Art at the service of justice: the old townhall of Kampen

Map of Kampen by Jacob van Deventer (Kampen, around 1500-Cologne, 1575) – from database NRCD/KB, The Hague

Along the river IJssel in the east of the Netherlands a number of towns still have a more or less medieval inner city, with both civil and ecclesiastical buildings. Cities such as Kampen, Zwolle, Deventer and Zutphen are not completely unfamiliar to historians thanks to their place in the history of the fourteenth-century reform movement in the Catholic Church, the Devotio Moderna. They played a subordinate but not neglectable role, too, within the Hanseatic league. The famous series of maps of cities in the Low Countries by Jacob van Deventer, a cartographer from Kampen, came into existence thanks to a request in 1558 by the Spanish king Philipp II. The surviving maps have been digitized in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid.

Kampen is the city closest to the end of the IJssel river. Five medieval city gates have survived the centuries. The town-hall from 1350 was hit by a fire in 1543. The courtroom had to be completely refurbished, and this was done in an indeed lavish way. Its rare unharmed survival makes this rather small building more important than you would guess from the outside. Until 2001 it was used by the city, and now it is part of the Stedelijk Museum Kampen. The way justice and city power are represented in the main room at the first floor, which was both court room and council room, is exemplary. A visit to this space amounts to a kind of pilgrimage for legal iconography. Within the space of a short post I can only focus on a few aspects of a building that deserves close inspection and study.

From the outside one can immediately notice the double function of the building. Barred windows give the building an austere image. On one side six sculptures kept a watch. Alas the figures of Charlemagne and Alexander the Great and allegoric personifications of Justice, Charity, Temperance and Fidelity had to be replaced by modern sculptures; the remains of the original sculptures can be seen at the Koornmarktspoort, one of the city gates. Wim van Anrooij, a reknown medievalist and specialist on the history of the Nine Best, doubted the identification of Charlemagne in ‘Beeldvorming in taal en steen ten stadhuize: Alexander en Karel de Grote (of Julius Caesar?) in Kampen’, Kamper Almanak (2002) 50-65.

Inside the town-hall much more is to be seen than I will present here. In a room adjacent to the Main Room you will find a fine exhibition of numerous objects from the history of Kampen as a proud city which could keep its independence until 1795.

The Main Room of Kampen’s town-hall is rather dark, and perhaps thus the white mantelpiece created in 1545 by Colijn de Nole from Cambrai attracts even more attention than it does already on its own. To the left an elaborate wooden structure with a painting of the Last Judgment is almost insignificant. I will point out its beautiful elements later on.

Central to the superb mantelpiece are a number of allegorical figures. In the midst you can see from the left to the right the figures of Spes, Caritas and Fides, hope, charity and fidelity, the three central virtues of faith. The Latin text below the central statue states that kingdoms fall due to luxury, cities prosper because of their virtues, the public interest grows by peace, and perishes by folly. Between the top part and the main part a scroll with another text in Latin focuses on justice, “The violence of Mars cedes before the sword of justice”. Four smaller statues represent Justice, Peace, Prudence and Temperance, four cardinal virtues. The eagle, symbol of the Holy Roman Empire and their Habsburgian rulers, crowns the very top of the mantelpiece in splendid Renaissance style.

The freezes show both scenes from Roman history and from the Bible. The left freeze pictures the Judgment of king Solomon (1 Kings 3,16-28). By now it should be clear that by focusing on the main elements I skip the very details which make this object so stunning. The putti, the two lions with the city blazons, the smaller heads, the use of perspective in the niches, the way persons are dressed, and the smaller reliefs all deserve, nay, need attention if you want to interpret the iconographic program of this showpiece convincingly.

To mention just one element that has to be considered, you cannot understand this mantelpiece properly without acknowledging the fact that specifically in the city of Utrecht late medieval mantelpieces used to be adorned by elaborate freezes. Colijn de Nole had connections with Utrecht. The medieval diocese of Utrecht covered large parts of the Netherlands, including the cities on the IJssel. The recent exhibition Ontsnapt aan de beeldenstorm [Escaped from the Iconoclastic Tempest] at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht showed a surprising number of mantelpiece freezes, many of them from the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, see the exhibition catalogue Middeleeuwse beeldhouwkunst uit Utrecht 1430-1528 [Medieval sculptural art from Utrecht 1430-1528] (Utrecht: Museum Catharijneconvent; Antwerp 2012). Some of De Nole’s work is charted in Medieval Memoria Online, a new database at Utrecht University on medieval memorial and funeral art in the Netherlands.

A double room

However, apart from an exhaustive inspection of all details, it is necessary to look at the other objects, and to view the mantelpiece as a part of a room with a double function, both court room and council room.

The wooden structure – in fact it is the seat of the judges – with at its top a painting of the Last Judgment by Ernst Maler can boast some fine carpentry by Meester Frederik, but it is not up to the standards set by Colijn de Nole. Its dimensions are really small compared to the mantelpiece. In fact the wooden edifice prevents you to have a good look at the right side of the mantelpiece, where you can only guess that the statue must represent Temperance.

Another detail of the woodwork is also relatively small, a finely detailed relief with an allegory of Justice. I could point out its position below a canopy or the way Renaissance style does influence even a lesser artist, but all these things can speak only when you bring them into a coherent view of all objects in this room. The most recent monograph on Kampen town-hall was published almost 25 years ago, A.J. Gevers and J. ten Hove, Raadhuis van Kampen (Zwolle 1988). At least one art historian has looked recently in close detail at the materials De Nole used for the mantelpiece [Trudy Brink, 'Spiegel voor stadsbestuur nader onderzocht : over de schouw van Colijn de Nole in Kampen', Bulletin KNOB 108 (2009) 183-193, 222-223 (with a summary in English)]. The title of this article states the mantelpiece formed a kind of mirror for the city council. I was not able to find more recent studies on it in the database of the former Dutch center for legal iconography at the Royal Library in The Hague. You can find some eighty images concerning Kampen from this collection at The Memory of The Netherlands, the portal to more than hundred Dutch digital collections.

Let’s turn to the other half of the room. Spectators were allowed to watch the proceedings of a trial from this part of the room. Along the walls you find a mass of spears, a graphic reminder of the city’s power. The door in the center opens to the Tower of the Échevins (Schepentoren), the oldest part of the building.

The wooden screen has large openings for viewing the proceedings in the other half of the room. In a way it is a reminder of the choir screens in medieval churches. Here by lending forms from Classical Antiquity it suggests powerfully that justice is being administered in a classic and therefore just way. The sixteenth-century city council of Kampen was clearly aware that their power had to be framed, to borrow an anachronistic term…

“Looking at legal history”

In 2014 the Dutch legal history journal Pro Memorie, published by the Foundation for the History of Old Dutch Law will publish as a special issue a volume on legal iconography with the title Rechtsgeschiedenis in beeld, “looking at legal history”. In the call for papers legal historians are invited to write contributions on legal iconography from the widest possible perspectives, be it artists’ contracts, the use of colors or forbidden art. Every year Pro Memorie has space for some contributions from the field of legal iconography. I look forward to the volume that will be published in 2014 for the fifteenth anniversary of this journal. No doubt Dutch and Flemish town-halls and their interiors, too, will figure in the new book. Kampen with its rich municipal archive would be a wonderful example to marvel at and to study again.

Digital wealth: comparing national digital libraries

On April 13, 2013 the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) was launched, an initiative that brings together digitized sources from a number of cultural institutions in the United States. In November 2012 the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) started which combines the digital collections of over 2,000 institutions in Germany. The DDB is still in its beta-version. A Wealth of Knowledge is the motto of the DPLA. In this post I will try to make a comparison between the new American and German national digital libraries. For this purpose I will look both at rather random chosen subjects, and also at specific subjects with a link to legal history. How rich are both initiatives? Do these two new digital libraries compare favorably with other national digital libraries? Actually it is already interesting to look how many comparable initiatives exist worldwide. A number of them is mentioned on my own webpage for digital libraries. Moreover, it is sometimes difficult to tell a national library portal apart from a general search portal or a national portal for digitized cultural heritage.

The limits of comparison

Perhaps it wise to start here with a Dutch proverb, je moet geen appels met peren vergelijken, do not compare apples with pears, in other words, don’t compare incomparable things. Each of the digital portals and national digital libraries has its own history, background and very different cooperating partners. In my view it is not unimportant to bear in mind this when I assess the qualities of the DPLA and the DDB. I do not want to judge them, but solely to put the efforts behind both libraries in perspective.

The first impression of the website of the Digital Public Library of America is colourful and inviting. A rolling banner shows an impressive array of beautiful images and photographs of important people and events. Visitors of the website can immediately starting looking at information for particular locations, dates and years. The exhibitions section brings you quickly to a number of themes. For legal history I would like to single out Indomitable spirits: Prohibition in the United States. Below the motto A Wealth of Knowledge you can enter a free text search. The DPLA gives prominent space to its tweets, a news section and its apps, alas not yet the applications to use on smartphones to search its contents, but two separate search interfaces. One of the apps enables searching in both the DPLA and Europeana. I will include this double search app and Europeana, too, in my comparison. For brevity’s sake I will not discuss here the Library Observatory with a more abstract presentation of the search interfaces of contributing institutions.

A first hesitation occurs when you notice no less than three horizontal menus to navigate the DPLA portal. The uppermost menu is definitely more concerned with the background, and perhaps you will scarcely need it, For navigation a site map would be helpful, also when facing the multiple browse and search options, the choice in the presentation of results and the way to filter them. In one of the new items you can read in small print that the DPLA is launched as a beta-version.

Engraving of Aaron Burr – Enoch Gridley after John Vanderlyn, c. 1801 – National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

How to probe faithfully the quality of any meta-catalogue or portal to cultural heritage? In my view both well-known matters and rather randomly chosen examples will help clarifying this matter. As for the random example, I will choose subjects and themes which just happened to be within my view these days. At his blog Appealingly Brief Dan Klau wrote on April 18, 2013 a posting on Aaron Burr (1756-1836), the vice-president who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, and the ancestor of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, the endless speech used to stop senators from voting on bills and other proposals. Until now the filibuster figured on my blog only in his original form as a pirate, and thus I am happy to welcome his namesake!

The DPLA finds 20 results on Aaron Burr. Not one of them is directly connected with the filibuster, but more with the conspiracy for which Burr was indicted on November 25, 1806, and with Liberty Hall in Frankfort, Kentucky, a place visited by Burr. I found just one image of Burr himself. The double app for the DPLA and Europeana, too, brings 20 results from the DPLA, and 3 digitized books in Europeana. It is the constellation of holding institutions in the DPLA that surprises me, and their content. The search term filibuster gives me just six results, all of them cartoons from the twentieth century. No doubt the cultural institutions that cooperate in the DPLA hold great treasures, but you would expect results from digital collections at Ivy League universities, and from libraries such as the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Boston Public Library, although this library is present as a general partner in the Digital Commonwealth portal of cultural institutions in Massachusetts, a portal linked to the DPLA. As for now only the NYPL and Harvard Library already participate in the DPLA. In the digital gallery of the NYPL I found 57 images concerned with Aaron Burr. It seems that you cannot search yet all digital collections of Harvard Library in one search action at its website.

At present it seems the DPLA has enlisted the services of only a few major institutions, among them The Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Searching the Smithsonian collections for Burr yields more than 200 results. Looking for Burr on the website of the NARA will easily bring you 75 results. Clearly not of all of them connect immediately to digitized materials, but still the difference is very large. Somehow the aggregating process behind the DPLA is not working as completely and correctly as possible. However, the DPLA is helpful in another way: when you click on More subjects you will find a nice overview of associated themes. For Burr the filibuster is missing among these proposed subjects.

Culture and knowledge

The second library portal in my comparison is the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB). At its launch in November 2012 only a beta-version became visible, thus inviting criticism. The first impression of the DDB is austere, a white background with only a search interface, a slide show with just six pictures, and two clear menus. A sitemap seems at first superfluous, but with a view to the future it is wise to include it already. The language of the search interface can be switched to German or English. Below the general free text search field you can click on Advanced search where you will find initially find just two search fields. However, you can add search fields at will, choose from ten categories, and set the character of a boolean search on “AND”or “OR”. The link to institutions brings you to a map of Germany and a search interface to filter for archives, libraries, museums, research institutions, media and monument protection. At present nearly 2,000 German institutions contribute to the DDB.

The Grimm brothers, drawing by Ludwig Emil Grimm, 1843 – Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen – image Deutsche Fotothek, Dresden

How to test the qualities of the DBB in a fair and reliable way? 150 years ago Jacob Grimm died, the eldest of the Grimm brothers. Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) was not only responsible for the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812) – the fairy tales had their own bicentennial last year – and with his brother for the Deutsches Wörterbuch, but published also a number of works which touch upon legal history, starting perhaps with a famous article ‘Von der Poesie im Recht’, Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft 2 (1816) 25-99, on the poetry of the law, and editions such as the texts in Reinhart Fuchs (Berlin 1834) and the Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer (first edition in two volumes, Göttingen 1828).

Just entering “Jacob Grimm” in the DDB gives you already more than 200 results, with 80 images of either Jacob Grimm or both him and his brother Wilhelm. The DDB does not bring you to a digitized version of the 1816 article, online in the digital library for German legal journals of the nineteenth century at the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main. The DDB does contain the Reinhart Fuchs from 1834, and a letter on the subject of this book on several medieval versions of the Ysengrinus story by Grimm to the philologist Karl Lachmann, Sendschreiben an Karl Lachmann von Jacob Grimm über Reinhart Fuchs (Berlin 1840). The DDB lists several digital copies of the 1828 and 1854 editions of the Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer. Twice it is stated the first edition appeared in Leipzig, but the title pages of both volumes of this edition mention Göttingen. The error is due to the source of the meta-data on the digitized copy in question, in this case the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.

With Grimm I choose an example from the very heart of German romanticism and scholarship. The formal end of the German Holy Roman Empire came in 1803 with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, a decision of the German Reichstag at Regensburg. One of its consequences was the end of the secular power of a number of German ecclesiastical institutions over large territories, and the secularisation of all possessions of German monasteries. Many libraries were torn apart and ended in the holdings of new large libraries such as the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. By some German scholars 1803 has been described as a more decisive turn in German history than the French invasion by Napoleon. The DDB shows 106 results concerning this decision, not just books, but also links to archival records. Alas the links to the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart are only links to the online finding aids, not to the archival records themselves. When searching for Jacob Grimm at Europeana you get literally hundreds results. A search for the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss as a subject brings at Europeana only four results, but they happen to be the digitized appendices to the decision of the Reichstag with detailed information about institutions and territories. These volumes have been digitized by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. If you search for titles with the same word, you get seven results, again from the same library.

Promises to be fulfilled…

How to assess the results presented in the DPLA and the DDB? Even when bearing in mind we have only been in touch with the beta-version of both digital portals a feeling of disappointment is not far away. For all its colourful and alluring aspects the actual search results at the DPLA are meagre. When you try to search for the same subjects in the online collection databases of some of the major participating institutions you get more results than are at presented harvested by or aggregated at the DPLA. The presence of less well-known digital libraries in the DPLA is a promise for the future. It is good that the nets of the DPLA are not only cast in familiar fishing waters. No doubt the number of participating institutions will steadily grow. In itself it is a strength that this portal does transcend the borders and limits of the traditional library. Images, sound recordings, archival records and artefacts are welcome in the DPLA without any prejudice. The side effect is, however, that books are not as prominently present as you would wish them to be. Some subjects are distinctly nearly absent in the DPLA. The last thing I expected to find in the DPLA among the few results for decretals was a digitized copy at the Brigham Young University of a rare edition of a medieval decretal taken from the edition of the Compilationes antiquae (Lerida 1576) by Antonio Agustín.

The DDB is a bit of a paradox. I have never seen before a digital portal with nearly 2,000 cooperating institutions behind it. I had expected more and more interesting search results for the examples I have chosen here. They stem from a pivotal period in German history and culture. It is not very reassuring to find that searches elsewhere, for example at Europeana and in the collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek yield more results than at the DDB. Especially when you realize German regional meta-catalogues, and at the top of them the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog, help you to track books, including digitized copies, in a very quick and reliable way, the question arises what the aims and goals of the DDB are. Is one it aims to do better than the BAM-Portal? The BAM-Portal finds more results, but on closer inspection only a portion of them concerns digitized materials.

How do the DPLA and DDB compare to similar national and international initiatives? Europeana came into view here already several times. A search for Aaron Burr at the European Library brings you 35 digital results. I found for the filibuster 68 results, with just 5 digital resources. Amon the results you can filter for disciplines, which is helpful to find the right kind of filibuster. A similar search for the decision in 1803 to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire yields 23 digital results, with again mostly items digitized at Munich.

Worldwide several library portals exists which combine the forces of several national or even foreign collections to present their digitized resources. Here just a few examples: Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, increasingly aggregates also digitized books from other libraries, for example at Lyons and Toulouse. The Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura is an Italian initiative which combines the forces of a number of thematic and special collections. In Mexico a number of institutions work together in the Biblioteca Digital Mexicana. Fifty digital libraries in Poland can be searched using the portal of the Federacja Bibliotek Cyfrowech. The Biblioteca Virtual Miguel Cervantes is a portal of several major Spanish institutions. For Catalonia the portal Memòria Digital de Catalunya brings you to even more institutions. In the portal Digital NZ – Á-Tihi Aotearoa a number of cultural institutions in New Zealand bring digitized collections together.

One of the main factors for the success of digital library portals is the way data and meta-data are harvested and aggregated. In countries where many different digitization standards prevailed it is surely more difficult to create a successful portal website. The Polish consortium of digital libraries unites institutions which use exactly the same system. Efforts to create a national portal can diminish the financial means for participating institutions to digitize materials that you would like to find also at the national level. The launch of the DPLA took place in Boston. It was no coincidence that I mentioned the position of the Boston Public Library. Its participation in the Massachusetts portal Digital Commonwealth surely poses both possibilities and limits.

Not the least factor in the success of digital portals is sticking to international standards and at the same time creating a tool that is useful for users with different interests and backgrounds. Some portals might in fact be closer to a kind of national showcase than a research tool that fits the needs of scholars from various disciplines. Sometimes it is clear you will start your search elsewhere: for digitized historical maps a first orientation is given at such portals as David Rumsey’s, Old Maps Online and Archival Maps, and a second major resource to use for this purpose is the GEO-LEO-portal of the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg and the university library at Göttingen. In my view the DPLA and DDB should get the benefit of doubt. It is clear that they do not yet fulfill all high expectations, but at the same time it is wise to realize nobody would see them as the one and only gateway to digital resources in a particular country. Hopefully constructive comments will be more helpful than harsh early criticisms to create the first complete releases of the DPLA and DDB more satisfactorily. These promising portals deserve a second chance.

A postscript

The portal to historical maps of David Rumsey will shortly join the forces of the DPLA. Among the European portals I could have mentioned the Spanish portal Hispana.

The tercentenary of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713)

In 2012 I wrote twice about the Peace of Utrecht, the series of treaties which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). The first post looked in great detail at the textual tradition of the Westphalian Peace of 1648, the Peace of Utrecht and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). The post contains an overview of treaty collections and relevant websites for historical treaties. In my second post I looked at Early Modern peace treaties more generally and I tried to summarize the results of my first post and to bring together some elements for a search strategy. One of my main points was these peace treaties are indeed treaties in the plural. The Peace of Utrecht consists of 22 treaties, counting also the treaties concluded at Baden (1714) and Rastatt (1715). On April 11, 1713 seven separate treaties were concluded. Last week it was exactly 300 years ago that Utrecht was at the center of contemporary international politics.

For the commemoration in 2013 some 150 events will take place in Utrecht. In this post I want to inform you briefly about the more scholarly events such as congresses, lectures and exhibitions. It seemed useful and sensible not to present information on a number of related congresses only in a chronological order at the congress calendar of this blog. I will skip the publicity in the media which incidentally had to battle against other Dutch festivities, such as 125 years Concertgebouw and Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the re-opening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam after ten years of renovation. In this post I will benefit from a posting in Dutch on the Treaty of Utrecht at the website of the Foundation for the History of Old Dutch Law.

A scholarly approach of the Peace of Utrecht

The peace treaty between France and the Dutch Republic, signed in Utrecht, April 11, 1713 – The Hague, National Archives

Among the festivities in 2013 surrounding the commemoration scholarly events are not absent, but it took quite some time before one could notice them at the official website for the tercentenary, and eventually they are somewhat tucked away between concerts and other artistic events. A kind of filter would make it more easy to select particular events. The choice of one of the related themes, the commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Suriname in 1863, can be discussed. The treaty between Great Britain and Spain in which the Asiento de Negros, the concession for the Atlantic slave trade, was transferred to Great Britain, has conspicuously been signed March 26, 1713 in Madrid. However, the first major commemorating congress is called Performances of Peace: Utrecht 1713-2013 (Utrecht, March 24-26, 2013). The second main congress includes the history of slavery by focusing on colonial history, The Colonial Legacy: The Treaty of Utrecht 1713-1863-2013 (Utrecht, June 21-22, 2013). A one-day conference – which I normally would not include on my blog’s event calendar – looks at the long time influence and consequences of 1713, The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and its enduring effects (Utrecht, September 19, 2013).

Not only in Utrecht scholars will meet to discuss aspects of the Peace of Utrecht. The Peace Palace in The Hague and the University of Utrecht will organize a two-day conference The Art of Peace Making: Lessons Learned from Peace Treaties (September 19-20, 2013). In Paris the conference Une paix pour le monde: Utrecht 1713 will take place from October 24 to 26, 2013. In Canada a conference will be held in Montreal, 300 years of collective security since the treaty of Utrecht (1713-2013) (November 22, 2013). On November 29, 2013 the city archive of Ypres will host a one-day conference on the history of the Franco-Belgian border.

Some scholarly events have already been held. In Baden scholars met in November 2012 to study the efforts in the field of translation in diplomacy and publicity concerning the treaties of Utrecht, Baden and Rastatt. The German calendar website for the humanities H-Soz-u-Kult provides a report on this congress. In Madrid a three-day conference was hosted from June 7 to 9, 2012, on the theme 1713-2013: The Peace of Utrecht revisited. Historiographical Debate and Comparative Studies. A preparatory workshop on Rethinking the Peace of Utrecht 1713 for the conference in Madrid took place in Osnabrück on May 5-7, 2011. Two scholars participating in Madrid, Ana Crespo Solana and David Onnekink, will lecture together in Utrecht on April 23, 2013 on Los españoles, Europa y los Tratados de Utrecht.

Museums and the Peace of Utrecht

Some of the events commemorating the Peace of Utrecht enlist the services of modern art to bring home the importance of this peace treaty today. This year museums in Utrecht organize a number of activities, for which they have developed a special website, alas only in Dutch. For people who like to stick to history the safest choice is to visit the main exhibition In Vredesnaam [In the Name of Peace] at the Centraal Museum (April 12 to September 22, 2013). The archives at Utrecht have created an exhibition with the title Hoge pruiken, plat vermaak [High wigs, mean pleasure] at the visitor center located in the old provincial court, the building from which the header image of my blog stems. Clearly the imagery of the peace conference and the boost to city life for Utrecht in the early eighteenth century is at the heart of this exhibition (March 16 to September 25, 2013).

It was only by chance that I found information about another small exhibition at Utrecht – not mentioned at the special museum website – which documents in its own way the history and impact of the Peace of Utrecht. At the former guild hall of the blacksmiths, the St. Eloyengasthuis, an exhibition focuses on eighteenth century damask with images celebrating the peace treaty (April 24 to May 23, 2013).

New publications concerning the Peace of Utrecht

The peace negotiations at the city hall of Utrecht, 1712 – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – image from The Memory of the Netherlands, Historical Prints from the Frederik Muller Collection

As for recent scholarly publications concerning the Peace of Utrecht I have looked for them, but the harvest until now is meagre, and their language is mainly Dutch. In my contribution in Dutch I have listed also a few less recent publications. David Onnekink and Renger de Bruin have published De Vrede van Utrecht (1713) [The Peace of Utrecht (1713)] (Hilversum 2013), a very concise book which explains in its short compass successfully the importance of the peace that ended eleven years of war. Even the earlier commemorations in 1813 and 1913 are not forgotten. Scholars will take advantage from the list of pamphlets, printed correspondences and a up-to-date overview of the main relevant scholarly literature. I enjoyed the splendid choice of illustrations in this book. Onnekink and De Bruin do not forget to tackle the question why Utrecht was chosen. Several reasons have been mentioned, but none of them was mentioned by contemporaries. Surely the reception of the French king in 1672 by the city of Utrecht was quite favorable, and the States of Utrecht had advocated a peaceful solution against opposition from other Dutch provinces, but other cities could have hosted the negotiating parties, too. The two steps at the front of the old city hall did indeed nicely solve the problem of precedence among diplomats. The story of the streets and squares of Utrecht offering plenty space to coaches is a just a story. The city of Utrecht still lacks large squares!

In his new book historian Donald Haks studies the theme of publicity in the Dutch Republic during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, with a particular focus on pamphlets, Vaderland en vrede, 1672-1713. Publiciteit over de Nederlandse Republiek in oorlog [Fatherland and peace. Publicity about the Dutch Republic at war] (Hilversum 2013). Haks offers a broad perspective at all cultural aspects and forms of communication and information about the period of war which marked the slow decline of the Dutch Republic as an European power. Daan Bronkhorst looks at the early Enlightenment, political theory, colonial history and the role of monarchies in his volume of essays with the title Vrijdenkers, vorsten, slaven. Een nieuwe blik op de Vrede van Utrecht [Free minds, princes, slaves. A new look at the Peace of Utrecht] (Breda 2013).

Stefan Smid (Universität Kiel) wrote Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg : Geschichte eines vergessenen Weltkriegs (1701-1714) [The War of the Spanish Succession. The history of a forgotten world war [1701-1714)] (Cologne 2011). At H-Soz-u-Kult Axel Flügel criticized the old-fashioned treatment of the subject by Smid who failed to put events and developments in broad perspectives, and at Sehepunkte Josef Johannes Schmid had even heavier remarks for Smid’s book. Hopefully other scholars will this year succeed in creating convincing, interesting and fitting new views of a war ended by a series of landmark peace treaties at Utrecht, Baden, Rastatt and Madrid.

A postscript

At The Memory of the Netherlands I found a slightly augmented version of the print showing the city hall of Utrecht in 1712 from the collection of the Atlas Van Stolk in Rotterdam, with below the picture a list of all negotiators and the houses where they were lodged.

Viewing Dutch books at home

This week the Dutch Royal Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) in The Hague launched a new digital library, Boeken 1700-1870. In this digitization project some 160,,000 titles will eventually appear. On this blog digital libraries have often been the subject of posts. In this post I offer an extended version of my review in Dutch for the portal of the Foundation for Old Dutch Law.

A large Dutch digital library

In discussions of Dutch digitization projects the absence of any large project for old books has often been noted. On my blog, too, I discusses this in a number of posts, for example this post in 2011, and in another post that year about projects focusing on pamphlets. The Royal Library did develop substantial projects for old newspapers, journals and its illuminated manuscripts. For the project Early Dutch Books Online on eighteenth-century books it cooperated with the university libraries at Leiden and Amsterdam. However, with 10,000 books this digital collection is relatively small compared to projects elsewhere. Dutch viewers have free access to the digitized books from the Royal Library in the project Early European Books of Chadwick. Pamphlets from the rich collections of the Dutch Royal Library are present in Brill’s The Early Modern Pamphlets Online. Digital libraries at other Dutch institutions and many Dutch digital repositories can be searched using the BASE portal of the Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld. It is common knowledge to use the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog to trace books in any language in major libraries all over the world, including digitized works.

For this new project the Dutch Royal Library has started a cooperation with Google. It follows the example of several major public and national libraries worldwide. Of the scheduled 160,000 titles some 80,000 are already available. A first notable feature is the rather restricted search functionality, just for author, title and a free search possibility. The website opens with this general search feature; with Uitgebreid zoeken (Advanced search) you get three search fields. Searches for a particular period, place of publication or a publisher are not (yet) possible. One can enter in the author field the full name in its normal word order to retrieve titles by a particular author, and this feature is certainly distinctive. The free text search enables you to search in all digitized texts. One can combine the search fields, and even add an extra search field, in order to narrow search results. The language of the search interface is Dutch. One can save pages either as an image or as a PDF. Buttons with links to social media can help you to alert others on the books digitized in this Dutch project.

Looking for legal history

It helps very much to make a review both readable and useful when you can include clear examples. Dutch legal history furnishes enough to have a good look at the workings of this digital library. For an author search I took the name of Cornelis Willem Opzoomer (1821-1892). At first I used only Opzoomer, but of course other people do have the same name. I was happy to find that you can enter his name in its entirety to get only the books he wrote. One of the things to notice is the great variety of subjects this prolific lawyer wrote about. With the word wetboek, “code of law”, I checked for both codes of law and commentaries on them. Boeken 1700-1870 contains a great range of both commentaries on particular codes, and it brings you also to subjects as military law, and codes for the former Dutch Indies and Suriname. In particular the digitization of books on Suriname is a major asset. Until now you would have to turn for Suriname to the digitized texts in the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Digital Library of Dutch Literature). The digital collections contains printed collection of arresten, verdicts of the Dutch Supreme Court, the Hoge Raad. I did not find many books on particular trials (proces). For subjects such as legal consultations (consultatie, advies) I did not find many titles. However, the typical Dutch kind of official consultation by lawyers on new or proposed legislation, often in their quality as member of the Nederlandse Juristenvereniging, the Dutch association of lawyers, now known as pre-advies (preliminary consultation), was also called advies during the nineteenth century.

Beyond Dutch borders

Using the general Dutch term for law as a subject, recht, I was surprised to find some fifty books in German. If you search for penal law, strafrecht, you will even find just one Dutch books and ten German titles, because both languages share the same word. One should consider this as a useful reminder of the great influence of German law and lawyers all over Europe during the nineteenth century. The Dutch code of private law that came into force in 1838 was adapted from the French Code civil, but this did not diminish the attention of Dutch lawyers for German law. When checking for titles in other languages – using the term civil – I encountered nearly 200 titles, and surely more is to be found, for example six titles of works by Alexis de Tocqueville.

It is still early to pronounce either completely positive or negative judgments on this new digital library. At this moment Boeken 1700-1870 forms already a substantial addition to the number of Dutch digitized books. The search possibilities are restricted, but search results yielded for authors and titles are promising. The full searchability of texts is a major quality. The contents for the field of legal history do seem alluring, especially when they clearly transcend the frontiers of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the borders of the Dutch language. Hopefully the comments and wishes of users in my country and abroad help to strengthen the qualities of this project.

Money, museums and legal history

While following these days the news on the actions of the European Union to help the economy of Cyprus by taxing the savings of those who had hoped that they had found a safe haven I could not helping trying to see these events in a historical perspective. Was this the first action of its kind? How typical was the role of banks and the banking system in the Mediterranean world? How to find information about the history of money since Classical Antiquity? Numismatics is the historical discipline that traces the history of both coins and paper money, monetary objects and medals, the history of mints and much more. By sheer luck I had been alerted earlier this month about a very useful Italian blog post with a summary guide by Lucia Travaini to important numismatic websites. With one exception money museums are not present in her brief guide. Remembering the difficulties and surprises last year in creating a sensible webpage on museums and legal history I decided to create space for money museums, and to write about the way to reach this goal. Looking for Cyprus and Cypriote coinage offers a chance to test the quality of the information I found.

Numismatics as a historical auxiliary science has not the same attraction for historians as for example palaeography, the science dealing with old scripts and handwriting. Of course being able to read old handwritten texts is most useful, but not looking at coins is excluding arbitrarily material objects with their own history, impact and significance. Unfamiliarity and downright depreciation explain part of the minor position often allotted to this discipline. Numismatics has been looked upon unfairly as a hobby-horse for people with only antiquarian interest, something suitable for connoisseurs and collectors, or as at best a small branch of art history. In fact the uses of auxiliary disciplines are multiple. A first practical distinction is that historians do not receive the same training in numismatics as they get – or are expected to get – in fields such as palaeography, diplomatics, heraldry, epigraphy and sigillography. For periods in which written records are not as abundantly present as for contemporary or Early Modern history the importance of sciences dealing with objects and artefacts gain importance. Epigraphy and numismatics tend to be less distant for historians dealing with Classical Antiquity.

Tracing the history of money

It is not possible to sketch in just one post a concise history of money, even when you restrict yourself to numismatics. The pocket online guide of Lucia Travaini will serve as a starting point. At her website is more space to introduce her scholarly qualities. By the way, the Bibliostoria blog of the Biblioteca di Scienze della Storia of the Università degli Studi di Milano where Travaini published her guide gives you excellent information on new and less recent online resources for historians.

The first resources mentioned by Travaini are image databases. McSearch, the Medieval and Modern Coins Search Engine, brings you quickly to literally hundreds of images of Cypriote coins sold at auctions. At CoinArchives.com you find similar information, with, however, for Cyprus less results. Wildwinds is a more ambitious site where the origin and present value of coins can be assessed. This site points also to other online collections and to the Digital Library Numis, on which I will comment later.

Travaini puts a number of numismatic societies in a second section of her guide. For the American Numismatic Society she mentions the online bibliography of numismatic literature, but the ANS offers more digital resources, including a selection of links to mints worldwide, a list of money museums, and lists of numismatic societies, virtual collections, online search tools, discussion groups and periodicals, information which in my opinion makes this website a portal for numismatic studies. International cooperation between money museums is represented by ICOMON, the International Committee of Money and Banking Museums, an initiative of the ICOM federation of museums worldwide. Some ICOM committees offer an overview or even a database of relevant museums, but ICOMON has not yet created any substantial list on its website. At present the board of ICOMON is led by a Dutch chairman, Christel Schollaardt of the Geldmuseum in Utrecht, and by Elena Zapti from Cyprus as its secretary.

The building of the Dutch Mint (Rijksmunt) and the Geldmuseum, Utrecht

So far Travaini’s guide brings us quickly to the most relevant institutions and resources. The section with online catalogues of specialized institutions is disappointing, with only the catalogue of the Museo Bottacin in Padova. Are online catalogues of money museums indeed rare to find? When writing this post I could not access the library catalogue of the Dutch Geldmuseum in my own home town Utrecht. Instead of complaining about this unfortunate situation I should redeem it somewhat by pointing out that the Geldmuseum founded the International Network of Numismatic Libraries (INNL). At its website the INNL gives a substantial list of numismatic libraries and their library catalogues all over the world. For Italy the Civica Biblioteca Archeologica e Numismatica at Milan (!) is listed, with a library catalogue which is integrated into the central catalogue of specialized city libraries. As for the Museo Bottacin in Padova this is a department of a larger museum. In Italy and elsewhere many museums have a numismatic department. The website Musei Numismatici Italiani lists fourteen museum departments and independent museums in Italy. It seems useful to include here at least the Museo della Zecca in Rome and its online database, and the database Iuno Moneta at the Portale Numismatico dello Stato.

Online numismatic collections are the subject of the next section in Travaini’s guide, but here her definition of collezioni online is not clear. Both the links to the Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.,, do bring you only to webpages concerning collections, but not to collection databases such as those of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and Princeton University; the link given by Travaini, however, is not to the database of Princeton, but only to the webpage of its numismatic collection. Both at Bologna and Dumbarton Oaks there is no online database for coins and medals.

Perhaps it is wise to say at this point that whatever faults or omissions the guide of Lucia Travaini may have, it certainly brings you to many important and reliable resources. It is courageous to present any guide in a nutshell, and here weaknesses in some sections have to be seen in the light of the other sections. I would not have thought about listing links to websites concerning coin findings. Travaini points to the Swiss website Coin Findings which has four URL’s depending on the language you want to read, English, French, German or Italian, and to the Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds, 410-1180 for the British Isles of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

In the last section of her guide Travaini lists a small number of thematic portals and bibliographies. Here the bibliographic website of Hendrik Mäkeler (Myntkabinett, Uppsala) concerning both ancient and medieval coins offers even more than just a fine bibliography which can be accessed in English, Swedish and German, but an exhaustive portal with links on any subject ranging from individual scholars, money museums and collection databases to the coin trade. Numismatik.org is a portal created by the Swiss scholar Benedikt Zäch. It incorporates the webpages of the International Numismatic Council with good information about current events. One of Zäch’s special subjects is coin findings. This Swiss portal owes its existence certainly also to the vicinity of the Münzkabinett Winterthur. The last portal Travaini mentions is the Digital Library NUMIS which in a very efficient way present a collection of (mainly links to) digitized publications.

Approaching coins from Cyprus and money museums

By now you may wonder about two questions. Will I look here at the monetary history of Cyprus at all? How do I proceed with creating my own list of museums concerning the history of coins, medals and paper money? Before answering these questions I want to point out a weakness in just looking at specialized institutions for monetary history. Coins and medals have been collected in great quantities by some of the world’s largest museums. In particular the links listed by the American Numismatic Society and by Hendrik Mäkeler contain these collections, but in a list on the English Wikipedia the information is supplemented with the number of coins which makes clear these institutions form a class of its own. Moreover, in these collections you will find in particular ancient coins from the Mediterranean. If you want to find early coins from Cyprus you are wise not to forget to look in their collections.

Thus it might be surprising to know that the Smithsonian Institution has more than 1,600,000 coins and medals in the holdings of the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg follows with more than a million objects. The Department of Coins and Medals of the British Museum, too, is home to more than one million coins and medals. I cannot help noticing the absence of an online catalogue or objects database on its very useful website, nor do the Smithsonian Institution and the Hermitage. The collection with some 600,000 coins of the American Numismatic Society in New York can be searched online using the MANTIS database. The Münzkabinett of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna does not present an online catalogue of its own holdings – more than 700,000 objects – on its website, but it is home to a number of specialized catalogues for ancient coins and medals such as the Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum. However, one can find some images of coins easily by tuning the image database of the KHM. The Wikipedia list mentions the Département des Monnaies, médailles et antiques of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I guessed the Louvre would have a numismatic collection, too, but this is not the case.

A silver tetrobolos from Cyprus with the head of Aphrodite, circa 351-332 BC – Arthur S. Dewing Collection, Dewing 2534 – image Art and Archaeological Artifact Browser, Perseus Digital Library

For the sake of compactness I will not discuss here all collections in this handy list at the Wikipedia, and go to the Numismatic Museum of Athens (NMA). It is a relief to view this very well-organized website with a splendid array of (mainly external) web resources. For looking at ancient coins from Cyprus you will benefit from the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, a project of the British Academy. The section on numismatics of the bibliography in the Bibliotheca Classica Selecta, a project at the Université de Liège, is not to be missed. The NMA provides a link to the website Digital Historia Nummorum of Ed Snible with a fine section on Cypriote coins, even though it relies on rather old literature. Some of these works are still valuable. In the Digital Library NUMIS I found among publications from this century also a digitized version of a book-length article by Jan Pieter Six, ‘Du classement des séries cypriotes’, Revue Numismatique, 2e série, 1 (1875) 249-374. In fact this article builds heavily on the collections of the large general museums in Europe, and apart from the collection at Winterthur much less on the collections of specialized independent institutions. A last link adduced by the NMA is the Art and Archaeology Artifact browser of the Perseus Digital Library, the well-known project of Tufts University, where you can look for coins from ancient Greece. Among the large collections of major European cultural institutions I would like to mention the numismatic collection of the Bode-Museum, now part of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz. You can find its coins and medals both in the online catalogue of the Münzkabinett, and also among the images at SMB-Digital.

In the last paragraph I finally presented some online information about ancient Greek coins with a focus on coins from Cyprus. I have not become overnight a specialist on ancient coinage nor a scholar focusing on economic history, but it is possible to find quickly some reliable roads to the materials and issues you face when dealing with these subjects. Incidentally the NMA cooperated with the British Museum for the Presveis exhibition on the history of European monetary unions before the euro. The links presented and discussed here amount to building materials for a more substantial answer to the initial question about the history of money on Cyprus. With regard to the second question, the creation of a sensible list of money museums, it seems you have to combine information from several resources in order to create a new – and preferably commented – list of money and banking museums. I would like to include links to online catalogues and survey projects, too. As for now the museums list provided by the American Numismatic Society, at the INNL website and by Hendrik Mäkeler present us together a fairly reliable overview of major and minor institutions in the field of numismatic collections.

An obstacle for creating a new list is the very low number of museums I detected so far featuring the history of banking. No doubt some money museums do deal with this subject, but few museums focusing more exclusively on banking, banks and their history have surfaced on the websites I visited for this long post. Banks and their history fully merit a new post on my blog, and the crisis of the Cypriote banks is just one example that needs further exploration. I scarcely need to admit it was hard to find a place for legal history in this first post on money and museums. Until that post arrives here you might already profit from the rich links collection on banking history provided by Roy Davies of the University of Exeter.

New light on Alfred Dreyfus in a secret dossier

On March 7, 2013 the online edition of the New York Times ran a story on the digitization of the secret dossier on the Dreyfus Affair by the historical department of the French Ministry of Defense. The documents are accompanied by full transcriptions at the website which accompanies the recent book by Pauline Peretz, Pierre Gervais and Pierre Stutin, Le dossier secret de l’affaire Dreyfus (Paris 2012). In their book they publish documents which had until now been neglected or usually presented in versions now proven to be less correct than one had reason to believe.

On the website the three authors discuss not only the trials, but they point for example also to the earliest movie about the Dreyfus affair. The site has even its own discussion forum and amounts to a portal on the Dreyfus case. Only a section with links to other websites seemed at first absent, and in my post I tried to provide information to fill this gap. In fact I mistakenly looked more at the sidebar of the website than at the main menu! A number of virtual exhibitions contain rich visual and written information on a case which for many years divided opinions in France. The Dreyfus affair became soon a focus point of political and social strife. Antisemitism played a large role, but nationalism and militarism, too, fueled the furious exchanges between dreyfusards and their opponents.

Tampering with documents

The 1894 bordereau - image Service Historique de la Défense, Paris

There is scarcely any need to mention here the main facts of the affair around Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), because they occupy a place of its own in European and French history. A central place in the Dreyfus affair has always been given to the bordereau from 1894, the document in which Dreyfus allegedly gave secret military information to the Germans. It was only five years later that this document was definitely unmasked as a falsification. Historians trained as medievalists, in particular professors at the École nationale des Chartes (ENC), were the first to apply a rigorous historical examination to the bordereau. Arthur Giry, Auguste Molinier and Paul Meyer were all ancient students of or professors at this famous grand établissement for the formation of archivists, palaeographers and historians, The auxiliary historical sciences, in particular palaeography, the study of old scripts, and diplomatics, the critical study of documents, are still central to the education given at the ENC.

Among the other falsifications in the dossier secret (SHD/GR 4 J 118, kept at the Centre historique des archives of the Service Historique de la Défense in Vincennes) is the faux Henry (cotes 365-370) from 1896. Its false nature was detected in 1898. When the court in Rennes established this as a truth army officer Henry committed suicide in his prison cell.

The Dreyfus affair and modern memory

Mass communication was one of the factors in giving the Dreyfus affair its enormous scale and impact. Newspapers and magazines covered all developments extensively. In the struggle for new readers cartoonists and photographers were engaged. The cartoon of Dreyfus as the head of Medusa has become an icon of French illustrations in the late nineteenth century. Photographs, cartoons and more sober drawings provide a living image of this cause célèbre. They are also an important element at several websites.

On my website I have created a special page for virtual exhibitions concerning legal history. The Dreyfus affair looms large among virtual exhibitions on French legal history. 1906 Dreyfus réhabilité, “1906: Dreyfus rehabilitated”, is a bilingual website of the French Ministry of Culture which functions as a portal to all kind of media concerning Dreyfus. It offers a great starting point for anyone curious about the Dreyfus affair. Savoir et Enseignement. L’affaire Dreyfus et l’École Normale Supérieure, ”Knowledge and Education: The Dreyfus Affair and the École Normale Supérieur”, is a small online exhibition on the aspects of the case which touched this institute for higher education in Paris. The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries has created a website for the Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair with more than 1,000 documents related to the impact of the affaire on French culture and society. Recently Duke University Libraries launched the virtual exhibition A Mockery of Justice: Caricature and the Dreyfus Affair with a number of cartoons, including the dragon head cartoon from the Musée des Horreurs. In its web exposition on the writer Émile Zola the Bibliothèque nationale de France does of course cover the Dreyfus affair, and the library provides additional information, too. The website Le capitaine Alfred Dreyfus à Rennes, “un reportage oublié de l’été 1899″ shows a number of rare photographs taken in Rennes during the 1899 revision trial. At L’histoire par image 1643-1945, a website with a fine selection of important images on French history, you can find some of the best known images about the affair. The Musée d’art et histoire du judaïsme in Paris has created a website around its Fonds Dreyfus. 

When looking for images it is also useful to consult the website of the Agence photographique des Musées nationaux. A first simple search indicates that you will find scores of images on the Dreyfus affair. The search engine of the French cultural portal Culture is also very helpful in finding all kind of resources. It brings you for example to images in the Joconde database for French museal collections of 23 drawings of the 1906 trial now kept at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Angers. In 1906 Dreyfus got rehabilitated. He received the Légion d’Honneur and served during the First World War. You can search online in the Leonore database of the French national archives to view the card with his honors, first the rank of chevalier in 1906, and in 1919 a promotion to officier. The 20 digitized pages constitute actually a rather complete dossier of his life and career (LH/803/61), including a physical description of Dreyfus.

Two Dutch twists

The end of the Rennes trial approaches – cartoon by V. Geldorp from the Amsterdamse Courant, September 8, 1899 – image from The Memory of the Netherlands, http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/en/homepage

Before I start writing here about two Dutch angles on the Dreyfus affair I am happy to thank Agnes Jonker (University of Amsterdam and Archiefschool, Hogeschool van Amsterdam) for alerting me about the digitization of the dossier secret. By only pointing to the numerous websites with digitized historical newspapers it is already clear that the number of images of Dreyfus and all people who came into the picture during the long years of his trials can be easily expanded. For a Dutch twist I can mention for example a cartoon in the Amsterdamse Courant of Dreyfus’ opponents trying to tear the blindfold from Themis’s eyes. It is really interesting that not as most often Lady Justice but Themis, the muse of law, is portrayed here. Perhaps the presence of the Dutch law journal Themis - now called Rechtsgeleerd Magazijn Themis – helped the cartoonist in his choice.

To end with yet another Dutch twist, a rather large part of the dossier secret is occupied by letters which touch only the margins of the Dreyfus affair. The numbers 159 to 235 of the dossier secret are love letters by Hermance de Weede, the wife of the Dutch ambassador in Paris, to the German military attaché Schwartzkoppen. Hearing about this part of the story readers of Umberto Eco’s novel The Prague cemetery will admit that even the makers of falsifications and all those people fueling nasty sentiments in the media of the late nineteenth century would not have thought of getting these love letters into the case file of the Dreyfus affair, certainly not in view of the Parisian way of life in that age. Other love affairs are indeed present, too, in the fascinating pages of the dossier secret, but around 1900 they constituted the more combustible part of it.

A postscript

Let’s add another Duch angle on the Dreyfus affair, one that I should have mentioned already when writing. The International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam has substantial holdings on on this subject, including publications from the late nineteenth century. Cartoons are not mssing among the items to be found. Among the Dutch books are publications by Aaron Adolf de Pinto (1828-1907), a judge of the Hoge Raad, the Dutch Supreme Court, in particular Het proces-Dreyfus getoetst aan wet en recht (2 vol., ‘s-Gravenhage 1899). Alas the digitized copy in the Igitur Archive of Utrecht University is not published in open access.

At the death of two leading Dutch legal historians

Last month Dutch legal historians were saddened to hear about the death of Jacobus Thomas de Smidt (December 19, 1923-February 18, 2013). In several obituaries, for instance by Arthur Elias for Leiden University, by Joke Roelevink for the Huygens Institute of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, and at the website of the Dutch National Archives, the great efforts and merits of Tom de Smidt for the study of Dutch legal history and the organization between Dutch legal historians are commemorated. Among the major projects he initiated are the project on the history of the Great Council of Malines, a project for the edition of the Dutch codifications in the period around 1800. De Smidt also helped Dutch archives to modernize, and helped the Indonesian government to deal with the records of the Dutch East India Company in the Indonesian National Archives. People remember his warm personality, his sense of humour and his encouragement to young scholars, and I can testify myself for this. In fact his words “Ja, moet je doen!” [Yes, do it!] are for me among his most characteristic utterances.

On March 2, 2013, Robert Feenstra passed away at the age of 92. For legal historians abroad he was without any doubt the best known and most respected Dutch legal historian. This week John W. Cairns (Edinburgh) is one of the first legal historians to commemorate Feenstra. If you want to mention major themes and projects with which Feenstra dealt during his long scholarly life you are faced with a very great variety. The history of Roman law in Europe after the end of the Roman Empire and Dutch legal history give only the boundaries of his research interests. Let it suffice here that only four years ago he published with Jeroen Vervliet a new edition of Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum  (Hugo Grotius, Mare Liberum 1609-2009 (Leyden 2009)), and that in 2011 he witnessed the completion of the project for the Dutch translation of the Corpus Iuris. He continued the research started by Eduard Maurits Meijers on the history of the School of Orléans, and many scholars from Leiden have followed him on this path. Feenstra published a number of volumes with articles by Meijers.

For six decades Feenstra was on the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis. Feenstra helped fostering the relations between Belgian and Dutch scholars. Just like Tom de Smidt he served for many years on the board of the Foundation for the Study of Old Dutch Law. Today Paul Brood (Nationaal Archief) wrote a brief obituary for both scholars on the website of this foundation. Surely its own journal Pro Memorie will contain longer obituaries on both scholars in its coming issue. Luckily this journal published in its series Rechtshistorici uit de Lage Landen [Legal historians from the Low Countries] interviews with both scholars on their scholarly lives and careers (Pro Memorie 5 (2003) 3-38 (Feenstra); with De Smidt in the special issue Prominenten kijken terug. Achttien rechtshistorici uit de Lage Landen over leven, werk en recht [Prominent scholars look back. Eighteen legal historians from the Low Countries on life, work and law] (Pro Memorie 6 (2004) 313-329). Feenstra founded a circle of scholars studying the reception of Roman law in the Low Countries – convening either in Leiden or in Antwerp – where young scholars, too, often got and get a chance to present their doctoral research. I remember how I presented the first results of my doctoral research for this circle. The austere company listened patiently, asked questions on subjects I had neglected or problems which I had not yet grasped, and encouraged me to pursue my research. Robert Feenstra had a keen interest in people and he did not fail to help scholars with practical advice and suggestions for sources and literature. One of the things that impressed me always was the way Feenstra corrected his own views expressed in earlier articles. It makes you realizes how Feenstra’s career spanned almost half a century, his tenacity about cherished subjects, and the high scientific standards he applied to scholars and to himself. His presence at scholarly meetings all over the world expressed the continuity of Dutch legal history.

It is sad that both scholars are no longer with us to respond to our ideas, questions and emerging publications, but we can remain faithful to their memory by remembering their tireless efforts, smiling presence and amazing wide interests in contemporary life and legal history, and by following the paths and roads they paved for present-day scholars and future generations.

A postscript

On March 6, 2013, the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main published an obituary of Robert Feenstra. On March 28, 2013 the blog of the Peace Palace Library publshed an in memoriam on Robert Feenstra by Laurens Winkel.

The first papal abdication since six centuries

Yesterday’s news about the abdication of pope Benedict XVI made headlines all over the world. Surprisingly among all comments is the publication on January 3, 2013 of a post with the title ‘Can a pope ever resign?’ on the blog of Cathy Caridi, a contemporary canon lawyer from the United States living in Rome, who wrote weeks ahead of the news already a very well-informed article. She deals not only with the contemporary canon law of the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983, but also with one of the medieval precedents, the abdication of pope Celestin V in 1294. For canonical aspects of the current abdication Caridi’s article is a must.

Today Anders Winroth (Yale University) alerted on Facebook to the digital version of an article by Martin Bertram, ‘Die Abdankung Papst Cölestins V. (1294) und die Kanonisten’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 56 (1970) 1-101. The online version of this article is only accessible at institutions subscribing to the services of DigiZeitschriften, a German portal for the digitization of scholarly journals. Bertram wrote his Ph.D. thesis at Berlin about pope Celestin V. In the same issue of this journal Horst Hermann wrote another article concerning question about papal abdication and canon law, ‘Fragen zum einem päpstlichen Amtsverzicht’ (pp. 102-141). Scholars in the field of medieval canon law have not dedicated many books or articles to the subject of papal abdication. Peter Herde contribute a paper ‘Election and abdication of the pope: Practice and doctrine in the thirteenth century’ to the Proceedings of the sixth international congress on medieval canon law, Berkeley, 28 July-2 August 1980, Kenneth Pennington and Stephan Kuttner (eds.) (Città del Vaticano 1985) pp. 411-435. In a volume with a collection of articles by Walter Ullmann, Law and jurisdiction in the Middle Ages (London 1988) is an article ‘Medieval views concerning papal abdication’, originally published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record 71 (1949) 125-133. John R. Eastman wrote a book about the subject, Papal abdication in later medieval thought (Lewiston, NY, 1990). Abdications by monarchs, including the pope, are the subject of a German volume with learned essays, Thronverzicht. Die Abdankung in Monarchien vom Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit, Susan Richter and Dirk Dirbach (eds.) (Cologne-Vienna 2010). In this volume stemming from a series of lectures at the university of Heidelberg Thomas Wetzstein writes about ‘Renuntiatio – resignatio. Zum Amtsverzicht in der Kirche des hohen und späten Mittelalters’ (pp. 30-61).

After pope Celestin V in 1294 only pope Gregory XII formally abdicated, on July 4, 1415. Caridi did not mention this case in the fine article on her blog Canon Law Made Easy. Gregory XII stepped down at the Council of Constance which aimed at ending the Great Schism, the period in the history of the Catholic Church from 1378 onwards, with two popes, one at Rome and the other at Avignon. Earlier in 1415 the Council of Constance had deposited the so-called antipope John XXIII. In view of the modern regulations for a papal abdication one thinks immediately about the voluntary character necessary according to the Code of Canon Law for a valid abdication.

When searching for studies concerning papal abdication I saw also several studies about the abdication of kings. This theme might well return here in another post. In fact readers of this blog may well be surprised why I have not yet written anything about the announcement of the abdication of Queen Beatrix on January 29, 2013. This year she will formally abdicate on April 30. I guess the very time span between the announcement and the celebrations on April 30 against the rapid coming of a conclave in March pleads in favour of writing about it now. Normally I would have delved deeper into such matters, but right now I face other tasks. A quick scan of the Liber Extra, the collection of papal decretals published in 1234 on behalf of pope Gregory IX, did not bring me any result about papal renunciations, but a section of the Liber Extra, De renuntiatione (X 1.9) was devoted to bishops resigning from their office. For quick reference I used the text-only version of the IntraText Digital Library. Here I simply wanted to present some information about the background of a truly historical step. I am sure others will soon publish more detailed accounts about the abdications of 1294 and 1415. As for Facebook and medieval canon law, Anders Winroth has created a Facebook group on this subject.

A postscript

Mike Widener published on February 18 a post on the Rare Books Blog of the Yale Law Library with a nice late medieval woodcut of pope Celestine V, accompanied by further references. The Early Books blog of Yale’s Beinecke Lbrary posted on February 27 a post on a medieval images of pope Celestine V in a manuscript of the Vaticinia Pontificum.

Blogging about medieval glosses

Today I launched my new blog Glossae – Middeleeuwse juriidische glossen in beeld, “Glosses – Looking at medieval legal glosses”. The very heart of this blog is a manuscript fragment with glosses, marginal and interlinear comments, on Justinian’s Digest, not the ordinary gloss edited by Francesco Accursio in the thirteenth century, but glosses by twelfth-century lawyers, collectively sometimes known as the glossators. The fragment with these early glosses surfaced during the cataloguing of fragments, in itself part of the preparation of a new manuscript catalogue at the Department of Special Collections of Utrecht University Library. Bart Jaski kindly provided detailed photographs of the manuscript (Utrecht UB, ms. fragm. 7.67) which help very much in the decipherment of the glosses which are sometimes very small and barely visible in the original.

The new blog is the first Dutch blog at the Hypotheses network, a French initiative. In 2012 a German branch has been founded. Encouragements from this branch helped me to decide to join this German portal. Of course the question of the main language for my contributions looms large. I have published a first, more general description of the blog in Dutch, with summaries in German and English. The study of medieval legal glosses is indeed marked by the uses of several modern languages, such as French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Publications in English are relatively new in this field. In my first post I mention the appearance of several blogs concerning medieval – in particular Carolingian –  glosses based in the Netherlands.

A very Dutch phenomenon is the collaborative study of manuscripts by both lawyers, historians and palaeographers. I feel privileged to have participated in the yearly Friday seminars on juridical palaeography at Leiden University. It seems this example has until now not be followed anywhere, but its advantages have been recognized and applauded. Scholars from Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam joined in the decipherment and study of medieval legal manuscripts, often covered with tiny glosses. By bringing together each other’s skills, talents and experience we were able to read these manuscripts and to discuss their contents at a level which hardly one of the learned participants could have reached independently. The seminar at Leiden gave me a living example of the great importance of scholarly exchange, discussion and support.

Even when writing (sometimes) in Dutch, a langauge spoken only by some 22 million people worldwide, I am very much aware of the need to transcend borders in time, language and approaches. I am happy that Bart Jaski will join me to write postings for the new blog, either about the manuscript fragment at Utrecht, about other juridical fragments, or about interesting projects and promising methods to deal with medieval manuscripts at large. In particular the use of digital tools to edit and comment on (layers of) annotation seems able to shed new light on the edition of medieval glosses, too.

In itself the fragment at Utrecht is not particularly long. Its importance lies in the presence of the relatively rare preaccursian – i.e. before the Glossa ordinaria edited by Francesco Accursio – glosses, which help us to document not only the development of medieval legal doctrine but also the growth of the mass with many thousand glosses at the disposal of Francesco Accursio during the decades in which he created the final form of the ordinary gloss. This year hope to bring you regularly news about my new project. Hopefully it will not distract me too much from this blog. I could not resist the opportunity to create a wider network around my new blog with a new Twitter account, @GlossaeIuris.

Remembering slavery

How to deal with major questions, problems and conflicts in history? How should one write about them as a blogger? Subjects such as the abuse of power, law and justice, the undeniable role of violence, wars, the exclusion of people from society, and the outright systematic persecution of people for whatever reason, cry out for probing questions and research from many perspectives. Here I have promised several times not to avoid such themes and problems. One of the reasons that my first posting of 2013 occurs only late in January is exactly devoting time to one of the subjects which cannot be excluded from legal history. In my country the abolition of slavery in Suriname in 1863 will be commemorated. In this post I will look at some publications and websites dealing both with slavery as a general subject and with the history and aftermath of slavery in Suriname. Until 1975 Suriname, situated between British and French Guyana, was a Dutch colony. I will not aim at any kind of exhaustive treatment of the abolition of slavery in this country.

Slavery and Suriname

The commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Suriname in the year 1863 has thus far in particular received attention on Dutch television in the NTR-VPRO series De slavernij [Slavery] broadcasted in 2011. The series centered around the search of the Dutch singer Roué Verveer for his ancestry. The very fact that background information was presented by a well-known Dutch anchorwoman was criticized by some people complaining she figured as a kind of all-knowing presenter high above the black singer who seemed only to ask questions which he could not answer himself. Whatever the value of this critique, in the book accompanying the series, De slavernij. Mensenhandel van de koloniale tijd tot nu [Slavery. Human traffic from colonial times until the present] (Amsterdam 2011) edited by Carla Boos and a team of scholars, his quest for the history of his family is barely touched upon.

The website of the series presents a very well equipped nutshell guide to genealogical research for Surinam ancestors. In fact it is a model of its kind, and I have searched in vain for a similar comprehensive treatment of the subject at other websites. Surely, the Dutch Nationaal Archief offers a guide to its own online databases concerning slavery in Suriname, even in English. It is one thing to have access to digitized manumission and emancipation registers, but knowing how to use them is a prerequisite dealt with very clearly at the TV series website. A possible complaint about the website is much more a request, the need for translation of the Dutch version into English and Papiamento. The book by Carla Boos offers a very readable and lavishly illustrated introduction to the history of slavery in general, the slave trade in Africa, the Dutch Atlantic slave trade, slavery in Suriname and its living memory. The choice of documents written by all kind of people to tell stories from inside is excellent. The only things missing are a good overview of the images, and registers for subjects and names.

On a website for Dutch history on television and radio you can find several earlier items in a dossier on slavery, for example on the slave trade between Vlissingen (Flushing) in Zeeland, the Dutch fortress Elmina in Ghana, and Tobago in the Caribbean. Some digitized books about the history of Suriname can be found in the project Early Dutch Books Online (EDBO) which focuses on the period 1780-1800. In its digital collection Suriname 1599-1975 the library of the University of Amsterdam has digitized several old maps of Suriname and a small number of books, including the Dutch translation of Johan Gabriel Stedman’s book about his travels. You can also view an abridged version of this translation on a separate website – using Shockwave – but you can use more easily the complete version at EDBO. In the Digital Library for Dutch Literature you can find not only novels concerning Suriname and books in Dutch by authors from Suriname, but also the text of several editions of the Surinaamsche Almanak from 1820 onwards. This yearbook contains for example lists of plantations, their locations, owners and administrators. Documentation about the sea voyages made by slaves and their traders can be found in particular in the online database concerning the Trans-Atlantic slave trade of Emory University.

Slave traders and slaves – image from http://www.ninsee.nl

The activities for this year’s commemoration of the abolition of slavery can be followed most easily using the website of the NinSee in Amsterdam, the Dutch central institute for the study of the Dutch slavery past and heritage. The NinSee publishes studies and source editions in its own publication series. However, in my opinion it is a failure this website offers its information only in Dutch. If I have learned just one thing from the 2011 tv series it is exactly you cannot isolate the history of slavery from general history. The selection of scholarly literature about Dutch and Atlantic slavery on the website does redress this imbalance a bit. The NinSee institute is housed almost next door to the municipal archive of Amsterdam. Digitized old maps of Suriname are abundantly present on the website of the Dutch Royal Tropical Institute. At the Memory of the Netherlands portal for digitized collections concerning the Dutch cultural heritage you will find many thousand digitized objects related to Suriname from a number of Dutch collections. Among them are apart from the Royal Tropical Institute the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam – its main website can be viewed in seven languages, and the collection can be searched at a separate subdomain – and the Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, with its own digital image library. Six Dutch ethnological museums work together for a portal website where you can search their collections, but you can still search online separately in the collections of the Museum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden or its library catalogue. Perhaps it is wise to mention here also the project Caribisch Erfgoed [Caribbean Heritage] for the digitization of photographs taken between 1886 and 1970 by the Brothers of Tilburg, a Catholic educational congregation long active in Suriname.

At the start of a commemoration year leading up to the first of July, the very day on which in 1863 the abolition of slavery in Suriname was formally proclaimed, it becomes increasingly clear for me how important it is to view this history from many perspectives. While reading about Suriname I had also on my desk Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial. Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2011). Last year I wrote a post about the Athenian democracy, and I am sure I will learn more about it when taking the role of slavery in ancient Greece into account. Learning about slavery also sheds light on the practice of commemorations in contemporary society. One of the commemorations I will surely write about here in 2013 is the bicentenary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.