Like ebooks, printed books and manuscripts tell a story that was envisioned by a particular author.
Like ebooks, printed books and manuscripts tell the story of their creation (a tale of ink and paper and printers, or ink and vellum and scriptoria, as opposed to a tale of computers and magnetic media):
Like ebooks, printed books and manuscripts also usually tell a different story each and every time an author's story is read.
Unlike ebooks, though, printed books and manuscripts tell an additional story. It is a story that all too often falls on deaf ears. The older the printed book or manuscript, the more complicated this story often is. For it is a tale of travel through time and space, a story spun by every manuscript and printed book that has ever existed:
In the early morning of 16th July 1648, during the very last stages of the Thirty Years War, a Swedish force one hundred strong, commanded by the Imperial renegade Ernst Odowalsky, scaled the city wall of Prague’s Kleinseite or ‘Little Side’ (Cz. Malá Strana) on the west bank of the Moldau. Overpowering the unsuspecting guard, the Swedes made their way through the Strahov gate. Soon afterwards 3,000 men flocked into the Kleinseite under the command of Swedish General Hans Kristofer von Königsmarck. The castle and a number of aristocratic palaces, in which both the Emperor and the Austro-Bohemian nobility had amassed great quantities of valuables, were at the troops’ mercy and were systematically looted, following a detailed plan which Königsmarck and Odowalsky had drawn up together. The haul was immense. Apart from a host of invaluable art objects, the Imperial Treasury contained a number of valuable illustrated works and rare manuscripts. The inventory drawn up at the time mentions 100 an allerhand Kunstbüchern (‘a hundred art books of different kinds’), among them two world-famous manuscripts: Codex Gigas and Codex Argenteus (the Silver Bible, now in Carolina Rediviva, Uppsala). The Emperor’s library, mainly from the time of Rudolph II was also looted, as was the princely Ursini-Rosenberg collection of books, one of the very finest at that time, which had been transferred to the castle only the year before. The Praemonstratensian monastery of Strahov, the Jesuit College and several aristocratic palaces were ransacked as well.
The complicated story of the movements of the famed Codex Gigas through time and space is notable more for the magnificence of that particular manuscript (it is the world's largest known surviving manuscript)...
...than for the travails it underwent, travails that have been experienced by many lesser printed books and manuscripts over the centuries:
All the booty was quickly inventoried. The books were packed into 30 large chests. On Queen Christina’s instructions these were shipped down the Elbe to the Baltic coast during the autumn. Time was short, because in the Osnabrück peace talks it had been settled that all booty which had not been carried off when hostilities ended was to be returned. The peace treaty was signed in Münster in mid-October 1648. The booty was stored during the winter in the border fortress of Dömitz, Mecklenburg, and at the end of May 1649 it reached Stockholm by way of Wismar where the Queen waited impatiently. She had made plans to enlarge the royal castle to make room for the new treasures. Isaac Vossius, her librarian, was tasked with arranging the books captured in Prague. He finished the work in March 1651, having catalogued some of the books and all the manuscripts. His catalogue starts with Codex Gigas. Most of the books ended up in the royal castle library, but some became the private property of Swedish and foreign officers. Some were given to Christina’s favourites and some in lieu of salary to her librarians. Other books went to the Swedish university and grammar school libraries, and probably also to Dorpat (Tartu) University.
The Queen eventually took the most valuable books and manuscripts with her when she left the country. The majority of those items are now in the Vatican Library. Much of the booty that remained in Sweden later perished in a number of fires while some was sold at book auctions in the eighteenth century. But a portion has survived and is now mainly in the Royal Library, Stockholm, in Uppsala and in Lund University Library....
The tales of these and similar such travails can be read by any book collector who is receptive to the evidence. The story is told in the paper and other materials used to create printed books and manuscripts....
The story is told in the annotations that have been left upon the pages of printed books and manuscripts....
Nicolaus Copernicus. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Nuremberg: Ioh. Petreius, 1543. Annotated by 16th- and early-17th-century German astronomers, Johann Hommel and Johannes Praetorius. Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.
The story is told in the bindings and re-bindings that printed books and manuscripts have endured....
The story is told in censuses and the catalogs of libraries and book fairs and booksellers and auction houses....
Do you know the secret history of your private library?
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