule, the same hand observes that rebellions in Wales ‘might have been followed unto the time of H4 [Henry IV] but bycause they were not done by a prince, they wolde not reccon hit done by Britaines’. The Welsh may have tried to rebel, but without united and princely leadership, this was not seen as a ‘Welsh’ rebellion.38 Jasper Gryffyth heavily annotated his copy of the Historie in English, Greek, Latin and Welsh, as he did in many other works that he owned or borrowed, and what comes across in both his collecting habits and the annotations he made was that he was interested primarily in Welsh history, Welsh law, and

34 35 36 37 38

NLW 4760B, ‘To the Reader’. Nia M.W. Powell, ‘Bulkeley, Sir Richard (c. 1540–1621)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn., Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb .com/view/article/3896, accessed 13 June 2019]. Penry Williams, The Council of the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth I (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), pp. 239, 309–10. NLW MS19106B, opening address. NLW MS 19016B p. 375.

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Welsh poetry.39 Richard Ovenden, in his study of Gryffyth, commented that his books must ‘have been carefully read, to judge by his marginalia and underlinings’, and concluded that Gryffyth ‘stands as an example of the rediscovery of both the Celtic past, and of the growing sense of Welsh national identity’.40 In Gryffyth’s library his copy of Powel’s Historie sat alongside a Latin version of the medieval Welsh laws, the Black Book of Carmarthen, a Welsh version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, and transcripts from the mid-fourteenth century White Book of Rhydderch, some of the most important works from medieval Wales.41 Jasper Gryffyth saved his most detailed comments in the Historie for the law. On the passage describing Edward I’s time in Wales in the early 1280s, Gryffyth added the comment that ‘there was a commission to Thomas bishop of St Davids, Reginald Grey and Walter Hopton to inquire & certified by whom laws and customes they were governed’.42 This investigation into Welsh law was aimed at showing that the application of Welsh law was not universal, as Edward’s rival Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (d. 1282) claimed, and that royal justice and jury justice had both been used in Wales. In ordering the commission, King Edward was trying to show that Welsh law was flawed, and by implication that the Welsh would benefit from English law, and thus English rule.43 This was a sentiment which would have fit Henry Sidney’s thinking well. One of the roles of the Council was to apply English law in Wales and the March. The legal jurisdiction of English laws in Wales had a long and disputed history, and even in the early seventeenth century the ‘authority and jurisdiction’ of the Council was ‘not certainly known’.44 The idea that the Council provided legal redress for those who wanted it was supported by another reader of Powel’s text, the Welsh antiquarian George Owen Harry (c. 1553–c. 1614) from Whitchurch in Pembrokeshire, who used Powel as a source for his own writing.45 He was a supporter of the idea of the Council in the Marches and the authority it could provide, commenting that the ‘oppressed poor’ flocked to have their grievances heard there.46 He knew the remit of the Council because he owned a 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Richard Ovenden, ‘Jaspar Gryffyth and his books’, The British Library Journal (1994), p. 112. Ovenden, ‘Jasper Gryffyth’, pp. 115, 119. Ovenden, ‘Jasper Gryffyth’, p. 113. NLW Peniarth PB4, p. 337. R.R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 346. Owen, Penbrokeshire III, p. 23. B.G. Charles, George Owen of Henllys: A Welsh Elizabethan (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales Press, 1973), p. 143. John Davies, A History of Wales (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 265.

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copy of the Queen’s instructions to the Lord President of the Council, issued in 1586, and wrote about its role in his study of Pembrokeshire.47 In this belief he was in tune with, and may have been influenced by, his patron and namesake, George Owen, who in 1594 wrote a work called the Dialogue of the Government of Wales in which he mourned the ‘lamentable estate of that poor afflicted nation’ before the Tudors came and brought the ‘happy reforming’ of rule.48 The fusion of English and Welsh rule under the Tudors sought precedents in the Welsh past. In John Richardson’s copy of the Historie, signed by him in 1629, the marginalia accompanying the creation of King Egbert shows an interest in Powel’s comment that Egbert threw down ‘the brazen image of Cadwalhon king of Brytaine […] forbidding this land to be called Brytain ane more, but England’. Here the origins of the fusing together of Welsh and English history can easily be seen.49 In another copy of the Historie, one of three held in Cardiff University’s Special Collections, one reader drew attention to the passage describing the reign of Athelstan, and in particular to his entry into Wales with an army where he ‘brought the kings of the countrie to subjection’ and received a yearly tribute.50 In another passage where Powel tells his readers that no Englishman held office under William the Conqueror, and to be called an Englishman then was shameful, someone has written a comment warning Englishmen to be ‘ashamed’ of their ‘pride’, presumably a comment aimed at Englishmen who thought themselves superior to the Welsh.51 In Jasper Gryffyth’s copy of the Historie he made notes on heraldry and genealogy. So too did the members of the Bulkeley family (judging from the variety of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hands adding to the text), who regularly commented on the Welsh genealogies or traced them in the margins. The interest of these readers in genealogy was part of a wider Welsh curiosity in tracing genealogies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As the Historie was essentially a genealogical list of rulers, it is unsurprising that several readers engaged with it purely because of what it could tell them about genealogical matters. One of the copies held in Chetham’s Library belonged to

47 48 49 50 51

NLW, MS 2377; George Owen, The Description of Penbrokeshire H. Owen (ed.), vol. III (London: Chas Clark, 1906), pp. 21–4. Preface, The Dialogue of the Government of Wales (1594): Updated Text and Commentary John Gwynfor Jones (ed.), (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010). Chetham’s Library U.2.40 pp. 25, 27. The book is also signed by Ambrose Richardson in 1636, and by Richard Lea and David M. (both undated, but probably seventeenth century). Cardiff University Library Special Collections, WG 30 (1584) [Vaughan/Collins book], p. 50. Cardiff University Library Special Collections, WG 30 (1584) [Vaughan/Collins book], pp. 117, 255.

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John Richardson, whose name appears on the frontispiece with the date 1629, as well as elsewhere in the text, and later to Ambrose Richardson, whose hand is dated to 1636. They were probably local to Cheshire or Northern Wales, but the annotation in these works suggests that at least one of them was interested in the genealogy of the Gray lordship in Powys.52 In one case, the response to the genealogical material was more pertinent to the contents and aims of the Historie. George Owen Harry’s overriding interest in the book, for example, stemmed from his fascination with Welsh history, genealogy, and heraldry. Its genealogical aspects would have aided him in the genealogy he published in 1604 of James I – The Genealogy of the High and Mighty Monarch, James … with his lineall descent from Noah, by divers direct lynes to Brutus … and from him to Cadwalader, the last king of the British blood; and from thence sundry ways to his Majesty. This work traced the king’s lineage back to Welsh origins to show the legitimacy of his rule over all of Britain.53 He produced this work informed by Powel’s Historie, which he appears to have read in 1584 and again in 1592.54 George Owen Harry also challenged Powel’s objection to Edward I’s creation of his son as the first English prince of Wales in an attempt to prompt the then-monarch, James I, to bestow the title on his son Henry.55 He also corrected what he thought were genealogical errors which had a bearing on the claim to England’s throne. In the Historie, for example, Powel claimed that Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s legitimate grandson Roger Mortimer (d. 1282) was ‘right inheriter [sic] by the order of law’ in preference to his illegitimate grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (d. 1282). George Owen Harry had underlined this text, and written next to it: ‘it is not true as you may see by the pedigree above’.56 The pedigree in question suggests that Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had married Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s grandmother, Tanglwst, making him legitimate. Overleaf, another comment challenges the statement that Roger Mortimer should have inherited the principality of Gwynedd, noting ‘it is very strange that Dr Powel should be soe much mistaken about Llm ap Iorw & his marriages’.57 Indeed, the whole emphasis of Powel’s work is on the supremacy of Gwynedd’s power in Welsh history because of the ancestral link 52 53

54 55 56 57

Chetham’s Library U.2.40, p. 208. George Owen Harry, The Genealogy of the High and Mighty Monarch, James, by the Grace of God King of Great Brittayne, & c. with his lineall descent from Noah, by divers direct lynes to Brutus, first inhabiter of this Ile of Brittayne: and from him to Cadwalader, the last King of the British blood; and from thence, sundry ways to his Majesty (London, 1604). NLW 23278B, p. 402. Charles, George Owen of Henllys, p. 116. NLW 23278B, p. 314. NLW 23278B, p. 315.

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to the kings and queens of England, something which William Maurice recognised, warning the reader: ‘Mark how partially ye translator paraphraseth the text for Northwales & their Superemacie the originall containing no such amplificiation [sic]’, and directs the reader instead to the Brut y Tywysogyon which he has copied alongside the printed text as a corrective.58 Powel’s decision to make the claim regarding Roger’s inheritance related to the politics of mid-fifteenth century England, when Roger’s descendent Anne Mortimer (d. 1411), great-granddaughter of Edward III’s son Lionel, duke of Clarence (d. 1368), married Richard of Cambridge.59 Their son Richard of York (d. 1460) inherited the Mortimer claim to the throne of England upon the death of his uncle Edmund Mortimer in 1425, leading to dynastic conflict in the 1450s and the accession of his sons, Edward IV and Richard III, England’s only Yorkist kings. Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII, helping to support his rule in England, and was grandmother to Elizabeth I.60 Powel claimed that Roger Mortimer had been the real heir of the rulers of Gwynedd because one of their descendants was Elizabeth of York, and through her the Tudors could reinforce their claim to rule over Wales. It is also possible that Powel aimed to justify the English conquest of Wales, as if Llywelyn ap Gruffydd had taken what was rightfully Roger Mortimer’s, so Edward I had been right to invade and conquer Wales in the early 1280s. Henry Sidney was clearly keen to highlight the claim which could be made through the Mortimer family, as in 1584 the heraldic roll he commissioned traced this same line of inheritance. Arguments over the jurisdiction of the Council were observed in relation to the Welsh border by George Owen Harry. In Powel’s account the settlement of Welshmen between the rivers Severn and Wye, and the subsequent expulsion of these Welshmen in favour of Saxons by King Offa ( fl. 709) is recorded for the eighth century. To keep the Welshmen out of this area, Offa then built a ‘great and famous ditch’, in Powel’s words.61 This was Offa’s Dyke, an earthwork stretching from Prestatyn in North Wales to Sedbury near Chepstow, down the eastern border of Wales. Henry Sidney was trying to include the area taken by 58

59 60 61

NLW NLW 4760B, no pagination. The Brut is the Welsh-language chronicle of Wales up to the time of its conquest which Llwyd used as a source base for his original work. Brut y Tywysogyon: Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth MS 20 Version ed. and trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1952, repr. 2015). P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 1411–1460 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 16. For the variant lines descended from Edward III, see Michael Bennett, ‘Edward III’s entail and the Succession to the Crown, 1376–1471’, English Historical Review 113 (1998), pp. 580–609. Powel, Historie of Cambria, p. 20.

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Offa from the Welsh in the jurisdiction of the Council, so attitudes to the validity of the Dyke as a border are pertinent to ideas about control of Wales. It was clearly seen as a dividing line at this time, as in 1617 when William Vaughan, brother of the then President of the Council in the Marches, founded a colony for Welshmen in Newfoundland he celebrated the idea that this new settlement meant unity: ‘I rejoice’, he said, ‘that the memorial of Offa’s Dyke is extinguished with love and charity’.62 That said, in his copy, next to the discussion of the Dyke, George Owen Harry wrote that ‘the old bounds seen by this & others was beyond Offa’s ditch & that was called the March’, thus supporting Sidney’s claim to rule a wider swathe of lands.63 Not all of the comments made on Powel’s work related to passages justifying English rule over Wales, and at times readers were in tune with Powel’s interest in rehabilitating the Welsh. On several occasions, Welsh readers were sympathetic to their historical compatriots, no more so than in the work owned by the antiquarian William Maurice of Llansilin. Maurice had a deep interest in Welsh poetry, and transcribed many works of law, history and literature. He had a collection of over a hundred manuscripts and read many more – Daniel Huws described him as ‘the best-read Welsh antiquary of his generation’.64 He highlighted where Powel complained that medieval writers ‘wrote everything to their [the Welsh] discredit, injury and wrong’.65 Later in the text in a discussion of King Arthur, Powel criticised the writing of Polydore Vergil and William Paruus and complained of their ‘cankered minds’, next to which Maurice wrote ‘The Anti. Brittanical. Hist. whipped’.66 Though William Maurice could see the need for strong rule in Wales, he defended Welsh history and interests, highlighting how the Welsh had been capable of their own good governance in 1020/22 when there was ‘Prosperitie & Tranquility in Wales’, and inserted several extracts from Welsh-language and Latin chronicles and other works on the history of the conquest, highlighting again where Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had ‘banished all the English’.67 After this Powel concluded his section on the native rulers of Wales with the comment ‘thus endeth the Histories 62 63 64 65 66 67

Gwynfor Evans, Land of My Fathers, p. 318. NLW MS 23278B, p. 20. In another copy William Maurice also noted the creation of Offa’s Dyke, and Lord Bulkeley commented on it, probably because it was a landscape feature he was aware of. NLW 4760B, p. 5. Daniel Huws, ‘Maurice, William (1619/20–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18388, accessed 13 June 2019]. NLW 4760B, opening pages. NLW 4760B, p. 239. NLW 4760B, pp. 84, 279.

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of the Brytish’, Maurice wrote ‘Tantae molis erat Gentem delere (or fraenare) Britannum’ – so vast was the task to curb the nation of Britain, echoing the famous line for the Aeneid and the Roman race.68 George Owen Harry’s interest in heraldry included painting an armorial achievement for his patron in 1586, and producing a Pembrokeshire armorial in 1602, one of the first in Wales.69 He was also specifically interested in proving his descent from the first Norman lords of Cemais, a motive which drove his interest in Pembrokeshire genealogy.70 In his copy of the Historie he added in heraldry for various figures, some in colour in the block-printed images, others drawn in the margins. This addition of heraldry, real or imagined, was quite a popular habit in copies of Powel’s work, as in Jasper Gryffyth’s copy and the copy owned first by Thomas Chaloner and then Randle Holme, a copy which both men autographed.71 Thomas Chaloner of Chester (d. 1598) was a painter, poet, and antiquary who was a deputy of the College of Arms for several years. His apprentice from 1587 was Randle Holme I (d. 1655), who became his Deputy Herald in 1606, and later married Chaloner’s widow, taking over his business as a herald-painter and genealogist.72 In addition to their names, this copy also has the signature of Francis Bassano, who bought the business after the death of the fourth Randle Holme in 1707.73 In their copy various coats of arms have been coloured to reflect arms attributed in works like Heraldry and Chivalry (1795) to the individuals in question, though in reality these were later inventions. For example, the azure and cross of Cadwaldwr (which also 68 69

70 71

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NLW 4760B, p. 375: ‘Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem’ (It was such a massive task to establish the Roman race). Vergil, Aenied, I. 33. E.D. Jones, ‘George Owen Harry (c. 1553–1614)’, The Pembrokeshire Historian: Journal of the Pembrokeshire Local History Society 6 (1979), 72–3; Chetham’s Library Manuscripts/1/453, Short Pedigrees of noblemen, knights, esquires, gentlemen and women of Pembrokshire 1592–1612. Printed in Edward Laws, The History of Little England Beyond Wales and the Non-Kymric colony settled in Pembrokeshire (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), pp. 423–46. Francis Jones, ‘An Approach to Welsh Genealogy’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorium (1948–49), p. 379. NLW Peniarth PB4, pp. 7, 14, 17, 24, 28, 46, 59, 67, 72, 103, 112, 115, 120, 227, 246, 314, 335, 376, 384–5, 388–90, 392–4. Cardiff University Library Special Collections WG30 (1584) [Salisbury Library Copy]. This volume came from the library of Enoch Robert Gibbon Salisbury (1819–1890), which formed the core of the University Library; Bodleian Library, Buxton 132. J.P. Earwaker (ed.), ‘The Four Randle Holmes of Chester, Antiquaries, Heralds and Genealogists’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological and Historic Society NS, 4, (1890/1), p. 115. David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: the City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 195.

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appears for the arms of Esylht ferch Conan and quartered for Rhodri Mawr, Esylht’s grandson), the three lions of Gruffydd ap Cynan used by members of this line, and the arms of the three thirteenth-century princes of Gwynedd based on the royal arms of England.74 The Historie of Cambria went through several reprints over the following centuries, but with the end of the Council in the Marches in 1689 a lot of its political message was lost. As a foundational history for defining the medieval Welsh past it had a long – perhaps too long – reach, and was modified from time to time to enhance the arguments put forward in 1584. Its effectiveness in making the arguments sought by Henry Sidney is another matter. Did those who read the Historie of Cambria agree with the idea that Wales was better off ruled by the English via the Council in the Marches? Did it make the case that the English monarchy had a claim through descent to rule in Wales, or that the authority of the Council should extend over the four disputed counties? Did Powel succeed in rehabilitating the reputation of the Welsh? Henry Sidney’s tenure as President ended with his death in 1586, never having achieved what he felt was due recognition for his efforts in administering law ‘cheaply and rapidly’ in Wales and governing Ireland on behalf of the queen.75 Whether Sir Henry Sidney or David Powel achieved their aims depended largely on who was reading the text, and in this the Historie’s readers fell into three clear categories. Several readers took a genuine interest in the work for its contemporary political message. Jasper Gruffyth commented at the very start of his copy on the importance of good rule and a willingness to be ruled in his definition of a good citizen. He quoted Aristotle’s Politics, and seemed to appreciate the role of the Council in the Welsh Marches in trying to give access to, and to deliver, justice. He also highlighted the inconsistencies in Welsh law and its application under native Welsh rule. George Owen Harry supported the legitimacy of English rule in Wales, and took an interest in the genealogical aspects of the work, in part because of their relevance to the Tudor, and then Stuart, claim to rule in Wales. This can be seen in his comments on the descent and claim of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and no doubt fed in to his later work on James I. Sir Richard Bulkeley was of a similar mind, no doubt because though he was a Welshman, the authority he gained from his appointment by Elizabeth I to a range of roles in Anglesey and the Marches gave him almost 74

75

Heraldry and Chivalry (Worcester: Holl and Brandish, 1795), p. 61; J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), pp. 274, 494; Huw Pryce, ‘Welsh Rulers and European Change’, in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies ed. Huw Pryce and John Watts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), p. 40. Davies, History of Wales, p. 265.

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free rein to abuse as he pleased. It was the argument that the Welsh needed to be controlled by strong English rulers which caught his attention, perhaps because (as his comment on the lack of princely leaders for rebellions against the English suggests) he felt that the Welsh lacked native leadership of any merit. Several readers read and used Powel’s work for the genealogical information it recorded, sometimes in only a very specific context such as with the interest shown in the earls of Chester in the edition held by John Rylands, or in the descent of the Gray family. This is hardly surprising given the flourishing of interest in Welsh genealogy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Fewer readers engaged directly with aspects of the text rehabilitating the Welsh character, or defending them. William Maurice was one who did, showing that he both understood the Welsh had been unfairly denigrated in the past, and that the glory of figures like King Arthur had been denied or appropriated by the English. He appears to have been suspicious of the way in which Powel used his source material, particularly in relation to glorifying Gwynedd’s princes, and spent considerable time annotating page after page of this copy with extracts from the Brut. His commentary comes across as the most pro-Welsh, and his final comment on the loss of Welsh independence read like a lament that it took so much to conquer the nation of his birth. Henry Sidney’s greatest impact on the reading of medieval Wales was in the commissioning of the Historie of Cambria. His intended messages may not have had much effect, but the work itself was enduringly popular, being revised by William Wynne in 1697, and then printed again in 1811 and 1832. The mixed reading of Powel’s Historie, particularly among the Welsh, no doubt came from the conflict between the aims of Powel and Sidney, as it is a sometimes conflicted work and was arguably, in the words of Highley, ‘a dissident account of English state-building on the margins of the nation’.76 76

Christopher Highley, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 71–76.

chapter 10

Poetic Failure, Communal Memory, and George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs Catherine Evans George Herbert’s posthumously published volume of poetry, The Temple (1633), opens with a declaration from the printers that Herbert was ‘justly a companion to the primitive Saints, and a pattern or more for the age he lived in’.1 Centuries later, the pattern of devotion and godliness that Herbert set out both in his personal life and in his poetry is still admired, with successive generations of editors and readers presenting him as the idealised Anglican minister. Izaak Walton’s quasi-hagiography, The Life of Mr George Herbert (1670), has cast a long shadow. Following Walton’s description, Herbert is remembered as a retiring man embedded in the pastoral idyll of Bemerton, a small village two miles from Salisbury where he was priest for three years before his early death in 1633. Writing after the Restoration, Walton sought to present Herbert as an exemplary High Church Anglican Royalist.2 His biography opens with the warning that it is ‘an almost incredible story of the great sanctity of the short remainder of [Herbert’s] holy life; a life so full of charity, Humility and all Christian virtues that it deserves the eloquence of St Chrysostom to commend and declare it!’3 In 2009, Rev. Justin Lewis-Anthony reflected on the dark side of this ‘Holy Life’, describing Herbert as ‘an impossible and inaccurate role model, a cause of guilt and anxiety’, and advising his readers that ‘if we meet George Herbert on the road, we must kill him’.4 In this highly charged critical atmosphere, Herbert’s ‘trifling’ works (in T.S. Eliot’s words) that draw on riddles, wordplay or proverbs have often been derided or met with a critical silence.5 1 George Herbert, The Temple (Cambridge: 1633), f. 2v. 2 See Christina Malcomson, Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 16–19. 3 Izaak Walton, ‘Life of Mr George Herbert’ in George Herbert: The Complete English Poems, ed. by John Tobin (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 265–314 (p. 290). Hereafter referred to as Life. 4 Justin Lewis-Anthony, “George Herbert must die”, The Guardian, 2 June 2009, . 5 T.S. Eliot, George Herbert (London: Green & Co., 1962), p. 31.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_012

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In this chapter, I examine two poems that have been dismissed as fragmentary and incoherent in their didacticism: Sunday and The Church Porch. I place these allegedly dull and orthodox poems within the social context in which Herbert was writing. Recently, John Kuhn has provided a necessary corrective to the fiction of Bemerton as a rustic arcadia. From 1620 onwards, Herbert’s adopted county of Wiltshire was in a state of political and social upheaval, as the dearth years of 1629–31 led to riots and hunger. The structure of charitable giving, and consequently, the ordering of society, was undergoing radical change.6 In this context, Herbert’s didactic verse illuminates his pastoral aims, which need to be re-read as an attempt to bring together and support a straited community. I explore the complex print history of Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs (1640), a collection of more than a thousand proverbs which appeared in an array of different editions in the mid-seventeenth century and then disappeared from view. I use these proverbs to approach The Church Porch, examining how these sayings offer counsel and create a shared bank of knowledge that can be extracted for use in rhetoric. Reading for commonplaces encouraged a particular style of reading and attitude towards the text, approaching a book as a repository of useful material that could be applied elsewhere in the reader’s life. The text can be dismantled and repurposed by readers, centuries after Herbert was writing, and reused in new contexts. 10.1

Sunday and Community through the Ages

One of Herbert’s most derided poems is Sunday, widely disparaged by critics as a poetic failure. Janis Lull describes it as a ‘breakdown of Herbert’s efforts to create a coherent lyric personae’.7 Similarly, Helen Vendler pronounces it ‘confusing and heterogeneous in its use of figures’, and asks wearily ‘what are we to deduce from the problems posed by so inchoate a poem?’8 The poem meditates on the role that Sunday plays in the week:

6 See John Kuhn, ‘“To Give Like a Priest”: George Herbert, Dearth, and the Transformation of Charity in Caroline Wiltshire’, English Literary Renaissance (2016), pp. 129–154, for further discussion. 7 Janis Lull, The Poem in Time: Reading George Herbert’s revisions of ‘The Church’ (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), p. 63. 8 Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 164, p. 166.

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Sundaies the pillars are, On which heav’ns palace arched lies: The other dayes fill up the spare And hollow room with vanities. They are the fruitful beds and borders In Gods rich garden: that is bare, Which parts their ranks and orders.9 Sunday becomes integral not only to the structure of the week, but also to the very order of heaven that rests upon the vaulting arches. Vendler argues that this poem is an example of Herbert’s ‘public homiletic intent’ gone awry.10 However, this may be partially due to a critical approach that pigeonholes ‘public homilies’ as intrinsically depoliticized or simplistic. There was not one orthodoxy for Herbert to offer regarding the role of the Sabbath for public life: debates over the sanctity of Sunday had been ongoing since the Reformation. The Book of Sports, a declaration by James I issued in 1618 and reissued by Charles I in 1633, listed the sports and games that were allowed on Sundays and holy days, intended as a rebuke to both ‘puritanes and precise people’ who called for severe abstinence on the Sabbath, and Catholics who did not attend church services. The proclamation was initially delivered only in Lancashire in 1617, after James travelled through the county on his return from Scotland and found ‘that two sorts of people wherewith that Countrey is much infested, (Wee meane Papists and Puritanes) have maliciously traduced and calumniated’ against lawful entertainments. The proclamation spoke out against those Priests who ‘take occasion … to vexe’ their congregations, ‘perswading them that no honest mirth or recreation is lawfull or tolerable in Our religion, which cannot but breed a great discontentment in Our peoples hearts’.11 The Book of Sports sought to placate the labouring populace, providing a pressure valve against discontent. As Charles wrote in his 1633 foreword, the king ‘prudently considered that, if these times were taken from them, the meaner sort who labour hard all the week should have no recreations at all to refresh their spirits’.12 As a further benefit, the active nature of the permitted ‘sports’, which included dancing, the ‘May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris dances … [and] Maypoles’, and archery, leaping and vaulting for men, would keep the bodies of 9 10 11 12

Herbert, The Temple, p. 66. Vendler, Invisible Listeners (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 165–6. The Kings Majesties Declaration to His Subjects, concerning lawful Sports (London: 1618), pp. 2–5. The Kings Majesties Declaration to His Subjects, concerning lawful Sports (London: 1633), p. 1.

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the ‘common and meaner sort of people … more able for Warre’.13 However, the proclamation had unintended effects. In associating Sabbath observance with puritanism it led to a spate of services being disturbed by disorderly locals. At an evening payer in Allbriton, Staffordshire in November 1618, a ‘company with drum and guns … striking up in the churchyard … shot off their pieces, and cried, “Come out, ye Puritans, come out”’.14 In the 1620s, the debates intensified with a series of Sabbath bills passing through Parliament.15 Visitation articles and injunctions attest to the ongoing tension over how the Sabbath was observed. Kenneth Parker’s survey of eighty-six visitation documents issued between 1618 and 1632 found that all enquired about alehouses on Sundays, seventy-eight asked about working on the Sabbath, and seventy-five about Sunday trading.16 The visitation articles at Salisbury in 1631, whilst Herbert was in post at Bemerton, asked ‘doe any in your parish prophane the Sundays by unlawfull games, drinking, or tipling in the times of Common Prayer or Sermon’. Another enquired ‘whether doe any … exercise any trade as labour, buy or sell, or keepe open shops, or set out any wares to be sold upon Sundayes and holidays, by themselves, their servants or apprentices’.17 For Herbert, musing on the correct response to the Sabbath therefore involved bringing together disparate viewpoints. Sunday explicitly states that ‘Thou art a day of mirth’ which acts as a ‘release’ from the ‘worky-daies’, suggesting that whilst Herbert was keen to see the day kept free of labor, he saw merriment and games as unprofane. Although, ‘the brightnesse of that day/ We sullied by our foul offence’, the offence is not lack of observance but long-standing human sin which lead to the Passion. Below is an 1856 broadsheet rendering of Sunday, produced by the Religious Tract Society which demonstrates how Herbert’s works have been taken out of context and made ‘concrete’ by later readers and editors.18 An image of a bucolic parish church heads the page in muted tones, surrounded by garlands of delicate wild flowers, ears of corn and an elaborate scroll bearing the title in red ink. The poem is surrounded by printers’ devices, centred and fixed on the page. This is Herbert as a watercolour greeting card, glossing over the 13 14 15 16 17 18

Sports (1618), pp. 4–7. HMC: Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Mountagu House (London, 1926), p. 111, cited in Parker, p. 153. See Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 169–77. Parker, p. 179. Articles to be enquired of in the Diocesse of Salisburie ([London?]: 1631), sig. B2v–B3r. George Herbert, Sunday (London: Religious Tract Society, 1856), London, British Library, 1872.a.1(161).

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Figure 10.1

“Sunday” produced by the Religious Tract Society, British Library, 1872.a.1 (161)

disturbing imagery, such as Christ’s punctured hands opening like a door to heaven, which punctuates Sunday: As Sampson bore the doors away, Christs hands, though nail’d, wrought our salvation, And did unhinge that day.

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The poem is removed from the wider context of The Temple and positioned so that the final stanza stands alone, offering a summary of the poem. The publication follows the text in Walton’s Life, rather than the 1633 edition of The Temple.19 Walton reports that Herbert sang the fifth stanza of Sunday the week before his death, rising from his sickbed and calling for ‘one of his instruments’ to accompany him: The Sundaies of mans life Thredded together on times string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King. On Sunday heavens door stands ope; [sic] Blessings are plentifull and rife, More plentifull then hope. Walton declares, ‘[t]hus he sang on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels, and he, and Mr Ferrar, now sing in Heaven’.20 In the hands of the Religious Tract Society, this poem becomes hymn-like again, part of the myth of Herbert as near-angelic. Vendler particularly attacks this fifth stanza as having ‘an air of being invented as “concrete examples” for a dull-witted congregation’.21 However, it seems that the linking together of ostensibly disconnected motifs enacts the mental work that the reader, congregation, and even the preacher need to do in order to make sense of the place of feast days and Sundays in the present religious environment, and within Christological time more generally. Herbert takes a linear metaphor of time, ‘time’s string’, and makes it cyclical, tied around the wrist of the ‘wife’ or church. However, this is not a simple, smooth cycle. Rather, the description of Sundays as beads, ‘threaded’ upon this string marks them as prominent, tactile points that retain their relationship to one another, and their order, even when reformed into this circle. Time is not collapsed or homogenized by being made cyclical: moments of importance, to both individuals and communities, stand out. Lull criticizes Herbert for his failure to deliver ‘a strong, unequivocal pronouncement – a sermon’ in Sunday, the reverse of Vendler’s reproach.22 In Herbert’s guide to preachers, 19 20 21 22

In the fifth stanza of Walton’s version “On Sunday heavens door stands ope:” rather than heaven’s “gate”, Walton, The Life of Mr George Herbert (London: 1670), p. 113. Walton, p. 113. Vendler, Invisible, pp. 165–6. Lull, p. 63.

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The Country Parson (1652), he stressed the importance of learning the language and frames of reference known to the congregation: ‘the country parson’ ‘condescends even to the knowledge of tillage, and pastorage, and makes great use of them in preaching because people by what they understand are best led to what they understand not’.23 To sermonise is not necessarily to make a clear pronouncement, but to lead a congregation into areas that may be beyond them, expanding their knowledge through examples that they can grasp. Returning to the Religious Tract Society’s image (Fig. 10.1) we should note that the church depicted is not Herbert’s St. Andrew’s in Bemerton: a low-lying, unassuming two-cell chapel built of local flintstone that seated only thirty people, its exterior unchanged since the fourteenth century.24 The pictured church has a vertiginous gothic spire, double nave and side chapels. It looms above the three parishioners or pilgrims who can just be seen to the right of the church, their huddled forms, swathed in cloaks, throwing the spire into yet greater relief. This design adheres to the principles of Pugin’s au courant Gothic revival, which took ‘the vertical principle, emblematic of the resurrection’ as the ‘leading characteristic of Christian architecture … nowhere so conspicuous or striking as in the majestic spires of the middle ages’.25 Pugin, who spent much of his career working in Salisbury, thought that the ‘pointed’ architecture of steeply pitched roofs and spires was the most godly, and that the English church needed to be reformed architecturally to renew the country’s devout spirit. This idealised image of the church makes clear how Victorian audiences were supposed to approach the poem: as a wholehearted panegyric to Sunday as the culmination of the Church’s work, a time for working people to come into contact with the glory of God through the beautified space of the church. The Religious Tract Society campaigned assiduously to have the Sabbath kept, trying to prevent trains running and post being delivered on Sundays.26

23 24

25 26

Herbert, A Priest to the Temple, or the Country Parson his character (London: 1652), p. 204. Hereafter referred to as Country Parson. The nave features a blocked round-arch door, which suggests the church is Norman, updated with new windows in c. 1310–40. Herbert oversaw a restoration of the church as it was dilapidated when he took up his post, with a 17th century door with moulded ribs likely dating from his tenure. A low bell tower was added to St. Andrew’s in the late 18th century. See Historic England, “Church of St Andrew (1023696)”, National Heritage List for England, . Augustus Welby Pugin, The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 21–2. Aileen Fyfe, Science and Salvation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 22. For more information about how the Religious Tract Society sought to improve the religious character of the country through improved literacy, see pp. 5–14.

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This bucolic image of the past was far from accurate either architecturally or historically: as already discussed, the keeping of the Sabbath was debated viciously in the seventeenth century. The early modern parish was a political unit as much as it was a religious one, and Herbert was writing in a time of turmoil.27 Bemerton sat in Wiltshire, a county that had suffered greatly following the collapse of the cloth industry between 1621 and 1622, with B.E. Supple calculating that at least 8,000 clothworkers were left unemployed.28 Throughout the 1620s, local forest enclosures left the lower classes unable to collect fuel, hunt, or graze livestock. In 1629, a year of bad harvest hit, and the vulnerable poor and middling sorts in Wiltshire were unable to make ends meet as prices of grain rose, exported to nearby Bristol and London rather than sold locally. Food riots erupted all over the country, with more than thirty nationwide in three years.29 The Wiltshire forests of Braydon, Chippenham and Melksham saw violent demonstrations, with local communities coming together against perceived ‘outsiders’, particularly courtiers and Londoners who had disrupted the local community and economy built around the forest to gain private profits.30 This context brings bite to the acknowledgement in Sunday that ‘the week were dark’. The image of a labourer bent double in toil takes on a greater significance: The other dayes and thou Make up one man; whose face thou art, Knocking at heaven with thy brow: The worky-daies are the back-part; The burden of the week lies there, Making the whole to stoop and bow, Till thy release appear. In a time of dearth and famine caused by political mismanagement rather than any lack of food, Herbert’s image of Sundays as ‘the fruitful beds and borders / In God’s rich garden: that is bare / Which parts their ranks and orders’ 27 28 29 30

See Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 260ff. B.E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 116–17. Nationwide between 1629–31, compared to 13 in the preceding 21 years. John Walters, ‘The Geography of Food Riots 1585–1649’ in Andrew Carlesworth ed., An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548–1900 (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 72–80. David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 108–9.

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could be read as an injunction against the negligence of the state and crown. The worries of the week that Sunday (and at the end of the poem Heaven) offer solace from are keenly felt, and potentially fatal. In a holograph early manuscript copy of Sunday, now in the Dr Williams’s Library, the first stanza speaks more directly to the experience of the individual. Sunday is described as ‘the Couch of Tyme, [the] balme of teares … The partner of my wrangling feares / Setting in order what they tumble / The week were dark, but [that] thy light/ Teaches it not to stumble’.31 The Dr Williams manuscript is generally agreed to have been composed between 1615 and 1625, while Herbert was at Cambridge. Lull argues that this metaphor of the week as a partner ‘provided a glimpse of personal coherence’, and yet was the only one completely removed by Herbert in his revisions.32 In The Country Parson, Herbert’s instructions for ‘the Parson on Sundays’ suggest that for the minister this day is less about personal reflection and more about working directly with their community. Herbert advises that the priest should see himself ‘as a Market-man is, when the Market day comes … full of making the best of the day, and contriving it to his best gaines’.33 The text he wrote whilst at Cambridge is perhaps a personal reflection on his own faith. Through edits made during his time at Bemerton as a priest, Sunday becomes poem that focuses on community.34 The poem as printed ends with an image of brotherhood and companionship: O let me take thee at the bound, Leaping with thee from sev’n to sev’n, Till that we both, being toss’d from earth, Flie hand in hand to heav’n! It is unclear whose hand is being taken in this image. Has Sunday now become the hand of God, a point of contact that must be grasped? Is this Christ’s hand transformed from that which is torn and bleeding earlier in the poem? Perhaps 31 32 33 34

London, Dr. Williams’s Library, MS. Jones B 62, ff. 51v–52v. Hereafter referred to as W. Lull, pp. 63–4. Herbert, Country Parson, p. 28. This manuscript establishes the tripartie structure of The Temple, but all the lyrics between “Obedience” and “The Elexir” are absent. The Bodleian Manuscript of The Temple (MS Tanner 307) is a presentation copy prepared by the women of Little Gidding, intended to be used to license the poems for publication, that was likely copied from Herbert’s later amended versions of the poems that he passed on to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, via Edmund Duncon. See Helen Wilcox ed. The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). xxxvii–xxix for a note on the manuscript.

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these readings should sit alongside a more humanistic one. The hand grasped is that of one who is also ‘toss’d from earth’, and so this image of travelling ‘hand in hand to heaven’ seems to be one of simple human companionship. Following food riots, exclusion crises in Wiltshire and Hertfordshire throughout the 1620s and 1630s penalised those who extended hospitality to strangers, marking (in Steve Hindle’s words) ‘the increasing reluctance of parishes to accommodate settlers who might prove chargeable’.35 Herbert’s repeated insistences on the humanity of charity, more famously seen in Love (III), operates both by making Christ human, but also by giving every human Christ-like qualities. The quotidian becomes holy in this reading. Engaging with the people around you in the church every week becomes a refuge from the trials of the wider world, with the possibility of holding out real change by bolstering community through fellowship in a time when parishes were increasingly closed to outsiders. 10.2

Outlandish Proverbs

Herbert dedicates three chapters of The Country Parson to the parson’s ‘Knowledges’, ‘Accesary Knowledges’ [sic] and his ‘Library’.36 He counsels specifically that a good parson ‘hath compiled a book and body of Divinity … in his younger and preparatory times’ from his extensive reading of ‘the Fathers … the Schoolmen, and the later writers’. This forms the ‘storehouse of his sermons, and which he preacheth all his life, but diversely clothed, illustrated, and enlarged’.37 Outlandish Proverbs could be considered the printed embodiment of this ‘storehouse’. Collections of maxims were highly popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, crossing boundaries of class and gender.38 Herbert’s proverbs range from the humorous and salacious, ‘Hee that wipes the childs nose, kisseth the mothers cheeke’, to the philosophical, ‘Life is halfe spent before we know what it is’.39 Considering the learned aspect of drawing together sayings, it is notable that many of the proverbs emphasise the importance of knowledge gained by life, rather than study: ‘A handfull of Good life, is better than a bushell of learning’; ‘Hee that lives well is learned enough’; 35 36 37 38 39

Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in early modern England, c. 1550–1640 (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 158–9. Herbert, Country Parson, p. 1. Herbert, Country Parson, pp. 15–16. See Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England: 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 112–170. Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (London: 1640), Proverbs 1032 and 917.

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‘Knowledge is folly, except grace guide it’; ‘In doing we learne’; ‘Yeeres know more then bookes’.40 Herbert’s aphorisms, both in Outlandish Proverbs and The Temple, are intended to be repeated, reused in various contexts both to offer counsel and to improve one’s manner of speaking or writing. This proverbial wisdom creates a community of readers and believers who are linked over time, sharing mutually held sentiments that are presumed to stay relevant for any time or place. Whilst Outlandish Proverbs may seem repetitive, it was clearly well received by seventeenth-century readers. The proverbs were first printed in 1640 in two separate books: a standalone volume, Outlandish Proverbs selected by Mr G.H., and as part of Wits Recreations, a two-volume collection of ‘fancies and fantasticks’.41 In Wits Recreations, the proverbs are given their own title page, identical to that of the separately sold edition. Both were printed by Thomas Paine for Humphrey Blunden and have identical printers’ signatures, suggesting that they were produced from the same typeset. However, in Wits Recreations the proverbs end at number 1010 with a note below stating ‘Imprimatur 1639, Matth. Clay’ whilst Outlandish Proverbs runs up to 1032, expanding on to a new page.42 It is unclear which edition appeared first. Presumably, the proverbs within Wits Recreations were originally printed in 1639 by Clay, however why they were not sold in this year and were instead packaged with a title page proclaiming ‘printed by T.P.’ is unclear. The proverbs first appear in the Stationers’ Register on 24 September 1639, entered for Matthew Simmons ‘under the hands of Master Hansley and Master Bourne warden a booke called. Outlandish Proverbs selected by G:H.’43 However, less than a month later on 15 October 1639, Humphrey Blunden appears in the register, with the note ‘Entred for his Copy under the hand of Master Clay a booke called Wits recreations selected from the finest fancies of Moderne Muses with a thousand outlandish proverbs’.44 Inspection of the copies of the two texts held at the British Library suggests that the text in Wits Recreations was printed first: the title page of Outlandish Proverbs shows more wear on individual letters and the decorative devices at the top of each page are smudged and distorted. Perhaps Blunden found that readers were primarily interested in the proverbs when purchasing Wits Recreations, and so made them available as a standalone text, 40 41 42 43 44

Outlandish Proverbs, Proverbs 3, 86, 248, 803 and 928, sigs. A2r, A4v, B2r, Er. The first volume of Wits Recreations appeared in 1640 (USTC 3021010) and the second in 1641 (USTC 3045498). The numbering system in Wits Recreations extends to 1010 entries, however there are only 1003 proverbs included due to errors in numeration. Register D, p. 455 (SRO10183). Register D, p. 457 (SRO10199).

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adding a few further sayings. He had beaten Simmons to publish them, and may have realised that making the text’s association with Herbert more explicit would bring further readers to the volume. The proverbs continued to be popular. A decade later, in 1651, they were reprinted with an additional fifty-eight proverbs by Timothy Garthwait under the new title Jacula Prudentum (The Darts of the Wise). This collection opens with a new proverb, ‘Old men go to Death, Death comes to young men’, and, unlike Outlandish Proverbs, provides no numbering for the entries.45 Garthwait oversaw the publication of the proverbs again, one year later, under the title Herbert’s Remains (1652). These later editions position the proverbs within Herbert’s career as a preacher and emphasise his public standing as a man of letters. The title page of Jaculu Prudentum declares ‘Selected by Mr George Herbert, Late Orator to the University of Camridg’ [sic]. Hebert’s Remains included The Country Parson and many other supplementary texts, including ‘an addition of Apothemgems by severall Authors’, Latin and English poems, ‘The Authors Prayer before Sermon’ and a letter from Herbert ‘to Master N.F. upon the translation of Valdesso … from Bemerton near Salisbury, Sept. 29 1631’.46 This letter illustrates a scene of literary exchange, in which Herbert returns to ‘his dear and deserving Brother’ his ‘Valdesso … with many thanks, and some notes; in which perhaps you will discover some care … for the Churches sake, to whom by printing it I would have you consecrate it’.47 Reading, editing, correcting and printing are all presented as holy acts, enacted diligently as evidence of spiritual commitment. We should remember that Herbert was rector at Bemerton for barely three years before his death from consumption in March 1633. Before this, he was marked for a role in court, working as an assistant lecturer and praelector at Trinity College, Cambridge, and gaining the prestigious role of University Orator in 1620.48 In these 1650s editions, Herbert’s role as a secular speaker, rather than divine poet or priest, is emphasised. This places the proverbs at the heart of a rhetorical tradition, designed to be used by a grammar school boy, university student or ‘outlandish’

45

46 47 48

Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (London: 1651). To cause further confusion over the publishing history of this text, there is at least one copy of the 1651 Jacula Prudentum circulating that simply placed a new title page before the 1640 text of Outlandish Proverbs, Bodleian Library, Wing H1509A, which can be viewed on EEBO. Herbert, Herbert’s Remains (London: 1652). J. Yeowell argued that the inclusion of these unauthorised prayers is evidence that the work was not by Herbert, who was generally greatly observant of canonical rules, Notes and Queries, 57 (January 1857), pp. 88–9. Herbert’s Remains, pp. 176–7. Helen Wilcox, ‘Herbert, George (1593–1633)’, in ODNB.

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person living in the countryside, far from a library to restock their quiver of cutting sayings. Outlandish Proverbs has been largely overlooked by critics, perhaps due to some lingering doubts over its ascription to Herbert. In 1932, Bernard Hall argued that the attribution of the sayings ‘rests on a very slender foundation … [with] little, if anything, which “smacks” of Herbert’s beautiful and curious wit’.49 Neither of his earliest biographers, Izaak Walton or Barnabas Oley, mentioned or quoted the proverbs, and Peter Packard omitted them from a list he compiled of Herbert’s works in 1790.50 The 1640 title page identifies the compiler only as ‘Mr G.H.’ and at least two of the 1651 copies (including one in the Bodleian Library) have these initials deleted.51 However, there is persuasive evidence that they were Herbert’s work. In a letter to his brother Sir Henry Herbert asking him to house one of their nieces, the ‘destitute’, orphaned and unmarried twenty-six year old Beatrice, Herbert remarks ‘take this rule, and it is an outlandish one, which I commend to you as being now a father, the best-bredd child hath the best portion’.52 This echoes proverb 953, ‘The best bred have the best portion’, and Herbert’s use of the unusual ‘outlandish’ further strengthens the speculative attribution of the proverbs to him. In The Country Parson, Herbert declared that he who ‘will be respected, must respect’, an inversion of proverb 427, ‘Hee that respects not, is not respected’.53 A list of manuscripts and books that belonged to the godson of Herbert’s close friend Nicholas Ferrar includes a ‘large book of stories, with outlandish proverbs at the end, englished by Mr. Geo Herbert: in all, 463 proverbs’.54 In addition, a manuscript in the National Library of Wales in the hand of Sir Henry Herbert, who oversaw the publication of his brother’s collected works, perfectly replicates the first seventy-two entries of the 1640 version of Outlandish Proverbs. The manuscript is dated 1637 and is headed ‘Outlandish Proverbs selected out of severall Languages & entered here the vi. August 1637 At Ribsford’.55 Herbert 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

Bernard G. Hall, “The ‘Jacula Prudentum’”, Times Literary Supplement, April 1932, p. 291. Peter Packard, Life of Nicholas Ferrar, his household and his friends (London: Longman, 1893), pp. 193–198. Bodleian Library, Malone 895. Michael Piret, “Herbert and Proverbs” in The Cambridge Quarterly, 17.3 (1988), pp. 222–243, p. 222. Yeowell argued that this indicated that Herbert was not the author, particularly as the Bodleian catalogued the book under “Proverbia”. Yeowell, pp. 88–9. William Hazlitt repeated this argument, see Collections and Notes: 1867– 1876 (London: 1876), p. 209. F.E. Hutchinson (ed.), Works of George Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon, 1941) III, p. 376. Herbert, Country Parson, p. 117, Outlandish Proverbs sig. B7v. See F.E. Hutchinson, III, p. 313. Library of Wales, MS 5301. There are two proverbs included in the manuscript that are not in the printed edition (“The longest Day hath an Eveninge” and “Who eates the Kings

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Wright has argued that this manuscript demonstrates that, a few years after Herbert’s death, Sir Henry was actively involved in copying down his brother’s proverbs, either from the copy text that became Outlandish Proverbs or a smaller collection.56 Returning to Wits Recreations, likely the earliest edition, from the very first page the reader is alerted to the presence of the proverbs, indicating that they were conceived as an important part of the miscellany. The volume has a detailed frontispiece (see Fig. 10.2), built up from a number of engravings, and proclaiming Wits Recreations selected from the finest Fancies of Modern Muses with A Thousand outLandish Proverbs [sic]. A spreading vine tops the page, whilst on the left a man with a sword swings wildly at the swarm of bees that have surrounded him, and beneath him a picture of a rider lost in a maze. On the right a bee skep overlooks a series of orderly gardens, inscribed ‘non nobis’ (not to us) and beneath this rests a bagpipe emblazoned ‘Attedite Vobis’ (take heed to yourselves).57 These reproduce images commonly seen in the emblematic tradition: a bagpipe headed ‘attenite vobis’ appears in Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïque and in Barthelemy Aneau’s Picta Poesis, the image of a man carrying away a dish of honey from a swarm of bees illustrates the didactic poem ‘non nobis nati’.58 Below all this sits a detailed image of satyrs dancing to the music of panpipes, inscribed ‘W. Marshall Sculpsit’. Overleaf, a poem offers concrete guidance to how these symbols should be interpreted. The beehive is glossed ‘these painefull Bees … Shewes th’Author works not for himself, but you’. The bee was intimately connected with the Senecan tradition of gathering information together from one’s studies in order improve both the mind and the word: we should imitate bees and we should keep in separate compartments whatever we have collected from our diverse reading, for things conserved

56 57 58

Goose voydes the feathers an hundred years after”) and one which appears in print (“A Bad dog never sees the wolfe”) which is missing from the manuscript. The 27th proverb in the manuscript reads “A Cake and an Ill custome must bee broken”, whilst in print this is (incorrectly) altered to “caske”. For further discussion of this manuscript, see Herbert G. Wright, ‘Was George Herbert the Author of Jacula Prudentum?’, The Review of English Studies, 11.42 (1935), pp. 139–144, pp. 141–3. Wright, pp. 143. In the second volume of Wits Recreations (London: 1641) the two images to the right have been replaced with a knave and a fool. Claude Paradin, Devises Heroïque (Lyon: 1551/1557), p. 113, p. 174. Paradin’s works were exceedingly popular, translated several times into Dutch, and English in London in 1591. They would be published in Paris into the 17th century in 1618, 1621 and 1622 with a new commentary. Barthelemy Aneau, Picta Poesis (Lyon: 1552), p. 97.

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Figure 10.2

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Frontispiece. Wits Recreations: Selected from the finest fancies of modern muses (London: 1640)

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separately keep better. Then, diligently applying all the resources of our native talent, we should mingle all the various nectars we have tasted, and turn them into a single sweet substance … quite different from what it was in its original state.59 Wits Recreations gathered together all these ‘nectars’ for the reader to easily peruse, counselling them to pay attention to what they imbibed. There is material evidence from many versions of Herbert’s proverbs that they were used as sources for commonplacing. J.E.B. Mayor suggested that the greater number of proverbs in Jacula Prudentum suggested that manuscript copies of Outlandish Proverbs were circulated and added to, but the printed versions were likely also annotated.60 One copy of Jacula Prudentum now held in the British Library shows multiple marks of reading. On some pages, nearly every entry has either a dash, cross or manicule beside it, suggesting that the owner transferred them into their own commonplace book, used them in a piece of writing, or otherwise digested them for use.61 Similarly, a copy in the University of Illinois Special Collections has dozens of entries marked with dashes or crosses. Some entries have ‘H’ or ‘M’ written beside them, such as ‘Play with a fool at home, and he will play with you in the market’. Midway through, this book is inscribed in the margin: ‘November 9 1690 Samuel Holland his Booke’. Holland writes back to the text, commenting ‘A True Expression’ beside the saying ‘Serve a noble disposition, though poor, the time comes that he will repay thee’. Other comments are less lofty. Beside ‘A marryed man turns his staffe into a stake’ is added ‘it be turn then on his wife’. The annotator clearly had two runs at this lewd joke, as a similar formulation has been crossed out higher on the page. Perhaps Holland was unlucky in love: beside the proverb ‘Love makes all hard hearts gentle’ a definite ‘no’ is inscribed in the margin. We can posit that he may have been rather embittered, as ‘True, true’ is written beside the maxim ‘Law suites [sic] consume time, and money, and rest, and friends’; each of the nouns are underlined.62 The proverbs create a space for the reader to commune with Herbert, whose compiler’s hand remains a ghostly presence throughout the editions, whilst the sayings are repurposed by generations of readers in relation to their own lives. 59 60 61 62

Cited in Anne Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structure of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 12. J.E.B. Mayor ed., Cambridge in the Seventeenth Century: Nicholas Ferrar (London: Macmillan, 1855), p. 302. Herbert, Jacula Prudentium (London: 1651), British Library, 1070.h.4. Herbert, Jacula Prudentium (London: 1651), University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign Campus) call no. IUA06605, p. 9, p. 16, p. 23, p. 33, p. 47.

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The Church Porch: Proverbial Wisdom in The Temple

Unlike the largely forgotten Outlandish Proverbs, produced in a flurry of different versions, every one with some error either in pagination or numbering, the 1633 edition of The Temple is one of the most meticulously edited books of the seventeenth century. This volume was the work of the Cambridge University printers Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, and was a marked departure for the Cambridge press, which had only produced one other book of poetry in the preceding fifty years. At that time, the Cambridge catalogue mainly consisted of almanacs, grammars, books of theology and liturgical texts including Bibles and psalters. Herbert’s was the only non-liturgical text they published in 1633, following a book on Christian hospitality and a translation of Protestant meditations in the preceding two years. Ramie Targoff argues that the material properties of the 1633 text suggest that it was specifically designed to remind readers of liturgy, the bread and butter of the Cambridge press at that time. As Targoff details, the volume is unusual for a single-authored book of poetry at the time in that it includes no commemorative or dedicatory materials that would point readers towards Herbert’s personal life.63 The volume was published in duodecimo, a format normally used for devotional texts so they could be carried in a pocket for easy reference. Finally, the decorative elements used to frame the pages of the 1633 edition of The Temple are identical to those used by the Cambridge press on the Book of Common Prayer, which they had only won the right to print through new legislation in 1629. The poems are separated from one another by pilcrows (¶), which in the Book of Common Prayer are used to divide readings from scriptural passages. Whilst it was common for printers to reuse woodcuts and printing devices from text to text, The Temple was the only volume of poetry to feature these.64 For its earliest readers, The Temple was visually and physically reminiscent of the liturgical texts they read daily, underlining the devotional use of the verse.65 We can posit that this similarity would have encouraged them to read the volume in the same way that they would approach a devotional text, or indeed a book of maxims: non-sequentially.

63 64 65

Ramie Targoff, ‘Poets in Print: The Case of Herbert’s Temple’, Word & Image, 17.1–2 (2001), pp. 140–52, p. 145, p. 145. Targoff, pp. 144–7. For further discussion on Herbert and bookbinding, see Kathleen Lynch, “Devotion Bound: A Social History of The Temple” in Books and Readers in Early Modern England ed. by Jenifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press: 2002), pp. 177–97.

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Reading The Temple alongside Outlandish Proverbs reminds readers of Herbert’s professional interest, as a preacher and orator, in gathering together commonplaces from disparate sources; creating a work that can easily speak to others in the voice they are most familiar with and in terms they recognise. The first poem of The Temple is The Church Porch, seventy-seven stanzas that usher readers into the devotional space of the volume, marking the move from profane to sacred matters. The language used, that of agricultural metaphor, is simultaneously both recognisably Biblical and accessible to the rural community that Herbert lived and worked in. The poem covers a vast variety of topics, explicitly instructing the reader in the appropriate attitude towards their priest: ‘Judge not the preacher; for he is thy Judge’, ‘Jest not at preachers language, or expression:/ How know’st thou, but thy sinnes made him miscarrie?’ (l. 427, ll. 439–40). Another couplet states that ‘a verse may finde him, who a sermon flies,/ And turne delight into a sacrifice’ (ll. 5–6). The power of aphorism is evident in The Church Porch, and the success of the poem lives and dies by how many proverbs the reader can stomach. Diana Benet argues that the poem’s sheer length ‘vitiates its impact’, as the individually acute maxims become dull and repetitive, clustered so together.66 Indeed, some of Herbert’s directives are po-faced at best: ‘Laugh not too much: the wittie man laughs least:/ For wit is newes onely to ignorance’ (ll. 229–30). Despite this, The Church Porch was popular for centuries, translated into Latin by William Dillingham in 1678 and transformed into an illustrated primer for children by Thomas White in Youth’s Alphabet: Or, Herbert’s Morals in 1702.67 Generations of readers treasured the poem, with John Ruskin learning it by heart two hundred years after its publication.68 Many of the concerns expressed in The Church Porch are heard in Outlandish Proverbs: there are six stanzas warning against the dangers of drink and ‘Stay at the third glasse’ is repeated three times, with minor variations. In Outlandish Proverbs, a series of sayings counsel the reader that ‘wine is a turn-coate’, ‘wine makes all sorts of creatures at table’, and that ‘the wine in the bottell doth not quench thirst’.69 Perhaps the two works were compiled alongside each other, with Herbert expanding the proverbs into verse, making the so-called ‘outlandish’ words familiar. It is worth noting that the first edition of The Temple included indices. 66 67 68 69

Diana Benet, Secretary of Praise: The Poetic Vocation of George Herbert (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), p. 35. See C.A. Patrides ed., George Herbert: The Critical Heritage (New York: Routledge, 1983), pp. 145–48 for further discussion of the afterlife of the poem. See John Idol, ‘George Herbert and John Ruskin’, George Herbert Journal, 4.1 (1980), pp. 11–28. Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640), Proverbs 929, 931, 616.

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One listed the poems, along with their number in the collection, in alphabetical order alongside their page numbers. The table at the end of the volume, in contrast, although also alphabetical, listed several poems at once, so that those with the same title were gathered together with the page numbers for each incidence. Whilst such tables were customarily found in seventeenth-century commonplace books, they were rarely seen in books of verse.70 Gathering together poems on similar topics would have intrinsically reminded contemporary readers of a commonplace book, allowing them to make comparisons between poems holding out similar moral precepts. Readers seem to have been aware of this freedom to commonplace Herbert’s words when it came to The Church Porch. Helen Wilcox has discussed a midseventeenth century domestic notebook now held in the Bodleian Library that records the family accounts of the Cartwrights of Anyhoe, who copied out couplets from ‘The Church-Porch’.71 Wilcox suggests that the wide-ranging mix of ‘sacred and secular in the volume’ is a ‘sign of the ease with which Herbert’s poems were absorbed into one particular family’s cultural memory’.72 Similarly, the Reverend Oliver Heywood copied The Church Porch in full into his diary and memorandum book, alongside eighteen more of Herbert’s poems.73 These are followed immediately by a list of resolutions, entitled ‘Rules of Practice I desire to charge upon my own base heart in the course of my life’. Heywood’s first ‘rule’ is ‘be serious (whether short or long in all religious exercises) doe thy best in al the weekes, trifle not in any thing, much lesse in the dutys of religion’.74 After these resolutions, Heywood includes several pages of his personal diary, amalgamating Herbert’s poem into a personal work of self-improvement. In one quarto volume of religious tracts and verse, now held in the British Library, the owner has made a painstaking scribal copy of the entire poem in an elegant italic hand with red and black ink.75 This volume was compiled by Thomas Sparrow of London, a member of Gray’s Inn, between 1658 and 1661.76 Every verse of ‘Mr Herbert’s Perirrhanterium’, as Sparrow heads it, is numbered and annotated with a phrase that sums up its didactic lesson. According to 70 71 72 73

74 75 76

Ferry, pp. 331–2. Bodleian Library, MS Don.e.6. Helen Wilcox, ‘In the Temple Precincts: George Herbert and Seventeenth-Century Community-Making’ in Writing and Religion in England, 1558–1689, pp. 253–272 (p. 259). BL Add MS 45965, ff. 71–77. The other Herbert poems included are ‘Anagram’, ‘Redemption’, ‘Easter’, ‘Prayer’, ‘The H. Communion’, ‘Antiphon’, ‘The Temper’, ‘Grace’, ‘The ChurchFloore’, ‘The Quiddity’, ‘Humility’, ‘The World’, ‘Justice’, ‘Charmes and Knotts’, ‘Home’, ‘Jesu’, ‘Love-Joy’, ‘Providence’. BL Add MS 45964, f. 78. BL, Add MS 74272. Sparrow gained his BA from St John’s College, Cambridge and was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1635. See ACAD (Venn) Person ID: SPRW629T.

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these headings, the second stanza is ‘against cleanliness & lust’, seventeen through nineteen warn of the dangers of ‘want of good education’, and the thirty-ninth speaks against ‘immodest laughter’.77 This means of organising the verses is Sparrow’s own, absent from any print version of the text. It speaks to his understanding of the poem as a ‘storehouse’ of knowledge, to use Herbert’s own terms. In The Church Porch, we are counselled ‘the cunning workman never doth refuse/ The meanest tool, that he may chance to use’ (ll. 353–4). Herbert offers the motif of digestion as the key to amalgamating this knowledge, declaring ‘All forrain wisdome doth amount to this,/ To take all that is given … A good digestion turneth all to health’ (ll. 355–8). This echoes John of Salisbury’s advice that commonplacing digests potentially dangerous material: ‘some things a good mind will instinctively evacuate, others it will digest to nourish its moral life’.78 Sparrow annotates this verse ‘mutual obligation’, which seems to rather overlook the stanza’s content. Sparrow’s headings often work to elide the difficulties of the verse, for example in the fifty-second stanza: Calmnesse is great advantage: he that lets Another chafe, may warm him at his fire: Mark all his wandrings, and enjoy his frets; As cunning fencers suffer heat to tire. Truth dwels not in the clouds: the bow that’s there, Doth often aim at, never hit the sphere. The move from fire to fencer to archery seems unconvincing, and the leap from the use of a calm manner in an argument to a discussion of where truth is located is one that the reader feels unable to make. Sparrow heads this stanza ‘calamities’, eclipsing the internal problems by drawing it together under one term to help himself make sense of it.79 In The Country Parson, Herbert argues that ‘a diligent collation of Scripture with Scripture’ is a key part of a parson’s knowledge. He explains, ‘for all Truth being consonant to itself, and all being penned by one hand and the selfsame Spirit, it cannot be but that an industrious and judicious comparing of place with place must be a singular help for the right understanding of the Scriptures’.80 This process of mutual illumination is further developed in The Holy Scriptures (II) where Herbert declares:

77 78 79 80

BL Add. MS 74272, ff. 157r–161v. Cited in Moss, p. 18. BL Add. MS 74272, f. 163v. Herbert, Country Parson, p. 129.

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O that I knew how all thy lights combine, And configurations of their glory! Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, But all the constellations of the story.81 It is in the combination of different verses and sayings that meaning is illuminated. However, if disparate ideas are too swiftly yoked together, or single lights observed out of context, the reader may misread. Whilst Herbert’s advice in The Country Parson was aimed at the clergy, The Temple and Outlandish Proverbs show how this guidance applied more widely. The laity was advised to compare different passages, and in reading The Temple explicitly coached in this form of non-sequential reading through the presence of indices. The enduring popularity of both The Church Porch and Outlandish Proverbs demonstrates that aphorisms were valued by Herbert’s readers: these sayings remained ‘timeless’ and valuable for at least two centuries after their publication. By repeating and reusing these pieces of advice, readers not only accessed personal mnemonic devices to prompt them towards more godly behaviour, but also a broader bank of communal memory: sayings shared and understood by many. However, these proverbial works need to be read within the context of Bemerton as a politicised space in which the structures of community were being altered in response to a crisis of famine and poverty. In this environment, Herbert’s counsels of church charity and the sanctity of Sunday are charged rather than idealistic. It was the commonplace nature of these aphorisms that meant they proved lastingly popular with Herbert’s readers who wished him to be a mouthpiece of timeless spiritual truths. As such, they are often encountered in this manner in children’s ABCs or the devotional quasi-propaganda produced by the Religious Tract Society. These later readers stand in contrast to the communities that he initially addressed as a matter of urgency when writing in the 1620s and early 1630s. Herbert’s verse has often been idealised as acts of pure prayer, the song of ‘a soul in paraphrase’.82 However, we should perhaps think of these prayers as ones made publicly within the space of a church rather than privately: simultaneously educating and inspiring a congregation whilst ostensibly being directed to God. By reading the neglected proverbs alongside Herbert’s poetry, we gain an insight into the wider literary culture that he inhabited, and are reminded of how, as orator and preacher, he built up texts from the ‘storehouse’ of his knowledge. 81 82

Herbert, Temple, p. 52. Herbert, Temple, p. 43.

chapter 11

Micrography in Later Stuart Britain: Curious Spectacles and Political Emblems Tim Somers In 1575 ‘a strange peece of worke, & almost incredible, was brought to passe’ by the writing master, Peter Bales. Within the compass of a penny, Bales managed to write the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and two other prayers. He set his miniature writing (or micrography) on the head of a ring and presented it, along with spectacles ‘for the easier reading thereof’, to Queen Elizabeth.1 The art of micrography predated Bales, but this spectacle of penmanship still became a commonly referenced episode in the history of writing.2 Future generations of writing masters, engravers, and ‘curious’ performers were inspired to produce and sell specimens of miniature writing. Often they followed Bales in using concise religious texts, especially the Lord’s Prayer. Others used miniature writing to construct ‘word-images’ (calligrams) in a manner comparable to the pattern poetry introduced to England by George Herbert’s Easter Wings (1633).3 This chapter will analyse the heightened interest in producing, consuming and collecting micrography during the later Stuart period. It argues that these easily passed-over objects exemplify a heightened interest in the relationship between script and print. By exploring this interest, we can recover the intellectual and political functions of micrography for their producers and consumers, who valued this genre in the context 1 John Stow, The Chronicles of England (London: H. Bynneman, 1580), p. 1187; USTC 509150. I wish to thank Abigail Williams and Adam Morton for their advice and encouragement, and everyone involved in the ‘Small Things in the Eighteenth Century’ conference held at the University of York, June 2019, for inspiring the topic of this chapter. 2 On Peter Bales’s reputation see John Evelyn, Numismata (London: B. Tooke, 1697), p. 268; John Bagford, ‘A Catalogue of Copybooks’, British Library [BL], Harley MS 5899, ff. 53–53v; John Ayres, A Tutor to Penmanship (London: 1698?), ‘To the Reader’; William Massey, The Origin and Progress of Letters (London: J. Johnson, 1763), p. 149. For the earlier tradition of micrography in Jewish scribal art and Protestant Germany see Andrew Morrall, ‘“On the Picture of the King Charles the First … written in Psalms”: Devotion, Commemoration and the Micrographic Portrait’, Antoinina Bevan Zlatar and Olga Timofeeva (eds.), What is an Image in Medieval and Early Modern England? (Zürich: Narr Francke Attempto, 2017), pp. 228–9. 3 Christian Algar, ‘Visual Verses’, 31 Aug. 2016 & March 3, 2017 [http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and -drama].

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470439_013

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of both an intensified print culture and an institutionalised partisan political culture that developed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1688). By the late seventeenth century, there was a notable increase in the production and collection of micrography. Its producers included the engraver, Robert Spofforth (fl. 1700), and the writing masters William Mason (d. 1719) and John Dundass (fl. 1698).4 Into the eighteenth century, disabled travelling performers such as Matthias Buchinger (1674–1740) and Martha Ann Honeywell (1786–1856), both born without arms, were celebrated by contemporaries for their micrography. The most prolific micro-engraver of this period was John Sturt (1658–1730). While at the end of the seventeenth century the quality of England’s copper-plate engraving was, compared to the continent, ‘at a low ebb’, Sturt was held ‘in some esteem’.5 Like Bales, Sturt wrote the Lord’s Prayer ‘in so small a compass’ that it fitted within a half-penny, and likewise put the Creed within a milled penny.6 His other miniature work included elegies for deceased monarchs: Charles II, Mary II, William III and Anne, and a panegyric for George I.7 The Lord’s Prayer was sold for as little as four pence, and the elegies went for sixpence, or, with a magnifying glass, one shilling.8 These prints were sold ready to be cut-and-pasted into books or, in partnership with jewellers, set into rings, pendants and brooches.9 Indeed by the mid-eighteenth century, the Lord’s Prayer was a common feature on ‘watch-paper’, a piece of 4 For Spofforth’s micrography see BL, Stowe MS 1060, f. 104; BL Harley 5949 (313); Bodleian Library [Bodl.], Arch. A. g.19 (2). For Mason see British Museum [BM], SLRings.19; BL, Harley 5899, f. 55v; William Turner, A Compleat History of the most remarkable providences both of judgment and mercy (London: J. Dunton, 1697), chap. XIII, p. 26. For Dundass see BL Harley 5949 (296); The universal library (London: G. Sawbridge, 1712), p. 77; Pepys Library, Magdalene College [PL], 2983, pp. 325–6. 5 ‘Vertue’s Note Book A.f.’ & ‘Vertue’s Note Book A.y.’ in The Volume of the Walpole Society, 22 & 30 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933–34 & 1951–52), pp. 7 & 184. 6 Ralph Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis (London: M. Atkins, 1715), p. 498. He also performed the X Commandments in this manner. For an example of all three see Bodl., C.17.26. Linc. (4–6), a volume containing the Lord’s Prayer in a variety of languages owned by Richard Rawlinson. 7 For William III see BL, Harley 5949 (307); PL, 2983, p. 326 (ix). For Anne and George see BM, 1881,0611.336. For Mary see PL, 2983, p. 325 (iv). Sturt’s involvement in Charles II’s elegy is inconclusive but probable. See ‘On the death of King. Charles ye. II’, PL, 2983, p. 235 (vii): ‘sold by Jacob Sturt, jeweller’; Jacob Sturt is a subscriber to John Sturt’s Book of Common Prayer (1717). 8 Sayer and Bennett’s Enlarged Catalogue of New and Valuable Prints (London: 1775), p. 136; ‘On the death of Queen Anne’, BM, 1881,0611.336; Bodl., C.17.26. Linc. (7); PL, 2983, p. 325 (viii). 9 ‘On the Death of K.CHARLES’, BM, G46/dc11/p4/no18; ‘On ye Death of K. William III’, National Museums Scotland [NMS], H.K 102; ‘On ye Death of K. William III’, Victoria & Albert Museum [V&A], Brooch, M.108–1962. On cut-and-paste reading practices see Adam Smyth, Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 1.

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Figure 11.1

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John Sturt, The Effigies of King William and Queen Mary (1693), PL 2983, p. 325x. 70mm diameter © Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

paper protecting the inside of a pocket watch.10 Sturt’s more ambitious projects included: ‘Proposals for Printing the New Testament in the Small Character’ and the engraving of William Addy’s The Bible, New Testament and the Singing Psalms (1689) in miniature short-hand.11 However, the most remarkable pieces by Sturt were two medal-sized micrographic portraits of William and Mary (1693) and George I (1717), constructed using the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and several other prayers (Figs. 11.1 and 11.2). 10 11

See, for example, BM, Heal,132.136; Maurice Rickards, The Encyclopedia of Ephemera (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 354–5. For specimens see BL, Harley 5949 (332, 333); PL, 2983, p. 325 (xiii–xiv).

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Figure 11.2

John Sturt, The Effigies of King George (1719), under four inches diameter. © History of Science Museum, University of Oxford, Inv. 11882

Analysing Sturt’s portraits can add to our understanding of visual prints and their function within later Stuart political culture. During this period, the public became a source of legitimacy in the emerging two-party system. Graphic satires started to respond to one another in a contest for ‘public opinion’, and their imagery migrated onto a variety of consumer objects.12 This visual culture did not just passively reflect textual propaganda, but instead encouraged 12

Antony Griffiths, The Print in Stuart Britain 1603–1689 (London: British Museum Press, 1998), ch. 12; Mark Knights, ‘Possessing the Visual: The Materiality of Visual Print Culture in Later Stuart Britain’, in James Daybell and Peter Hinds (eds), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

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active ways of reading images as part of an ‘emblematic tradition’.13 Viewers read text and image reciprocally, and searched out allusions and ‘different levels of meaning’ within ‘playful’ and ambiguous compositions.14 Sometimes allusive combinations of text and image were a ‘defensive strategy’ on the producers’ part; sometimes viewers felt ‘intellectual delight’ in decoding their compositions.15 The micrographic portrait – creating images out of text – is a manifestation of this emblematic tradition. The most famous English micrographic portrait of the seventeenth century represented Charles I with miniaturised letters from the book of psalms, ‘very handsomely writt & plainly to be read’. The portrait was displayed at St John’s College, Oxford, as early as 1662 and became a well-known attraction.16 Andrew Morrall has discussed how this word-image bypassed Protestant iconophobia and functioned within the cult of Charles’s martyrdom after the regicide on 30 January 1649. However, with the proliferation of travellers in the late seventeenth century jostling to the view the picture, combined with the cultural criticism of The Spectator periodical (1711–1714), Charles’s portrait lost some of its divine presence. No longer an ‘icon of sacred memory’, the portrait was, at best, a ‘curiosity’ and, at worst, an example of what Joseph Addison called ‘false wit’.17 While micrography displayed ‘great industry’, squeezing words into inappropriate shapes added little to a text’s literary merit.18 The Spectator preferred precision and clarity of meaning over ‘monkish’, ‘hieroglyphical’, and ‘gothic’ emblems.19 Nevertheless, Whiggish cultural reform was a process rather than a finished product and Sturt’s micrographic portraits can still be read on different levels: 13 14

15

16 17 18 19

Eirwen E.C. Nicholson, ‘Emblem v. Caricature: a Tenacious Conceptual Framework’, in Adams, Grove (eds.), Emblems and Art History: Nine Essays (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 1996), pp. 141–68. Margaret J.M. Ezell, ‘Multimodal Literacies, Late Seventeenth-Century English Illustrated Broadsheets, and Graphic Narratives’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 51 (2008), p. 362; Adam Morton, ‘Popery, Politics, and Play: Visual Culture in Succession Crisis England’, The Seventeenth Century, 31 (2016), pp. 411–49. Ezell, ‘Multimodal Literacies’, p. 367; Murray Pittock, Material Culture and Sedition, 1688–1760: Treacherous Objects, Secret Places (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Jan C. Westerhoff, ‘A World of Signs: Baroque Pansemioticism, the Polyhistor and the Early Modern Wunderkammer’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2001), p. 637; Morton, ‘Popery, Politics, and Play’, p. 431. Narcissus Luttrell, ‘Travel 3rd’, March 16 to April 18, 1678, Beinecke Library, Osborn b314, f. 20; John Bagford, ‘Catalogue of Copybooks’, BL, Harley MS 5899, f. 54. Morrall, ‘“On the Picture of the King Charles”’, p. 231. The Spectator, no. 58, May 7, 1711, in Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (5 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) [hereafter The Spectator]. Elizabeth Kraft, ‘Wit and the Spectators Ethics of Desire’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 45 (2005), pp. 625–46; Nicholson, ‘Emblem v. Caricature’, pp. 141–68.

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as curiosities, or as sacred images of monarchy that resonated with Tory consumers. The context for the portraits’ immediate reception corresponds with two fraught periods for Church Tories. The first was in 1693 when debates were ongoing between High and Low Churchmen over the comprehension of nonconformity in the aftermath of the Revolution and the Toleration Act (1689). The second was in 1717, when the Whig ministry under Sunderland and Stanhope sought to repeal legislation against nonconformity, both the recent Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts (1711 and 1714), and the Corporation and Test Acts (1661 and 1673). In this context, micrographic portraits did not function as straightforward badges of party allegiance, like other print portraits used in ritualistic bonfires and protests.20 Instead they appropriated sacred texts and images of monarchical authority, representing William III (a Calvinist) and George I (a Lutheran) who were both sympathetic towards nonconformity, as icons of the Church of England. Such emblematic portraits went against the grain of polite Whig aesthetics and held symbolic appeal for Tory consumers. Sturt’s micrographic portraits were also significant because they straddled the line between being sacred, ‘singular’ objects and widely available commodities.21 In 1575, Peter Bales participated directly in a system of royal patronage, gifting a unique piece of micrography to Elizabeth I. By contrast, Sturt’s portraits were commercial ventures advertised in the London Gazette.22 They competed within a marketplace of visual prints dedicated to the monarchy, constituting part of an emerging ‘public sphere’. Nevertheless, the wondrous and uniquely-skilled spectacle of Sturt’s word-images harkened back to sacred, unique objects such as Charles I’s micrographic portrait. To establish this point, this chapter will first discuss the cultural and symbolic significance of miniaturisation in relation to an intensifying print culture during the 1700s, before addressing its political context. The chapter closes by further charting the trajectory of micrography’s commoditisation among travelling performers, who sold specimens of miniature writing to the audiences at their entertaining shows.

20 21 22

See, for example, Knights, ‘Possessing the Visual’, p. 113. Igor Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64–94. C.H.L George, ‘Topical portrait print advertising in London newspapers and The Term Catalogues, 1660–1714’, PhD thesis, Durham University (2005), p. 125.

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Curious Spectacles

As Susan Pearce notes, miniaturisation turns production into a ‘spectacle’.23 The penny-sized Lord’s Prayer thus presents the art of writing as something to admire and emulate, as opposed to a mechanical task delegated to secretaries or scriveners.24 One miniature Lord’s Prayer makes this connection explicit by framing its circular writing within a calligraphic flourish emanating from a writing master’s disembodied hand.25 A 1638 commentator described how ‘children and schoole-boyes’ were ‘wont to wonder … at the dexteritie’ of such feats.26 Indeed to advertise their skills fledgling penmen sold calligraphic flourishes and micrography specimens, dedicating them to ‘all kind judges’.27 Likewise, the ‘national craze’ for short-hand in seventeenth-century England – a technique for rapid note-taking – led practitioners such as Jeremiah Rich to produce examples of miniature short-hand that promoted their competing methods.28 Towards the end of the century, natural theology compilations listed Sturt, short-hand, and Peter Bales’s micrography as ‘artificial curiosities’, providing admirable exploits of God’s finest creation, Mankind.29

23 24 25 26

27 28

29

Susan Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), p. 58. Ann Blair, ‘Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-taking’, in Alberto Cevolini (ed.), Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 265–85. PL, 2983, p. 325 (xi). John Crompe, Collections out of S. Augustine (London: W. Lee, 1638); USTC 3019904. A 1673 copybook, designed for school children, contains a hand-written, miniature Lord’s Prayer presumably to emulate this feat. See Ambrose Heal, The English Writing-Masters and their Copy-Books, 1570–1800 (Hildesheim: George Olms Verlag, 1931), p. 72. Bodl., Douce adds. 141 (12): John Dundas Jnr, a half-sheet with two calligraphic figures holding looking glasses with the Lord’s Prayer in miniature (1705), priced 6d. One example, kept alongside Sturt, contains the Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer for the King on a miniature stone tablet, Bodl., C.17.26. Linc. (2). See also BL, Harley 5949 (327–9); PL, 2983, p. 326 (x). On short-hand see Michael Mendle, ‘News and the Pamphlet Culture of Mid-Seventeenth-Century England’, in Brendan Dooley (ed.), The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 63. Turner, A compleat history, ch. xiii, p. 26; Nathaniel Wanley, The wonders of the little world (London: T. Basset, et al, 1678), p. 227; Mankind displayed: or, The history of the little world (London: T. Northcott, 1690), p. 64; The universal library (1712), p. 163; and later, secular compilations: The sixth volume of Brett’s miscellany (Dublin: W. Williamson, 1762), pp. 170– 2; The entertainer (London: J. Henry, 1766). On artificial curiosities see Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (London: MIT Press, 1998), p. 314.

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Micrography’s ‘curious’ status was further enhanced by the growing interest in the history of writing and the impact of the printing press.30 This interest was driven by the genteel virtuosi who read the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, visited coffeehouses to watch wondrous spectacles, and observed the world through new optical instruments such as the microscope – including, as in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), specimens of micrography.31 One such virtuoso was Samuel Pepys, who owned a three-volume ‘Calligraphical Collection’ that chronologically documented the development of writing as it adapted to the print revolution.32 The collection started with ‘Original Proofs of the hand-writing of the Ancients’; it then showed ‘the Competition for Maistery, between the Librarians & Printers, upon the first breaking-out of the Latter’; and it concluded with ‘the Different Performances of the Masters of the Last and Present age, in the Curiositys of Small-Writing & Flourishing’. Pepys thus followed a narrative set out in the collection’s preface: that ‘the Writers Trade was wholly laid aside’ after the introduction of ‘cheap’ printing, before reaching new heights with the introduction of engraved copybooks.33 Such improvements were exemplified by curious spectacles of micrography, such as William and Mary’s effigies, that provided the collection’s finale. The collection shares a significant amount of overlap in content and intellectual rationale with the lesser-known calligraphical collection of John Bagford (1650/1–1716), a shoemaker who became a book agent for wealthier collectors such as Pepys, Hans Sloane and Robert Harley.34 Bagford amassed a collection of title pages, ballads, printed ephemera and manuscript fragments as part of an antiquarian history of printing – proposals for which were published in the Philosophical Transactions.35 Both Bagford and Sturt assisted Pepys by inspecting his ‘Gatherings relating to Fair Writing’ and helping to put ‘them in 30 31

32

33 34 35

Cf. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (London: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 39. Frances Hughes, ‘Micrography, Medleys and Marks: The Visual Discernment of Text in the Calligraphy Collection of Samuel Pepys’, Word & Im­age, vol. 36, issue 4 (2020), pp. 397–416. Hughes’s article was in press while this chapter was written and provides a fuller context for Pepys’s collecting; many thanks to the author for sharing this work. PL, 2981–3, Robert Latham (ed.), Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, … Music, Maps and Calligraphy, vol. iv, part I (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1989); Pepys to Charlett, Sep. 13, 1702, in J.R. Tanner (ed.), Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1670–1703 (2 vols., London: G. Bell and Sons, 1926), ii, p. 272. John Ayres, Tutor to Penmanship (1698), qu. in PL, 2981, p. 11. BL, Harley 5949. This volume is part of the Bagford title page collections in the BL’s Dept. of Printed Books, kept separate from the manuscript volumes. John Bagford, ‘An Essay on the Invention of Printing’, in Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxv, no. 305–312 (London: 1706), pp. 2397–410.

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Order’.36 Sturt, for his own part, played up to another client’s interest in printing’s history, James West (1703–1772), by writing his correspondence in a miniature script imitating old-fashioned black-letter typography.37 Bagford and Sturt operated as part of a close-knit network of tradesmen who provided services to the virtuosi.38 This network included the writing masters John Ayres and John Smith, the spectacles-maker John Marshall, and the draughtsman, Bernard Lens II. Sturt engraved the calligraphy of these writing masters – overcoming the challenge of replicating the quick flow of a pen stroke through the stiffer process of working upon metal plates – and was counted amongst their ‘Brothers of the Quill’; he ran a drawing school with Lens; and his apprentice, George Bickham (1684–1758), became a prolific engraver of calligraphy. Bagford played an active role in producing and selling specimens of calligraphy and micrography by these figures, enhancing the status of their trade among the curious. For example a close associate, Humfrey Wanley, then assistant librarian at the Bodleian Library, wrote to Bagford desiring him ‘to persuade Mr Aires to give one of every writing book he has published to this Library, here they may be preserved together, and Forreigners & our Posterity may see to what perfection he brought writing amongst us’.39 A printer in Oxford likewise requested Bagford to ‘procure me some of Mr Sturts commandments in smale, for some friends of mine’. The collector also commissioned calligraphic pieces, making a ‘memorandum [for] the lords praye[r] to be done in the sevirall hands’, and sending ‘a nice Collection of Curiosities’ to Smith who, at the time, was not ‘inclin’d to take a Pen in hand’.40 Bagford even produced his own diamond-shaped calligraphic version of the Lord’s Prayer, complete with the collector’s characteristically poor orthography, signed ‘Johon Bagf 1684 January ye 20’.41 In one sense, the biblical origins of the Lord’s Prayer and its status as a ‘pattern’ for prayer gave it a ubiquitous cultural presence. It was used on hornbooks and memorised by children, and it was the first text to be translated and used 36 37 38 39 40 41

Pepys to Bagford, May 11, June 22, 1699, BL, Harley MS 4966, ff. 89–90. Sturt to West, 28 April, 1728, BL, Stowe MS 1060, f. 102. For a more detailed discussion see Tim Somers, ‘Tradesmen in Virtuoso Culture: “Honest” John Bagford and His Collecting Network, 1683–1716’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 81 (2018), pp. 359–87. Humfrey Wanley to Bagford, Sep. 27, 1696, BL, Harley MS 4966, f. 36. Benjamin Cole to Bagford, July 15, 1698, BL, Harley MS 4966, f. 120; ‘Bagford’s account book c. July 22, 1705 to July 1708’, BL, Harley MS 5998, f. 85v; John Smith to Bagford, November 23, 1705, BL, Harley MS 4966, f. 140. BL, Harley 5959, f. 31, amongst other ‘Od things’. Bagford’s accounts show him delivering spectacles and a reading glass to clients and friends, an essential requirement for inspecting micrography. BL, Harley MS 5998, ff. 25, 41, 60v.

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by missionaries.42 Indeed the proverb ‘No penny, no pater noster’ – a criticism of Catholic indulgences – may have provided the initial inspiration for fitting the Lord’s Prayer within the compass of a penny.43 Regardless, the penny was a common, small object that provided a reference for perceiving scale (in the twentieth century, postage stamps also showing the monarch’s head were used for the same reason). Producers and collectors such as Sturt and Bagford were therefore turning the commonplace into a ‘singular’, curious spectacle. Just one manifestation of their playful use of sacred texts can be seen in George Bickham’s 1705 medley – a trompe l’oeil engraving that gives the illusion of various prints scattered upon a table. Overlaying a popular ballad, ‘The Scotch Wedding’, Bickham added a cherub reading what seems to be a broadside. Upon closer inspection, we find it to be the Lord’s Prayer in miniature.44 This commercial and intellectual interest in micrography, and its relationship to the history of print and script, was part of a wider cultural reaction to the intensification of print culture. Since Peter Bales’s time, contemporaries had complained about the proliferation of epitomes and compilations that eased the labour of reading and helped to control ‘information overload’.45 Sometimes the miniature Lord’s Prayer stood as a metaphor for such publications.46 During the Civil Wars, however, ‘people encountered print with increasing frequency and intensity’; and by the end of the seventeenth century, ‘[t]he scale of press activity was unprecedented’, causing a profound awareness of what Dror Wahrman calls a ‘media revolution’.47 Insofar as micrography 42 43

44

45 46

47

Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 246; John Bagford, ‘Of Booke binding Modourne’, BL, Harley MS 5943, repro. in Cyril Davenport, ‘Bagford’s Notes on Bookbindings’, The Library, 7:1 (1902), p. 142. George Latimer Apperson, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (London: Wordsworth, 1993), p. 416. This may also be the case for beggars who performed the Lord’s Prayer backwards for a penny. See Edward Ward, The London-Spy Compleat (London: A. Bettesworth, 1718), pp. 36–7. George Bickham, etching, 1707, BM, Heal, 59.17. John Sturt’s 1706 medley also displayed the miniaturised words: ‘Hearing excites the mind by slow degrees; the man is warmed at once by what he Sees’ – perhaps ironically, given that slow examination was required to read the text. BM, no. 1896,0501.1360. Ann Blair, ‘Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–1700’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), pp. 11–28. For example, A generall bill of the mortality of the clergy of London (London: 1662), p. 6. Thomas Nash argued that micrography and upstart scriveners (‘Noverints’) were emblematic of this ‘new fashion’. See Nash, ‘To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities’, in Robert Greene, Arcadia (London: N. Ling, 1599); USTC 513960. Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 58; James Raven, Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), p. 33; Dror Wahrman, Mr. Collier’s Letter

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offered its owners the illusion of mastery and ‘completion’ at this time of change, the function of miniature writing lay not just in its penmanship but also its symbolic and microcosmic significance.48 Indeed, the art of writing received a blow when Hooke peered through his microscope and discovered that, under extreme magnification, micrography was composed of ‘pitifull bungling scribbles’.49 Aside from admiring penmanship, miniaturisation allowed readers to carefully cast their eyes over a text in its entirety. Such playfulness with scale complicated and slowed down the act of reading. Viewers leaned forward, their gaze intensified, encouraging a greater attention to the word that enhanced a miniature text’s symbolic value.50 According to Susan Stewart: A reduction in dimensions does not produce a corresponding reduction in significance; indeed, the gemlike properties of the miniature book and the feats of micrographia make these forms especially suitable ‘containers’ of aphoristic and didactic thought.51 This, again, provides a rationale for the miniaturisation of the Lord’s Prayer, whose conciseness was related to its microcosmic significance. As one conformist explained, ‘doth it not containe an ocean of matter in a little current of speech?’52 It also provides another connection between miniaturisation and the act of collecting as a ‘desire for totality’, achieved by owning the

48 49 50

51 52

Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 20. Cf. Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections, p. 54. Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London: John Martyn, 1665), p. 3. On slow reading see Smyth, Material Texts in Early Modern England, p. 39. On the ‘shrinking of space’ and ‘intimate’ miniatures see Hanneke Grootenboer, Treasuring Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures (London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 43. As material objects, micrography occupied a space between portrait miniatures and domestic items inscribed with aphorisms. See Marcia Pointon, ‘“Surrounded with Brilliants”: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth-Century England’, The Art Bulletin, 83 (2001), pp. 48–71; Andrew Morrall, ‘Inscriptional Wisdom and the Domestic Arts in Early Modern Northern Europe’, in Natalia Filatkina, et al. (eds.), Formelhaftigkeit in Text und Bild (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012), pp. 121–38. Stewart, On Longing, p. 43. Peter Bales [Jnr.?], Oratio Dominica (London: F. Eglesfield, 1643), pp. 13, 23; USTC 3046241. For the symbolic uses of the Bible as an object within rituals see David Cressy, ‘Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England’, The Journal of Library History, 21 (1986), pp. 92–106; Rowan Watson, ‘Some Non-textual Uses of Books’, in Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (eds.), A Companion to the History of the Book (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2007), pp. 480–492.

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world in microcosm.53 For example, the cabinet of curiosity compiled by the Tradescants – a popular seventeenth-century attraction open to the public for sixpence – was compared to the classical story of Homer’s epic, the Iliad, written inside a lowly nutshell: ‘Whilst they (as Homer’s Iliad in a nut) / A world of wonders in one closet shut’.54 By fitting big things into small packages, then, miniatures offered ‘the possibility of possession, comprehension, and control’.55 11.2

Political Emblems

Sturt’s micrographic portrait of William and Mary was advertised in the London Gazette on 17 August 1693, priced at two shillings. The advertisement described the print as containing: The Effigies of King William and Queen Mary, with the Lords Prayer, the Creed, and Ten Commandments; the Magnificat, the Prayer for the king and queen; the Prayer for the Royal Family, the Prayer for Clergy and People; the Prayer of St Chrysostom; and the Blessing, Engraven within a Circle, two Inches and Quarter Diameter.56 In their dimensions and composition, these effigies resembled contemporary commemorative medals.57 One catalogue describes the print as being ‘upon a Medal’ and a surviving example (Figure 2) further suggests that the print could have been cropped, mounted and kept in a medal collection as a durable historical record for future generations, as recommended by John Evelyn’s Numismata (1697).58 It is remarkable, however, that Sturt constructed the effigies using the order of morning and evening prayer prescribed in the 53 54 55

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Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), ch. 10. Melinda Alliker Rabb, Miniature and the English Imagination: Literature, Cognition, and Small-Scale Culture, 1650–1765 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 152. On Tradescant’s ‘Ark’ see Joy Kenseth, “A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut”, in idem (ed.), The Age of the Marvellous (Hanover, New Hampshire: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 81–101. George, ‘Topical portrait print advertising’, p. 125. Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Images of Queen Mary II, 1689–95’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), p. 737. For a similar medal composition see National Portrait Gallery, no. NPG D32771, c. 1690. Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis, p. 498; George, ‘Topical portrait print advertising’, p. 87.

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1662 Book of Common Prayer. In contrast to some nonconformists who preferred extempore prayer, Sturt’s choice of prescribed prayers turned William and Mary into emblems of the Church of England.59 Such a combination of the Church and the nation’s new rulers gave – perhaps purposefully for posterity’s sake – a false impression of harmony during what was, in fact, a period marked by ambiguity over the Revolution’s legality and division over the direction of Church politics.60 Tories had to reconcile the Church of England’s doctrine of passive obedience towards divinely-anointed monarchs with their support for the deposition of James II by a foreign army under the command of the Dutch Stadholder, William of Orange. Such scruples led to the non-juring schism, where 400 clergymen and seven bishops were deprived of their positions for refusing to swear the Oath of Allegiance to William and Mary.61 As a result Latitudinarians, centred around the controversial figure John Tillotson, ascended to power and, with the support of the court, argued that nonconformity should be met with comprehension and persuasion, rather than coercion. Sturt’s portrait, appearing in the aftermath of the Toleration Act (1689), was therefore produced at a time when Church Tories would have desired objects offering a sense of ‘possession’ and ‘control’ over the course of history.62

59

60

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For Royalist representations of radical Puritans rejecting the Lord’s Prayer see Bales, Oratio Dominica (1643), pp. 28–9; ‘Majesty in Misery’, in The Royal Martyr Or the Life and Death of King Charles I (London: R. Royston, 1676); Coffee-house jests (London: B. Thrale, 1677), pp. 14–15. The debates over prescribed prayer were still ongoing in 1688. See William Gibson, ‘Dissenters, Anglicans and the Glorious Revolution: The Collection of Cases’, The Seventeenth Century, 22 (2007), pp. 173–4. See also C. de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II, trans. van Muyden (London: J. Murray, 1902), pp. 320–1. Thoresby drew a similar connection between miniatures, conciseness and orthodoxy, if only to challenge it. He kept in his collection ‘A Sermon of Mr. Rob Porters, a N C. [nonconformist] who are frequently reflected upon as long winded, yet a Leaf in 8vo. comprises the whole: It is not only legible, but delicately writ, yet so close that 28 Lines come within the Space of an Inch.’ Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis p. 498. For the legal debates in the Convention Parliament see Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London: Penguin, 2006). For Church politics, see Mark Goldie, ‘John Locke, Jonas Proast, and Religious Toleration, 1688–1692’, in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor (eds.), The Church of England, c. 1689–c. 1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 143–71. Mark Goldie, ‘The Nonjurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy’, in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism 1689–1759 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982); Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 145–54. On portrait collecting as a means of ‘ordering society’ see Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 58.

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In 1717, Sturt published by subscription his magnum opus, the Book of Common Prayer engraved on 188 silver plates (eight inches tall). Whereas radical Whig opinion was mindful that Queen Elizabeth had forbidden ‘Cuts in the Common-Prayer-Book’, Sturt’s rendition of the text included numerous illustrations and was framed with lavish borders made of cherubs, angels and saints.63 Prefacing this visually splendid book was a micrographic portrait of George I, containing similar texts to the 1693 print: ‘the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, The X Commandments, the Prayer for the King and the Royal Family, and the XXI Psalm’. Sturt’s micrography once again appeared at an especially precarious period for Church Tories: the Hanoverian succession (1714). The sympathies of the newly-arrived George I laid naturally with the Whigs and, after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 and the defection of several high-profile figures, the Tory party was suspected of harbouring Jacobite sympathies. That same year the Whigs decisively won a general election and gained a parliamentary majority. Thus excluded from government, the Tories relied upon Church politics as a ‘source of strength and unity’.64 In this context, Sturt’s seemingly generic dedicatory preface to George I and the Prince of Wales takes on a loaded meaning. Sturt requested both their ‘Patronage and Protection’ from ‘Censures’ and hoped their reigns would be ‘a Blessing and an Ornament to this Church’ that may ‘for ever flourish under the Mighty Protection of your most Illustrious Posterity.’ Such a sentiment would have resonated with the book’s subscribers, including the Jacobites Thomas Wentworth (1672–1739), William North (1678–1734) and Richard Rawlinson (1690–1755), and the Tory politicians George Clarke (1661–1736), Thomas Trevor (1658–1730), Robert Price (1655–1733), and the Earl of Abingdon (1673–1743), who was ‘very high for the monarchy and Church’.65 Moreover, the immediate context for the reception of Sturt’s publication added further significance to turning George I into an emblem of the Church, like William 63 64

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[Anthony Collins], Priestcraft in Perfection (London: B. Bragg, 1710), pp. 5–8. G.M. Townend, ‘Religious Radicalism and Conservatism in the Whig Party under George I: The Repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts’, Parliamentary History, 7:1 (1988), p. 27; Nigel Aston, ‘The Tories and the Dissenters in the Reign of George I’, in Nigel Aston and Benjamin Bankhurst (eds.), Negotiating Toleration: Dissent and the Hanoverian Succession, 1714–1760 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 213. Paula Watson & Perry Gauci, ‘Venables-Bertie, Montagu’, in D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley (eds.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690–1715 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002). Other noteworthy subscribers include Mary Butler, Duchess of Ormonde, whose husband was in exile at the Jacobite court, and the ‘Duchess of St Albans, Groom of ye Stole to Her Royal Highness the Princess’. At this time, the Prince and Princess of Wales were aligned with opposition politicians and opposed the Stanhope-Sunderland reforms.

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and Mary beforehand. In 1717 the Church’s convocation, dominated by High Churchmen, was suspended for censuring a controversial Erastian sermon by Benjamin Hoadley.66 At the same time, deists such as John Toland and government-sponsored ‘Commonwealth Whig’ periodicals such as The Freethinker were stirring up public controversy. They attacked the tyrannical, popish priestcraft of High Churchmen; they censured the ‘barbarism and ignorance’ of Oxford Toryism; and they promoted the interests of nonconformists, who deserved toleration for having defended ‘English Liberty’ by supporting the Hanoverian Succession.67 ‘I look upon penal lawes and force in matters of Religion’, wrote the government-connected book agent, James Fraser, ‘as the only pernicious heresie that has done more mischeif to men, than all other opinions together call’d heresie’.68 Worse still, in 1717 such radical opinions on toleration were translated into proposed commonwealth reforms by the Stanhope-Sunderland ministry that, among other things, attempted to repeal the Test Acts. Such reforms pushed some moderate Whigs into league with the Tories, including Archbishop William Wake, one of Sturt’s subscribers.69 In 1719, the same year Sturt sold the micrographic portrait of George I as a standalone print, parliament voted on these measures, repealing the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts (though not the Test). Notwithstanding the topical relevance of Sturt’s micrography, we must be careful when assigning commercially-driven, deferential booksellers and engravers with fixed political convictions. Sturt’s financial situation was unstable, having ‘urgent occasions’ for money in 1703 and living in ‘poverty’ later in life.70 His work ranged from assisting collectors with transcriptions of old manuscripts (sometimes gratis), to producing new commercial documents such as counterfeit-proof notes for the Bank of England and trade cards with ornate intaglio designs. Nevertheless, if we consider Sturt’s practice of writing prayers (in miniature) as part of a Protestant tradition of visibly demonstrating and documenting one’s piety, the engraver evidently held strong religious 66 67

68 69 70

Andrew Starkie, ‘Contested Histories of the English Church: Gilbert Burnet and Jeremy Collier’, in Paulina Kewes (ed.), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 343–5. Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 147–8, 157; David Wykes, ‘George I, the Hanoverian Succession, and Religious Dissent’, in Andreas Gestrich and Michael Schaich (eds.), The Hanoverian Succession (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), ch. 4. James Fraser to Jean Le Clerc, Sep. 13, 1720, in Maria Grazia Sina and Mario Sina (eds.), Jean Le Clerc, Epistolario (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 4 vols. 1987–97), vol. iv, letter 668, pp. 44–7. Townend, ‘Religious Radicalism’, pp. 24–44. Wake is the only identifiable Whig on the subscriber list. Sturt to unknown, Jan. 19, 1703, BL, Stowe MS 748 & ft. 74.

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convictions.71 One of Sturt’s independent projects, a ‘medley’ from 1705, can be read as a nostalgic, Tory-sympathetic invocation of the past – fitting into a wider genre of medleys from the 1700s that helped conservative viewers navigate the contested memories of Reformation and Civil War, and the divisive issues of Union with Scotland and ‘modern’ Whiggery.72 The Oxford non-juror, Thomas Hearne, whose ideology shaped nearly all of his opinions of others, owned this medley and admired Sturt as ‘a very great man in his way’.73 Sturt thus probably shared some of his Church Tory sympathies that were expressed, for example, on a calligraphical display of Tory aphorisms he engraved in the aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis. ‘Let no pretence of Conscience render you disobedient to your Prince’s Commands For obedience to your lawfull Prince is part of your duty towards God’, went one of these topically-relevant aphorisms.74 When it came to Sturt’s monumental projects, moreover, he tended to work on Anglican publications: the non-juror Laurence Howell’s Orthodox Communicant (1721), The Liturgy of the Church of England: adorn’d with 55 historical cuts (Oxford, 1706), and calligraphic portraiture of the Seven Bishops (1688).75 Sturt’s micrographic portraits can therefore be viewed as both commercial displays of skill and productions backed by religious and political conviction. Rather than partisan statements, though, the micrographic portraits of 1693 and 1717 were allusive, emblematic objects with a more complicated function. The inclusion of psalm twenty-one within George I’s portrait, for example, is open to multiple readings. The psalm’s use in thanks-giving sermons for the Hanoverian Succession certainly gave it topical relevance.76 In 1717 the nonconformist preacher John Cumming discussed the psalm’s line ‘for they intended Evil against thee; they imagined a mischievous Device, which they 71 72

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Sundar Henny, ‘Archiving the Archive: Scribal and Material Culture in 17th-Century Zurich’, in Kate Peters, Alexandra Walsham, and Liesbeth Corens (eds.), Archives and Information in the Early Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 224. For a discussion of this medley’s place in the print marketplace see Mark Hallett, ‘The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Art History, 20 (1997), pp. 214–37. For their political allusions see Tim Somers, Ephemeral Print Culture in Early Modern England: Sociability, Politics and Collecting (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), ch. 2. Hearne to West, Aug. 31, 1730, BL, Lansdowne MS 778, f. 173. John Smith & Sturt, To the Rt. Worp’ll the President, Tre’ar & Governors of Christs Hospitall (1683). Also included were depictions of hawkers holding broadsides that read: ‘honor the KING’ and ‘Fear GOD’, a biblical ref. used on other loyalist publications: The Loyal Garland, Containing choice Songs and Sonnets of our late unhappy Revolutions (London: T. Passenger, 1678). PL, 2983, p. 313; BM, no. 1872,0608.539. William Wake, A Sermon Preached before the King in St. James’s Chapel, Upon the First of August (London: R. Sare, 1715), p. 5.

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are not able to perform’, as foreshadowing the preservation of ‘the Protestant dissenting Interest’ against ‘spiteful Enemies’.77 Yet, with the ‘mischievous’ reforms of the Stanhope-Sunderland ministry in play too, Tories could equally identify these lines with their nonconformist ‘enemies’. It was the symbolism of Sturt’s micrography, however, that played an especially significant part in its appeal. The portraits drew upon traditional concepts of royal patronage and a divine, mystical monarchy, conveying a nostalgic sense of ‘uniformity’.78 This is the case even when William, Mary and George I were disinclined to legitimise their rule with mystical rituals, such as touching for the ‘king’s evil’.79 As part of an intensified print culture, Sturt’s ‘singular’, wondrous miniaturisation worked against the ‘desacralisation’ of monarchy that supposedly occurred in the age of mechanical reproduction.80 A poem on Charles I’s portrait at Oxford highlights the extent to which micrography could provoke mystical devotion: With double reverence we approach, to look, On what’s at once a Picture and a Book: Nor think it Superstition to adore A King made Now more sacred then Before.81 Sturt’s micrographic portraits did not necessarily demand the same degree of reverence, but by invoking ideas of sacred monarchy the engraver appropriated the royal image, a source of authority, and aligned it with Church Toryism.82 Something similar occurred in the 1715 pamphlet debates over George I’s Lutheranism, during which High Churchmen and nonconformists claimed the king for their own causes. The new king would be ‘the Support and Nursing Father of the Church Establish’d’, according to the wishful thinking of one High

77 78 79 80 81 82

John Cumming, A Sermon Preach’d at Founders-Hall, November 5 (London: A. Bell, 1717), pp. 30–1. On the continued popularity of divine right monarchy post-1688 see J.C.D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Régime (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 95. Cf. Wahrman, Mr. Collier’s Letter Racks, pp. 96–8; Stephanie Koscak, ‘The Royal Sign and Visual Literacy in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of British Studies, 55 (2016), pp. 24–56: ‘the commercialization of politics need not be oppositional or secular’ (p. 49). Jeremiah Wells, Poems upon Divers Occasions (London: J. Crosley, 1667), qu. in Morrall, ‘“On the Picture of the King Charles”’, pp. 224–5. Kevin Sharpe, Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 153–71.

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Churchman.83 This appropriating function of micrographic portraits could also be compared to the public addresses and courtly panegyrics directed to monarchy that disguised ‘criticism with compliment’.84 Finally they were – like the several examples of miniaturised elegies to deceased monarchs embedded in jewelry – a way to produce and express ‘emotive’ bonds between subject and ruler.85 Miniaturising Church texts and shaping them into the form of divisive monarchs was not practical for the purposes of reading. However, as symbolic objects that could be possessed, carried close to the body, gazed at, and ordered within collections, micrographic portraits provide an instance when miniatures offered a ‘sense of reorientation and control’ during two moments of political uncertainty.86 Yet even if these political emblems eschewed explicit partisanship, their cultural status was still under attack from polite Whig critics. For the third Earl of Shaftesbury, ‘mystical’ emblems were remnants of superstitious popery.87 Likewise, Joseph Addison’s criticism of micrography as ‘false wit’ recognised a continuity between the earlier royalist tradition of micrography (Charles I’s portrait) and the productions of the later Stuart period. To satirise this emblematic mentality, Addison conjured up the image of ‘an eminent Writing-Master in Town, who has transcribed all the Old Testament in a full-bottomed Periwig’. This writing master was represented as driven by commercial gain rather than loyal devotion: ‘He designed this Wig originally for King William … but that glorious Monarch dying before the Wig was finished, there is a Space left in it for the Face of any one that has a mind to purchase it’.88 Notwithstanding Sturt’s political convictions, Addison’s portrayal of micrography as a commodity, whose producers held little regard for who they represented with 83 84 85 86

87 88

Matthew Kilburn, ‘Royalty and Public in Britain: 1714–1789’, PhD, University of Oxford (1997), pp. 70–1. Smith, Georgian Monarchy, p. 53; Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 153. For examples see notes 7–9 above & Angela McShane, ‘Subjects and Objects: Material Expression of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 48 (2009), p. 872. Rabb, Miniature and the English Imagination, p. 33. This raises the question of whether, for example, a miniature Athanasian Creed produced in 1716 by a Scottish Jacobite writing master, David Beatt, was a display of skill or a politically-influenced gesture, or both? Archaeologia Scotica (Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1831), app. ii, p. 128. Preserved in the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland archives, NMS. Nicholson, ‘Emblem v. Caricature’, p. 162; Kraft, ‘Wit and the Spectators Ethics of Desire’, p. 636. The Spectator, no. 58 (May 7, 1711).

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miniature religious writing, has some truth to it. As the eighteenth century unfolded, micrography continued to move beyond its courtly origins to a reach an ever-widening consumer public. And while micrographic portraits were no longer produced at moments of political uncertainty, a longer tradition of parodying the Lord’s Prayer, Creed and Book of Common Prayer continued, reaching a mass public in 1817 with the three landmark blasphemy trials of the radical publisher, William Hone.89

…

In 1735, George I’s micrographic portrait was displayed at Don Saltero’s barbershop and coffeehouse in Chelsea as part of an entertaining, commercial exhibition for the public. It was listed alongside other natural and artificial curiosities: ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Styrrup’, ‘Sea Coral’ and ‘A Pair of Saxon Stockings’.90 In this context, Sturt’s micrography no longer functioned as a political emblem, but was instead valued solely as a curious and, depending on the viewer, trivial spectacle.91 The afterlife of George I’s portrait mirrored the increasing prevalence of micrography and artful penmanship within the milieu of coffeehouse wonder exhibitions. In 1710 Ralph Thoresby, a collector of micrography and a friend of Sturt’s, carried his children to see Hans Valery, ‘the German, who, though born without hands or arms, writes different hands and languages with his feet and mouth.’92 Other calligraphic performers included: ‘Thomas Sweiker, a Dutchman, born without arms or hands, [who] is said to have written elegantly with his feet’; ‘one Twiddy, a cripple, who wrote and drew with his mouth’; and ‘a woman [who] went about divers parts of England, that could write with her feet, and perform many other things to the wonder of the 89

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The Courtier’s Book of Common-Prayer (London: T. Davis, 1745?); George Bickham the Younger, The [Cha]mpion; or Even[ing] Adver[tiser] by Capt Hercules Vinegar, of Pall-mall (1744), BM Satires 2453; Mark Knights, ‘“Was a laugh treason?” Corruption, Satire, Parody and the Press in Early Modern Britain’, in Mark Knights and Adam Morton (eds), The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), pp. 190–210. A catalogue of the rarities to be seen at Don Saltero’s coffee-house in Chelsea (London: 1735), p. 11. Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 121–5. Joseph Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Thoresby (2 vols., London: H. Colburn et al, 1830), ii, p. 59. In terms of Sturt’s political network, Thoresby was an Anglican, raised a Presbyterian, who held Whig sympathies. However, when Sturt appears in his diary he was accompanied by the Herald, Robert Dale (1666–1722), who offended Thoresby with his uncharitable ‘reflections upon the Dissenters’ (ii, pp. 100 & 222).

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beholders.’93 Especially skillful was Martha Ann Honeywell (1786–1856), born without hands, who travelled across England and the United States exhibiting miniature writing cut from paper (using scissors held in her mouth).94 Another celebrated figure was Matthias Buchinger (1674–1740), who travelled from Nuremburg to England around 1718, performing for the public across the kingdom and eventually settling down in Dublin.95 Born without arms or legs, Buchinger’s shows included magic tricks, music, ball games, as well as calligraphic and miniature writing, which he sold afterwards as mementos and bookplates.96 Like earlier producers of micrography, Buchinger produced elaborate portraits of Queen Anne and ‘the head of the late King George’, the latter selling for around fifteen guineas. His art was not patronised by royalty, however, but rather by the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, who commissioned an heraldic composition that included ‘Sir Roberts arms’ alongside ‘the little Mans own Picture in the Compass of six Inches’ where ‘the Curls of his Peruke [wig] are Psalms written in different Characters’.97 Whereas Charles I’s hair was written with miniature psalms as an act of royalist devotion, Buchinger incorporated the psalms into the curls of his own wig, both in this bespoke heraldic composition and his engraved self-portrait.98 Rather than functioning as sacred, political emblems, Buchinger’s micrography was a display of skill – alongside music and magic tricks – that was especially miraculous and commercially-lucrative because of the performer’s non-normative body. This prompted curious spectators to draw from life Buchinger’s equipment (a writing desk) and the manner in which he held a pen between his stumps.99 Indeed, the primary function of Buchinger’s self-portrait was to confidently display the performer’s body as a mark of ‘authenticity’, spread the artist’s 93 94 95 96

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The sixth volume of Brett’s miscellany (1762), pp. 170–2; Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis p. 498. Laurel Daen, ‘Martha Ann Honeywell: Art, Performance, and Disability in the Early Republic’, Journal of the Early Republic, 37 (2017), pp. 225–50. An Elegy on the much lamented death of Matthew Buckinger (Dublin: 1722). Buchinger probably developed his style of micrography from the German engraver, Johann Michael Püchler (act. c. 1680–1702). On Buchinger see David M. Turner, ‘Picturing Disability in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Michael Rembis et al (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Disability History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 331–4; for a calligraphic specimen by him showing ‘Alphabets in all the Hands of Great Britain’ see BL Stowe MS 1060, f. 97. For bookplates see BL, MS Egerton 1711, ff. 3–4. Edward Godfrey to Cox Macro, March 16, 1730, BL Add MS 32556, f. 183–4v. Matthias Buchinger, ‘the effigies of Mr. Matthew Buchinger, being Drawn and Written by Himself’ (1724), Wellcome Library no. 195i. Peter Tillemans to Cox Macro, Feb. 20, 1731, BL, Add MS 32556, f. 181; Edward Godfrey to Macro, March 16, 1730, BL, Add MS 32556, ff. 183–4v.

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celebrity, and ‘humanise’ its subject.100 We thus see the movement of micrography from a unique courtly gift given by Peter Bales, to an object worthy of study among elite seventeenth-century virtuosi and symbolically valuable to Tory consumers, towards its function, continuing into the nineteenth century, as a commodity within socially-diverse wonder exhibitions at coffeehouses, taverns and fairs. In all cases, however, manuscript culture was not so much displaced by print, but rather modified as new communities of readers and viewers formed around a shared interest in the ‘singular’ art of handwriting during the age of mechanical reproduction. Yet while micrography prospered among these curious performers, the practice declined among the ranks of writing masters and engravers. With the success of English ‘round-hand’ – a clear script used in commerce that flowed quickly – the cultural status of writing seemed more assured. In 1749 Joseph Champion was confident enough to reproduce plates by continental masters – especially those from ‘our confirm’d enemies in politics -France!’ – and display them side-by-side with ‘polite’, English round-hand.101 Such penmanship did not call for elaborate ‘Knotts & Flourisht Pieces’, as Pepys termed them, or miraculous miniaturisation. In 1712, Charles Snell criticised copybooks with grotesque ‘Owls, Apes, Monsters, and sprig’d Letters’, whose impracticality held little interest for clerks and merchants.102 Artful penmanship still drew in audiences, to be sure, but aside from curious performers, it was more often performed by female writing masters who were excluded from the male-dominated business of calligraphy publishing. These included Mary Johns (b. c. 1725), a cooper’s daughter from Bermondsey, and Ann Brett, a shroud maker, who exhibited her work to the Dublin Society in 1747.103 Female 100 Turner, ‘Picturing Disability’, p. 331; David M. Turner, Disability in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 98; Stephen Pender, ‘In the Bodyshop: Human Exhibition in Early Modern England’, in Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum (eds.), “Defects”: Engendering the Modern Body (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 107. A similar disabled calligraphy performer, John Cox (fl. 1714), enhanced his ‘authenticity’ by including biographical details of his life and the ‘great paines I have attain’d to Writing’, as well as visually representing ‘the shape of that which is instead of a hand to mee and the manner of holding the Pen to Write’. Both Cox and Buchinger used the same epithet: ‘Tho Nature hath deni’d mee hands, yet I the want of hands doe by my witt supply’. See BL, Stowe MS 1060, ff. 99–100; and a similar calligraphy sheet dedicated to Edward Harley, BL, Add MS 70089, f. 94. 101 Joseph Champion, The Parallel; or, comparative penmanship exemplified in four, the greatest original foreign masters (London: J. Bowles, 1749), p. b3. 102 Charles Snell, The Art of Writing: In its Theory and Practice (London: H. Overton, 1712). 103 Massey, The Origin and Progress of Letters, pp. 168–72; Stacey Sloboda, ‘Between the Mind and the Hand: Gender, Art and Skill in Eighteenth-Century Copybooks’, Women’s Writing, 21, 3 (2014), p. 345; Kim Sloan, ‘A Noble Art’: Amateur Artists and Drawing Masters,

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writing masters remained marginalised, however, and were not memorialised in Champion’s ‘table of all the penmen, domestic and foreign, who have publish’d, more or less, their works (engraved)’ between 1507–1750. Nor were published performers such as Buchinger, whom Champion may have associated with the ‘miracle-mongers, mountebanks, and circulatory professors’ who show-cased wondrous spectacles rather than the dull reality of skilled penmanship: repetition and instruction.104 In broader terms, the declining emblematic tradition, the rise of secularism, and ‘a larger form of cultural logocentrism’ impacted the reception of micrography.105 The bibliographer, Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847), thought that all ‘tasteful men’ would agree that in George I’s micrographic portrait the ‘sacred parts of our Liturgy were perhaps never before so unpicturesquely introduced’.106 The Presbyterian minister, Abraham Rees (1743–1825), likewise found no sacred or political significance to George I’s micrographic portrait: ‘here are prayers which cannot be read, and a head which might have been better produced with a hundredth part of the labour.’107 Micrography and calligraphy still featured as curiosities within antiquarian collections that compared writing specimens from different cultures and time periods, including one belonging to Dibdin’s friend, Francis Douce (1757–1834).108 But given their lessened ability to inspire reverence, coupled with Douce’s radical-deist opinions, it is unsurprising to find two of Sturt’s micrographic prayers irreverently pasted into the collector’s scrapbook alongside advertisements for curiosity exhibitions (a handbill for ‘The Gigantic Whale’) and other kinds of ephemera: ‘bon-mots, riddles, anecdotes, caricatures, [and] facetiae of all kinds.’109 Nonetheless miniature writing still continues to fascinate us, just as it has done

104 105 106 107 108 109

c. 1600–1800 (London: British Museum Press, 2000), p. 110; The sixth volume of Brett’s miscellany, p. 172. Champion, The Parallel, p. c3. Morrall, ‘“On the Picture of the King Charles”’, p. 211. T.F. Dibdin, The Bibliographical Decameron (3 vols., London: W. Bulmer, 1817), i, pp. 116–7. Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia; Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature (39 vols., London: Longman, 1802–1820), xiii, ‘Engraving’. ‘Specimens of Penmanship and Alphabets of Various Nations’, Bodl., Douce adds. 141; ‘Various Alphabets, Characters and Inscriptions, Used in divers Parts and Ages of the World. Collected by Joseph Ames’, BL, Ames 10. Bodl., Douce adds. 139 (850–1). Qu. in James A. Secord, ‘Scrapbook Science: Composite Caricatures in Late Georgian England’, in Ann B. Shteir and Bernard V. Lightman (eds.), Figuring it Out: Science, Gender and Visual Culture (Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2006), pp. 164–91.

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for thousands of years.110 As this chapter has shown, though, micrography was remarkably significant to later Stuart consumers and collectors, who grappled with rapid changes in print culture and religious politics. To appreciate this, all we have to do is pick up a magnifying glass. 110 Patricia Pistner and Jan Storm van Leeuwen, A Matter of Size: Miniature Bindings & Texts from the Collection of Patricia J. Pistner (New York: The Grolier Club, 2019). Many thanks to the anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention.

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Index Abstract Letter books 140 Addison, Joseph 219, 232 Addy, William 217 Adrovandi, Ulisse, naturalist 109 Aittinger, Wolfgang 25 Albert of Brandenburg 17 Alberti, Leon Battista 112 Alighieri, Dante, poet 112 Álvarez de Toledo, Fernando, 3rd Duke of Alba 42, 59 Ambrose of Milan, saint 77, 131–134 Ambrose, Isaac 93 America 182 Amsterdam 41, 116, 124, 128 Anabaptism 26, 37, 142, 149 Andrewes, Lancelot 67 Anglesey 185, 192 Anne, queen of England 136, 216, 234 annotations, see also marginalia and readers’ marks 2, 4, 6–12, 71–72, 80, 83, 90–96, 107, 157–161, 165–177, 183–188, 193, 209, 212–213 Anselm of Canterbury 125 Ansidei, Marco Antonio, cardinal 110 Anti-Catholicism 74–77, 90, 92, 95, 172–175 Anti-Donatist writings 125 Anti-Pelagian writings 125, 128 Anti-Puritanism 174–175 Antoninus of Florence 108 Antonio, Giulio 105 Antwerp 6, 39–53, 58–60, 66–67, 122 apocalypse 159 Apostle’s Creed, the 133, 215–216, 226, 228, 233 apostles 92, 125, 131 Aquinas, Thomas 125 Arezzo 108 library of 104, 107–108, 110 Ariosto, Ludovico 112 Aristotle 145, 149, 192 Arius 165 Arminianism 73, 126, 132 Arminius, Jacob 127–130 Ashton-in-Makerfield 137, 147, 150, 152 Aspull, Wigan 163–164, 172

assurance of grace 91–95 Athanasius, saint 68 Athelstan 187 Augsburg 4, 10, 17–32, 35–38, 47, 50 Augustine 117, 123–134 Augustinianism 17, 126 avoidance of sin 93–95 Ayres, John 223 Bagford, John 222–224 Baggs, Chris, historian 80 Baglioni, Anton Zanobi 105 Baglioni, Lelio 105 Bales, Peter 215–216, 220–221, 224, 235 Bank of England 229 Basil of Caesarea, saint, also called Basil the Great 124, 134 Basilides 165 Bassano, Francis 191 Batman, Stephan 166, 168, 172 Baxter, Richard 87, 94 Bayle, Pierre, scholar 116 Bayly, Lewis 5, 67, 152 Becanus, Joannes Goropius 42 Becanus, Martin 75 Becket, Thomas 161 Belgic Confession 126 Belgium 41 Bell, Thomas 69, 74, 173–174 Bellarmine, Robert 10, 75, 127 Belt, Henk van den 134 Bemerton 194–197, 200–202, 205, 214 Benedict XI, pope 100 Benet, Diana, historian 211 Bermondsey 235 Bernard, Richard 69 Beveridge, William 145 Beys, Gilles 48 Beza, Theodore 76, 127 Bible 6–8, 20, 43, 57–58, 64, 75, 83, 87, 91, 111, 116–117, 124–128, 131, 134–135, 140, 144–147, 159, 165, 170, 210–211, 217, 223 Biblioteca Gennaro Maria Monti 110–111 Bickham, George 223–224 Bill, John 72

246 Blanckhart, Rogerius 124 Bland, Lady Ann 137 Blunden, Humphrey 204 Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Andreas 26 Bodleian Library 70, 72, 74, 206, 212, 223 Bologna 108 Bolton School 85 Bolton 79, 83–84, 87 Bolton, Robert 87, 89 Bomberghen, Cornelis van 42 Bomberghen, Karel van 42, 59 Bonaventura 76 Bonucci, Stefano 108 book catalogues 5, 9, 11, 62, 68–78, 118–135, 210, 226 Book of Common Prayer 13, 136, 140, 144–145, 210, 227–228, 233 book trade 4–5, 10–11, 40–41, 43, 45, 47–51, 57, 61–73, 77–78, 86, 147 Latin trade 72 second-hand book trade 5, 88 bookbinding 25–26, 67 Bracciolini, Poggio, humanist 113 Bradshaw, John, rector of Nantwich 142 Brampton, Cumberland 141 Bray, Thomas 96, 140, 145 Brett, Ann 235 Brett, Richard 67 Breu, Jӧrg 24 Briskin, Griffin, prebend of York Minster 76 Bristol 78, 180, 201 British Library 204, 209, 212 Brook, John 149–150 Brussels 59 Bucer, Martin 127 Buchinger, Matthias 216, 234–236 Buchwald, D. Georg, historian 31 Buck, Thomas 210 Bulkeley, Richard, of Beaumaris 185, 192 Bulkeley, Thomas, Viscount Bulkeley of Cashel 185 Bulman, William J., historian 143 Bunny, Edmund 69 Burgess, Anthony 90 Burgkmair, Hans 24 Burton, Robert 71 Bury, Richard de 74

Index Cadwaldwr 187–188, 191 Caesar, Julius, Chancellor of the Exchequer  62 Cajetan, Thomas, cardinal 18 calligrams 215 calligraphy 221–223, 230, 233–236 Calvin, John 83, 120, 125, 127 Calvinism 126 Cambers, Andrew, historian 7, 82, 137, 141, 148 Cambridge University Library 140 Cambridge 5, 73, 76, 202, 210 Camden, William 69 Carlisle Cathedral 142 Carlisle, archdeacon of 141 Carrion, Luis 53 catechisms 67, 89, 140, 144, 148 Catholicism 63, 76, 81, 92, 117, 125, 132–134, 143, 158, 161, 167, 172–175, 196 Cavacurta 105 Çayas, Gabriel de 58 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 182 censorship 17, 19, 25, 37, 68, 161, 173 Chadoke, John 150 Chaloner, Thomas 191 Charles I, king of England 136, 196, 219–220, 231–232, 234 Charles II, king of England 216 Cheshire 138, 180, 188 Chetham, George 84 Chetham, Henry 82 Chetham, Humphrey 79, 82–90 Chetham, Jane 82 Chetham, Margaret 87 Chetham’s Library, Manchester 1, 12–14, 86, 158, 161, 164, 187 Christ Church, Walmsley 83 Christ 29, 91–92, 94, 117–118, 145–146, 151, 157, 173–174, 198, 202–203 Christ’s College, Cambridge 94 Chrysostom, John, saint 122–124, 129–134, 194, 226 Church Fathers 12, 116–135, 165, 203 Church Tories 141, 220, 227–228, 230–231 Cicero 112 Civil War 82, 86, 224, 230 Clarendon Code 136, 141 Clark, Peter, historian 148

247

Index Clarke, George 228 Clay, Robert 77 Co. Tipperary 182 Cologne 41, 47, 53 commonplace books 169–170, 209, 212 conformists 137, 141–143, 146–147, 152–154 Congregation of the Index 99, 101, 107, 112–113 Constantinople 109 Contra-Remonstrants 126 Cooke, Alexander 69, 74–75 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury 232 Cooper, Thomas, bishop of Winchester 167, 172 Corporation Act (1661) 220 Council in the Marches of Wales 179–181, 185–187, 189–190, 192 Council of the North 64 Council of Trent 108 counterfeits 10, 17–18, 22–33, 36 Courard, Wolfgang 47 Horner, Craig 148–149 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 30–31 Crashawe, William, prebendary of York 9, 76 Croft, Sir James 179 Crumpsall Hall, Manchester 82 Cumberland 138, 141 Cumming, John 230 Cynan, Gruffydd ap 180, 184, 192 Cyprian, saint 134 Cyril of Alexandria, saint 130, 134 Dachser, Jakob 37 Danaeus, Lambertus 126–127 Daniel, Roger, printer 210 Dda, Hywel 184 Deane, Bolton 87 Deane, Edmund 66 death 11, 58, 90, 92–95, 152 Dee, John 8, 71 Delft 122 devil 94, 144 Dewes, Gerard 66–67 Dibdin, Thomas Frognall 236 Diet of Worms (1518) 18, 37 Dijk, Johannes van 124 Dillingham, William 211

Dionysius the Areopagite 122 dissent 6, 129, 136, 141, 231 Dod, John 91–94 Donatus 165 Dordrecht 116–117 Dorman, Thomas 67 Douai 75 Douce, Francis 236 Dr Williams Library, London 202 Dublin Society 235 Dublin 234 Duchy of Bavaria 19 Dundass, John 216 Duns Scotus 76 Dutch Republic 41, 116, 125 Dutch Revolt 41, 58 Early Church 124, 149 Eberlin von Günzberg, Johan 29 Eck, Johannes 21 Edward I, king of England 178, 186, 188, 189 Edward III, king of England 189 Edward IV, king of England 180, 189 Edwards, Mark, historian 21 Egton, North Yorkshire 81 Eliot, T. S., 194 Elizabeth I, queen of England 64, 81, 170, 181, 185, 189, 192, 215, 220, 228, 233 Elizabeth of York 189 Elyot, Sir Thomas 165 Elzevier, Bonaventure 71 Encke, Wolff 48 England 4–7, 10–11, 40, 44, 50, 62–63, 71–72, 80–81, 88, 94, 96, 139, 141, 143, 153, 158, 161, 172, 179, 181–183, 187–189, 192, 215–216, 221, 234 Church of 68, 136–140, 143, 151, 153, 220, 227 Entwistle, Edmund, archdeacon of Chester  143 Epiphanius 133–134 Erasmus, Desiderius 23, 68, 121, 125, 127 Erfurt, Hans von 24 eternal life 94–95 Eucharist 35, 92, 140, 146 Euripides 112 Europe 1–5, 9–10, 18, 22, 39–40, 43, 45–57, 62, 109, 158, 159

248 Evelyn, John 226 Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681) 203, 230 Fabius, Guilielmus 122 Fabyan, Robert 160, 169 Faggi, Angelo 112 false imprints 4, 10, 31, 35–36 Farnese, Alessandro, Duke of Parma 60 Favour, John, Vicar of Halifax 9, 73–77 Ferrar, Nicholas 206 Ferrer, Vincent, saint 110 Ficino, Marsilio 112 Filelfo, Tolentino Francesco, humanist 109 Fitch, John, historian 80 Flaccus, Valerius 53 Fleetwood, Edward 174 Florence 23, 104–105, 108, 112 Foster, Anthony, bookseller 65–68 Foster, John, bookseller 68–76 Foxe, John, martyrologist 157, 166–168, 170–175 France 4–7, 11, 44, 109, 235 Francis of Assisi, saint 99 Frankfurt 41, 45, 47–51, 57 book fair 5, 11, 41, 45, 50, 53, 68, 70–72, 78 Fraser, James 229 Froben, Johann 23, 47, 121 Fugger, Jakob 17 Galletti, Cosimo 112 Galli, Agostino 103 Garthwait, Timothy 205 genealogy 12, 182–183, 187–188, 191–193 Geneva 67 Genoa 102 Geoffrey of Monmouth 186 George I, king of England 216–217, 220, 228–236 Gerald of Wales 183 Gerard, Alexander 173–174 Gerard, Myles 173–174 Gerard, Thomas 173–174 Gerard, William 164 German National Bibliography (VD16) 26 Germany 40 Gesner, Conrad 70 Giani, Arcangelo 105 Gidlow Hall 164

Index Giovanetti, Francesco 104, 110 Giunta, Luc’Antonio 58 Giunta, Lucantonio, the Elder 111 Giustinian, Leonardo 109 Glamorgan 182 Glorious Revolution (1688) 216 Gloucestershire 180 God 39, 58, 61, 89, 91–95, 99, 116–117, 125, 132–133, 138, 144–146, 151–152, 174, 200–202, 214, 221, 230 godly 8, 11, 69, 80, 82–84, 90–95, 136–137, 147–148, 151, 200, 214 Goldsmith’s Row, Cheapside 87 Gomarists 126 Gomarus, Franciscus 130 good works 151 Gorlitz 48, 51 Gorton Chest Library 11, 84–85, 88–96 Gorton, Manchester 79–80, 83–84, 86 Gorucci, Agostino, friar 104, 108, 110 Goudriaan, Aza, historian 126, 130 Gowthwaite, John, bookseller 66–67 grace 39, 58, 89, 91–92, 95, 125, 157, 204 Grafton, Richard 160 Gray, Sarah, historian 80 Gray’s Inn 164, 212 Green, Ian, historian 88 Green, Jonathan 161 Gregory of Nazianzus, saint 123, 130–133 Gregory of Nyssa, saint 130, 133 Gregory the Great, saint and pope 122, 131 Gregory XIII, pope 41 Grey, Reginald 186 Grimm, Sigmund, printer 24 Grismand, John, stationer 66 Grolier, Jean, secrétaire du roi and TreasurerGeneral of France 109 Grosmont Abbey 81 Grotius, Hugo 126–127 Groto, Luigi 112 Gryffyth, Jasper 184–187, 191 Guarini, Giovanni Battista 112 Gubbin, Thomas, stationer 66 Gudlawe, Thomas 9, 157–177 Gudlawe, Thomas, the Elder 163 Gudlawe/Watmough, Jane 162–163, 165 Gunpowder Plot 75 Gwynedd 180, 184, 188–189, 192–193

249

Index Habsburg territories 19 Hadrian VI, pope 37 Hailwood, Mark, historian 148 Hakluyt, Richard, explorer 183 Halberstadt 22 Halifax, Yorkshire 70, 73–78 Hall, Bernard 206 Hamburg 41 Harley, Robert 222 Harrold, Edmund 136–138, 147–154 Harry, George Owen 186, 188–192 Harvey, William, physician 144 Haseldon family, the 152 Heal, Felicity, historian 151 Hearne, Thomas 230 Heidanus, Abraham 123 Heidelberg Catechism 126 Heidelberg 53, 116 Heilke, Thomas 149 Henry IV, king of England 185 Henry VII, king of England 182, 189 Henry VIII, king of England 63 Henry, Matthew, Presbyterian divine 142 heraldry 181–183, 187–191, 234 Herbert, George 4, 12, 194–215 Herbert, Sir Henry 206 Herefordshire 180 heresy 6, 42, 165, 173 Hertfordshire 203 Hesis, Walter 48 Heywood, Oliver 212 Higgin, Anthony 68, 76–77 Higgins, John, poet and lexicographer  166–167 Higgs, Griffin, dean of Lichfield 71 High Church 12, 136–137, 141–142, 147, 194, 229, 231 Highley, Christopher, historian 193 Hildersham, Arthur 87, 89, 94–95 Hill, Adam 166, 168, 173, 175 Hill, Mary 148, 150 Hindle, Steve 203 Hoadley, Benjamin 229 Holinshed’s Chronicle 181 Holland, Samuel 209 Hollinworth, Richard 86–88 Holme, Randle 191 Homer 226 Honeywell, Martha Ann 216, 234

Hooke, Robert 222, 225 Hopkins, Ezekiel 148 Hopton, Walter 186 Horrocks, Ann 137 Howell, Laurence 230 Huber, Samuel 75 Hunt, Arnold, historian 81 Hus, Jan 173 Hut, Hans 26, 37 Huws, Daniel, historian 190 Iconoclastic Fury (1566) 42, 58 iconophobia 219 idolatry 92, 151 Iliad, the 226 Ince, Wigan 173 incunabula 21, 111, 160 indexes 165, 170–171 indulgences 17, 224 Inns of Court 140, 163–164, 176, 212 Institutio Christianae Religionis 120, 125 Italy 11, 40, 51, 107, 109, 115 Jacobite Rebellion (1715) 228 Jacobites 228 James I, king of England 75, 188, 192, 196 James II, king of England 227 James, Thomas 70, 74 Jena 48 Jesuits 44, 168 Jewel, John, bishop of Salisbury 67 Joan, pope 74, 161 John of Salisbury 213 John Rylands Library, Manchester 1, 14, 184, 193 Johns, Mary 235 Johnson, Richard 84, 86–88 Jones, Grace, historian 181–182 Kammermeister, Sebastian, humanist 159 ‘king’s evil’ 231 King Arthur 190, 193 King Egbert 187 King Offa 189–190 Klug, Joseph 35–36 Koberger, Anton 159–160 Kuhn, John, historian 195 Künast, Hans-Jӧrg, historian 21

250 Laertius, Johannes 126 Lancashire Presbyterian Experiment (1646)  86 Lancashire 9, 12, 82, 86, 90, 137–138, 147, 157, 162–164, 169, 172, 174–175, 177, 196 Lane, Anthony N. S., historian 120 Latitudinarians 227 lay education 80–81, 95–96, 171, 213 Le Clerc, Jean 145 Leaver, James 85 Leiden 43, 123, 126–128, 130 Leipzig Debate 21 Leipzig 19, 30, 36, 40, 51 Lens, Bernard II 223 Leo the Great, saint and pope 131 Leo X, pope 36 Leoni, Giovanni Battista 112 Leuven 53 Lewis-Anthony, Justin 194 Lincoln 67 Lincoln’s Inn 140, 163 Lindsay, Sir David 166, 168, 171–174 Lindt, Willem van der 68 Lionel, duke of Clarence 189 Little Britain, London 87 Littlebury, Robert, bookseller 87–88, 164 Liverpool 147 Lloyd, J. E., historian 178, 181 Llwyd, Humphrey 178, 181–183 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd 186, 188–189, 192 Llywelyn ap Iorwerth 188, 190 Lombardy 101–103, 106 London Gazette, periodical 220, 226 London 4–5, 11, 40, 53, 62–63, 66–69, 71, 73–76, 78, 86–88, 140–142, 144, 154, 164, 201, 212 Lord’s Day 146 Lord’s Prayer 13, 133, 215–217, 221, 223–225, 228, 233 Lord’s Supper 92, 142 Lotter, Melchior II 27 Lotter, Melchior 30–32 Low Church 137 Low Churchmen 220 Low Countries 39–41, 44, 53 Lowe, Roger 137–138, 147–148, 150–154 Ludlow Castle 181 Lull, Janis, historian 195, 199, 202

Index Luther, Martin 10, 17–37, 120–121, 125, 127, 132, 134 Lydius, Balthazar 116–118, 131 Lydius, Martinus 116 Lyon 23, 40, 50, 108 Maes, Andreas 58 Magdalen Hall, Oxford 77 Magnago, convent 105 Mainz 17, 48 Manchester Collegiate Church of St Mary  83, 86–87, 137 Manchester Grammar School 82 Manchester 1, 4, 12–13, 79, 82, 83–84, 86, 136–137, 147, 158, 164, 184 Mandelbrote, Scott, historian 140 Mantua 102 marginalia, see annotations Maria, Alessandro 105 Maria, Filippo, friar 104 Marprelate, Martin 174 Marsh, Thomas, bookseller 66–67 Marshall, John 223 Martin, Jessica 139 martyrdom 167, 219 Mary II, queen of England 216–217, 222, 226–227, 229, 231 Mason, William 216 Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database 111 Matthew, Tobie, archbishop of York 10, 62–63, 68–78 Maunsell, Andrew 70 Maurice, William, of Llansilin, antiquarian  185, 189–193 Mayor, J. E. B., historian 209 Mazzone, Marco Antonio 112 Mears, Natalie, historian 139 Melanchthon, Philipp 29, 32, 126–127 Mendicant Orders 11, 99, 101, 103, 107–108, 112 Mennonites 124, 134 Merlin 184 Merton College, Oxford 77 Michelozzo, architect and sculptor 113 micrography 13, 215–237 Milan 103, 105, 131–132 Minster Close 64, 69

Index Minster Yard 64, 66 Mocket, Richard 68, 75 More, Thomas 160 Mores, Neville 64 Moretus, Jan 45, 58–60 Morley, Yorkshire 73 Morrall, Andrew, historian 219 Mortimer, Anne 189 Mortimer, Edmund 189 Mortimer, Roger 188–189 Morton, Thomas 77 Moses 28 Munich 26 Museum Plantin-Moretus 39, 42 Nadler, Jӧrg 21, 24–29, 35 Nashe, Thomas 166, 174–175 New Spain 183 New Testament 30, 140, 217 Newcome, Peter 148 Niellius, Carolus 124 Ninety-Five Theses 17, 30 nonconformity 12, 84, 136–138, 141–142, 146–147, 150–153, 220, 227, 229–231 Norris, John 149 North, William 228 Norton, James 72 Nuremberg 22–23, 40, 157, 159–160 Obrecht, George 72 Occasional Conformity Act (1711) 220, 229 Oeglin, Erhard 25, 29 Offa’s Dyke 189–190 Oley, Barnabas 206 Order of the Servants of Mary 100–101, 105, 107 Origen, scholar 123 original sin 127 Otmar, Silvan 20–21, 24, 36 Ovenden, Richard, historian 186 Overijssel 116 Owen, George 187 Oxford 5, 77, 86, 219, 223, 229–231 Paci, Giuseppe, friar 110 Padua 109 Paine, Thomas 204 Palladio, Andrea 112

251 Pamphilius, Eusebius 124 Paris 5, 41–42, 48–50, 53–54, 59, 76, 122 parish library 11, 70, 79–88, 96 Parochial Libraries Act (1709) 81 Parsons, Robert, Jesuit 166, 168, 173 Paruus, William 190 Paternoster Row, London 88 Patrimonio 102 Paul, saint 35–36 Pearce, Susan, historian 221 Peasants’ War (1524–1525) 20, 24 Pelagianism 126, 128 Pelagius 126, 129 Pelegri, Paolo 106 Pembrokeshire 186–187, 191 Pepys, Samuel, diarist 222, 235 Percy, Henry, ninth earl of Northumberland  71–72 Perkins, William 5, 83, 90–91, 94–95, 126–127 Perugia 110 Peter, saint, apostle 35–36, 131 Petrarch 112 Pfefferkorn, Johannes 25 Philip II, king of Spain 42, 51, 57, 116 philology 119, 183 Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society publication 222 piety 74, 132, 136–153, 229 Pisa 105 Pistoia, convent 106 Piunio, Apollonio, friar 104 Plantin, Christopher 4, 10–11, 39–53, 57–61, 71 Pleydenwurff, Wilhelm, artist 160 Poliziano, Angelo, humanist 109, 112 popery 142–143, 229, 232 Porret, Pierre 48 Portugal 40 Powel, David 12, 178–193 Powell, Nia, historian 185 Poznań 51 practical divinity 11, 88, 90, 93, 95, 139–140, 143–146, 149, 152–153 Prague 51 predestination 128–129, 133 Presbyterianism 86, 88, 136, 142 Preston, John 83

252

Index

Price, Robert 228 primers 59, 67, 144, 211 printed sermons 11–12, 21, 28, 32, 67, 69, 73, 88–90, 94, 110, 124, 132, 148–150, 168, 199 Prise, Sir John 185 Protestantism 6, 12, 17, 63–64, 69–70, 73–74, 78–79, 81, 86, 89, 91–92, 117, 121, 125, 137–139, 143, 146, 153, 158, 171–172, 174, 177, 219, 229 Pudsey, West Yorkshire 73 Puritanism 6–7, 84, 87, 95, 133, 136–137, 174–175, 197

Richardson, John 187–188 Ripon Cathedral 68, 76–78 Roffet, Étienne, royal binder 109 Rogers, Richard 90 Romano, Pietro Francesco 111 Rome 17, 19, 37–38 Rosenblat(t), Sebastian 47 Rothwell, John, bookseller 87 royal patronage 220, 231 Ruff, Simprecht, printer 24 Rule of Saint Francis 99 Ruskin, John 211 Ryrie, Alec, historian 139

Quakerism 143

sabbath 175, 196–197, 200–201 Sacheverall, Henry, controversialist 137 sacraments 32, 91–92, 125, 146 Salisbury 194–197, 200, 205 salvation 11, 89–95, 139 San Pier Piccolo, convent 107, 110 Sandys, Edwin 67 Santa Maria delle Grazie, convent 105 Santissima Annunziata, cloister 112–113 Sarnano, municipal library of 110–111 Savile, Sir Henry, of Bank 76 Saville, George 148 Saxons 189 Saxony 30–33 Schäufelein, Hans 24 Schedel, Hartmann 159, 164–168, 170, 173 Scheldt, river 41, 60 Schilling, Hans 18 Schism Act (1714) 220, 229 Schmalkaldic War 37 Scholderer, Victor, bibliographer 181 Schotti, Jacopo de 42–45 Schreyer, Sebald, humanist 159 Schwyzer, Philip, academic 180–181 Schӧnsperger, Johann II 24, 26, 31 Schӧnsperger, Johann 31 Scotland 44, 196, 230 Scripture 11, 80, 88–91, 95, 121, 134, 174, 213 second-hand books 5, 62, 67–68, 88, 91, 147, 164 Seneca 112, 143, 207 Serlio, Sebastiano 112 sermons 12, 86, 116, 120–121, 128, 141, 146, 150, 230

Ramminger, Melchior 20–21, 24–25, 27–28 Ramminger, Narziß 25 Raphelengen, Francis 59 Rautenberg, Ursula, historian 25 Ravillian, Pierre 42 Rawlet, John 144 Rawlinson, Richard 228 readers’ marks, see annotations recusancy 6, 76, 172–173, 175 Rees, Abraham 236 Reformation 6, 17–26, 30, 36–37, 80–81, 96, 125, 139, 158, 161, 196, 230 Reggio Emilia, convent 104 regicide 219 Religious Tract Society 197–200, 214 Remonstrants 126, 132 Renaissance 3, 110–115, 158, 160, 167, 177 Renialme, Ascanius de 71 repentance 89, 93, 145, 151 ‘Republic of Letters’ 39, 61 Reske, Christoph, historian 25 Restoration 136, 139, 141, 146, 194 Church 143 Rhau-Grunenberg, Johann 29, 31 Rhegius, Urbanus, preacher 18, 37 Rheims 75 Rho, Alessandro 111 Rich, Jeremiah 221 Richard III, king of England 189 Richard of Cambridge 189 Richard of York 189 Richardson, Ambrose 188

253

Index Sharp, John, archbishop of York 141 Sharpe, Kevin, historian 1, 69 Shropshire 96, 180 Sidney, Henry 179–181, 183–186, 189–193 Siena 104, 108 Simmons, Matthew 204–205 sin 80, 89, 93–95, 125, 128, 197, 211 Sirota, Brent, historian 139, 144 Sixtus, Regner 72 Skelton, Edward 81 Sloane, Hans 222 Smith, John 223 Snell, Charles 235 Societies for the Reformation of Manners (SRM s) 141–142 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) 96, 137–147, 153 Somasco, Giacomo Antonio 111 Sonnius, Michel, bookseller 48 Sophocles 112 Spain 4, 40, 44, 51, 59 ‘Spanish Fury’, 43, 48 Sparrow, Thomas 212–213 Spencer, Charles, 3rd Earl of Sunderland  220, 229, 231 Spenser, Edmund 12, 166, 171, 174 Spofforth, Robert, engraver 216 St Ann’s Church, Manchester 137 St Anne’s Church, Turton 83 St Catherine’s Day 31 St Donat’s Castle 182 St James’s Church, Gorton 83–84, 86, 88 St John’s College, Oxford 219 St Paul’s Churchyard 62, 66–70, 87–88 St Peter’s Basilica, Rome 17 St Peter’s Church, Bolton 83–84 Stanhope, James, 1st Viscount Stanhope of Mahon 220, 229, 231 Stanhope, Sir Edward, sheriff of York 67 States General 43 Stationers’ Register 204 Steiner, Heinrich 20–21, 24–37 Stewart, Susan, historian 225 Stradling, Sir Edward 182 Stradling, Thomas 182 Strand School, Pilkington 147 Strasbourg 19, 22–23, 40, 47 Stratford, Nicholas, bishop of Chester 142

Sturt, John, micro-engraver 216–233, 236 Stuttgart 26 Swan, Hans 48 Sweiker, Thomas 233 Synod of Dort 73, 116, 126, 128–129, 132 Acts of 120 Targoff, Ramie, academic 210 Temple Church, London 86–87 Ten Commandments, the 133, 145, 215, 217, 226, 228 Test Act (1673) 220, 229 The Freethinker, periodical 229 The Hague 71 The Spectator, periodical 219 Theodoret 76, 131, 133 Thoresby, Ralph 233 Tildsley, John 86–88 Tillotson, John 227 Todd, Hugh, Vicar of Penrith and Prebendary of Carlisle Cathedral 141 Toland, John 229 Toleration Act (1689) 220, 227 Tradescants 226 Treviso 102 Trevor, Thomas 228 Trigland, Jacob, minister 128 Trinity College, Cambridge 205 Tübingen 48 Tudor, Owen 182 Turano 105 Turton 79–80, 83–84, 87 Tuscany 101 Tuscia 108 Udemans, Godefridus 133–134 Ulhart, Philipp I 20–21, 24, 26, 32–37 Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) 25 University of Edinburgh 87 University of Franeker 116 University of Illinois 209 University of Leiden 127 Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh 71 Valery, Hans 233 Valla, Lorenzo 112 Valverde, Juan 54 Vasari, Giorgio 112

254 Venables-Bertie, Montagu, 2nd Earl of Abingdon 228 Vendler, Helen, historian 195–196, 199 Venice 3, 40, 45, 50, 58, 109, 111, 122 Vergil, Polydore 168, 172, 190 Vesalius, Andreas 54 Vienna 22 Virgin Mary 28, 133 Voet, Leon 49–50, 53–54, 57 Voetius, Gisbertus 131–132 voluntary religion 138–143, 146–147, 150, 153 Vossius, Gerardus 126 Vrijdagmarkt 42 Wahrman, Dror, historian 224 Wake, William, archbishop of Canterbury  229 Wales 12, 178–193 National Library of 206 Wales, Elkannah 73 Wales, Samuel 73 Wallensis, Thomas, bishop of St Davids 186 Walmsley 79, 83–84, 87 Walpole, Robert 234 Walsham, Alexandra, historian 175 Walton, Izaak 194, 199, 206 Wanesford, Gerard 64 Wanley, Humfrey 223 Ward, Samuel 73 Warfield, B. B., theologian 125 Warrington deanery 172 Watmough, Edward 162, 164–167, 171 Watterworth, Tomisin 67 Welsh March 179–180, 183, 192 Wentworth, Thomas 228 West, James 223 Westmorland 138 Whiggism 219–220, 228–232

Index Whitchurch, Pembrokeshire 186 White, Francis 92–93 White, John 91 White, Thomas 211 Whitgift, John, bishop 161, 179 Whitworth, John 150 Wickham, Henry 73 Wigan 142, 163, 174 Wigan Church 175 Wight, John 66–67 Wilcox, Helen, historian 212 Willer, Georg 47 William I, the Conqueror, king of England  187 William III, king of England 216–217, 220, 222, 226–227 William of Orange, see William III, king of England Williams, David, historian 80 Wiltshire 195, 201, 203 Wittenberg 4, 17–18, 22–38, 51 Wohlgemut, Michael 160 Wolfe, Michelle, historian 141 Woolf, Daniel, historian 177 Worcester 180 Worcestershire 180 Wraithe, Thomas, bookseller 66–67 Wtenbogaert, Johannes 116, 129 Wycliffe, John 173 Wynne, William 193 Yeo, Matthew, historian 86 York Minster 64–69, 78 Library 71 York 62–70, 73, 75–78 Zierikzee 133