De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 36
(1958)– [tijdschrift] Gulden Passer, De–
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd
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Books printed by the Officina Plantiniana in Antwerp and Leyden in the travelling library of sir Julius Caesar
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[pagina 113]
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This career, however, is stamped neither with outstanding success not with conspicuous failure. Sir Julius' uniqueness - and for that age the word is no exaggeration - lay in his personality. An accountGa naar voetnoot(2) of his saintly generosity was given by a near contemporary. He was a Person of prodigious bounty to all of worth or want, so that he might seem to be Almoner general of the Nation. The story is well known, of a Gentleman who once borrowing his Coach (which was as well known to poor people as any Hospital in England) was so rendezvouz'd about with Beggars in London, that it cost him all the money in his purse to satisfie their importunity, so that he might have hired twenty Coaches on the same terms. Sir Francis Bacon Lord Verulam was judicious in his Election, when perceiving his Dissolution to approach, he made his last Bed in effect in the house of Sir Julius. Had this generosity been confined to Sir Julius' private life, it would have been most unusual in fact but nevertheless, for an admirable man, conventional in theory. What made it the more remarkable was that Sir Julius extended his conscience to his professional life, refusing to take the bribes and illicit fees by which most lawyers thrived and made themselves common objects of satire. Sir Julius did not feel that he should give all his goods to the poor and have none left for himself; he took rather the modern view that he should devote his intelligence and professional skill to serving the people of England, and that the State should pay him for this. He envisaged a sinecure as the means of its paying, but his petitions for such a post for long failing, he spent his own money. In 1614, however, he was granted the position of Master of the Rolls, which he held till his death. It is plain that this man possessed a widely ranging, reflective, and original mind; and his possession of a library is entirely in keeping with what we know of him. This particular library, however, was not an ordinary one; it accompanied the lawyer on his travels. It consists of forty-three tiny books (4 ½″ × 2 ½″ × ½″ - 1″) on which vast care has been lavished. The measurements given above are average; as the books came from severa different printers at several different dates they are not quite identical in size, though they come very close because of the trouble | |||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 114]
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that has been taken over them. They have all been rebound in white vellum tooled with gold and put into a wooden box (16″ × 10 ¾″ × 3 ¼″) apparently made to measure, since the contents exactly fill it. This box is disguised by gold-tooled green morocco, now faded to brown, to look like a huge folio volume. On the inside of the lid is a beautiful illuminated vellum lining on which are inscribed the names of the authors and the brief titles of the tiny volumes. This list corresponds with the contents except that a copy of Augustine's Meditations is said to be present. It is not, nor has it been since the British Museum acquired the box in 1842. The present contents of the box entirely fill it. Perhaps Sir Julius Caesar made a slight miscalculation of space, and Augustine was omitted when it was found that one volume had to be sacrificed. Most of the forty-three books which make up the travelling library are in Latin, though a few are in modern languages. Some of the Latin books are classics, some are medieval, and others are modern. They include theology, philosophy, history, and poetry. No one religious strain is exclusively represented. The printing origin of the books is similarly diverse, though well over half come from Holland and Belgium. Of these three were printed by Gaspar Bellerus in Antwerp. They were: Aquinas, TOTA / THEOLOGIA / SANCTI TH. ABBREVIATA, 1614; St. Bonaventure, EXIMII ECCLESIAE / DOCTORIS / SOLILOQUIUM, 1616; and Justus Lipsius, FLORES, 1616. The others were printed by the Officina PlantinianaGa naar voetnoot(3). This more limited selection also shows a wide range of interest. Classical history is perhaps particularly well represented with Caesar, Sallust, Justin, Silius Italicus, and Suetonius; and the lighter side of life in various ways by Suetonius, Petronius, Catullus, Martial and others. Lucretius, Epictetus, and Prudentius represent philosophy and meditation. This list is strikingly classical, and indeed Caesar's books from the | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Officina Plantiniana include few modern authors except George Buchanan and Justus Lipsius. These two, for different reasons, are particularly interesting. George Buchanan, Scots university teacher, historian, and poet, was imprisoned by Cardinal Beaton on his conversion to Protestantism. Buchanan escaped, but after the change of religious fortune in Scotland returned to become tutor to Prince James, future First of England and Sixth of Scotland. It was Buchanan's elegant and distinguished Latin version of the psalms which found its way into Sir Julius Caesar's library. Justus Lipsius was a celebrated Belgian savant of the Renaissance. Born in Brabant in 1548, he had a brilliant career, first as a promising secretary to Cardinal Granvella at Rome, then in the Universities of Jena, Leyden, and Louvain. In the course of this career he changed his religion several times, but was equally zealous whether as Calvinist, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic. This is the total list of books from the Plantin press in the library of Sir Julius Caesar. I quote short titles here; title pages are given in the notes:
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Of a total of twenty-four books, twenty-three came from the presses of the Raphelengii at Leyden, and only one from the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp. It was printed by John Moretus who, on Plantin's death in 1589, carried on the business in Antwerp, first in conjunction with Plantin's widow Joanna, and then alone. The Proverbs of Solomon in Sir Julius Caesar's library was printed in 1591 and is marked ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana, apud Viduam, & Joannem Moretum’. But a great many of these books printed in Leyden and Antwerp after Christopher Plantin's death had been already printed by him in his lifetime: the Enchiridon of Epictetus was printed by Plantin in 1585; Justus Lipsius' treatise De Constantia left his presses in 1584 and again in 1585 and 1586; the works of Caesar were published in 1585 and 1586 and those of Sallust in 1579 and 1587; Valerius Maximus appeared in 1567; 1574 and 1585; Suetonius in 1574 and 1578; Petronius in 1565; Danaeus in 1583; Lucanus in 1564, 1576 and 1589; the poems of Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius in 1560, 1569, 1587; Juvenalis and Persius in 1565 and 1566; Terentius in 1560, 1565, 1565, 1576, 1580, 1583, 1588; Martial in 1568, 1579, 1588; Seneca in 1576, 1588, and 1589; Buchanan's Psalms in 1566, 1567, 1571, 1576 and 1588; Claudianus' works in 1571, 1572, and 1585; those of Prudentius in 1564; Lucretius in 1565, 1566, and 1589. Moreover, of many books in the possession of Sir Julius Caesar the Raphelengii at Leyden and John Moretus at Antwerp themselves published different editions: Raphelengius' edition of 1613 of Lipsius' De Constantia had been preceded by the editions of 1591, 1602 and 1605, whilst John Moretus and his successors Balthasar I and John Moretus II published the same work in 1599, 1605, 1615 and 1628; the Caesar of 1614 was preceded by Raphelengius' edition of 1593; the Valerius Maximus of 1612 by similar ones in 1594 and 1596; the Suetonius of 1611 by two Raphelengius (1596, 1597) and two Moretus editions (1591, 1592); the Petronius of 1614 by the Raphelengius editions of 1596 and 1604; Lipsius' Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex of 1615 by no less than four Raphelengius | |||||||||||||||||||||
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editions (two in 1589, one in 1590 and 1605) whilst the Moretuses published five of them (1596, 1599, 1604, 1610, 1623), not counting the ones in their editions of Lipsius' Opera Omnia. The Danaeus of 1610 was followed by another Raphelengius edition in 1612; the Lucanus of 1612 was preceded by the Moretus edition of 1592 and followed by a Raphelengius edition of 1614. The poems Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius had already been published by Raphelengius in 1591 and 1592; Terence's Comoediae in 1591 by John Moretus, in 1599 by Raphelengius; Martial's Epigrammata in 1595 and Buchanan's Psalms in 1590 by Raphelengius, in 1595 by Moretus. The Raphelengius edition of Claudianus of 1607 was preceded by the Moretus editions of 1596, 1602 and 1607; Prudentius' Opera of 1610 by the Raphelengius edition of 1596; the Lucretius of 1611 by the Raphelengius edition of 1595. The judgement with which Christopher Plantin and his heirs chose their material for printing is evident in the degree to which reprinting was demanded. And the wide circulation of the products of the House of Plantin is plain in their bulking so largely in the collection of an English gentleman. |
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