"The Jewish Book in a Christian World": International Conference at Antwerp (25-27 June, 2008)

With the recently inaugurated exhibition "Hebraica veritas: Sprak God Hebreeuws? (did God Speak Hebrew, see our April 25, 2008 post)" up and running until August 17, 2008, the Plantin-Moretus Museum (MPM) is about to close its Spring season festively with the international conference "The Jewish Book in a Christian World" (25-27 June, 2008).

Apart from MPM and the University of Antwerp's IJS (Institute of Jewish Studies), co-organizers are the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), and the Universitair Centrum Sint-Ignatius at Antwerp (UCSIA).

Keynote lecturer at 5 pm on Wednesday at the City Hall of Antwerp is Princeton professor of Renaissance history and the history of scholarship, Anthony Grafton. Grafton's first book was an intellectual biography of Joseph Scaliger. He's been a frequent visitor at the University of Leiden, where he received an honorary doctorate in 2006, and where he has found colleagues to edit Scaliger's collected letters. The University of Leiden Library has a Scaliger Institute to promote research of its holdings.

This blogger has some interesting links in connection with Grafton's latest book, Codex in Crisis. It's a bibliophile edition limited to 250 copies based on an article from the New Yorker in which Grafton expresses to what extend some reserve is due about digitization.

On Thursday June 26, 2008, two sessions will be held at this conference: "The Printing of the Hebrew Bible and Judaica in Antwerp and the Low Countries" (morning) and "Christian Publishers and Readers of Hebrew Literature (afternoon). Location is the Print Room at the Plantin-Moretus Museum (morning) and University of Antwerp's Hof van Liere (afternoon).

A morning session on Friday June 27, 2008 will close the conference: "The Impact of Print on Jewish Culture." Location that day is the University of Antwerp's Hof van Liere. The conference will be held entirely in English. Admission is free, but registration is mandatory.

Illustration: cover of the exhibition catalogue of Hebraica veritas. Book design of the catalogue by Louis van den Eede, who drew the front cover's design by hand. Details: Hebraica veritas. Christoffel Plantijn en de Christelijke Hebraïsten. Catalogus bij de tentoonstelling: Hebraica veritas. Sprak God Hebreeuws? Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet, 16 mei-17 augustus 2008. No ISBN. Inquiries should be made at the museum.

Museum Plantin-Moretus to initiate TORAD, an image bank of ornamental typography for Antwerp printers 1541-1600

The Museum Plantin-Moretus / Prentenkabinet at Antwerp has received government funding to initiate a project called TORAD, short for Typografische Ornamenten Repertorium van Antwerpse Drukkers 1541-1600. (Our source for this post is the Museum's press release in Dutch).

The TORAD project, which runs over the next three years, aims to create an image bank of the typographical ornamentation and ornamental letters that printers at Antwerp used between 1541 and 1600.

The historical context is a period rife with political and religious instability in the Spanish Netherlands, with a serious likelihood for printers to be persecuted for their output. Many publications appeared anonymously. Often they mention a publisher, but no printer, which begs the question for book historians which printer delivered the goods.

A repertory will help researchers to identify the anonymous titles. A similar project in Holland could identify the right printer for 70% of the anonymous output, and 99% of the editions for which publishers were known, could be matched to a printer. The Antwerp project is hoping to achieve a similar succes rate.

Illustration: Initial (51mmx51mm) cut by Anton Van Leest, used in Petrus Bizarus, Senatus populique genuensis rerum. Antwerpen, Christoffel Plantijn, 1579. Initial used in Museum Plantin-Moretus press release, but here taken from our own library copy (Labore et constantia 155).

Hora est!

In 2008, quite a number of Belgian researchers in the fields of history, as well as in history of art, literature and the book, defended a PhD thesis or are about to. A short overview.

On February 5, 2008, Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Director of the Erasmus House at Brussels, defended a thesis on Erasmus and typography as a rhetorical instrument in the 16th century: "Erasme typographe. La mise en page, instrument de rhétorique au XVI siècle", towards a PhD in history, art and archaeology at the ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles).
Promotors were Sylvia Deswarte-Rosa (CNRS-Université Lumière-Lyon) and Alain Dierkens (ULB). The jury consisted of Franz Bierlaire (ULB-Université de Liège), Wouter Bracke (ULB-KBR), Jean-François Cottier (Université de Montréal), and Michel Magnien (Université de Paris III-Sorbonne nouvelle).
Vanautgaerden has edited, with Jean-François Gilmont, a study called La page de titre à la renaissance (Brepols Publishers, 2008), ISBN 978 2 503 52669 0. See our June 2, 2008 post

On April 18, 2008, art historian Lieve Wattteeuw presented "The Touch of Chronos: Caring for the Medieval Manuscript (1731-1937)", in defense of her PhD at the KUL (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). Promotor was Prof. Jan Van der Stock, Director of the Center of the Study of Illumination, Illuminare. Watteeuw can easily be regarded as one of the (alas, too) few authorities (Dutch-speaking research), on the conservation on paper, parchment, and bindings. We will dwell somewhat longer on the contents of this thesis in a next post.

On May, 27, 2008, Kevin Absillis defended his PhD at the University of Antwerp, with research conducted about an episode in the history of Manteau, a Dutch-language Belgian publishing house founded by Angèle Manteau (1911-2008): Literaire kwaliteit uit Arm Vlaanderen. Uitgeverij A.Manteau en de verzelfstandiging van het literaire veld (1932-1971). Professor of Dutch Literature Kris Humbeeck was promotor. Absillis will publish this thesis in edited form at Meulenhoff/Manteau early in 2009. He has already published on the rather complex history of this publishing house:
-Kevin Absillis, Een kleine uitgeverij van stand. Fondslijst uitgeverij A.Manteau/Les Editions Lumière 1956-1970 (250 numbered copies). L.P. Booncentrum/Demian, 2005. ISBN 90 804548 8 5.
-Kevin Absillis and Katrien Jacobs, eds, Van Hugo Claus tot hoelahoep. Vlaanderen in beweging 1950-1960 (Literatuur in veelvoud-series, no. 17). 282 p. Maklu/Garant, 2007. ISBN 978 90441 201 89.

On May 29, 2008, Gerrit Verhoeven defended his PhD at the Department of History of the University of Antwerp: "Anders reizen? Evoluties in vroegmoderne reiservaringen van Hollandse en Brabantse elites (1600-1750)." Promotors were Professors of History Guido Marnef, specialist of the history of the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Bruno Blondé, who heads a research unit called History of Cities (University of Antwerp).
According to Verhoeven, historical research on travel in the early modern period all too often limits itself to study of the Grand Tour as carried out by British noblemen, with the occasional foray into the travel habits of French and German nobility, but with the Netherlands entirely out of scope. Unjustly so: travel in the early modern period in the Netherlands showed more variation and was subject to greater changes than is known to current research.
Verhoeven consulted diaries and fringe documents in libraries and archives in Holland and Brabant, and chose the quantification of thousands of data as his gauge for how travel exceeded the utility aspect of the Grand Tour, what the means of travel were and the destinations, and what the social profile of travellers was.

On June 20, 2008, Dirk Imhof, Curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, will defend his PhD in History with a study of the publishing activities at the Plantinian house of Jan I Moretus: "De Officina Plantiniana ratione recta: het uitgeversfonds van Jan I Moretus (1589-1610)," at the University of Antwerp. Professor of History Alfons Thijs and Professor of Dutch Literature Hubert Meeus serve as promotors.
Imhof, with Karen Bowen, recently published Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008, ISBN 978 0 521 85276 0.
Regarding Plantin's successors, the Moretus family, see also, amongst others, Imhof's introduction to Le rayonnement des Moretus, a 2006 exhibition catalogue of the Bibliotheca Wittockiana, edited by Bruno Liesen and Claude Sorgeloos.

On June 24, 2008, at the University of Antwerp, Department of Dutch Literature, Goran Proot defends a PhD on Jesuit school plays: "Het schooltoneel van de jezuïeten in de Provincia Flandro-Belgica tijdens het ancien régime 1575-1773." Promotor is Professor of Literature Hubert Meeus. Goran Proot has been a bibliographer at the STCV, the Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen. Regarding Jesuit plays, recent articles of his are:
-Goran Proot and Leo Egghe, "Estimating editions on the basis of survivals: Printed programmes of Jesuit theatre plays in the Provincia Flandro-Belgica before 1773. With a note on the 'bookhistorical law'" in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 102, no.3 (2008).
-Goran Proot, "Gebruikssporen in programmaboekjes voor het collegetoneel van de jezuïeten in de provincia Flandro-Belgica 1575-1773," in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis 15 (2008), p.71-91.

Lastly, Bart Op de Beeck Curator of the Rare Books Department of the KBR (Royal Library of Belgium), who's been working for years on the library holdings of Jesuits, is finally presenting his PhD thesis at the University of Leuven in September 2008. As Op de Beeck has been working on this for over 10 years, and as he has closely scrutinized up to 24,000 copies out of Jesuit collections, if not more, his work is expected to be.. weighty. Serving as promotor is the former head of the University of Leuven's Central Library, Jan Roegiers.

Illustration (to follow): woodcut on the titlepage of Francisco Del Tuppo, La Uita De Esopo Hystoriata. S.l. [probably Venice], s.d. [15..]. Page: 149x94 mm; typesetting: 122x72mm.
See no.4 in our second catalogue: Claude Sorgeloos, La bibliothèque du Cultura Fonds: acquisitions 1991-1999 (See label: Our catalogues).

Springtime is book time

Springtime is not only auction time, but also a busy period for authors and publishers, as we saw a few interesting new publications around book preservation and research arrive in rapid succession.
1. It's worth repeating that on February 1, 2008, In de ban van boeken was opened at Belgium's National Library. This exhibition highlights books from 20 book collectors from the 19th century, that went into the collection by donation or via acquisition. The catalogue (ISBN 90-6637-145-5), work of reference in provenance research, has the same title, and was edited by Marcus de Schepper, An Kelders, and Jan Pauwels.

This exhibition still runs until August 24, 2008, and in May the entire contents will be fully renewed, so that new books will be on display for each collector. On Sunday April 18, 2008, the National Library has a special Visitor Day from 1-6 p.m.

2. On February 29, 2008, volume 2 of Armarium. Publicaties voor erfgoedbibliotheken, was presented to the public. Mieke Lietaer of Stadsbibliotheek Antwerp, Flanders' largest depot library, wrote Goed gegeven! Gids voor schenkingen aan bibliotheken (ISBN 9789072679338): a manual geared to librarians, acquainting them with every aspect of book donations to libraries. The Koning Boudewijnstichting, consulted on the matter as well, put a the information on its page devoted to the preservation of artefacts.

Promotors of Erfgoedbibliotheken Vlaanderen (libraries preserving books and manuscripts in Flanders) are Antwerp professor of history and book history Pierre Delsaerdt, and Director of Stadsbibliotheek Antwerpen, An Renard. The Armarium publications are funded by the Flemish government, the City of Antwerp, and the University of Antwerp.

3. The prize for sumptuous elegance in academic publishing certainly goes to the folio produced by Luc Knapen and Leo Kenis (editors) around the use of wood in books: Hout in boeken, houten boeken en de "fraaye konst van houtdraayen", Documenta libraria series no. 35 from Peeters Publishers, Leuven (ISBN 9789042920576). This work unites contributions from historians, book historians, and woodturning lathe specialists from this country and abroad. It is truffled with color illustration.

4. And just this week we saw the arrival of a monograph on 16th-century book illustration in the Low Countries: Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixtieenth-Century Europe, by Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof (Cambridge UP, ISBN 978052185276-0). Bowen is a specialist on book illustration and Imhof is curator of rare books and archives at the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Their research relies heavily on the rich archives of the Plantinian Press. As a study, it takes a contextual approach to document how Plantin's choice for etchings influenced a change in taste with regard to book illustration at the time.