Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 11

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Summaries

Saskia van Bergen, The production of a book of hours in late-medieval Bruges

A fifteenth-century book of hours, now in a private collection in Germany, is the subject of a case-study to discuss the problems and possibilities that face the researcher when trying to date and locate medieval manuscripts.

This König book of hours, written in Latin, contains miniatures, historiated initials and borders in different styles, deriving from both the Northern and the Southern Low Countries. Most of the miniatures are not an integral part of the book, but they have been painted on inserted loose leaves. The book has been rebound at least once, thus making it impossible to ascertain the original construction of the book block. The formal style of the handwriting does not allow for any conclusions about the date and provenance of the codex.

The manuscript contains the standard text of a book of hours for the use of Rome. The borders are painted in a style that is typical for the Northern Low Countries. Five inserted single-leaf miniatures and three miniatures painted on blank pages in the codex itself can be ascribed to three illuminators from the Bruges-based group of the Masters of the Beaufort Saints. Two miniatures by one of the Masters of Guillebert de Mets from Flanders and six by one of the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht were probably purchased on the open market by the ‘librarius’ who coordinated the production of the book. All miniatures and borders can be dated to the 1420s.

Some textual additions, notably a cycle of prayers, suggest an adjustment to the use of Salisbury. The hypothesis that the book was adapted for the English market is further supported by the iconography chosen for the Hours of the Virgin. Stylistically, these additions can be dated to the 1420s as well.

Because of the added texts and miniatures, it is not improbable that the König book of hours was made in at least two stages. The most obvious place of production is Bruges, an important centre for the manufacture of books for the local as well as the English market, and well known for importing single-leaf miniatures from other regions.

Sabrina Corbellini & Gerrit Verhoeven, A Delft book catalogue from 1573

The archives of the convent of Sint Anna in Delft contain a hand-written catalogue of more than five hundred books, entitled Catalogus librorum omnium qui fuerunt Delphis in aede D. Annae. The catalogue is dated 1573 (Anno LXXIII). The listed books were apparently kept in the building in 1573, shortly after the suppression of the convent. This article focuses on the central question whether it is likely that a relatively modest convent, such as Sint Anna in Delft, owned such a large collection of books. If not, whose library or libraries might be described in this catalogue? First, the contents of the catalogue is presented and analyzed. Second, the historical context is described. In conclusion, some hypotheses about the compilation and the function of the catalogue are presented.

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The massive presence of legal works could point us in another direction than that of a convent library and could possibly indicate a connection with the University of Louvain or with the library of the Court of Holland. Another possibility is that the books could have belonged to Joachim Hopperus, doctor in law and professor in Louvain but also appointed member of the Council of Mechelen and of the Secret Council. Finally, a fourth option is presented, that the catalogue could be a list of books belonging to several confiscated libraries.

Thijs Weststrate, ‘Printer Ordinary to the Lords States of Zeeland’. The firm of Symon Moulert and his successors (1597-1646) as printers to the States (1618-1646)

This article focuses on the problem of defining the concept of drukker-ordinaris van de Staten, the official printer to the provincial government in the Netherlands. My research concentrates on the province of Zeeland and on the printing firm of the Moulert family (1597-1646). The hypothesis was that to be the official printer entailed some sort of official appointment in which the rights and duties of both parties had to be recorded. However, little evidence of this was found in the archives. Working from another angle, I developed a very general working hypothesis and checked this against a wealth of extremely detailed materials from the archives of the Zeeland auditor's office, concerning payments to the Moulert printing firm and to other printers at Middelburg, the Zeeland capital. The research showed that no satisfactory general description of this office can be given. The actual interpretation of the position of drukker-ordinaris is heavily dependent on chance and circumstance.

The activities of the Moulert family provide an insight into the role of the drukker-ordinaris. The Moulert family started out as printers and booksellers in 1597 and became official printers for the Staten van Zeeland only after 1618. From a study of the invoices they sent to the Staten it becomes clear that supplying stationery was much more important than working for the government as printers or booksellers. As printers it was their regular duty to print the half-yearly revision of the ordonnantiën, the rulings on taxes, and this must have been important for the continuity of their printing business. Selling books to the Staten was a fluctuating affair, depending on political conflict within the Staten and on the personal attitude of the Raadpensionaris, the Grand Pensionary.

The wealth of the relevant archival materials presented an embarassment of riches. Interested readers may consult some of the background material to the subject of this article on the nbv website, www.kb.nl/infolev/nbv/.

Lesley Monfils, A book travels the world. Distribution and early possessors of Balthasar Bekker's De betoverde weereld, 1691

De betoverde weereld (‘The world bewitch'd’) by the Amsterdam Reformed minister of Frisian descent Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698) was first published in octavo by the Frisian publisher/printer Hero Nauta in a print run of 750 copies. On Cartesian grounds, its author denied the power of the Satan in the material world. In a similar vein, Balthasar Bekker dismissed various forms of witchcraft and sorcery as mere superstition. Even before publication the book gained notoriety. Bekker was accused of being a Spinozist and an atheist. To defend himself, Bekker expanded the introduction to his book in the latest stages of publication

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around March 1691. Before long the book was reprinted in Amsterdam by Daniel van den Dalen in a quarto edition totalling eight thousand copies in altogether six impressions. The publication of De betoverde weereld caused one of the greatest theological controversies in the Dutch Republic at the end of the seventeenth century. Eventually Bekker had to resign as a minister.

It has been generally assumed that all copies of De betoverde weereld sold out almost immediately. An investigation into 766 Dutch book sales catalogues over the period 1691-1751, however, presents a different picture. It turns out that in 249 catalogues 65 octavos against 227 copies of the quarto edition are found. All 750 copies of the octavo edition were sold by August 1691, and if we extrapolate the proportion of 1 octavo against 3,5 quartos sold, it can be assumed that of the quarto edition an approximate 2619 copies were sold. If this is true, roughly three quarters of the quarto edition remained unsold. A possible explanation for this ‘overproduction’ is given by the strict regulations of the book trade in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. Booksellers traded their books amongst themselves by barter with no right of return. Auctions of unbound books were only permitted under strict conditions. As a result of the great demand for Bekker's book, his Amsterdam publisher Van den Dalen was able to produce several impressions over a short period, while the diminishing demand only became noticeable after the booksellers sold out their stock. A remainder of the last impression was reissued by Andries van Damme in 1715.

At least 27% of the early possessors of De betoverde weereld consisted of Reformed ministers. By estimation three quarters of the profession owned a copy. As the figures show, the book was also read by a wide variety of academics and magistrates.

Joop W. Koopmans, For the sake of peace? Foreign influences on Dutch censorship in the eighteenth century

During the period of the Dutch Republic, many books were printed for the foreign market. Neighbouring states tried to stop the publication of undesirable texts, e.g. by instructing their envoys in The Hague to lobby for publication bans on such works. So far most historical research on Dutch early modern censorship has focused on the seventeenth century. This article elaborates on one aspect of the less-known situation in the eighteenth century. It also reveals the Dutch willingness to censure controversial publications even without formal foreign protests. The main questions are: which countries submitted censorship requests and which motives underlay the Dutch responses? While England had been the country most critical towards the Dutch press during the seventeenth century, in the eighteenth century it was France that would submit most of the censorship requests. German, Russian and some other European envoys occasionally joined the French ambassadors. The majority of their censorship requests concerned publications that were regarded as insulting to heads of state and other highly placed persons. Only a small minority dealt with religious issues. In many cases the Republic was willing to take action when confronted with foreign criticism. Especially during the European wars, the Dutch authorities pursued a policy of caution, attempting to maintain neutrality and to avoid foreign aggression or punitive measures. They were driven by national self-interest and were particularly careful not to harm further their already diminishing international and economic position.

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Hannie van Goinga, Books on the move. Public book auctions in the Dutch Republic 1711-1805, mainly in Amsterdam, Groningen, The Hague and Leiden

For tax purposes auctions were registered with the local authorities and the guilds. These registrations have been inventoried for four cities: Amsterdam, The Hague and Leiden for the period 1711-1805, and Groningen for 1740-1805. They have been supplemented by information from other primary sources, catalogues and newspaper advertisements (the last only for the years 1711-1771). This resulted in the Repertorium van Nederlandse boekenveilingen 1711-1805 (Repertory of Dutch public book auctions 1711-1805), a database linked to the Dutch electronic history of the book, Bibliopolis, which contains details of 9972 public book auctions from all over the Dutch Republic, of which the sales in the four cities form the core.

The article opens with a detailed account of the sources available for the four ‘core cities’ and discusses their reliability. The second part gives a first analysis of the results that can be gathered from the database. Since turnover figures for (nearly) every auction in The Hague, Leiden and Groningen are known from 1745 to 1805, it is possible to track the ups and downs in the antiquarian and secondhand book trade and to discern differences between these three cities.

An important feature of bookselling by auction is the attendant publicity in the form of catalogues and newspaper advertisements. A comparison of the number of auctions and the surviving catalogues in each of the four cities yields some unexpected results. As far as can be established the catalogues of only 8% of the Amsterdam auctions have been preserved, against 27% of catalogues for the sales in The Hague. Explanations for this phenomenon are posed tentatively.

The local newspapers offer the best chance to find the announcement of a public book auction. Some suggestions are given for the use of the database for further research. Such details as the names and professions of the book owners provide promising clues.

Jos van Heel Johannes Enschedé (1708-1780)

Among Dutch book collectors of the second half of the eighteenth century the Haarlem typefounder and printer Johannes Enschedé (1708-1780) was an exceptional character. Trained as an artisan, not as an academic, he had no access to the world of learned books written in Latin. This didn't prevent him from buying such books, for his pursuit in collecting was to elucidate the history of printing and the development of the woodcut. Enschedé collected a large number of fifteenth and sixteenth century books, without worrying about their state of preservation and defects. He mainly focused on the printing types used, the quality of the woodcuts, and the information found in the colophon (place of printing, name of the printer and year of printing).

Enschedé made an inventory of his collection of early printed books, with sometimes extensive notes on technical aspects of the edition - an early example of book archaeology. He shared the Costerianism of the Rotterdam pensionary Gerard Meerman (1722-1771), but they had different views about details of the development, and quarelled a lot. While Meerman published his Origines typographicae in 1765, Enschedé did not succeed in elaborating his dispersed notes and comments into a book on the early development of the art of printing. After Enschedé's death in 1780, his son Johannes ii expanded his father's collection of early printing. In 1867 the Enschedé family library was put up for auction, but before that the librarians of the Royal Library in The Hague had had ample opportunity to examine the collection for their pioneering study on early Dutch printing.

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The kind of library Enschedé collected was exceptional in Holland in that time. The preservation of his extensive notes and comments makes his case unique in Holland, and at least rare in Europe.

Rietje van Vliet, The polyp and the aphid. Scientists and booksellers in the middle of the eighteenth century

When he began his career as a scientific bookseller in Leiden Elie Luzac (1721-1796) needed to create for himself a position in the Republic of Letters. For this he happily made use of the existing network of the Leiden professor Johannes Nicolaas Sebastiaan Allamand, who served as an important intermediary. Allamand brought him into contact with various authors who were engaged in the very topical debate on the procreation of living creatures and the material quality of the soul. Luzac published a number of these physicotheological works, which were very popular in learned Europe. One publication, however, caused a tremendous shock in the Republic of Letters. This was L'homme machine (1748) by Julien d'Offray de Lamettrie. The work was banned, Luzac as the publisher was fined, and the author was forced to flee the country. Yet this work turned out very profitable for Luzac. It was in great demand, and it was this publication that established Luzac as a scientific publisher. By participating in the materialism debate himself, he also established himself as a philosophe-libraire. As a scholar among scholars Luzac was also the right man to do his fellow scholars a favour. It was quite possibly Luzac who, during the peace conference at Aken in 1748, proposed a Bill to prohibit unauthorised publication of scholarly work.

Berry Dongelmans, Patented robbery versus basic decency. The Berne Convention as a divisive element in the Dutch book trade 1888-1912

The article discusses the arguments for and against the Netherlands joining the Berne Convention as they could be heard in the Dutch book trade in the period 1888-1912. Countries, publishers, authors, booksellers, lawyers, politicians were strongly divided on the issue, often also among themselves. In many ways the controversy reflected the prevalent attitudes in the Dutch book trade at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of its more nationalist members primarily took the view that the Netherlands were only a small country with a limited market, causing translation costs to place a forbiddingly high burden on any publication, and pleaded against entering the Berne treaty. Their opponents held that the Dutch honour was at stake, and advocated that a fair fee should be paid to the original authors to avoid accusations of piracy. Several rounds of heated discussion took place before it became a national political issue in 1905. In 1911 the Dutch government decided finally to join the Convention.