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Howard W. Gunlocke (C '34) Rare Book and
Special Collections Room
January · April 2005
Home · Titles
in the Exhibition
"Monastic bindings" share with
a somewhat better-known whitish commodity, "divinity
fudge," naming that expresses a partial, rather
than a whole, truth. The best known of these alum-tawed
leather bindings are those, many with pictorial panels,
produced in Germany between the middle of the sixteenth
century and the middle of the seventeenth century. They
possess, for the casual observer, an apparent unity of
appearance and structure which obstructs our view of
a larger, and perhaps more interesting bookbinding phenomenon.
"Monastic Bindings of Three Centuries" presents
a total of 56 bindings (plus a dozen added
volumes, bringing the total count to 68)
ranging in date of publication
from 1479 to 1768 and in date of binding
from somewhere in the last two decades
of the fifteenth century to no
earlier than the date of the most recent
title. Many of these books entered the
modern book-collecting market
following the suppression of the Society
of Jesus and the dissolution of numerous
Continental cloistered religious
houses in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The fact that many
of them shared a "monastic" provenance,
combined with that whitish color, led
to the adoption of the term "monastic." But while there
is nothing inherently "monastic" about these
books, it is also likely that some percentage
of these bindings were indeed produced
by the binderies in religious
houses.
Tawing, as opposed to tanning, means treating
the leather (generally but not always,
in the case of bookbindings, pigskin) with alum (and
perhaps salts
of iron or chromium, says one source).
This "mineral
tanning" produces a leather that is whitish in
color, flexible, of great strength, and more resistant
than tanned leather to atmospheric pollution. The relatively
ready availability of pigskin - pork was probably
one of the staple meats of Germany in the sixteenth
century as it is now - and the scarcity of other, "higher" uses
for that form of leather made it a natural for application
in the burgeoning market for bookbindings. The binding
on the 1487 Imitatio Christi, however, certainly nearly
contemporary to the date of publication of the text,
is probably tawed goatskin rather than pigskin, as
the skin itself lacks the characteristic distribution
of small surface holes found in most pigskin bindings
(e.g., in the same exhibit case, the 1498 Biblia latina).
One characteristic of these bindings that aids us materially
in understanding their evolution over time is the propensity
of their makers to date them. Of the 56 primary titles
in the exhibit 17 are in dated bindings, and these cover
more than a hundred years' time, from 1522 to 1657.
As one might expect, both early and late dated examples
are less common than those from the boom time for these
bindings: nine of the 17 are dated between 1574 and 1597.
The decorative schemes of the earlier bindings in the
exhibit generally make use of a restricted range of motifs.
Backgrounds are commonly formed of foliate pointed near-ovals,
giving them almost an ogival character. Borders are most
commonly composed of multiple rules, and circular stamps
of various types are applied around, or over, both background
and borders. This general style gives us no clues as
to place of manufacture, nor are there places in the
design where they might be signed. But they do give us
a means of sorting out texts bound long after their date
of publication.
The best-known of the "monastic bindings" are
those whose sides are adorned by central pictorial, or
at least figural or armorial, panels. E. P. Goldschmidt
(Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings, 1967) maintains
that bindings in this style became a commonplace in Saxony
in the late sixteenth century. Although we cannot trace
any of the bindings in the exhibit directly to known
Saxon craftsmen, the bindings' distribution by
date and their very diversity argue strongly for the
validity of Goldschmidt's theory. The exhibit contains
13 "panel" bindings which display 15 different
subjects in more than 20 different panels. Dated panels
come from the years 1562 (on a text published in 1599),
1573, and 1574; the dates of the texts of the books in
panel bindings range from 1546 to 1626; the six books
which are themselves (rather than their panels) dated
on their bindings come from the years 1574, 1579, 1581,
1595, 1597, and 1626.
Another obvious reason for the "monastic bindings" term
is the content the bindings have preserved.
A casual survey of the 56 primary titles
in the exhibit shows
that it includes 10 Bibles or portions
of Scripture and 28 other works which
fall into the category of theology
or religion broadly considered. That leaves
18, and among these we observe quite a
different spread: in the fields
of science and medicine, five titles;
in literature and linguistics, four; in
philosophy, three; in emblem books,
three; in law, two - and then there's a solitary
illustrated Latin edition of Reynard the
Fox. While one cannot say whether the
books chosen for the exhibit are "typical" of
all other books in similar bindings in
terms of subject range, this selection
does help to show why the term
in question gained currency.
One final note: "monastic bindings" are
not now common in the trade, nor have they been for some
time. Only about half a dozen of the books in the exhibit
have come to Georgetown since the library began actively
collecting rare books in 1970, and almost all of those
went into previous private or institutional collections
before 1950. In all, 32 of the 56 primary titles certainly
came to Georgetown in the nineteenth century, and it
is likely others did as well: four were here before 1836;
24 came in the library of Georgetown's first librarian,
Rev. Thomas C. Levins, in 1844, and four others can be
shown to have arrived before 1900.
George M. Barringer
Associate University Librarian for Special
Collections
March
2005
Click here
for titles in the exhibition
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