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Pentateuch from Plantin’s Polyglot Bible

The Plantin Polyglot or Biblia regia constitutes the third large-scale polyglot bible edition in European history, after the famous Complutensian polyglot of 1514–7, and Johns Hopkins’ superb copy of the Genoa polyglot psalter of 1516. Many of the original 1,200 copies were lost in a shipwreck en route to Spain. A handful of copies of the Plantin Polyglot Bible are found today in European and American libraries.

Published in eight volumes between 1569 and 1572 in Antwerp by the leading printer of the northern Renaissance, Christopher Plantin (around 1520–89), this bold project was underwritten directly by King Philip II of Spain. Produced by an international team of linguists, biblical scholars, and more than 40 printers, the Plantin Polyglot is a breathtaking masterpiece both of philology and typography. It is, simply put, one of the most famous books ever printed.

The first volume of Johns Hopkins’ copy, which is used frequently for teaching and scholarship, is in need of conservation treatment. It contains the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—in the original Hebrew with parallel translations in Latin and Greek as well as an Aramaic commentary (targum) below the main texts.

Conservation Treatment

Remove from current binding, mend and guard all spine folds and other tears/losses in paper, re-sew, and re-bind using conservation-grade materials and structure.

Catacomb Saint Copperplate and Etching

This etched copperplate—unusually preserved here with an otherwise unrecorded contemporary print pulled directly from it—depicts the body of the virgin-martyr St. Gaudenzia as she was displayed in the convent of Capuchin nuns at San Giovanni in Bagnacavallo near Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The plate was etched by Vincenzo Marabini (1774-1847), very likely shortly after the arrival of the body of Gaudenzia.

Marabini is known from a handful of devotional prints, but none following the format seen here. The inscription of the print is fictive, made to look like an epigraphic inscription on the monument but in fact describing the print itself: “Image of the Virgin and Martyr Saint Gaudenzia, drawn and etched [exculpta] from the prototype, which in the interior chapel of the Capuchin nuns of Bagnacavallo is most religiously tended and venerated.”

The body of Gaudenzia remains at Bagnacavallo to the present day. This engraving appears to be a unique survival, as no other early prints of the Gaudenzia body/shrine have been forthcoming. The print was likely mounted to card and preserved with the plate to serve as an easy reference for visualizing the plate’s design, a common practice in the preservation and storage of such plates.

A saint of rather dubious attestation, Gaudenzia was “rediscovered” in 1796 in the Catacombs of Ciriaca in Rome near San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, and shortly thereafter her body was transferred to the convent at Bagnacavallo. Gaudenzia ranks among the very last early Christian saints to be discovered in the monumental archaeological explorations of the ancient Roman catacombs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

San Giovanni, a Camaldolese house during the eighteenth century, was closed following to the destructive suppression of religious orders during the Napoleonic period. In 1816, it was reoccupied by Capuchin nuns who ran the convent as a boarding school for the girls of local and regional aristocrats and landed gentry. The house is perhaps most (in)famous for being the school where Lord Byron sent his illegitimate daughter Allegra (1817-22), who tragically died there at five years of age.

Spanish Golden Age Carta executoria

This extremely luxurious example of a 16th-century Spanish Golden Age Carta executoria, finely bound in red velvet, incorporates two full page paintings, and a small portrait of King Philip II, as well as two contemporary extra-illustrated hand-colored engravings laid into the front and back binding. The document is dated 1587, and again in 1590 in a later notarial receipt of the document.

This formal legal petition comprised of depositions and other evidence was filed with authorities by Diego de Frias Salazar of the Villa de Alfaro, establishing his family’s limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”) and, thus, his right to serve in the Cortes and enjoy freedom from taxation.

The two full page paintings reveal the Salazar family’s loyalty to Philip II, many generations of Catholics (i.e., no Jewish or Moorish ancestors), and the family’s role as defenders of the kingdom against heretics.

The first painting is divided in two parts. Top: The Blessed Virgin Mary surrounded by musical angels, as the petitioning family kneel piously before her, in full contemporary attires, mostly made of black cloth, as was customary for Philip’s court. Bottom: Typical image of a battle scene portraying Santiago Matamoros slaying Moors on horseback. The frame is of particular notice, as it contains images of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalen, as well as birds and floral swag arrangements of unusual quality.

 

The second full-page painting, again within a wide frame showing a variety of motifs, shows a genealogical tree, modeled on the biblical Tree of Jesse, with the coats of arms of Salazar’s loyal Catholic ancestors. The Salazar family armorial at the base of the genealogical tree, 13 red stars upon a yellow field, is mirrored as well in the unusual, handsomely embroidered textile binding.

The two large hand-colored engravings are especially unusual.

The first extra illustration portrays Mary Magdalene with her familiar legend Ne desperetis vos qui peccare soletis exemplo qui meo vos preparate Deo (“Don’t despair, you who habitually sin, since through my example God will restore you”).
The second extra-illustration is a rather popular engraving, probably Spanish as well, portraying events from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, including the main image of the saint holding a crucifix, and ten smaller images surrounding it portraying his deeds. On the lower frame of the Franciscan engraving, the legend in Spanish reads: “Francisco was born in the city of Assisi in a stable, in the year of the birth of our Redemptor 1152, his father was called Pedro Bernardez and his mother, Dona Picha, both natives of the city of Assisi del Valle Spoletano, at age 17, he renounced all his assets before of the bishop of Assisi.”

Mourning Veil Relic from the Holy House of Loreto

The Basilica della Santa Casa (Basilica of the Holy House) is a shrine in Loreto, Italy, where the house in which the Virgin Mary is believed to have lived is preserved. It has been a Catholic pilgrimage destination since at least the 14th century. The statue of Our Lady of Loreto enshrined in the Holy House is a black Madonna carved from Cedar of Lebanon and, like the Holy House itself, has a miracle-working reputation.

This holy pilgrimage souvenir signed in March 1736 has a (duly certified) fragment of the black gauze mourning veil worn by the statue during Holy Week to cover the basilica’s much-venerated cult statue of the Virgin and Child. These fabric fragments were prized not only as souvenirs, but also as wonder-working relics originating from arguably the most famous pilgrimage destination in all of early modern Europe. After Easter the veil would be cut up into little pieces and distributed among the pilgrims as relics—a custom that continues today.

The letterpress text on the certificate attests that the attached veil fragment covered the statue of the Virgin and Child on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and that it also touched the Holy Dress of the Virgin and the Holy Bowl, two other powerful relics kept in the Holy House.

At the center of the sheet is a woodcut of the cult statue being transported atop the Virgin’s original house in Palestine. The custodian indicated that the certificate was given “Gratis” or free of charge, wrote the date on which the relic was certified, “24 Marzo 1736,” and signed his name and title: “Gioseppe Santoni Custode della S.a Casa.”

No other examples of this contact relic broadside are recorded, making this a unique survival of popular Roman Catholic veneration.

 

The story of the Santa Casa ranks among the more unusual legends from the Middle Ages. The house in Nazareth—where the Virgin was born and later conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit—was carried in 1291 by angels to Tersatto (now Trsat, Croatia). In 1294, angels carried the House across the Adriatic to a grove near Ancona. It then was removed in 1295 to a hill near Recanati and then less than a year later to nearby Monte Prodo, not far from Loreto. In 1296, the Santa Casa was at last moved to its present location. It became one of the most popular pilgrimages sites in Christendom.

The veil fabric given to Loreto pilgrims is an example of a “touch relic” (also called “contact relics” and “secondary relics”), that is to say an object, in this case a veil, that came in direct contact with a saint’s primary relic (e.g., a body part or personal item owned by the saint). Other pilgrim-oriented touch relics from Loreto include engraved “envelopes” containing dust from the Holy House, as well as replicas of the Holy Bowl made of clay to which such dust was added. Examples of both are also held in the Sheridan Libraries’ Women of the Book Collection.

To learn more, see Karin Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Crucifix Paper Tool Sundials

These two “paper tool” sundial broadsides, present readymade, wall-mounted sundials based on the Crucifixion of Christ. The large central engraving was meant to be affixed to a plank of wood and needles inserted into Christ’s nail wounds to serve as the gnomons for the dials, marking time as the sun passes across the sky.

The text opens with a nod to the giants of celestial horology and then discusses how to use the broadside to build the sundial and provides details about how to use it. Users who followed the instructions would have had to destroy or damage the broadside—which likely was produced in small numbers to begin with—and so it is little surprise that so few examples survive today. These particular examples appear to be completely unknown to the scholarly literature on celestial horology.

The letterpress text was printed in Bologna, followed by a second run of the sheet through a roller press to add the engraving.

Bologna: Jacopo Monti, 1675. One other copy known, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

The sundial was designed by a certain Milanese Barnabite cleric Virmundo Corio, and the copperplate was engraved by the Bolognese printmaker Francesco Corti. The Latin text was written by jurist Francesco Maria Bordocchi, who dedicated the piece to the jurist Vincenzo Butari of Osimo. The Latin poem at the foot of the sheet was composed by a cleric using the initials R. P. D. S. G.

Milan: Francisci Vigoni, 1675. No other copies are known.

The design of the engraving is spectacular, with the Crucifix set within a fictive niche flanked by Solomonic columns thought to have been in the original Temple of Jerusalem. Above is a cupid with his own sundial, whose quiver contains Christ’s three nails. On the steps leading up to the scene sit lions as putti display both Solomonic and Christological mottos. The dial furniture is shown as if it were woven into tapestries.

Using the Crucifix as a central design for sundials was already well established in celestial horology, perhaps most notably by Georg Hartmann (1489-1564), who created a cut-out “paper tool” of such a device; and also by Christopher Clavius, who provided a similar design in the last pages of his 1581 Gnomonices. The layouts of these predecessors, however, function differently than the dials presented in this broadside.

Far from losing market share to mechanical clockmakers, early modern creators of sundials in fact saw prospects for their devices improve: “This was primarily due to the need to periodically readjust mechanical clocks, bringing them into correspondence with the local solar time, as well as to the increasing awareness of the utility of public and private timekeeping” (Lloyd, 14).

Interestingly, the other known copy of the Bologna broadside is folded and was tipped into an autograph manuscript by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-80), himself a celestial horologist of considerable importance as author of the Ars magna lucis et umbrae [1646].

Sources:

  • S. Karr Schmidt, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance, Brill, 2018, pp. 205-40.
  • S. A. Lloyd, Ivory Diptych Sundials, 1570-1750: A Catalogue of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University Press, 1992.
  • H. Maué, et al., Quasi Centrum Europae: Europa Kauft in Nürnberg 1400-1800, Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 2002, p. 367-71.