This contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of the earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular connected... Show moreThis contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of the earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular connected to the religious reform movement of the Devotio moderna. Studies of book ownership and book collections in these communities have tended to focus on manuscripts. From the last decades of the fifteenth century onwards, however, these religious women increasingly came in contact with printed books, even though the involvement of the Devotio moderna with the printing press was limited. The discussion focuses on the channels via which tertiaries and canonesses acquired books produced by commercially operating printers, the ways in which incunabula affected what these (semi-)religious women read, as well as the ratio between printed books in Latin and the vernacular, and their function(s) within these communities. Thus the essay intends to sketch a preliminary image of the role of incunabula in female convents, and advocates a more inclusive approach of female religious book ownership. Show less
De Madoc-redactie bedient zich graag van haar eigen netwerk om aan kopij te komen. Zo zet ze in feite een traditie voort die terug reikt tot de Middeleeuwen. Vijftiende-eeuwse drukkers zetten hun... Show moreDe Madoc-redactie bedient zich graag van haar eigen netwerk om aan kopij te komen. Zo zet ze in feite een traditie voort die terug reikt tot de Middeleeuwen. Vijftiende-eeuwse drukkers zetten hun connecties ook al in om aan teksten te komen die interessant waren om te drukken en het liefst ook nog geld in het laatje brachten. Het is vaak evenwel lastig om het netwerk van vroege drukkers te reconstrueren. De connectie tussen Gerard Leeu en de Leidse schoolmeester Engelbert Schut biedt in dit verband een interessante casus. Show less
This essay explores the Dutch recension of the richly illustrated Latin Meditationes de vita et passione Jesu Christi, a weekly excersie that went directly into print and was first published by... Show moreThis essay explores the Dutch recension of the richly illustrated Latin Meditationes de vita et passione Jesu Christi, a weekly excersie that went directly into print and was first published by Gerard Leeu in Antwerp on 10 February 1485. The Dutch text appeared about two years later, on 5 Janruary 1487. Both the Dutch and the Latin texts contain at their core the sixty-five prayers on the Passion (from Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to his funeral) from Jordan of Quedlinburg’s Meditationes de passione Christi (1365). Each of the prayers is accompanied by a woodcut, which in itself was an important innovation and departure from previous manuscript transmission that did not systematically illustrate each prayer. Furthermore, the compiler of the weekly exercise used Jordan’s prayers as his reference point, and divided them over five days of the week (Monday-Friday). He added other (meditative) texts and prayers so that readers are presented with an exercise for each day of the week that permits them to meditate on the entire life of Christ (from Mary’s visit to Elizabeth to Mary’s Ascension), as well as on other subjects, such as the four last things (death, judgement, hell, heaven) throughout the week. Here, images are also used as an integral part of the meditative exercise. The printed text might have been based on a similar exercise found in a manuscript from South-Holland, currently held at The Hague, Royal Library, 133 H 1. Moreover, the Dutch edition of 1487 is not just a translation of Leeu’s earlier Latin edition: apart from changes to its physical appearance, the text has undergone a siginificant reworking as well. The meditations to be performed before lunch, before and after dinner, and before going to sleep, are longer and much more detailed than in the Latin edition, allowing unexperienced readers to use these ‘intimate scripts’ in their meditations. Leeu’s parallel editions of the Latin and Dutch Meditationes thus provided various groups of readers (Latinate, non-Latinate, those familiar with meditative techniques and the Gospels, and those who were not) to participate in affective meditation on Christ’s life and to deepen their spiritual lifes in a similar fashion despite the differences in their background. Show less
The Devote ghetiden vanden leven ende passie Jhesu Christi (Devout Hours on the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) provides an intriguing case study of text and image relationships in the... Show moreThe Devote ghetiden vanden leven ende passie Jhesu Christi (Devout Hours on the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) provides an intriguing case study of text and image relationships in the transitional age between manuscript and print. The 1483 and 1484/5 editions of the Devote ghetiden were an innovative commercial endeavor by the prolific printer Gerard Leeu. These editions of a new vernacular religious text, flexible in use and primarily aimed at laymen, combined with no less than eighty-four full-page illustrations, offered the lay reader an unprecedented level of visual material for private devotion located in the same object as the text. Changes in both composition and page layout, which occurred when text and image were refashioned in a different medium, altered the reader’s meditative experience, reflecting not only the multiform character and individuation of religious practice on the eve of the Reformation but also the influence of printed books on late medieval textual and visual culture as a whole. Show less
This article explores the printing business of the widow of Roland van den Dorpe within the urban context of Antwerp. However modest in scale, the business of Van den Dorpe’s widow does show that... Show moreThis article explores the printing business of the widow of Roland van den Dorpe within the urban context of Antwerp. However modest in scale, the business of Van den Dorpe’s widow does show that when a woman continued her husband’s printing business in the early 1500s in Antwerp, she was able to put her stamp on the work she produced. A close examination of the works the widow printed shows that she did depart from her husband’s editorial program, tapping into her own new associations and thus contributing to the intellectual and religious life in the town where she worked and beyond. In order to acquire texts suitable for printing, the widow must have had a network at her disposable that was already initiated by her husband, but that she was able to broaden. The first text she printed came from the Franciscan Observant friars who most likely familiarized her with the text. This shows the importance of religious houses and networks for the mobility and dissemination of texts. The widow would not have been the first woman to be in touch with the Observant friars minor, nor the last. The woman for whom Hendrik Herp initially composed the Spieghel der volcomenheit was a widow herself and Herp was her father confessor. In the first half of the sixteenth century the Antwerp schoolteacher Anna Bijns had strong connections with the Observant friars: one of them, Bonaventura Vorsel, is believed to have been her father confessor and even a close friend of hers. Show less
Members of the Franciscan Observance, introduced in the Low Countries in the 1440s, seem to have become actively involved in the production and circulation of religious literature, both in the... Show moreMembers of the Franciscan Observance, introduced in the Low Countries in the 1440s, seem to have become actively involved in the production and circulation of religious literature, both in the vernacular and in Latin, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Although the observance was a factor of importance in several religious orders at that time, this issue focuses on the Franciscan order. The aim is to explore several aspects of the involvement of the Observant branch in this order in the production and dissemination of religious literature in the Low Countries, in the period before, during and after the Reformation. Show less
