Book culture in early modern Europe is mired in paradox. Intertwined with seemingly endless military conflicts and upheavals, it seems, at first glance, to manifest itself in the agitated and convulsive interplay between cultural paradigms and historical events. The more pronounced the external stimuli that incite aggression and foster anxiety, the more unsettled the intellectual and cultural environments. We are wont to assume that this turbulence not only leaves an indelible impact on print culture, but also profoundly influences other forms of cultural expression.
This current volume demonstrates that the early modern period, if viewed through the lens of media culture especially in its print form, projects a completely different view. Before our eyes there unfolds a tapestry, the individual threads of which display discrepancy and dissonance; the patterns formed in the embroidery as a whole, however, seem to possess a surprising degree of consonance, unity and coherence. The modern Europe that takes form in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War projects a surprisingly composite image.
Consequently, it is only fitting to ask whether the purported battle of books, the term chosen as the title of this volume, truly presages and sets in motion broader changes and lasting shifts in cultural values. Do these changes indisputably reflect more than just random fluctuations? How should we apprehend cultural phenomena against the background of institutional transformations and the reconfiguration of power structures in the European North? How are we to reassess the transition from medieval paradigms to more modern ones? To what extent does the development of technical platforms and production methods interplay with ideological notions and perceptions?
These questions compel the authors of this volume to calibrate the porosity and receptiveness of this region, at times broadly, at others, in minute detail. Battles usually promulgate and enforce clear borders and divisions, many of which tend to be less visible and less tangible before the actual commencement of hostilities. They also frequently take place without marked aesthetic impact. Books, regardless of their ideological colouration, resemble works of art. At times, users of very different persuasions can view them and find meaning and purpose in them. They can also be viewed and not necessarily perused. Very portable, even when transported in bulk, they can change their character with a change of environment. They can make spectacular entries, only to disappear from public view just as quickly. They unravel microcosms and allude to macrocosms.
One circumscribed microcosm is at the centre of Matthias Lundberg’s exposition on the interplay between market interests and ecclesiastical idiosyncrasies. He demonstrates how missals, often regarded as crown jewels in the history of early modern printing, seem to live in a world of their own. There seems to be an insatiable appetite for large format publications that display technical brilliance and virtuosity. The ink had hardly dried before dioceses demonstrated their command of the media market by launching new large-scale follow-up editions. The turnarounds were quick and effective.
Against the mirror of these showy editions, Lundberg engages the question whether it is viable to regard the Baltic as a region from the perspective of book production. The fissure between larger centres with resources and those without the infrastructure for conceiving large print projects was striking. This dichotomy allows us, hundreds of years later, to discern how disinterested the producers and printers themselves were in ecclesiastical matters. Lundberg also underscores how infatuated church circles could be with the size of individual print editions.
Book production, however, does not always follow strict market criteria. In her contribution, Lenka Veselá points to the importance of underscoring narrow indicators at the expense of more comprehensive approaches. Detail is all-important, despite the magnitude of her source material! Her contribution returns repeatedly to the question of why some libraries were very coveted, while others not at all. She advocates opening the question of the functionality of books in motion and provides a rather stunning excursus on the bold efforts of the Bishop Mathiae of Strängnäs to open the transferred collections to a broader public upon their arrival at their final destination.
At times, the volume expands time perspectives by concentrating on a limited physical territory. Fryderyk Rozen not only draws attention to the importance of private libraries in early modern Europe, but also on the vagaries of territorial jurisdictions and disappearing histories. Underlying his entire presentation is the notion or erasure. Not only have we lost our appreciation of the differences between Royal and Ducal Prussia, but encounter almost insurmountable barriers in our attempts to focus on the disappearance of a regional cultural tradition in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Reconfigured geography figures in a meaningful way also in Anders Toftgaard’s chapter on Holstein and Denmark. To this day, this area provides a telling example of the, at times, complicated interplay between political and cultural borders. Toftgaard calls into question how the identities of book collectors can raise questions and concerns in trying to devise fault-proof models of cultural interaction. Of particular interest, is the role that the language used in books can be used as a weapon, most often provocatively in dealings with one’s neighbours and rivals. Also insightful is Toftgaard’s observation on the role that book sales can have in reconfiguring cultural identity and literacy. A book auction in Strängnäs in central Sweden provided an opportunity for Danes to shore up and enhance their competitive positioning in a cultural landscape beset with contradictions and turmoil. This can even have repercussions in dealing with issues of heritage in contemporary settings.
Laine Tabora enables us to pause for a moment and view the role that manuscript editing can have on printed cultural values long after any emendations are made. The battle for Tabora can be discerned already in handwritten books of hours, as seemingly minor alterations enabled religious orders to sustain liturgical traditions and practices. New meanings could be created by the seemingly innocuous shift from the singular to the plural in certain passages.
Jonas Nordin raises the interesting question as to how items confiscated or taken as booty differ from those imported through usual channels. What happens once they have found their new homes in their new settings? The entire volume contains a plethora of examples where staking claim to material resources is no guarantee for preferential treatment or enhanced legacy. Propriety does not appear to be influenced by the process by which ownership and control is transferred. Without stating it explicitly, he intimates that the practice of conspicuous consumption does not follow the same patterns when physical objects contain intellectual capital. How are we to assess intellectual value upon its assimilation in a new environment? This question should garner more attention, since selection and curatorship was not necessarily performed by specialists or enthusiasts, but by secretaries of the field chancellery or other clerks of various sorts. Extremely titillating is Nordin’s claim that the movement of intellectual property may have a direct correlation with the rise of censorship and control.
This line of thought leads well into Kathleen M. Comerford’s reflection as to why certain books have appeal and others not. Closely related with that is the question of how books are used, especially after shifts in ownership. Comerford provides us with a glimpse into this world of how regulae, indices, and prescriptive guidelines such as the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, provided guidance for those faced with challenge of weeding in the early modern world-wide-web. This volume insightfully documents a very central shift in this world – from one in which libraries were not yet selecta in more modern sense of the word to one in which the organic growth and shrinkage of collections developed into a habitus. This habitus endured for centuries and was fractured and fissured significantly for the first time in a significant way with the onset of the digital world. The confiscation of books contributed to the development of a practice of selection – one is tempted to claim that the early modern period teaches us that disappropriation is an indispensable part or collection development.
Curatorship is the activity that enables us to deconstruct these processes. Elin Andersson in her presentation on an early modern academic gymnasium directs our attention to the notion of curatorship. Anderson concentrates more on the concept of curatorship than on individual curators, the more common approach. A library connected to an educational institution must address the question of what exactly is a useful book. Useful books play an elevated role in curriculum development. Curriculums are, and always have, set in motion volatile exchange. All through history, discussions about them have drawn battle lines and allegiances.
Hanna Matzheika, in turn, reminds us that books do not instigate battles on their own. They need their instigators. Not always was content the most important issue. In Poland-Lithuania, a Calvinist-Protestant Commonwealth, book cultures could coexist. This was especially true of poetry. This coexistence manifested itself even materially. Sustainability could manifest itself in use, re-use and repair. A Cistercian parchment could seemingly effortlessly be reinvented as a part of a Jesuit flyleaf!
Religious orders played a significant role in early modern book culture in North-eastern Europe. A common misconception is that religious orders thrived in isolated settings. Andris Levāns and Gustavs Strenga unfold a rapturous tale of the role that mendicant orders played in urban settings. There arose allegiances that left visible footprints in book culture. But even within particular orders, internal reform could disrupt social networks. Religious orders could ally themselves, at times, with the nobility, at others with merchants, with very different outcomes. In these settings, private book collections could interact with collective ones in astounding ways, thus forming multi-level book cultures in which women played leading roles, not only as stewards and custodians, but also as patrons and benefactors. The most active engagement with books not infrequently took place in the most unexpected environs. Books could thrive not only in seemingly unnoticed and secluded hideaways, but also in the crossfire of cultural social and political forces.
Some of the most effective weapons in battle could be catalogues that served as windows to that which the native eye not always could perceive. The key to a material’s imperishableness and renewability lay frequently in the infrequency of its use. The confluence of these two phenomena, placement and catalogues, comes to the fore very vividly in the contributions of Peter Sjökvist and Laura Kreigere-Liepiņa.
1 The Practical and Symbolic Use of Books as Objects, Aids and Collections
A question that remains unanswered in almost every contribution in this volume is whether books engaged individually behave differently from those that are parts of collections. Does their individualization and privatization alter patterns of use? This issue unambiguously also demonstrates that books do not necessarily need to be opened and perused to exert influence and partake in societal building processes. This can happen in the following ways:
(1) Books can grant status and prestige by their sheer bulk, artistic quality, and visual impact. This volume manifests repeatedly how the desirability of individual objects and collections is only marginally related to use. Even more surprising perhaps for modern readers, is how neglect and indifference, disregard for subject matter, could set in motion unexpected processes.
(2) This volume also seems to illuminate how early modern books, when not used for devotional ends, were surprisingly often used as encyclopaedic reference tools. This was true of one’s engagement with text, as well as with image. Some of the most sought after works incorporated intricate search systems with cross references and other tracking tools.
Early modern society was permeated with an abundance of sources the access to which did not present unconquerable hurdles. Source criticism acquired new depths and dimensions through the transformation of cognitive abilities not only in how users construed sources, but also in how the sources themselves were perceived. Books with interesting Windows-like layouts and physical tab-systems frequently show the greatest use. To reach any significant conclusions in these matters it is necessary to peruse collections and physically engage them – a task not made easier by restricted access to storage areas today. The early modern era was a golden age for reference source materials. It took some two hundred years for this force to reappear.
(3) Books also served as financial weapons – a way in which to arrange financial dealings and commercial exchange. This volume illustrates clearly, how war-booty was not only driven by policies to gain access to information, but also to accrue wealth. It provided an alternative system with which to settle accounts, certify balances and, at times, intimidate and fiscally embarrass enemies and opposing players. Books even more than artworks also provided an alternative currency. There are parallels with our contemporary crypto-currency. They both constitute a financial system that lacks a central regulating authority, thus introducing an element of decentralization. The more mercurial the times, the more effective were dealings not overseen by any governing agency.
(4) This volume also illustrates how books served as an important tool in conflict resolution. The shambles that battlefields leave behind can be rectified and regulated with the help of physical objects be they works of arts or books. The most normative text in this regard was Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis (1625). Almost singlehandedly, this manual, introduced in this volume by Jonas Nordin, spelled out how books could be used in conflict resolution and outlined the hitherto lacking notions of how a law of booty and prize could be formulated.
For most of us, the first association with the concept of battle in which books are used as instruments of warfare is with war booty. Hugo Grotius was a true pioneer in this subject area. Grotius demonstrated how ideological warfare could be intermeshed not only with market regulation, but also with a court of justice. More was at stake here than a public show of military or political power intended to peeve an opponent. A stockroom full of artworks did not necessarily improve one’s cash flow, but it could solidify one’s money reserve – a tool to improve one’s line of revolving credit on an international market. It hearkens back to gold credit – important to possess, but difficult to use.
(5) The early modern battle of books coincides with the proliferation and expansion of the Jesuit educational network in the European north. In today’s book world, distinctiveness is a highly prized quality that provides added value. The Jesuit collections were in many regards the antithesis of this and left their mark by their number and their likeness. By expropriating one collection, one could claim a limited victory, no matter how spectacular the prize may have been. These small battles created sudden headlines and notoriety. Just as those of today, collections could disappear quickly from sight and collective consciousness.
The Jesuit collections demonstrated how sheer number and spread played an important role in times of political tension and ideological warfare. Neither is the role that glamour and fashion played to be disparaged; comprehensive networks of book collections far outstripped individual items, no matter what symbolic qualities they possessed, no matter their opulence. On the battlefield, uniformity and ubiquity proved to be the most effective weapon in the battle of books. It is no coincidence that Jesuit collections are the subject of interest for a number of the authors of this volume.
(6) The Jesuit predilection for uniformity opens the question of variance and eclecticism. Parallel to the Jesuit ‘franchise-form’ libraries, we find simultaneously cabinets of curiosities that served as showcases for the informational/cognitive power of variance. Here the goal was not to assemble as comprehensive a collection of books or works of art that fit into certain stylistic categories, but to create laboratories in which exploration took place communally and multi-medially. Here the battlefield was reconfigured. The outer appearance of books by the early modern period was quite standardized and uniform in appearance. Only opened, did they significantly differ. ‘Opening’ a painting involved deciphering its iconological confessional perspective. Cabinets of curiosities, on the other hand, constituted a no man’s land, geographically broad, but not bound to one location. The viewer was asked to relocate him- or herself.
(7) To outperform one’s adversaries in this battle of books it was incumbent upon the participants to demonstrate technical proficiency and creativity. It was necessary not only to create new platforms, but also to reinforce and leverage existing ones. During the early modern period, the appearance of books underwent a profound shift in the way information was produced, viewed, and assessed. Of supreme importance were print techniques that furthered visualization and inquiry. In this battle, the appearance of books could change marginally, but their valence and their firepower could be encased and cloaked in technically advanced production methods and techniques.
2 Reconfigurations as Time Capsules
In most circumstances, we associate battles with build-ups and breakdowns, suddenness and unpredictability, and dramatic shift. This volume clearly demonstrates that the great build-ups only infrequently led to real change. These build-ups are frequently much more convulsive than the transfers themselves. Individual books or those that are a part of collections seem to lose their distinctiveness and idiosyncratic quality once they are moved. Puzzling are the circumstances that surround the transfer of books. There are countless contemporary examples of how the effectors of these transfers pursue objects with greater vigour and intensity than the skilled craftsmen and artisans themselves.
This volume also compels us to reconsider the notion that library identities seem to oscillate between two very distinct, though contrapuntal identities – that of the isolated safe haven and that of hubs of intertwined entanglement. From the contributions here it is clear that entanglement and simultaneity are not to be immediately conflated with battlegrounds.
Our contemporary notion of the library is that of a safeguard, albeit one that does not always live up to its call. To understand this role better, we must introduce yet another tension integral to the battle for books, that between suddenness and intransigence. We are apt to regard libraries as only marginally affected by change. A library that is removed from public space, a library the access to which is not used as a tool of political enforcement, is frequently immune to change; their most frequent challenge is to remain relevant and useful for the societal processes in their midst that motivate history and cultural evolution. Physical destruction of libraries takes place, but seldom.
This volume presents a telling example. The confessional battles in Riga in the post-Reformation era do not result in unrestricted iconoclasm; institutions, practices, and attitudes continue to live their lives in varying forms and to varying degrees. Not every institution was worn into submission. Instead of working in the open, books were safeguarded and stored, preserved not for intensive use in the moment, but for an unforeseeable future. Just as a pilot light does not provide enough heat for heat-intensive cooking, so, too, were books placed on a back burner. This explains how many seemingly untenable collections survive. The more irrelevant they are, the greater the chance that their possessions fall out of the spotlight and survive. The convent of Mary Magdalene Riga, we learn, provides such a haven in a turbulent world. And this is not merely a forlorn and distant historical example. Collections have been safeguarded in a similar manner during more recent times – inaccessible and icebound, collections can go into hibernation. Hibernation contributes to the natural ability of items to survive the presence of onslaughts of the most varied kind.
The library world in early modern Europe could be very insular. In many cases, libraries were the last institutions affected by change. Except for a few spectacular, politically motivated media events, they lived rather reclusive lives. Most often private or off-limits, they reflected individual tastes and creativity – not those of society as a whole. Individuality could be collective, as the Jesuit libraries so poignantly demonstrate. This was a franchised individuality, one lacking in medieval settings. Manuscripts fostered vastly diverging forms of devotion more subject to constant appraisal and change.
An almost sacred value for early modern libraries was safeism. Guaranteeing safety became ever more difficult as their invisibility decreased. There is an underlying expectation that collections are fragile and can be disbanded at any moment. Thus, collectors are wont not to flaunt wealth, but to ensure that collections reflect the collectors’ good sense of style and taste. This involved making trade-offs demanded by practical and moral concerns.
The greater the emphasis on safety, the more private and secure the collections. Once again, the Jesuit collections stand out, as they were integrated into instruction. Instruction, in turn, unleashed a creativity that extended the walls of the physical collections. There arose a tradition grounded in material elusiveness. A prime example of this is Jesuit drama. Seldom did the plays themselves find their way into the physical book collections. Yet the organizational imperative to record and report led to the rise of rich archival collections outlining the process of production that not only complemented the book collections themselves, but also infused them with energy and life. Thus the key to understanding the inner workings of book collections comes not from the books themselves alone or the occasional catalogue, but from source material, outlining the performances and their production. It is very possible that the most dynamic collections are not book, but ephemeral collections. As frequently is the case, the volatile oral, performative, ephemeral world makes the book world seem stringent and intransigent in comparison. Yet books remain the object of desire. The plays are much more mobile than the books. Books, at times, could be more a liability than an asset.
Idiosyncratic and iconoclastic keepers play major roles in the grand theatre of early modern book collecting. Interestingly enough, they are largely missing in this battle report with the exception of some surreptitious nuns. The names of owners appear to be brandished in this volume, but were early modern books truly without keepers? Did books have cameo roles, supporting roles, or were they at the centre of attention? At times, it appears that they were independent of all human involvement, frozen in time. One could almost draw the conclusion that a book incorporated into a collection lost its dynamic quality if it was not embraced and taken care of by a keeper. The more eccentric the keeper, the more things happened. The keepers were the only ones who viewed the mass of books as an intertwined organic entity with its special identity. They were the ones who systematized and catalogued; they breathed life into the collections. In many regards, the keepers were the catalysts moving books to the front lines.
Since the collections and their keepers conflated, the story of the battle of books cannot be told without paying attention to their contribution. By directing the spotlight at the transfer of collections in bulk, we ignore that books were exchanged and reallocated. It is quite possible that he greatest battle of books took place out of sight – keepers weeding, replacing and exchanging, restocking, physically moving them around as chess pieces, and, in many cases, receiving them as recompense for services and incorporating them unobtrusively into one’s own private collections or just losing track of them for no particular reason at all.
Regardless of their form, reconfigurations of collections play an important role in ideological battles. Not always was what you saw that what you got! Material could be excerpted, abridged, and taken out of context, thus muddling the original source. This was a frequent ploy in confessional battles and provided for the opportunity to circumvent censorship. This was the tour de force in controversial questions. There was no purer sense of conquest than using the writing of one’s opponent to further one’s own polemic intentions. Today, this would be considered as blatant plagiarism – using material without providing their source – but here the ends justified the means. Thus, Jesuit devotional texts could be retooled and rearranged and neatly made to fit in Protestant settings. Books could enter enemy territory without being noticed.
3 Relocating Books from Private to Public Spheres
The early modern age is also a harbinger of a new dichotomy in the world of books. On the one hand, private reading, which previously had been the domain of manuscripts, many frequently copied, written and illuminated on demand, now was closely intertwined with production processes that were determined by market forces of demand and supply. Gaining possession of an individual manuscript involved, in some ways, assuming and appropriating a very specific identity, both of the producer and the user. With the spread of print, the object could be monetized and relegated to a commodity. This involved a redefining of individuality and autonomy in reading. The notion of collectiveness was transformed. It lost some of its performative character. This was replaced by the notion that imaginary collective thinking could be fostered when a wide spectrum of readers were engaging the same text, even though each in his or her own particular way.
A pioneer in this regard was the Swedish polymath Gabriel Sparwenfeld (1655–1727). In Swedish civil service, he understood that the real battle of books did not primarily involve sequestering books in private libraries, but rather transforming them into public space. Moving books and collections would be of the greatest benefit if they contributed to change markedly the essence of societies. He also understood that opening borders, ultimately, would have the most significant lasting effect. The purpose was not to assume a defensive stance and to preserve an ideologically uniformity or to extend cross-jurisdictional conflicts, by emptying the hard-discs of one’s enemies, but to promote and enhance movement that would serve constructive ends and not merely political positioning.
The true battle of books for him involved constructing a worldview that was not purely based on bilateralism. This meant not cleansing collections of rival publication, but acquainting oneself with a broader playing field. For Sparwenfeld, this implied traveling extensively and learning languages – a prerequisite for being able to access the riches in this world. He did not believe that this could be done by engaging a linguistic topography in direct view; one also needed to open one’s eyes to the rich flora that existed, but may have been outside one’s direct scope. His travels took him to places off the beaten track and involved learning languages that provided access to this rich tapestry of cultural expression.
Sparwenfeld was a prophet of the globalism to which we aspire today. Well aware that the greatest danger was ruptures in the chain of memory, he proposed taking intellectually in possession and serious engagement with the unknown by launching the idea of public institutions that would contribute to the notion of stewardship and deflate antagonism. As Wolfgang Undorf so poignantly underscores in his contribution, the whole notion of battles may be undermined by the insight that we have a penchant for misconstruing borders and devaluing market forces. Ironically, one of the most powerful market forces was the Index of Prohibited Books that directly contributed to the ‘more modern’ commodification and commercialization of books. This volume illustrates that the real war may not have been fought on the battlefield of legitimacy, ideology and vaunting. Its physical dimension may not have been its most important attribute. Its contours were vague, just as those of the then nascent and now ubiquitous modern financial market.