There is an enduring story that Martin Luther invented the Christmas tree. The usual version is something along the following lines: Luther was walking home close to Christmas and, inspired by the starry sky, brought a small fir tree into the house and decorated it with candles to remind his children of the stars shining over Bethlehem when Christ was born.

A 19th-century American Lutheran tract, T. Stork, Luther’s Christmas Tree (Philadelphia, 1855) 4887.aa.61

In fact it’s pretty certain that Luther had nothing to do with Christmas trees. There’s no mention of such a thing in his letters or Table Talk, or in biographical accounts by his contemporaries. The popular association seems to go back to an engraving of 1843 by Carl August Schwerdgeburth (below) showing the Luther family gathered round a tree. As described in an earlier post, 19th-century pictures of Luther’s family life often reflected their own times as much as his, and a tree was a definite fixture of a German Christmas by the 1840s – although not in the 16th century.

Schwerdgeburth’s picture was widely reproduced and much imitated, and no doubt the growing visual association of Luther with an anachronistic Christmas tree led to the story that he invented the tradition.

Another anachronistic Christmas Tree, picture by Gustav König from Heinrich Gelzer, Martin Luther, der deutsche Reformator (Hamburg, 1847-51) 4885.f.13. 

However, Luther did have a hand in another German Christmas tradition: the giving of gifts on Christmas Eve. Although there is some evidence that he and his family continued the established custom of giving small presents on the feast of St Nicholas (6 December), Luther wanted to make the nativity and the infant Jesus the focus of Christmas celebrations. Thus he encouraged making Christmas Eve the principal day for gift-giving and identified the Christkind (Christ-Child) as the gift bearer. Father Christmas (Der Weihnachtsmann) has taken over the role in some German households today, but in others the Christkind still brings the children their presents. (And German children still get gifts from St Nicholas on 6 December as well.)

‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her’, from  Gesangbuch, darinn begriffen sind, die aller fürnemisten und besten Psalmen, Geistliche Lieder und Chorgeseng ... [A facsimile of the ‘Grosses Strassburger Gesangbuch’ of 1541] (Stuttgart, 1953). 3438.p.1.

It is said that Luther wrote his Christmas hymn, ‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her’ (‘From heaven above to earth I come’) for a family Christmas Eve celebration in 1535. The song reflects the angel’s message to the shepherds from the nativity story, and according to at least one 19th-century account, it was first performed to the family by a singer dressed as an angel. In the accompanying picture (below) Luther looks oddly fierce and the children rather frightened; I assume this is unintentional, as the text praises Luther as family man, poet and musician. Interestingly, there’s no tree in sight here.

‘Christmas Eve 1535 at Luther’s house’. Picture by Eduard Kaempffer from Franz Fauth, Dr. Martin Luthers Leben, dem deutschen Volke erzählt (Leipzig, 1897) 4887.g.3.

Unlike many German hymns and carols, ‘Vom Himmel hoch…’ has never really caught on in Britain, but Luther may have contributed to a German carol that is still popular here. The macaronic ‘In dulci jubilo’ dates back to the 14th century, but an additional verse about God’s grace to sinners was added in the 16th century and is often ascribed to Luther.

Christmas with the Luthers probably wasn’t quite as 19th-century artists and biographers liked to imagine it, but was clearly a happy time: one of Luther’s students once described him as being ‘very jocund’ on Christmas Eve. We hope that you all will be too, and throughout the season.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

The medieval archives of the Crown of Aragon are generally said to be richer than those of neighbouring Castile. They’re an invaluable source for scholars of all aspects of cultural history, including the history of the book.

And of weird stuff.

In the inventory of the goods of Martin I (1356-1410) we find the following treasures: the arm of St George (p. 461); ditto St Barbara (461); and he must have had over 100 pieces of church vestments.

He had the Cid’s sword:

item una spasa ab son pom de jaspi apellada ne tisona sens fouro bo (p. 524)
[Item a sword with a jasper pommel called The Tizona without a good scabbard]

He had a piece of cloth decorated with the magical sign or seal or knot of Solomon:

primo una tovallola de lens prim brodada de fil d aur e de sede de diverses colors ab .IIII. baboyns de fil d or e de sede en mig VII. senyals salamons squinsada (p. 507)
[first, a fine linen cloth embroidered with gold thread and silk in various colours with four baboons in gold thread in the middle of seven signs of Solomon, torn]

A version of the seal of Solomon from Pertus de Abano, Claviculae Salomonis, seu Philosophia pneumatica … (Bifingen, 1974). X.529/17795

Even these apparently harmless references to items showing the Armed Man turn out, as explained by Joan Evans, in her study, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance particularly in England, to be amulets: “in many instances those [stones] that include figures of armed men confer courage and victory in battle” (p. 49), “for alectorias, for instance, the sigil of an armed knight and consecration by nine masses is prescribed” (p. 71):

item una bossa de vellut carmesi dins la qual ha Ia empremte o ymatge pocha de I. hom qui te una spasa en la ma e un cap tellat en l altre ab un cordo de seda vermeya (p. 491)
[item a bag of carmine velvet in which is a small impression or image of a man with a sword in one hand and a detached head in the other with a red cord]

 Carved gems for use as amulets, from, Johann Martin von Ebermayer, Capita Deorum et illustrium hominum ... nec non Hieroglyphica, Abraxea et Amuleta quædam, in gemmis antiqua partim, partim recenti manu, affabre incisa (Frankfurt, 1721). 139.g.11.

There are nine or so references to “serpents’ teeth”. These were actually prehistoric arrow heads or fossils, and were used to test food for poison. Martin had some mounted on a branching piece of coral, to form what in English we call by the French name of languier:

item diversos trosos de branchas d coral ab algunes lengues de serps encastades en argent (p. 528)
[item various pieces of coral branches with some serpent’s teeth set in silver]

Coral was used as a teething ring, because it too was thought to have protective powers:

item una brancha de coral ab una virolla d argent per a portar a infants (p. 490)
[item a coral branch with a golden ring for children to wear]

And how could he fail to have:

item .I. tros de unicorn encastat en .I.a virolla d aur ab son cordo vermey (p. 541)
[item a piece of unicorn set in a gold ring with its red cord]

As Roca tells us, citing a letter of 1379, unicorn horn too was proof against poison : “la qual val contra verí” (p. 54).

 Unicorns, from Pierre Pomet, Histoire générale des Drogues, traitant des plantes, des animaux et des mineraux (Paris, 1694) 37.h.7.

Martin wasn’t some dark-age wizard who crammed his palace with superstitious rubbish, although he might have been unduly afraid of poisoning. He was also a patron of medical schools in the modern sense, and it’s likely many of these gewgaws were family heirlooms, as they also appear in the inventory of James II (1267-1327), his great grandfather. And these old beliefs died hard and in the 1720s the existence of the unicorn was still a matter of debate.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies

References:

J. Massó Torrents, ‘Inventari del bens del rey Martí d’Aragó’, Revue Hispanique, 12 (1905), 413-590. PP.4331.aea

J. M. Roca, La medicina catalana en temps del Rey Martí (Barcelona, 1919) YA.1990.a 16394

Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance particularly in England (Oxford, 1922) W2/7263

You can discover many more magical artefacts in our current exhibition Harry Potter: a History of Magic, which runs until 28 February 2018

In 1525 the Protestant reformer Martin Luther married a former nun, Katharina von Bora. The couple had six children, four of whom survived into adulthood. Their household was a hospitable one: they also took in the orphaned children of relatives,  and regularly offered a home to Luther’s friends, colleagues and students.

It became increasingly common, especially in the 19th century, to depict the Luthers and their family as an ideal of clerical marriage and the Christian home. Illustrations to popular biographies show Luther in the bosom of his family, often at the same time reflecting contemporary mores, as in the examples below. In the first, the furnishings of the house and the dress and attitudes of the figures owe as much to the early 19th century ‘Biedermeier’ period as to the reality of the 15th century, while in the second, from an 1905 publication, a positively Dickensian Luther beams over his brood.

Luther and his family. Above, from Christian Franz Gottlieb Stang, Martin Luther. Sein Leben und Wirken (Stuttgart, 1839) 1372.k.5; Below from M. Wartburger, Martin Luther: Lebensgeschichte des Reformators (Berlin, 1905) 4887.f.17.

However idealised – or occasionally saccharine – such pictures might be, they do reflect a certain reality. Luther took much pleasure in family life and his letters show that he was an observant, affectionate and proud father. There are touching descriptions of his grief over the deaths of his daughters Elisabeth (in infancy) and Magdalena (aged 13). He was, of course, a man of his times, who believed in the necessity of firm discipline and corporal punishment in child-rearing, but he recognised that the kind of exaggerated beatings he had received as a child for small transgressions, both at home and at school, were counter-productive, and that punishment should be tempered with rewards.

A often-quoted example of Luther’s paternal affection is a letter that he wrote to his eldest son Hans (‘Hänschen’) in 1530 from Coburg. Hans had recently started lessons at home and Luther was pleased to hear that he was working hard. He goes on to describe:

… a pretty and cheerful garden, where there are many children. They wear little golden coats, and gather beautiful apples and pears, cherries and plums under the trees; they sing and run about and are happy. They have lovely ponies, with golden bridles and silver saddles. I asked the owner of the garden whose the children were. And he said, “They are the children who love to pray and to learn and are good.” Then I said, “My dear sir, I also have a son, called Hänschen Luther: could he come into the garden too …?” The man said, “If he loves to pray and to learn and is good, then he too may come into the garden, and Lippus and Jost ; and if they all come together, they can play on fifes, drums and lutes, and all kinds of instruments, and dance, and shoot with little crossbows.” He then showed me a beautiful lawn in the garden, prepared for dancing, where a great many golden fifes and drums and silver crossbows were hanging.

(You can read the original here. ‘Lippus and Jost’ were the sons of Luther’s fellow-reformers Philipp Melanchthon and Justus Jonas.)

The letter’s vision of a ‘children’s paradise’ shows that Luther had a good idea of what might appeal to a little boy, and that he wanted to encourage Hans with kindness rather threats. However, Hans was only four years old, and I can’t help thinking that he would have been too young to understand this delightful vision as a metaphor for the heavenly rewards of learning and piety and that Luther’s good intentions may have backfired. Did the little boy sit down to his lessons every day hoping for the actual reward of a visit to the enchanted garden described in the letter, only to be disappointed by the realities of early modern education and disillusioned by his father’s apparent deception?

The realities of early modern education? This 19th-century picture by Gustav König imagines Martin Luther being taken to school for the first time by his own father. The teacher holds a switch and a boy who has just been beaten sobs behind the chair. From Heinrich Gelzer and Gustav König, Dr Martin Luther der deutsche Reformator (Hamburg, 1847-51) 4885.f.13.

As Hans grew older he tended to show a lack of application in his studies and lapses in his behaviour that concerned and sometimes angered his father. I wouldn’t for a moment argue that this was all the result of childhood trauma caused by a lack of ponies and golden fifes but perhaps a little bit of iron had entered into his soul when he realised that these things were not literally going to come his way. (In fairness to Luther, however, I should point out that he did bring Hans the very real gift of sweetmeats back from Coburg, which may have made a greater impression than the letter.)

Hans made good in the end; he settled to his studies and went on to become a lawyer – appropriately enough the career that his paternal grandfather and namesake had originally intended for Luther himself. He never had a son of his own, so we don’t know how if he would have used his father’s method of encouraging a little boy to study, pray and be good.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

Our free display, Martin Luther: 500 Years of Reformation, continues in the British Library Treasures Gallery until 4 February 2018.

Many factors contributed to the spread of the Reformation in the Nordic region from the 16th century onwards. The developing ‘national’ monarchies, with ever more centralized rule, gradually saw the Catholic Church as the main obstacle to the consolidation of wealth and power. This disillusionment with the Catholic Church was also of course a result of the dissemination of new Lutheran teachings, by German preachers who had moved north, by Scandinavian preachers who had been taught in Lutheran contexts, or often by Hansa merchants spreading the faith.

In the process of reforming the North, as elsewhere, vernacular translations of scripture were significant. As Bent Noack writes, ‘it is not sufficiently emphasized that the printing of vernacular texts long preceded the Reformation in many countries’ (The Cambridge History of the Bible, p. 423): there are mediaeval Danish and Swedish biblical manuscripts based on the Vulgate and, as early as 1514, Christiern Pedersen (c.1480-1554) had translated parts of the New Testament. In a preface to his 1515 translated Book of Homilies, Pedersen makes plain the richness of vernacular translations: ‘Nobody ought to think that the Gospels are more sacred in one tongue than in another: they are as good in Danish or in German as they are in Latin, if only they are rightly interpreted’. Soon after Luther’s 1522 translation of the New Testament there followed Danish (1524) and Swedish (1526) versions. So, Noack writes, these New Testaments ‘were called forth by the Reformation in Germany and served to prepare the soil for it in Scandinavia’, showing how vernacular translations preceded and then pushed forward the Reformation in the North, which was only made official by the establishment of a Lutheran State Church from 1536 (in Denmark and Sweden).

With state-sponsored Lutheranism came the means for producing complete Bible translations. The British Library holds examples of most of the earliest printed Bibles from the Nordic region. The earliest complete one was produced in Sweden. The ‘Gustav Vasa Bible’ (1541), named after the king who commissioned it, was translated by the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri and was heavily based on Luther’s translations. The German influence spread to the book’s production, style and typography, as the printer Georg Richolff of Lübeck was invited to Uppsala to print it. Richolff brought with him new type material and a range of woodblocks, including some by Lucas Cranach. In the image below, we see an elaborate architectural title frame for the New Testament and the German Fraktur type used for the title itself.

Title-page for the New Testament from Biblia, thet är, All then Helgha Scrifft, på Swensko (Uppsala, 1541) 1109.kk.5, the ‘Gustav Vasa Bible’

The British Library has another copy of this 1541 New Testament (1.b.3.), bound separately, which contains copious  manuscript annotations, some dated 1639, about which we know very little (below).

What scholars consistently emphasise with this, and every other, early vernacular Bible is how the language and style of the translation influenced the standard modern languages and, in the case of Swedish, ‘the orthography and use of accents made its difference from Danish more distinctive’ (A History of the Book in 100 Books, p. 125). The first complete Danish Bible, known as the ‘Christian III Bible’, after the King of Denmark-Norway, was printed in 1550. The publisher of the Low German Luther edition, Ludwig Dietz, printed it in Copenhagen and the translation is generally ascribed to Christiern Pedersen, though it remains uncertain.  

Top to bottom: title page, King Christian III’s portrait and armorial bearings, from the ‘Christian III Bible’, Biblia, Det er den gantske Hellige Scrifft, vdsæt paa Danske (Copenhagen, 1550) 2.e.11

In Iceland, under the rule of Denmark at the time, book production begun with a press established by the last Roman Catholic bishop, Jón Arason, at Hólar. Noack describes the Reformation Bible as ‘its most outstanding specimen’ (Cambridge History, p. 140). It is known as the Guðbrandsbiblía (Gudbrand’s Bible), after Guðbrandur Þorláksson, the Bishop of Hólar at the time of its publication in 1584, who executed the translation and designed and engraved most of the woodcuts. A laborious project, it took 2 years to print 500 copies. Our copy is one of the 121 printed books donated to the British Museum by Joseph Banks in 1773, following an exploratory trip to south-eastern Iceland in the previous September.

Titlepage (above) and note of  presentation by Joseph Banks (below) from the ‘Guðbrandsbiblía’, Biblia, þad er, Øll Heilög Ritning, vtlögd a Norrænu (Hólar, 1584), 692.i.1

Like the Swedish and Danish translations before it, the Icelandic Bible is said to have contributed enormously to the development of the modern standard language. Yet, even more emphatic is the influence of the vernacular Bible translation on the Finnish language, as it represents the first ever appearance of the language in print. Mikael Agricola (c.1510-1557) began translating Scripture following a period of study in Wittenberg and we hold a 1931 facsimile edition of his 1548 New Testament (Se Wsi Testamenti, Helsinki, 1931; 3706.cc.10). The first complete Finnish Bible dates back to 1642 and was printed in Stockholm in an edition of 1200 copies. The task of the printer, Henrik Keyser, was made more difficult by the fact that none of the compositors knew any Finnish! The BL also holds the first Finnish Bible printed in Finland itself (Turku, 1685, BL 219.h.13).

Genesis, chapter 1 (above) and an illustration of David and Goliath (below) from the first complete Bible in Finnish, Biblia, se on: Coco Pyhä Ramattu, Suomexi (Stockholm, 1642), C.108.aaa.12

The first New Testaments in the Greenlandic Inuit language, Testamente Nutak, (Copenhagen, 1766; 217.e.23) and in Saami , Ådde Testament, (Stockholm, 1755; 3040.a.29) can also be found in our collections.

To bring this brief survey of the earliest vernacular Bibles to a close, then, we should emphasize that these Bibles are not only the literary foundations of the Reformation but also the foundations of standard modern languages in the Nordic region. Thanks in part to the (mostly) consistent presence of a Lutheran State Church over the last four centuries, in the words of T.K. Derry, ‘the view of religion which was shaped in Germany still receives an ampler recognition in Scandinavia than in its homeland’ (A History of Scandinavia, p. 95).

Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic Collections

References/Further Reading

T.K. Derry, A History of Scandinavia (London, 1979), X.800/29298

S.L. Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible. The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge, 1963/1987), YC.1988.a.9888

James L. Larson, Reforming the North: the Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520-1545 (Cambridge, 2010), YC.2011.a.5047

Ole Peter Grell (ed.), The Scandinavian Reformation: from evangelical movement to institutionalisation of reform (Cambridge, 1995), YC.1995.b.214

Charlotte Appel & Morten Fink-Jensen (eds.), Religious Reading in the Lutheran North: Studies in Early Modern Scandinavian Book Culture (Cambridge, 2011), YC.2011.a.14186

Roderick Cave & Sara Ayad, A History of the Book in 100 Books (London, 2014),  YC.2016.b.1783

 

The Scythians (Σκύθες), currently the subject of an exhibition at the British Museum, were nomadic herdsmen who spoke an Iranian language and inhabited the steppes of modern Ukraine, Moldova and southwestern Russia (the Don River basin). The Scythians appeared in the territory of modern Ukraine in the 7th century BC, having come from the steppes of Inner Asia. After a while the bands of Scythian warriors crossed the Caucasus Range and attacked the states of the Middle East – Urartu, Assyria, Media, Babylonia. Scythian warriors are even mentioned in the Bible (Colossians 3:11). Almost 30 years the Scythians terrorized the Middle East, and then returned to the North Pontic steppes. Here the Greek city-colonies such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus and Panticapaeum, the capital of the Bosporan kingdom, were their neighbors and trading partners.

 Cover (above) and map (below)  from E.V.Chernenko, The Scythians 700-300 BC, colour plates by Angus McBride (London, 1983), X.622/16001

At the end of the 6th century BC the Scythians became well known throughout the civilized world, having defeated the Persian king Darius I. A century later the “Father of History”, the Greek scholar Herodotus, wrote about this war. He composed a detailed description of Scythia including its borders, which generally coincide with the borders of modern Ukraine, the names of neighboring tribes, the story of the campaign of Darius, the retreat of the Scythians and the further expulsion of the Persians, the description of Scythian life and the burial of Scythian kings in barrows.

 Cover of a Ukrainian translation of Herodotus Istoriï v devi’aty knyhakh (Kyiv, 1993) YA.1998.a.5482

The Scythians were known in the Hellenic world first of all as skilful mounted archers and brave warriors. Scythian mercenaries served in Athens as guardians of order; they were a kind of police. Weapons of Scythian types – short swords, bronze arrowheads, scale armour – have been found not only in Scythia but also in Central Europe, Iran, and Central Asia – wherever the Scythian warriors sent their horses.

Except for the work of Herodotus, the only source for the study of Scythian nomads is their archeological sites – the burial mounds known as kurgans. In the North Pontic Steppes stand thousands of these kurgans of varying heights – from 20-metre-high royal tombs to the low mounds of ordinary herdsmen which are hardly visible. In fact, the archeology of Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, began with the excavation of Scythian royal burial mounds and Greek cities in the 18th century.

The first of these – Lyta Mohyla – was excavated in 1763 on the orders of General A.P. Melgunov near the modern city of Kropivnitsky. In this kurgan (known also as the Melgunov Kurgan), dated to the early 6th century BC, evidence of the Near Eastern campaigns of the Scythians – a sword, battle-axe and throne decorated with gold in the Assyrian-Urartian manner – was discovered. It is interesting that the first Scythian kurgan to be excavated was found to be the oldest.

Description of  a golden sheath and fragment of sword hilt from Melgunov’s kurgan. From Ellis H.Minns, Scythians and Greeks. A survey of ancient history and archaeology on the north coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus. (Cambridge, 1913). 7706.i.19.

In the 19th-early 20th century, such famous kurgans of 4th-century BC Scythian kings as Kul-Oba (1830), Chortomlyk (1862-1863), Solokha (1912) were excavated in the territory of modern Ukraine. It was in these barrows that masterpieces of jewellery with the images of Scythians were found: the golden cup from Kul-Oba, silver amphora and golden gorytus (Scythic bow-case and quiver in one)  from Chortomlyk, and a silver cup and golden comb from Solokha. These finds then went to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg where they are still kept.

The excavations of Scythian royal kurgans were continued in 1958 by the patriarch of Ukrainian Scythian studies, Professor Oleksiy Terenozhkin, who discovered the Melitopolsky Barrow. 

 Cover of: A.I. Terenozhkin and B.N. Mozolevskiĭ, Melitopolʹskiĭ kurgan (Kyiv, 1988). YA.1992.a.8828

Next came the sensational finds from the Haymanova Mohyla near Zaporizhia (1969), Tovsta Mohyla near Nikopol (1971), Berdyansk Kurgan (1979), and Bratolubivka (1990). At the same time, hundreds of low mounds of ordinary Scythians were unearthed in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolayiv, and Odessa regions of Ukraine.

Silver gilded bowl with relief images of Scythian warriors. 4th century BC. From the Haymanova Burial Mound, Zaporizhia Region. Excavated by V.I.Bidzilya, 1969-70. (Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv.)

Gold ritual vessel with relief images of griffins, lions, horses and deer. 5th century BC. From the Bratolyubivka Burial Mound, Kherson Region. Excavated by A.I.Kubyshev, 1990. (Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv.)

All these sites are dated to the 4th-5th centuries BC – the heyday of Scythia. And not without reason, the symbol of Ukrainian archeology became the famous golden pectoral found by Boris Mozolevsky in the Scythian royal barrow of the 4th century BC at Tovsta Mohyla  in 1971.

Cover of Borys Mykolaĭovych Mozolevsʹkyĭ, Tovsta Mohyla (Kyiv, 1979). X.421/20845

The end of the Scythian steppe culture came in the early 3rd century BC. Under the onslaughts of related but hostile newcomers from the east the Scythian entity, already being weakened by internal problems, disintegrated. The remnants of the Scythians migrated west to the Dniester and Lower Danube. Gradually the Scythians were assimilated by the Sarmatians  and Goths  and by the middle of the 3rd century AD they disappeared as a political and ethnic unit.

Dr Oleksandr Symonenko, Chief Research Fellow in the Institute of Archaeology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin.

Further reading:

E. V. Chernenko, Skifskie luchniki (Kiev,1981).X.629/17920

E.V. Chernenko, Die Schutzwaffen der Skythen (Stuttgart, 2006).X.0415/55(3) [BD.2]

Gold der Steppe: Archäologie der Ukraine (Neumünster, 1991). Awaiting shelfmark

On 28 November 2017, the British Library is hosting a conference on Combined Methodological Approaches for Manuscripts and Printed Books (text and images; material evidence; historical bibliographical and documentary sources; sale and auction catalogues; etc.). The conference will be held in the Eliot and Dickens rooms of the British Library’s Knowledge Centre and is organised by Laura Carnelos (Marie Curie Fellow at CERL), Stephen Parkin (Curator, Printed Heritage, British Library), and Cristina Dondi (Lincoln College Oxford, CERL, Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI).

When Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’apparition du livre (Paris, 1958; 9010.a.1/49) was first published, a new research field was opened up, launching an innovative approach to book history. Studies started to appear not only on the production, distribution and reading of books, but also more widely on the materiality, multiple uses, forms, meanings and influences of the book within a given society. Decades of systematic cataloguing, the integration of records into large databases, the development of digital tools and resources which can handle huge quantities of high-quality bibliographical data now make it possible to undertake new kinds of research.

The main question this one-day conference will try to address is: what sources and methodologies are now used by librarians, historians and other such users and what are the possible outcomes?

The day will consist of four main sessions will follow up during the day, dedicated respectively to manuscripts, blockbooks and 15th-century books, and early modern printed books (16th-19th centuries). The papers for each session are listed below (a copy of the full programme with timings can be found here).

Session 1 (9.15-10.45):
Ivan Boserup (The Royal Library, Copenhagen), Strategies for Separating Authentic and Forged Colonial Manuscripts of the Private Collezione Miccinelli in Naples.
Angéline Rais (University of Oxford), Sir Thomas Phillipps’s purchases of manuscripts in Switzerland: an analysis of sources.
Cristina Dondi (University of Oxford, CERL), From liturgical data to historical evidence in the study of books of hours.

Session 2 (11.15-13.00):
Bettina Wagner (Staatsbibliothek, Bamberg), Methodological approaches to 15th-century blockbooks.
Claire Bolton (Oxford), Measuring skeletons - discovering the printer.
Sabrina Minuzzi (University of Oxford), New tricks for provenance lost in miscellanies: documentary evidence, coloured edges and historical catalogues in MEI.

A calendar page for November from a 15th-century blockbook ([Leipzig, ca 1490?]) IA.11

Session 3:
Paolo Sachet (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Exploiting Antiquarian Sale Catalogues: Blueprint for the Study of Sixteenth-Century Books on Blue Paper.
Francesca Tancini (University of Bologna), New sources for dating illustrated Victorian popular books: illustrators’ diaries, printers’ ledgers, woodblocks and drawings.
Laura Carnelos (CERL), The study of rare popular books through PATRIMONiT: a combined methodological approach.
Richard Sharpe (University of Oxford), A hidden collection of Irish manuscripts.

In the fourth and last session posters relating to six international projects will be presented by Toby Burrows (University of Western Australia and of Oxford); Ilaria Andreoli (CNRS-ITEM, Paris; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice) and Ilenia Maschietto (Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice); Veronika Girininkaitė (University Library of Vilnius); William Stoneman (Houghton Library, Harvard); Helwi Blom, Rindert Jagersma, Juliette Reboul (Radboud University, The Netherlands); and Sofie Arneberg (National Library of Norway).

Other posters will be presented in the Dickens room by Irène Fabry-Tehranchi (British Library), Simona Inserra, Marco Palma and their group (Catania City Library), Cristiana Iommi (Biblioteca civica Romolo Spezioli di Fermo); Rosa Parlavecchia (Catania and Salerno Universities); Christian Scheidegger (Zentralbibliothek Zürich); Sonja Svoljšak and Urša Kocjan (National and University Library’s Early Prints Collection, Ljubljana).

The conference has been organized in collaboration with the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) and the British Library. A live streaming of the conference will be available on the day in the Dickens Room to a limited number of participants and then on the CERL website to a wider audience.

With the aim of producing a coherent and methodologically innovative volume, subject to peer review, the proceedings will be published on open access and available via the CERL website by March 2018.

The conference and the publication are sponsored by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skolodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 659625. The main conference is already fully booked, but a few places are available in the Dickens room. If you are interested please contact Laura Carnelos: [email protected]

A printing workshop, from the title page of Bernardus Mallinckrodt, De ortu ac progressu artis typographicæ dissertatio historica ... (Cologne, 1640) 274.d.12.

Our current Treasures Gallery display focuses on Martin Luther to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. But this is not the first time that our holdings have been showcased for a Luther-related anniversary.

In 1883, George Bullen, Keeper of the Department of Printed Books in the then British Museum Library, organised an exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth. In his introduction to the short accompanying catalogue (‘price twopence’), he notes that the anniversary celebrations in Germany had ‘attracted … much notice and sympathy in this country’ and says that a suggestion for an exhibition ‘formed of the numerous books, pamphlets and broadsides contained in the Museum’ had been ‘cordially adopted’ by senior staff there.

Title-page of the 1883 exhibition catalogue (London, 1883) 4999.bbb.17

Looking at the catalogue, it’s gratifying to know that, 134 years later, the team behind our display selected many of the same items to exhibit as Bullen and his colleagues did. Of course it’s also inevitable since some items were such obvious choices: the 95 theses, the Indulgence that triggered them, the Papal Bull condemning Luther, the ‘September Testament’, and Luther’s first complete German Bible. A surprising omission in 1883 was Luther’s response to criticisms of his Bible translation, the Sendbrief von Dolmetschen – perhaps the more so since Bullen did show Hieronymus Emser’s attack on Luther’s translation (pictured below).

Hieronymus Emser, Auss was grund unnd ursach Luthers dolmatschung uber das nawe testament dem gemeinē man billich vorbotten worden sey (Leipzig, [1523]) 1012.c.15.

Two other choices we shared were an edition of Henry VIII’s Assertio septem sacramentorum and a book-binding stamped with portraits of Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, but those currently on display are definitely not the same as the ones shown in 1883: we have a Rome edition of the Assertio while Bullen chose a London one, and the binding we are displaying comes from the collection of Henry Davis which was bequeathed to the British Library in 1977.

Bullen had more space than our modest four cases: his exhibition was mounted in the Grenville Library, to the right of the Museum’s entrance hall (now a gift shop), where he was able to show a wider range of items. In some cases these helped add context to other exhibits. For example there were copies of other writings against indulgences alongside the 95 theses, including German-language pamphlets which took Luther’s arguments to a wider audience. Likewise the Assertio septem sacramentorum was accompanied by the pamphlet De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae which inspired Henry’s response, and by Luther’s own reply to the Assertio.

On Aplas von Rom kan man wol selig werden ([Augsburg, 1520?]) 3906.b.55. A German pamphlet against indulgences, with a portrait of Luther on the title-page. 

The 1883 exhibition also had space for more Bibles, including some of some of the first sections of Luther’s Old Testament to be printed, and the splendid Bible of 1541 with manuscript inscriptions by Luther, Philipp Melanchthon and other reformers.

Inscription in Luther’s hand, with the opening of Psalm 23 and four lines of commentary. From the first volume of Biblia, das ist, die gantze Heilige Schrift (Wittenberg, 1541) 679.i.15

Other exhibits from 1883 touch on areas we couldn’t accommodate, including pamphlets by Luther on theological topics, works of scriptural exegesis, and copies of his services for baptism and the mass. Bullen also found room for some manuscript letters, including one from Luther to Thomas Cromwell (MS Harley 6989, f.56) which had in fact been on my initial longlist but missed the final cut.

Examples of items shown in 1883 but not in 2017. Above: Martin Luther, Auslegung Deutsch des Vatter Unser ... (Leipzig, 1519) 3905.bbb.22, an exegiesis of the Lord’s prayer for German-speaking lay people. Below: Martin Luther, Vom Eelichen Leben (Wittenberg, 1522) 3905.dd.76, Luther’s treatise on marriage.

One theme which we chose to feature and Bullen did not was pro-and anti-Lutheran visual propaganda, such as the Passional Christi und Antichristi ([Wittenberg, 1521]; C.53.c.3.) which compares the perceived corruption of the papacy with the life of Jesus, or Thomas Murner’s attack on Luther, Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren. Perhaps these were seen as too frivolous or too crude for contemporary tastes. A number of pictures from the Department of Prints and Drawings were shown, but these were nearly all straightforward portraits rather than propaganda prints or caricatures.

Too crude for Victorian visitors? An image of Luther being stuffed into a privy, from Thomas Murner, Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (Strassburg, 1522) 11517.c.33. Shown in 2017 but not in 1883

I suspect that our final exhibit of a Playmobil Luther figure and a Luther rubber duck (below) would certainly have raised eyebrows in 1883, but the display then also included commemorative souvenirs, albeit in the less frivolous form of items from the Department of Coins and Medals. And placed on a table in the gallery was ‘a statuette of Luther modelled in terra-cotta by Mr Charles Martin, after Lucas Cranach’s portrait, lent for exhibition by Mr Martin.’ No doubt a more realistic and sober representation than our souvenirs, but that in itself shows how attitudes to the culture of commemoration have changed since Bullen’s day.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

The Treasures Gallery display continues until 4 February 2018. 

George Orwell’s Animal Farm was first published on 17 August 1945 and on 28 August the Russian scholar and critic Gleb Struve wrote to Orwell to say that he found the book “delightful” and would like to translate it for the benefit of Russians, “who could read the truth about their country only when outside it”. Replying to this letter on 1 September, Orwell wondered “what the procedure is. Are books in Russian published in this country, i.e. from non-official sources?” He told Struve that, at about the same time, he had received a letter from a Pole who wanted to translate the book into Polish. Orwell’s main worry was how to pay his translators, but he said he was “anxious that the book should find its way into other languages. If translations into the Slav languages were made, I shouldn’t want any money out of them myself (The Complete Works of George Orwell (CWGO), vol. 17, pp. 274-5). 

Cover of Teresa Jelenska’s Polish translation: Zwierzęcy folwark (London, 1947). 012642.pp.100.

The first translation of Animal Farm into a Slavic language – in fact, into any language! – was into Polish. It was made by Teresa Jelenska, the wife of a Polish diplomat, and published at the turn of 1946 and 1947 in London by the League of Poles Abroad.

Teresa Jelenska was also instrumental in putting her son’s friend, a young Polish-born Ukrainian Ihor Szewczenko  in touch with Orwell. Szewczenko, then aged 25, wrote to Orwell in April 1946 immediately after he had read Animal Farm and saw at once, as he put it, “that a translation of the tale into Ukrainian would be of great value to my countrymen” (CWGO, vol. 19, p. 72). Szewczenko (who later changed the spelling of his name to Ševčenko, the heading under which his works can be found in the British Library’s catalogue), translated Animal Farm while commuting between Munich, where he lived with his wife and mother-in-law, both Soviet-Ukrainian refugees, and Quackenbrück in the British zone of Germany, where he worked for a Polish newspaper.

A year later, when the translation was ready for publication by the Munich publisher Prometheus, Szewczenko wrote to Orwell again asking him for a preface for the book and Orwell, although he was “frightfully busy”, did indeed write the preface to the Ukrainian edition, which remains his most detailed explanation of his motives for writing the “fairy story”. He was particularly glad to find out from Szewczenko, who published his translation under the pseudonym of Ivan Cherniatynskyi, that his publishers in Munich were the Soviet Ukrainians, who defended the “acquisitions of the October revolution”, but turned against the “counter-revolutionary Bonapartism” of Stalin and the Russian nationalistic exploitation of the Ukrainian people. Orwell was “encouraged to learn that that kind of opposition exists in the USSR” (CWGO, vol. 19, p. 73).

Cover of  the Ukrainian translation by ‘Ivan Cherniatynskyi’,  Kolhosp tvaryn: kazka, with an introduction by George Orwell. ([Munich, 1947?]) 12593.f.40.

The first Ukrainian edition was not very lucky. Orwell informed his friend, writer Arthur Koestler on 20 September 1947 (CWGO, vol. 19, pp. 206-7), that “the American authorities in Munich have seized 1500 copies of it and handed them over to the Soviet repatriation people, but it appears 2000 copies got distributed among the DPs (Displaced Persons) first”. In the same letter Orwell told Koestler that he had given Szewczenko his address and added: “I have been saying ever since 1945 that the DPs were a godsent opportunity for breaking down the wall between Russia and the West”. Shortly before that, in his review of James Burnham’s book The Struggle for the World (London, 1947; 8011.ee.32.), he expressed a similar thought even more directly: “one of the most important problems at this moment is to find a way of speaking to the Russian people over the heads of their rulers” (CWGO, vol. 19, p. 105).

It was precisely the plan to send Animal Farm into the Soviet Union that made Orwell agree to fund the publication of Gleb Struve’s translation into Russian by the DP publisher Possev. Approached by Possev six months before his death, Orwell immediately supported the idea of publishing the translation in a book form (it had already been serialized in the publisher’s weekly magazine of the same name (no. 7-32, 1949) and smuggling it into the USSR, but he still wanted to know for sure who he was dealing with. “I suppose the editors of this paper are bona fide people and also not Whites?” – he asked his recent acquaintance, a German communist Ruth Fischer in a letter of 15 July 1949 (CWGO, vol. 20, p.146). The first part of his question could easily be confirmed, but it was more complicated with the second. As Orwell had feared Possev, unlike the Ukrainian publishers of Animal Farm, were indeed “Whites”. They enjoyed Orwell’s satire of the Soviet regime, but could not stomach him satirising the church and religion and the role they played in society. That is why – as it became known much later, in the 1980s – they censored Orwell and cut out from Animal Farm two paragraphs describing the role of Moses, the tame raven, who tells the animals about “Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died.”

Title-page of the  Russian translation. Skotskii khutor. ([Frankfurt am Main], 1950). 12654.de.12.

This was of course only the beginning. Eventually Animal Farm was translated into at least 70 languages, including Esperanto, but it is worth stressing that the Slavic languages (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian) were among the first. The French publication appeared later than expected, only in October 1947, because, as Orwell wrote to Koestler in January 1946, “The French publisher, who had signed a contract to translate Animal Farm, has got cold feet and says it is impossible «for political reasons»” (CWGO, vol. 18. p.28) – this no doubt was the result of the 1945 elections in France, when the Communists became the largest party in the French National Assembly. But those whose countries were directly under the Communist rule continued publishing the book abroad – in 1952 Animal Farm came out in Lithuanian and in 1955 in Serbian.

Cover of the  Lithuanian translation. Gyvulių ūkis. Fantastině apysaka. (London, 1952). X.950/31145

Masha Karp, editor of The Orwell Society Journal and author of a forthcoming  Russian biography of George Orwell

References/Further reading

The Complete Works of George Orwell edited by Peter Davison (London, 2000-2002). Vols. 17 (YC.2001.a.13719), 18 (YC.2001.a.16202), 19 (YC.2002.a.23095) and 20 (YC.2002.a.23177)

Masha Karp. ‘The Raven Vanishes’. The Orwell Society Journal. No. 9, December 2016, pp. 16-19

Ksenya Kiebuzinski. ‘Not Lost in Translation: Orwell’s Animal Farm Among Refugees and Beyond the Iron Curtain’, The Halcyon: Newsletter of the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, no. 59, June 2017.  

To English-speaking readers, the name Vesaas is perhaps best known through the work of the Norwegian poet and novelist Terje Vesaas (1897-1970), whose most famous work, Is-slottet (‘The ice palace’: Oslo, 1963; X.908/1343) was filmed in 1987 by Per Blom, winning the Grand Prix at the Flanders International Film Festival in 1988. In Norway, however, it equally calls to mind his wife, the poet, translator and children’s author Halldis Moren Vesaas, who was born on 18 November 1907 in Trysil, in the county of Hedmark.

 
View of Trysil from Halldis Moren Vesaas, Sven Moren og heimen hans (Oslo, 1951) 10763.a.20.

Both of them came from farming backgrounds in rural Norway, but broke away to pursue a teaching career. Terje Vesaas suffered pangs of guilt for years over his decision not to take over the family farm in Telemark, but Halldis grew up in an environment more favourable to her literary gifts, as her father was Sven Moren, a poet and playwright. The eldest child and only daughter in a family of five, she showed a natural aptitude for teaching and went away to train in Elverum before taking posts in Hamar and Oslo. However, after publishing her first collection of poems, Harpe og dolk (‘Harp and Dagger’: Oslo, 1929; YF.2011.a.23158) at the age of 22, she set off for Switzerland the following year to work as a secretary; her next volume of poetry, Morgonen (‘Morning’)  came out in this year.

Cover of Morgonen (Oslo, 1930) YF.2012.a.6610

After spending three years in Switzerland, she returned to Norway and married Tarjei Vesaas in 1934. They returned to his home district of Vinje and settled on the Midtbø farm there when he took up an appointment at a local school. For both of them, nature and the Norwegian landscape in all its pitiless grandeur were important sources of inspiration and a reminder of the timeless renewal of the natural world during the dark days of the German occupation. Their use of the Norwegian Landsmål (Nynorsk) fully explored its potential as a world literary language, capable of expressing with subtlety and directness the darker psychological themes of guilt and mortality as well as the eerie splendour of an ice-cave or the beauty of the mountain pastures in spring.

Halldis Moren Vesaas’s poetry celebrates every stage of woman’s life from girlhood through marriage and motherhood to the sorrow and solitude of widowhood (Terje Vesaas died in 1970) and the joy of discovering new love in later years. As well as composing eight books of poetry, she wrote and translated for the theatre, acting as a consultant for Det Norske Teatret in Oslo and sitting on the board of the Riksteatret (1949-69). One of her most notable translations is her version of Racine’s Phèdre (Fedra: Oslo, 1999; YF.2011.a.5500), where her poetic language fully conveys the passion and drama of the original. Her fascination with Greek subjects is also evident in Den gode gåva (‘The good gift’: Oslo, 1987; LB.31.a.2374), a retelling in verse for children of the myth of Demeter and Persephone with exquisite illustrations by Kaja Thorne. Her achievements were recognized not only in Norway, where she was awarded the Bastian Prize (1961) and the Norsk kulturråds ærespris (1982) and made a Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 1984, but also in France, where she was honoured with its second-highest order as a Knight of the National Order of Merit. She died in 1995.

Halldis Moren Vesaas had the ability to speak not only to adult audiences on the world stage but also to children. In 2007 a  a lively and playful collection of poems for the young by both Halldis and her husband, Eg sette brillene på min katt (‘I put spectacles on my cat’), was published, colourfully illustrated by Inger Lise Belsvik. 

Cover illustration by Inger Lise Belsvik from Eg sette brillene på min katt  (Oslo, 2007)  LF.31.a.2134

Halldis's experience as a teacher had equipped her to write for younger readers with verve and charm, without a trace of condescension but with an intuitive understanding of the child’s world and emotional and psychological needs, in verse and stories such as Hildegunn (1942) and Tidleg på våren (‘Early in spring’: 1949).

Her poetry evokes the joy of life with such sensuous vigour that it seems only fitting to allow it to speak for itself:

That you laughed aloud with gladness
when the rain came, and the first drop
fell, so strangely heavy and warm
and lay on your cheek a second or two –

that the wind which whirled the leaves
so brusquely round the trunk of the tree
sent a wave of happiness
and frost through all my blood –

that something that was nothing
still can follow me everywhere,
so that you know that nothing
as happened to me since that time –

Just because we were together?

Halldis Moren Vesaas, ‘At du –’, from I ein annan skog (‘In another forest’) Translation © Susan Reynolds Halstead, 2017).

Susan Halstead, Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services.

Cover of  I ein annan skog (Oslo, 1955) 01565.e.107

 

Did you have to hand in your wand when you came to the British Library to see Harry Potter: A History of Magic? There’s a reason for that.

When Arnau de Cabrera entered judicial combat with Bernat de Centelles in Barcelona in 1274, both parties had to declare before King Jaume I “I swear I am carrying no magical weapons” [quod non deferebant aliquid quod haberet virtutem].

Mediaeval knights in combat from Jean d'Arras, Roman de Mélusine, c. 1450. MS Harley 4418, f. 56.

Arnau de Cabrera however denounced his opponent for bearing the sword of Vilardell: no-one who bore it could be defeated or killed [“portavit ensem de Villardello, qui quidem ensis habet virtutem ut nullus subcumbere vel superari possit qui illum in bello detulerit”]. It also had the quality that if it was put point down it righted itself.

Apparently, Bernat’s father, like any good parent, had bought the sword for him for 500 maravedis. He had also asked the Prior of St Paul’s in Barcelona for a shirt which again prevented its owner from being vanquished in battle.

And what’s more Bernat was wearing an iron cap which contained a precious stone called diamas, supplied by his brother Gilabert: the bearer’s bones could not be broken.

The king found for Arnau.

The Sword of Vilardell acquired its powers because it was forged at a particularly propitious astrological conjunction.

Relief from Barcelona Cathedral showing Vilardell fighting a griffin with his magical sword. (Photograph by Pere López from Wikimedia Commons.

The sword’s original owner, Vilardell, went out one day with an ordinary sword to cut wood. He did a kind deed for a poor man who replaced his old sword with a new one and then disappeared. Vilardell tested the new sword by splitting a rock with it (still to be seen) and then slayed a dragon. So in the early accounts it was a holy weapon not a magic one.

The sword eventually found its way to the Musée de l’Armée  in Paris, where you can see it.

Virtually nobody in the Middle Ages doubted the existence of magic, or its efficacy. What the Church for instance objected to was the use of magic for evil ends.

Modern-day surveillance equipment will (hopefully) pick up any concealed weapons, but magic ones (and I don’t want to alarm you) might be beyond its reach.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies

References/Further reading

Martí de Riquer, Llegendes històriques catalanes (Barcelona, 2000) YA.2001.a.38498

Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1988) YC.1988.a.7138