FYI France: digital libraries, at Sélestat(?)
The Bibliothèque Humaniste, at Sélestat in Alsace, is one of the
great libraries of Europe. We now have an excellent Bibliothèque
Humaniste website, providing information about and digital access
to the Sélestat treasures:
http://www.ville-selestat.fr/bhselestat/
-- see particularly the very interesting "service educatif" of
the library, offering well-done pdf files intended to help with
school visits of various educational levels, files which can give
even the online user an "interactive" idea of the resources --
http://www.ville-selestat.fr/bhselestat/service_educatif.htm
And this summer a special exhibition of bindings in the
collection has been mounted at the Bibliothèque Humaniste: "a
meeting of two eras, the 16th c. and the 21st -- 20 examples of
remarkable bookbinding work, most from the personal library of
Beatus Rhenanus, together with modern works by Anne Giordan".
The Bibliothèque Humaniste offers famous ancient collections of
the religious communities of its region, and 15th-16th century
collections from the period during which the city was a leading
center of the Humanism movement in Europe. Most well-known is the
collection of Beatus Rhenanus: [tr. JK]
"The 20th of July, 1547, saw the death of the savant Beat
Bild, known as Beatus Rhenanus, friend of Erasmus who
called him his alter ego. He was interred in the église
Saint-Georges.
"Born at Sélestat on the 22nd of August, 1485, Beatus at
the age of six became the student of Craton Hofmann. The
library preserves his student notebook from the years
1498-1499: in its pages one can discover both the
richness of the instruction provided and the intelligence
of the pupil.
"After brilliant studies at the Sorbonne from 1503 to
1507, under the direction of Lefebvre d'Etaples, Beatus
became a proofreader and philologist, first at Paris with
the printer Estienne, then with a Strasbourg printer
originally from Sélestat named Mathias Schurer, finally
at Basel with the printers Jean Amerbach and above all
Frobenius. So Beatus came into contact with the most
learned people in the Europe of his time.
"He began to assemble his library when he was very young.
The wealth of his father, Antoine Bild, Burgomaster,
enabled him to acquire 57 volumes even prior to his
admission to the university in 1503: works of grammar and
of rhetoric (Alexandre de Villedieu), and works of the
humanists (Nicolaus Perottes, Franciscus Niger). During
his university studies at Paris he collected 188 volumes:
among these 20 treatises of Aristotle, editions of the
classical Latin authors, and first editions of works of
the Fathers of the Church.
"At age 22 Beatus already owned 253 books, which was a
considerable library for that period. His long literary
career enabled him to acquire the numerous Parisan
editions, and editions by Frobenius, which form one of
the unique characteristics of his library. Also he
purchased numerous copies of editions on which he himself
worked as proofreader and philologist: Tertullian,
Eusebius, Sozomenos, Seneca, Quintus-Curtius, Velleius
Paterculus, Pliny the Elder, Titus-Livius, etc.
"Beatus received numerous works which carry the ex libris
of the previous owner on the title page. He exchanged
many of his own editions with those of his friends. Each
of his books carries, nearly always, the manuscript ex
libris of Beatus: one of these shows how dear to him his
library was -- he marked on a title page, "Sum Beati
Rhenani Nec muto dominum" -- "I belong to Beatus Rhenanus
and I will have no other master".
"Ennobled by the Emperor Charles V, in 1523, Beatus had
many of his bindings decorated with his armorial crest.
Now 222 volumes form the collection: each may contain up
to 30 different texts, most of them covered with
marginalia, the variety often resulting from the
inclusion of a manuscript discovered in some other library.
"And don't forget the correspondance of Beatus: 255
autograph letters from his friends are preserved in the
library here at Sélestat..."
http://www.ville-selestat.fr/bhselestat/histoire_suite2.htm
The collections Sélestat offers are ancient, and distinguished:
"About 70,000 documents are available, divided among
various collections: a collection of money and medals,
currently being inventoried, and collections of
postcards, prints, engravings, music scores. The most
precious of the documents are writings divided into
specific groups: the fonds humaniste, the fonds ancien
général, the fonds d'alsatiques, and others.
"Since the opening of the Médiathèque Intercommunale in
1997, the Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat has been
focussed on a mission of study and research. In addition
to the encyclopedic collections already acquired by that
date, it now puts at the disposition of researchers
current acquisitions concerning the Middle Ages,
Humanism, and the Renaissance, and the History of The Book.
"The library's important fonds ancien -- composed of 464
ancient and modern manuscripts, 550 incunables, and more
than 2,000 printed works of the 16th century -- attracts
numerous researchers from the four corners of Europe, who
by their labors contribute so much to our intellectual
life. The catalog of manuscripts is accessible at the
Bibliothèque Humaniste. For the incunables, one may
consult the catalog compiled by the Canon Walter, of the
city of Sélestat: 'catalogue général de la Bibliothèque
municipale, t. III : incunables et XVIe siècle, Colmar,
Alsatia, 1929.' The library continues to acquire,
regularly, works intended to enrich its collection of
printed works of the 16th century, records of which are
accessible via the online public access catalog.
"The Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat also preserves an
important collection of the music scores of Alsatian
composers, trying constantly to increase this through
donations. The music library of the Abbé Martin Vogeleis
(1861-1930), or Bibliotheca Alcediana, is the most
significant of these collections: it contains about 3,000
titles, and includes books of chant, scores, diverse
music studies, and both ancient and recent Alsatian works."
http://www.ville-selestat.fr/
And see:
http://www.selestat-tourisme.com/patrimoine.htm (look for the
place Gambetta at the north end of the interactive map)
--oOo--
Note:
Any era transfixed by notions of religion and nation-state and
empire, as our own appears to have become -- "Axis of Evil" &
"Fundamentalism", "Europe" & "Globalization" -- might do well to
re-read the Humanists. They are where our thinking on this began.
Beatus Rhenanus lived from 1485 to 1547, Erasmus from 1466 to
1536, Thomas More from 1478 to his foreshortened 1535... The
terrible Wars of Religion lasted from about 1559 to 1598. And the
Thirty Years War ran from 1618 to the Treaty of Westphalia of
1648, marking the founding of the very modern nation-state idea
which now seems to be crumbling around its edges a bit.
The Europe which followed Humanism learned bitter lessons, then,
the hardest way, about religious excess and nationalism --
lessons which might profitably be dusted-off today, by all of us.
A few bits of recent bibliography:
* Erasmus, Desiderius, d. 1536. _Christian humanism and
the Reformation : selected writings of Erasmus, with his
life by Beatus Rhenanus and a biographical sketch by the
editor_ (New York : Fordham University Press, 1987) ed.
John C. Olin. ISBN 0823211924.
* _Beatus Rhenanus, 1485-1547, son activité de lecteur,
d'éditeur et d'écrivain : 18 septembre-18 novembre 1998,
Bibliothèque humaniste Sélestat_ (Paris : Ministère
culture communication, Direction du livre et de la
lecture : Fédération française de coopération entre
bibliothèques, 1998) ed. Hubert Meyer. ISBN 2907420593.
* Cummings, Brian. _The literary culture of the
Reformation : grammar and grace_ (Oxford ; New York :
Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0198187351.
* Delatour, Jérôme. _Une bibliothèque humaniste au temps
des guerres de religion : les livres de Claude Dupuy,
d'après l'inventaire dressé par le libraire Denis Duval
(1595)_ préf. de Bruno Neveu, intro. de Dominique
Bougé-Grandon. ([Paris] : Ecole des Chartes ;
Villeurbanne : Editions de l'ENSSIB, 1998) ISBN
2910227227 (ENSSIB), 2900791235 (Ecole des Chartes).
* _Humanism and the Renaissance_ (Boston : Houghton
Mifflin Co., c2002) ed. Zachary S. Schiffman. ISBN:
0618116257.
* Holt, Mack P. _The French wars of religion, 1562-1629_
(Cambridge [England] ; New York, N.Y. : Cambridge
University Press, 1995) ISBN 0521353599, 0521358736.
* Bobbitt, Philip. _The shield of Achilles : war, peace,
and the course of history_ (New York : Knopf, 2002) ISBN
0375412921, 0385721382.
* Auden, W.H. _The shield of Achilles_ (1952)
(_many_ sites online...)
--oOo--
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