The archaeology of a collecion:
the example of Soeterbeeck*
johan oosterman
At the end of the previous century the few remaining Augustinian nuns of
the convent of Soeterbeeck in Deursen-Ravenstein, near Nijmegen, made
the radical decision to continue their communal and contemplative life in
a nursing home for elderly nuns in Nuland, and to close down their
convent, which had been established 550 years earlier. The buildings and
their fittings, including the old library, were transferred to the Radboud
University of Nijmegen in 1997, causing the university to come into possession of a collection of over 50, mostly liturgical, manuscripts, and
several hundreds of printed books, dating from the late fifteenth to the
twentieth century.1
A first examination of the manuscripts has made it clear that these books
were preserved because they had been in use for centuries and – maybe
more importantly – as a result of the frugality of their owners. Heavily
used, repaired, and eventually unbound by the nuns themselves, many of
them have ended up defective, already partially reused for binding purposes. The more substantial parts, torsos as it were, were ultimately only
joined together, to judge by their simple cardboard covers, in order to
preserve them.2
Many of the printed books – most of them of small size – show adaptations and extensions too, some of them substantial. Notes of ownership
sometimes go hand in hand with short handwritten texts; there are traces
of repair; books were rebound, partly with leaves from cut-up manuscripts; and quite a few of them contain loose objects ranging from devotional pictures and mortuary cards to small pieces of textile.
Studying these books makes the reader aware of their multi-layered
character and anchoring in time. As such, the Soeterbeeck Collection
provides us with an exceptional insight into the individual and collective
use and reuse of its manuscripts and printed books over a long period of
time, leading to transformation and loss as well to preservation.
Virtual visits to lost libraries: reconstruction of and access to dispersed collections (2010)
cerl papers xi (2011)
johan oosterman
The Soeterbeeck Collection is unique in its genesis, and it reflects a
history of living with books. As such, it demands a different way of looking at medieval book collections, and it provokes new questions and asks
for novel approaches that will provide new insights into the history of
book collections in general.
what is a collection?
Research into libraries and book collections often centres around the
reconstruction of a collection.3 But what are we talking about when we
talk about a collection? Which books did the library of a monastery, a
monarch or a scholar include? There are several ways to determine this.
The starting point is often an inventory or a catalogue that has survived
the passage of time. But such sources are rare, and the information they
contain is often far from unambiguous: how and to what purpose was the
inventory compiled, was it meant to include all property or was a
conscious selection made? The catalogue or inventory of a monastic collection may very well list the contents of the library, but not the books which
were in the chapel or the refectory, just as the books which the monks or
nuns kept in their cells may also be lacking. Moreover, lists like these often
include a significant number of items – such as composite volumes and
miscellanies – the contents of which cannot be exactly determined without
reference to the actual copy, which seldom survives.
Where a catalogue or an inventory is lacking, a starting point for the
reconstruction of a collection is often provided by ownership notes and
other traces in surviving books.4 But such a reconstruction will never be
complete. Whoever tries to determine which books mentioned in an
inventory have actually survived, is forced, in most cases, to conclude that
only a very small number of them are extant. Of the 312 titles mentioned
on Michael van der Stoct’s book list, only one is currently known to have
survived.5 Because of this, reconstruction on the basis of what survives to
the present day almost certainly provides a distorted image of the
collection as it once was. In addition, it is far from certain that all surviving
books belonged to the collection which we think we are reconstructing at
the same point in time.
It is thus a relevant question to ask: what is a collection? And what are
the problems we have to deal with when we try to do research on a collection? Before I go more deeply into this, it is worthwhile first to explain
what I mean by a collection. A collection is a gathering of books which are
or once were in the possession of a single owner, be that a person or an
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
institution. It is often advisable, for practical reasons, to speak of a collection as it was at a given moment in time: in 1960, the Soeterbeeck
Collection was very different from what that collection was in 1560. Books
from the collection as it was in 1560 could still be part of it 400 years later,
although by 1960 most books from the older period had been lost or
ended up in another collection. And if they still did belong to the collection in 1960, they had often been changed. After all, books are expanded,
supplied with notes, rebound, or wilfully damaged.6
Confronted with a historical collection, we must ask ourselves how we
can conceptualise a collection which has undergone profound alterations
or has been completely or partially lost. To make visible what was lost, and
to fill gaps in order to create a coherent impression of what must have
been, seems to be the most important motive for reconstructing historical
book collections. In doing so, the present state of the collections, or their
remains, is often ignored, both because little has survived to make up a
collection in the narrow sense of the word, and because we often focus
chiefly on the historical period in which it originated or flourished. A
medievalist will be looking for medieval collections, rather than focus on
the present state of an originally medieval collection (and seldom take into
account the printed books).7 There are good reasons for doing so. I will
show why research into the so-called Soeterbeeck Collection is helped by
looking beyond its medieval core. In order to be able to understand the
complexity of the collection, and its multi-layered structure, it is essential
to know its history. So I will first relate the history of the convent and of
its collection.
a short history of the convent
It was not until 1732 that this convent settled in Deursen-Ravenstein. Its
roots are in Nederwetten, a small village near a brook called the ‘Suetbeeck’, within a stone’s throw of Eindhoven. The convent started there in
1448 as a community of the Sisters of the Common Life. In 1452, these
devout women requested permission from the bishop of Liège, John of
Heinsberg, to adopt the Rule of St Augustine, and it was granted in 1454.8
The nuns moved from the marshy soil of Nederwetten to the higher
situated village of Nuenen near the river Dommel in 1462, and they were
encloistered some years later. From then on the sisters lived only within
the monastic enclosure.
From 1452 to 1744 the cura monialium, the pastoral care of the nuns, was
entrusted to the Augustinian Canons of the monastery of Mariënwater in
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Woensel, also near Eindhoven. One group of liturgical manuscripts in the
Soeterbeeck Collection probably was manufactured in this monastery.
In the 1580s the convent joined the Chapter of Venlo, which the bishop
of Liège had established in 1455 for the benefit of the Augustinian nuns in
his diocese. As a result of the closing or amalgamation of monasteries and
convents in North Brabant due to regional troubles, the Reformation, and
the Eighty Years’ War, books from at least three convents of this chapter
eventually ended up in Soeterbeeck.
One of these convents, that of Onze Lieve Vrouw in den Hage (‘Our
Lady in the Hague’) in Helmond, first merged with the convent of SintAnnenborch (‘St Anna’s Burrow’) in Rosmalen in 1543, after the former
monastery had been destroyed by the troops of the notorious Guelderian
Field Marshal Maarten van Rossum, who was to sack the convent of
Soeterbeeck later that same year. The nuns of the convent of SintAnnentroon (‘St Anna’s Throne’) in Kerkdriel joined those of the convent
of Sint-Annenborch in 1572. In the next year, the community of SintAnnenborch was forced to take refuge in a monastery in Den Bosch, but
in 1613 they had to leave the monastery in favour of a community of
Jesuits. Seven of the remaining nuns decided to continue their religious
life in the convent of Soeterbeeck, near Nuenen, taking with them a large
part of the monastic furnishings, including some manuscripts and printed
books.
In 1621 the convent of Soeterbeeck counted 17 choir sisters and eight lay
or ‘converse’ sisters, and in 1632 there were 26 sisters and one novice. The
signing of the Peace of Münster in 1648 ushered in the last period of the
‘old’ convent of Soeterbeeck, for in 1732 the nuns finally had to leave
Nuenen. They settled on Den Bongaert (‘The Orchard’), a rural estate near
Deursen in the independent Land of Ravenstein.
There the community survived the French occupation of 1794. Though
the end of the community seemed to be nigh on more than one occasion,
the ‘new’ convent of Soeterbeeck survived the nineteenth century. In 1954
the Windesheim community of Mariëndaal (‘Mary’s Vale’), in Diest
(Belgium), even amalgamated with the nunnery in Deursen. The curtain
only fell in 1997, as the few remaining nuns moved to Nuland.
constant change
The convent’s history clearly shows that it is not easy to determine what
the collection looked like at any given moment: which collection should
we reconstruct? What, for example, do we know of the fifteenth-century
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
book stock? When were which books added to or taken from the collection, or deemed redundant and cut to pieces? We run the risk of reconstructing a collection which never existed.
Doing justice to the Soeterbeeck Collection and the many people who
lived with these books requires an in-depth investigation of all of the
books in every detail, of all of the inscriptions, and of all of the traces of
use in them.9 The point of departure of the research project at the Radboud University in Nijmegen is the assumption that the collection is the
result of a process of constant change which resulted in books that bear
traces of alterations, additions, and different forms of deliberate and unintended loss.10 Considering each book on its own would give a wrong
impression because of the many interrelated inscriptions and alterations
which can be observed. Not the individual artefacts but the collection as a
whole — manuscripts, printed books, and fragments — must be the object
of study.
The manuscripts are not only examined for their medieval core, but also
for later additions and adaptations. In addition to the manuscripts, the
printed books are also fully part of the investigation. Manuscripts and
printed books have, for a very long time, functioned side by side, and all
of them show notes by the same sisters and rectors, related adaptations,
and reciprocal references. The distinction, often found in research,
between medieval manuscripts and post-medieval printed books gives a
wrong impression of the situation in a convent where all the books were
part of a collection which was often heavily used. In the case of Soeterbeeck, some manuscripts supposedly were still used well into the twentieth century. All of these books should be compared to each other in order
to track down diachronic layers of use, and thereby contribute insight into
the separate stages (stratification) in the use of this collection.
In order to handle this huge research project a new approach is
required: the ‘archaeology’ of the collection. The starting point of the
investigations will be what is certain. Not the oldest layers, nor the question how these books ended up as they are now, but their current state, is
what forms the point of departure: the collection as it was when transferred to the Radboud University in 1997. It means that the books which
have ended up elsewhere are not, at first, part of the corpus.11 But it also
means that all books and fragments, including those which were acquired
in the twentieth century, have to be scrutinised.12 A collection is not a
static entity, and a student of collections therefore must have an eye for its
dynamics, since constant change is an essential aspect of every collection.
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archaeology of the book
The approach presented here is heavily dependent on L. M. J. Delaissé,
who, in his 1967 paper ‘Towards a History of the Book’, proposed metaphorically to denote the way a book historian had to work as ‘archaeology’:13
The examination of the different techniques or aspects of our mediaeval books
does not differ from the archaeological method as it is commonly known. As in
any other branch of this discipline it consists first in observing and analysing all
the material data concerning objects of the past and in interpreting them afterwards in order to determine the time and place of their execution. Why not
therefore also use for the mediaeval book the word archaeology which not only
indicates a method but also suggests a purpose because of its historical significance.
Because of Delaissé’s untimely decease, he never developed a detailed
method and never extended his approach to a collection of books.14 Not
single books and their individual inscriptions, but successive layers of
acquisition and loss, and traces of use, are the object of research. We
consider the present collection as an archaeological site which has to be
dug up layer by layer. We want to make visible layers over time: the stratigraphy. This means that individual books’ diachronic developments have
to be correlated, causing synchronic layers to appear. The examination of
each individual book is like a deep drilling which yields a certain amount
of information. Much of that information is difficult to interpret when the
book is studied on its own, but becomes meaningful in the context of
other data from the same layer.
In order to make this information visible in a manageable way, all books
will have to be described in detail. The printed books are at present being
inventoried in a database, where each item is accompanied by a detailed
description of its traces of use. This includes at least the binding, ownership notes, in-text corrections and underscoring, added texts, inserted
leaves, and loose objects. Ultimately, each of these traces should, if possible, be connected to traces in other books. The researchers’ experience is
of great importance for this identification process, but we also want to
make use of modern techniques, such as automatic handwriting recognition and data mining. Ideally, each of the items from the collection should
be made available digitally, a process which might be difficult to realise
given the collection’s size, but which has at least been started. The ultimate
goal is a digital Soeterbeeck Library through time, which would not only
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
Figure 1
Bindings of books in the Soeterbeeck Collection (Nijmegen UB)
be available as research material for experts, but also as a way for anyone
who wants to get access to an all but lost monastic tradition and its
liturgical and scribal practices.15
Once the material has been inventoried, but also at the present stage of
the project, connections become clear: we find, for example, various
books which have been provided with an ownership mark by the same
sister.
Books from the convent’s earliest phase often turn out to contain much
information on later developments in the collection, but the reverse is also
true: later books often contain traces of older books. The most visible
examples of this are the books which have been bound in leaves from
liturgical books that were taken apart (Fig. 1).
two layers
Two examples will enable me to show the results which this type of
research, where we search for layers of use in the collection as a whole, that
is, for stages in the use of that collection, can yield. The first example is
related to a small group of books of hours from various monasteries: two
of them are from Onze Lieve Vrouwe in den Hage in Helmond, and date
from the first half of the sixteenth century, while a third book was written
in Sint-Annenborch in Rosmalen in 1600, into which the Helmond community had amalgamated in 1543.16 Three other sixteenth-century books
are from Soeterbeeck.17 When the community of Sint-Annenborch left
their abode in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and went to Soeterbeeck, their three
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Figure 2
Nijmegen UB Ms 458 (olim Soeterbeeck IV 48)
books of hours came along, and became part of the collection to which the
other three books already belonged. But the text of the three newly arrived
books differed from that of the copies which already were at Soeterbeeck
and this caused them, at one point, to be adjusted to the ‘Soeterbeecknorm’ (compare Figs 2 and 3). There were reasons, apparently, for presenting an identical text in all of these books of hours.
The amalgamation of communities leads to books from different collections coming together. This can result in books that have become redundant being disposed of. The need will have often been felt to attune books
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
Figure 3 Nijmegen UB Ms 472 (olim Soeterbeeck IV 81). Textual additation on a pasted strip
of paper, cf. the last lines on Fig. 2
because they were in the future to function in the same context, although
their contents refer to different contexts. This will have been especially
important for books with a liturgical or a para-liturgical function, such as
the six Latin books of hours.
The adjustments to the books of hours could have been made shortly
after the convents were amalgamated, but it is more likely that they are of
later date and are connected to the adaptations made at the end of the
eighteenth century, mostly on the part of Arnoldus Beckers, Canon Regular of Gaesdonck near Goch, and rector of Soeterbeeck from 1772 to 1810.18
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Figure 4 Nijmegen UB Hs 447 (olim Soeterbeeck IV 6) Antiphonarium
aestivale. Several alterations made by Arnoldus Beckers
Anyone who looks through the liturgical manuscripts from Soeterbeeck
will see that, in innumerable places, the melodies and texts of certain
chants have been changed. Sometimes, passages have been crossed out and
adjustments added in the margin, but often slips of paper with new notes
and words have been pasted on top of the existing music and text (Figs 4
and 5). We know, from the comparison of chants added at the back of
some codices (some of which can with certainty be ascribed to Arnoldus
Beckers), that the rector of Soeterbeeck is also responsible for some of the
other adjustments throughout the entire collection. We do not have a
complete survey of his adaptations, but it is clear that Beckers carried out
a liturgical revision which obliged him to make widespread adjustments.
These modifications also show that manuscripts which were by then
centuries-old were still heavily used in the daily services.
Less conspicuous user notes were brought to light primarily during
research on the printed books. The flyleaves of many of those books bear
the designation ‘Soeterbeeck’, sometimes followed by a date (Fig. 6). A
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
Figure 5 Nijmegen UB Hs 447 (olim Soeterbeeck IV 6) Antiphonarium
aestivale. Patrocinium sancti Josephi, antiphons for the Vespers on the third
Sunday after Easter, added by Beckers. On the left page: ‘Renovatum ab A.
Beckers rectore’.
large number of these entries were also made by Beckers. Here, too,
research is still ongoing, and we do not have a complete survey, but it
seems that, as Soeterbeeck’s rector, Beckers wanted to mark the convent’s
book collection. It is not clear whether he also made an inventory or a
catalogue. Further research into the surviving books and the archives,
which have only recently been opened, will hopefully throw more light on
this issue.
The many adjustments by Arnoldus Beckers, which are related both to
fixing the collection and to updating the liturgy, probably make up the
most prominent synchronic layer in the Soeterbeeck Collection. His
adjustments can be found in dozens of manuscripts and printed books.
This one layer alone shows how extensive and complex the collection
under scrutiny is.
These examples do not only show how one can apply the archaeological
concept of ‘stratification’, but it also makes clear what happened to the
books during these phases.19 It is obvious that, next to various individual
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Figure 6 Nijmegen UB (olim Soeterbeeck III 1622 10). Flyleaf of a printed
book, with several ownership marks. The last inscription reads ‘Soeterbeeck
1798’ and is made by Arnoldus Beckers
traces, there are also many traces which indicate a more systematic adaptation of the books to new uses in a different time.
To systematically map all layers demands a lot of time and effort.
Interpreting them is possibly even harder. For this reason, we have opted
for a procedure where we do not reconstruct and interpret all layers in
detail, but strive to write a small number of synchronically and diachronically oriented monographs. The research into the books of hours, just mentioned, will probably be one such study, and Beckers’ role as the convent’s
Rector and the collection’s Keeper certainly has to be exhaustively investigated. It is precisely the possibility of combining research into the book
collection with what is known from other sources that allows us to
integrate archaeological investigations with research into the lives of
people of flesh and blood.
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
Research on the Soeterbeeck Collection is not only important because it
will provide insight into a culture of devout and literate women. It also
explicitly confronts us with aspects that are significant for research into
every collection. The realisation that a collection is not static but constantly subject to change is very important. These dynamics play a role
even when a collection is examined in the shape it has at a specific point in
time: many books display their own traces of use. Over the course of time,
virtually every book has been expanded, changed or stripped (and the
newly available leaves or fragments can have subsequently ended up in
other books). And because many of these changes pertain to a layer of use
that is also visible in other books, the separate parts of a collection can
often be connected to each other in different ways. In this way, they mirror
various layers of adaptation and stages in use. These, again, can be
connected to moments in history and thereby tell more than a mere story
of paper, parchment, and ink. Just like the opening of an archaeological
site, the meticulous ‘digging up’ of a collection and its parts yields material
traces from the past, traces which enable us to gain insight into the
religious and literary culture of a monastic community which existed for
more than five centuries.
notes
* This paper is strongly dependent on the thorough knowledge Hans Kienhorst
has of the Soeterbeeck Collection. In several talks we developed our ideas on
how to investigate such a collection. I warmly want to thank him for his kind
and unconditional help in writing this paper. I want to thank Anouk Geurts,
Gaby Kloosman and Diana Denissen for their dedicated and meticulous work
on describing the printed books. Ad Poirters assisted me in rendering what I
wanted to present in the English language.
1. R. Th. M. van Dijk, ‘”Dat oetmoedich fundament ende privilegie der susteren.”
Het leven van een reguliere kanunnikes in Soeterbeeck’. In: Kienhorst et al.
(2005) 11–25 (p. 17).
2. To get an impression of the collection and its present state, see H. Kienhorst et
al., Rijkdom in eenvoud. Laatmiddeleeuwse handschriften uit klooster Soeterbeeck
(Nijmegen: Stichting Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies, 2005); H. Kienhorst,
Verbruikt verleden. Handcshriftfragmenten in en uit boeken van klooster Soeterbeeck
(Nijmegen: Stichting Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies, 2009).
3. Inspiring examples are P. Crouzet-Daurat, I. Hans-Collas, and P. Schandel,
Manuscrits enluminés des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux. 1: Manuscrits de Louis
de Bruges (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009) (on the collection of
Louis de Bruges); A. Freckmann, Die Bibliothek des Klosters Bursfelde im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2006).
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4. E.g. E. Kwakkel, Die Dietsche boeke die ons toebehoeren. De kartuizers van Herne
en de productie van Middelnederlandse handschriften in de regio Brussel (1350–1400)
(Leuven: Peeters, 2002).
5. R. Gabriël, ‘Boekenlijsten en Material Philology. Methodologische overwegingen bij de boekenlijst van Michael van der Stoct (ca. 1394)’, in: Queeste.
Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries 16 (2009), 83–111 (pp. 85–87).
6. It is with books as it is with texts (and likewise with all historical artifacts): they
undergo change while being in use, e.g. because they are adapted to new
circumstances , or damaged. Inspiring theoretical thinking on the Soeterbeeck
Collection was provided by publications on the variability of medieval texts.
See Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: histoire critique de la philologie
(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989); S. G. Nichols (ed.), ‘New philology’. Special
issue of Speculum 65 (1990); S. G. Nichols, ‘Why Material Philology? Some
Thoughts’, in: Philologie als Textwissenschaft. Alte und neue Horizonte =
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 116 (1997), Beiheft, pp. 10–30; Jürgen Wolf,
‘New Philology / Textkritik: a) Ältere deutsche Literatur’, in: Claudia Benthien
and Hans Rudolf Velten (eds), Germanistik als Kulturwissenschaft. Eine
Einführung (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2002), 174–95.
7. See e.g. K. Stooker and T. J. Verbeij, Collecties op orde. Middelnederlandse
handschriften uit kloosters en semi-religieuze gemeenschappen in de Nederlanden,
2 vols (Leuven: Peeters 1997).
8. This paragraph is mainly based on J. W. M. Peijnenburg, ‘De geschiedenis van
Soeterbeeck tot 1840’, in: Van Dijk (1982), pp. 31–53, and on J. W. M.
Peijnenburg, ‘De geschiedenis van Soeterbeeck na 1840’, in: R. Th. M. van Dijk
(ed.), Het klooster Soeterbeeck te Deursen, 1732–1982 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk
Historisch Contact, 1982), pp. 54–72. Additional information is found in Van
Dijk, ‘Dat oetmoedich fundament ende privilegie der susteren’, and in A. M.
Frenken, ‘Het Augustinessen-Klooster te Zoeterbeek’, in: Bossche Bijdragen 11
(1931–1932), 174–301.
9. On marginal inscriptions and other traces of use, see H. J. Jackson, Marginalia.
Readers writing in books (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2001).
10. Involved in this research programme are dr. Hans Kienhorst, drs. José Rekers
(PhD student, working on six written breviaries), and three research assistants:
Anouk Geurts (2009 until summer 2010), Gaby Kloosman and Diana
Denissen (both from august 2010 until 2011).
11. In Brussels (Royal Library), The Hague (Royal Library), Tilburg (University
Library) and Amsterdam (University Library), we find manuscripts that can be
connected with (parts of) the Soeterbeeck Collection. One manuscript
(actually consisting of the remains of two graduals) for several years formed
part of a private collection in Louvain, but is kept in Nijmegen University
Library (Ms. 492) since 2009.
12. On fragments and the way they influence our attitude to texts and historical
artifacts, see H. U. Gumbrecht, The powers of philology. Dynamics of textual
scholarship (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 9–23.
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The archaeology of a collection: the example of Soeterbeeck
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
This book as a whole was a great inspiration in thinking about the Soeterbeeck
Collection.
L. M. J. Delaissé, ‘Towards a history of the mediaeval book’, in: Divinitas 11
(1967), 423–35 (p. 429).
But see L. M. J. Delaissé, ‘The importance of books of hours for the history of
the medieval book’, in: U. E. McCracken et al. (eds), Gatherings in honor of
Dorothy E. Miner (Baltimore: The Walters Art Gallery, 1974), pp. 203–25. See
also A. Derolez, ‘Codicologie ou archéologie du livre? Quelques observations
sur la leçon inaugurale de M. Albert Gruijs à l’université catholique de
Nimègue’, in: Scriptorium. Revue Internationale des Études Relatives aux Manuscrits 27 (1973), 47–49.
On recent developments in presenting and disclosing books and libraries, see
E. Mittler, ‘Wiedergewinnung durch Wissenschaft und Technik. Die europäische Buchkultur zwischen Original und Internetportal’, in: A. Rapp and
M. Embach (eds), Zur Erforschung mittelalterlicher Bibliotheken. Chance –
Entwicklungen – Perpektiven (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2009),
291–304.
Ms. 456 (IV 46), c. 1543–1544, and Ms. 457 (IV 47), c. 1525–1530, both from
Helmond (Kienhorst, Rijkdom in eenvoud, pp. 74–77). Ms. 482 (IV 91), written
by Catharina van Eyck in 1600 in Rosmalen (Kienhorst, Rijkdom in eenvoud,
pp. 126–27).
Ms. 458 (IV 48), Ms. 459 (IV49) and Ms. 460 (IV 50), all three from
Soeterbeeck and written in the 16th century (Kienhorst, Rijkdom in eenvoud,
pp. 78–83).
On Beckers, see Peijnenburg, ‘De geschiedenis van Soeterbeeck na 1840’,
pp. 47–51; A. J. Geurts (ed.), Moderne devotie, figuren en facetten. Tentoonstelling
ter herdenking van het sterfjaar van Geert Grote, 1384–1984. Catalogus (Nijmegen:
Roomsch-Katholieke Universiteit, 1984), p. 30. A portrait of Beckers is found
on p. 248.
Here I have only provisional presented this approach. Hans Kienhorst is preparing a more thorough paper on the archaeological method in analysing book
collections.
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