The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus (ruled 1611–1632) in the war against Poland entered Riga with his troops on 16 September 1621, when the city had finally fallen after a long siege.1 Although the king was in general quite lenient towards its citizens, there were some obvious exceptions. The properties of the Polish king and of the Jesuit Order, which had started its activities in the city in 1583, were accordingly confiscated, and all movables belonging to the Jesuit College were taken and inventoried on the king’s order.2 The members of the Jesuit Order were forced to leave. It is not known exactly when the College’s library was loaded onto ships bound for Stockholm, but in November of the following year it was presented at the castle by the clergyman Johannes Bothvidi (1575–1635), who initially was commissioned to take care of the library, to the vice-chancellor of Uppsala University, Laurentius Olai Wallius (1588–1638). He was the head of the learned institution that was now to receive the library as a donation from the Crown. Gustavus II Adolphus had the ambition to make the university in Uppsala a scholarly institution of international stature, and by donating literary spoils of war to its library one problem was seemingly taken care of: the books that were needed arrived in great numbers. The collection from Riga would soon be followed by several others, looted from libraries on the continent during the seventeenth century.3 Taking books from the institutions of confessional enemies in order to meet the demands for literature at home, however, was not an ideal solution when education at Uppsala aimed primarily at training clergymen and officials loyal to the state.4 It is a truism that not all books from a Jesuit College could be considered useful at a Lutheran university in an age of confessionalization and conflict. Nevertheless, it is essential to investigate what kind of books and literature was or could be useful, and to suggest the reasons why. With the help of some catalogues, both early modern and very new ones, that cover the Riga collection and Uppsala University Library in the first half of the seventeenth century and today, the present study will seek to contribute to that discussion.5 To start with, we have to survey the material we have to work with, and how library contents were arranged at the time.
1 Catalogues and Registers
The Johannes Bothvidi mentioned earlier was the alleged, though doubted, author of an inventory that listed the contents of the library from Riga together with some other taken items. This inventory is still extant at Uppsala University Library, and it consists of 893 titles, 61 unbound items, and a number of household utensils.6 Gustavus Adolphus reminded of the necessity of making such a register in November 1626, and Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) wrote to Laurentius Olai Wallius, the vice-chancellor, about the matter at the same time when he, Bureus, was going through the books that had been looted in Prussia in the same year. The Riga inventory is likely to have been created after that date.7 The list, however, does follow an original at Stockholm Castle, as is stated in some notes at the end of the extant inventory, but this original has not been identified in our time. We could presume that the original had come about already in Riga, since, as we saw, the Swedes had been ordered by the king to register all goods taken there.8
As Isak Collijn later noticed when starting a project to reconstruct the Riga collection at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Bothvidi inventory is not complete. At Uppsala University Library there are today books with a Riga provenance that are missing in the list. In addition, the bibliographical details in the inventory are not always correct, and the information given there very rudimentary. The arrangement of the books in the inventory is simple: they are classified only according to format and to whether they were bound or not.9 On the other hand, there are also books on the Bothvidi list that are not at Uppsala University Library today, because some were discarded and others sold at auctions of duplicates over the centuries.10
In spite of its obvious deficiencies, the Bothvidi list will have an important role in the rest of the present study as a complement to and a very early forerunner of the new catalogue of books from the Jesuit College of Riga that was released at the beginning of 2021 by Laura Kreigere-Liepiņa and Renāte Berga at the National Library of Latvia.11 The work of Kreigere-Liepiņa and Berga, which was able to use Collijn’s above mentioned archive material extant at Uppsala as a starting point, means that there is for the first time ever a published register covering the books from the Jesuit College of Riga.12 In connection to this event, the books from Riga have been gathered at Uppsala University Library, in an attempt to reconstruct the collection physically in one place, and they are now located in the Library’s magnificent Book Hall. Titles of books from Riga that we know have been at Uppsala from the start until now, and that can be found both in the oldest and newest inventories, will help us to see how this collection was received in its new environment during the first decades in Uppsala, when we identify them in the first library catalogues from 1638–1641.13
The intention here is thus to try to see which books from the Jesuit College of Riga were considered useful at the Lutheran university of Uppsala at the beginning of the seventeenth century by examining how they were located on the shelves once the contents had been studied and evaluated.14 In order to do so, we must first briefly describe how the library collection was arranged at the time, since the extant catalogues are in reality shelf lists and are arranged according to subject and format.
2 The Seventeenth-Century Library
Although, of course, there had been books at Uppsala University since its beginnings in 1477 and an inventory of the book collections had been ordered at the ecclesiastical Uppsala Assembly in 1593, the university library was not formally founded until two royal decrees of 1620 and 1621. With the first decree came donations of collections from the Crown’s depot Gråmunkeholmen in Stockholm, containing the confiscated libraries of noblemen and of old monasteries, among other things.15 At the beginning of the 1620s, nonetheless, there was still no single building destined for the purpose. When the books from Riga came to Uppsala in 1622, they were first placed in the southern chancel of the cathedral. In 1626, however, a small edifice in two floors next to the cathedral and the new main university building Gustavianum became available to house the library collections, and the books from the cathedral, the Riga collection and the Crown depot collection, among others, were soon carried in on the upper floor. In the following year, the literary spoils of war from Braniewo (Braunsberg) and Frombork (Frauenburg) arrived at Uppsala and were stored on the lower floor.16
In spite of the order by Gustavus Adolphus that the collections should be registered and a catalogue made, it took more than a decade until such an undertaking was finished. The result was a handwritten catalogue in two volumes, one covering the bibliotheca superior and another the bibliotheca inferior, which mirrored how the books were arranged in the library. The catalogue was in fact a collection of shelf-lists of books according to subject and format.17 I have myself discussed the order of the books in this first university library in other articles, and I will not repeat all the details and arguments here.18 May it suffice to mention that the library was built in two floors with split levels and contained three rooms on each floor. Obviously, the building was of very poor quality. There were constantly recurring complaints at the university council about the poor conditions the books had to endure, especially on the lower floor, where they were allegedly even at risk of destruction. But while the lower floor suffered heavily from moisture, the roof was leaking repeatedly on the upper floor. What we see, however, is that the books in the upper library were arranged according to the four faculties and the professorial chairs, while the lower was more of a storage room for literature that was not really useful for the regular teaching at the university, where the Jesuit classification of theology from Braniewo had in fact been retained for many titles by Catholic authors. When the books were taken from their original locations, they were placed in chests according to subject, supposedly according to how they had been arranged in Braniewo. In Uppsala, as it seems, they were at first simply arranged on the shelves in the same order.
Step by step, books that were considered relevant at the university were selected and moved to other sections of the library. And, as already mentioned, large portions of the books written by Catholic authors and with a confessional Catholic content were by default assumed to be less useful at this very Lutheran university. In dissertations and propaganda of the time the Pope was here compared with Antichrist and the Jesuits described as his deceitful, cunning and blood-thirsty followers.19 In addition, several books in the library at the end of the 1630s were duplicates, since the libraries of the learned Catholic institutions from which they were taken frequently held copies of the same or similar editions.20 In such cases, in Uppsala one copy was placed on the upper and one on the lower floor. Nor were the books perceived as Calvinist judged to be very useful, and many, though not all, were stored on the lower floor, under the heading libri Calvinianorum.21 According to the catalogues of the time, there was thus a separation of the library into one floor for the actual and current university library, containing the most useful books arranged according to the four faculties, and one where duplicate copies and less useful books were stored.22 This is our starting-point.
3 Aims
With the help of the Bothvidi inventory and Kreigere-Liepiņa and Berga’s new catalogue of books from the Jesuit College, in the following discussion we will seek to locate specific titles from Riga in the first (1638–1641) catalogues of the Uppsala University Library, proceeding section by section. To begin with, we need to address the questions of usefulness and classification in the new environment of these books. What kind of titles from Riga were useful enough to be placed on the upper floor and in the actual library that was arranged according to the four faculties? Which kind ended up in the storage of mostly Catholic literature on the lower floor? A second aspect of relevance comes from a comparison of the handling of the Riga books with that of the books from Braniewo and Frombork, which I have discussed in a previous article.23 The latter books were initially stocked on the lower floor. Some categories of them also stayed there, with several books in fact still in the very same order as they had been listed by Johannes Bureus when he inventoried the spoils from those places at Stockholm Castle. Others were found more useful and moved to the upper floor. With most of the books from Riga the opposite can therefore be expected to have taken place. Books relevant for the teaching at the university are likely to have stayed and were relocated to the upper floor, while less useful books were moved down. We can assume that the Riga books were not kept together to the same degree as the books from Braniewo, since they were not carried into the storage part but into the rooms comprising the active university library. In addition, this assumption receives support from the fact that the arrival of the books from Riga at Uppsala was even questioned by librarians themselves some decades later.24 The following discussion may be dry, but it does reveal interesting aspects concerning the judgement and valuation of learning and literature at a small but significant university in the outskirts of Europe during a turbulent period. It should also be stressed that we can track only a limited number of books here, since the entire collection originally contained more than 900 titles.
4 Bibles and Languages
To begin with, the location of some books from Riga in the classification scheme of the first catalogues is obvious. Martin Luther’s Bible, printed in Magdeburg in 1536, for instance, and part of the spoils, could be found on the upper floor, in the first room among the other Bibles.25 The same was the case with the German Bible printed in Lübeck in 1494 and containing comments by Nicolas de Lyre;26 a Bible in Dutch printed in Harlingen in 1585;27 and the German edition of the Bible created by Johann Dietenberger and printed in 1582.28 Not all Bibles, however useful they normally were, were located in that section. A Dutch Bible printed in Delft in 1581, for instance, could be found on the upper floor under Theologi.29 The New Testament in Polish, printed in Kraków in 1594, ended up on the lower floor, under the heading Libri Polonici.30 Books in the Polish language were not only inaccessible to most people at Uppsala for linguistic reasons, but could at the time also be suspected of containing theologically doubtful material. Other books in Polish from the Riga spoils that ended up there were, for example, the O naśladowaniu Pana Christysa by Thomas a Kempis and printed in Kraków in 1603;31 the Okulary na zwierciadło nabożeństwa chrześciańskiego w Polszcze by Marcin Łaszcz, printed in Vilnius in 1594;32 the Żołnierskie nabożeństwo by Piotr Skarga, printed in Kraków in 1606; and Diego Álvarez de Paz’s O żywocie zakonnym, printed in Kraków in 1613.33
Next to the Polish section there were two others on the lower floor where, according to the headings, language was the main criterion of classification. These sections contained books in Italian and in German. In fact, however, most of the titles in these sections had Catholic authors who wrote in these languages. In the Italian section, we find books from Riga such as the Meditationi sopra tutti gli evangeli del’anno, by the Jesuit Andreu Capella, printed in Brescia in 1601;34 the Dispregio della vanita del mondo by the Franciscan Diego de Estella, printed in Venice in 1604;35 and Effetti mirabili de la limosina, printed in Rome in 1581 by Giulio Folco.36 In the German section, we find books such as Triumph der Warheit by the Jesuit Georg Scherer, printed in Ingolstadt in 1587 and 1588;37 the Anatomiae Lutheri, printed in Köln in 1595 and edited by the Catholic physician Johann Pistorius the Younger;38 the Apologia und gründliche Verthetigung eines kleinen Büchleins, by the Jesuit Jan Uber, printed in Braniewo in 1606;39 as well as the German Postilla catholica evangeliorum de tempore totius anni, by Johann Eck, printed in Ingolstadt 1583.40 Common to all books in these three sections on the lower floor, however, is the fact that content had been more decisive for their location than language. We can still find a few books in Polish and Italian, and rather many in German, on the upper floor in the collection arranged according to the four faculties.
5 Bible Commentaries and Dogmatic Literature
Moving to Bible commentaries, we can find a section on the lower floor especially reserved for commentaries by Catholic authors (Commentatores Catholici), arranged according to size (from folio to duodecimo), while on the upper floor, useful commentaries by both Lutheran and Catholic authors are found in one of the theology sections.41 According to the University constitutions dating from 1626, one of the four professors of theology had to teach the Old Testament and one professor the New Testament. The third had to teach theological polemics, or the Old and New Testament alternately, while the fourth had to teach the articles of faith or dogmatics.42 In addition, in the philosophical faculty, the professor of Hebrew had to teach grammar and its usage based on the biblical texts and on the explanation of more obscure and controversial passages, while the professor of Greek had to teach grammar and its usage based on the New Testament, the Church Fathers and the ancient authors.43 The strong emphasis on biblical studies, including more difficult and debated biblical passages, can explain the considerable presence of Bible commentaries by both Catholic and Protestant authors on the upper floor. We should not, however, confuse this with tolerance. There was a reason why the third professor had to be concerned with Bible studies or controversial theology. With the support of the Bible, the Catholics needed to be proven wrong. The majority of the Catholic authors of Bible commentaries were also kept on the lower floor. Accordingly, we notice, for instance, that the commentary on the Book of Revelations by the Franciscan Francisco de Ribera, printed in Lyon in 1593, a copy of which was also part of the booty from Braniewo, was located on the lower floor.44 The commentary on the twelve prophets by Pablo de Palacio, printed in Cologne in 1583, was likewise located in the Catholic section on the lower floor.45 Another example of a title placed there is the commentary on the letters of Paul by Saint Bruno of Cologne, printed in Paris in 1509, which was part of the spoils.46 On the other hand, a title such as the Notae in evangelicas lectiones, printed in Freiburg in 1591 by the Jesuit Petrus Canisius, could be found on both the upper and the lower floors.47 In addition it should be noted that no titles by Protestant authors can be found under the heading ‘Bible commentaries’ on the lower floor.
Dogmatic literature, moreover, is a field in which we once more find sections that are labelled as purely Catholic in the lower library, under the heading Controvertistae Catholici and divided according to format ranging from folio to duodecimo.48 Just as in the case of the Bible commentaries, it was also true that some Catholic dogmatic literature could be found among the useful books on the upper floor, where it stood together with and among its Lutheran counterparts. As mentioned, one of the professorial chairs at Uppsala was concerned with polemic theology, and one with the articles of faith; in other words, the arguments of the religious enemies, whether Catholic or Calvinist, had to be scrutinized and defeated.49 Under Controvertistae Catholici, for instance, we find works by the main Catholic antagonist of the Lutherans, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), which were part of the spoils from Riga, Braniewo and later Poznań. Bellarmine was the focus of several dissertations in polemic theology at Uppsala at the end of the 1620s and in the 1630s, after both the Riga and Braniewo spoils had arrived. Most books by Bellarmine were located on the lower floor, but occasionally titles by him can also be found on the upper. An example is his Apologia … pro responsione sua ad librum Iacobi Magnae Britanniae regis printed in Vilnius in 1610.50 Other titles from the Riga spoils to be found among the controversial literature on the lower floor are, for instance, the Contra universos Catholicae fidei adversarios, by Catholic bishop Friedrich Nausea (1496–1552), printed in Magdeburg in 1529;51 the Pro Catholicae fidei antiquitate et veritate, Vincent de Lérins, a Gallic monk of Late Antiquity, printed in Cologne in 1569 by;52 and the De expresso Dei verbo, by the Warmian bishop Stanisław Hozjusz (1504–1579), printed in Leuven in 1559.53 The case of the Adversus omnes haereses libri quatuordecim, printed in Lyon 1555 by the Franciscan Alfonso de Castro (1495–1558), is interesting. The book was part of the spoils from both Riga and Braniewo, but in different editions. One copy was thus kept on the upper floor under the heading Scripta patrum, while the other was kept in the purely Catholic section on the ground floor.54 In the 1640s, however, the copy on the upper floor was obviously moved to the lower, as can be seen in a later catalogue.55 A group of books mainly consisting of Catholic literature were then transported downstairs, presumably in order to make room for new acquisitions.
Worth stressing again is the fact that not a single work by an author of the Lutheran confession has been found on the lower floor. Several books of this kind, however, were part of the spoils from Riga, and they are all to be found on the upper floor, despite sometimes even being in duplicate. Duplicates were not a problem if the books were by Lutheran authors. Among a large number of works by Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Martin Luther (1483–1546), Lucas Osiander (1534–1604), et cetera, we thus find examples from Riga such as the Catechesis and Regulae vitae by David Chytraeus, printed in Rostock and Bautzen in 1572 and 1571 and bound in the same volume;56 the Theologiae Jesuitarum praecipua capita by Martin Chemnitz, printed in Leipzig in 1563;57 the Husspostilla in Saxon German by Martin Luther, printed in Wittenberg in 1550;58 as well as the Margarita theologica by Johann Spangenberg (1484–1550), printed in Leipzig in 1542.59
Near the section containing Catholic controversial theologians on the lower floor is a smaller section containing catechisms and theological loci communes, that is a kind of easily accessible and thematically arranged dogmatic literature directed at Catholic believers. There we find, for instance, books from Riga such as Piae ac solidae ex Francisco Costero, Petro de Soto, & auctore methodi confessionis catecheses, printed in Trier in 1590;60 the Catholicus catechismus by Catholic bishop Friedrich Nausea, printed in Antwerp in 1544;61 and the Flores R. P. F. Lodoici Granatensis by the Dominican Luis de Granada, printed in Cologne in 1588.62
6 Devotional Literature and Sermons
The next section on the lower floor is a purely Catholic one as well, having the heading Lib. precat et meditat. (‘Books for praying and meditation’). In it can be found such books as the two copies of De frequenti communione libellus by the same Dominican Luis de Granada, printed in Cologne in 1586 and 1591;63 as well as his Memoriale vitae Christianae, printed in Cologne in 1589;64 his Dux peccatorum, printed in Cologne in 1590;65 and his De devotione, excellentia, utilitate, et necessitate orationis, printed in Cologne in 1592.66 Several copies of Thomas de Kempis’ De imitatione Christi can also be found here, the Riga copy, printed in Vilnius in 1585, among others.67 But this book can also be found in several places on the upper floor. We also find from Riga on the lower floor the De vita et laudibus Deiparae Mariae virginis by the Jesuit Francis Coster, printed in Cologne in 1587.68
Sermons by Catholic authors were mostly to be found on the lower floor also. From the Riga booty we there find, for instance, the Sermones sive enarrationes in evangelia et epistolas quadragesimales, by the Dominican Pierre La Palud, printed in Antwerp in 1572;69 several volumes by the Dominican Gilles vanden Prieele, Conciones in evangelia et epistolas, printed in Antwerp in 1574;70 the Homiliae in evangelia dominicalia by the Franciscan Heinrich Helm, printed in Cologne in 1550;71 the Sermones de sanctis by Jacobus de Voragine, printed in Venice in 1580;72 as well as the Quadragesimale by Johannes Gritsch, printed in Nürnberg in 1481.73
Catholic devotional literature and sermons are probably the kind of books that we would expect to find among the least useful books in a Lutheran university library. All other theological subjects mentioned had connections with some of the professorial chairs in theology, while the devotional and sermon categories speak rather to the private inner religious life. Being a Catholic in Sweden was forbidden by law at the time and could after 1617 be punished with death. Although this did not happen very often, a few persons were in fact executed for this reason.74
In the adjacent sections on the lower floor we can also find one with the heading Theologi scholastici, containing mainly duplicate titles by authors who can also be found on the upper floor: medieval writers such as Thomas Aquinas, Jean Gerson, William of Ockham, Peter Lombard and Bonaventure.75 In the middle room of the lower floor were gathered Catholic manuscripts in a variety of fields, with the exception of law.76 The case is the same here, however, as with the printed materials. Useful manuscripts were usually found on the upper floor, together and among the printed books. No discrimination was made between a manuscript and a printed copy as long as the book was useful.
Being Catholic confessional literature and duplicates were, as we have seen, the main reasons why some books ended up on the lower floor of the library. It is nevertheless true that we also see some Catholic titles and duplicates on the upper floor. If we focus on the categories there, it will be even more evident how the floors differ from each other in content.
7 Classical Authors, History and Church Fathers
Classical authors are of course unproblematic and valuable in all libraries, thus we find them on the upper floor, in different sections. The works of Cicero, for instance, that were part of the spoils from Riga are mostly located under the heading Oratores, corresponding to the professorial chair of rhetoric. We find there the three volumes of his speeches edited by Caelius Curio and printed in Basle in 1592, as well as a copy of the second volume of the Basle edition of 1585;77 Cicero’s De Officiis, printed in Cologne in 1612;78 his Epistulae familiares of Lyon and Paris from 1505;79 and the Orationes Philippicae, printed in Cologne. in 1522.80 Similarly, the upper floor has a copy of the works of Quintilian with commentary, printed in Venice in 1506.81
Books by authors writing about history are also kept on the upper floor. This corresponded to the chair in history, which was meant to teach historia universalis, according to the university constitutions.82 Examples were the Rapsodiae historiarum Enneadum by Marco Antonio Sabellico, printed in Paris in 1516 and 1517;83 the De moribus et ritibus gentium by Alessandro Sardi, printed in Mainz in 1577;84 as well as Livy’s Ab urbe condita, printed in Basle in 1549.85 The same is the case with books in the field of Church history, which are located separately from those in secular history, regardless of the confession of the author, with yet a separate section for them on the upper floor. We find there from the Riga booty, for instance, the Ecclesiasticae historiae libri decem by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos of Constantinople, printed in Frankfurt in 1588;86 the Catalogus sanctorum et gestorum eorum by Petrus de Natalibus, printed in Lyon in 1519;87 the Historia scholastica by Petrus Comestor, printed in Strasbourg in 1500;88 as well as the De vita Ignatii Loiola by the Jesuit Giovanni Pietro Maffei, printed in Cologne in 1585.89
The Church Fathers had their own section on the upper floor, and there we also find several books from the Riga booty. In fact, books of very different kinds have been gathered on these particular shelves. The heading scripta patrum covers authors from all periods, from the Church fathers of Late Antiquity such as Jerome, Tertullian and Augustine to such medieval theologians as Thomas Aquinas, Denis the Carthusian and Jean Gerson, to post-Reformation authors such as the Franciscan Frans Titelmans and the Jesuits Peter Canisius and Robert Bellarmine, as well as some Protestant authors. The complete works of Augustine, printed in Antwerp in 1576 and 157790 can be found there, and also his commentary on the letters of Paul, printed in Paris in 1499.91 There are also volumes three and four of Origen’s works, printed in Paris in 1512.92 Several other titles by the authors of Late Antiquity resided mainly at the beginning of the section. As mentioned earlier, the works of the Church fathers were used not only by the professors of theology, but also especially by the professor of Greek.
8 Medicine, Mathematics and Law
Typical of useful books are those belonging to the faculty of medicine, which had its own section on the upper floor. There we find, for instance, the Universa medicina by Jean Fernel, printed in Frankfurt in 1592;93 the Methodus curandorum omnium morborum corporis humani by Guillaume Rondelet, printed in Lyon in 1575;94 the De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides, printed in Paris in 1537;95 the Opuscula medica by Girolamo Cardano, printed in Basle in 1559;96 and the Judicia urinarum by Jodocus Willich, printed in Wittenberg in 1562.97 Under the heading of mathematics on the upper floor, and corresponding to the professorial chairs in this subject, we meet titles from the Riga booty such as Pliny the Younger’s De mundi historia, printed in Frankfurt in 1543;98 the Ephemerides by Luca Gaurico, printed in Venice in 1533;99 and the De sphaera by Johannes de Sacro Bosco, printed in Cologne in 1500.100
Finally, the Faculty of Law was of course represented with its own section on the upper floor, but there were also a smaller number of books located under that heading on the lower. In both sections there were many works on Canon law. The difference between the two seems to have had to do with the age of the book. The books on the lower floor were mostly older, while copies from all ages could be found on the upper. The first shelf on the lower floor even held a number of manuscripts, although there were several manuscripts to be found among the printed items as well. From the Riga spoils, which admittedly were not very rich in literature on law, we find on the upper floor, for instance, the three volumes of the Ex miscellaneorum scriptoribus digestorum, codicis, & institutionum Iuris Ciuilis interpretatio collecta by Martin Antonio Delrio, printed in Paris in 1580;101 as well as the Decretales of Gregory IX, printed in Paris in 1511.102 According to the university constitutions of 1626 there were to be two professors of law at Uppsala. One was to lecture on Swedish law and compare it to the Roman, and the other was to lecture on Roman law and moral philosophy.103
9 Conclusions
Together with previous studies on the arrangement of the first university library building at Uppsala as background, the present study has sought to follow a group of books from the Riga Jesuit college library to their relocation in their new environment, using the new catalogue of Laura Kreigere-Liepiņa and Renāte Berga as well as the early register of Johannes Bothvidi and the first library catalogues at Uppsala from 1638–1641. The books from Riga were initially placed on the upper floor of the building, but the collection was soon broken up, scattered among other collections, and arranged according to subject. Accordingly, we find books from Riga remaining on the upper floor, which contained the actual university library and was arranged according to the four faculties. The lower floor was more of a storage area for less useful Catholic literature, with the arrangement of theological literature seemingly still following the system from the Braniewo Jesuit College library. Lutheran books, for instance, were always in the ‘useful’ category, and not a single title by a Lutheran author can, in fact, be found in the registers for the lower floor of the library. These have been the main organizing principles for dealing with the Riga library that entered into the Uppsala collections in the seventeenth century. We do not find that parts of the Riga collection were kept together to the same degree as the books from Braniewo.
The primary reason why the Riga library was scattered among the collections to a greater degree was that it had first been located on the upper floor, in the active university library where books were rearranged more often than in the lower. The Riga Jesuit library was also considerably smaller than the one from Braniewo, being only about one third of its size. At the end of the seventeenth century, a librarian at Uppsala even wondered whether it had really arrived there or not. Among the useful books from Riga we find German and Dutch Bibles; Bible commentaries, including such Catholic authors as Petrus Canisius; books on theological polemics, including such Catholic authors as Alfonso de Castro (although his work was revaluated after a while); of course, books by Protestant authors such as David Chytraeus, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon; the Church fathers, even including Catholic authors of the time; books in Church history by both Protestants and Catholics; and also devotional literature such as the De imitatione Christi of Thomas de Kempis. Books from Riga in secular subjects were less problematic, and usually were to be found on the upper floor. We find there classical authors such as Cicero, Quintilian and Livy, alongside with works in history, medicine, mathematics and law. Admittedly, the latter also contains titles on canon law.
Somewhat paradoxically, the Catholic books that were of less use in Lutheran Uppsala seemed still to be valued. In the abovementioned poem on the new university library from the end of the 1620s, Jonas Columbus related how a stranger comes to Uppsala and admired the great number of books kept there.104 For a poor university in a poor state foreign book collections were bound to increase domestic cultural capital considerably, regardless of the content that met the eyes of the reader who at a certain point decided to open the books themselves.105
As always in the case of literary spoils of war taken by the Swedes, the fundamental study is Otto Walde’s magisterial doctoral thesis Storhetstidens litterära krigsbyten: En kulturhistorisk-bibliografisk Studie (2 vols., Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1916–1920). The case of Riga is discussed in the first volume on pp. 42–52. For a more detailed account of the war when Riga surrendered, see Sveriges krig 1611–1632, 2: Polska kriget (Stockholm: Generalstaben, 1936).
On the history of the Jesuit College in Riga, see Reinis Norkārls, ‘The Riga Jesuit College and its Book Collection’, in Catalogue of the Riga Jesuit College Book Collection (1583–1621): History and Reconstruction of the Collection [CRJCBC] = Rīgas Jezuītu kolēģijas grāmatu krājuma (1583–1621) katalogs: Krājuma vēsture un rekonstrukcija, Gustavs Strenga and Andris Levāns (Riga: Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, 2021), pp. 90–111.
The collections looted from Braniewo and Poznań have been or are the subjects of recent projects at Uppsala University Library, in collaboration with librarians from Poland. A catalogue of the Braniewo collection was published in 2007; see Józef Trypućko, The Catalogue of the Book Collection of the Jesuit College in Braniewo Held in the University Library in Uppsala = Katalog księgozbioru Kolegium Jezuitów w Braniewie zachowanego w Bibliotece Uniwersyteckiej w Uppsali, eds. Michał Spandowski and Sławomir Szyller (3 vols., Uppsala/Warsaw: Uppsala universitetsbibliotek/Biblioteka Narodowa, 2007). Modern catalogues of the Poznań spoils are being created presently. As regards the Polish collections in Uppsala, see also Peter Sjökvist, ‘Polish Collections at Uppsala University Library: A ‑History of Research’, in Dorota Sidorowicz-Mulak and Agnieszka Franczyk Cegła (eds.), Książka dawna i jej właściciele (2 vols., Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 2017), 2, pp. 237–244. For information on the Poznań project, see Peter Sjökvist, ‘Books from Poznań at the Uppsala University Library,’ in Jack Puchalski et al. (eds.), Z badań nad książką i księgozbiorami historycznymi: Polonika w zbiorach obcych (Warsaw: Bractwo Kawalerów Gutenberg, 2017), pp. 319–327.
Cf., e.g., Erland Sellberg, Kyrkan och den tidigmoderna staten: En konflikt om Aristoteles, utbildning och makt (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2010), pp. 370–371. An example from the time is the statement in Laurentius Olai Wallius’ program Decretum super vexationes humanitatis fere omnis expertes, dated 11 August 1633 at Uppsala: subolem … literis et virtute erudiendam committunt, ut post parentis sui obitum Dei cultor existat, et patriae servitor.
Cf. especially Renāte Berga, ‘Rara et Cara. Collection of Rare Books and Books of Cultural and Historical Significance in the Riga Jesuit College’, in Catalogue of the Riga Jesuit College Book Collection (1583–1621), pp. 134–149.
Uppsala University Library (UUB) U 271, digitized version: www.urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-248017 (last accessed 20 July 2022). Cf. Claes Annerstedt, Upsala universitetsbiblioteks historia intill år 1702 (Uppsala: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1894), p. 9, and Antoaneta Granberg, ‘Carolina Redivivas samling från jesuitkollegiets bibliotek i Riga och Isak Collijns arkiv’, in Per Ambrosiani, Per-Arne Bodin, and Nadezjda Zorikhina Nilsson (eds.), Må Novgorod fröjda sig: Hyllningsskrift till Elisabeth Löfstrand (Stockholm: Institutionen för slaviska och baltiska språk, finska, nederländska och tyska, Stockholms universitet, 2016), p. 80.
Walde, Storhetstidens litterära krigsbyten, 1, p. 49. Cf. Johannes Bureus, ‘Anteckningar av Johannes Thomae Agrivillensis Bureus’, Samlaren, 4 (1883), p. 102, and Emma Hagström Molin, Krigsbytets biografi: Byten i riksarkivet, Uppsala universitetsbibliotek och Skokloster slott under 1600-talet (Göteborg: Makadam, 2015), p. 123.
Cf. Granberg, ‘Carolina Redivivas samling från jesuitkollegiets bibliotek i Riga och Isak Collijns arkiv’, p. 80.
Isak Collijn, Jesuitkollegiets i Riga bibliotek: Bidrag till dess historia, unpublished essay, UUB 475 D:2, digitized version: www.urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-400144 (last accessed 20 July 2022).
See further Peter Sjökvist, ‘Litterära krigsbytens öden i Sverige’, Biblis: Kvartalstidskrift för bokvänner, 89 (2020), pp. 20–26. Polish version: ‘Losy księgozbiorów zagrabionych w czasazh wojen szwedzkich w XVII w’, in Dorota Sidorowicz-Mulak and Agnieszka Franczyk-Cegła (eds.), Kolekcje prywatne w zbiorach książki dawnej (2 vols., Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 2020), 1, pp. 252–264.
Catalogue of the Riga Jesuit College Book Collection (1583–1621). In the rest of this chapter, records in this catalogue will be referred to only as CRJCBC and with record numbers.
See further, Laura Kreigere-Liepiņa, ‘Bibliographic Reconstruction of the Book Collection of the Riga Jesuit College’, in Catalogue of the Riga Jesuit College Book Collection (1583–1621), pp. 50–68.
For valuable case studies on the importance of book lists for a purpose like this, see the conference volume Malcolm Walsby and Natasha Constantinidou (eds.), Documenting the Early Modern Book World: Inventories and Catalogues in Manuscript and Print (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
This article is thus a parallel to a previous study of mine. See, Peter Sjökvist, ‘The Reception of Books from Braniewo in the 17th-century Uppsala University Library’, Biblioteka, 24 (33) (2020), pp. 101–116.
See further Otto Walde, ‘Konung Sigismunds bibliotek och Gustaf Adolfs donation 1620–1621: Ett bidrag till Uppsala universitetsbiblioteks äldsta historia’, Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen, 2 (1915), pp. 317–322; and Åke Davidsson, ‘Gustav II Adolfs bokgåvor till akademien i Uppsala’, in Gustav II Adolf och Uppsala universitet (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1982), pp. 93–110.
Annerstedt, Upsala universitetsbiblioteks historia, pp. 8–12. The cathedral had generally housed the books of the university before the formal foundation of the university library.
Uppsala University Library (UUB), Bibl. arkiv K2 and K3. Both are available in digitized versions online: urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-270360 (K2), and urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-270365 (K3), (both last accessed 7 December 2022).
See Peter Sjökvist ‘On the Order of the Books in the First Uppsala University Library Building’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 6 (2019), pp. 315–326; idem, ‘Literary Spoils of War in Uppsala in Practice’, Biblioteka, 25 (34) (2021), pp. 127–140; and idem, ‘The Reception of Books from Braniewo’, pp. 101–116.
See Sjökvist, ‘Literary Spoils of War in Uppsala in Practice’. Cf. Hans Helander, Neo-Latin Literature in Sweden in the Period 1620–1720: Stylistics, Vocabulary and Characteristic Ideas (Uppsala: Acta universitatis Upsaliensis, 2004), pp. 321–336.
In 1626 looted books arrived from Catholic institutions at Frombork and Braniewo. In 1636, looted books arrived from Catholic institutions at Würzburg and Mainz.
UUB, Bibl. arkiv K 2, pp. 119–122.
This division can also be verified in explicit contemporary sources, such as a poem by the Uppsala professor of music and poetry Jonas Columbus (1586–1663) on the Swedish victory at Braniewo (Victoria Brunsbergensis): ‘Hic ubi nubiferas alte est educta sub auras/ ingentis precii libros quae continet aedes,/ et duplex ample librorum conficitur grex./ Dividuus paries omnes qui ponitur inter/ foetibus a sanis scabiosa peculia nobis/ plurima quae data sunt abs te Brunsberga repellit’. Jonas Columbus, manuscript at Linköping Diocese Library, W 28. Apograph at UUB, R 383. There is also a short note stating the same thing in prose in a history of Uppsala by Johan Eenberg (d. 1709), a former employee of the library, from the beginning of the eighteenth century: ‘Det förste academiske bibliothek är … inrättadt åhr 1620, uti det huset, som står uti nord-wäst på domkyrkiogården (därest nu är Consistorium Academicum), hwarest uti öfre wåningen de förnämste, och i under wåningen de sämbre böcker blefwe då planterade, och stode til åhr 1691’. Johan Eenberg, Kort berättelse af de märkwärdigste saker som för de främmande äre at besee och förnimma uti Upsala stad … (Uppsala: Werner, 1703–1704), p. 56.
Sjökvist, ‘The Reception of Books from Braniewo’.
The librarian Harald Vallerius in a list of extant registers in 1678 mentioned the inventory of the Riga books, and added: ‘but we do not know for sure whether these came here or not’ (Men man icke wist wet om de äre hitkomne eller icke). UUB Bibl. arkiv K6, p. 597.
CRJCBC 174 (USTC 616654); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 5; UUB U271, p. 2 or 4 [?].
CRJCBC 41 (USTC 743347); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 5; UUB U271, p. 2.
CRJCBC 168 (USTC 616569); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 5; UUB U271, p. 5.
CRJCBC 180 (USTC 243000); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 5; UUB U271, p. 2 or 4 [?].
CRJCBC 167 (USTC 616568); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 37; UUB U271, p. 5 [?].
CRJCBC 176 (USTC 678685); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 113; UUB U271, p. 7.
CRJCBC 763 (USTC 250113); UUB U271, p. 16.
CRJCBC 499 (USTC 250347); UUB U271, p. 11.
CRJCBC 722 (USTC –), and 104 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, pp. 114–115. In the inventory of Bothvidi there are several entries just stating liber Polonicus, not specifying the exact title. This of course makes an absolute identification impossible.
CRJCBC 234 (USTC 4036246); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 117; UUB U271, [?].
CRJCBC 368 (USTC 641277); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 116; UUB U271, p. 8.
CRJCBC 393 (USTC 671394); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 117; not identified in UUB U271.
CRJCBC 708 (USTC 855533), and 709 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 109; UUB U271, p. 10.
CRJCBC 533 (USTC 625157); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 108; UUB U271, p. 6.
CRJCBC 783 (USTC 240336); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 109; UUB U271, p. 9.
CRJCBC 348 (USTC 182850); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 107; UUB U271, p. 3.
Only the heading for 4:o in this section has the explicit Commentatores Catholici. However, the label is true for all formats in this section, which all only contain Catholic authors.
‘Ex Theologis primus veteris testamenti libros auditoribus proponat, alter libros novi testamenti: tertius controversias tractet, aut veteris aut novi testamenti scripta alterne; quartus locos sive articulos fidei’. Cited from Claes Annerstedt, Upsala universitets historia, Bihang 1: Handlingar 1477–1654 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1877), p. 249.
‘Hebreae linguae professor … juventuti tradat; grammaticam et ejus usum ex textu biblico et obscuriorum ac controversorum locorum explicatione. Graecae linguae professor similiter grammaticam et usum ex novi testamenti libris, ex patrum et veterum auctorum scriptis’. Cited from Annerstedt, Upsala universitets historia, Bihang 1, p. 250.
CRJCBC 679 (USTC 2105211); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 13; UUB U271, p. 10.
CRJCBC 618 (USTC 250351); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 15; UUB U271, p. 12.
CRJCBC 209 (USTC 143448); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 14; UUB U271, p. 10.
CRJCBC 229 (USTC 678317); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 18; UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 41; UUB U271, p. 7 and 8.
Only the 2:o has the explicit Catholici in the heading in this section, but the designation is true for the other formats as well.
See further Sjökvist, ‘Literary Spoils of War in Uppsala in Practice’.
CRJCBC 153 (USTC 250272); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 36; UUB U271, p. 27.
CRJCBC 593 (USTC 844515); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 20; UUB U271, p. 8.
CRJCBC 804 (USTC 626152); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 28; UUB U271, p. 29.
CRJCBC 454 (USTC 663913); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 26; UUB U271, p. 18.
CRJCBC 242 (USTC 204802); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 12; UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 28; UUB U271, p. 13.
UUB Bibl. arkiv K4, p. 193.
CRJCBC 253 (USTC 400698), and 254 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 42. UUB U271, p. 21.
CRJCBC 249 (USTC 635973); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 38; not identified in UUB U271.
CRJCBC 539–540 (USTC 664380 and 404719); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 44; UUB U271, p. 12.
CRJCBC 731 (USTC 675067); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 45; UUB U271, p. 18.
CRJCBC 633 (USTC 848195); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 29; UUB U271, p. 17.
CRJCBC 592 (USTC 658307); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 29; UUB U271, p. 15.
CRJCBC 518 (USTC 838970); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 31; UUB U271, p. 24.
CRJCBC 525 (USTC 689706), and 526 (USTC 689712); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 34; UUB U271, p. 25.
CRJCBC 520 (USTC 675677); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 34; UUB U271, p. 24.
CRJCBC 516 (USTC 641804); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 34; UUB U271, p. 24.
CRJCBC 527 (USTC 137096); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 34; UUB U271, p. 23[?].
CRJCBC 762 (USTC 696752); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 34; UUB U271, p. 23.
CRJCBC 295 (USTC 406780); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 35; UUB U271, p. 24.
CRJCBC 631 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 43; UUB U271, p. 12 or 20[?].
CRJCBC 773 (USTC 695126); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 43; UUB U271, p. 13.
CRJCBC 443 (USTC 626440); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 37; UUB U271, p. 5[?].
CRJCBC 458 (USTC 144137); UUB U271, p. 16.
CRJCBC 54 (USTC 745407); UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, p. 37; UUB U271, p. 2.
See Magnus Nyman, Förlorarnas historia: Katolskt liv i Sverige från Gustav Vasa till drottning Kristina (Stockholm: Katolska bokförlaget, 1997), pp. 229–235.
UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, pp. 47–56.
UUB Bibl. arkiv K2, pp. 75–91.
CRJCBC 264–265 (USTC 147676), 266 (USTC –), 267 (USTC 674202); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 114; UUB U271, p. 16[?].
CRJCBC 260 (USTC 674530); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 115; UUB U271, p. 12[?].
CRJCBC 255 (USTC 690482); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 110; Not identified in UUB U271.
CRJCBC 262 (USTC 241767); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 113; UUB U271, p. 11.
CRJCBC 666 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 110; Not identified in UUB U271.
Annerstedt, Upsala universitets historia, Bihang 1, p. 250.
CRJCBC 696–697 (USTC 684065 and 2014962); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 92; UUB U271, p. 3 or 5[?].
CRJCBC 704 (USTC 628858); UUB U271, p. 12.
CRJCBC 508 (USTC 673499); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 94; UUB U271, p. 4.
CRJCBC 596 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 48; UUB U271, p. 1.
CRJCBC 628 (USTC 411667); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 49; UUB U271, p. 2.
CRJCBC 69 (USTC 748032): UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 51; UUB U271, p. 5.
CRJCBC 545 (USTC 6901200); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 55; UUB U271, p. 16[?].
CRJCBC 126 (USTC 686497), 129–136 (USTC 686497, 443372, 452634, 452637, 443370, 452636, 452635, 452639); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 8; UUB U271, p. 3[?].
CRJCBC 36 (USTC 739970); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 8; UUB U271, p. 1. Medicine, Mathematics, and Law.
CRJCBC 606–607 (USTC 662789 and 689671); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 9; UUB U271, p. 3.
CRJCBC 376 (USTC 628436); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 76; UUB U271, p. 3 or 4[?].
CRJCBC 684 (USTC 250318); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 84; UUB U271, p. 20.
CRJCBC 338 (USTC 691783); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 83; UUB U271, p. 12.
CRJCBC 237 (USTC 601641); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 78; UUB U271, p. 2.
CRJCBC 816 (USTC –); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 85; Not identified in UUB U271.
CRJCBC 646 (USTC 695641); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 89; UUB U271, p. 6.
CRJCBC 410 (USTC 689050); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 89; UUB U271, p. 9.
CRJCBC 60 (USTC 746365); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 91; UUB U271, p. 16.
CRJCBC 320 (USTC 6901057); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 70; UUB U271, p. 7[?].
CRJCBC 422 (USTC 640406); UUB Bibl. arkiv K3, p. 70; UUB U271, p. 5[?].
Annerstedt, Upsala universitets historia, Bihang 1, p. 249.
‘Et quoties aliquis veniens novus advena spectat,/ Ah quantus, clamat, librorum accrevit acervus!’ Jonas Columbus, manuscript at Linköping Diocese Library, W 28. Apograph at UUB, R 383.
See further Peter Sjökvist and Krister Östlund, ‘Bokliga krigsbyten som kulturtransfer?’, in Peter Sjökvist (ed.), Kulturarvsperspektiv: Texter från en seminarieserie om specialsamlingar i Sverige (Uppsala: Uppsala universitetsbibliotek, 2018), pp. 141–149.