Behind the scenes of our latest exhibition, Books and Power in Tudor England: The Renaissance Library of Sir Thomas Smith

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bibliography, Binding, books, classics, england, history, humanism, library, marginalia, Old Library, Provenance, Queens' College Cambridge, rare books, Reformation, renaissance, Thomas Smith, William Cecil

By Hannah Smith, Library Graduate Trainee

The Old Library’s new exhibition opens to the public on 19th September. But how is an exhibition of rare books curated and prepared?

Four hundred and forty years ago, Sir Thomas Smith bequeathed his extensive library to his alma mater, Queens’ College. His instructions were brusque: collect them within twelve days of his death, or Peterhouse would have them instead. Gruff, learned, acerbically funny – the same personality is evident in this story as in the annotations and doodles in his books.

Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577) was a Tudor ambassador, Secretary of State and political writer, but above all he was a humanist scholar. His books, around sixty-five of which are still in the Old Library, range in subject from classical archaeology to contemporary zoology. With a collection this diverse, where is a librarian to begin in curating an exhibition? What follows is an account of the creation of Books and Power in Tudor England, from first concept to final caption.

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Before May

Thanks to the generosity of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Queens’ is undertaking a two-year project to catalogue the early printed books of the Old Library and make the collections more accessible to the public. Events, schools outreach and exhibitions form part of this endeavour.

HLF Project Associate Lucille and College Librarian Tim are already well acquainted with Smith’s collection. Detailed bibliographic records of each book have been completed, with notes on their annotations, bindings and provenance. These prove to be invaluable to the new graduate trainee, Hannah, who arrives just as work on the exhibition begins and has some catching up to do.

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May

The project team begin reading in earnest. Smith had two biographers, one writing at the end of the seventeenth century and the other in the 1960s. We work our way through both and note the biographers’ wildly different attitudes to Smith and his achievements. Strype, the first biographer, is elegiac in his praise. Dewar, the more recent writer, celebrates his achievements, but presents his life as a series of tragedies. The more we learn about Smith, the clearer it becomes that both stances are legitimate; Smith was remarkably intelligent, influential and well-connected, but in many ways he was also vulnerable, susceptible to the influence of others. He’s a fascinating subject.

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June

Smith certainly was intimidatingly well-read; Strype’s emphatic praise seems much more reasonable now that we are reading around the subjects that Smith knew back to front: history, law, sciences and mathematics, astronomy, astrology (all of these represented in his library in classical and contemporary texts), the pronunciation of ancient Greek, the colonisation of Ireland… The list continues. The sheer scale of the task before us becomes apparent.

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July

One by one, each of Smith’s surviving books is examined thoroughly. We sort them into subjects and make a note of the shelfmark of the book, its condition and subject and, most importantly, what marginalia it contains. Most of Smith’s books bear his signature on the title page, sometimes ‘Smith’, sometimes ‘Smyth’, often a latinised ‘Smithus’.

A spreadsheet of Smith’s books, with notes on the subject, condition and marginalia of each one.

It becomes obvious that certain books, or even certain chapters of books, were read and annotated repeatedly. In the context of the story of his life, we begin to see how he turned to these books for personal direction. In a book on mining and mineralogy he has made notes only next to passages that relate to the transmutation of one metal element into another using acid. It makes sense in light of the fact that Smith was defrauded in an alchemical scheme (the conman claimed to be able to turn iron into copper using nitric acid). In another book, this time a classical work of medicine, Smith made notes around a passage on the paralysis of the tongue, underlining the most emotive words. Developing what was almost certainly cancer of the throat and unable to speak in 1576, he wrote to William Cecil, ‘what pleasure can a man have of my years when he cannot speak as he would’.

Hannah goes on a training course on the use of special collections materials in exhibitions. Serif fonts, it turns out, are the most helpful for the visually impaired, but sans serif work best for dyslexic readers.

We consider structuring the exhibition around the chronology of Smith’s life, from his lowly birth in Saffron Walden to his legacy in the present day, but it is becoming clear that his books, and his method of reading them, are a window into the broader intellectual and political culture of his time. Books were a source of power for Smith and other ‘intellectuals in office’, more so than they had ever been before. We arrive at our title.

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August

With only a month until Open Cambridge and the unveiling of the new exhibition, there is no time to lose. It’s time to decide which books will feature. Books are added, removed and swapped around many times before we settle on the final configuration. Like our library, the exhibition has an emphasis on Renaissance Humanism. The final titles for the cases are:

Thomas Smith and reading as a ‘trigger for action’

Thomas Smith and the advancement of Humanism in Cambridge

Exploring the Renaissance mind

Reading the natural world

Reading the natural world: ‘natural magic’

Thomas Smith: Library as university

Now comes the most time-consuming task: turning our research into clear, concise copy for the booklet, posters and captions. Tim, Lucille and Hannah each take two cases and get to work. Painful as it is after immersing ourselves in obscure topics such as the ancient Heruli tribe, the distillation of aqua vitae or the architecture of Smith’s mansion, often we have to kill our darlings if we want to produce succinct copy that visitors are willing to read. We draft, edit and re-draft.

Trying out new configurations; books are moved, withdrawn and re-added before we settle on our final book list.

A local graphic design company will be producing our exhibition materials. Lucille sends them high-quality photographs of some of Smith’s annotations and doodles to be included in the booklet.

Several of Smith’s annotations are photographed, to be included in the booklet and display boards.

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September

One week remains until Open Cambridge; tickets are selling out. After six months on display the Erasmus exhibition is taken down, and the work of installing Books and Power begins.

Each book requires its own purpose-built book cradle. Made from stiff cardboard, they support the bindings of the books and lend a uniform look to the cases. It’s imperative that the cradle fits the book exactly, and that the book doesn’t extend past its natural opening (usually no more than 120 degrees).

Hannah makes a book cradle for a small book with a particularly narrow opening.

Over the weekend of Open Cambridge almost two hundred visitors pass through the doors of the Old Library. As usual, many comment on the smell of the old books, the reverence they feel, the impulse to whisper. Smith’s books are so full of humour and verve that they cut through that, though. Few things are more enjoyable than examining a historical object and in it discovering a relatable, human personality. We will certainly miss his.

Open Cambridge: Hannah introduces a tour group to the Old Library and the exhibition.

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Books and Power in Tudor England: The Renaissance Library of Sir Thomas Smith will be open in the Old Library from 9th October to 3rd November, on weekday afternoons between 1:30 and 4:30. Admission is free.

 

As part of the Festival of Ideas College Librarian Tim Eggington and Perne Librarian Scott Mandelbrote will give a talk entitled ‘Reading books in sixteenth-century Cambridge’ to accompany the exhibition. Book via the Festival of Ideas website.

The Old Kitchens, Queens’ College, Saturday 28th October, 2:30-4:30pm

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Books as evidence, part two: William Cecil’s books and the spread of ideas from Cambridge to Parliament

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Binding, books, classics, education, england, history, humanism, library, Old Library, Provenance, Queens' College Cambridge, rare books, Reformation, renaissance, teaching, tudors, William Cecil

By Hannah Smith, Graduate Library Trainee

In the previous post, we discovered that Queens’ Old Library holds books from the dispersed library of William Cecil Lord Burghley, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I and Secretary of State. An annotation within one of these books, the bindings of which are stamped with the Cecil family arms, confirms that at one time they belonged to Humphrey Tindall, President of Queens’ from 1579 to 1614, who subsequently donated them to the College. These books, and in particular their remarkable and rare bindings, provide evidence of the relationship between these two men.

However, that Cecil, a man with power and responsibility second only to the Queen, should secure this position for Tindall despite outcry among the Fellows begs the questions: why did Cecil arrange Tindall’s appointment, and what ideas was he attempting to propagate by the donation of these books?

William Cecil had intervened in matters of Queens’ College appointments before. That the Queen’s chief advisor would do so did so speaks of the influence that the University’s teaching had on the political and intellectual life of the nation. In an era of class immobility, men who had the opportunity of receiving an education at Oxford or Cambridge often did so with the guarantee of a political career on the other side; very soon, ideas taught and stances taken in the universities would filter through the upper strata of government.

Portrait of William Cecil. Thomas Birch, The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain (1743)

However, in 1576, the year of Tindall’s appointment, Cecil was responding to both national and personal crises: at the beginning of the year he had backed an unsuccessful marriage suit between the Queen and François, Duke of Alençon and Anjou.

It was imperative that the Queen produced an heir to the throne; the Elizabethan religious settlement, created to provide a middle way under which Catholic and Protestant traditions could coalesce, was precarious, and was unlikely to survive the political instability of a contested throne. The match between Elizabeth and Anjou had for a short time developed into a relationship sufficiently romantic for the pair to exchange betrothal rings (although these were removed the next day, at the urging of the Privy Council). Eventually, though, the problem of Anjou’s Catholic faith was deemed insurmountable.

By the time that this match had been abandoned Cecil, himself a passionate reformer, had left himself vulnerable to suggestions that he was a papist sympathiser, or, at the very least, a lukewarm and changeable believer; either charge was damning. It was now more pressing than ever that he promoted the religious settlement and its moderate reform.

It was not unusual for Cecil, as well as his co-Secretary of State and close friend, Queens’ alumnus Thomas Smith, to require Cambridge preachers to support the monarch’s agenda in their sermons; indeed, after deviating from their instructions the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, was confined to the Tower of London for five years.

The vacancy at Queens’ College afforded Cecil an opportunity. By appointing the right candidate, he could ensure that the College continued to teach the next generation of politicians and bishops to uphold the Elizabethan religious settlement.

Tindall was well known as a defender of religious orthodoxy, and found no theological objection to the Queen’s religious agenda. Licensed as a preacher of the University of Cambridge in 1576, as well as a parish priest and the chaplain of Robert Dudley, his influence in matters of theology was far-reaching. He was young, too, and presumably could hold the role of President for several decades, advocating for the religious settlement even after the death of the Queen.

Girolamo Zanchi, De Tribus Elohim (On the Trinity, Eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Book XIII), 1572. Note the dedication to Edmund Grindal.

Among Cecil’s books given to Tindall was this, written by Girolamo Zanchi, an Italian priest and supporter of the Protestant Reformation. Zanchi’s books, some of which are still in print, were sufficiently controversial that he spent the latter half of his life in exile, moving from city to city in Western Europe. This book on the doctrine of the Trinity was addressed to Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London and later of Canterbury. Grindal, like Tindall, benefited from the patronage of William Cecil, who urged him to use his position to promote the “middle way” between the vying Puritans and Catholics. His efforts in this area were by and large successful, and he was well respected; perhaps the gift of this particular book was a reminder to Tindall of the success he might enjoy if he followed Grindal’s example.

Johannes Gunther, Postillae Sive Conciones Reverendi Patris D. Ioannis Feri (Sermons of Johann Ferus),
1564.

Unsurprisingly, most of Cecil’s books at Queens’ are works of theology, written by Protestant theologians. A notable exception, though, is a collection of sermons by Johann Ferus,  the endpaper of which bears Tindall’s signature. Ferus, also known as Johann Wild, was a German Catholic preacher of the Franciscan Order, born at the turn of the fifteenth century. Wild was famed for the eloquence and zeal of his sermons, which won him the respect of Protestants as well as Catholics in a nation divided by the Reformation. His Evangelical preaching style and his promotion of a German middle way resulted in the inclusion of many of his published works in the Roman Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of prohibited books). Tindall must have appreciated the significance of the gift: a guide to persuasive preaching, and an example of another figure who, like Grindal, had earned respect within both denominations by promoting a middle way.

Until the eighteenth century it was usual for books to be shelved with the fore-edge outwards. The Old Library was no exception. Here someone, possibly Cecil or Tindall, has added the title in ink.

Unlike the majority of his predecessors Humphrey Tindall was never promoted to the bishopric, and remained at Queens’ until his death in 1614. Oral tradition has it that he was offered the throne of Bohemia but refused it, saying that “he had rather be Queen Elizabeth’s subject than a foreign prince”. These words, inscribed on his memorial in Ely Cathedral, are all the more remarkable because his presidency was beset by complaints and rebellions. However, by retaining the presidency of Queens’ College for the remainder of Elizabeth I’s reign and well into that of James I, he ensured that the College, and the University, remained committed to the Elizabeth religious settlement and to the Anglican Church that arose from it.

These remarkable books and their bindings shed light not only on Tindall’s path to the presidency of the College, but also on the University’s political and religious importance during the English Reformation. Stances that were taken in the University would soon spread to the leaders and lawmakers of the nation at large; William Cecil ensured that these ideas, like his books, travelled from Cambridge to Parliament and back again.

 

Proverbial Battles: Desiderius Erasmus, Polydore Vergil and the Race for Supremacy in Renaissance Europe…

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classics, education, history, humanism, marginalia, Old Library, proverbs, rare books, Reformation, renaissance, teaching, tudors

In our previous blog post, we briefly considered one of Erasmus’s key works: the Adagia. Through the intimacy of his own inner thoughts, we gained a rare insight into how difficult the “Prince of the Humanists” may have found the relatively new mode of learning known as humanism. Yet it was also noted how recent innovations such as the printing press with movable type supported the process; used with catalytic effect in Europe to circulate new ideas and information recovered from manuscripts in a purer critical form, all within what became an increasing self-conscious intellectual community. Largely due to itinerant scholars such as Erasmus, the humanist project that had begun in Renaissance Italy was gradually travelling north and finally making its first impressions on English soil under the patronage of a royal court recently stabilized under the first Tudor monarchs.  As a new programme for education it seemed fitting and suitably noble, providing a shining beacon of light that could lead a relatively backward kingdom out from the stagnation, fear and despair generated from decades of dynastic dispute.

Engraving of Queens’ College from Cantabrigia illustrata (1690) by David Loggan. Dating from the College’s foundation in 1448, ‘Old Court’ has remained relatively unchanged through the centuries [C.11.16].

It’s often delightful to stroll through the Cambridge colleges, and Queens’ is certainly no exception. If we pause now to consider the original medieval buildings, purpose-built during the Wars of the Roses to serve a self-contained scholastic community, we can safely conclude that Erasmus also once set eyes on the very same enclosures.  Following his invitation from former President of Queens’ College – John Fisher, this devoutly religious man would possibly have sought occasional contemplation in what is now the Old Library or communal prayer in what was then the chapel (now the student library).  Yet Erasmus’s mind had long occupied an idealized space above the material world: elaborately structured around the highest of Christian morals; supported by classical pillars of virtue reinforced with a vast reading of ancient literature.  We can thus only begin to imagine how the supposedly undervalued humanist then felt when the work of another man implied the sin of literary theft.  He had already suffered the hardships of his Herculean labours and a potential rival now disputed his claim to originality with respect to his very first publication.

Author and title have been written on the fore-edge of this 1540 edition of the Adagia. Early printed books were shelved with the spines facing inward and it would not become regular practice to print such information on the spines until the 18th century [L.10.7]

The issue of originality or ‘primacy’ between Erasmus’s Adagia and Polydore Vergil’s Proverbiorum Libellus never really amounted to more than a minor controversy relative to the more serious disputes of the day.  Although the issue dragged on for decades, there is considerable evidence that the situation mellowed with time.  Nevertheless, it was significant enough at the outset for Polydore Vergil to rename his work Adagiorum Liber in later editions thus drawing attention to its similarity to Erasmus’s collection. It’s also an episode that provides some further interesting insights. Firstly, in my mind at least, this is an early and largely forgotten forerunner for the more famous contests of ideas that would follow between other Great Men – as the term goes (women would not be admitted to the universities on equal terms for a long time to come – at least not until the 19th century in England: there would be no proverbial battle of the sexes in the academic arena for quite a while). I refer of course to the ‘scientific priority disputes’ that would later consume a venerable list of other Cambridge luminaries including Isaac Newton (with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the invention of calculus) and Charles Darwin (with Alfred Russel Wallace over the theory of natural selection).  Disputes of this nature seem to characterize the darker or unhealthy aspects of competition as it degenerates into envy or rivalry in the strive for academic excellence.  After all, in the race for reputation there is often no prize for second place.  Yet, as in the many cases of so-called priority that would follow the scientific revolution, it appears that – by chance – similar circumstances had aligned in different locations such that both scholars decided independently to work on the same project at roughly the same time.  The two Renaissance humanists had both chosen to compile a list of proverbs, but even though Erasmus would claim first publication or primacy for the rest of his life, Vergil had indeed beaten him by two years (i.e. 1498).

Polydori Virgilii (Polydore Vergil) is acknowledged on this title-page to the 1617 edition of Erasmus’s Adagiorum Chiliades as having written a work of similar fashion [C.4.3].

As in the case of Erasmus, Vergil’s Proverbiorum Libellus was his first published book.  It originally contained 306 distinct entries but, following the Lutheran Reformation in Germany, his edition of 1521 would include an additional 431 adagia sacra i.e. sacred proverbs or sayings drawn exclusively from the Bible. Indeed, it is in the preface of this edition that Vergil finally decided to publish his objections to Erasmus’s priority claims and that in fact it was he who deserved the honours.  However, it would soon become increasingly clear that the Dutchman’s version was not only more comprehensive but also achieving far greater popularity. Furthermore, the Italian’s characteristic desire to actively avoid religious controversy meant his work was rather tame compared to Eramsus’s biting essays that skilfully exposed what he judged to be the abuses and superstitions of the medieval Church.  By the latter half of the 16th century, Vergil’s collection would for the most part fall out of use; although another of his publications – the Anglica Historia – would later establish his reputation near that of the venerable Bede¹ as one of the most significant and influential historians on England.

Although the 1540 edition of Erasmus’s Adagia does not acknowledge Polydore Vergil in print, he [Polidoro Virgilii] and his ‘Proverbiorum’ are referenced in ink on the front pastedown of this Queens’ copy. At least part of this inscription can probably be attributed to Richard Bryan, fellow of Queens’ from 1632-44, and from 1660-1680. Proctor. Vice-President. Vicar of St Botolph’s, Cambridge [L.10.7]

Interestingly, it is in the Adagia itself that we find strong evidence as to how Erasmus might have interpreted the circumstances surrounding Vergil’s first visit to England. His Italian ‘rival’ was then in the service of Pope Alexander VI and had been sent north in 1502 as a sub-collector of the much resented “Peter’s Pence”: a payment that had already existed for centuries but had taken many forms ranging from a pious contribution to an effective tax (or occasional extortion…).  Needless to say, it was later abolished by King Henry VIII along with all other financial contributions to Rome in the “Dispensations Act” passed by the Reformation Parliament of 1534.

Although it will probably seem unfamiliar to most of us now, the adage “as figs [styes] are native to the eyes” proves instructive here. It first appeared in the 1517 edition, printed by Johann Froben in Basle as events over the border in Wittenberg were about to plunge Europe into chaos. Indeed, in this context the associated commentary seems remarkably prophetic:

 …the metaphor is taken from that defect which clings to the eyes and cannot be removed without     harming the eye itself. It may be applied not unsuitably to those people who cannot be removed     without great disaster, although they are an intolerable burden to others².

[G.4.8]

He demonstrates the antiquity of the adage by quoting from Aristophanes’s Frogs, a political comedy first performed in Athens during the age of Socrates and Plato: “Like a sty sticking to the eye, so was he”. As is often the case, Erasmus moves seamlessly into a contemporary discussion by reflecting on actions perpetrated by certain elements within the aristocracy and the highest ‘offices’ of the Church. In the following passage, he specifically laments their use of several orders of friars that subsisted mostly on alms:

If the princes intend to perpetrate some shameless deed, it is through these people that they carry it out. If the Roman pontiffs [popes] have designs which are not quite according to the early Apostolic holiness, these are the intermediaries they prefer to use.  For instance if there is some war, some public disturbance, some levying of taxes, some particularly flagrant delay of justice, they are there, acting as chief parts in the play…I must point out that I am not censuring the good, nor the Order itself.  For those who are incorrupt among them deplore just what I deplore³.

These observations could have easily been applied to men in Polydore Vergil’s occupation as a sub-collector. But perhaps, more appropriately, some may have specifically directed such criticism to his supervisor, Cardinal Castellesi (who was once curiously described by a Venetian ambassador as a ‘hard and sinister man…much favoured by the pontiff’; see footnotes**).

In Erasmus’s Moriae Encomium [In Praise of Folly], Folly ironically narrates her own ‘encomium’ by praising herself. It’s prefaced with a dedication to Sir Thomas More (also note the clever pun in the title) and was suitably written during a brief visit to his friend’s estate. This Queens’copy of 1522 is heavily annotated with ‘marginalia’ [B.8.43].

It’s also worth noting here that by 1511 Erasmus had already travelled to Paris to supervise the printing of his daring satire entitled In Praise of Folly. Indeed, it was upon his return from this very trip that he finally set out for the University of Cambridge and to reside at Queens’ College, following the invitation of John Fisher. The book includes a famous critique against what he judged to be the corruption of the medieval Church and the serious abuses committed by its political allies. Its influence on the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation therefore should not be underestimated.

[B.8.43]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly: Moriae encomium a  booke made in latin by that great clerke Erasmus Roterodame. Englisshed by sir Thomas Chaloner knight. This Queens’ copy of 1549 is particularly interesting since it has various 16th century notes and scribbling, one dated to 24th April 1584. In addition, the fly-leaves are formed with ‘waste’ from a 14th century theological manuscript [G.8.40].

Often considered Erasmus’s literary masterpiece, In Praise of Folly is seasoned and spiced with language gleaned from classical sources and it’s plain to see that the first editions of the Adagia ie. the Adagiorum Collectanea of 1500 and Adagiorum Chiliades of 1508 had provided the perfect groundwork. Indeed, in the following extract, Erasmus vicariously praises himself by ironically referencing his own Adagia as Folly pompously restrains herself from the temptation to ‘proverbialize’ :

…ill-gotten goods will never prosper; and more to the same purpose.  But I forbear from any farther Proverbializing, lest I should be thought to have rifled my Eramsus’s Adagies [see caption below*].

 

Originally written in Latin, this Queens’ copy is the 1709 edition of In Praise of Folly “done into English” and “illustrated…by Hans Holbein”. *The quote above on ill-gotten gains is found on p.137 of this book. Also of note: Fig.38 – Fortune favours fools – to wise men she is always stingy and sparing of her gifts; Fig.39 – Erasmus quotes Horaces’s Epistles on the following page: Me pinguem et nitidum… Epicuri de grege porcum or ‘My sleek-skin’d corps as smooth as if I lye… Mong th’ fatted swine of Epicurus Sty’ [ER.2.05].

To end our discussion here, it is perhaps also worth speculating on the psychological role that earlier disputes – such as that with Polydore Vergil – may have played in later events. Once Erasmus heard of the project at the Complutense University of Madrid to print the first polyglot of the entire Bible, he succeeded in delaying its full publication until 1522. The Dutchman had already gone to some considerable effort to obtain by 1516 an exclusive four year publishing privilege for his own edition of the New Testament and this had been achieved through the consent of both Maximilian I (Holy Roman Emperor) and Pope Leo X. Life seems so full of irony…since Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici: the very same man who would later excommunicate Martin Luther) had also received a humanist education…and is known to have found Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly amusing.

By David Radcliffe

¹ Saint Bede (672 or 623-735) was a skilled translator and interpreter of the early Church Fathers. He is known to have had the relative luxury then of a monastery library that included many significant works in Greek and Latin. His most famous work, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum or ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’, is still a precious source for historians, all the more exceptional due to the scarcity of reliable information during the 8th century AD. Bede’s work would later prove useful to the humanist Polydore Vergil when he wrote a more critical analysis, taking the story of the English up to the 16th century. At various times, both men have been honoured with the title of ‘Father of English History’.

² Translated commentary from the 1517 edition: found in Mann Phillips, Margaret (1964), page 358.

³ Found in Mann Phillips, Margaret (1964), page 360.

**P. Paschini, ‘Adriano Castellesi cardinale di S. Grisogono’, Tre illustri prelati del Rinascimento (1957), 43–130 in ‘Vergil, Polydore  [Polidoro Virgili] (c.1470–1555), historian’: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28224?docPos=1  [Accessed July 2016].

Sources

Hay, Denys, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance historian and man of letters (1952).

Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus, man of letters : the construction of charisma in print (2015).

Leedham-Green, Elizabeth, A Concise history of the University of Cambridge (2001).

Mann Phillips, Margaret, The ‘Adages’ of Erasmus; a study with translations (1964).

McConica, James Kelsey, English humanists and Reformation politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (1965).

Pearson, David, Books as history : the importance of books beyond their texts (2008).

Twigg, John, A History of Queens’ College, Cambridge 1448-1986 (1987).

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The Labours of Erasmus: why Hercules might have been impressed…

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classics, education, history, humanism, Old Library, proverbs, rare books, Reformation, renaissance, teaching, tudors

Have you ever worked really hard at something but then felt undervalued? Did others profit from those endeavours yet your only return was to provoke envy, suspicion or outright hostility in the people around you?  Well, if the answer is yes then it appears that you are in the greatest of company: a towering figure of the Renaissance; a person we now regard as perhaps the most brilliant scholar of the 16th century…Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Engraving of Erasmus by Sturt after Holbein [ER.2.05]

In fact, we can sympathize with how Desiderius Erasmus may have felt about this unfortunate predicament through his own eloquent writing. By getting up close and personal with this important historical figure, one is also presented with an ideal opportunity to discover why the itinerant scholar came to be considered “Prince of the Humanists” and gain a rare insight into the relatively new mode of scholarship to which the title once referred.

This former resident of Queens’ College (1511-1514) will already be familiar to some. However, given the sheer scale, depth and occasional complexity of his work – originally written in Latin and Greek – the full legacy of his scholarly achievements could only ever be appreciated by an expert in the appropriate fields.  To join in with any discussion, the majority of us would have to make do by consulting some of the available translations and in this regard at least, can take some comfort in the knowledge that we ‘are in the same boat’.  Yet the supreme irony here is that we probably owe the familiarity of that very phrase and others like it to his relentless hard work.  I refer here to one of Erasmus’s greatest scholarly achievements: the Adagia.

– Engraving found in The Life of Erasmus by Samuel Knight (1726). It depicts the only known view of Pump Court at Queens’ [reputedly the location of Erasmus’s room when at College] to predate the alterations resulting from James Essex’s new building of 1756 [K.25.33].

So how could a man like Erasmus feel undervalued?  And was this great scholar really a source of envy or hostility in his peers? If we truly desire to appreciate the labours of Erasmus of Rotterdam; to consider for a while his prolific output and why it is worth celebrating, then we should probably start by sketching the context for his first publications and then add a little colour by discussing a few, manageable examples of his writing; at least in their English translation. It is perhaps his collection of proverbs or Adagia that best serves both of these purposes.

The Adagiorum Collectanea was printed in 1500. It was Erasmus’s very first publication and by the end of his life it would also prove to be his most successful. The research necessary in compiling this annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs marked a significant stage in the Dutchman’s journey to mastering the Greek language and through subsequent editions such as the Adagiorum Chiliades (i.e. ‘ordered in thousands’) first printed in 1508, sayings such as In eadem es navi  or ‘to be in the same boat’ soon found their way into his writing.  Yet these subsequent editions were not merely reprints or revisions nor did they only represent an ever expanding list of useful sayings. This was an essential and ongoing project, a huge labour that had started at the turn of the century as a modest collection of around eight hundred seemingly wise or philosophical observations and grew throughout his lifetime into a monumental work, including essays of ever increasing length and richness with each publication.

Title page from the 1540 edition of Adagiorum Chiliades with the famous device of the Froben printing house in Basle. Published just after Erasmus’s death, the book contains a prolific 4151 adages with commentaries [L.10.7].

The foundation of Queens’ College in 1448 had come at an auspicious time in European history. The printing press and moveable type had only just been introduced to the continent and using Gutenberg’s infant technology, humanist publications (exemplars of a new direction for education and scholarship) were rapidly spreading throughout Renaissance Europe.  Building upon these early foundations, the Adagia would soon become a companion for anyone who wished to gloss their speech or writing, demonstrating that they were perhaps not only distinguished by birth, rank or office but also through their learned reading. These works would also diffuse throughout England as Renaissance ideas finally took root at our ancient universities and the kingdom took its first tentative steps into the modern era.

Along with the preparatory work for his new edition of the New Testament, Erasmus certainly undertook revisions of his Adagia whilst resident at Queens’ College. A by-product of all this work was an educational treatise and collection of aphorisms, first published in 1513, called Parabolae Sive Similia. His interest in pre-university education had initially been encouraged by one of his many English friends – John Colet; and alongside his academic duties as the Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, Erasmus still found time to produce further treatises, style manuals and text-books intended for use in the new Tudor grammar schools (including St Paul’s of which Colet was the founder).

– This Queens’ copy of the Parabolae Sive Similia dating to 1521 is still beautifully bound in 16th century blind-stamped paneled calf [I.8.17]

Although written in Latin, the structure of the Adagia was in fact itself influenced by the way that Greek had been taught during the 15th century.  At that time, key educators in Europe were instructing their pupils using books that followed a distinct pattern i.e. a Latin quote from a celebrated source (such as Cicero) juxtaposed with the Greek equivalent, then an appropriate commentary of moral or ethical form. Many of the essays in Erasmus’s collection of proverbs are also moral or ethical in character but crucially, for our purposes here, they are topical and largely autobiographical in nature. The following passage, an abridged translation¹ from the 1515 Froben edition, is a wonderful example whereby Erasmus reveals the back-stage work (and laments the struggles) of the Renaissance humanist in his commentary on Herculei Labores or ‘Herculean Labours’:

If any human labours ever deserved to be called Herculean, it is certainly the work of those who are striving to restore the great works of ancient literature…While…they condemn themselves to immense toil…they arouse among the vulgar the greatest envy and ill-will…The works of St. Jerome…was no light task…if only for the number of volumes which had to be looked through…what a struggle I had with the monstrous scribal errors, which were swarming through the text!  What a business it was to restore the passages in Greek, which our great author had mixed in everywhere-for mostly they had dropped out or were wrongly reinserted …so much jumbled by various hands…The nature of this kind of work is that it brings profit to everyone, and the only person to suffer hardship is the one who undertakes it¹

– Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

In ancient times, the ‘Labours of Heracles’ [later named Hercules by the Romans] was once sung by the poets.  The deeds of heroes were part of an oral tradition of Greek mythology that had preceded the written word and they included the conquering of the Lernaean Hydra  – a many headed snake – by a divine man tasked with twelve acts of penance: a man of extraordinary strength, the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Hercules initially squares up to the foul creature with a harvesting sickle but finally defeats it with Athena’s golden sword.

Petrarch is often credited as the founder of Humanism, with initiating the Renaissance (upon the rediscovery of Cicero’s Letters), and for coining the term ‘Dark Ages’ for the preceding medieval period. Here is the title page from Queens’ 1562 edition of Cicero’s fascinating correspondence, the Epistolae ad Atticum, Brutum, & Q. Fratrem (Jean Boulier ed.) [E.17.26].

In his commentaries, Erasmus glosses the Adagia with quotes from the greats of classical literature including Cicero, Homer and Horace. This image  is of an extract from the first edition of Horatius – the works of Horace (Aldo Manuzio ed.), published in 1501 by the great Venetian printer and humanist Aldus Manutius. It’s not only the second text ever to be set in italic type but quite possibly one of the most beautiful books ever printed [U.5.5].

Within his discussion of the sources for the adage “Herculean Labours”, Erasmus explains how “by this symbol [the Hydra] the ancients wished to express Envy” and how “…This most loathsome of pests has always had the habit of accompanying the fairest deeds, and following the highest virtue as a body is followed by its shadow…”  His commentary is interwoven and embellished with classical references to great poets such as Horace who had witnessed the upheavals that followed Rome’s turbulent transition from Republic to Empire under Augustus.  Indeed, the increasing availability of classical literature during the Renaissance – whether it be the immediate impact of rhetoric through the carefully weighted sentences of Cicero; or the delicate rhythms of Horace immortalized in verse to share profound reflections on the impact of war and revolutionary change – greatly influenced Erasmus’s own literary response to the practices of the medieval Church and the turbulence of Reformation Europe.

– Medieval scribes undertook the slow and challenging process of copying texts by hand. This earlier manuscript tradition had formed an unbroken chain, transmitting ideas from the ancient world to the Renaissance humanists.  This example is from a bound volume of St. Augustine’s Soliloquia. Annotations on its final leaf indicate that it once belonged to Mary Tudor [Queens’ MS 25].

It is also here in the Adagia that we not only find reference to the great stories and authors of the classical world, but crucially find a rather grand reference to the humanist himself. For woven into the heroic labours of the ancient Hercules, the fair deeds and high virtue Erasmus reflects on are of course the labours of the contemporary, hard-working and undervalued scholar toiling away in the field of textual criticism.

He was certainly not alone in this endeavour. It was the aspiration of many a Renaissance man to produce critical editions of key texts: to reconstruct if possible what the original author had once written as manuscripts (or at least their fragments) were rediscovered and increasingly made available throughout Europe. The final sentence of the quote above refers to the craft of early printing houses which meant that, once the hardships of textual criticism had been endured by these dedicated humanists, anyone else who pursued the ideals of purity and truth could instantly profit by reading the final product.

But should we actually feel sorry for Erasmus? Was he really revealing a sorry, downtrodden state? Maybe not, since it has been argued quite convincingly that the ‘Prince of the Humanists’ was probably an early form of spin-doctor: or at least a person who traveled extensively as he networked amongst the elite and sought patronage from the influential; a man who crafted his own image as a hard-worker; a relentless, indefatigable force.  He would also visit the great printers of Europe on his travels for it seems that he was fully aware of the role and incredible potential of the new print technology in manufacturing not only a book but also a new species at the dawn of the modern age: what we would now call the ‘intellectual’.  Indeed, Erasmus may have actively shaped his own reputation as a towering figure of the Renaissance by self-consciously manipulating the world of print and the circulation of ideas.

A 4th century contemporary of St. Jerome, Augustine of Hippo wrote many significant works. Unlike his introspective soliloquies, De Doctina Cristiana was a powerful Christian apology for studying classical literature. The use of pagan sources had to be justified since it often provoked ill-will and Erasmus would develop this thesis in his Antibarbarorum (or Antibarbari). This Queens’ copy is from 1527 [ER.1.09].

However, we can’t deny the reality that Erasmus did work hard, extremely hard, and he was exceptional at what he did. Yet, any great innovator will probably have to confront envy or hostility from their peers at some stage. Ideas – and their originality – were often challenged and protected as intellectual reputations were forged. Erasmus was certainly no stranger to rivalry. In this context, I will explore and clarify such a dispute in my next blog post when we continue with the story of the Adagia, but it is worth noting here how Erasmus was even challenged in his lifetime by those he had once been deeply sympathetic to.  Printed in 1523, the Spongia was his response to an attack on his sincerity by the German reformer Ulrich von Hutten. In his defence, Erasmus claimed to have been misrepresented by the fellow humanist and supports this claim with a skillful defense of his decision not to support the actions of Martin Luther once the Reformation had threatened the unity of Catholic Europe.

Title page of Erasmus’s Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines Hutteni. Published in 1523, this precious Queens’ first edition has a dedication written by Erasmus to his friend Johannes von Botzheim, canon at Constance cathedral. Within four years the surrounding area and ‘Episcopal see’ would fall to a reformed Protestant majority [X.8.1].

The birth of the intellectual, the explosion of interest in the study of antiquity and the associated desire to seek out, restore and learn from classical sources was of course part of a wider movement that had already gained momentum in Italy during the 14th century.  That movement had perhaps found its greatest visual expression through the exuberant art of Michelangelo.  The task of the humanist though was to now widen programmes of education in the medieval universities from their cloistered confines. Hitherto the curriculum had been restricted and narrow.

Change was gradual though, for proponents of the older and still dominant system of learning termed Scholasticism had been schooled in the web of Aristotelian logic and doctrine that defined the philosophy of the Catholic Church. Yet, ancient texts were clearly demonstrating to some that there was much more to life than theology, medicine or bureaucratic studies in law and administration. The appreciation of epic and lyric poetry, of drama and satire; or the study of grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy and mathematics (beyond mere bookkeeping) were not only becoming worthy pursuits now – at least in the view or justifications of their proponents – but increasingly consistent with the life of a virtuous and pious man. As a programme for widening the scope of education, humanism could also be thought of as a proto-democratic enterprise that sought to create more effective citizens who could not only read and write, but discuss and seek solutions to the problems their societies faced.  At least in part perhaps, we may even owe many of our relative ‘freedoms’ today to the Herculean labours of scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam.

By David Radcliffe

¹ This is an abridged, translated extract from the 1515 Froben edition of the Adagiorum Chiliades, found in Jardine (2015) pages 42-43.

Further reading:

Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus, man of letters : the construction of charisma in print (2015).

Leedham-Green, Elizabeth, A Concise history of the University of Cambridge (2001).

Mann Phillips, Margaret, The ‘Adages’ of Erasmus; a study with translations (1964).

McConica, James Kelsey, English humanists and Reformation politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (1965).

Pearson, David, Books as history : the importance of books beyond their texts (2008).

Twigg, John, A History of Queens’ College, Cambridge 1448-1986 (1987).