Figure 5. “Carmeli Bamberg” inscription on the general title page.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA rather salient discovery I made while researching the previous owners of the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i> was my newfound understanding of two of the flowing inscriptions that lie within the first few leaves of the text. The former of the two, \u201cCarmely Bamberg,\u201d appears on the fly leaf of the book, while the latter, \u201cCarmeli Bambergensis,\u201d is written on the general title page (in a size almost as large and sprawling as the name of the work itself). Upon first glance, both of these inscriptions looked like the neatly-drawn signatures of a collector or scholar; based on my previous knowledge of this text\u2019s Protestant affiliation, I guessed that this was the name of a student or professor at the University of Wittenberg, or perhaps a wealthy Lutheran looking to expand his personal library. As approximately two thirds of the annotations throughout the text are written in the same short and wide script (bearing a striking resemblance to blackletter), and contain dates ranging from 1562 to 1568 (including a note on the back paste-down mentioning \u201cAnno 1563\u201d), I was led to believe that this scholar purchased the individual sheets from George Rhau\u2019s press in 1559, had them bound, and then annotated them over the course of the next ten years. However, after searching for the name \u201cCarmeli Bambergensis\u201d in online library catalogues and finding that the <\/span>Codex Justinianus <\/span><\/i>(1488), <\/span>Repertorium Juris <\/span><\/i>(1478), <\/span>Recueil Asc\u00e9tique<\/span><\/i> (1471), <\/span>Vitras Patrum <\/span><\/i>(1488), <\/span>Libros Sententiarum<\/span><\/i> (1491) and a trove of other fifteenth and sixteenth-century texts contained the same inscription on their own fly leaves, I realized that the signature I found was not a signature at all; rather, it was the name of a much larger monastic order dating back to the twelfth century.<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 6. Monastery of the Carmelites of Bamberg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cCarmeli Bambergensis,\u201d or \u201cthe Carmelites of Bamberg,\u201d was (and still is) a monastery located on the hill of Kaulberg near the Chapel of the Virgin Mary in Bamberg, Germany. Established as a \u201chospital for the poor\u201d\u00a0 in 1030 by Archbishop of Trier Eberhard I, and then converted into a women\u2019s monastery in 1157 by Archbishop Eberhard II, the convent housed a vast collection of manuscripts and prints until its first dissolution in 1554. Despite the shutdown of the institution during the Protestant Reformation, the Carmelite Library within the monastery remained intact, and was used by members of the order who occupied the convent\u2019s \u201cabandoned rooms\u201d until it was re-instituted in the seventeenth century. In 1803, the monastery was once again dissolved by the government as Bavaria began a period of secularization, meaning that the majority of the texts housed inside the convent were eventually donated to Bamberg State Library (Staatsbibliothek Bamberg). Another portion of the prints and rare incunabula were sold at auction to American collectors– which explains their 3,500-mile journey over the Atlantic during the mid eighteenth century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 7. Fly leaf containing Hand B on top and Hand A on the bottom. Note the difference in width and flourish between the two scripts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhile it appears that the 1559 copy of <\/span>Calendarium Historicum Conscription <\/span><\/i>was annotated intermittently between 1560 and 1580 (as evidenced by the conveniently-dated marginalia), my analysis of the script in the text has revealed that<\/span> at least<\/span><\/i> two separate individuals made notes in the blank spaces. While one of the hands (Hand A) resembles blackletter with its wide spacing, short mid-height, and thick stroke width, the other (Hand B) has a slight slant, longer mid-height, smaller spacing, and a thinner stroke width, boasting slight flourishes on its capital letters. <\/span>The difference between the two scripts can be seen clearly on the second blank leaf of the text; notice how the top half of the page depicts the qualities Hand B, while the bottom half (marked with the digitally-drawn line in Figure 7) has the characteristics of Hand A. The same visual difference is evident in a side-by-side comparison of pages 119 and 122, the former containing Hand B and the latter containing Hand A. <\/span><\/p>\nFigure 8. Left Image: Hand B, Right Top Image: Hand C, Right Bottom Image: Hand A<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIt is also possible that a third script, Hand C, appears throughout the text; it bears a striking resemblance to Hand A, but has a \u201ccruder\u201d appearance (characterized by a lack of separation between each individual letter). While it could be true that Hands A and C are written by the same scholar on two different occasions, the scripts look different enough to attribute them to two completely separate individuals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs there are two or three different writers who have annotated the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i>, I have reasoned that they were likely sitting down with the text at different points during the mid-sixteenth century, each utilizing the blank space in the book to write notes about their own lives or theological beliefs. Fortunately, most annotations are conveniently dated, indicating that they were written during or after the years mentioned in the marginalia. While the following conclusion is undoubtedly an oversimplification (as there are multiple exceptions to this general rule), it seems as if Hand A was written between 1562 and 1568, while Hands B and C were written between 1568 and 1579.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile it makes complete sense that these notes were made by a group of nuns or friars in the Carmelite Monastery who revisited the text at various points during the Reformation to record current events as Eber recommends in the Preface, it is perplexing that they chose to do so in a text so strongly tied to the Protestant cause. A devout Lutheran and close companion of Martin Luther, Paul Eber strongly (and openly) opposed the beliefs of the papacy, choosing to supplement the traditional Roman calendar with the corresponding months of four other populations (two of which– the Jewish and the Egyptians), would have been considered \u201cbarbarous\u201d and \u201cheretical\u201d by Roman Catholic leadership of the time period). So what was this text doing in the hands of some of the most conservative Roman Catholics in Germany? Why would one of the sources of the Counter-Reformation be preserving and annotating such a \u201cscandalous\u201d work?<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 9. An image of William H. Sherman’s categories of marginalia (from pg. 17 of Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhile I cannot be completely sure that I am correct due to my inability to decipher Latin shorthand, I can guess that many of the longer annotations written in this text are \u201csocial,\u201d \u201cecclesiastical,\u201d or \u201cpolitical\u201d comments, which William Sherman categorizes as \u201cPolemic Responses\u201d in <\/span>Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England<\/span><\/i>. Debate was common in the annotations of antiquarian texts, and this argumentation was even prevalent between the annotators themselves when they disagreed with previous owners\u2019 notes. For example: One of the digital facsimiles of <\/span>Calendarium Historicum Conscriptum, <\/span><\/i>whose marginalia have been translated by paleographers, contains a written debate between two sixteenth-century scholars, each disagreeing as to whether or not Gutenberg\u2019s press could be considered a \u201cmajor technological advancement\u201d in the printing industry. As it was a common occurrence, it is quite possible that the long paragraphs of writing on pages 118 and 119 of this text are theological arguments against Paul Eber\u2019s statements in the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i>. I will be diving deeper into the potential contents of these notes in the section \u201c<\/span>On the Marginalia of the <\/span><\/i>Calendarium,\u201d but for now, it is sufficient enough to conclude that the book was likely purchased, bound, and annotated by a group of Roman Catholics between 1560 and 1580.<\/span><\/p>\n3. William E. Saunders (1871)*<\/strong><\/p>\nFigure 10. Handmade label of William E. Saunders (note that the first name is abbreviated to Wm.) Research suggests that the “71” refers to 1871 as opposed to 1771.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCalendarium <\/span><\/i>in 1871 as opposed to 1771 (this also matches up with the rough date that the Carmelite Monastery\u2019s books were shipped out of Germany). While it is impossible to know for sure, it is possible that William Saunders purchased the text at auction directly from the Carmelites of Bamberg (similar to the way a man named \u201cMr. Marks\u201d bought the texts for a collection at Amherst College in the 1830\u2019s).<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 11. William E. Saunders House in Cambridge, Massachusetts (now registered as the Mary Prentiss Inn).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter a bit of research (which would not have been possible without the help of Professor Cook\u2019s Twitter page), I discovered that William E. Saunders was the name of a wealthy Cambridge collector whose father (also named William) erected the William Saunders House for him in 1843 (another date that lines up with the \u201c71\u201d on the book label). According to a \u201cReport of the Free Public Library Commission of Massachusetts (Vol. 10-18),\u201d \u201cthe income of the William E. Saunders Fund [was] devoted to the purchase of books on local history as well as to books on genealogy, as heretofore limited.\u201d Despite the fact that the description does not include antiquarian prints, it is quite possible that the library began collecting these as soon as they became available at auction.<\/span><\/p>\n*Note1 : The reason why I have asterisked this owner\u2019s name is because I am currently unsure if the book label in the <\/span><\/i>Calendarium<\/span> truly says \u201cWm. E Saunders.\u201d This seemed like the guess with the most historical support (especially when taking the date into account), but I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty that this particular Saunders owned the text.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n*Note 2: I have reasoned that William E. Saunders was a resident of the United States as opposed to Germany due to the etymology of the last name. I have also used the style of his signature as evidence for the \u201c1871\u201d ownership date, as Saunders\u2019 hand is more reminiscent of a nineteenth-century handwriting than one from the sixteenth century.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n4. Holmes (Date Unknown, Perhaps Late 19th Century)*<\/strong><\/p>\nFigure 12. “Holmes” inscription above the Colby College bookplate on the paste down of the front cover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe name “Holmes” has been stamped in black ink above the Colby College bookplate on the front paste down of the\u00a0Calendarium<\/em>. There is no first name or date provided with this inscription, making it extremely difficult \u00a0to track the person or library who placed their name within the text. There is a library in Oxford, Maine called the Freeland Holmes Library, which was established in 1873 after its founder (Freeland Holmes) bequeathed a fund of $500.00 to be matched by the town to purchase books, however I cannot be sure if this<\/em> is the library being referenced in Eber’s work. Though this answer makes the most contextual sense based on the research I have completed, the Freeland Holmes Library’s small size and initial lack of funding implies that it may not have been able to purchase a book like the Calendarium<\/em>\u00a0upon its establishment in the late nineteenth century.<\/em><\/p>\n5. Florence Perry Hahn and William Harding Hahn (~1903-1957)<\/strong><\/p>\nFigure 13. Colby College bookplate on paste down of the text’s front cover. Note that the plate states the original shelf number at the top, and mentions the name “Mrs. Florence Hahn” at the bottom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe owner with the most number of existing records was Florence Perry Hahn (1881-1957), a resident of Friendship, Maine who graduated from Coburn Classical Institute and then studied two years at Colby College from 1899 to 1900. According to (an extremely detailed) family history book called \u201cOur Perry Family in Maine,\u201d Florence was a \u201cfine teacher\u201d at Camden, Maine, and a faithful member of the Baptist Church. On April 8, 1907, she married Dr. William Harding Hahn, who graduated from Vermont Academy in 1899 and then earned a degree from Baltimore Medical College in 1904. According to the book, he was a \u201cgood physician\u201d and a Knight of the Pythias.<\/span><\/p>\nOne of Dr. William Hahn\u2019s largest hobbies was collecting antiquarian treasures, as was evident by passages in <\/span>Maine, A Guide Down East<\/span><\/i>, which mention that \u201cin a small building on the grounds of Dr. William H. Hahn is an extensive <\/span>Collection of Glassware<\/span><\/i>, consisting of about 1,000 pieces, most of which are early American lamps. Dr. Hahn also has a collection of ruby glassware and some old Roman and Turkish lamps.\u201d While Hahn mainly collected light fixtures, he also maintained a library of old literature, the majority of which was a collection of historical documents from Friendship, Maine. According to a legal case detailing transactions between Florence Perry Hahn and the town of Friendship, the Hahn\u2019s possessions included four folders containing typescript copies of deeds for land in Meduncook, Lincoln County, Maine from 1762 to 1807, when Maine was still a part of Massachusetts. Meduncook was later renamed \u201cFriendship\u201d– the eventual birthplace of William Hahn. Though Paul Eber\u2019s <\/span>Calenarium Historicum Conscriptum <\/span><\/i>does not fit the typical description of items owned by the Hahn\u2019s, it was certainly in Florence\u2019s possession by the time she donated the text to Colby College in the mid twentieth century.<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 14. Update on the life of Florence Perry Hahn, published in the “Colby Alumnus Vol. 45, No. 2: Winter 1956.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter William Hahn\u2019s passing, Florence was responsible for tending to his collections. Likely in an effort to donate them before her own passing, she gifted a large collection to Colby College– a donation recorded on the bookplate lightly pasted to the inner front cover of the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i>. The label depicts the Colby College official seal, along with information on the room and shelf number for the book when it first arrived. Notably, according to the plate, the text was placed in the Robinson Room on shelf D11.E16– the very spot where I found it at the beginning of this Pet Book Project.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nFigure 15. Robinson Memorial Room at Colby College, where Eber’s\u00a0Calendarium\u00a0<\/em>is held.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n6. Colby College (~1957-Present)<\/strong><\/p>\nWhile there are no records indicating the exact donation date of <\/span>Calendarium Historicum Conscriptum<\/span><\/i> from Florence Perry Hahn\u2019s collection, we can assume that it was donated close to the year of her death in 1957. Still kept in the Special Collections Library today, this text is available for all Colby students to view during the school year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOn the Marginalia of the <\/i><\/b>Calendarium<\/b><\/p>\n
While I have spent a considerable amount of time hypothesizing how many members of the Carmelite Monastery annotated Eber\u2019s <\/span>Calendarium Historicum Conscriptum<\/span><\/i>, I noted that I was not able to read the marginalia written in the text\u2019s blank leaves. Despite my lack of expertise with paleography, I have noted some key elements of the annotations that should not go unmentioned:<\/span><\/p>\n1. Almost every single annotation includes a date, whether that be a day, month and year or just a simple \u201cAnno ____.\u201d As this book is a calendar, and contains information about contemporary historical events, it makes contextual sense that its readers continued this historical progression with notes about their own lives.<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 16. Marginalia in the Dedicatory Epistle; notice that “Generationi Rectorum benedicetur” is underlined, followed by a note identifying the phrase as “Psalm: 111.” Also note the Greek annotation at the end of the paragraph.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n2. I have detected numerous Biblical references throughout the marginalia, such as the word \u201cMary\u201d appearing on page 119, the word \u201cChristi appearing on page 518, and the note \u201cPsalm 111\u201d written next to an underlined sentence stating \u201cGenerationi Rectorum benedicetur\u201d in the Dedicatory Epistle. I was able to translate the Latin on this page, and I have confirmed that the reader was correct in recognizing the language from Psalm 111 (perhaps further justifying the idea that the person annotating this book had a firm grasp of the Bible and was likely a scholar or member of church).<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 17. Annotations at the top of page 208, depicting two Omegas (Greek letters) in the left margin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n3. There are notes in Greek that appear throughout this text, indicating that whomever annotated the work could read and write in multiple Classical languages (typically an ability of educated scholars or ecclesiastical leadership). Most of these annotations are phrases written next to sentences that are already in Greek (such as a sentence in Attic Greek midway down page in the Dedicatory Epistle), while other notes are small Greek symbols that probably have other literary or astrological meanings (such as the Omega [\u03a9] appearing twice on page 208 (once in the top left hand corner of the page, and the the other time appearing next to the word \u201cBEDA\u201d in the body of printed text). One page (264) additionally includes two identical symbols that look like three tally marks crossed out by a diagonal line, although I am unable to comprehend what the reader was intending to draw (perhaps it is another Greek symbol or part of the reader\u2019s Latin shorthand).<\/span><\/p>\nFigure 18. Upside down annotations on page 118 of the text.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n4. Multiple annotations are written upside down, such as those on pages 118 and 356. While it seems like both annotations were written this way for either spatial reasons or personal preference (ie: if the reader found it easier for his or her hand to write at the tops of pages than the bottoms), it is interesting that the practicality of writing was consistently prioritized over future legibility. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that Paul Eber\u2019s layout of the calendar forced readers to rotate the book in various directions in order to properly read multiple month charts; based on the annotations in the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i>, it seems that his readers were listening.<\/span><\/p>\n5. At least three or four of the annotations mention the word \u201cfolio\u201d or \u201cfol.\u201d followed by a number, indicating that they are likely referencing sections of another text within the <\/span>Calendarium<\/span><\/i> (perhaps the Bible or some other religious work). According to Sherman, \u201ccross-references and passages copied verbatim from other books are frequent enough to attest to the wide-spread practice of what has been called \u2018extensive\u2019 rather than \u2018intensive\u2019 reading,\u201d meaning that quoting and then citing folios from other works would not have been unusual for the time period.<\/span><\/p>\nOn the Binding of the Text<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
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