Our last blog was about Guðbrandur´s Bible, printed in 1584. Who would have thought that actually two copies of that work are kept at Göttingen university library right in the centre of Germany?!
In March, I, Regina, went to Göttingen, though not to check on the Icelandic bibles, but instead to present part of our research at Germany’s biggest art history conference
This year, the overall topic was “Zu den Dingen!” – “On things!” I enjoyed a great number of lectures, among them some programmatic discussions of possible definitions of the term “object”, e.g. by Germany’s leading (but also controversial) art historian Horst Bredekamp. Bredekamp, together with Wolfgang Schäffner, organised a section on “Material agencies”: in contrast to philologists, art historians are quite used to consult material aspects of their objects if the art work itself does not offer information on its history, and they have long been thinking about relationships between material and art object.
Thus, I found the discussions at the conference quite advanced as well as inspiring. However, I was surprised to witness the still very lively debate on definitions of the term “thing” as opposed to “object”. In short, you could define a thing as a material item that is not semantically specified. In contrast, an object is thought to be an item that was willingly designed and that is perceived by a subject, for example a painted bicture that a person is looking at. Well, this is something to think and obviously to argue about.
As a matter of course, I eagerly followed the section called “Object book. The codex as object in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period” organised by Jennifer Bawden and Karin Gludovatz. Most interesting in our Paper Trail context was a discussion of the use of medieval evangeliaries used as liturgical objects during mass and the spatial aspects of bearing the book through the church and towards the king (by David Ganz). Jutta v. Dithfurth put this discussion further by pointing to the special role of evangeliaries as literal representions of Christ during mass. She showed convincingly how codices were recoded and reframed according to new requirements and uses. In fact, books were for example rebound with a new order of the quires it contained before.
As to Paper Trails, we formed part of a section on “Turning tides. Church art and religious change around the North Sea (1400–1700)” led by Antje Fehrmann and Justin Kroesen. In my paper, I discussed the impact of the fact that for centuries, Iceland’s first (and until 1770 the only existing) printing press was owned by a bishop and thus everything printed during that period was approved by the Church and produced to promote Christian (and most of the time Protestant) faith.
As one example of travelling Icelandic manuscripts changing from a religious object into an item forming part of a library collection, I presented the “ofurlítil bænabók”, “a very small prayer book”, Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelf. Extravagantes 315. It contains a collection of Icelandic prayers mostly translated from German. In a number of ownership marks, the small codex gives us rich information on its previous owners. The tiny paper manuscript in octavo was written in the 1650s possibly by Elín Þorláksdóttir (daughter of bishop Þorlákur Skúlason) who certainly owned it and gave it to her cousin Elín Hákonardóttir. This Elín then gave the little object to her brother Vigfús who in 1668 went to the continent for university studies. Possibly, the book was meant as a kind of talisman or a souvenir that should remind the boy of his background. Thus, it would have changed its original meaning already when leaving Iceland.
The young student also travelled through Europe, and on one of his trips, he must have come into contact with a young German, August Heliand, whom he gave the little manuscript as a present. How the prayer book made it into the library of Duke August, having lost its original significances as a religious object and almost being reduced to a “thing” within a historical collection instead, we do not know. It was completely overlooked for centuries until some years ago when Margrét Eggertsdóttir came across it while it was still labelled as a “Swedish prayer book”. We think that this is book object biography at its best, and are eager to find out more – especially about the Icelandic Bible prints travelling to Europe, where Wolfenbüttel definitely also is a place to go.
Back from Göttingen, I felt intellectually enriched and bursting with the energy of spring – Göttingen university campus is lined with cherry trees that were blooming and blossoming as best as they could.
PS: If you wondered why the object historical part of our blog has been less active during the last months, this is, because I, Regina, have become part of another research project on material and object history within book studies – you will hear more about that at a later stage, so stay tuned!
Further reading:
Margrét Eggertsdóttir: “A small prayer book travels from Iceland to Germany”, in: Skandinavische Schriftlandschaften. En vänbok till Jürg Glauser, ed. Klaus Müller-Wille et al. Tübingen: Narr, 2017, pp. 189-193.
Margrét Eggertsdóttir: “Ofurlítil íslensk baenabók í Wolfenbüttel”, Gripla 15 (2004), pp. 223-244.
For those who love theories: The Object Reader, ed. Fiona Candlin & Raiford Guins. London & New York: Routledge, 2009.
Comments