Katharine C Chandler

One of twelve volvelles in Trithemius, Polygraphie, 1561. The title written on the fore-edge of this book suggests that it belonged to John Dee. It’s a book about cryptography, and the volvelles are cipher discs used to encoding or decoding text.

Arthur! Arthur, King of the Britons– oh, don’t grovel. One thing I can’t stand is people groveling. LJS 55 is a collection of cosmological, religious, and obstetrical works, and this king receiving a blessing from the hand of God is a delightful bit of marginalia on fol. 10v. We assume that it is a king receiving a blessing from the hand of God, but it could also just as well be Jughead staring in uncertainty as a spontaneous portal materializes into thin air and a disembodied arm offers him a high-five.

We’ve shared this beauty before, just after it got conservation treatment (funded through our Adopt a Book program), but you didn’t get to see much of the inside that time.  This is a manuscript Vulgate Bible written in the 14th century in Italy.  It has over 50 large flourished initials like the ones shown here, and it contains the books Proverbs through Lamentations, missing Baruch and part of Ezekiel.  One of my favorite things about this manuscript are the numerous little pointing hands a later reader drew in the margins. Those types of hands are called manicules, and the ones in this book seem to have very long fingernails!

Another interesting feature of this book is that it was bound in a page from another manuscript. Stay tuned - you’ll see that one next week!

- Kelli

We’ve posted before on LJS 473, and here is another illustration – this time from fol. 8r – of the signs of the zodiac in their heavenly sphere revolving around the Earth. Since it is November, here’s to all the Scorpios out there: remember, you can use the L'arte del navegare to sail wherever you wish, but you can never escape the turmoil of your own heart.

#ThyCaptionBe: Roast Your Enemies

You captioned this detail. And we’re revealing the full story now.

First draft Dementors or medieval hairspray? It’s not spit at all, but rather…fire.

Here’s the full story:

Although this may look like the result of digestive difficulty, we are meant to see the Prophet Elijah breathing fire on his enemies. 

This illumination comes from a thirteenth-century English manuscript of St. John’s Revelation, the last book in the Christian Bible and an apocalyptic prophecy about the end of time. 

The accompanying passage (Revelation 11 vv.3-6) tells us that two witnesses, Elijah and Enoch, clothed in sackcloth will prophesy for 1,260 days and destroy anyone who wishes them harm! Beware.

bishop vs. fiddler

‘The Maastricht Hours’, Liège 14th century

Izcatqui in icuepca in Pater Noster. Reimpressas en Mexico: En la imprenta nueva de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, 1755. Bridwell Library Special Collections BRD0012.

Indigenous language printing for purposes of evangelization began in Mexico soon after the introduction of printing there in 1539, less than twenty years after the initial conquest of the Aztecs by the Spanish. Although works were most often published as books, texts were also issued in alternative formats including broadsides. Surviving copies of these ephemeral printings serve as engaging reminders of the series of collaborations between translators, native speakers, and printers whose collaborations created these works.  

In September 2015 Bridwell Library acquired a broadside published in 1755 by the Bibliotheca Mexicana, the private press of secular cleric, writer, and bibliographer Juan José de Eguira y Eguren. Printed entirely in Nahuatl, the Aztec imperial language spoken after the Conquest primarily in the Central Valley of Mexico, the text is presented in double-column format with the entire text surrounded by a decorative border of vine ornaments and the two columns separated by a line of type ornaments.  The brief religious texts comprise the Lord’s Prayer, Ave Maria, Apostles’ Creed, Salve Regina, Ten Commandments, Five Commandments of the Church, and Seven Sacraments. 

Antonio de Guadalupe Ramírez (fl. ca. 1785). Epitome de lo que debe saber, y entender el christiano, para que pueda conseguir veer, conocer, y gozar de dios eternamente en la gloria. Sacado del Breve Compendio… formé en el idioma otomí. Mexico: Imprenta Nueva Madrileña, 1785. Bridwell Library Special Collections BRB0760

From the Houghton Instagram, a 1944 fine-press edition of Euclid designed by the great Bruce Rogers.

Typ 4751.44a

Johannes Melber (fl. 15th century). Vocabularius praedicantium, sive Variloquus. [Strassburg: Georg Husner, ca. 1493-1495].

[Bound with:] Vocabularius ex quo. [Strasbourg: Georg Husner, ca. 1498].

[Bound with:] Wenceslaus Brack (d. 1495). Vocabularius rerum. Strassburg: [Georg Husner], 1 February, 1491.

In November 2013 Bridwell Library acquired three fifteenth-century dictionaries of Latin terms with German definitions, all printed in Strasbourg by Georg Husner, and all preserved within the single volume into which they were bound circa 1500. The first dictionary, by Johannes Melber of Heidelberg, was intended for unschooled preachers. Bridwell’s copy is the only one recorded within the United States. The anonymous second work, the Vocabularius ex quo, was a handy all-purpose dictionary that appeared in at least forty-eight fifteenth-century editions. One of these editions is represented solely by Bridwell’s unique recorded copy.

The third dictionary, the Vocabularius rerum, was compiled by Wenceslaus Brack (d. 1495), a noted scholar-physician at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg. The work first appeared in print at Basel in 1483. Bridwell’s Vocabularius rerum is one of only two copies from the eighth edition, printed at Strasbourg in 1491, that are recorded within the United States. Consisting of more than 3,500 Latin terms, Brack’s Vocabularius rerum was intended as a glossary for basic instruction in Latin. Today, it also serves as a valuable source for the study of late-medieval German vocabulary. Unlike the other two dictionaries, Brack’s work is arranged by categories, such as the features of the heavens and the Earth, the parts of the human body, and various crafts and their implements. 

Wenceslaus Brack also owned Bridwell Library’s copy of the pseudo-Augustinian De cognitione verae vitae (Mainz: Peter Schoeffer, not after 1474). He inscribed his name on the inside of the book’s original vellum wrapper, along with the book’s title and the titles of five other tracts by Jean Gerson (1363–1429) that were bound with the first work during the fifteenth century. Although their present location is unknown, these tracts most likely were from Ulrich Zel’s collected edition, published at Cologne circa 1472.

William Morris’s copy of Saint Augustine’s De civitate dei [Subiaco: Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz], 12 June 1467. Bridwell Library Special Collections 06054.

Saint Augustine (354 - 430), one of the four Great Fathers of the Western Church, served as Bishop of Hippo in modern-day Algeria. His writings are among the most important in the early Christian church. This first edition of De civitate dei (“City of God”) was printed in 1467 at the ancient Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, fifty miles east of Rome, and is one of the earliest books published in Italy.  The decorations at the beginning of the text in the Bridwell Library copy are typical of Italian humanist book decoration found both in manuscript and print during the 15th century. This copy had belonged to William Morris (1834 -1896), artist, author, visionary socialist, and founder of the Kelmscott Press.  Morris’s bookplate is located on the front pastedown. 

Morris eschewed the practices of the industrial revolution, ardently wishing to return to book production as practiced during the medieval and Renaissance periods. Kelmscott Press books were produced with non-industrial methods utilizing a hand press and hand-made paper. His design and visual motifs, such as the white vine decoration of the Italian Renaissance seen in the Kelmscott Chaucer were also borrowed from earlier periods.