The Rite Stuff

A Newberry project blog for Religious Change, 1450 - 1700, an exploration of how religion and print made the medieval world modern.

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When Henry VIII outlawed the veneration of Thomas Becket, he ordered that all references to the saint be removed wherever they appeared. The owner of this prayer book apparently couldn't bring himself to comply with the law completely. You can see this beautiful book in our exhibition galleries through Dec. 27!

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Our Lady of Guadalupe

The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Roman Catholic church is December 12, commemorating the date in 1531 when the Virgin Mary appeared for the last time to Juan Diego, an Indigenous Mexican peasant. As proof to church leaders of her appearance to Diego, her image was left in his tilma. The tilma remains in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, the most popular Catholic sacred site in the world.

Despite its great significance, the church did not immediately embrace the story of the apparition; authorized printed accounts did not appear until the middle of the seventeenth century, more than a hundred years after the events occurred, when the veneration of the Virgin and the tilma had already become hugely popular in Mexico.  One of the most elaborate and beautiful early printed works celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe was a book of poetry by a priest, José López de Avilés, published in Mexico City in 1669. The book bears two long titles, one of which translates, in abbreviated form, to "The Poetic Garden in Honor of... the Most Blessed Virgin."

The poetry includes baroque forms such as an acrostic and anagrams, with extensive explanatory notes surrounding the verses. Each page appears almost a hedge-maze, the notes forming a decorative border around the "garden" of the poetry itself.  The book also includes two stunning copperplate engravings, of Juan Diego at the site of the apparition and of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  These are attributed to Antonio de Castro, an important figure in the development of engraving in Mexico.

The Newberry's copy of this important work has now been digitized in conjunction with Religious Change, 1450-1700, and is available online at the Internet Archive.

--Will Hansen, Curator of Americana

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A Martyrdom is Worth a Thousand Words

Living in the shadow of Martin Luther, Johannes Pollicarius was another charismatic Lutheran pastor in mid-16th-century Germany. He was so colorful that even after he was imprisoned for drunkenness and adultery, he still resumed his regular pastoral duties a year later! A prolific writer, he published some 20 religious pamphlets and the first biography of Luther in 1555, nine years after Luther’s death.

The Newberry recently acquired its first work by Pollicarius, his 1549 sermon [Case folio BS2440 .P65 1549] on emulating the behavior and beliefs of the Twelve Apostles. Part of the appeal was that Pollicarius’s text came packed with unforgettable visual aids. He anticipated a wide audience for the booklet, suggested both by the use of German (as opposed to Latin) and by the subtitle dedicating the text to the “laity and simple folk.” Here is where the pictures come in, which are both instructive and mesmerizingly graphic. The title page border, for instance, has been constructed of twelve tiny woodblocks of interchangeable saints helpfully labeled with their names in letterpress. They follow the order in which their origin and martyrdom stories appear in the pamphlet, providing a visual table-of-contents, or cheat sheet, right up front.

What made the Apostles memorable, besides their association with Jesus of course, were their grisly deaths. To make the most of their martyrdoms by decapitation, defenestration, crucifixion, poison, and stabbing, the pamphlet cleverly reuses woodblocks by fellow Luther supporter Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553) and his Wittenberg workshop.  The blocks illustrate each disciple’s death alongside their story. These blocks had already been printed hundreds of times by the same publisher, but they have not lost their punch.

As part of the Religious Change and Print project, you can now see the Newberry’s book online in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

--Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

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Here there be Monsters…and Purgatory

Though many of us are familiar with the modern geography of Ireland, this map of the island might make one pause to gain one’s bearings—where exactly are some of the major cities, like Dublin and Limerick? And why is the shape so unfamiliar?

This 1560 map of Ireland, Hibernia, or Ireland, the Largest Island between Britain and Spain [. . .]. (Hibernia siue Irlanda insula maxima inter Brittanniam & Hispaniam), attributed to Italian printer and engraver Ferando Bertelli [Novacco 2F 72], reads with the South at the top of the page. It is interesting not only for its orientation, for its illustrations, or for its monsters, but also for the larger-than-life presence of St. Patrick’s Purgatory (Purgatorium s. Patrigi) on the bottom right.

The map is upside down only to our current standards of map-reading. Modern day Cork and Kerry are at the top of the map, but geographically speaking, they make up the southwest of Ireland. And Dublin? That capital city across the Irish sea from Wales? It’s on the left-hand side of the map, not the right-hand side, where we are used to finding it. The orientation of the map would not have been particularly remarkable at the time, as our standard of north at the top is a more recent norm.

But the inaccurate shape of the map? That is not something we can simply chalk up to the standards of the time—even at the drawing of this map, other, more-accurate maps were in existence, including the 1564 Mercator map, with its much greater representation of the true shape of Ireland. So this map was nearly out of date by the time it had been printed.

But after orientating yourself, you may note the castles and monasteries dotting the landscape. In the mid-16th century, Ireland was a decidedly Catholic place. Both the Gaelic “Old Irish” and the Anglo-Norman “New Irish” maintained a strong Catholic faith. Despite the efforts of monarchs and evangelists, the majority of people living in Ireland remained staunch Catholics throughout the reformation and beyond.

Among the decidedly Catholic landscape, sits a sparsely mapped area in the bottom right titled “Purgatorium S Patrigi.” This section corresponds to the most northwestern part of the island, and the counties of Donegal, Tyrone, and Derry, which was the least-well mapped area of Ireland at the time. Most will be familiar with the figure of St. Patrick (or at least, St. Patrick’s Day as celebrated in Ireland and around the world). But the St. Patrick evoked by this cave-like entrance to purgatory is a long way from celebratory beads and green beer.

Before he was the occasion for an international holiday, way back in the 5th century, he was a man who reportedly descended into purgatory itself through an entrance on a small island in the middle of a lake, called Lough Derg.

The legacy of St. Patrick’s religious experience left its mark on the site, which became known as “St. Patrick’s Purgatory” and became a pilgrimage site for Catholics in Ireland and throughout medieval Europe. It is the topic of a 12th century poem by Marie de France. In the early 13th century, Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) wrote about the site in his History and Topography of Ireland. The outsized presence of St. Patrick’s Purgatory on the map suggests the mapmaker may have relied on Gerald of Wales’ account of the geography of Ireland—or of others’ versions that did, such as Spaniard Sebastiano de Rey—in his rendering of the map. It also attests to the significance of the site itself in the collective imagination of Ireland in early modern Europe, as a land of saints and religiosity, and a bastion of Catholicism.

While geographers and mapmakers soon overtook this representation of Ireland with images of greater accuracy, the legacy of St. Patrick’s Purgatory persisted. Lough Derg remains a holy site to this day, drawing pilgrims from around the world. It has inspired the work of Irish poets from William Butler Yeats to Patrick Kavanagh to Seamus Heaney. So perhaps Bertelli was on to something when he gave pride of place to St. Patrick’s Purgatory in his map: in the midst of religious upheaval across early modern Europe, Ireland itself persisted as a home to Catholicism and its earthly connection to the world beyond.

See it in the digital exhibit: Hibernia

--Keelin Burke, Fellowships Manager

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This extra-illustrated Bible and Book of Common [ VAULT Case BX5145 .A4 1642 no.1] prayer may seem like it has a single style of printing (with consistent red ruling!), but it in fact was printed over two decades in London--spanning the Civil War. The first segment, the Book of Common Prayer, was dated 1642 (the start of the war); the New Testament bears the date 1660 (the year of the restoration of King Charles II); and the "book of Psalmes collected into English meetre by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins and others” claims to date to 1658.

We believe the texts were bound together in or around 1660 based on the fanned fore-edge painting, which reads: “Give Attendance to reading” and is signed: "ST Lewis fecit 1660". Coinciding with the Restoration of the King, this Bible is a sign of renewed respect for the Church of England. The decorative embellishments of the fore-edge, illustrations, and elaborate binding seem to communicate that English religious life was thriving and unified once more.

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Matting the Map

For any exhibition, conservation plays an important role. Conservators clean and repair manuscripts and bindings; find or craft book supports and cradles to display materials in cases; mat, frame, and mount paintings, maps, and posters; and control light, humidity, and temperature levels in the exhibition environment. With an ambitious project like Religious Change, conservation’s role only grows.

The sheer number of items involved increased, as did the ways they would be used for the project. Digital resources demanded photography and preservation work; many of the documents found in the curatorial discovery process required cleaning or more intensive conservation treatment; and exhibiting over 150 items—some quite large or unusually shaped—meant a very organized and careful process.

One item that was particularly challenging for its size was a six-paneled 1629 map depicting the Siege of La Rochelle [Novacco 4F 112]. The piece shows a battle scene at the height of tensions between Protestants and Catholics in France, and rather than being a traditional navigational map is a large printed illustration meant as art. Its subject was perfect for the exhibition; it visualizes the impact of the rifts the Reformation caused and exemplifies their cultural significance.

The matting and framing, however, posed quite the challenge. The six poster-sized sheets would need to be framed in one piece. Each sheet was secured to the mat board individually, using linen thread instead of paper hinges to give the fragile paper extra flexibility. Then the conservators covered the matting with a large piece of custom-cut plexiglass and reinforced it with a backing board, sealing it all together with a passe-partout. This was then secured to the frame.

One last challenge remained. To prevent dust from entering during the framing process, the map was framed in the Newberry’s Conservation Lab; but then the item, measuring 66”x66” when framed, had to be transported to the gallery space. It just barely fit through the doors leading out of the lab, and would need to be finessed diagonally into the elevator so the team could hang it securely in the gallery.

—Kasie Janssen, Conservator for Special Projects, & Jamie Waters, Communications Coordinator

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Exactly 500 years ago on Halloween, (the day before All Saints Day) Martin Luther circulated the 95 Theses--inadvertently sparking the Reformation. We discussed Luther and his legacy in our exhibit galleries with Christopher Fletcher, the Newberry's resident Luther expert. See the conversation, that was live from our exhibition Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700!

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500 years later...

Exactly 500 years ago today, the day before All Saints Day in 1517, Martin Luther circulated the 95 Theses, sparking a revolution. Today we indulged in some whimsy, and a Martin Luther bobblehead took over our instagram (and our Tumblr!). Enjoy:

“What a lovely library. But the doors seem to be missing something. Does anyone have a nail I could borrow”

Editorial note: There’s some debate over whether or not Luther actually nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. (Sorry to burst your bubble, Luther Bobblehead.) However, it’s generally accepted that on this day 500 years ago, Luther began circulating his pivotal list of grievances against the Catholic Church.

“This place is all right—they’re playing my song!”

Editorial note: Thanks, Luther Bobblehead. Luther loved music, and even penned a few ditties himself. He wrote the hymn "Ein feste Burg" ("A Mighty Fortress"), adapting the lyrics from Psalm 46. You can hear what Luther is grooving on right now in our exhibit "Religious Change & Print, 1450-1700."[VAULT Case VM 2128 .M83k 1580]

“What the &#%*?! What’s this abominable papal decree doing here?!”

Editorial note: What—it’s part of history! Nothing got Luther’s blood boiling quite like the sale of indulgences, which he saw as a corruption of how salvation worked. In response to the booming indulgence market, Luther developed his core doctrine that salvation is achieved through “faith alone” (“sola fide”). This particular indulgence, issued by Sixtus IV in 1481, forgave the sins of one Lorenzo Matteo Morelli in exchange for his participation in the Crusades. [Vault folio Case MS 150] .

“Now THIS is an indulgence I can get behind.”

Editorial note: Luther was a gregarious guy who loved good food, good drink, and good conversation. No doubt this is partially why he left his old monastic habits behind after his Reformation. [“On the Banks of the Rhine with a Stein.” Part of the Driscoll Collection of American Sheet Music: Section 2, Box 81.]

“Henry VIII…Who’s the genius who gave that frothy-mouthed fool a printing press anyway?”

Editorial note: Tell us how you really feel, Luther Bobblehead. Luther's famously fierce feud with King Henry VIII re-ignited after Luther heard a false rumor that Henry wanted to leave the Roman Church. In 1526, Luther attempted to take back his earlier harsh criticism in an apologetic letter, but the still-Catholic Henry gleefully reprinted the letter (seen here) with his own mocking commentary.You can read more about it in our resource, Tracking the Luther Controversy. [Case 3A 557]

“That's more like it: accessible text with substantial commentary—and it's printed in England no less!”

Editorial note: Luther inspired a flood of Bible translations, which aimed to turn ordinary people into Biblical scholars. The Geneva Bible, the most popular English Bible of the period, featured maps, tables, and marginal annotations. Though this edition was printed after his death, Luther would have appreciated its accessible language and explanatory text. Learn more in our digital resource, The Bible in Print. [Vault Case folio C 223 .611]

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Newberry Library's 'Book of Magical Charms' is the 'stuff of nightmares’

Newberry Library in Chicago crowdsourced the translation to an ancient book of magic

Get into the Halloween spirit with some supernatural medicine!

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How Martin Luther became a publishing smash — and created books as we know them

The German church reformer knew his audience, and he hated typos.

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Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700

Between 1450 and 1700, religion changed – and changed the world. Even before Martin Luther challenged the doctrines, rites, and authority of the Roman Church 500 years ago, quests for spiritual renewal or ecclesiastical reform were already beginning to shake European life...

Our exhibition Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700 is in full swing, but you can delve into the materials online too! The digital exhibition includes digitized versions of many of the pieces in the galleries, meaning anyone can flip through the pages on their device and directly engage with the primary source. Essays by the curators surround the items and offer historical narrative and context. Use the digital resource to explore religious upheaval in the lives of the people who went through it and through the books that tell their stories!

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Voices of Reform

The early music in the Newberry’s collection and in the exhibition Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700 show the musical world of the reformation period. But you have to hear it to fully experience it. We teamed up with local early music ensemble, Schola Antiqua, to make this music available for listeners around the world through our new digital resource.

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Stopp certificates: German-American birth and baptismal certificates, 1700-1900

Collection of approximately 1350 printed variants of German American birth and baptismal certificates from about 1700 through 1900; collected ...

Birth celebrations and ephemera can tell us a lot about how people saw their place in the world and what they valued, especially their religious beliefs and practices.

German-American Birth and Baptismal Certificates, 1700-1900 is a new digital collection that gathers together approximately 1,200 printed variants of German-American birth and baptismal certificates collected by the late Professor Klaus Stopp, a bibliographer and authority on printed fraktur.

Designed as richly decorated broadsides meant to publicize births and baptisms in the Pennsylvania Dutch community, the certificates - sometimes called Frakturs, after the type and handwriting style used in them - were created with templates and then filled out and painted based on a purchaser's request.

The Stopp Collection illuminates a vibrant yet often overlooked practice in the religious life of the Pennsylvania Dutch between 1700 and 1900.

Drawing on the illuminated manuscript tradition, early certificates feature gorgeous, hand-painted woodcut borders, displaying songbirds, tulips, and crowns, while later 19th-century certificates mimic gravestones, commemorative plaques, and lithographic posters.

Printed fraktur texts announce births and baptisms, with names and dates added by hand, but the certificates also include Christian poems and, in some cases, additional information like death date. Reflecting developments in print technology over 200 years and serving as a valuable demographic resource, the Stopp Collection will appeal especially to scholars and members of the public interested in art history, print history, genealogy, and the religious history of America.

--Matthew Clarke, Digital Initiatives and Metadata Assistant

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Watch our conservators and installers take this map from six loose broadsheets to one stunning framed piece for our exhibit Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700. The map illustrates, in incredible detail, the siege of La Rochelle, a battle between French Protestants and Louis XIII's royal forces in 1627--and it's now on view through December 27. [Novacco 4F 112 prct]

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Who painted out the pope?

 How did a print become a painting, and in one deft stroke, turn a Jesuit allegory into an anti-Jesuit manifesto? In the exhibition Religious Change and Print 1450-1700, the Newberry debuts a newly-conserved artwork that is part print, part painting, and all mystery—for we can only speculate on the intent behind a brown smudge appearing in the scene’s lower right quadrant. Who committed this act of censorship? And what motivated them?

This little-known engraving, titled Typus Religionis, [or Model of Religion, VAULT Case oversize BX3731 .T95 1570z], seems to be unsigned and undated. Originally produced from two massive copperplates in black ink on white paper (together measuring some 2 by 3 feet), this impression was pasted onto a sheet of canvas, brightly colored, varnished, and mounted, making the final object look very much like an oil painting. While painted prints were commonly available in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the unusual use of varnish suggests the owner of the engraving wished to display the work as a painting on a wall, rather than store it as a print. Thus the print itself effectively became a painting.

This was intentional. Indeed, the print reproduces an allegorical painting made for the Jesuit College in Billom, France between its 1556 founding and the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762.

On the massive central ship appear several Jesuit priests, including Saint Ignatius of Loyola (with a glowing Jesuit emblem in hand), overseeing other founders of Christian orders (Saint Francis, Dominic, etc.). These luminaries shepherd the Christian faithful across the stormy, satanic seas to the Port of Salvation on the left. People of all ranks and walks of life appear in the hapless rowboats below the main three-master, all patiently awaiting Jesuit assistance.

Both the painting and the Newberry's painted print suggested the benevolence of the Jesuits and their worldwide mission. So far, so good. But this positive interpretation would not last.

[Jean Michel Moreau, Typus Religionis, or Estampe, du tableau trouvé dans l’eglise, des ci-devant soi-disans-Jésuites de Billom en Auvergne, l’an 1762. (Model of Religion, or Print of a Painting found in a Church of the self-called Jesuits of Billom of Auverge, in the year 1762.) Engraving, 1763. VAULT Case oversize BX3731 .T95 1763]

Confiscated in 1762 by French authorities when they closed the Jesuit College, the original painting is now in the Hôtel de Soubise, Paris. Another early reproduction (about 1.5 x 3 feet) based on the painting suddenly appeared in 1763 with a strong anti-Jesuit message across the bottom. It was commissioned as documentary evidence of Jesuit arrogance in the trial the French government waged that year against the Billom Jesuits to support their imminent expulsion from the country. It stands to reason that the Newberry’s painted print was made, mounted, and illuminated significantly earlier, well before this backlash.

Unlike the painting and 1763 print, the Newberry’s version has Ignatius facing a different way, and includes fewer figures. While the sky is less cloudy, the waves are much wilder and more dramatic. One particularly painterly addition isn’t a wave at all, but a brown circular mass oddly positioned inside a boat at the upper right (next to the angel steering the vessel).

We don’t know exactly when this censoring detail was added, but we can guess the identity of the figure lurking beneath the paint. Looking at later accounts of the trial of the Billom Jesuits, it seems that the French government’s biggest objection to the pro-Jesuit painting wasn’t so much its portrayal of the power of the Jesuits, but the helplessness of everyone else. Most notably, the trial commissioners were “scandalized” that the Pope wasn’t commanding the main ship of Christianity himself in the painting.

Rather, he was pictured nonchalantly paging through a book in the rightmost rowboat in the midst of the chaos. Indeed, in the Newberry’s painted print, this detail has completely disappeared under swirling brown paint. The Pope has been censored!

Further technical examination in the Newberry’s Conservation Lab may confirm if the obscuring patch was applied beneath or above the varnish layer, which would help determine a time frame and a motive for the alteration. It seems likely that the Newberry painted print started life as a colored version of the Billom painting with pro-Jesuit connotations. Perhaps it was even owned by a Billom graduate. Only later, once the painted print had changed hands, it may have received its papal makeover—an act of protest against the Jesuit visual mistreatment of Rome!

These thematically intertwined, hybrid paintings and prints are closely connected to the changing interpretations of the iconographies they presented. Even though it was once produced in multiple impressions (of which the Newberry's may be the only survivor), the painted Typus Religionis has taken on a unique life of its own.

The Typus Religionis will be on view at the Newberry from September 14-December 27, and then available for consultation in the library’s special collections reading room. Unless of course we’re looking at it under infrared lighting in our Conservation Lab!

Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

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Print helped fuel the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which in turn fueled major developments in the printing industry. As people were exhorted to read the Bible, new tools emerged to help them navigate its pages: page numbers, indexes, annotations--basically, all the features of the "apparatus of the book" that we take for granted today. We speak with Newberry President David Spadafora and curator of printing history Jill Gage about the reciprocal relationship between religion and print in the early modern era.(Shelf Life, from the Newberry Library)

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Folios from a Non-Illustrated Manuscript, Islamic Art

Medium: Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper

Gift of Adrienne Minassian, 1978 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/458036