Mining Library Treasures

“I hear that you, distinguished young gentleman, are thinking of traveling to Italy,” illustrious humanist Justus Lipsius (1547 – 1606) wrote to one of his students. “It pleases me to hear of your intentions. These are only innate to the most enlightened minds. Common and plebeian minds keep hanging around the church tower; stuck in love only with their native country. Your mind is much more divine: it imitates the heavens, finding its pleasure in movement. It is because of this that the greatest men always have traveled.” Lipsius continues by advising his pupil that, when he indeed undertakes his journey, he should not only do so for pleasure. Especially when one is planning to go to Rome, one should also aim to learn new things. By going to Rome to see its past grandeur with your own eyes is to observe to what has been learned by text. When walking among the columns and ruins, which you have studied for years, you enter a historical reality. Even three hundred years after Lipsius, the British writer Augustus Hare (1834 – 1903) would still advocate for the pleasure received from this act. “Still, the travelers who enjoy Rome most are those who have studied it thoroughly before leaving their own homes.” To illustrate this, he quotes the famous antiquarian Johann Winkelmann (1717 – 1768): “Rome is the high school which is open to all the world.”

 

The books, Roma Illustrata, sive Antiquitatum Romanarum Breviarum (1645, first published in 1651) by Lipsius and Walks in Rome (1923, first published in 1871) by Hare, both call upon their readers to travel to Rome. The former, a handbook treating the history of Rome’s antique history, does this by providing one pocket-size volume with the collected research done by Lipsius throughout his life. A handbook such as Lipsius’ is the sort of books with which one can prepare oneself, as Hare advises to do. The book includes a handy list of important persons and locations of Rome’s history written by antiquarian and archeologist Georg Fabricius (1516 – 1571). Hare’s book is a traveller’s guidebook to Rome, and can be seen as a product of the transition of grand tourism into tourism of the late nineteenth-century. The book is published commercially - this is the twenty-first print, but the text contains many references to erudite writers and visitors of Rome, such as the erudite writer Johann Goethe (1749 – 1832) and the Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788 – 1824). In this sense, the book can be seen as a continuation of a guidebook writing style that has at least been around since Franz Schottus’ (1548 – 1622) guidebooks of Rome, written in the early seventeenth century.

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From 1600 onward, it became more customary for young intellectuals, primarily from the northern parts of Europe, to undertake a tour through Europe and visit its main cities. The tour was taken to be part of the young intellectuals’ education. Having undertaken one or more educational voyages to Rome, the authors continue this tradition. What they found however was a city both new and old. Lipsius traveled to Rome when he was around twenty years old. Lipsius worked in Rome as secretary to cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517 – 1586), who managed to give him access to the Vatican library, and introduced him to the highest circles of Roman intellectuals. Hare was a frequent traveller and often visited Rome during the nineteenth century. During these visits he made studies of both ancient Rome and modern Rome for his guidebooks.

 

After Italy became a nation state (the unification ended around 1870), Rome lost its old status as centre of Europe, to become the capital of this new nation. Consequently, Rome was now formally on the same level as other capitals in Europe. The contrast between the new and the old, between the ancient and the modern, is difficult to miss when visiting the eternal city. Arriving in Old Rome, you were struck by the collapse and decay of empire and the intimations of impermanence, while at same time you immediately immerse into the sights, sounds, and silences that transcended the brevity of existence. “It must, however, be confessed that it is a sad business to track out ancient Rome in modern Rome; but it must be done; and we may hope for incalculable gratification,” Goethe wrote and Hare quoted.

 

Hare was a lover of Old Rome par excellence. He visited Rome at the time of its division around 1871 into three cities. The first division of Rome can be dated at 1510, for then the descriptive guide of the second city named Nova Urbs was published. If we follow this reasoning, Lipsius was a visitor of Rome only fifty years after the first division. In the light of this thesis of Rome’s three cities, it is interesting to see that Lipsius’ book presents the history of Rome limited to the first city. Lipsius called upon the church to ‘acknowledge divine Providence’ and to accept, preserve and marvel and the city’s antiquary past.

 

Lipsius goes beyond admiration of the past. Textual criticism and historical scrutiny are a means to create a history of Rome from which useful knowledge could be derived (e.g. Maurice of Nassau based his military reforms on Lipsius’ research of Rome military history). For Lipsius, however, history has pedagogical function; it should teach us valuable lessons for life. The ancient Romans should be an example of virtus - an ancient Roman virtue. However, as Lipsius concludes after a life of research, to find Rome as an exemplar of virtus, one is obliged to refer to Rome in its current state too. The ruins of the ancient city only present a fragmented history, meaning that to formulate a complete picture of the ancient history of Rome one has to rely on imagination, supported by what is observed in today’s Rome, as an illustration of its own past. This is why Lipsius argued that it is a necessity for every true scholar of antiquity to go to Rome and experience inseparability of the ancient from the modern. A conclusion which Hare might have agreed to. He wrote, “Those who devote themselves exclusively to legends of the Kingly Period, to the Republic, or to the Empire, and who see no interest in the memorials of the Middle Ages and the greater Popes, take only half the blessing of Rome, and perhaps the half which has the least of human sympathy in it.”

Bibliography

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Lipsius J., Brieven aan studenten, De Romereis, Honden en geleerden, Drinkebroers en smulpapen, Jan Papy transl., Leuven: Uitgeverij P, 2006.

 

Papy, J., ‘An Antiquarian Scholar between Text and Image? Justus Lipsius, Humanist Education, and the Visualization of Ancient Rome’ in The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 97-131.

 

Pemble, J., The Rome we have Lost. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

 

Rietbergen, P., Europe, a Cultural History. London: Routledge, 2015.

 

Stagl, J. A History of Curiosity, The Theory of Travel 1550-1800. Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995.

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Book description

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KNIR signature: Pregiato octavo DR BR55​

Short title: Justus Lipsius and Georgius Fabricius. Roma Illustrata. Amsterdam, apud Ludovicum & Danielem Elsevirios,1657.

Full title: Roma Illustrata, sive Antiquitatum Romanarum Brevarium.  Accessit Georgii Fabricii 

Chemnicensis Veteris Romae cum Nova collatio.  Ex nova Recensione Antionii Thysii Jc.  Postrema Editio. 

Amstelodami, apud Ludovicum & Danielem Elsevirios, MDCVII. 

Collation: 12°:π4 A-Y12 Z8 (Z8 blank).

Description: The book has a contemporary parchment laced case binding. The spine bears the manuscript title ‘Roma Illustrata’. The two individual boards of the book are made of carton and held in place by three parchment lacing strips. The binding is a typically Dutch ‘Spitselband’ of the size that is characteristic to the publisher Elsevier. The edge has been plowed and marbled in red. There are two endleaves in the front of the book (one pasted down, the other one free). In the back, however, there are three endleaves. The last endleaf at the back is pasted down to the board, while its counterpart is free. The third endleaf is pasted to the last page of the book block and sewn with the rest of the book. The book shows several traces of usage. Besides multiple markings that seem cataloguing notes of libraries, the name “Johannes Ku[r/c]k” and “anno 1665, const. 29a5[?] vis[?]as” has been written on the free endleaf at the front of the book. It is difficult to distinguish an image in the watermark. On the pasted down endleaf a list of numbers and markings were written down to be later wiped out again, except for the name “Paul.” A monogram with the letters CC and a crown has been stamped on the back of the free endleaf. On the title page “sum κλῆμα Joachimi Eberhard” has been written, which can be translated as “I am wine-sprout Joachimi Eberhard”. The description of someone being a branch or sprout was sometimes used to refer to someone in their youth, in the process of growing up (see: tandem fit surculus arbor) - a metaphor that recurs in the nineteenth century student culture. Something was written on the bottom of the title page, but that has been torn off. 

 

Within the book block large sections of the text have been underlined, and in the margins notes, such as "Nota Bene" and quotation marks can be found. Furthermore, on the pastedown endleaf at the back of the book the following text can be found “Sub Trajano et Hadrianus legiones fuerunt 30% 180.000 Crassus in tunis habuit, 5, milliones 50 …” On the basis of these notes, together with the underlining, I postulate the hypothesis that the book was studied by a student. The pocket size, the binding and the content indicate that the book is was a handbook. 

 

KNIR signature: 50.400 C Hare​

Short title: Augustus J.C. Hare and St. C. Baddeley. Walks in Rome. London, Kegen Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd., 1923.

Full title: Walks in Rome (including Tivoli, Frascati, and Albano) by Augustus J.C. Hare 

author of ‘Venice,’ ‘Sicily’ (1907), ‘Days near Rome,’ ‘Florence,’ ‘Cities of Southern Italy (1911)  

Twenty-first edition (illustrated by A.J.C. Hare, F.F. Tuckett, and Others)  by St. Clair Baddeley

author of ‘Robert the Wise, King of Naples,’ ‘A Cotteswold Manor,’ ‘Recent Excavations,’ etc. ‘A Cotteswold Shrine’ (1908) 

London 

Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd. Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, E.C. 1923

Collation: 8°:π6 A-2X8 2Y4

Folded maps inserted after π2, G7, N4, 2H3, 2T2 (after the image)

Images inserted on different paper after C3, H1, H5, H6, H7, I2, I3, I4, I6, I7, K5, K7, M1, O6, P6, Q7, U1, U8, Y1, Z4, Z5, 2D1, 2G4, 2M8, 2R7, 2T2, 2T3, 2U8 and 2X1.

Description: The binding is a contemporary common full cloth binding with a gold stamp in the middle. The cover is further decorated with orange lines. The joints of the book are damaged and reveal the underlying structure. The title is printed on the spine of the book. The edge has been dyed red. The flyleaf in the front of the book has several markings of library catalogues and a stamp that indicates that the addition of the book to the KNIR library has been funded by Foundation Fokker. The book is sewn on linen bands and has no endbands. The maps and images are pasted to the pages of the book block and are not sewn together with the book. The binding is cheap and common, which indicates that it was mass produced to be sold in high number. The small size, the binding and the content indicate that the book was a commercial guidebook for tourists of Rome.