Manuscript or print? The case of Antoine Vérard’s “Guiron le Courtois”

Laurie Hoeben, Universität Zürich

My REBPAF project deals with the transition from manuscript to print and in the last few months, I have particularly focused on the 15th/16th-century Parisian bookseller and publisher Antoine Vérard. He was mainly known “to be the most successful and expert publisher of Arthurian romance in the early years” of printing.¹ From 1489 until 1503 he published various Arthurian romances including a part of the Guiron romance. Guiron le Courtois is a cycle that tells the story of the ancestors of the Knights of the Round Table, characters well known to every reader of the prose versions of Lancelot-Grail and Tristan.²

While making an inventory of Vérard’s Arthurian prints, I was surprised by the looks of one of the first pages of his version of Guiron le Courtois (image 1). Although I expected to see a printed book on paper, it seemed for a moment that I had come across an illuminated manuscript on vellum.

Image 1: Gyron le Courtoys, Paris, Antoine Vérard [c. 1503]. Paris, BnF, VELINS-622, f. a1v

In image 1, we see a miniature depicting the coronation of a king. At first glance, it does not appear to be an image created by wood engraving. The miniature is combined with an ornamental border, and at the bottom centre of the page, we see a coat of arms that most likely indicates the person or family for whom the copy was produced. Although further research into such ownership elements is very valuable for mapping early modern book ownership and would merit one or even several blog posts on its own, I propose that we take a closer look at some other notable elements of the layout. A few pages later (images 2 and 3), we see multiple lines that are typically used by scribes to plan the page layout. Here, both the text-margin ratio and the rulings are indicated, and in several places in the text, we see hand-painted initials structuring the text.

Image 2: BnF, VELINS-622, f. a5v; Image 3                                                                         

Although at first glance this copy has many elements that seem characteristic of a medieval manuscript, it is indeed a printed book. Antoine Vérard was known for his luxurious prints that were primarily intended for a noble audience accustomed to richly decorated medieval manuscripts.³ Vérard’s illuminated prints on vellum could therefore be seen as a kind of hybrid object between manuscript and print, meeting the expectations of an audience that, on the one hand, was used to manuscripts and, on the other hand, had to become accustomed to the new medium of print.⁴

Vérard not only printed Guiron le Courtois on vellum, there also exist copies on paper. When we compare the print on vellum with the one on paper, it is clear that they use the same typesetting (images 2 repeated and 4).

Image 2 (repeated): BnF, VELINS-622, f. a5v; Image 4: Gyron le Courtoys, Paris, Antoine Vérard [c. 1503]. Paris, BnF, RESERVE FOL-BL-922, f. a5v

The layout of the page is exactly the same, as are the font and use of abbreviations, only the printed initials have been painted over. Consequently, the ruling that we just saw in the vellum copy is only there for decorative purposes. The similarities between the vellum and paper copies become even clearer when we look at the first image we saw and compare it with the print on paper (images 1 repeated and 5). Except for some small details, the composition of the image is similar, and when we take a closer look at the miniature in the vellum copy, we can even see in the left and right columns that the ink does not completely cover the original ink of the wood engraving (image 6). Thus, the miniaturist did not just color the woodcut but recreated almost exactly the pre-existing engraving.

Image 1 (repeated): BnF, VELINS-622, f. a1v; Image 5: BnF, RESERVE FOL-BL-922, f. a1v

Image 6: right column in miniature in BnF, VELINS-622, f. a1v

Another interesting phenomenon that we only encounter in the print on vellum and not in the one in paper are the small miniatures that are placed in the middle of the text (images 7 and 8). These miniatures sometimes cover the rubrics from the original typesetting of the text. In print, rubrics clarify the text and guide the reading process as they indicate the different chapters and structure the text.⁵ They filter the content to come (by highlighting certain elements and eliminating others) and interpret it.⁶ Just as we saw with the covered engraving, we see here that the ink of the original rubric comes through the ink of the miniature. Although some original rubrics in the print on vellum are covered, they are not lost. They are always written by hand in the margins of the book.

Image 7: BnF, VELINS-622, f. a6r; Image 8

Although it seems as if Vérard, in his vellum copy, aimed to make the print resemble a manuscript, it should be noted that it is not merely imitation. The transition from manuscript to print was certainly not an orderly, linear process.⁷ Manuscript and print would continue to coexist for a long time. The illuminator, the rubricator, and the bookbinder, in short, those specialized in the production of manuscripts, continued to fulfil their roles in the early years of the printing press. The only role that clearly changed was that of scribe to printer, as the time-consuming art of copying by hand could be replaced by the faster art of printing.⁸ As Charles Mortet already noted in 1922, even though the production process changed, the appearance of the work (whether manuscript or print) often stayed similar.⁹

While Vérard’s print on vellum raises many questions, it offers interesting starting points for further investigation and, step by step, insight into the complex transition from manuscript to print.

1. Taylor, J.H.M. (2014). Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, p. 7 ↩︎
2. Leonardi, L. & Trachsler, R. (2018). Le cycle de “Guiron le Courtois” [Texte imprimé] : prolégomènes à l’édition intégrale du corpus / sous la direction de Lino Leonardi et Richard Trachsler ; études réunies par Luca Cadioli et Sophie Lecomte. Paris, Classiques Garnier, p. 9 ↩︎
3. Fabry-Tehranchi, I. (2015). Les imprimés sur vélin d’Antoine Vérard: d’Ogier le Danois au Merlin de la bibliothèque d’Henry VII enluminé par le maître de Jacques de Besançon(1498). Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture, 7(1), pp. 5-6 ↩︎
4. Fabry-Tehranchi, I. Les imprimés sur vélin d’Antoine Vérard. p. 1 ↩︎
5. Taylor, J.H.M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance, p. 106 ↩︎
6. Timelli, M.C. (1998). Syntaxe et Technique Narrative: Titres et Attaques de Chapitre dans “l’Erec” Bourguignon”, Fifteenth Century Studies; Stuttgart [etc.], 24, p. 208 ↩︎
7. McKitterick, D. (2003). Print, manuscript and the search for order, 1450-1830. Cambridge University Press, p. 47 ↩︎
8. Smith, M.M. (2000). Medieval Roots of the Renaissance Printed Book: An Essay in Design History. In G.H.Tucker (Ed.), Forms of the “medieval” in the “Renaissance”: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of a Cultural Continuum (p. 146). Rookwood Press ↩︎
9. Mortet, C. (1922). Les Origines et les Débuts de l’Imprimerie. Paris La société Française de Bibliographie, p. 1 ↩︎

Why would a humanist print a ‘Dark Age’ gardening poem and what we can learn from dedicatory letters

Luca Hollenborg, University of Zurich (UZH)

Figure 1: Title page of 1510 Vienna edition; Figure 2: Title page of 1512 Nuremberg edition

The humanist Joachim Vadian (1583/84-1551), who came from St. Gall and worked at the University of Vienna (until 1518), published a Latin ‘gardening’ poem called the Hortulus by the German Abbot of Reichenau Walahfrid Strabo (9th century) in 1510 in Vienna by Hieronymus Vietor¹ and in 1512 in an embellished new edition in Nuremberg by Johann Weyssenburger².

From today’s perspective, one might be puzzled: Why would a humanist, otherwise concerned with the greats of antiquity, put a gardening poem with roughly 450 verses from the ‘Dark Ages’ into print as a stand-alone work?

Fortunately, the poem does not stand entirely alone in both editions, but is framed by several paratexts, including a dedicatory letter to the humanist teacher, colleague, and friend Georg Collimitius, which could give us answers to these questions.

The term ‘paratext’ goes back primarily to Genette and is now widely established within all literary studies. Paratexts refer to all texts that can be found in a work alongside the actual ‘main text’. These include the title page, the table of contents, indices, prefaces and also the so-called dedicatory letters discussed here.

According to Genette, dedications go back to ancient Rome, for example the Georgica of Vergil is dedicated to Maecenas (from which the modern term ‘maecenasship’ is derived). In general, dedications are a form of homage that is rewarded either with patronage or money, which is why, according to Genette, they can often have an extremely sycophantic effect. This function is largely absent in the case of the humanists, where there is neither a financial benefit nor a protective function. Instead, they are a ritual act of giving.³  In the vast majority of cases, the dedicatory letters are found at the beginning of a work and are usually part of the first edition. However, it is quite possible for the dedication to be omitted in later editions if, for example, the relationship between the dedicator and the dedicatee has changed for the worse.⁴

Enenkel states that Genette’s definition of dedications, which he mainly draws up with reference to 19th and 20th century literature, is not entirely applicable to the literature of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, as a different conception of literature exists.⁵  Letters of dedication, especially in Latin literature, have been appearing so frequently since the 14th century, still in the period of manuscripts, that Enenkel describes them as a “conditio sine qua non”.⁶ In our case, dedicatory prefaces have a variety of functions and offer opportunities to examine the respective conception of authorship, the staging of the author, the control of reading and also the transfer of knowledge. The authors also stand for their work by name, with all their public reputation and social connections. They stand for the fact that the text is worth reading and thus also act a means of advertising.⁷

Figure 3 Portrait of Joachim Vadian, oil on canvas, Kulturmuseum St. Gallen; Figure 4 Portrait of Georg Collimitius (c.1515) by Bernhard Strigel, Liechtenstein Collections

But let us now return to our Hortulus: what do we learn from the two dedicatory epistles to Collimitius in the 1510 Vienna edition and the 1512 Nuremberg edition? In terms of content, the two do not really differ too much. In the letter in the Vienna edition, Vadian reports that the Italian humanist Poggio from Florence found many dusty manuscripts in the monastery library in St. Gall and brought them to Florence. Vadian himself had also rummaged through old manuscripts during a stay there and came across the works of Walahfrid Strabo (“libellus iste Strabi”). Among these, a poem about horticulture stood out, which he copied and affectionately called Hortulus. He sent this copy to Collimitius in Vienna to have it printed so that the work could be brought to the attention of scholars (“in doctissimorum hominum conspectum passim prodiret”). As a scholar, physician, mathematician, and astronomer, Collimitius would certainly also recognize the brilliance of this work, which, according to Vadian, had been languishing in a dark dungeon for 600 years (“quippe quod sexcentis retro annis tam crassae turris carcerem sustinuerit”). He also notes that he has corrected the errors but asks Collimitius to take another sharp look and accept the work favourably, as Strabo is an amiable and graceful poet and also a profound theologian (“poetam lepidum, facilem ac elegantem, theologum profundissimum”).

Figure 5-7: Dedicatory letter from Vadian to Collimitius in the 1510 Vienna edition

From the letter in the 1512 edition, we also learn that Vadian had travelled from Vienna to St. Gall (his home) to put things in order with friends there, without going into more detail. During this stay, he visited the monastery library. He gave the Hortulus to the most scholarly Collimitius (“Georgi doctissime”) as a friend’s service, as he was a lover of the rare and scholarly (“rara et … docta”). Collimitius was to fight as a pioneer and defend the Hortulus against the “theonine pack” of enemies. This presumably meant above all conservative theologians within the University of Vienna, who have not yet been identified more precisely.⁸

Figure 8-9: Dedicatory letter of Vadian to Collimitius in 1512 Nuremberg edition

So, what is the difference between these two letters? The letter in the 1510 edition (29.10.1510) is actually dated later than the letter in the 1512 edition (20.08.1509). This is because the latter is the actual private letter that Vadian sent directly to Collimitius. The former is a letter specially prepared for printing, which is not at all unusual, but rather the norm. Why exactly this private letter was printed in the second edition requires further research, also with regard to stylistic differences. But there are hints that it might be related to the early death of a dear friend of Vadian called Abrogast Strub, who wrote a letter to congratulate him on his finding of the Hortulus but died shortly before the 1510 edition was printed.

Let us return to our original question: why would the humanist Vadian bring this medieval poem about horticulture into print? From the dedicatory epistles we learn that Vadian was enthusiastic about the elegance of the poem. Was this enough of a reason? In both epistles, Vadian also mentions the Italian humanist Poggio, who had brought manuscripts from St. Gall to Florence with the promise that they would be returned, but this never happened. Therein probably lies another hidden reason for this: German humanists had a certain aversion towards Italian humanists. They therefore tried to emphasize ‘German’ antiquity (= Carolingian Renaissance) and its authors and works. For example, Hrotsvitha (c. 935–973) was referred to as the German Sapho by Conrad Celtis, who was Vadians teacher. Celtis was very keen to prove at least the equivalence of German humanism with Italian humanism by contrasting German authors with Italian/Roman authors.⁹ He saw it as a patriotic task to find as many German authors as possible and put them into print.  This could also have been one of Vadian’s motives, but this requires further investigation and cannot be based solely on his note on Poggio’s theft of German manuscripts.¹⁰

But there is one more piece in this puzzle: We know that Vadian gave a lecture on the Hortulus at the University of Vienna around 1511. From this we can deduce that Vadian had the Hortulus printed so that his students could work directly with the text. This would also explain the rather unadorned edition.¹¹

In this text, some ideas were presented that have not yet blossomed and will be further nurtured in the future. Overall, however, it became clear that paratexts, such as dedication letters in this case, represent a rich resource for researching a book, a text and the people involved.

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1. “Strabi, Galli Poetae et Theologi Doctissimi: Ad Grimaldum Coenobii S. Galli Abbatem Hortulus. [Wien, per Hieronymus Vietor, 1510]. The copy shown here is ÖNB, MF 1265” ↩︎
2. Psalmus 41 et psalmus 112 strabi fuldensis monachi poete suauissimi. Guondam rabani mauri auditoris hortulus nuper apud Helvetios in.s.galli monasterio repertus. Qui carminis elegantia tam est delectabilis. que doctrine cognoscendarum quarundam herbarum varietate utilis. Ad grymaldu abbatem. Item psalmus. 41. Sicut ceruus desiderat et’c. Et psalmus. 112. Laudate pueri et’c. Per venerabilem bedam. Sono heroico decantanti., [Nürnberg, Johann Weißenburger, 1512]. The copy shown here is Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 P.o.lat. 752,35. ↩︎
3. Enenkel, K.A.E.: Die Stiftung von Autorschaft in der neulateinischen Literatur (ca. 1350-ca. 1650), Leiden/Boston 2015 (=Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 48), pp. 35-39. ↩︎
4. Genette, G.: Paratexte. Das Buch vom Beiwerk des Buches, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1989, pp. 115-125. ↩︎
5. Enenkel: Die Stiftung von Autorschaft, pp. 2-7. ↩︎
6. Ibd., p. 6. ↩︎
7. Ibd., p. 17. ↩︎
8. For further reading on Vadians enemies and critics see: Gamper, R.: Joachim Vadian. 1483/84-1551. Humanist, Arzt, Reformator, Zürich 2017, pp. 63-64. ↩︎
9. Robert, J.: Celtis, in: Worstbrock, F. J. (ed.):  Deutscher Humanismus 1480-1520. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 1 A-K, Berlin/New York 2008, cl. 375-427, here 384. ↩︎
10. Cardelle de Hartman, C.: Die Roswitha-Edition des Humanisten Conrad Celtis, in : Henkes, C. et al. (edd.): Schrift – Text – Edition. Hans Walter Gabler zum 65. Geburtstag, Tübingen 2003, pp. 137-147, here 139. See also Hirschi, C.: Wettkampf der Nationen. Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, Göttingen 2005, especially chapters 4 and 5. ↩︎
11. Näf, W.: Vadianische Analekten, St. Gallen 1945 (=Vadian-Studien. Untersuchungen und Texte 1), p. 33. ↩︎

The Annotated Books Online (ABO), A Digital Archive of Early Modern Annotated Books

by Véronique George, University of Bristol

Looking at different early prints of the narrative of Les Quatre Fils Aymon, my speciality in our REBPAF-network, I encountered some nice annotations and doodling in the margins.  The following images can be found in a copy of an incunabulum printed by Guillaume Le Roy in Lyon between 1485 and 1486; the copy is held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and is accessible online via the website of Gallica:

Paris, BnF, Rés. Y² 364, source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Paris, BnF, Rés. Y² 364, source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Is this doodling not charming? One could wonder if there were two different persons at work here, one copying parts of the text and another making these drawings, or was it one and the same person, maybe a child?  I find such discoveries very moving, it is almost like a time machine allowing you to return to the past and to imagine the reader who had this book in his hand. It shows us that the books we are examining from a scientific point of view have been loved and appreciated.

But did you know of the existence of the ABO (Annotated Books Online) database https://www.annotatedbooksonline.com which is part of the research project ‘A Collaboratory for the Study of Reading and the Circulation of Ideas in Early Modern Europe’ funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)?

The fact that we are no longer allowed to write in books that are not our private property is a recent phenomenon, and we may all have borrowed books from the library in which previous readers have underlined sentences or made notes in the margins.  But when such annotations were made by famous people, things get particularly interesting. For example, the University Library of Utrecht, one of the libraries participating in the project, owns a copy of the Bible that belonged to Luther, in which Luther calls Erasmus a scoundrel in the margin of the text, because he disagreed with his translation of the New Testament. But annotations made by the more ‘ordinary’ reader also provide an interesting insight into an important aspect of the scholarly discipline ‘History of the Book’, namely into the ‘reception of the book: how did people perceive certain books over the centuries?  Names, notes, marks, and underlining provide unique evidence of how generations of readers used their books. The ABO database gives full open access to these unique copies, focusing on the first three centuries of print.

ABO currently includes over one hundred copies from library collections all over the globe. But it is always looking to expand its collection, and after checking the participating universities, I have noticed that none of the REBPAF-universities is part of this network. Perhaps the various ‘special collections’ of our University libraries have not really examined their manuscripts and prints from this angle, seeing that it is a fact that such annotations are very rarely mentioned in library catalogues around the world.

May I therefore make the following suggestion: if during our research we discover such annotated early prints or incunabula, for instance in our own University libraries, perhaps we could inform the archivists of the existence of the ABO database and suggest them to make a digital copy available?

Because annotated books have not yet been catalogued in a systematic or comprehensive way, and that some existing catalogues, moreover, are difficult to find or consult, another way in which we can help the ABO to develop, is to assist them in compiling a list of available catalogues of annotated books in public collections. So, if you know of any catalogues (published, manuscript or digital), please go to the ABO website and complete the form.

The aim of the ABO database is not only to make these unique books accessible to scholars as a source of information, it seeks also to enhance the collaboration between scholars across borders and across different scientific disciplines: the database has developed tools so that we may add remarks to these annotations, such as giving explanations, or assisting in deciphering or even providing translations.

Enjoy exploring this fascinating website!

https://www.annotatedbooksonline.com

An occult tome in the West of Ireland: a first-edition copy of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s ‘De occulta philosophia’ (1533) in the University of Galway’s Special Collections

Ian Wong, University of Galway

“Boy, give me the book and I will give you everything you desire. Power! Wealth! Women!”

—Winifred, Hocus Pocus (1993)

The Special Collections room here in the University of Galway is by no means a dark and mysterious place – full-length windows let in as much sunlight as the weather permits, the furniture is well-maintained, and the space itself is modern and friendly. It’s not the kind of place where you’d expect to find a sixteenth-century book of occult knowledge – whispering of angels, demons, and the hidden forces of the cosmos.

Nested snugly on a book cushion before us is a plain white tome. Its nondescript appearance belies the fact that it’s among the oldest books in the university’s collection – and also one of its most enigmatic. I carefully lift the front cover and the flyleaf below, scrawled with the doodles and inscriptions of previous owners, and find myself face to face with the man himself.

Taking pride of place on the title page is a spartan woodcut portrait of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535/6), his expression impassive, almost severe. This unassuming volume is in fact a copy of the first complete edition of the De occulta philosophia, sometimes also known as the Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Agrippa’s magnum opus was one of the first major occult books to circulate in print, and was translated into English in 1651.[1] The De occulta philosophia remains vastly influential, and much of what passes for esoteric knowledge in today’s New Age and occult circles owe their lasting popularity in some way to Agrippa’s work, directly or otherwise.

As my colleagues and I carefully flip through the book,[2] we come across all kinds of fascinating tables and illustrations: magical seals associated with the different planets; Vitruvian diagrams of the human body; secret alphabets with divine meanings. Magic in the late medieval and early modern period occupied a liminal space between science and religion: on one hand there were texts describing the effects of distant cosmic bodies on humanity, while on the other there were rituals circulating that mimicked religious rites, especially exorcism, except with the purpose of controlling spirits rather than expelling them.[3] Amidst the feverish intellectual climate of the early Renaissance, some sought to save magic from such distortions, believing that it had a place as a legitimate science. It was this lofty vision that captured a young Agrippa, inspired by an encounter with Johannes Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifico while at the University of Dole in 1509.[4]

Agrippa would end up dedicating twenty years of his life to putting together an encyclopaedic compendium of magical knowledge with the aim of restoring this fallen art to its rightful status.[5] In his address to the reader, Agrippa insists on the legitimacy of magic, maintaining that ‘the name of Magicke was received by Phylosophers [philosophers], commended by Divines, and not unacceptable to the Gospel’.[6] This noble conception failed to convince the city’s authorities, who tried to stop production of the book: it was saved only on the intervention of Agrippa’s patron Hermann von Wied, the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, despite a lengthy plea from Agrippa himself.[7] As a compromise – or in a bid to avoid further trouble – the printer, Johannes Soter, omitted any mention of his name or location from the book. Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed this detail in the picture of the title page above.

Intriguingly, it’s not actually clear how this particular copy of the De occulta philosophia wound up in the university collection. It doesn’t appear in the library’s original nineteenth-century catalogue, and there isn’t any record of its later ownership history that the librarians have been able to uncover.[8] I myself discovered it in the catalogue purely by accident – hoping to bring my own personal interest in the esoteric to an early modern Latin reading group, I’d looked up the De occulta philosophia on the library database in search of Perrone Compagni’s critical edition of the text, only to find that there was a Special Collections entry logged for a book of that very title – dated 1533. I was so surprised that I refused to believe it at first, convinced that it must’ve been a cataloguing error. I had to put in a request to see it for myself – and the sheer thrill of discovering that it was the real deal is something that will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of my life.

These are the joys that, for me, make hours and hours of poring over weathered tomes worth it. As every book historian can tell you, books don’t need secret knowledge – or occult diagrams – to be profoundly, truly magical.

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[1] Published by Gregory Moule, the translation itself was attributed to a ‘J.F.’, whom Joseph H. Peterson proposes to be most likely a John French. Peterson’s full text can be found on his website: see Peterson. J. H. (2000), ‘Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa: Of Occult Philosophy, Book I’, Esoteric Archives, accessed 27^th February 2024.

[2] Many thanks to my fellow REBPAFers Rosenn Nicolas and Luca Hollenborg for accompanying me, and for their incredibly valuable input during the course of the visit.

[3] For more on this two-fold typology, see Klaassen, F. (2013), The Transformations of Magic, PA: Penn State University Press. For a classic analysis of a book of necromantic experiments, see Kieckhefer, R. (1998), Forbidden Rites, PA: Penn State University Press.

[4] Compagni, P. (ed.), Agrippa, H. C. (1992), De occulta philosophia, libri tres (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, Vol. 48), Leiden: Brill, 2.

[5] Ibid.: 15.

[6] Peterson, 2000; Agrippa: ‘nomen acceptum philosophis, laudatum a theologis, etiam ipsi Evangelio non ingratum’ (Compagni, 1992: 65).

[7] Compagni, 1992: 9–10.

[8] Many thanks to Geraldine Curtin and Marie Boran at the University of Galway Library for their help and enthusiasm upon hearing about my interest in the book. The importance of library staff to the work of book historians cannot be appreciated enough! Marie noted in an email to me that part of the mystery arises from the fact that while the book carries an outdated catalogue identifier (SpColl 201) indicating it had been in the collection for a long time, it is lacking the expected shelf number that books kept in the Old Library up until 1973 would have been assigned. A short blog post on the book from 2014, focusing on the wax seal on the title page, can be accessed at https://hardimanlibrary.blogspot.com/2014/04/book-of-month-with-twist.html

A Medieval Error 404: Page Not Found in a 16th-Century Edition of ‘Karel Ende Elegast’

by Nicky Voorneveld, University of Antwerp

In the prologue to a Dutch translation of Josephus Flavius’ Ηistoria Ioudaikou polemou pros Rōmaious (English: History of the Jewish War against the Romans) printed in 1564, translator Nicolaus van Winghe vents his frustration with printers in his day. Instead of taking care to publish accurate and useful information, they seem to only be interested in making profit, and in order to do so they resort to publishing made up stories without reliable sources.[1] One of the texts he refers to in this light is Karel ende Elegast, a Middle Dutch chivalric romance about Charlemagne (Karel), who is sent on a quest to ‘go stealing’ and, with the help of former-duke-turned-thief Elegast, uncovers a conspiracy against him along the way. This short story (approx. 1400 verses) enjoyed a fair bit of popularity in the late Middle Ages, as in addition to its manuscript transmission it was printed at least seven times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Van Winghe’s criticism was not unjustified. Early printers’ desire for quick profit did not only affect the historical accuracy of the texts they produced, but also their content. Textual inaccuracies were abundant in the early days of print, and Karel ende Elegast was no exception.[2] One of the printed editions of this text that circulated in Van Winghe’s time was ‘print E’ (Antwerp, Jan van Ghelen, between 1550 and 1596).[3] At first glance it doesn’t seem too different from other versions of the text, but a closer look reveals that a crucial mistake has been made: roughly 150 verses of the text are missing. As a result, a key passage, the uncovering of the conspiracy, is lost entirely for readers of print E.

Gallery: Figure 1 & Figure 2 (see below for captions)

The cause of the error can be seen when taking a closer look at print D[4], of which E in many ways seems to be a somewhat careless reproduction (compare Figures 1 and 2). The text that is missing from E corresponds exactly with two leaves in D (f. 13 and 14), suggesting that the exemplar for E was a print with the same lay-out as D.[5] The rhyme scheme has been restored in E, suggesting that either the omission happened accidentally in an earlier print, and was ‘corrected’ by a later printer, either E’s or the printer of an intermediary edition, or that the typesetter of E was working with a damaged exemplar which was missing the two leaves in question. After all, if the omission would have been noticed immediately by a typesetter with a complete exemplar, a more logical solution would have been to set the missing verses.

• 

• 

• 

Slideshow: Figure 3, Figure 4, and Figure 5 (see below for captions)

The missing verses are lines 824 to 978.[6] This results in the following orphan rhymes:

823: Beyde aen hanen ende aen honden

        Both of roosters and of dogs

979: Buyten den houe tot sinen paerde (cited from D)

   Out of the courtyard, to his horse

To mend the gap, the second verse is changed slightly to complete the rhyme:

823: Beyde aen hanen ende aen honden

   Both of roosters and of dogs

979: Buyten den houe daer haer paerden stonden

        Out of the courtyard, where their horses stood

For readers, this results in the following storyline in E:

After meeting in the forest, Charlemagne (under the alias Adelbrecht) and Elegast travel to the castle of Eggherick, Charlemagne’s brother-in-law, with the intention of breaking in. Having little faith in Adelbrecht’s capacities as a thief, Elegast decides to go in alone. Before entering, Elegast uses a magical herb that allows him to understand the animals in the courtyard. The roosters and dogs tell him the king is nearby. He goes back to Adelbrecht to tell him what he heard. Then Elegast comes back a second time to Adelbrecht who impatiently asks what has taken Elegast so long, to which Elegast answers that the wait was not his fault. He is heartbroken and wants to go back in to kill Eggherick. Adelbrecht is confused: shouldn’t Elegast be happy with the saddle and all the gold he managed to steal?

Adelbrecht is not the only one to be puzzled by Elegast’s words. Readers were also left confused, but for an additional reason: as far as they are aware, nothing has been stolen yet! How did they interpret Elegast’s emotional response? It is only much later in the story that they hear Elegast’s testimony against Eggherick, in which he recounts the events of the night before (v. 1268-1278). During the 300 verses in between, however, readers are left in the dark. Furthermore, this version’s readers have no way of verifying Elegast’s information as the original sequence of events was not narrated before.

How did readers deal with this uncertainty? Were they still able to follow the story? Print E is the last surviving edition of Karel ende Elegast that was printed before the story regained popularity in the nineteenth century. This raises questions as to whether the decline in popularity had something to do with the lacuna in the text. Did printers stop printing Karel ende Elegast simply because frustrated readers lost interest in the text as it became increasingly difficult to comprehend? This is the type of questions my Ph.D.-project aims to answer in the next four years, to ultimately uncover how a text from the 13^th century lived on throughout the ages and how different people connected with it in its many adaptations.

Image captions

Figure 1: Brussels, KBR, II 54948 A L.P. [D], Title page, https://uurl.kbr.be/1975531

Figure 2: Brussels, KBR, II 47686 A L.P. [E], Title page

Figure 3: Brussels, KBR, II 54948 A L.P. [D], f. 12v. The page in D preceding the text missing from E, showing the orphan rhyme ‘Beyde aen hanen ende aen honden’, https://uurl.kbr.be/1975531

Figure 4: Brussels, KBR, II 54948 A L.P. [D], f. 15r. The page in D following the text missing from E, showing the orphan rhyme ‘Buyten den houe tot sinen paerde’, https://uurl.kbr.be/1975531

Figure 5: Brussels, KBR, II 47686 A L.P. [E], f. 8v, The lacuna in E, showing the resolved rhyme ‘Beyde aen hanen ende aen honden // Buyten den houe daer haer paerden stonden’

Notes

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[1] Utrecht, University Library, Depository-S, THO VEN 132-703 dl 2, f. 2r, line 19. Digitisation available at: http://objects.library.uu.nl/reader/resolver.php?obj=001338304.

[2] For more on printing errors in the first centuries of the printing press, see: Geri Della Rocca de Candal, Anthony Grafton, and Paolo Sachet, eds., Printing and Misprinting: A Companion to Mistakes and In-House Corrections in Renaissance Europe (1450-1650) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

[3] The edition survives in only one copy, as do all other extant printed versions of the text. The copy of E is held at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, under the shelf mark II 47686 A L.P.

[4] Brussels, Royal Library, II 54948 A L.P.. A full digitisation of this edition can be found at https://uurl.kbr.be/1975531.

[5] D and E are, however, not directly related as the younger E retains an older reading than D in several places. See A. M. Duinhoven, Bijdragen tot reconstructie van de Karel ende Elegast (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975–1981), pp. 79, 279–208.

[6] Verse numbering refers to the diplomatic edition by A.M. Duinhoven: Karel ende Elegast. Diplomatische uitgave van de Middelnederlandse teksten en de tekst uit de Karlmeinet-compilatie (Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1969).

First Meeting

‌ On Wednesday 6th September 2023, REBPAF researchers met online for the first time. The researchers shared introductions including how they are finding the moves to their new universities and cities and what they are looking forward to in their participation in the REBPAF doctoral training network.