Many reading practices did not physically impact the book. Readers could develop the most intricate interpretations of the biblical text, fully emerge themselves in devout experiences by using biblical passages as objects for thorough meditation, and eagerly engage with the paratextual liturgical reading aids to include the book in their preparations for Mass – whilst leaving no visible, physical traces whatsoever. Thus, although not all dynamic reading practices are detectable through the study of material evidence, the types of interactions that did leave traces share a specific characteristic: they allowed readers and their activities to become, in a way, part of the production process of the book; part of the paratextual, textual, visual, and material entity of the Bible. Through the use of pens, scissors, or glue, readers were provided with tools to respond to the book, to shape its contents, and to serve as important agents in the redesign, formation, and later reception of a copy.
This chapter explores various ways in which readers responded to, reflected upon, and interacted with their Bibles. Firstly, I will discuss the ways in which readers reflected upon the textual and paratextual contents of their Bibles. In a sense, this is the most traditional way of understanding the practice of reading a book: grasping the words on the page, interpreting their meaning, and placing them within a broader context of knowledge in order to embrace and remember their content. The second part of this chapter focuses on traces that relate to the accommodation of certain reading practices. Rather than taking the textual and paratextual content of their Bibles at face value, readers regularly shaped and transformed their copies in order to suit their practical or confessional preferences and to enable or ease specific reading practices. Users could add structuralising elements (such as page numbering or tables of contents) or modify the contents of the book by including or removing certain textual or visual elements (for instance maps). These traces and transformations are as much traces for reading as they are traces of reading. Not only do they show how readers engaged with the book and its text, they also illustrate how certain reading practices were actively accommodated, optimised, and framed by readers themselves.
1 Reflecting on Textual and Paratextual Content
As Saenger and Heinlen have stated, early modern readers generally did not share the modern perspective on book use which ‘views the printed page as sacrosanct and consequently all handwritten additions to the printed page as … detrimental.’1 On the contrary: reading with the pen in hand was not only widespread, but also regularly instructed and taught as a suitable and useful way of thoroughly reading a text and properly ordering one’s thoughts.2 In his De ratione studii (‘On the method of study’), Desiderius Erasmus states that text passages that are especially important, skilfully written, or otherwise exceptional ‘should be indicated by some appropriate mark’ in order to stimulate the memorisation of these passages.3
Moreover, when they responded to the textual and paratextual contents of their Bibles, Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s readers not only made an impact on their own memorisations and interpretations, but also influenced the experiences of later readers – similarly to the way printed paratextual elements could. As psychological studies have indeed confirmed, the presence of notes or underlining left by previous readers directs processes of navigation, interpretation, and memorisation in later instances of reading.4 In psychology and education sciences, this has been connected to the Von Restorff effect: the insight that the isolated position of a certain item against a more homogeneous background makes it more likely that the item is remembered.5 Furthermore, eye-tracking research by Chi, Gumbrecht, and Hong has confirmed that ‘readers’ attention is directed to highlighted areas, regardless of their appropriateness to the task.’6 In other words: even if later readers would not understand why previous readers marked or annotated certain textual sections, they would still be influenced by the very presence of these traces.
1.1 Applying and Creating Knowledge Structures
As discussed in previous chapters, various paratextual elements, in particular in the folio-sized editions, emphasised and facilitated the function of early modern Dutch Bibles as spaces of knowledge creation. The entire ‘library’ of Bible books was collected within one volume, and the presence of paratexts such as cross-references and topical registers framed the coherence and connectivity of all the different parts. In addition, studious reading practices were stimulated through marginal glosses and prologues, which placed biblical information within a broader world of knowledge, including classical history and astrology. In readers’ annotations, the functioning of these knowledge structures can be seen reflected. Similar to printed marginalia, handwritten annotations can be divided into responses that point outside the book and those that point inside; those that supplement the text or provide contextualising information versus those that encourage the reader to attend to the very textual site itself.7
A copy in which outward pointing annotations were made, is a Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Leerdam, SBM), which was once owned, used, and ‘traced’ by the sixteenth-century Bible owner Johan Crieckelman.8 Crieckelman worked as a notary and magistrate in the town of Heer (currently part of Maastricht) in the province of Limburg.9 His recognisable chancery cursive writing is found alongside annotations in a contemporary secretary script. The traces found in this copy range from underlining to extensive annotations in Dutch, German, and Latin, and are mainly found in the first five books, in Proverbs, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the four Gospels (with the exception of Mark), Acts, and the Letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Hebrews. In various Latin annotations, Crieckelman provided supplementary information. For instance, above the start of each Gospel, he noted in which year the text was supposedly written, for instance: S. Matheus Scripsit Euangelium. Anno. 39. Furthermore, at the end of the Gospel of Luke, he listed the original addressees of the Gospels: Marcus Romanis. Sed Joannes Asianis. Lucas Achaijs. Matheus scripsit Hebreis.
Similar interests in the historical background and origin of certain Bible books can be recognised in other surviving copies. In a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Haarlem, NBG, 32”1535”-Lies. 14839), Daniel Tijcke, a priest of Dworp and Alsenberg, who left his ownership mark in the book in 1587, commented as follows on the book of Wisdom:10
The book of Wisdom cannot be found anywhere in the Hebrew [tradition]. But it is addressed to Philo the Jew because it follows the Greek style. And it is called the Book of Wisdom because it prophesies about the future and also about the suffering of Christ Jesus. This is the wisdom of God the Almighty Father. In eternity, Amen.11
By including this contextualising information, which is embedded in theological tradition, the priest enabled himself and any future readers to return to it anytime.
Other copies contain annotations that provide specific supplementary information about a single verse or word. Some of these annotations reflect the interest in translation and languages that can also be encountered in the printed glosses of Peetersen van Middelburch’s 1541 Bible. In a 1526 Liesvelt Bible (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-30), for instance, an alternative translation of the verse Genesis 2:17 (‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’) has been written down in the margin: ‘In Hebrew it says: dyingly die.’12 Furthermore, this annotator not only provided additional translations but also clarified certain words. For instance, next to Daniel 13:9 (i.e. Susanna 1:9; ‘And they perverted their own mind, and turned away their eyes that they might not look unto heaven, nor remember just judgments’) the annotator added an explanation of the word ‘perverted’: ‘Perverted. That is: [to the] wrong [side].’13
Readers could also add to the intertextual entirety of the book through the inclusion of references to other, non-biblical texts. The empty space of the flyleaf proves to have been particularly suitable for the addition of new texts, although some readers also left references to non-biblical texts in the margins. On a flyleaf in the back of the only surviving copy of Peetersen van Middelburch’s New Testament of 1546, a sixteenth-century annotator quoted several Latin phrases from Virgil’s Georgics (book II). In translation:
Such days as these, I can imagine well, shone at the dawn of the infant world and took no different course: springtime it was, the whole wide world was keeping spring, and the east winds spared their icy blasts: then the first cattle drank in the light, the earthborn race of men reared its head from the stony plains.14
More common, however, are references to religious scholarly authorities. On the back flyleaf of a Peetersen van Middelburch 1541 Bible (Brussels, KBR, 14.885.C), for instance, an anonymous reader has referred to works by St. Jerome, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Gregory the Great. The texts that are quoted all concern critical responses of these three writers on the topic of heresy. For instance, the annotation quotes a fragment from Bernard of Clairvaux’s 65th sermon on the Song of Songs. In this sermon, Bernard supposedly responded to a letter about troubling ‘heretic’ communities near Cologne, written by Erewin, a prior of the abbey of Steinfeld.15 In the cited verse, Bernard criticised the ways in which heretics aim to be glorified for their knowledge: ‘The one aim of all heretics has always been to gain renown for the particular extent of their knowledge’.16 In other writings too, Bernard of Clairvaux considered great curiosity an intellectual vice. For him and other influential theologians, highly curious people aimed at gaining knowledge that would surpass their human capacities and were motivated to do so by pride and vanity.17
In accordance with the quote of Bernard’s sermon, the reader’s annotation on Gregory the Great’s work also concerns the ways heretics deal with knowledge.18 The annotator quoted – in Latin – part of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, book 5:23, paragraph 45:
Now they are loath to have a common sort of knowledge, lest they should be placed on a par with the rest of their fellow creatures, and they are ever making out new things, which whilst others know nothing of, they plume their own selves on the pre-eminence of their knowledge before inexperienced minds.19
With these references to the works of important theologians and Church Fathers, the annotator took part in, and extended, the knowledge aggregating system of the book. Furthermore, the annotations not only show an interest in and knowledge of the work of influential figures in Christianity (and particularly Catholicism), but also mark an awareness of contemporary religious developments in which the question ‘what defines a heretic?’ was highly relevant. The annotations in this copy demonstrate a certain disregard for or criticism of Reformation-minded ideas. By including these references, the reader brought contemporary debates into the space of the book.
References to Church Fathers can also be found in the already mentioned Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Leerdam, SBM). Notary Crieckelman added two references to texts by Saint Augustine, the second actually being pseudo- Augustinian. Next to an underlined verse of Matthew 11:12, he quoted from Augustine’s eighth confession: Augustinus [s]implices et indocti [re]gnum caelorum rapiunt nos cum literis [nost]ris ad infernum [de]scendimus: ‘Augustine. The simple and unlearned take up the kingdom of heaven, while we with our knowledge descend into hell’.20 On the flyleaf in the back of the book, then, Crieckelman mentioned Augustine again, citing the pseudo-Augustinian text De duodecim abusivis saeculi. The text De duodecim abusivis saeculi, ‘of the twelve abuses of the world’, discusses twelve types of unwanted and unlawful behaviour.21 It was written by an anonymous Irish author in the seventh century, but has been ascribed to various authors, amongst whom were Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, and Augustine.22 The text has remained popular throughout the Middle Ages, up to the early modern period.23 Crieckelman has written the author’s name and the text’s incipit in his chancery cursive script, and the rest of the twelve-part text is added in secretary script. Furthermore, about a century later, a seventeenth-century reader apparently acknowledged the benefits of including this text in the Bible and added a German translation of the De duodecim abusivis saeculi underneath the Latin annotation. Examples like these illustrate how readers took part in the knowledge aggregating functions of the book and included new intertextual connections. Moreover, as the German addition reveals, later readers would interact with the book as an entirety, a unity of both printed and hand-added material.
1.2 Pointing ‘Inwards’
Readers’ traces illustrate not only how readers responded to and created knowledge structures that reached beyond the text, but also how they reflected on specific details, stressed the content of a specific textual passage, or strengthened the internal connections between various parts of the book. The inward-pointing references and markings in Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles take various forms. In some cases, readers added annotations that bear their direct response to a certain textual fragment. For instance, in a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-36), a reader responded to Luke 12:53 (‘The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother …’) by writing down in the margin: ‘This is incomprehensible to me’.24 It remains unclear whether the annotator has issues with the theological underpinning of this phrase, or whether they simply struggled with the semantic structure. More common than such direct responses, however, are traces such as markings, cross-references, and intertextual comparisons. These types of reading traces demonstrate how readers established textual hierarchies and interrelated the various contents within the entirety of the Bible.
Markings appear in great variety, ranging from the underlining of a single word to elaborately drawn manicules in the margin. Individual readers often display a preference for a certain way of marking, but also regularly alternate between various marking styles or combine them. In some cases, the diversity of marks in a single copy can help in identifying which reader left which marks, particularly when some of the marks contain handwriting that can be connected to an ownership mark. Nevertheless, the majority of marks are difficult to attribute to an individual reader or to a certain moment in time. Contrary to specific forms of script, many types of non-verbal marks were employed by readers across a wide time frame. The manicule, for instance, remained one of the most common marking symbols between at least the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries. The continuity in the design of manicules makes it difficult to date them. However, dating a practice such as underlining is an even greater challenge. Underlining practices can be found from medieval manuscripts up to modern study books and usually do not follow specific ‘styles’. In some instances, the ink can be recognised and connected to verbal annotations made with the same pen. However, when these are absent, dating such traces is often virtually impossible.
Although most studies into reading traces mention the presence of markings such as manicules and underlining, difficulties regarding identification, characterisation, and dating have left these types of traces underrepresented. This is particularly striking because of their sweeping presence in early modern books. The most frequent type of readers’ traces in Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles is marking. Not only is the marking of textual sections by symbols or underlining regularly the only type of reading trace to be found, when a surviving copy contains any written glosses, it almost always also contains markings.
In the surviving copies under consideration in this study, several common ways of marking a textual passage can be distinguished. Regardless of their form, these all assert that the marked text is important and needs to be distinguished from all other words and phrases surrounding it. Firstly, the type of marking that occurs most often is the underlining of textual entities, either single words, phrases, sentences, or full paragraphs. As has been discussed before, underscored parts of the text would be remembered more easily and allowed readers to quickly return to important elements in later encounters with the page. Underlining a passage made it stand out from the background, highlighting its place on the page and its content.25 The practice, furthermore, is quick and versatile, enabling readers to mark single words as easily as multiple lines.
A second way in which early modern Bible readers highlighted textual sections, was by drawing symbols such as manicules, crosses, small horizontal lines, dots, or circles in the margins of the page. Rarer are symbols such as florilegia: depictions of small flowers or clovers. This type of marking symbol can be found in, for instance, a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (London, BL, 3061.i.12.) where, underneath the woodcut at the end of the Book of Job, a reader drew a green flower. Slightly smaller but relatively similar florilegia have been included in a 1538 Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Cambridge, ULC, BSS.223.B38). In this copy, clover-like symbols have been placed, for instance, in the margins next to Exodus 22:16 (‘And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife’) and Numbers 16:26 (‘And he spoke unto the congregation, saying: Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of their’s, lest ye be consumed in all their sins’). Rather than using pen or pencil to draw them, this reader appears to have used a small stamp to create identical clovers. The manicules in this copy (included only in the Bible books from Genesis up to Numbers) were also stamped rather than individually drawn, using the same ink as in the stamped clovers. Apparently, the user (or users) of this Bible had access to at least two types of stamps that allowed him or her to conveniently mark certain textual passages.26 The fact that such objects existed emphasises the frequency and commonality with which marks such as manicules and florilegia were added to early modern, printed texts.
Whereas these marking symbols are mainly of use to point out small textual fragments, e.g. a single line or verse, marks such as vertical lines and brackets were used to highlight larger sections of text. Brackets are found in their round, curly, square, or angle variant. In many cases, a word or a marking symbol is placed at the closed side of the bracket. Brackets and vertical lines are often combined with crosses, manicules, or notate bene. For example, in the 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Utrecht, MCC, BMH Warm od1259F12), verses 7–14 in Isaiah 44, which concern idolatry, have been marked with a long-stretched bracket and, on its closed side and in the intertextual margin, the (abbreviated) word ‘nota’ (fig. 31).
Marking of Isaiah 44:7–14 in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1541. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, BMH Warm od1259F12
Verbal ways of marking a certain passage also occur. Most common is the writing of ‘nota bene’ (often abbreviated to ‘NB’) in the margin. These could take creative forms, as is the case in a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (London, BL, 3041.h.7), where a reader wrote ‘nooooootabene’ in the margin of Jeremiah 30:15 (‘Why criest thou for thine affliction? Thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquity: because thy sins were increased, I have done these things unto thee’).
Another way of verbally marking a textual passage was by copying words, sentences, or verses from the main text in the margin, reminding in their form and content of the short summaries printed in the margins of various New Testaments by Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch. Various examples of this type of marking can be found in a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (London, BL, C.64.g.5). In the Bible book of Genesis alone, the reader has repeated or summarised printed text in the blank spaces around it no fewer than 102 times. When the outer margins were already filled with printed glosses, the reader-annotator used any other open space in close proximity to the textual section they wanted to mark, such as the space between the two columns and half empty lines. Whereas some annotations are exact repetitions of the printed text, others rephrase or summarise the text they accompany. An example of the latter is the annotation next to Genesis 3:12. The printed text ‘The woman whom you gave to me as wife, gave me of the tree’ (Dat wijf die ghi mi gegeuen hebt tot eender gesellini gaf mi vanden boom) is summarised in the margin as ‘The woman made me do that’ (Dat wijf heeft mij daer toe gebracht). Note the use of the first-person singular: the annotator did not comment on this biblical passage from their own perspective, but verbalised and summarised how Adam vocalised these events.
The reader-annotator of this copy shaped an infrastructure of knowledge that points inwards to the printed text and simultaneously creates new dynamics in the margins of the page. The reader as well as any future readers would be invited to find their entrance to the text through the repetitions and summaries in the margin. This way of marking and remembering text is, in a way, related to the early modern practice of creating commonplace books. Here, the margins serve as open spaces for collecting elements of the printed text, either as full quotations or through rephrasing and summary. As has been established in previous studies, particularly regarding early modern England, taking notes and extracting information from books played an important role in early modern devotional practices.27 Practices of commonplacing, either in separate notebooks or by collecting annotations in the margins or on blank flyleaves, show that early modern readers viewed their Bibles as intertextual entities, with which they actively engaged.
It is often difficult to reconstruct why specific readers marked certain textual sections. In some cases, however, a reader’s frequent marking of specific textual passages implies their preference for certain topics. This is the case, for instance, in a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Utrecht, ULU, THO RAR 6–41) where a reader marked with the word ‘that’ (dat) the verses Matthew 9:16, Mark 2:21, and Luke 5:36. Each of these places concerns the same parable about the use of new cloth on an old garment, e.g. Luke 5:36: ‘No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.’ This marking ‘sequence’ may be inspired by the printed cross-reference to the comparable passages in Matthew and Luke that Liesvelt included next to Mark 2:21.
Regardless of the motivations that sparked readers’ markings, by highlighting sections of the text readers created new hierarchical structures on the page. Together with the lay-out of the page and printed paratextual elements, readers’ hand-added marks provided a navigational and interpretive framework of the connections and hierarchies within the biblical text. Whereas the printed paratext displays the printer-publisher’s considerations, these reader-annotators created a personal system of entries to the text that relied upon their understanding of what was relevant and what was not, what needed to be remembered especially well, or what ought to light up from the page at first glance. Moreover, their markings would remain influential after the book moved hands. As will be familiar to any modern person who once borrowed a book from the library that suddenly proved to contain the highlighting frenzies of a previous user, the marks of long-gone readers would continue to thoroughly impact, direct, or simply frustrate later users and their interpretations of the text.
As the abovementioned marking of three similar parables in different Bible books demonstrates, readers were often well aware of, and interested in, the interconnectivity between various parts of the Bible. Aids to help harmonise the contents of the four Gospels were widespread. The Eusebian canon tables, in particular, were highly popular and regularly included in Bible editions, for instance in Willem Vorsterman’s Bible of 1533–1534. Although these canons were not incorporated in any of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bible editions, the presence of paratextual elements such as printed cross- references and topical registers nevertheless enabled readers to gain insight into the intertextual structures between the many books of the Bible and ultimately utilise this knowledge in their understanding of God’s Word. Many surviving copies of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles bear readers’ traces such as typological annotations and hand-added cross-references that reflect how readers actively engaged with the intertextualities within the biblical library. Readers were actively concerned with the relationship between the Old and the New Testament, the connections between various Bible sections, and the coherency of the Bible as a whole. Moreover, readers’ responses to certain parts of the Bible demonstrate that they were often very well aware of typological traditions that concerned the interdependence between the Old and New Testaments. An example is a reader’s comment on Genesis 37:1 (‘And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan’) in a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (London, BL, C.64.g.5). According to the annotator, Joseph can be seen as a prefiguration of Christ because he was ‘hated [and] persecuted by his brothers’, as was Christ.28 Readers also paid attention to prophecies in the Old Testament. Next to Deuteronomy 18:15 (‘The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken’), the reader of the heavily annotated 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C3.) wrote ‘of Christ’.29
Readers most commonly expressed their awareness of the interconnectivity between various parts of the Bible by adding handwritten cross-references to the already abundant number of printed cross-references in the margins of their Bibles. In the bottom margin of Isaiah 5, the reader-annotator of a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Antwerp, MPM, R 53.12) listed no fewer than fifty-five cross-references to chapters of, amongst others, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Luke, Matthew, and Psalms. According to the note at the end of the list, ‘all these chapters address the fifth chapter of Isaiah and provide [their] opinion and knowledge, and a few speak about both.’30 The surviving copies of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles confirm Molekamp’s conclusion that the growing popularity of printed cross-references in the sixteenth century did not end the practice of handwritten additions.31 The presence of printed cross-references rather seems to have shaped and stimulated an intertextual structure for interpreting the Bible that was actively embraced by many of the readers of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles.
1.3 Responding to Confessional Markers
In their responses to the Bible’s content, some readers display particular concern with, and interest in, confessional characteristics of the translation. As mentioned before, the translations of Liesvelt’s Bibles as well as of Peetersen van Middelburch’s 1535 edition contain various Reformation-oriented features. These include the use of words such as ‘congregation’ (rather than ‘church’) and ‘elders’ (rather than ‘priests’), e.g. in James 5:14: ‘Is anyone sick among you, let him call for the elders of the congregation, and let them pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.’32 Furthermore, verses that support the observance of the seven sacraments were sometimes translated in a non-traditional manner, e.g. ‘repent’ instead of ‘do penance’ in Matthew 4:17, a verse that was commonly used to support the penitential traditions of the Church: ‘From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’33 Verbal traces left by readers can prove their awareness of the significianse of these expressions. For instance, in the copy of a 1538 Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Leerdam, SBM) previously mentioned above, the translation of James 5:14 has been adjusted to a more traditional translation. The printed ‘eldest of the congregation’ has been crossed out and replaced by the handwritten, catholicised version ‘priests of the church’, written in the margin.34
In a Liesvelt Bible of 1535 (Tilburg, ULT, TF PRE 10), the Reformation- minded translation has been adjusted by a user who pasted slips of paper with a new translation onto the printed text in at least ten instances.35 In Ephesians 5:32, for instance, the word ‘sacrament’ is glued onto the printed ‘mystery’, and the word ‘church’ onto ‘congregation’, thus adapting the verse from ‘this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the congregation’ to ‘this is a great sacrament, but I speak concerning Christ and the church’ (fig. 32).36
Adaptation of the text of Ephesians 5:32 by slips of paper glued onto the printed text, in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Tilburg University Library, TF PRE 10
The word ‘priest’ can also be found on several paper slips, for example in the adjustment of James 5:14 into ‘priests of the church’, a correction identical to the one in the Leerdam 1538 Bible.37 This addition of paper slips that are glued over a section of the printed text seem to, in Smyth’s words, ‘draw attention to points of pressure, discord, or conflict.’38 These early modern Bible readers did not cover any use of the words ‘congregation’ or ‘elders’. Rather, they adjusted the verses that were particular subject of confessional debates and turned these in a more ‘catholicising’ direction.
The texts printed on the paper slips in this copy confirm that they were taken from a copy of the Louvain Bible, a Catholic Bible translated by the Augustinian canon regular Nicolaas van Winghe and first published in Leuven in 1548.39 The publication of this Bible was requested by the theologian faculty of the university with the aim to provide a trustworthy, Dutch translation of the Latin Vulgate, and the development of the text was supervised by the Louvain theologians.40 Not only parts of the text of the Louvain Bible were cut out and glued into the 1534 Liesvelt Bible in Tilburg, also the translator’s prologue to the edition was bound in. In this prologue, Van Winghe elaborates upon his translation techniques, his aim to stay as true to the Latin text as possible, and the difficulties he faced in doing so. He stresses that his ‘good, genuine Dutch Bible’ needed to be published in order ‘to get the other, incorrect, and false Bibles more easily out of the hands of the bad people.’41 Van Winghe might not have foreseen that his Bible would eventually have been cut up to include in one of these ‘other, incorrect, and false’ Bible editions.
The creation of this customised Liesvelt Bible raises various questions. For a start, was an entire Louvain Bible available to the reader? And if so, why was it necessary to take out fragments of the Louvain Bible and insert those into the Liesvelt Bible? Could the reader not simply have used the Louvain Bible, if they preferred that specific translation? And what has happened with the copy from which the fragments were taken? Although most of these questions remain unanswered, the evidence of this and other copies suggests that the manipulation and transformation of a Bible’s translation was relatively common. As will be stressed in more detail later in this chapter, readers embraced a broad array of possibilities to change the book’s form and content. The translation of specific textual parts was subject to change, not only in processes of printing and publishing but also as part of reading practices. Moreover, expecting a historic reader to have chosen one specific Bible edition might be a limited perspective on reading and book ownership. The Liesvelt Bible may have contained elements that the reader preferred, even though they included parts of the Louvain Bible to ‘optimise’ and in this case ‘catholicise’ the book. Compared to the Louvain Bible, the 1534 Liesvelt edition, for instance, contains a broader variety of paratextual elements, including the topical register and printed marginalia.
In addition to the verses mentioned above, another disputed phrase in the Bible editions under consideration proves to be Romans 3:28. In accordance with Luther’s German Bible translation, the translation of the verse as it is presented in various Liesvelt editions is: ‘… that a man is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone.’42 The addition of the word ‘alone’ originates from Luther’s Bible translation. Luther’s inclusion of the word allein, which is absent in the Greek source text, was in accordance with his sola fide theology. However, the translation was contentious, and various readers prove to have been aware of that. In a 1535 complete Liesvelt Bible in the Maurits Sabbe Library in Leuven (P22.005.1/Fo BIJB 1535), a user has meticulously scratched out the word ‘alone’ (alleen) in Romans 3:28 (fig. 33).
The word alleen (in Romans 3:28) has been carefully scratched out in this copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, P22.005.1/Fo BIJB 1535
This manipulation has left an open space, that may be easily overlooked when leafing through the book, as the white space at first glance seems to be nothing more than a slightly strangely placed indentation.
A similar correction has been made in a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-36). Here as well, the word ‘alone’ has been scratched out, albeit less carefully than in the Leuven copy. However, in the margin, then, someone noted: ‘NB alone’.43 It is possible the scratching and noting have been performed by two different readers. In that case, the second reader appears not to have agreed with their predecessor. However, it cannot be ruled out that both traces were left by the same reader, possibly separated in time. The Lutheran addition may have been considered relevant to mention in the margin of the text, but not suitable for the main translation.
A comparable ‘discussion’ is found, for instance, in the above mentioned Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Leerdam, SBM). In Matthew 6:13, someone crossed out the last few lines of the Lord’s Prayer, known as the doxology: ‘for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory in eternity, Amen’.44 Exactly the same words, however, were written down in the margin. As the crossing out is not identifiable on the basis of handwriting, it is impossible to state whether both traces have been left by one or more readers. The inclusion of these final phrases of the Lord’s Prayer in Bible translations was, and still is, debated, as the words occur only in part of the manuscript sources of the Gospel of Matthew and are altogether absent in Luke’s version of the prayer.45 The Latin Vulgate does not contain the words, leading to the absence of the phrase in catholicising editions such as Vorsterman’s 1531 Bible and the Louvain Bible of 1548. In the words of the late sixteenth-century, anti-Calvinist annotator of the 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Leuven, MSB, P22.055.1/Fo BIJB 1535) – the same Bible in which the word ‘alone’ in Romans 3:28 had been so carefully scratched out – ‘these notes have been added by the geuzen [i.e. Calvinist opponents of the Spanish rule].’46
Not only the content of text and paratext, but also the structure of the book was determined by confessional guidelines and expectations and therefore open to debate. In a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Cambridge, SCC, R.23), a reader regularly adjusted the chapter divisions of multiple Bible books. Adaptations have been made, for instance, to the beginning of Job 39. Rather than having the chapter begin with the verse ‘Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion …’ (Job 38:39 in the Catholic Louvain Bible, Job 39:1 in the Liesvelt Bible), the reader let the chapter start at ‘Knowest thou the time when the wild goats …’ (Job 39:1 in the Catholic Louvain Bible, Job 39:4 in the Liesvelt Bible). This was achieved by crossing out the printed chapter heading and writing ‘capit xxix’ in the margin three verses further down (fig. 34).47
Adjustment of the beginning of Job 39 in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Cambridge, Selwyn College, R.23
Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Selwyn College, Cambridge
These corrections are in accordance with the Vulgate-based chapter division of various Catholic early modern Bible editions that follow Stephen Langton’s medieval chapter division, such as the Louvain Bible of 1548.
Another example of a reader-annotator who shows awareness of the debates in biblical chapter division is the seventeenth-century reader of the heavily-annotated 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C3). In this copy, several annotations in the book of Isaiah relate to the fact that the chapter division in the Liesvelt Bible differs from the chapter division in a Bible the annotator refers to as the deodati Bybel, as shortly mentioned in chapter 4.2. The Geneva-born Bible translator Giovanni Diodati was responsible for several seventeenth-century Protestant Italian Bible translations, as well as a French Bible printed in Geneva in 1644. It is likely that the annotator refers here to the French Bible, which, indeed, follows the chapter division mentioned in the annotations. An example is the beginning of Isaiah 8. In the margin of Isaiah 7:27 (‘Moreover the Lord said unto me, take thee a great roll …’), the annotation recalls that ‘Here starts the 8th chapter in [the] Deodati Bible’ (Hyer begint het 8. capittel in deodati Bybel). Isaiah 8:1 in Diodati’s La sainte Bible (1644) indeed begins with ‘Puis l’Eternel me dit, Pren-toi un grand rouleau …’.48 Similar references to the chapter division in Diodati’s Bible are made concerning the starts of chapters Isaiah 14, Isaiah 15, Isaiah 16, and Isaiah 64. By their adjustments, reader-users thus display their preference for certain chapter divisions. With pen in hand, they could take part in the completion of text production and could appropriate agency in the creation of a ‘proper’ structuralising of the text, going beyond the control of the printer-publisher.
Readers’ interventions in the confessionally-coloured characteristics of their Bibles did not only concern the textual and paratextual elements of the book. In a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Leuven, MSB, P22.055.1/Fo BIJB 1535), a user has displayed their outspoken criticism of certain elements in the woodcut at the beginning of Genesis. Apparently aware of the important role images and depictions played in the contemporary confessional debates, they deliberately placed an ink blob on the figure of God in the woodcut depicting the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib (fig. 35).
Censorship of the depiction of God and the genitalia of Adam and Eve in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, P22.005.1/Fo BIJB 1535
Similarly, in a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Haarlem, BKA, previous collection of G. J. Jaspers), depictions of God have been obliterated with ink stains, testifying to an increasing sensitivity of Protestants with regard to the depiction of God.49 Although the woodcuts used by Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch were often shared among printers with different confessional preferences, imagery that was not confessionally coloured at the moment of printing could gain that meaning over time.
Early modern readers of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles would also leave annotations commenting on contemporary theological and confessional discussions, or the confessional implications of certain biblical passages. In a Hansken van Liesvelt Bible 1538 (Brussels, KBR, L.P.174C RP), an anonymous sixteenth-century reader displayed their Reformation-minded orientation in extensive annotations across the flyleaf in the back of the book. The annotations consist of references to certain biblical passages, as well as notes that point out the differences between Catholic and Reformation-minded beliefs. The reader-annotator begins with the following lines:
There are three things through which one may distinguish the Christian religion from the false and heretic religion, namely first the word of God about the use of the sacraments and about the Christian punishment, which the heretic and devilish religion does not have.50
The annotator continues by providing a list of biblical references, which they apply to defend Reformation-minded perspectives on themes such as imagery and God’s grace. These include references to the Bible books of Deuteronomy 12, concerning the veneration of images, and to Philippians 3:18–19, about people who live as ‘enemies of Christ’s cross’.51 Further along, the annotator also refers to and rephrases Romans 3:28, the disputed verse concerning the justification by grace mentioned above: ‘… because nobody can be justified for God by the works of the law’.52
In a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-36), a reader-annotator left multiple marginal notes that display their Catholic conviction. In the margin of Matthew 16:18, which states that Peter is the rock upon which the congregation will be build, the annotator inscribed: ‘NB this is the greatest commandment in the church.’53 The confessional stance of the annotator is displayed by marking this passage, which forms one of the main justifications of the papacy, as well as by their use of the word ‘church’ (kerck) in the annotation, instead of ‘congregation’ (gemeynte), although the latter is used in the main text. Another confessionally coloured marginal response can be found next to Luke 19:10 (‘For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost’): ‘NB this argues against the predestination.’54 Furthermore, the annotator refers to several of the seven sacraments, for instance by writing ‘NB [Holy] supper’ in the margin next to Mark 14:22 (‘And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said: Take, eat: this is my body’), and ‘Baptism and confirmation’ alongside John 3:5 (‘Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’).55 In the margin next to Luke 7:47 (‘Wherefore I say unto thee: Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little’), the annotation states that ‘one should repeatedly do penance and good works because of many sins.’56 In these and various other annotations, the reader used elements of the biblical text to confirm and develop their ideas of what the Christian, Catholic faith should comprehend.
2 Accommodating Reading Practices
In their annotations, markings, and additions, readers could not only respond to text, paratext, or image, but they could also apply such modifications to ease, shape, or structure future reading behaviour. The current section will dive deeper into the transformative techniques that readers embraced in their accommodation of specific reading practices.57
2.1 Creating Efficient Navigation
In the words of Sawyer, ‘[almost] all … kinds of reading entail at least a minimum amount of navigation: when reading a text from beginning to end in more than one session we must “find our place” on each return to the book; when reading a text out of order – discontinuously – we must navigate within and between different pages.’58 It has been assumed that as printer-publishers started to develop typographical and paratextual elements to facilitate navigation – such as the running titles, summaries, and registers described previously – handwritten navigational and paratextual additions would become superfluous and start to diminish.59 However, surviving Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch Bible copies demonstrate that readers remained actively involved in shaping their own navigational processes.
Evidence of readers’ involvement with the printed navigational aids can be found in several types of responses and adjustments. Readers have, for instance, recurrently corrected printing errors in the paratexts, particularly in the running titles and chapter numberings.60 In the annotated Liesvelt Bible of 1535 (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C3), for example, the running title at the top of the page of Exodus 6 – incorrectly printed as ‘The book Genesis / The 6th Chapter’ (Het boec Genesis / Het .vi. Capittel) – was corrected by a reader by crossing out the word ‘Genesis’ and changing it to ‘Exodus’.61 In a similar manner, readers of various copies have corrected erroneous chapter numberings, either in running titles or above chapters. This could easily be done by adding or removing a character from the number, e.g. from 4 Kings (2 Kings) XVII to 4 Kings XVIII in a 1538 Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (New York, BeNY, MLN30 + 538).62 Examples like these show that readers valued trustworthy navigational guidance and were critical towards printing errors and inconsistencies in the printed paratext.63
In various cases, readers of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles went beyond correcting or improving printed navigational aids. They also included their own paratextual instruments to ease and accommodate certain discontinuous reading practices.64 In two surviving copies, readers have included handwritten tables of contents. This is the case in a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Antwerp, MPM, R 53.12), where a list of all Bible books in the Old and New Testaments has been written in a late-sixteenth-century hand on the blank space underneath the colophon at the back of the book. Similarly, in a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Ghent, ULG, Theol. 4084), a seventeenth-century handwritten table of contents of the Old Testament can be found on a front flyleaf of the book.
Another way in which readers could impact the navigational structures of their book, was through the addition of folio numbering and verse numbering. Both elements are absent in the printed material of most Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch Bibles but were regularly included by readers themselves.65 Foliation has been added, for instance, in a 1538 Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (Utrecht, ULU, Rariora qu.175).66 The upper right corner of each folio has been numbered in an early modern hand, throughout both the Old and New Testaments.67 In addition, the same reader added these folio numbers to the list of Bible book abbreviations at the beginning of the book, allowing it to function as a table of contents.68 The reader-annotator also included the corresponding folio-numbers to every reference in the liturgical reading schedule and extended the printed introduction to the schedule with the line: ‘and [for] the page: the number which is written there, there you shall seek the chapter’ (fig. 36).69
Annotation and added folio numbers in the liturgical reading schedule in a copy of Hansken van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1538. Utrecht University Library, Rariora qu.175
The presence of this explanation implies that the reader was aware that future readers might engage with the book and use its reading schedule for their reading, and that they could hence benefit from the handwritten addition of folio numbers. By adding the folio numbers to the pages and including them in the printed paratextual material, the reader thus provided new navigational possibilities for themselves as well as for future readers.
A similar practice can be recognised in hand-added verse numbering. As mentioned earlier, verse numbering was not introduced in Dutch Bible editions until the Biestkens Bible of 1560.70 However, late sixteenth-century readers would often have been acquainted with the benefits of verse numbering for biblical navigation, and might have felt inclined to add such numbering to their Bibles.71 In a 1526 Liesvelt Bible (Antwerp, MPM, R 58.2), an anonymous user of the book developed an intricate reference system by adding verse numbering to a considerable number of single verses across both the Old and New Testaments (and in a few cases multiple verses in a row), and connecting these to hand-written cross-references.72 By doing so, the reader could navigate to the precise verses to which their cross-references pointed. In other surviving copies, verse numbering is added ‘in isolation’, i.e. not connected to another paratextual element. In a 1542a Liesvelt Bible (Amsterdam, VU, XC.05046-), a reader has numbered various verses throughout the Old and New Testaments, such as all fifty-eight verses of Matthew 13, all thirty-six of Matthew 14, and verses 9 and 27–39 of Matthew 15 (fig. 37).
Hand-added verse numbering in Matthew 13 to 15 in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition (a) of 1542. Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, XC.05046-
It is unclear why this user numbered these specific verses and left the margins next to others blank, and how these numberings might have been used in reading practices. The reader possibly used other liturgical schedules or reference works that specified verse numbers, and thus allowed for the application of these aids to the Bible.73
It is relevant to note that the verse distinction in each of the copies mentioned here was not added randomly, but in accordance with the established verse numbering in later early modern Bibles. Readers evidently had access to a source upon which they could base their numbering of Bible verses, such as another partial or complete Bible edition, and considered it relevant to bring that structuralising aspect into their Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch Bibles.
Beyond the structuring of chapters, readers also interacted with larger navigational structures of the book. For instance, one of the ways in which book users could embrace and reinforce the navigability between Bible books was through the addition of tabs: small bookmarks glued to the edges of a page.74 Tabs in Bibles were – and are – commonly used to signal the beginnings of Bible books. Tabs could be made from various materials. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (St. Gallen, KBG, Vadslg EA 50), small, greenish-coloured textile knots identify the start of each Bible book (fig. 38).
Knotted, textile tabs to mark the beginning of each Bible book in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1541. St. Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek Vadiana, Sammlung der Ortsbürgergemeinde, Vadslg EA 50
More common, however, are tabs made from parchment. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Haarlem, NBG, 31”1541”-Vors(Midd)), for instance, strips of parchment have been folded over and glued to both sides of the right edge of the page in two diagonal lines (i.e. starting at the top of the page again at the beginning of the New Testament).75 The name of each Bible book has been written on the tabs in an anonymous, late sixteenth-century hand. Recurrent use has darkened the parchment and the tabs are missing in some places, leaving ripped edges of the paper or glue stains. As in this example, the parchment or paper from which tabs were made was usually blank. However, tabs could also be made from recycled material. A 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Leerdam, GBS) contains two tabs that have been made from parchment scraps from a medieval manuscript, featuring red and blue penwork (fig. 39).76
Parchment tabs featuring fragments of red and blue medieval penwork in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1541. Leerdam, Gereformeerde Bijbelstichting
Besides tabs, early modern readers of Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch Bibles used moveable bookmarks to remember where they left off or to mark certain biblical passages in order to easily return to them later. However, the very moveability and temporality of these marks has resulted in a low survival rate and few evident traces.77 Nevertheless, several extent Bible copies contain loose slips of paper that we can assume were probably used as dynamic bookmarks. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Leuven, MSB, P22.055.1/Fo BIJB 1541), for instance, a separate leaf from a sextodecimo-sized book survives between the pages of the folio Bible. The leaf, which is taken from Lambrecht Myseras’ manual for Reformed participants to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, printed in 1738 by the Rotterdam printer Hendrik van Pelt, was probably used as a book mark.78 Another example is a 1542 Liesvelt Bible (Utrecht, ULU, THO RIJS 001–067) in which five paper slips have survived. Three are torn from blank paper, one from the Book of Joshua in a Statenbijbel (Dutch Standard Bible), and one originates from a vita of St. Lambertus of Maastricht.79 The last of these paper slips contains the ownership inscription ‘Lijsbetie Blanckevort’, who owned the vitae book and/or the Liesvelt Bible.
The presence of fragments of other texts within the book creates a dynamic of what Knight has called ‘material intertextuality’.80 Regardless of the content of the various texts, their togetherness within the material book creates discursive interactions between them. From the material togetherness of texts from Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fragments from a Reformed manual, the Statenbijbel, or a vitae book, new narratives and interpretations may emerge, either consciously or unconsciously. It is particularly interesting that these three paper slips are taken from religious works that are outspokenly Catholic or Reformed, which creates a rather eclectic and dynamic combination of confessional colours within the material book. Not only does their presence in the Bibles testify to (likely) overlapping reading circles between these various texts, they also provide any later reader of the book with a dynamic combination of texts.
Not all bookmarks, however, contain text, either printed or written. On the contrary: most are empty paper slips, torn from paper that was simply available at the moment of reading. Many of these appear to be, as Kwakkel calls them, ‘spur-of-the-moment bookmarks.’81 Some bookmarks, however, were deliberately created for their purpose. Both a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Tilburg, ULT, TF.PRE.10) and a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Düsseldorf, ULB, 20 Biblth.1A.75(2), 2. Ex) contain little heart-shaped bookmarks, cut out of parchment and with a V-shaped opening in the middle (fig. 40).
Heart-shaped bookmark in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. University Library Tilburg, TF.PRE.10
A kite-shaped bookmark, made from inscribed paper, that has survived in a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (London, BL, C.64.g.5) also has the V-shaped opening and similar pointing end. These characteristics would allow the reader to place the bookmark at the edge of the page. With the pointing end of the heart or kite, the reader could rindicate precisely the verse where they wish to continue reading.82 These small, practical bookmarks could help readers quickly return to a marked page or verse. Furthermore, it is plausible that readers would have had multiple bookmarks at hand, allowing them to navigate easily between various places in the book and hence enable the concurrent reading of several biblical passages. Although so often lost, bookmarks functioned as important navigational aids.
2.2 Expanding the Volume
Influencing and creating navigational aids was only one of the means for readers to accommodate certain reading practices. Their agency and involvement in shaping and transforming the book could also manifest in the addition of textual and visual material to the book, either by including elements within the book binding or by positioning them alongside the printed material on the page. Ranging from the addition of a single prayer to creating what Sherman has called ‘radically customized copies’, readers could actively challenge the content and shape of the book and the page.83
The flexibility of early modern books relied for a considerable part upon the fact that binding processes were creative and open-ended. Like most early printed books, Bibles by Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch were probably sold from the publishing house or bookshop to readers as unbound sheets.84 Book buyers would decide about the type of binding and would take the sheets to a book binder. They could also decide to incorporate other texts, creating sammelbände or textual compilations, or to not even bind the book at all.85 Because unbound books – or books kept in temporary structures such as paper wrappers – would usually be bound in a more solid way at a later moment or discarded as waste paper, examples of unbound books rarely survive.86 However, a copy of Liesvelt’s 1527 edition of the Wisdom of Solomon (Amsterdam, UvA, Ned. Inc. 511; fig. 41) indeed seems to have never been sewn into a solid binding.
Title page of Jacob van Liesvelt’s edition of the Wisdom of Solomon of 1527. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam Library, Ned. Inc. 511
The copy currently consists of separate gatherings that are not connected to each other. Three widely placed double perforations at the top of the page suggest that the book has been fastened to something before, but the absence of any perforation and needle marks in the folding of the quires rules out that the book has ever been bound in a more definite way.
Furthermore, a large number of surviving Bible copies prove to have been rebound at least once.87 It is likely that in various instances, intensive use of the book could have worn out the original binding. In addition, readers could choose to rebind the book in order to personalise the copy or to reshape its contents. The relevance of binding and rebinding the book is reflected in the words of Ghijsbrecht Fransz who wrote on the first flyleaf of his 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Utrecht, MCC, BMH Sp pi5): ‘Anno 1561 on 17 August this book was bound this way.’88 The binding has received considerably care: multiple folio-sized medieval manuscript leaves were used to strengthen the heavy wooden plats and stamped leather binding. To Ghijsbrecht Fransz, this (re)binding of the book was clearly a moment worth to mark and remember.
Processes of binding and rebinding could define the contents and build-up of the book, as readers could decide to remove parts of the text or paratext, split the book into multiple volumes, or include new texts, paratexts, or images in the binding.89 In Scott-Warren’s words, ‘acts of binding and rebinding could be embodied interpretation.’90 By adjusting the book’s content and structure, readers could influence the formation of meaning within the book, for themselves as well as for future readers. Readers could have various reasons to include non-original material into the binding of the book. Firstly, textual, paratextual, or visual elements could be added in order to solve possible lacunae and losses in the book.91 As Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles moved through time, pages could get lost as a result of damage or active removal. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Amsterdam, VU, XC.05044-), for instance, the first twenty-five chapters of Genesis were lost. However, a large part of the missing text is substituted by an early modern, likely late seventeenth-century manuscript, bound in before the printed pages.92 The manuscript consists of a simple title page with the words Biblia Sacra, an opening page to the Bible book of Genesis, and the first fifteen chapters of Genesis, including the reproduction of several marginal glosses and illustrations. Genesis 16 to Genesis 24 remain lacking, but the blank sheets of paper that follow the handwritten part suggest that the reader might have intended to follow up their activity.93 The handwritten text follows the aforementioned Louvain Bible translation of Nicolaas van Winge. Although the reader-annotator clearly adhered to a printed exemplar in text, paratext, and layout (even including the placement of several images), the manuscript format also provided space to personalise: they drew the coat of arms of Amsterdam on a blank verso next to their handwritten reconstruction of Genesis 13 (fig. 42).
A hand-drawn coat of arms of Amsterdam in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1541. Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, XC.05044-
The inclusion of this manuscript supplement displays the user’s desire to repair the printed Bible as well as their employment of the possibilities to transform and personalise the book.
In many other cases, the addition of textual, paratextual, or visual elements was not motivated by a need to fill in any evident lacunae, but rather by a wish to transform, optimise, and expand the contents of the book. Although in theory, every type of text or image could be inserted within, or removed from, the early modern book, elements that were most regularly added to Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles are informative charts and geographic maps.94 One of the copies in which these elements have been included is a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Cambridge, ULC, BSS.223.B34). The book contains four meticulously coloured woodcut maps and four informative charts, which have been bound in between the pages of the Bible. The maps depict the Israelites’ wanderings from Egypt to Canaan (inserted before Numbers 23; fig. 43), the division of Israel (before Joshua 15), the Holy Land at the time of the Gospels (before Matthew 1), and the geographic places mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (before Acts 1).
Coloured map of the wanderings of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, bound in before Numbers 23 in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1534. University Library Cambridge, BSS.223.B34
The four informative charts contain overviews of the history of the Greek and Jewish states (inserted before 1 Maccabees 1), the history of the Roman state (before Matthew 1; the map of the Holy Land can be found on the verso side of this leaf), the genealogy of Christ (also before Matthew 1), and the events and days related to the Passion (after John 18).
Although these maps and charts were not originally part of the Liesvelt Bible, they were meant to be included in Bibles. This is demonstrated in the various explanatory texts at the top of the inserted leaves that define where the chart or map should be placed within a Bible. The description of placement of the map of the Israelites’ wanderings, for instance, begins as follows:
This map (which is supposed to be inserted before the 23rd Chapter of the Book of Numbers) shows us the path that the people wandered [along] for forty forbearing years, departing from the Land of Egypt, along the deserts of the Arabs, until they [arrived] in the land of Canaan, which can also be read in the books Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.95
Maps and charts like the ones bound in with the Cambridge copy circulated in various forms during the early modern period, both as cut-outs from other Bible editions as well as in separately printed sheets or in manuscript.96 The maps included in this copy were first printed as part of the French Geneva Bible by Nicolas Barbier and Thomas Courteau in 1559.97 This edition also included various ‘cartes’: registers and charts of important biblical dates, rulers, and events. The maps and charts remained part of vernacular Genevan Bibles during the second half of the sixteenth century. From 1560 onwards, the four maps were usually published alongside a fifth map, depicting the location of Paradise. The combination of maps was adopted by various printer-publishers in England, Scotland, and the Low Countries.98 The Dordrecht printer Jan Canin included the five maps, together with various informative charts, in his Deux-Aes Bible of 1580.99 The maps and charts that were included in the Cambridge Liesvelt Bible are identical to those from Jan Canin’s edition, although Canin’s map of Paradise and the charts before Genesis and before Ezra are not added to the Liesvelt copy.
The inclusion of maps and charts provided new possibilities for readers to engage with the book and its contents. The geographic maps would have served as exegetical tools that not only contextualised biblical narratives but also provided readers with devices to personally experience and visualise certain places and events.100 In general, the maps are less concerned with a precise geographic representation than with emphasising the religious and devotional significance of certain routes and locations in the biblical history. For instance, in the map of the Israelites’ forty-year wanderings that is bound in with the Cambridge copy, it is not the small place names but rather the detailed depictions of principal events, such as Moses receiving the Commandments, that may grab a reader-viewer’s attention.101 When observing the numbered encampments on the route of the Exodus and following them one by one, the reader could become as an eyewitness to the situation, and visually, mentally, and religiously participate in the experiences of the travelling Israelites.
The inclusion of maps and charts in Bibles, furthermore, attests to the growing interest in an intellectual understanding of geography, chronology, history, and biblical politics in relation to Scripture. By expanding the contents of their early sixteenth-century Bibles with a map or chart, readers transferred developments in the field of biblical antiquarianism and sacred geography into their decade- or even century-old Bibles, thus modernising their copy and ensuring its enduring relevance and attraction. Examples like these underline how early modern readers, in Durrant’s words, ‘were comfortable with a sense of the book as an accumulative form, whose endurance through time was predicated upon its openness to material change.’102
2.3 Creating a Book of Liturgical and Devotional Practice
As has been discussed, the paratexts of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles encouraged readers to take a scholarly approach to the book, while simultaneously enabling paraliturgical and devotional reading practices. Likewise, readers’ adjustments and adaptations to the book account for scholarly, paraliturgical, and devotional reading. Whereas the inclusion of charts and maps connects to readers’ approaches to the Bible as an object of intellectual study, readers also actively shaped the book in relation to paraliturgical or devotional uses of Scripture.
The liturgical reading schedules in surviving copies often appear more tarnished than other pages, suggesting that they were indeed regularly handled. The paratextual elements offered in the book were also sometimes extended or adapted in order to further accommodate, or personalise, manners of liturgical reading. In other cases, readers included handwritten additions to this purpose. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Utrecht, ULU, THO RIJS 001–007), an eighteenth-century reader named Ysak (his surname is unknown) noted the dates of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost for the years 1729 to 1745 on the front flyleaf of his Bible, similar to the way such dates are found in the printed almanacs in New Testaments (fig. 44).103
Handwritten overview of the dates of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost between 1729 and 1745 in a copy of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch’s complete Bible edition of 1541. University Library Utrecht, THO RIJS 001–007
Ysak’s overview of the liturgical year not only displays the need he apparently felt to have these dates at hand whilst reading his Bible, they also show that this Peetersen van Middelburch Bible remained to be used in religious reading up to at least two centuries after its printing date.
Readers also regularly added their own liturgical markers around the text. This is the case, for example, in a Liesvelt Epistles of the Apostles (The Hague, KB, KW 230 G 31). The copy contains hand-added foliation, rubrication, and colouring of the woodcuts, as well as liturgical references in the margins and between the lines of the biblical text. The latter announce on what day the corresponding passage ought to be read. For instance, the beginning of Romans 1 should be read ‘on Christmas eve’ and part of Romans 10 ‘on St. Andrew’s day’.104 The red-coloured liturgical marks would allow the reader who included them, or ordered their inclusion, to more easily locate the pericopes that were to be read throughout the liturgical year.
Similarly, in a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (London, BL, C66.k.8), an anonymous sixteenth-century reader included liturgical references throughout the Old and New Testaments, although omitting the Gospels.105 The references dictate on which day the passage ought to be read. Acts 2, for example, should be read ‘on the day of Pentecost’ and Acts 3 ‘on St. Peter and Paul’s evening’.106 The end of each lection is marked by the word ‘ending’ or ‘end’, written in the margin or between the lines.107 Whereas the reference for Pentecost corresponds with the printed reading schedule in the Bible – which follows the Missal of Cambrai – the reference to Peter and Paul’s evening is an addition to the printed schedule. Consistently, the annotating reader also included this additional reference to the liturgical reading schedule, alongside the pericopes prescribed for St. Peter and Paul’s day: ‘in the evening: in the Acts of the Apostles the 3rd [chapter].’108 In several other cases, this reader not only added lections, but also adapted the printed references. The adaptations concern, for instance, the Epistle reading of Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, which was adapted from Revelations 4 to Romans 11. The reader consequently noted ‘on the [day of the] Holy Trinity’109 in the margin of Romans 11. Similarly, on the third Sunday after Epiphany, the reader suggests reading John 2 rather than Matthew 8. In addition, they included an extensive, handwritten list of thirty-six feastdays and saints’ days with their accompanying lections, written on a blank space at the end of the printed schedule.
Such adjustments of the liturgical reading schedule are not unique. As churches or congregations adapted their liturgical calendar, individual readers could feel prompted to adjust the reading schedule of their Bible accordingly. In a copy of Liesvelt’s New Testament of 1534 (Royal Library Brussels, L.P.586.A), a reader called ‘Sister Chatarina [Catharina]’, as her partially readable ownership mark on the title page ensures, meticulously changed the liturgical reading schedule in the back of her book by pasting in forty little slips of paper with handwritten references to specific Bible parts (fig. 45).
Handwritten alterations to the liturgical reading schedule in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s New Testament of 1534. Brussels, Royal Library, L.P.586.A
The paper slips are glued onto the page to cover the printed text and thus change the prescribed pericopes. Sister Chatarina’s handwritten alterations, for instance, call for the reading of Matthew 11 on the second Sunday of the Advent, whereas the printed schedule originally proposed the lecture of Luke 21. The adjustments Chatarina made are in accordance with the Missale Romanum and its liturgical reading schedule. The Missale Romanum was promulgated by Pius V’s papal bull Quo primum of 1570 and developed in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), with the aim of replacing local missals and offering unum missae celebrandae ritum: a single rite for celebrating mass.110 As Antwerp belonged to the diocese of Cambrai, the reading schedules in Liesvelt’s Bible editions still follow the lectionary of Cambrai. This schedule differs from the Roman Missal in exactly those places marked by Chatarina’s adjustments. These alterations to the reading schedule were hence not coincidental marks left in a mindless reading practice. Rather, by modifying the references in the reading schedule in the ways she did, the sister consciously transformed and updated the liturgical reading schedule in her New Testament.
By adjusting or expanding the liturgical reading schedule and by adding liturgical references in the margins, readers created reading structures that departed from the printed navigational aids. Although most early-modern readers do not explicitly describe their use of the Bible, their commitment to correct and complete reading schedules affirms that they connected their personal reading practices to those of communal worship.111
In addition to using the vernacular Bible alongside the liturgy, readers interacted with the early modern Bible as a source for prayers, available for inclusion in daily devotional practices. Similarly to the way some printed marginal glosses denote the presence of a prayer in the biblical text, readers took up this practice to mark in the margin those textual passages that they personally considered to be prayer-like. In a 1535 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Cambridge, SCC, R.23), for instance, a user added the words ‘to pray always’ to the printed gloss next to Jeremiah’s lamenting response to God’s call to leave Jerusalem (Jeremiah 10:23: ‘O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps’).112
The use of the Bible as an ‘archive of prayers’ is also apparent in a copy of Liesvelt’s 1542a Bible (Amsterdam, VU, XC.05046-).113 The copy contains extensive underscorings, verse numbering, markings, marginal repetitions of printed text, and explanatory notes, left by an anonymous sixteenth-century hand.114 In addition, the annotating reader made various remarks on the use of several biblical passages as prayers. They noted ‘prayer’ (gebet) in the margins of several verses, such as Baruch 3:1 (‘O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, the soul in anguish the troubled spirit, crieth unto thee’), Habakkuk 4:2 (i.e. Habakkuk 3:2 in modern translations: ‘O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy’), and Judith 6:19 (‘O Lord God of heaven, behold their pride, and pity the low estate of our nation, and look upon the face of those that are sanctified unto thee this day’). The reader marked these places, furthermore, by including a cross sign and three horizontal lines in the margin. In some cases, the symbols occur individually to mark the prayer-like features of a certain textual passage, such as Nehemiah’s prayer in 2 Maccabees 1:24 (‘O Lord, Lord God, Creator of all things, who art fearful and strong, and righteous, and merciful, and the only and gracious King’).
The annotating reader of this copy not only indicated the presence of some prayers, but also stressed the purpose, relevance, or appropriation of some biblical passages to the devotee.115 The hymn in Judith 16:13 (‘I will sing unto the Lord a new song: O Lord, thou art great and glorious, wonderful in strength, and invincible’) could serve as a ‘prayer or thanksgiving’, and Job’s devout words in Job 27, where he debates with his accusing friend Bildad, may be ‘comforting to all pious people in distress.’116 In the margin of Psalm 149, furthermore, the user noted that ‘after this psalm, I will always read psalm 103: Praise the Lord, my soul,’ and at psalm 103 they stressed that: ‘this psalm will always be read lastly, as I have intended and noted down after the psalms of praise.’117 Both psalms call to praise God and the reader-annotator who included the annotations apparently preferred to combine both in their reading practices. The examples in this copy not only show that biblical passages were used in personal devotion, they also demonstrate how the reader-annotator created a system of navigation in which the required prayers could be found easily through annotations and markings in the margins of the text.
Prayer written underneath the printer’s mark on the last page of a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s New Testament of 1540. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Bb niederländ 154001
Moreover, as readers’ additions of navigational tools or non-biblical material have already demonstrated, early modern readers did not ‘have to do’ with the printed material offered in their Bibles. Users would add their own prayers to the book, writing on title pages, flyleaves, or alongside the printed text. An example can be found in the only known surviving copy of Liesvelt’s New Testament of 1540 (Stuttgart, WLB, Bb niederländ 154001). A small, six-line prayer has been written in an anonymous sixteenth-century hand underneath Liesvelt’s printer’s mark on the last page of the book (fig. 46): ‘Lord, we pray you, hear our prayers with mercy. And when we are unchained from the chains of sin, protect us from all misery.’118
The short prayer follows the ‘colloquy’ style: it is an invocation, followed by a request for assistance.119 A devotee asks God to be heard and protected. The prayer may have served as a way to begin or conclude devotional or Bible-reading practices. Furthermore, the sentences also physically conclude the book. Even when they were not read aloud, the placement of this prayer may have had a devotional effect in closing off Scripture. Similar mechanisms appear to be in place in other surviving copies. In a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Oxford, LC, k.9.27), the words ‘Praise God above all’are written underneath the colophon on the last page of the book.120 In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Nijmegen, ULN, OD b 477), eighteenth-century user Lukas Laurense rephrased Sirach 7:38 as a prayer at the end of the book: ‘Man, for ever remember your Four Last Things and you will not sin; namely death, hell, judgement, and the glory of heaven.’121
In other copies, devotional statements are placed at the very beginning of the book, as if to frame any subsequent readings of the biblical text. For instance, on the title page of a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Bibel- S. 40.99) the phrases ‘Love God, love God again’ and ‘Fear God and keep his commandments’ were noted in a sixteenth-century hand.122 The phrases stimulate a reader towards an appropriate devout attitude befor entering the text.123
But reader-users could add more than just a few lines of prayer. A more elaborate devotional text is included in a 1534 Liesvelt Bible (Mons, ULMo, 1002/25). In 1655, a page-long, sermon-like reflection was written on the blank page opposite the beginning of the New Testament. The text states that all Christ’s ‘miracles and wonders’ (miraculen en wonder daden), as are described in the New Testament, continue to be of influence today, because Christ still aims to heal and help all people who truly believe in him. Similarly to the ways in which he healed ‘all toxic lepers, blind, crippled, lame, deaf, dead, and dying people’, he would also heal the ‘mental illness’ (geestelijcke kranckheijt) of all inherently sinful people.124 In the margins of the text, the annotator also included references to relevant Bible verses. The text provides a way for the Bible reader to apply the stories of miraculous healings to their own life. Furthermore, it underlines the relevance of devotion and prayer: only those ‘who come to him with solid faith’ and ‘earnest prayers’ will be saved by Jesus Christ.125
Another exceptional example of the addition of devotional or meditational texts can be found in the Bodleian Library’s heavily annotated 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C3). The white space underneath the end of the Song of Songs and the blank verso side of the page were used for an extensive, hand-added, textual and visual meditation on the ‘bride of Christ’. As has briefly been mentioned in section 4.2, the text and image were, most likely, copied from the second edition of David Joris’ T’Wonder-boeck, waer in dat van der werldt aen versloten gheopenbaert is, first printed in 1551 (fig. 30).126 David Joris (ca. 1501–1556) was one of the most prominent Dutch religious dissenters in the 1530s. Joris claimed to have undergone a series of ecstatic episodes or visions from 1536 onwards, in which he closely encountered the Holy Spirit and received supernatural insights. Joris believed that he was a divine agent of God who could connect with the Spirit in a direct manner. In 1542, David Joris published the first edition of his magnum opus T’Wonder-boeck.127 The book provides a complex reflection on spiritual growth, the internalisation of the Holy Spirit, and the return of Christ. Whereas the first edition devoted considerable attention to Joris’ process from an unknowing infant to becoming ‘the third David’, the second edition of 1551 turned away from these messianic claims and suggested that the third David would be the internalised Holy Spirit within each individual.128 Joris’ writings were controversial but highly popular, especially among the Dutch nobility and social elite. An estimate over 70,000 copies of the writings of David Joris circulated in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.129
The reader-annotator apparently had access to a copy of the 1551 edition, or a later reprint of that edition. They copied the engraving depicting ‘the image of the bride of Christ’, together with the explanatory text placed on the next folio in the printed version (fig. 47).130
Hand-drawn copy of ‘the image of the bride of Christ’, after the engraving in David Joris’ T’Wonder-boeck (see fig. 30), on a blank leaf at the end of the Song of Songs in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bib.Dutch.C3
According to an explanation on the verso side of the engraving in T’Wonder- boeck, the reader-viewer should look at the image and understand it as an ‘example, image, or literal likeness of the Bride of Christ … [that serves] as a mirror and warning for all believers, in order to prepare themselves for the celebration, to arrange the wedding in holy jewellery, in honour and grace of the almighty heavenly Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.’131 Although this passage has not been copied by the annotator of the Liesvelt Bible, a similar phrase was added to the drawing: ‘Perceive this likeness or image of the Bride of Christ; see and notice what you are still lacking.’132 In addition, the list of instructions on the meaning of all elements within the image, which is present in T’Wonder-boeck, has not been copied by the reader-annotator. However, they summarised the explanations of the sword in the printed list and wrote onto the blade of the sword: ‘the large, firm sword of the anger and the word of God.’133
The accompanying explanatory text that was copied by the reader-annotator provides an elaborate meditation on the meanings of this imagery of the Bride of Christ (fig. 48).
Extensive annotations at the end of the Song of Songs in a copy of Jacob van Liesvelt’s complete Bible edition of 1535. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bib.Dutch.C3
The text directly addresses the reader-viewer, explaining what they should consider when looking at the image, which metaphors would apply to the Bride of Christ, and how one should conduct oneself in order to receive divine appreciation. The text invites the reader to visualise beyond what is visible in the image itself. The first paragraph translates as follows:
Behold, the bride of the lamb Jesus Christ, in her beauty and golden jewellery of the souls, without wrinkle or any stain. A trustworthy image or likeness of God, or the true tabernacle, genuine temple or house, a dwelling or hometown of God within the Spirit. Behold, the holy mountain of the Lord, and the most beautiful woman who is clothed with holiness and virtues in the likeness of God; flesh from his flesh, bone from his bone, created by God for his praise and legacy; the living word of the father brought forth by Christ Jesus, alike Eve from Adam. Be blessed him who blesses you, be condemned him who condemns you. All should say: Amen.134
The metaphors lean heavily on biblical themes. The comparisons between the Bride of Christ and the tabernacle, a mountain, and a town, for instance, originate from Revelation 21:9, in which John describes how God showed him Jerusalem as ‘the bride, the Lamb’s wife’. The concept of the Bride of Christ is strongly embedded in the Song of Songs. It is no coincidence that the user chose to copy David Joris’ words and image at the end of this Bible book. The connection between the meditative drawing and the Song of Songs is further articulated by the phrase, taken from Song of Songs 6:10, which the reader-annotater wrote underneath the image: ‘Who is this who appears like the dawn? Fair as the moon, pure as the sun, formidable as an army.’135
By including this image and text, the user has created new intertextual dynamics between the Bible books of Song of Songs and Revelations, as well as between the Liesvelt Bible and Anabaptist spiritual texts and imagery. At the same time, the combination of text and image provides a model for meditation and devotional reflection upon a biblical figure and theme, which could be practised alongside reading the Bible text. Future users of the book would be invited to not only read the text but to also meditate on the image and its meaning, and to compare themselves with the bride. On the basis of that comparison, they might further map out their own spiritual development.136 This hand-added meditative tool creates a new space and form of worship and devotion that was not readily included in the printed book, but that was considered beneficial by the annotating reader.
3 Conclusion
Contrary to the idea of the printed book as a fixed object, readers’ active involvement in the creation and ‘modelling’ of the book evidently did not stop with the transition from manuscript to print. The surviving copies of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles continued to be, in the words of Manguel, ‘as singular as the phoenix’.137 As readers interacted with the text and paratext of their Bibles, they left their commentaries, included new references, created knowledge structures, and responded to or adapted confessional characteristics of their books. Furthermore, readers’ lectoral agency stretched beyond that, as they consciously adjusted their Bibles in order to accommodate certain reading experiences. Acting beyond the ideas and control of the printer-publishers, they played a crucial role in shaping the book by including navigational aids, maps, charts, liturgical markers, and prayers, either written or pasted onto the pages, or bound in with the biblical text.
Moreover, whereas the paratextual devices in Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles display only the concerns with reading behaviour and textual interpretation at a certain point in time – namely the very moment of printing – readers’ transformations demonstrate how these Bibles continued to be actively read, used, and developed for multiple decades after their printing date. By including new material and manipulating aspects of the printed book, readers tailored their copies according to contemporary developments in Bible-reading practices and confessional concerns. The ability of the material book to change, and the involvement of readers in creating these changes, ensured the Bibles’ endurance through time and space. Future readers of these books, including us when we sit down with them in the reading room of a library’s special collections department, encounter copies that have been adapted, extended, and transformed by the people who came before. As spaces of dialogue and accumulation, Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles could acquire, in the words of Clark and Sheingorn, ‘intertextual layering[s] of voices’ in which the paratextual voice of the printer-publisher harmonised, and sometimes disharmonised, with the voices of mindful, critical, autonomous, scholarly, and devout readers through time and space.138
Paul Saenger and Michael Heinlen, ‘Incunable Description and its Implication for the Analysis of Fifteenth-Century Reading Habits’, in Sandra L. Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450–1520 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 225–258, p. 254. See also: William H. Sherman, ‘What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books?’, in Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (eds.), Books and Readers in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 119–137, pp. 121–122.
See: Blair, Too Much to Know, p. 303; Sherman, Used Books, p. 3.
His itaque rebus instructus, inter legundum auctores non oscitanter obseruabis, si quod incidat insigne verbum, si quid antique aut noue dictum, si quod argumentum aut inuentum acute aut tortum apte, si quod egregium orationis decus, si quod adagium, si quod exemplum, si qua sententia digna quae memoriae commendetur. Isque locus erit apta notula quapiam insigniendus (Margolin, ‘De Ratione Stvdii’, p. 117, verses 9–13). In translation by McGregor, Collected Works, p. 670: ‘Informed then by all this you will carefully observe when reading writers whether any striking word occurs, if diction is archaic or novel, if some argument shows brilliant invention or has been skilfully adapted from elsewhere, if there is any brilliance in the style, if there is any adage, historical parallel, or maxim worth committing to memory. Such a passage should be indicated by some appropriate mark.’
For example: Donald A. McAndrew, ‘Underlining and Notetaking: Some Suggestions from Research’, Journal of Reading, 27:2 (1983), pp. 103–108; S. L. Nist and M. C. Hogrebe, ‘The Role of Underlining and Annotating in Remembering Textual Information’, Reading Research and Instruction, 27:1 (1987), pp. 12–25; Ed H.Chi, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Lichan Hong, ‘Visual Foraging of Highlighted Text: An Eye-Tracking Study’, in Masaaki Kurasu (ed.), Human-Computer Interaction, part III (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2007), pp. 589–598.
See: McAndrew, ‘Underlining and Notetaking’, p. 103.
Chi, Gumbrecht, and Hong, ‘Visual Foraging of Highlighted Text’, p. 591, pp. 596–597.
See: King, Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, p. 64.
Crieckelman wrote his name and the year 1576 on the title page. The annotation is only just readable, as a later user crossed through his name. Further in the book, at the end of the St. Luke Gospel, Crieckelman wrote down his name a second time, along with the date 8 January 1577 and his motto: Nae dit een beter (after this [it will be] better).
See: Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, 20.241 Notarissen ter standplaats Maastricht, 1544–1842, Johan Crieckelmans.
On Daniel Tijcke, see: Constant Theys, Geschiedenis van Dworp (Brussels: Drukkerij A. Hessens, 1948), p. 131.
Dat boeck der Wijsheyt en wort bij den Hebreen nerghens ghevonden. Maer wort vanden Joden Philonen toegheeijghent om dat het luijt naer den grixken stiel. Ende wert daerom gheheeten het boeck der Wijsheyt om dat dar wort geeprophiteert de toecomste ende oock het lijden Christi Jesum di[t] is de wijsheijt Godts vaders Almachtig Inder eeuwighijt Amen.
Int heebreeuws staedt. stervende sterven. The interest in the original language of the text can be recognised in the adjustments and additions of readers in other copies as well. For example, in JvL CB 1534 (Cambridge, ULC, BSS.223.B34), in the margin of Leviticus 20:20: ‘lies with his mother / says the Hebrew’ (bij sijne moeye slaept / state In hebreesc[h]). This annotator also crossed out the original, printed lines.
Susanna 1:9: translation after Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition. Averechts. dat is. verkeert.
Non alios primos crescents origene mundo / Illuxisse dies ue habuissent tenorem / crediderim ver illud erat ver magnuus agebat / orbis et hibernis parcebant flatibus euri / cum primae pecudes vires ausere virumque / terrea progenies durum caput extulit arvis. Translation: Virgil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1–6 (transl. H. Rushton Fairclough) (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 160–161.
See: Karen Sullivan, The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 215.
Omnibus una intentio haereticis, semper fuit captare gloriam de singularitate scientiae. Translation: Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs: Volume 3 (transl. Kilian Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds) (Kalamazoo, Michigan/Coalville, Leicestershire: Cistercian Publications, 1979), p. 180. For this fragment in Bernardus’ Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, see: Jean Leclercq et al. (eds.), Sermones super Cantica Canticorum (2 volumes) (Rome, Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1958), vol II, p. 173.
See: Peter Harrison, ‘Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England’, Isis, 92:2 (2001), pp. 265–290, pp. 267–268.
The interest in the connections between knowledge, heresy, and religion can also be recognised in the annotations of an early seventeenth-century reader left in a 1535 Liesvelt Bible (Utrecht, ULU, THO RAR 2–31). Around the prologue, they copied two fragments from the humanist theologian Cornelius Agrippa’s De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum. The first fragment states that at the Council of Nicaea it was ordered that no Christian believer should be without the Bible, and the second quotation explains why science opposes the Christian faith (nulla res christiane religioni atque fidei, tam repugnant quam scientia, miniusque so invicem compatiuntur).
Communem scientiam habere refugiunt ne caeteris equales estimentur occulta et nova semper exquirunt, quae dum alii nesciunt apud imperitorum mentes ipsi de singularitate scientie gloriantur. Translation: Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job – 4 volumes (2013; previously printed in 1844) (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013), p. 275.
Cf. Augustine, Confessions 8; 8 (19): ‘People with no education are rising up and seizing heaven, and we, with all our learning, look on! We are entangled in flesh and blood!’ (Surgunt indocti et caelum rapiunt, et nos cum doctronis nostris sine corde, ecce ubi volutamur in carne et sanguine). Translation: Augustine, Confessions. Volume 1: Books 1–8 (ed. and transl. Carolyn J.B. Hammond) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 390–391.
For a detailed description of De duodecim abusivis saeculi, see: Rob Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-Being of the Realm’, Early Medieval Europe, 7:3 (1998), pp. 345–357.
See: B. Weiler, ‘Kingship, Usurpation and the Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Europe. The Case of Stephen’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 23 (2001), pp. 299–326, p. 322.
The De duodecim abusivis saeculi was included, for instance, in Gerard Geldenhouwer of Nijmegen’s Epistola de officio christiani principis, a ‘mirror of prince’ (speculum regale) addressed to William, duke of Guelders, which was printed in 1538. See: Meens, ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes’, p. 357.
Dit is bij mijn onbegrijpelijck.
The underscoring practices in the Bibles here under scrutiny appear to have been motivated by various aims. Not only could underscoring a section be a tool in studying the textual content, readers also appear to have underscored specific words or phrases to highlight the structure of the page. The latter is the case, for instance, in copies where, usually in red ink, chapter headings have been underlined. This type of underlining will be discussed in more detail in section 5.2., as it relates more strongly to readers’ manipulations of the navigational structure of the page than to their responses upon the textual content.
Stamps were also developed by individuals to leave their ownership mark in books. In contrast with, for instance, an ex-libris, the signature stamp could be used over and over again. Furthermore, stamping would take less time than carefully writing down ones name and would lead to uniform ownership marks. An example can be found in a JvL CB 1542a (Antwerp, MPM, A.3162). Here, a reader by the name of H. J. Matthijnzoon stamped his name a total of seven times across the book, in various colours. On the use of signature stamps, see also: Christel H. Force, ‘Intellectual Property and Ownership History’, in Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce (eds.), Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield, 2019), pp. 17–36, p. 25.
See, for instance: Molekamp, Women and the Bible, pp. 55–59; Smith, ‘Grossly Material Things’, pp. 187–188; Brownlee, Biblical Readings, p. 3.
Joseph wert [v]an sijn broe[de]rs gehaet [ende] vervolcht. Item een figure van christo die is van [sij]n broederen gehaet ende ghedoot.
Van christo.
Alle dese capittelen roeren van dat v capittel esaia ende spreken een meningh oft sin ende paer spreken beider. The page has been trimmed at the bottom, cutting of part of the annotation, so there would originally have been even more cross-references connected to this Bible section.
See, for instance: Molekamp, Women and the Bible, p. 35.
Quoted from JvL 1542a CB, James 5:14: Isser yemant cranc onder v, die hale die oudtste vander vergaderingen, ende laten ouer hem bidden ende saluen met olie inden naem des HEREN.
Quoted from JvL 1542a CB, Matthew 4:17: Van dier tijt aen begonst Iesus te prediken ende te seggen, doet penitencie, dat rijck der hemelen sal ghenaken.
In margin of James 5:14: priesters der kercken. Crossed out: die oudste vander vergaderingen. The word priesters has also been written between the lines.
Glued-on paper fragments or the remains of glue in JvL CB 1535 (Tilburg, ULT, TF PRE 10) can be found in Genesis 48:16, Matthew 16:18, Matthew 18:17 (twice), Acts 15:41, 1 Corinthians 11:23, Ephesians 5:32, 1 Timothy 4:14, 2 Peter 1:11, and James 5:14.
dat misterium is groote, mer ic segge van Christo, ende van der ghemeynten. The user glued the word sacrament onto misterium and Kercke onto ghemeynten.
The same adjustment of this verse can also be found in JvL CB 1534 (Cambridge, ULC, BS 223.B.34). As in the Tilburg copy, a paper slip with the text ‘Priest of the Church’ (priesters der kercken) has been glued onto the printed text. Two other phrases have also been adjusted in this manner, namely Matthew 16:18 and Matthew 18:17. These manipulations are both in accordance with the Tilburg copy as well. In JvL CB 1526 (Brussels, KBR, III 6057 C), the printed translation in James 5:14 has been crossed out and the translation ‘Priest of the Church’ (idem) has been written above it.
Smyth, Material Texts, p. 118. On the addition of paper slips, see also: Smyth, Material Texts, pp. 41–44; William H. Sherman and Heather Wolfe, ‘The Department of Hybrid Books: Thomas Miles between Manuscript and Print’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 45:3 (2015), pp. 457–485; John Considine, ‘Cutting and Pasting Slips: Early Modern Compilation and Information Management’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 45:3 (2015), pp. 487–504.
USTC No. 400782.
On the origins of the Louvain Bible, see: Wim François, ‘Solomon Writing and Resting: Tradition, Words and Images in the 1548 Dutch “Louvain Bible”’, in Celeste Brusati et al. (eds.), The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400–1700 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 181–261, pp. 181–189; François, ‘De Leuvense Bijbel’, pp. 276–294.
In Van Winghe’s prologue: datmen een goede onghevalsche duytsche Bybel soude uutgheven om die andere incorrecte ende vervalschte bybelen beter uuten handen der slechter menschen te crijghen.
Liesvelt 1535, Romans 3:28: … dat die mensche gerechtuaerdicht wort sonder toe doen die wercken des wets / alleene door tgeloue. The word ‘alone’ is included in the translation of Romans 3:28 in Liesvelt’s complete Bibles of 1526, 1532, 1534, and 1535.
NB [a]lleene.
Want u is dat rijc, ende die cracht, ende die heerlicheydt inder eewicheydt, Amen.
On the presence and absence of the doxology in the manuscript sources of Matthew, see: Dennis D. Duling, ‘The Gospel of Matthew’, in David E. Aune (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 296–318, pp. 299–300.
Dese noteringe is van de geusen bygevoegt. The same annotator left several other anti- Calvinist notes in the books of Genesis and Exodus. Furthermore, it might be this reader who decided to scrape the word ‘alone’ off the page in Romans 3:28.
Another comparable example is the adjustment in the beginning of Job 41, which also resonates with contemporary debates on chapter division: rather than starting with ‘Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook …’ (Job 40:20 in the Louvain Bible and Job 41:1 in the Liesvelt Bible), the reader transfers the beginning of the chapter to ‘None is so fierce that dare stir him up …’ (Job 41:1 in the Louvain Bible and Job 41:10 in the Liesvelt Bible).
USTC No. 6701164.
In his Insitutio (lib. I, cap. xi, paragraph 12), John Calvin states that: Restat igitur ut ea sola pingantur ac sculpantur quorum sint capaces oculi: Dei maiestas, quae oculorum sensu longe superior est, ne indecoris spectris corrampatur (Petrus Barth and Guilelmus Niesel (eds.), Joannis Calvini: Opera Selecta; volume III (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), p, 101); ‘only those things are to be sculptured or painted which the eyes are capable of seeing: let not God’s majesty, which is far above the perception of the eyes, be debased through unseemly representations’ (translation: William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 74).
Daer zijn 3 zaecken daer an dat men de kristeleken Relygen bekennen mach vuut der valsen ende ketterschen relyge te weten teerste het woordt godes vuut het ghebruick der sacrementen ende vuut de kristeleke strafe ut welcke de valsche ofte de kettersche en duvelsche Relyge niet en heeft.
vyands vands cruise christi.
… om dat gheen vleesch dor die wercken des wets voor godt rechuerdich zijn en mach.
NB dit ist grootste gebodt inde kerck.
NB: dit strijt tegen de predestinatie.
NB avontmaal; Doopsel en vormsel. The annotator also refers to the confirmation (vormsel or formsel) in the margins of Luke 18:16, Acts 8:15, and Acts 19:2. In each of these references, to receive the Holy Ghost is understood as the sacrament of confirmation.
Men moet veel pententie en goede wercken doen om veel sonden.
The term ‘transformative techniques’ is also used by Sherman, Used Books, 3.
Daniel Sawyer, ‘Navigation by Tab and Thread: Place-Markers and Readers’ Movement in Books’, in Mary C. Flannery and Carrie Griffin (eds.), Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 99–114, p. 100.
For example, Dijstelberge, Wat is een boek?, who stated that the reader who would have personally managed the paratext of his books during the fifteenth century became a passive consumer of the printer’s ideas of hierarchy in the sixteenth century (74–75). Furthermore, the presence of navigational and decorative elements such as colouring and rubrication in printed books at the beginning of the sixteenth century has been understood almost exclusively as a reminder of a manuscript lay-out (e.g. Elly Cockx-Indestege and Willem Heijting, ‘De doorbraak van de drukkunst in roerige tijden: Het Nederlandse boek in de zestiende eeuw’, Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis, 17 (2010), pp. 93–140, p. 116), rather than an early modern characteristic as such.
On the practice of correcting running titles, see also: Bourne, ‘Running Titles’, pp. 197–199.
The same correction has been made in another JvL CB 1535 (Oxford, LC, k.9.27). Similar corrections of running titles can also be found in HvL CB 1538 (Leerdam, SBM), HvL CB 1538 (Utrecht, ULU, Rariora qu.175), JvL CB 1534 (Brussels, KBR, LP VH 30 C), and HPvM CB 1535 (Cambridge, SCC, R.23).
Similar corrections of chapter numberings can also be found in JvL CB 1526 (Antwerp, MPM, R 58.2), JvL B 1526 (Leiden, ULL, 1497 A 11) JvL CB 1534 (Brussels, KBR, LP 586 A), JvL CB 1534 (‘s-Heerenberg, HB, Inv. no. 327), JvL CB 1542a (Tilburg, ULT, TFH-D 303), HvL CB 1538 (Leerdam, SBM), and HPvM CB 1535 (Cambridge, SCC, R.23).
Readers adjusted and corrected not only printing errors in paratext, but also mistakes and inconsistencies in the main text of the book. An example can be found in Exodus 32:10 (‘Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.’ (ESV)) in JvL CB 1535 (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C3), where two letters that are missing in the printed text have been added in red ink (‘ende ic sal u maken in een groot volc’). On readers’ involvement in correcting the book, see also: Blair, ‘Errata Lists’; Blatt, Participatory Reading, pp. 27–61. Blair crucially notes that ‘even when, as in most cases, readers’ corrections did not affect later editions, the changes made by readers nonetheless constituted the final stage of production of a printed text … Those who read with pen in hand to correct their copy of a printed book … shaped the transmission of that text, at least through their individual copy’ (40). By the corrections they made, readers could act beyond the control of printer-publishers and influence the ‘correct’ mediation of the biblical text and paratext in their own copy.
Although the vast majority of readers’ traces, adjustments, and annotations point towards a discontinuous reading behaviour, some readers might have also aimed for a continuous reading of the book from Genesis to Revelations. Underneath the colophon of a 1542b Liesvelt Bible (Ghent, BS, A 872), a reader marked that they ‘began [reading] on 18 June 1643’ (Den xviije Junij 1643 begonst). This annotation connects to a linear mode of reading that appears to be popular particularly among seventeenth-century, Protestant readers. Such annotations are not unique. In a Dutch 1683 Statenbijbel (in private ownership), a reader called Pieter Pietersz. Cuus describes his and his wife’s reading behaviour at the end of the New Testament. Between 1688 and 1721 they read the entire Bible eleven times. In 1688, they even finished reading the entire book twice: ‘Anno 1688, on 1 January, have I, Pieter Pietersz Cuus, and my wife Jannetie Bareus, started reading this Bible and have succeeded on 30 June. On 1 July in the same year, we have started again and my wife has succeeded on the 20 December and I on the 28th of the same [month]. So we have twice in one year read across the Old and New Testament with joy, through God’s blessing’ (Anno 1688 Op den 1 Januuarij Ben Ick Pieter Pietersz Cuus Ende mijn huysvrou Jannetie Bareus Desen bijbel begonnen om te lesen en hebben op den 30 Junij gedaen gekregen / Den 1 Julij des selwen jaers sijn wij beijde weder begonnen en heeft mijn vrouw den 20 desember ende ick den 28 dijto gedaen gekregen soo dat wij 2 mael in een jaer soo Oud als Nuw Testament door godes zegen met vrught hebben om gelezen). On continuous Bible reading practices in the early modern period, see also: Patrick Collinson, ‘The Coherence of the Text: How it Hangeth Together: The Bible in Reformation England’, in W. P. Stephens (ed.), The Bible, the Reformation and the Church: Essays in Honour of James Atkinson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 84–108, pp. 91–99; Stallybrass, ‘Books and Scrolls’, pp. 47–50.
Printed foliation is present in PvM 1541 CB, not in any of the other complete Bible editions.
This foliation has been added by a late sixteenth century reader, as can be detected based on the handwriting. Foliation from a (much) later date, however, also occurs in various surviving Bible copies. This is the case, for instance, in a JvL NT 1535 (Ghent, ULG, BIB.ACC.033490), which features modern pencil foliation.
Complete foliation, of all 411 folio’s in this case, is rare. In most cases foliation was only added to certain parts of the book. This is the case, for instance, in a copy of the 1538 Hansken van Liesvelt Bible (New York, BeNY, Mln30 + 538). The 92 folio’s of the New Testament have been numbered in the right upper corner. Similar to the HvL CB 1538 (Utrecht, ULU, Rariora qu.175), the annotator included these folio numbers to the list of contents of the New Testament.
The reader rendered the list of abbreviations incomplete, as the Epistle of James was missing. They added it at the end of the list, together with the corresponding folio number.
ende het blat. dat ghetal datter ghescreven state. daer soectet capittell.
See: Wim François, ‘De doopsgezinde Biestkensbijbel (1560) en de gereformeerde Deux-Aesbijbel (1562): Bijbelvertalingen voor de protestanten’, in Paul Gillaerts et al. (eds.), De Bijbel in de Lage Landen. Elf eeuwen van vertalen (Heerenveen: Royal Jongbloed, 2015), pp. 304–341, pp. 319–320.
Verse numbering was first introduced in print by Robert Estienne in 1551. About Robert Estienne’s verse numbering and the reception of this system in other Bible editions, see: William P. Weaver, ‘The Verse Divisions of the New Testament and the Literary Culture of the Reformation’, Reformation, 16 (2011), pp. 161–177, pp. 161–164.
The handwritten cross-references in this copy (Antwerp, MPM, R 58.2) also sometimes refer to each other. For example, next to Job 31:1, the reader annotated Mat. 5. 26, and next to Matthew 5:26, they referred back to Job. 31. 1. It should be noted, furthermore, that not every verse to which a cross-reference points has been numbered. In various cases, a cross-reference refers to an unnumbered Bible verse. This is also the case in this example; neither Job 31:1 nor Matthew 5:26 has been numbered.
The inclusion of numbering was not the only way in which users could clarify verse distinctions. In the only known surviving copy of Liesvelt’s 1540 New Testament (Stuttgart, WLB, Bb niederländ 154001), the verses of Matthew 2 have been distinguished by placing brackets at the end of every verse. This practice of verse division does not appear anywhere else in the book, and it is unknown why the individual chose to do so in Matthew 2. However, similarly to the examples already described, the distinctions between verses may have played a role in the reader’s understanding of the structure of the chapter.
As Sawyer has noted, physical markers such as tabs have survived in large numbers in late medieval and early modern books. However, there has been little detailed or systematic treatment of the practice of creating and utilising these markers. See: Sawyer, ‘Navigation by Tab and Thread’, pp. 99–101. Tabs, furthermore, are not the only static markers that were used in late medieval and early modern books. Other examples are knotted pieces of thread (see: Sawyer, ‘Navigation by Tab and Thread’, p. 102; Heather Blatt, ‘Book Accessories, Gender, and the Staging of Reading’, in Martin Chase and Maryanne Kowaleski (eds.), Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honor of Mary C. Erler (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019), pp. 150–177, pp. 157–161) or objects such as religious badges and pilgrims’ souvenirs attached to the edge of the page (see: Hanneke van Asperen, ‘The Book as Shrine, the Badge as Bookmark: Religious Badges and Pilgrims’ Souvenirs in Devotional Manuscripts’, in Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 288–312). On a short description of static bookmarks in manuscripts, see: Erik Kwakkel, Books Before Print (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 135–136.
Similar tabs marking the beginnings of Bible books are featured in JvL CB 1526 (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-33), JvL CB 1526 (Cambridge, ULC, Young 32–33), JvL CB 1535 (Oxford, BLO, Bib.Dutch.C2), HvL CB 1538 (Haarlem, NHA, NK 409), JvL CB 1534 (Leerdam, GBS), HPvM CB 1535 (Cambridge, SCC, R.23), HPvM CB 1541 (Leerdam, GBS), and HPvM CB 1541 (Cambridge, ULC, Syn.3.54.3). Another JvL CB 1542b (Amsterdam, VU, XC.05045-) only contains one tab, marking the beginning of Proverbs.
The reuse of manuscript material to create tabs is not unique to this copy. The tabs in a 1481 breviary (Groningen, RUG, uklu INC 55) were made from a colourful, illuminated manuscript (e.g. at fol. K6), and in a manuscript compilation containing, amongst others, several texts by Jan van Boendale (Oxford, BLO, MS. Marschall 29), the beginnings of various texts are similarly marked by tabs made from manuscript material. Special thanks to Anna de Bruyn and Daniël Ermens for informing me about these examples.
Bookmarks could leave traces, but this is rarely found in the analysed Liesvelt and Peetersen van Middelburch Bibles. Bookmarks made from acidic paper can leave discolouration. This is mainly the case with the use of modern, wood pulp-based paper, which has a significantly higher acid level than the rag-based paper of the premodern period. In addition, although not strictly a bookmark (and definitely not early modern), a rusty stain of a paperclip at the beginning of the Book of Exodus in a JvL CB 1526 (London, BL, C.110.g.4) clearly illustrates its past presence.
Lambrecht Myseras, Onderrigt voor ware Vroome, Om een betamelyk gebruik van het H. Avondmaal te maken, printed by Hendrik van Pelt in Rotterdam, 1738; fol. 123. Digitally available at: https://books.google.nl/books?id=d7uowhuaoPoC&hl=nl&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
The text on the paper slip is in accordance with the digitised edition of the Statenbijbel of 1728 (https://books.google.be/books?id=IAv5KpXJp70C&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl#v=onepage&q&f=true, fol. 101), but the mise-en-page is slightly different. It is, however, likely that the paper fragment is taken from another eighteenth-century edition of the Statenbijbel. The precise edition of the fragment of the vita has so far remained undetectable, but the fragment was most likely taken from a seventeenth-century book of vitae.
Knight, Bound to Read, p. 16. Another Bible copy in which the material closeness between various texts provides insight in the use of the book is a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (Leuven, MSB, P.22.055.1/Fo BIJB 1541(a)). In this copy, the pastedown at the back of the book has started to disintegrate, and it now displays the various layers underneath the top paper layer. Closest to the wooden binding is a late medieval parchment manuscript fragment. Then, the binding is strengthened with a paper fragment which is cut from an early modern pamphlet. The pamphlet, Tractaet van t’Bestand, ghemaeckt ende besloten binnen de Stadt ende Cité van Antwerpen, was printed by Hillebrant Iacobsz in 1609 in The Hague (not enough of the fragment has survived to determine from which of the 1609 editions (USTC No’s: 1516112; 1032209; 1032208; 1516102; 1019393) it was taken). On top of these two fragments, the remains of what once functioned as a paper pastedown display vague and only partially readable genealogical annotations from around 1690.
Kwakkel, Books Before Print, p. 138.
Similar heart-shaped bookmarks were already created and used in the late medieval period. See: Kwakkel, Books Before Print, p. 136.
Sherman 2012, 127–130.
There is no clear-cut evidence of the selling and buying practice of Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles. However, based on data from contemporary printers such as Cornelis Claesz and Plantin, it is plausible that the majority of Bibles would have been sold from the publisher’s bookshop to the buyer in separate sheets (in albis). See: August A. den Hollander, ‘Assortiment (genre/taal) van het verhandelde boek’, in Marieke van Delft en Clemens de Wolf (eds.), Bibliopolis: Geschiedenis van het gedrukte boek in Nederland (Zwolle/The Hague: Waanders Uitgevers/Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2003), pp. 42–43.
For an extensive study of practices of textual compilation within bindings in the early modern period, see Knight, Bound to Read. See also: Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Ligatures of the Early Modern Book’, Book 2.0, 7:1 (2017), pp. 33–44, pp. 35–36.
See also: David Pearson, Book Ownership in Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 104.
Rebinding practices have been an important cause for the loss of many readers’ traces. Rebinding would often include replacing pastedowns and flyleaves as well, elements regularly used for annotation and ownership notes. Therefore, rebinding would allow later book users to discard traces of previous readers. Furthermore, a crucial agent in these processes have been modern librarians, in particular those of the nineteenth century, whose destructive perspective on annotations and reading traces led to the washing and bleaching of annotated pages and the extreme cropping of edges in processes of rebinding. See also: Monique Hulvey, ‘Not So Marginal: Manuscript Annotations in the Folger Incunabula’, PBSA, 92:2 (1998), pp. 159–176, p. 161; Saenger and Heilen 1991, 254.
Anno 1561 den 17 augustus is dit buick aldus gebonden. Ghijsbrecht Fransz wrote down his ownership mark at the end of the book, underneath the colophon: ‘Item: this book belongs to Ghijsbrecht Fransz, living in Amsterdam on the Oude Sijdt, on the leech eerf in the Halsteeghe. If it were the case that it gets lost, I beg the person who finds it that he will bring it back; he will be justly awarded. Do good, you will not be disappointed’ (Item dit boock hort toe ghijsbrecht fransz wonende tamsterdamme ande oude sijdt opt leech eerf in die halsteeghe oft saeck waer dattet verloren wort soe bid ick die gheen diet vijndt dat hijdt weder brenct men salt hem eerlijck loonen. Doet goedt hedt sal u niet rouwen).
A JvL CB 1526 (Cambridge, ULC, Young 32 & 33) has been divided in two volumes. The first contains the Bible books Genesis to Song of Songs, the second contains Isaiah to Revelations. The current binding is from later date, probably late eighteenth- or early nineteenth century. However, the early modern annotations at the ends of both volumes, which describe which books are part of which volume, suggest that the splitting of the book dates back to at least the seventeenth century.
See: Scott-Warren, ‘Ligatures’, p. 35. See also: McKitterick, Print, Manuscript, and the Search for Order, pp. 48–52.
On mutilated books and how readers made sense of loss and incompletion, both practically and metaphorically, see: Leah Whittington, ‘The Mutilated Text’, in Alexandra Gillespie and Deidre Lynch (eds.), The Unfinished Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 429–443.
In a similar way, a missing corner of the liturgical reading schedule in a 1526 Liesvelt Bible (Bremen, SUB, 99.C.0417) has been completed by pasting a square of paper onto the page, containing in handwriting the missing passages from the reading schedule. Furthermore, lacunae in the printed content of the Bible copies were not only reconstructed by the early modern additions of manuscript material, but also, much more recently, by placing photocopies of the missing parts between the pages. This is the case in JvL CB 1526 (Leiden, ULL, 1497 A 11; according to an annotation on the first flyleaf of the book, the copies were included in 1968) and HvL CB 1538 (Leerdam, GBS; according to an annotation on the back pastedown, the copies were included during rebinding and restoring practices in 1993).
The first two sheets after the handwritten Genesis addition contain ownership annotations and a short prayer in nineteenth- and twentieth-century hands.
Late sixteenth-century or early seventeenth-century charts and/or maps have been bound in with the following copies: JvL CB 1534 (Cambridge, ULC, BSS.223.B34); JvL CB 1542a (Leeuwarden, TL, Gg 80); JvL CB 1542a (Tilburg, ULT, TFH-D 303); JvL CB 1542a (Amsterdam, UvA, OG 65-33); HPvM CB 1541 (Leuven, MSB, B22.055.1/Fo BIJB 1541); HPvM CB 1541 (Groningen, RUG, A g-3); HPvM CB 1541 (Haarlem, NBG, 1 A 2). On the inclusion of maps in early modern Dutch Bibles, see also: Renske Hoff, ‘“Door geographische beschrijvinghe verlicht”: Ingebonden kaarten in Bijbels uit de eerste helft van de zestiende eeuw’, Jaarboek van het Nederlands Genootschap van Bibliofielen, 30 (2022), pp. 29–40. Readers and book users not only implemented new material into their Bibles, they also sometimes eliminated parts of the book. In many cases, for instance, the Exodus map, which was supposed to be placed in Liesvelt’s and Peetersen van Middelburch’s Bibles between the books of Genesis and Exodus, was taken out. One of the main reasons to do so might have been related to the fact that separate historic maps were – and still are – easily sold as independent objects. Besides maps, woodcuts could also be taken out of one book and placed in another. In a 1541 Peetersen van Middelburch Bible (New York, NYPL, KB + 1541 BibleDutch), a woodcut above Daniel 3, depicting the scene described in Daniel 3:23–25, in which three men fell into a fire but were not hurt, has been carefully cut out of the Bible.
Dese Caerte (de welcke behoort ingeuoecht te worden voor het xxiij. Capittel des Boecx Numeri) teeckent ons den wech, die het volck xl. gheduerige Jaren ghewandelt heft, van het Landt Egypti aen, lancks henen de Woestijnen van Arabien, tot dat sy inden lande van Chanaan, alsoo tselue in de Boecken Exodi, Numeri, ende Deuteronomy te lesen is.
See also: Den Hollander 2019, 137. For overviews of biblical maps in the sixteenth century, see: Wilco C. Poortman and Joost Augustijn, Kaarten in Bijbels (16e–18e eeuw) (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1995); Catherine Delano-Smith and Elizabeth Morley Ingram, Maps in Bibles 1500–1600: An Illustrated Catalogue (Genève: Librairie Droz S.A., 1991).
USTC No. 5696.
See also: Morley Ingram, ‘Maps as Readers’ Aids’, pp. 30–31.
Various surviving copies of this Bible edition lack some of the maps. For instance, only four out of five maps have survived in the Deux Aes copies of the Groningen University Library (uklu AG-27) and the Royal Library The Hague (1702 B 8). For an overview of the history and circulation of the Dutch Deux Aes Bible, see: August A. den Hollander, ‘The Edition History of the Deux Aes Bible’, in M. van Veen et al. (eds.), Religious Minorities and Cultural Diversity in the Dutch Republic. Sutides Presented to Piet Visser on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 41–72.
On the use of maps as exegetical tools, see: Shalev, ‘Early Modern Geographia Sacra’, p. 197; Moffitt Watts, ‘The European Religious Worldview’, p. 387.
See: Morley Ingram, ‘Maps as Readers’ Aids’, p. 30.
Michael Durrant, ‘Old Books, New Beginnings: Recovering Lost Pages’, Inscription: The Journal of Material Text – Theory, Practice, History, 1 (2020).
On one of the flyleaves, the book owner wrote the following incomplete sentence: ‘On 18 August 1737, have I, Ysek …’ (Den 18 augustus 1737 heb ick Ysek).
Opten kersauent; Opten sint andris dach.
It is likely that the reader used a separate publication of the Gospels for their reading of these Bible books.
Opten pinxter dach; Op S. Petrus ende Paulus auont.
Wtganc or wt.
Opten auont int werck der apostolen int iij.
Van Heiligher drievuldicheit.
On the Council of Trent and the development of the Roman Missal, see: Nathan D. Mitchell, ‘Reforms, Protestant and Catholic’, in Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen B. Westerfield (eds.), The Oxford History of Christian Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 583–668, pp. 637–641.
See also: Kathleen Ashley, ‘Psalm-Singing at Home; The Case of Etienne Mathie, a Burgundian Protestant’, in Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 71–81, p. 74.
Om altijt te biden.
The term ‘archive of prayer’ has been coined by Reinburg to describe how Books of Hours had a bridging function between the liturgy and the home and both shaped and were shaped by religious practices. See: Reinburg, French Books of Hours.
This copy is incomplete. The title page, the first three chapters of Genesis, and all paratextual elements at the end of the book are missing. If the annotating reader left any ownership marks, it is likely that these were lost when the outer leaves of the book were discarded.
The function of certain prayers is also confirmed in a HvL CB 1538 (Leerdam, SBM), where the reader noted whether certain biblical prayers were suitable as oratio or confessio.
Gebet ofte dancksegginghe; Dese bedene Hiobs is troostelijck allen vromen benauden.
Nae des[e] psalm s[al] ick alti[jt] lesen di[e] 103 psal[m] Looft di[e] heere mij[n] siele; Dese psalm sal ick altijdt lest lessen so ick voorgenomen ende aengeteeckent heb achter bij die loffpsalmen.
Heere Wij bidden u verhoort onse ghebeden goedertierliik ende als wij ontbonden zijn van die banden der sonden bewaere ons van alle teghenspoet.
See: Reinburg, French Books of Horus, pp. 149–154.
Lof god van al. This phrase is written in other books as well, such as on the title page of a devout book titled Dit is een deuoet meditacie op die passie ons heren, printed by Jan Seversz in Leiden, ca. 1516 (Amsterdam, UvA, Ned. Inc. 76).
Mensch gedinckt uwe vier uijtstere in der eeuwigheijd en zult gij niet sondige / te wete de dood de hel het oordel en de hemel glorie.
Min god min god weder; Vrese god ende hadt sijn gebodt.
In Peetersen van Middelburch’s 1541 Bible, a similar effect occurs in print as well, as the phrase ‘Holy is God in all his works’ (Heylich is God in alle sine wercken) is printed alongside the large woodcut depicting the creation, which opposes the beginning of the book of Genesis. Placed at the opening of the Bible, the words seem to refer to the gift of Holy Scripture itself and frame a sense of gratitude, praise, and devotion with which a reader is expected to approach the text. In one copy (Nijmegen, ULN, 100 b 10), the well-known Latin version of the phrase is written underneath the printed words: Benedictus Deus in donis suis, et sanctus in omnibus operibus suis (‘Blessed be God in his gifts, and holy in all his works’).
… alle gieftige melaetsen, blinde, kreupele, lamme, doove, dooden en verstervene menschen.
… bewijst sulx noch aen alle die gene die alsoo met een vast betrouwen tot hem komen, ende door ernstige gebeden … dan komet der heere den mensch te hulpe.
USTC No. 1527751.
USTC No. 425770. On T’Wonder-boeck, see: Gary K. Waite, ‘Knowing the Spirit(s) in the Dutch Radical Reformation: From Physical Perception to Rational Doubt, 1536–1690’, in Michelle D. Brock et al. (eds.), Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 23–54, pp. 26–29.
See: Waite, ‘Knowing the Spirit(s)’, p. 28; Gary K. Waite, ‘Writing in the Heavenly Language: A Guide to the Works of David Joris’, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, 14:4 (1990), pp. 297–319, pp. 302–304.
Waite, ‘Writing in the Heavenly Language’, p. 305.
Figuer des Bruyts Christi.
Voorbeeldt / Beeldt ofte Letterlijcke Figuere des Bruydts Christi … tot een Spieghel ende waerninge allen Gheloouighen / dat sy hen op maecker ter Feesten / ter Bruyloft bereyden in Heyligher Cieragie / tot prijs ende lof van den Almachtighen Hemelschen Vader / ende onsen Heere Jesu Christo.
Neemt waer een figure oft beelt des bruijts Cristij; siet ende merct wat v noch ontbreeckt.
Dat grote harde swaert der gramscappen ende woort gods.
Siet daer / die bruit des lams Jesu christi In haere fr[aeyheyt] ende gouden cieragie der zijelen sonder rimpel ofte enighe [vlecken] Een warachtich beelt ofte gelijckenisse godes of den waren taber[na]kel / de rechten tempel ofte huis / Een woninge ofte woenstat go[des] In den gheest / siet daer den heijlighen berch des heeren / Ende alder scoonste wijf welcke met heijlicheit ende der duechden gecleet is [na] die ghelijckenisse gods vleijsch van sijnen vleijsche been van sijn[en] beenen van god gescapen tot zijns lof ende erfdeel doer cris[tum] Jesum Dat leuende woort der vaders voort gebracht effen als heua van Adam. Ghebenedijt moet hij zijn die u gebenedijt / werderom verv[loect] moet hij sijn vie u vervloeckt / een ygelick moet seggen: a[men].
Wie is die daer voertcomt gelijck die dacheraet? Scone ghelijck die mane uutvercoren gelijck die zonne Vervaerlick ghelijck die heerscerpte.
Meditative considerations of the Bride of Christ are most commonly associated with late medieval mysticism and ‘Catholic’ religious experience. See, for instance: Lieke Andrea Smits, Performing Desire: Bridal Mysticism and Medieval Imagery in the Low Countries (c. 1100–1500) (Leiden: Universiteit Leiden, 2019); Renana Bartal, ‘Bridal Mysticism and Eucharistic Devotion: The Marriage of the Lamb in an Illustrated Apocalypse from Fourteenth-Century England’, Viator, 42:1 (2011), pp. 277–246. However, the vocabulary and images associated with the Bride of Christ in the Song of Songs and Revelations prove to have remained influential across time, space, and confessionality.
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), p. 16.
Clark and Sheingorn, ‘Encountering a Dream-Vision’, p. 19. On the relevance of the concepts of time and space in the study of premodern Bibles, see: Sabrina Corbellini, Renske A. Hoff, and Wim François, ‘Introduction: Premodern Bibles through Space and Time’, in Sabrina Corbellini, Wim François, and Renske A. Hoff, In Readers’ Hands: New Perspectives on Premodern Bibles in Europe (Leiden/Boston: Brill, to be published).