Girolamo Schola

Capituli di M. Girolamo Schola sopra varii suggetti, Girolamo Schola, [1540?]
Lawn f.44

A collection of Italian verses on a variety of subjects, including: the hat, gypsies, the goose, the horse, mustard, the cap, and sausages. The date, suggested by the British Museum’s Short-title catalogue of books printed in Italy, is supported by an early manuscript note in this Bodleian copy, which includes the date 1545.

Capituli di M. Girolamo Schola sopra varii suggetti, Girolamo Schola, [1540?], Bodleian Library Lawn f.44

A guide for confessors

Speculum confessorum et lumen conscientie, Mateo Corradone, Venice, 1538, Bodleian Library Lawn F.42
Speculum confessorum et lumen conscientie, Mateo Corradone, Venice, 1538 Bodleian Library, Lawn F.42

This Italian text serves as a guide for confessors, providing them with questions to put to those who come for confession. Each question, or set of questions, for example, “Have you cursed the sky and the stars, sun, and moon?”, is followed either by an instruction – “You have to ask how many times: ten or a hundred, etc., or more or less, etc.” – or by a statement of the seriousness of the sin (for example, “mortal”), together with references to autoritative texts on the matter. The book is held in a re-used Parchment wrapper containing a manuscript document apparently from a widow to her confessor. She asks the confessor to intercede with the bishop on her behalf, in connection with her desire to enter religion.

Avancini: 17th-century embroidered binding, on a rare meditation on the life and doctrines of Christ

The author, Nicola Avancini, was a Jesuit, and Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy at Gratz, then of Theology at Vienna. This work, originally written in Latin, appears to have been his most enduring. It was translated into several European languages, including English in 1875. This edition of the Italian translation is unrecorded elsewhere. The binding is red silk/satin with large embroidered foliage in silver, yellow and white threads, and with gilt and gauffered edges. A child’s hand has written “magister meus et unus est Christus

Vita, e dottrina di Gesu Cristo raccolta da’quattro evangelisti, Nicola Avancini. Parma: Galeazzo Rosati, 1686. Bodleian Library Vet. F3 f.128.

Rainy weather …

This publication from 1758 should resolve our questions about the continuing rain.
The new book of knowledge. Shewing the effects of the planets and other astronomical constellations; with the strange events that befall men, women and children, born under them. Together with the husbandman’s practice: Or, prognostication for ever. With the shepherd’s perpetual prognostication for the weather. … London: Printed for A. Wilde, in Aldersgate-Street: sold also by the book-sellers in town and country. MDCCLVIII

The new book of knowledge, (London, A. Wilde, 1758), Bodleian Library Vet. A5 f.4135 [detail]

Rare Books discoveries, 2: Picture book of Hitler’s navy

from Sarah Wheale, Rare Books, Department of Special Collections

Not everything discovered during the recent emptying of the New Library ahead of the refurbishment was old or rare, but their subject matter or form brought them to our attention. One such item is a picture book of Hitler’s navy containing 270 photographs, looking much like cigarette cards, pasted into an album.

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Unsere Reichsmarine : Bilder aus dem Leben der Matrosen was probably published in 1934 in Hamburg and was based on an earlier book published in the previous year entitled Matrosen, Soldaten, Kameraden by Max Burchartz and Edgar Zeller (Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1933). This new edition was greatly enhanced with an additional 80 photographs by Burchartz but the text was largely taken from the earlier edition.
It covers every aspect of a sailor’s life at sea, from firing practice to disarming a sea-mine to keeping exotic pets on board ship. The intention is clearly to portray the Reichsmarine as a modern, well trained and well equipped service at a time when Hitler was pressing to increase the size of Germany’s marine forces beyond that stipulated in the Versailles Treaty. With full German rearmament just over the horizon this picture book was doubtless intended to justify the need for a larger navy, and the Introduction clearly draws comparisons between the size of the other great marine forces (America, Great Britain, Japan) and the depleted size of Germany’s.
There are few clues as to how this item came to the Library. It was found in the stacks of the New Library (construction completed 1940) in 2011, as material was being prepared for removal preceding renovation of the building (see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/projects/new_bodleian).
It is now kept at shelfmark: Rec. d.494.

Purchase of historical medical books

from Francesca Galligan, Rare Books, Dept. of Special Collections

The Birmingham Medical Institute, established in 1875, offered a first part of its historical medical books at auction in April. The Bodleian purchased six lots, of fifteen editions, adding important new texts and editions to our extensive medical collections. Many of the books were chosen for their focus on women, and include a group on midwifery.

Midwifery

Fielding Ould, A Treatise of midwifry (1748; Vet. A4 e.3676)
This is the rare first London edition of a book striking in its concern for the wellbeing of and respect for the mother, and in its focus on observations from nature and on natural delivery. It includes a glossary: “To make this treatise of more general use, (especially to women who live in the country remote from the assistance of skilful persons) the editors have here subjoined an explanation of the tems of art”. Most of the words in the glossary are of a technical nature, though some are very general: ‘adult’, ‘pregnant’, ‘spine’, ‘intestines’. Ould discusses the work of several others in this field, including Henry Deventer, whose The art of midwifery improv’d was purchased in its 4thedition (1746, Vet. A4 e.3676).

Fig. 1

Deventer’s book contains a series of illustrations of the foetus in utero [Fig. 1].

Illustrations were, for some, a point of concern. Edmund Chapman notes in the preface to his Treatise on the improvement of Midwifery, purchased in its 2nd and 3rd editions (1735 and 1759, Vet. A4 e.3678, Vet. A5 e.7466), that plates of the body would only “serve to raise and encourage impure thoughts” (p. xx). He states “my design, on the contrary, was to compose such a treatise as one of either sex might read without a blush”, and the only illustrations present are forceps and another extraction tool called the fillet. [Figs 2 and 3.] The author recommends the book specifically to midwives, though he hopes that surgeons will also find it useful.

Fig. 2

Women’s health – general

Jean Astruc, Treatise on the diseases of women (1762, in two volumes, together with the rarer third volume, 1767), Vet. A5 e.7469 and Vet. A5 e.7470
An English translation of this important French work that includes an extensive “Chronological catalogue of the physicians, who have written treatises, particularly on the diseases of women…”, divided into four periods. In his preface, Astruc likens his task to that of Vergil, picking over the poetry of Ennius: “I acknowledge it is not without being surfeited with them, that I have gone over so great a number of such collections: and I question whether Virgil was ever so much so in reading the verses of Ennius. But we had both the same design: for I endeavoured, like him, to extract something useful from this heap of things, that contained so little of what was good; and this supported my patience” (p. iv).

Fig. 3

Also purchased were:

William Rowley, A treatise on female, nervous, hysterical, hypochondriacal, bilious, convulsive diseases; apoplexy and palsy; with thoughts on madness, suicide, &c. in which the principal disorders are explained from anatomical facts, and the treatment formed on several new principles(1788), Vet. A5 e.7468  [Fig. 4].

Fig. 4

John Friend, Emmenologia (1752), Vet. A5 e.3
An edition in English, with a typographical error corrected in manuscript [Fig. 5].

Fig. 5

Charles Perry’s rare A mechanical account and explication of the hysteric passion (1755), Vet. A5 e.74711st and 3rd editions of Pierre Pomme’s Traité des affections vaporeuses des deux sexes(Lyon, 1763 and 1767), Vet. E5 f.549 and Vet. E5 e.1221

General medical

William Salmon’s Parateremata: or Select physical and chyrurgical observations: containing divers remarkable histories of cures, done by several famous physicians (1687); Vet. A3 e.2219
One of three editions of this year, all rare, and all thus far absent from the Bodleian. [Figs 6 and 7]

Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Domenico Panaroli, Discorso delle stufe da bagni di Roma, e suoi nocumenti. (Rome, 1646); Vet. F3 e.66
A treatise on the perils of Rome’s modern public baths, known in only a few copies. [Fig. 8]

Robert Bunon, Essay sur les maladies des dents, (Paris, 1743); Vet. E4 e.92
One of the first books devoted to children’s teeth.

An Edinburgh edition of Anton Störck’s An essay on the medicinal nature of hemlock (1762).
Vet. A5 e.7465

Fig. 8

A visual record of unidentified coats of arms in Bodleian incunables

From Marie-Eugénie Lecouffe (Enssib / CSB intern)

The importance for a library such as the Bodleian Library of making provenance information more available for its users, with the aim of helping provenance research, was already mentioned on this blog in a previous post. Indeed supplying images of provenance evidence was described as the easiest way to allow comparison between several unidentified monograms or coats of arms, for example. Displaying the pictures on Flickr was also presented as one simple possibility for sharing them, organizing them in sets and receiving corrections and comments from any person interested in provenance research.

A family or institutional coat of arms is a very good example of provenance evidence that might be helpfully identified by a picture.  The Provenance Index of the Bodleian Incunable Catalogue registers more than 80 unidentified coats of arms.  For each of them an extended blazoning is provided in the text of the catalogue. But heraldic language is so specific that it could be difficult for non-specialists to imagine what these really look like. Supplying  photos allows visual connections… and perhaps identification!

Now almost all of the unidentified coats of arms registered in the Bodleian Incunable Catalogue (Bod-Inc) have been imaged. A few examples of these pictures are shown in the slideshow below.

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But you’ll find much more on Flickr. Indeed all (or almost all) the pictures of those unidentified coats of arms have been put with their descriptions in the set called “Unidentified coats of arms in Bodleian incunables“. A caption for each picture includes:

  • the location of the coat of arms in the incunable;
  • its blazoning (verbal description), as it is provided in Bodleian Incunable Catalogue;
  • a short notice of the incunable: shelfmark, author, title, publisher details and publication date;
  • the link to the online PDF version of the incunable catalogue with the Bod-Inc number.

Tags have been added as well:

  • Bodleian shelfmark;
  • Bod-Inc number;
  • keywords (“coat of arms”, unidentified and incunables).

There are other types of unidentified provenance evidence noted in the Bodleian Incunable Catalogue which might usefully be imaged and put on Flickr for the same purpose: bookplates, monograms…

Identifications, if any are forthcoming, can be made in comments to this blogpost.

Monastic provenances of early printed books in Bodleian collections: case 5

Aristoteles’ Opera from the Premonstratensians of Weissenau

 

Fol. A1r
Fol. 3A1r

 

 

Aristoteles, Opera
Venice: A. Torresanus and B. de Blavis (in part for Johannes de Colonia), 1483.
Folio (ISTC ia00962000; Bod-inc A-387(1)).
Bodleian Library Auct. P inf. 1.3

 

 

 

 

Provenance:

Weissenau, Württemberg, dioc. of Konstanz, Premonstratensians, SS.Petrus et Paulus

Founded in 1145, dissolved in 1802. On a1r «Coenobii Minoraugiensis»; on 3A1r «Bibliothecae Weissenaviensis».

Fol. 3A1r: inscription

Samuel Butler (1774-1839), Bishop of Lichfield

Bodleian Library

Purchased in 1840 at the Butler sale for £18. 0. 0; not found in Books purchased for the Bodleian (1840).

Decoration:

South-German decoration. On 3A1r a circular portion which presumably bore a coat of arms has been cut out and replaced by blank paper. A different artist has supplied a new coat of arms, unidentified.

Binding:

Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards, made in/for Weissenau.

Medieval manuscripts surviving from the Premonstratensians of Weissenau are today in:

Amiens, Berlin, Bloomington Indiana, Brussels, Cambridge, Cambridge MA, Cologny, Freiburg i. Br., Karlsruhe, Kremsmünster, St Petersburg, Liebenau, London BL, Manchester, Munich SBS, Nantes, New Haven, Nuremberg, Paris BnF, Prague (the largest number), Princeton, St Gallen, St Paul im Lavanttal, Sigmaringen, Stuttgart, Washington DC, Williamstown MA, Wolfenbüttel, Zeil.

Bibliography: Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, ed. S. Krämer, 2 vols, Munich 1989, p. II 818.

Other incunables surviving from the Premonstratensians of Weissenau are today in:

Oxford, Bodleian Library (22); Cambridge UL (1); Copenhagen (1); Frankfurt/M (1); Freiburg UB (6); Hannover (2); Harvard (1); Leipzig (1); London, BL (1); New York, P. Morgan Lib. (1); Paris, BnF; Diocese Rottenburg-Stuttgart (20); Sigmaringen Hofbibliothek (1); Stockholm (1); Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek (106); Tübingen UB (9); Ulm (1); Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibl. (1) and further research may trace more in…?

 

[Source: Paul Needham’s IPI, Bod-inc., BSB-Ink, INKA]

Monastic provenances of early printed books in Bodleian collections: case 4

An Augustinus from the Augustinian Canons regular of the Lateran congregation of Padua 

Augustinus, De civitate Dei
Venice: Johannes and Vindelinus de Spira, 1470.
Folio (ISTC ia01233000; Bod-inc A-520).
Bodleian Library: Broxb. 18.10

Provenance:

  • Petrus de Montagnana (d. 1478), grammarian and bibliophile
  • Padua, Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran Congregation, S. Johannes Baptista in Viridario, 1478

A gift from Petrus de Montagnana as stated in the inscription on E9r: «Librum hunc Canonicis Regularibus Lateranensibus in monasterio diui Ioannis Baptiste de uiridaria Padue agentibus uir uenerabilis ac deuotus Christi sacerdos & bonarum artium cultor Grece Latine Hebraice eque peritissimus D. Petrus Montagnana optima fide pietatis studio proque salute adscripsit atque donauit quem quisque legens proficiat primum deinde sit gratus | M.CCCCLXXVIII». The collection was moved in the late 18th century to the Marciana Library of Venice.

Fol. 9r: inscription
  • Sir John Hayford Thorold (1773-1831)
  • Quaritch, London antiquarian booksellers, 1897

The book features in Monumenta typographica (1897), no. 233 for £28. 0. 0.

  • Charles Stephen Ascherson (d. 1945)

Bookplate dated 1902.

  • Quaritch, London antiquarian booksellers, c. 1954
  • Albert Ehrman (1890-1969)

Purchased from Quaritch in 1954 for £210

  • Oxford, Bodleian Library

Presented by John Ehrman in 1978.

Bibliography: P. Sambin, ‘La formazione quattrocentesca della Biblioteca di S. Giovanni di Verdara in Padova’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Classe di Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti, 114 (1956), 263-80; R. W. Hunt, ‘Pietro da Montagnana: a Donor of Books to san Giovanni di Verdara in Padua’, The Bodleian Library Record, 9 (1973), pp. 17-22.

History of the Collection:

The monastery housed not only a valuable library which contained the collections of scholars such Pietro da Montagnana, Giovanni Marcanova, and Marco Mantova Benavides, but also portraits, sculptures, coins, archeological and natural history specimens. When in 1783 the Senate of Venice decreed the closure of the institution, it also arranged for the tranfer of the collection in approriate locations: manuscripts and early printed books were assigned to the Marciana Library, the rest of the book collection to the public library of Padua.

Other books surviving from the Augustinian canons regular of Padua are today in:

Paul Needham’s IPI refers that Thomas Coke (1697-1759) 1st Earl of Leicester, on Grand Tour bought 40 manuscripts from S. Johannes in Viridario in 1717.

Other incunabula are today in Venice, Oxford, Bodleian Library (2); Harvard Houghton Lib., New York, P. Morgan Library, in private collections, and further research may trace more in…?

[Source: Paul Needham’s IPI, Bod-inc.]

Monastic provenances of early printed books in Bodleian collections: case 3

An incunable from the Benedictines of Fiecht (Tyrol)

Fol. a1r

Hugo de Sancto Victore, Didascalicon
[Strasbourg: Printer of Henricus Ariminensis (Georg Reyser?), not after 1474]
(ISTC ih00532000; Bod-inc H-242(1)).
Bodleian Library: Auct. 6Q 5.7

Provenance:

Caspar Augsburger, Abbot of St Georgenberg (1469-91)

Fol. a1r: Within the South-German decorated border the arms of Caspar Augsburger and of the monastery: argent, cross of St George, gules, with escutcheon en surtont, argent, a watering can, gules.

Fol. a1r: Arms of Caspar Augsburger

St Georgenberg, Tyrol, Benedictines

Founded in 1138 and moved to Fiecht in 1708
Fol. a1r: Later inscription: «In usum Fratrum Montis S: Georgii |1652»

Fol. a1r: Later inscription

Fiecht, Tyrol, Benedictines

St Gergenberg, then S. Josephus, suppressed by the Bavarian government in 1807.

Bodleian Library

Purchased in 1851 for £1. 1. 0, as published in List of Books Purchased for the Bodleian for 1851, p.64.

Binding

Contemporary German blind-tooled leather over wooden boards, with a title-label on the upper cover.

Bibliography: 805 Jahre Benediktinerabtei Sankt Georgenberg, Fiecht: 1138-1988, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige, Ergänzungsband 31 (St Ottilien, 1988).

Other books surviving from the Benedictines of Fiecht are today in:

Oxford, Bodleian Library (12); Augsburg, Uppsala, Stockholm, Dublin Trinity College, Cambridge UL, Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum Lib., London Library, Paris BnF, New York, P. Morgan Library, Harvard Univ Houghton Lib., in private collections, and further research may trace more in…?

[Source: Paul Needham’s IPI, Bod.-inc.]