Keys to understanding the ancient Egyptian empire

A few months ago already I spotted the beautiful catalogue Hieroglyphs. Unlocking ancient Egypt for the exhibition with this name at the British Museum (13 October 2022-19 February 2023). My initial interest was the palaeographical side of hieroglyphs. In 1822 Jean-François Champollion famously announced his decipherment of this script. One of the great merits of the exhibition is showing not only the Rosetta Stone as crucial to this breakthrough, but a combination of his own stamina and intellectual creativity, the comparison of several sources, languages and scripts, and not in the least cooperation with many people in Europe, Britain and Egypt. The exhibition traces in fact the development of what we now know as Egyptology from the Middle Ages to the present. I will not forget to look at legal sources in this fascinating story of philological work, the acquisition of cultural heritage by European countries and the challenges of Egyptology in our days. By choosing Egypt as a subject I follow my tradition of starting a new year with a contribution about an empire or imperial laws.

A story spanning centuries

My own encounters with hieroglyphs did not start at the British Museum in 1980 and admiring the Rosetta Stone, but already earlier on. In 1976 I saw a copy of the Rosetta Stone in the municipal museum of Figeac, Champollion’s place of birth. He was truly one of the few heroes in philology from the nineteenth century, next to scholars such as the Grimm brothers and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The exhibition catalogue does not start with the heroic struggle between Thomas Young and Champollion, but takes you first to the fascination for Egypt that started much earlier. The first chapter of the exhibition catalogue, edited and largely written by Ilona Regulski, is aptly called ‘The truth in translation’. She charts attempts at decipherment from medieval Islamic scholars upto 1835, the age of the European vogue of collecting Egyptian antiquities at all costs by governments, tourists, museums and scholars. Regulski opens the catalogue with an introduction to the aims of the exhibition, followed by a lucid and concise explanation of the writing system in the hieroglyphs by Pascal Vernus. The crucial features of hieroglyphs are the combined use of both logograms representing concepts and actual objects on one hand, and using ideograms for phonetic representation on the other hand. This combination worked for centuries as a code which proved very hard to crack.

Champollion’s manuscript and the first edition of the Lettre à M. Dacier, 1822 – image source British Museum

The second chapter describes the almost legendary race to decipherment led by Thomas Young (1773-1829) and Champollion (1790-1832) accelerated by the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. Regulski shows that both men were only occasionly the archetypical chauvinist enemies so often depicted. Far more important were their individual choices to prefer at some point hieratic, demotic or Coptic script as the main road to understanding. Perhaps more important was Young’s vision of Egypt as a beneficiary of wisdom from classical Greece against Champollion’s perspective of Egypt as the origin of classical Antiquity. When you cloak such perspectives in terms of supremacy and inferiority a far more pervasive bias can easily develop. Both men made some wrong turns in their research. Champollion was very lucky with his scholarly training, his connections and his choice of other resources to combine with the Rosetta Stone. It was not just a matter of focusing on the royal names in cartouches, but of gaining insight in the peculiar qualities of hieroglyphs where logograms mostly represented concepts, but also could be used to represent sounds in the rendering of foreign names, such as Ptolemaios and Cleopatra, the two names that finally brought Champollion on the right track to complete and reliable decipherment. With the beautiful and most telling illustrations in view from several museums it becomes clear, too, how much easier it is now to compare such sources. On the website of the British Museum Regulski presents a concise overview of the steps taken by Young and Champollion in their attempts at decipherment.

My curiosity for hieroglyphs grew even more by an episode of the National Geographic tv series Lost treasures of Egypt on the written legacy of Tutanchamon. Deft research of a number of objects connected with this pharaoh led to the suspicion some objects were originally destined for or commissioned by a forgotten Egyptian queen who was almost literally written out of Egyptian history. The most obvious way to do this was tampering with the names in cartouches. In one case the new name was obviously superimposed with a different kind of gold leaf. In some cases there are indications similar attempts were done for Tutanchamon’s legacy, too.

In the third chapter of the catalogue Regulski leads you away from the pharaohs, religion and Egyptian dignitaries to the impact of decipherment for understanding Egypt’s culture and society at large. For example, rather slowly grew any true understanding of Egyptian poetry and its genres, as shown by Richard Bruce Parkinson in his contribution.

‘Rediscovering ancient Egypt’ is the title of the fourth chapter, but it could have been named discovering equally well. Understanding the pharaohs, their reigns and dynasties certainly did not escape from reinterpretation thanks to finally being able to read and understand hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic script correctly. Bilingualism during the Ptolemaic period comes into view, as are the concept of time and views of the afterlife. Personal life gets attention, too, with subjects such as crime, family, marriage and divorce, satire, love, medicine and magic. Several specialists contributed to this chapter. Here and elsewhere in the catalogue you will find texts in translations as examples of particular source genres.

In the short paragraph on crime (pp. 201-204) Ilona Regulski looks at a variety of texts, from royal decrees to court proceedings and private notes. Legal documents could touch upon many subjects, including mortgages and loans. The evidence is preserved in inscriptions and papyri. For the history of daily life and family relations Susanne Beck points to the existence of family archives (pp. 204-209). The footnotes to both paragraphs point you to relevant literature. The great strength here is showing all kinds of documentary evidence and objects.

In the fifth and final chapter new approaches are presented. In the first paragraph Monica Betti and Franziska Naether introduce the Leipzig project for an online version of the Rosetta Stone. Fayza Haikal connects in her short contribution the decipherment of Egyptian scripts and the ongoing efforts of Egyptologists with the search for Egyptian identity. Her point of using knowledge of Arabic poetry to understand aspects of ancient Egyptian poetry is well made. Egypt’s fragmented ancient cultural heritage belongs both to mankind and to living Egyptians who can contribute from inside Egypt – mentally and physically – to research into Egypt’s multi-layered history. This contribution certainly serves its purpose to underline the need to prevent a kind of de vous, chez vous, sans vous in doing research concerning Egypt’s history of more than four millennia.

Matters for reflection

My summaries of the five main chapters of this splendid catalogue do hardly justice to the wealth of information and insights they bring, and to the wonderful accessible writing style of all contributors. The catalogue is a heavy book, but it is hard to put it down and not to read it in one session!

By showing objects now held in various countries and bringing in the assistance of scholars from many corners of the world the catalogue and the exhibition show graphically some of the dilemmas facing current Egyptologists. How must one deal with the fragile remains of antiquities that were taken from Egypt with care or carelessly from their original context? Hardly any untouched mummy has survived nowadays, and the few ones that do show – thanks to modern research methods – things we would not know in any other way. Even when you return objects to Egypt it is not or only seldom possible to restore their original configuration. It is much to the credit of Champollion he pleaded with the Ottoman authorities to impose at least some restrictions on the large-scale industry of providing Europe indiscriminately with Egyptian antiquities. Some most valuable object genres were disregarded at all. Objects were even simply thrown away immediately because Europeans were not interested in them in the early nineteenth century. Of course some scholars and institutions tried to work diligently, but they could not always maintain high standards of conduct. Surely it is important to see that the hunt for contemporary copies of the Rosetta Stone and for similar trilingual or bilingual inscriptions did help to see this object in a wider setting. The catalogue provides you with an overview of these inscriptions in an appendix.

The catalogue with so many qualities misses only a few things. There is no list of contributors and their affiliations. For some lenders of objects their location is specified, but for most institutions this is not mentioned at all. The lenders contribute immensely to the value of this exhibition with their willingness to lend in some cases truly unique objects. The very presence of Egyptian antiquities in so many institutions all over Europe, not only in London or Paris, could hardly have been shown better. Not only the major European countries took part in the race to acquire the supposedly or really most important objects.

Egyptology as a discipline recently received heavy blows by stories about outrageous behaviour around original sources, in particular papyri. This exhibition helps to show the genuine efforts for solid and reliable study of ancient resources which outshine the selfish aims of some people who acted against fundamental principles of good science. Cooperation, comparison and critical understanding are essential for keeping research into classical Antiquity at the level the many subjects and periods included within it fully deserve.

Hieroglyphs. Unlocking ancient Egypt – London, British Museum, 13 October 2022 – 19 February 2023

Grotius through students’ eyes

During summer some lighter subjects can come into view, but sometimes you suddenly notice something well worth looking at. In order to protect you from too much centenary celebrations I try to choose every year just a few of them. A new virtual exhibit concerning Hugo Grotius starts with a winning title, Grotius: A life between freedom and oppression has been launched in March 2021 by Leiden University Library on a new platform for its web presentations. One of the most celebrated historic events in the canon of Dutch history is the escape of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) from castle Loevestein in 1621 where he was imprisoned as the chief follower of the late Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the statesman who had done so much in creating the blossoming Dutch Republic. An exhibition in Amersfoort on Van Oldenbarnevelt and prince Maurits (Maurice) came into view here a few years ago, and just like in that summer post a particular historical object will figure here. The matters under discussion here are in the end not just light-weight, and thus I finished this post only in autumn.

A canonical figure in Dutch legal history

Before you sigh at the prospect of going on well-trodden paths with me you should know nine students of Leiden University College in The Hague prepared the virtual exhibit in English. Together with their supervisors Hanne Cuyckens and Jacqueline Hylkema they did choose five focal points which are just different enough to make you curious again about Grotius. In the first section, Leiden, the student, he forming years of the child prodigy form the subject. Grotius matriculated at Leiden in 1594 at the age of ten years. For each subject a number of objects are shown, in this case for example the matriculation register, a portrait of Grotius at fifteen, the earliest printed map of Leiden and a portrait of the famous philologist Joseph Justus Scaliger, the best known teacher of Grotius. Grotius started at Leiden with literary studies, not with jurisprudence, freedom indeed for this child prodigy to develop himself in many directions. In 1598 he obtained his doctoral degree in law at Orléans.

In the second section we do not jump at once to his major publications such as Mare Liberum (1609), followed by De iure belli ac pacis (1625) and the Inleidinghe tot de Hollandsche rechtsgeleerdheid (1631). Even a young superstar as Grotius had to immerse himself in at least one subject not just in learned books and contemporary theory, but also in daily practice. Grotius was admitted in 1599 as an advocate to the Hof van Holland, the high court of Holland in The Hague. His position as a lawyer made him for Van Oldenbarnevelt the obvious candidate to set out at length the Dutch position on the freedom of the seas. Already in 1598 Grotius accompanied him on a embassy to France, and afterwards the two men stayed in contact with each other. In this section there is also attention for Grotius’ religious views articulated in his work Ordinum pietas (1613). It put him firmly on the side of the Remonstrant movement favored also by Oldenbarnevelt.

Castle Loevestein – image Wikimedia Commons

The third section brings you to Grotius’ imprisonment at Loevestein Castle on ground of his religious and political views. The castle is placed on a marvelous strategic spot in the Rhine delta where several of its branches come together. The nearby towns of Gorinchem and Woudrichem are not easily reached. The background with the execution of Oldenbarnevelt in 1619 gets due attention, as are his religious views. You can also look at two letters. When you try to navigate to subsequent items this does not always function correctly. I had expected a link to the online version of the edition of Grotius’ correspondence at the portal of the Huygens Institute in Amsterdam nor to the version at its philological platform Textual Scholarship or to the catalogue at Early Modern Letters Online, but you can look at scans of original letters held at Leiden. The project Circulation of Knowledge and Learned Practices in the 17th-Century Dutch Republic could be added as well.

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  The chest of the Rijksmuseum

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  The chest at Loevestein, photo Tom Haartsen

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  The chest at Delft, photo Ivo Hoekstra

At Loevestein Grotius was allowed to borrow books from Leiden university library. These books were transported in a large and heavy chest. Hidden in the book chest Grotius could famously escape on March 22, 1621 from castle Loevestein. In 2020 a part of the television series created by the Rijksmuseum on Historisch bewijs (Historical evidence) was devoted to establishing which book chest of three chests held at the Rijksmuseum, Loevestein and Museum Prinsenhof in Delft was probably the original book chest. The chest in Delft has suitable dimensions and a more reliable provenance from the Graswinckel family who was closely connected to the De Groot family in Delft, but no evidence was adduced to confirm its actual use beyond any doubt. Thus the chest is a kind of objet de mémoire connected with an almost mythical heroic story, and the natural point of focus at castle Loevestein, a typical nationalist lieu de mémoire on a beautiful spot at the point where the Waal branch of the Rhine and a branch of the Meuse come together.

In the fourth section of the online exhibit we arrive with Grotius as an exile in Paris. In this town he completed his treatise De iure belli ac pacis. Apart from letters and a map of Paris poetry by Grotius and a poem by Joost van den Vondel come into view here.

The autograph manuscript of “De iure praedae” – Leiden University Library, ms. BPL 917 – image Leiden University Library

The fifth and final section of the virtual exhibit deals with the major treatise by Grotius on prize law, De iure praedae. The Leiden manuscript BPL 917 is the sole handwritten and even autograph witness to the text of Grotius’ treatise on prize law and booty composed between 1604 and 1609. Only one chapter was published during his life as Mare Liberum (1609). The restoration of this manuscript and the subsequent digitization for the full digital edition published in 2015 are the very heart of this section.

By choosing four actual locations – Leiden, The Hague, Loevestein and Paris – the nine students succeed easily in freeing Grotius from a too narrow view of him as only a figure in Dutch history who became first a victim of religious strife and later on a figure head in the struggle for tolerance. These backgrounds do matter indeed. No doubt some Dutch people will be surprised to find the article on Grotius in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its rich bibliography. He is regarded as the very founder of natural law. Thus there is an entry for Grotius, too, in the database Natural Law 1625-1850, one of the fruits of a research project of the universities at Halle, Erfurt and Bayreuth. By showing not just works by Grotius, and not only his legal works, but also his poems and a treatise on religion, the students show him as a major intellectual in European history. You might with me deplore the lack of further links or an essential bibliography, but there is surely a place for the approach chosen for this virtual exhibit.

Recently Leiden University launched a new platform for its online exhibits. Among the digital collections of Leiden University Library is a section with nearly fifty virtual exhibitions; in some cases only a PDF remains available.

As for creating a Grotius Year the museum Loevestein can readily be pardoned for seeking a way to attract visitors after the corona lockdowns in the Netherlands. The website for the public events around the Grotius commemoration does mention his importance as a lawyer, diplomat and theologian. Themes as the freedom of thought and religious tolerance are vitally relevant in our contemporary world. Showing things have been very different in the past shakes (young) people free from thinking the present has always been there as a a most natural thing.

In earlier posts about Grotius, in particular the one about a rare early edition of De iure beli ac pacis, I provided information about his main legal works concerning the first printed editions, modern editions, translations and digital versions. I would like to point again to the presence of text versions and seventeenth-century or modern translations into Dutch for a number of his works at the portal of the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL). In the DBNL you can find also digital versions of numerous older publications about Grotius, and the entry for his historical works by E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier and G. van der Lem in their work on Early Modern Dutch historiography, Repertorium van geschiedschrijvers in Nederland 1500-1800 (The Hague 1990).

The riches of the Peace Palace Library

The Peace Palace Library (PPL) in The Hague is the natural starting point for any research on Hugo Grotius. Lately this library has put its digital collections on a new separate platform, but for some silly reason the actual URL is not easily found at the website of the PPL, as are alas some other web addresses. A few years ago I wrote here about the Scheldt River collection which now can be found, too, at this new platform. It seems the PPL provides for each collection on this platform a special page with the correct link. However, there is no page or news item for the new platform itself, or maybe it has only to be added to the top bar menu. A platform with eight interesting collections in open access merits a place in the spotlights.

The PPL contributes two collections in open access to LLMC Digital, but no direct links are give on the PPL’s special page for its collections at LLMC Digital. It is only fair to say that finding these collections at the LLMC portal is a feat in itself. So far my attempts to locate them simply failed. Both LLMC Digital and the website of the PPL lack a general search function and a sitemap. The collections at both websites deserve better accessibility. As for the licensed digital collections and also for the databases accessible through the PPL you might contemplate acquiring a library card of this library. For this choice, too, hving a clear overview of digitized materials and their access is most practical.

Grotius figures of course also on the website of the PPL, starting with the chat function called Ask Hugo! The web page on the Grotius Collection tells you about the general background and the famous bibliography by Ter Meulen and Diermanse [J. ter Meulen and P.P.J. Diermanse (eds.), Bibliographie des écrits imprimés de Hugo Grotius (The Hague 1950)] and a more recent catalogue of the PPL’s holdings of works by Grotius. Instead of the direct link to the licensed Grotius Collection Online: Printed Works of Brill only a link to the title in the PPL library catalogue is provided, yet another minor howler. In fact this digital collection contains also numerous works dealing with Old Dutch law, and I would even single it out as a very representative selection of legal books from the Dutch Republic brought most conveniently together. A research guide for Grotius would be a welcome addition to the thirty existing online guides on the website of the Peace Palace Library. A quick search for a nutshell guide to Grotius brought me only to a very concise guide created by the Alexander Campbell King Law Library at the University of Georgia. It is sensible to look at the Grotius pages of Wikipedia in several languages.

Gaining a wider view

I would like to end this post constructively, and not with criticism on defects. Grotius belongs to the group of thinkers students and scholars cannot approach completely straightforward. Often there is abundant scholarly activity, there might be opposing schools and roads of interpretation and across linguistic borders studies can take refreshing turns closed to those staying content with Anglo-American scholarship. Luckily regularly guides are published in the form of essay volumes by an international team of distinguished scholars to bridge such gaps and bring together different views and themes surrounding a major thinker. In September 2021 the Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius appeared in print and online, edited by Randall Lesaffer and Janne Nijman. Interestingly this seems to be the first companion volume to Grotius. There is not yet A Very Short Introduction on Grotius from Oxford, presumably exactly because his versatility can hardly be sufficiently shown in a slim volume by a single author. Hopefully different views on Grotius find space in the scholarly journal Grotiana with apart for the printed version some articles published online in open access.

This year’s International Open Access Week will take place from October 25 to 31, 2021. The existence of a number of vital online resources for doing research on Grotius only accessible as licensed resources, most often through the services of libraries, diminishes the chances for those outside the circle of blessed beneficiaries to learn more about Grotius or about other major intellectuals whose thought changed the world forever. Institutions not caring or simply forgetting to provide even links to their own digital collections, be they in open or licensed access, should reflect on their duties and capacities to help both scholars and the general public. Of course in some cases it is a matter of discommunication or worse between for example a library staff, a project leader and the communication officers.

It might seem seducing to bring your collections under the flag of a prestigious publishing company, but if this means closing access to your priceless possessions for most of the world the ultimate blame should be in my view on their original holder. In my view individual scholars, scholarly communities, publishers and research institutions, including university presses, all have their own ongoing responsibility to discuss matters concerning access to scholarly publications. In actual life both institutions with digitized resources and publishers increasingly offer digitized materials both in licensed and in open access, depending on their policies. Hopefully solutions can be found to create and assure wider access whenever possible and feasible for us and future generations interested in the versatile mind of Grotius and the impact of his works through the centuries. Sailing oceans with free, affordable and sustainable access to research resources would be most helpful to achieve this aim.

Maurits and Oldenbarnevelt, a prince and a statesman

Paintings of Oldenbarnevelt (left) and Maurits (right)

Any country has some dates in its history on which politics and violence come together. Political murders are a rare phenomenon in Dutch history. Willem van Oranje, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century, was assasinated in Delft on July 10, 1584. The brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt were lynched by a mob in The Hague on August 20, 1672. The mob held them responsible for the French occupation of the Dutch Republic. In recent years my country has witnessed the assasinations of politician Pim Fortuyn (May 6, 2002) and movie director Theo van Gogh (November 2, 2004). Last week solicitor Derk Wierum was shot brutally in front of his home in Amsterdam. Alas it was not the first time in this century a Dutch lawyer was shot, but the death of a solicitor defending a crown witness is an assault on the rule of law and justice.

In the list of Dutch historical figures who became a victim of violence you will find also a lawyer and statesman sentenced to death after a political trial. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619) clashed with prince Maurits, the son of William of Orange. I hesitated to deal here with yet another commemoration based on rounded years, but at last I visited an exhibition in his home town Amersfoort. I looked at some historical spots and archival records, and I will briefly mention some recent publications about Oldenbarnevelt.

A matter of choices

In the lovely old inner city of  Amersfoort – near Utrecht- Museum Flehite has organized the exhibition Johan en Maurits. Van vriend tot vijand [John and Maurits, from friends to enemies]. The exhibition opened on May 13, 2019, exactly four hundred years after the execution of Oldenbarnevelt on the inner court of the Binnenhof in The Hague, the premises of the Staten-Generaal, the governing body of the Dutch Republic. A life of service to the state, helping to create and unify it, ended on the scaffold. In a country sharply divided between his followers and those agreeing with prince Maurits Oldenbarnevelt had become a public enemy.

Van Oldenbarnevelt stemmed from a fairly average family in Amersfoort. His father was a merchant who acted also as a sequester, an official who took goods into his charge pending judicial proceedings. It is not known where Johan was born, but the house Bollenburg (Muurhuizen 19) where he lived for some time in later years still exists. The Muurhuizen, literally “wall houses” is nowadays a very picturesque street around the inner city with many beautifully restored medieval and Early Modern houses.

The information about his youth comes mainly form a single source, his own statement from 1619 about his life. The full biography on Oldenbarnevelt by  J. den Tex [Oldenbarnevelt (5 vol., Haarlem-Groningen 1960-1972) warns for wanting to flesh out such information. After going in 1564 to The Hague to work for a barrister he studied between 1566 and 1569 in Louvain, Bourges, Cologne, Heidelberg and Padua. At Louvain his name was entered wrongly in the student register…  In 1570 he became a barrister at the Hof van Holland. Two years later he went to Delft to work for the hoogheemraadschap (water control board) of Delfland. In 1576 he became the city pensionary of Rotterdam. Soon he was chosen also on committees of the States of Holland. After the death of William of Orange in 1584 he supported a transfer of power to his son Maurits. His activity, qualities and insights were duly noticed, for in 1586 he reached the two posts he would hold until his death, landsadvocaat (state solicitor) and raadpensionaris (grand pensionary) of Holland.

Much has been made of the personal differences between Maurits and Oldenbarnevelt. Up to the year 1600 they seemed to make a perfect match, Maurits as a prudent and most gifted tactical military leader, Oldenbarnevelt as the man of grand strategies. Thanks to their combined leadership the Dutch Republic grew from a very low point in the mid-eighties to an emerging European power. A campaign to deal with the pirates of Dunkirk led to a hard fought victory in 1600 on the beach of Nieuwpoort in Flanders where Maurits won the day with some luck. The incident annoyed him a lot, because he had urged Oldenbarnevelt not to start this adventure.

In 1609 a truce for twelve years with Spain was reached. Oldenbarnevelt had personally supported François van Aerssen (1572-1641), the Dutch ambassador in France, until 1613 when he did not continue him in his function. Van Aerssen felt disappointed and soon became the personal advisor of Maurits. A prolonged debate about theological matters in the Dutch Republic, in particular about predestination, developed into a full-scale political conflict about the relation between church and state. Maurits decided in 1617 to join sides in public by going to the church of Oldenbarnevelt’s opponents in the Kloosterkerk, next to Oldenbarnevelt’s home in The Hague. The way a national synod should convene at Dordrecht and settle these matters was another matter of disagreement. In several cities riots broke out. In August 1617 Oldenbarnevelt forced the States of Holland in issuing an ordinance permitting individual cities to raise mercenaries to protect citizens. Citizens were not allowed to appeal to the Court of Holland, and soldiers had to obey only the orders of the States of Holland, not those of their commander Maurits. The very balance of power in the Dutch Republic between the individual provinces, the States General and the stadhouder was at stake, and also the adherence to the principles of government laid down in the Union of Utrecht (1579). Oldenbarnevelt favored a situation where towns and provinces could decide themselves on the admission of religious movements, and more specifically he wanted space and tolerance for those who did not join the Reformed protestant majority.

Maurits’ role in the events from 1617 until 1620 is nowadays much clearer than for Den Tex. J.G. Smit could edit 120 letters by Maurits held since 1862 at the Koninklijk Huisarchief [Royal Archive] in The Hague [‘Prins Maurits en de goede zaak : Brieven van Maurits uit de jaren 1617-1619’, in: Nederlandse historische bronnen I, A.C.F. Koch, J.G. Smit and A. Kersten (eds.) (The Hague 1979) 43-173; online, Digitale Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Letteren]. These letters show clearly how Maurits worked slowly but steadily against Oldenbarnevelt after the resolution of August 1617. A year later, after more riots, forced changes in city government, and above all the dismissal of the waardgelders in several towns Maurits had Oldenbarnevelt and his chief supporters, one of them Hugo Grotius, arrested on August 29, 1618. Maurits was in contact with some of the men who were later on chosen to judge Oldenbarnevelt.

It is wise to refer here also to the analysis by Jonathan Israel in his major study The Dutch Republic. Its rise, greatness, and fall 1477-1806 (Oxford 1995) of what happened in this year. Finding a legal reason for arresting Oldenbarnevelt might not have been particularly difficult, but on whose authority the arrest had to be done was certainly unclear, as was the choice of a tribunal and the judges. In the end the judges were chosen from both Holland and the other Dutch provinces. The trial dragged on for months. In the end the verdicts surprised many people. Grotius and Hogerbeets were sentenced to life imprisonment, but Oldenbarnevelt was sentenced to death, with the execution already following the next day, May 13, 1619. Maurits had ignored pleas for leniency towards Oldenbarnevelt. He did not attend the execution and an eyewitness report troubled his mind severely.

Some telling objects

The diary of Jan Francken

The sword of Hans Pruym

Oldenbarnevelt’s walking stick

Pamphlets and broadsides on display

An early contemporary edition of the verdict on Oldenbarnevelt, 1619

The exhibition in Amersfoort is rather small, but the role of pamphlets and broadsides is made quite clear. The verdict on Oldenbarnevelt was quickly printed and published in several languages. Some of the items on display are most telling. The walking stick of Oldenbarnevelt is perhaps the most famous item associated with any Dutch historical figure. A poem by Joost van den Vondel immortalized both its owner and the stick. Another item is rather grim. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden recently acquired a sword which belonged to the German executioner Hans Pruym who worked for the city of Utrecht, the very man who decapitated Oldenbarnevelt. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has another sword said to have been used for the execution of Oldenbarnevelt (object no. NG-NM-4245), inscribed with a poem, but there is no provenance record of it before 1745. The story of Oldenbarnevelt’s captivity has long been known partially from a deposition by his servant Jan Francken, edited by Robert Fruin, ‘Verhaal der gevangenschap van Oldenbarnevelt, beschreven door zijn knecht Jan Francken’, Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap, 6th series, part 5 (1874) 734-785 (online, Hathi Trust Digital Library). This year the original diary long held in private possession finally became visible to the public. It has been shown at the Museum De Gevangenpoort, a prison museum just outside the Binnenhof in The Hague, and is now on display at Museum Flehite.

‘Justice done to Jan van Oldenbarnevelt’, engraving of the execution of Oldenbarnevelt by Claes Jansz. Visscher, 1619 – source: Het Geheugen van Nederland, https://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/

This engraving has become famous for many reasons. Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen discussed it in their study The bookshop of the world, reviewed here earlier this year, as the very work which laid the foundation for the success of Broer Jansz., a publisher in Amsterdam who succeeded in very quickly publishing this powerful picture. At Museum Flehite it is literally used as a background picture on a wall. These years saw a flood of pamphlets about and more often against Oldenbarnevelt. Fake news was created, too, to undermine his position. A number of these pamphlets has been put on display at Museum Flehite. The death of Oldenbarnevelt was not the end of the political strife. A few years later two of his sons prepared a coup, but they were quickly unmasked and severely punished. This did not help to put Oldenbarnevelt and his party in favorable light. The conflict helped to create a fundamental division in the Dutch Republic between those supporting the Oranje family and those supporting the cities and their governing class.

A quick look at recent publications about Oldenbarnevelt leaves me with sometimes mixed feelings. Jan Niessen, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt 1547-1619, vormgever van de Republiek (Utrecht 2019) is rather short. The translation of Jan Francken’s diary by Thomas Rosenboom does some service in retelling his story in modern Dutch [Het einde van Johan Oldenbarnevelt, beschreven dor zijn knecht Jan Francken (3rd ed., Amsterdam 2019)], but a new edition of the text from the original diary which surfaced this year is necessary. The book of Ben Knapen, De man en zijn staat. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt 1547-1619 (7th ed., Amsterdam 2019) offers a political study of Oldenbarnevelt by a historian and politician. Broeders in oorlog, vijanden in vrede. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt en Maurits van Nassau, redders van de Nederlandse Republiek by Mike Hermsen (Zutphen 2019) focuses on the two statesmen and their contribution to the Dutch state, with a fine choice of illustrations. Wilfried Uitterhove’s De zaak Oldenbarnevelt : val, proces en executie (Nijmegen 2019) focuses not only on the final years, but also in particular on the documents concerning the trial. Ronald Prud’homme van Reine, Onthoofdingen in de Hofstad. De val van de Oldenbarnevelts (Amsterdam 2019) looks also at the plot of the two sons. Bollenburg, het huis van Oldenbarnevelt by Jojanneke Clarijs (Bussum 2017) appeared a few years earlier to commemorate the recent restoration of this house.

Account for the costs of the trials in 1618-1619 – Utrecht, Het Utrechts Archief, Huis Hardenbroek, inv.no. 4507

The main historiographical gap is still the lack of a full biography of prince Maurits on the scale of Den Tex’ work for Oldenbarnevelt. The study by J.G. Kikkert, Maurits van Nassau (Bussum 1985; 3rd ed., Soesterberg 2016) is very much in favor of Maurits. Arie van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau, 1567-1625. De winnaar die faalde (Amsterdam 2000) did not quite live up to high expectations. Some of the documents about Oldenbarnevelt’s life and the trial were edited already long ago, for example the questionings at the trial, Verhooren van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (Utrecht 1850; online, Hathi Trust) and the Gedenkstukken van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt en zijn tijd, M.L.van Deventer (ed.) (3 vol., The Hague 1860-1865; online, Hathi Trust). The document on the left, an account of the costs for the trials against Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius, Rombout Hogerbeets and Gilles van Ledenberg, was edited by J.J. de Geer van Oudegein, ‘Onkosten der judicature van Van Oldenbarnevelt’, Kronijk van het Historisch Genootschap 17 (1861) 336-340 [online, Hathi Trust]. This account is now – together with yet another copy of it – one of the special items in the archival collection of castle Hardenbroek for which I am busy finishing a new and very extensive finding aid at Het Utrechts Archief.

Another element that for many years hampered scholars to do research on Oldenbarnevelt was exactly the fact his archive held at the Dutch National Archives was only fully described as late as in 1984 by H.J.Ph.G. Kaajan, Inventaris van het archief van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, 1586-1619 (finding aid no. 3.01.14 (PDF), followed in 1987 by a finding aid for the Oldenbarnevelt family archive [H.J.Ph.G. Kaajan, Inventaris van het archief van de familie Van Oldenbarnevelt, (1449) 1510-1705) (finding aid no. 3.20.41 (PDF)]. Kaajan drily notes in his introduction Oldenbarnevelt’s handwriting was terrible. The modern edition of his state papers and family papers by S.P. Haak and A.J. Veenendaal, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Bescheiden betreffende zijn staatkundig beleid en zijn familie 1570-1620 (3 vol., The Hague 1934-1967) can be consulted online, too.

Doing full justice to two historical figures can be seen as a metaphor, but in this case there are certainly spurs – both new objects and archival records – to delve again into the early history of the Dutch Republic which was shaped decisively by Maurits and Oldenbarnevelt. It is always a good sign when an exhibition makes you think again about its subjects and the objects put on display.

Amersfoort, Museum Flehite: Johan & Maurits: Van vriend tot vijand – May 13, 2019 until January 5, 2020

A postscript

On February 5, 2020, AvroTros television broadcasted the first installment of the series Historisch bewijs [Historical proof] created in cooperation with the Rijksmuseum featuring both the sword from Dresden and a sword in the holdings of the Rijksmuseum [Rijksmuseum, inv. no. ng-nm-4245] said to be the executioner’s sword. As an extra you can look at a fifteen minutes video of background research in the municipal archive of The Hague. The sword from Dresden was put on display at the Rijksmuseum in 2018. Research concerning both swords led to the article by Lieke van Deinsen en Jan de Hond, ‘The Sword and the Album: Material Memories and an Eighteenth-Century Poetic Account of the Execution of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1619)’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66/3 (2018) 204-233. The sword in Dresden [Rüstkammer, Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen, inv. no. iv 0198] came into view thanks to research by Gisela Wilbertz who published the article ‘Das Schwert des Scharfrichters Hans Prum in der Dresdner Rüstkammer’, Signa Iuris 16 (2018) 91-108. Hans Prum (ca. 1560/65-1621) stemmed from Meisenheim. He came to the Netherlands and worked in Zutphen and Utrecht; see for his life the articles by Cornelis R.H. Snijder, ‘Het scherprechtersgeslacht Pruijm/Pfraum, ook Prom/Praum/Sprong genoemd’, Gens Nostra 69 (2014), 488-500, 70 (2015), 14-23 (also online, PDF), and ‘Hans Pruijm, scherprechter te Zutphen 1595-1604. Executeur van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt’, Zutphen 35/4 (2016) 105-111 (online, PDF).

Archiving spies in the Early Modern Spanish empire

While musing about a possible subject for a new post I luckily remembered an announcement about a vital element within the Early Modern Spanish empire. Not only official ambassadors and delegates played an important role in informing governments, spies played an important role to. From July 2018 to July 2019 the Archivo General de Simancas presents the exhibition Espias. Servicios secretos y escritura cifrada en la Monarquiaa Hispánica [Spies. Secret services and enciphered writing in the Spanish monarchy]. The Spanish Empire formed with the Habsburg Empire a European superpower which needed crucial information from other countries, but also wanted to hide their own secrets from others. In this post I will looked at the very substantial downloadable catalogue of this exhibition (54 MB, PDF). In particular the use of encrypted writing made me curious to find out about this exhibition with three main themes: the organization of intelligence services, the spies and encrypted writing.

Archiving at Simancas

A few lines about the Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), ten kilometers from Valladolid, seem in place here. in 1540 emperor Charles V decided to create a new governmental archive, and quickly Simancas was chosen as its location. King Philip II of Spain issued in 1588 a further instruction for the running of this new archive, in fact one of the first Early Modern archival ordinances. Ten years earlier, in 1578, a new building was built for this purpose, yet another pioneering project of this period. The collections can be divided in two major blocks, the collections stemming from the Habsburgian period and those from the period under the rule of the Bourbon dynasty. The collections of the various consejos (councils) for the regions of the Spanish empire are characteristic for the AGS. For the Bourbon period five major series for the secretaries and again five series for other organisms of the state are the key elements. Outside these series you can find the Patronato Real y Mapas, Planos y Dibujos, with maps, drawings and much more.

By all means the AGS can look literally as a formidable fortress! Guides such as the Guía del investigador by Angel de la Plaza Bores (4th ed., 1992; online, 5 MB, PDF) help much to overcome your awe. In her article ‘Fuentes para la historia colonial de Brasil en los archivos españoles’ , published in 2009 in the series Guide du chercheur americaniste of the online journal Nuevo Mundo/ Mundos Nuevos, María Belén García López devoted a section to the use of archival record series at the AGS for researching the history of relations between Spain and Portugal with regard to Brazilian history. In English you might want to look at a 2014 contribution about Simancas by Claire Gilbert at Hazine. In 2016 Adolfo Polo y La Borda looked very brief at Simancas and other major Spanish archives in his post ‘Rethinking the Spanish Imperial Archives’ for the series Fresh from the archives of Dissertation Reviews. The Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES) offers a kind of tree structure which you can navigate to find not only online finding aids but also digitized archival records. At first this might look difficult, but the online guide Taming PARES by Scott Cave and Ashleigh Dean is a must-read to gain access to all riches of PARES. There is a separate website for the digital collection with 7,000 digitized items from the Mapas, Planos y Dibujos of the AGS. A much older guide by William R. Shepard, Guide to the materials for the history of the United States in Spanish archives. (Simancas, the Archivo histórico nacional, and Seville) (Washington, D.C., 1907) can be viewed online in the Hathi Trust Digital Library. German readers might want to look at Marc André Grebe, Akten, Archive, Absolutismus? Das Kronarchiv von Simancas im Herrschaftsgefüge der spanischen Habsburger (1540-1598) (Madrid 2014).

Early Modern spies

Detail of a deciphered spy report on fortifications in Piedmont, 1572 – AGS, EST LEG 1234-48

In the preface of the exhibition catalogue Julia Rodriguez de Diego explains how the study of the history of spies, their networks and tools is important for at least three main terrains, viz. the growth of absolute monarchies, the history of Early Modern diplomacy and the field of political theories, even its very heart, the building of states and concepts of states and Staatsräson. The first part of the catalogue deals with the organization of espionage at several levels with the Spanish state. In 1497 the pope authorized the Reyes Católicos to send spies into Africa. It seems the Spanish government scarcely needed this spur, but it proved to be a welcome confirmation. In the catalogue you will find discussions of several documents, for example instructions to virreyes (the viceroys of Navarra, Naples and Sicily) and gobernadores (the governors of Milan and Flandes, meaning the Low Countries). The chart with several layers of the Spanish state is very helpful to perceive the impact and role of intelligence services within and for Spain. Juan Velasquez de Velasco, head of the royal intelligence service at the end of the sixteenth century, wrote to the king about the urgent need for coordination of all efforts. As an example of actual reconnaissance by spies you can look at a 1572 report on French fortifications in the Piedmont region with explanations about a map showing details of these fortresses. A number of documents about payments to spies closes the first section of the catalogue. Here and elsewhere you will find images of documents and substantial transcribed parts in the commentaries.

An encrypted message written on linen, ca. 1588-1621 – AGS, MPD 44-48

The second and largest part of the catalogue deals with actual spies. Spies might be the word we want to use, but agents is a better term. The Spanish agents delivered reports in encrypted script, here an example written on linen using an unknown cipher code. A late sixteenth-century treatise on counter espionage (AGS, EST LEG 601-183) shows insights in the way enemy spies were hindered in achieving foreign objectives. Spies travelled over all Europe. Venice was considered the very spy capital of Europe. Some documents in this exhibition tell us about spies going to the Ottoman empire. The Spanish spies reported also on the roles and fate of spies from other countries. Corsairs were another matter of concern, as in a 1535 report about preparations for an attack at Oran. Rather grim is the story from 1536-1537 in Naples of the interrogation of a person suspected to be a judeoconverso, a converted Jew, and of being a spy for the Ottomans. Some time later he was found drowned in a river. The story of a spy working in Ireland to get information about British industry and inventions is another interesting subject. The contemporary picture of a spy heading this chapter is a nice vignette of the perceived qualities of a spy, working day and night, always watching out as if he had eyes all over his clothes. A paragraph on famous spies is a logical ending for this section of the catalogue.

The uses of encryption

An encrypted negotiation report by ambassador Rodriguez Gonzalez de la Puebla, 1498 – AGS, PTR LEG 52-144, fol. 2r

The third part of the catalogue deals with encryption and its uses. The traditional main ways of encryption were substitution or transposition of letters and hiding written messages. For a late fifteenth-century example of a simple cipher code with 2,400 expressions the use of Roman numbers is shown for the names of particular authorities. The code was used by the Spanish ambassador in England who negotiated for the marriage of Catherine of Aragon with Arthur Tudor, the king’s brother. It is good to see the catalogue uses here an article by María del Carmen Sevilla González, ‘Las nupcias de Catalina de Aragón: aspectos jurídicos, políticos y diplomáticos’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 86 (2016) 657-726. Several documents help to give you an idea of what happened behind the screens before king Henry VII agreed in 1504 with the marriage conditions of Catherine’s second marriage in 1503 with the future Henry VIII in a beautiful illuminated document [AGS, PTR LEG 53-1].

In a final paragraph the catalogue shows examples of both general and particular cipher codes. Much of the information given here comes from a recent study by Javier Marcos Rivas, Los dueños del secreto. Espías y espionaje de la Monarquía de los Austrias en el Archivo de Simancas (Madrid 2015). A document from 1564 shows not only a text but also two bars of music [AGS, Estado, leg. 1.1.1.204]. The AGS has in its holdings a manuscript of an unpublished study by Claudio Pérez Gredilla, written in 1899 and 1900 about 200 different cipher codes found in the holdings of this archive [AGS, D/203]. The very last item is really a surprise, a 1936 German Enigma code machine from the holdings of the Museo Histórico Militar de Burgos. This object is really from another age of cryptography. It highlights the fact this catalogue focuses on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

With some regret I have skipped a number of items in this exhibition catalogue, just as i have condensed four centuries of archiving at Simancas. To give just one example, a document with microscopic script from 1586 is presented separately online. You will agree with me the exhibition builds to a climax with the marriages of Catherine of Aragon and the presence of an original Enigma code machine. A particular strength of the catalogue is the ample use of images from archival records combined with partial transcriptions and extensive commentaries. To some extent you can use this catalogue also as an introduction to Spanish palaeography in the Early Modern period. This exhibition fits neatly in the tradition of the AGS for organizing interesting exhibitions, sometimes followed by a virtual exhibit, and publishing accompanying publications. It should invite you to combine your strengths in the Spanish language and the skills of the auxiliary historical sciences such as palaeography to benefit from the wealth of archival records kept at Simancas and in other Spanish archives.

Rembrandt’s private and legal life

On December 7, 2018 the exhibition Rembrandt Privé [Rembrandt Privately] opened at the city archives of Amsterdam. In an earlier post on my blog I mentioned the project RemDoc – Rembrandt Documentation which offers a searchable database with images, transcriptions and many English translations of seventeenth-century documents pertaining to Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). The exhibit shows documents held at the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, the largest municipal archive in the Netherlands, some original works by Rembrandt, a number of maps and the chance to gain access to augmented reality around the documents using a tablet. The legal nature of many documents will soon become clear in this post.

Stories of love, art and money

I started to admire Rembrandt already as a child. His paintings, drawings and etchings are so much alive with people. Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age helped shaping my perceptions of the seventeenth century. I was soon aware of the many decisive turns in Rembrandt’s life. The way he portrayed people both in sorrow and joy, and the dark hours of his own life offered a healthy antidote to viewing the Dutch Republic in too much sunlight. The catalogue of the major Rembrandt exposition in Amsterdam in 1969 was a book I have seen many times. It often referred to historical documents about Rembrandt and his works.

The Stadsarchief Amsterdam at the Vijzelstraat in the former bank building designed by K.P.C. de Bazel

Reading about somebody in a book is one thing, seeing the works of an artist in museums adds much to it, but somehow having the documents in front of you stirs the imagination even more. The Rembrandt Documentation project of the Huygens Institute in Amsterdam and the Radboud University Nijmegen gives you online access to many thousand documents. There was an older work, Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575-1721) by C. Hofstede de Groot (The Hague 1906; online, Universität Heidelberg) with transcriptions and commentaries for nearly 500 documents, followed by W.L. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents (New York 1979) and M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt 2006, II: New Rembrandt Documents (Leiden 2006). The online project has a wider time range, 1424 to 1799, and offers much more documents, and also references about Rembrandt in art literature. Sometimes Hofstede de Groot did not record texts completely. Commentaries can be very different and convincing explanations no longer missing. An example: Hofstede de Groot gave a large extract from an attestatio de vita from July 26, 1632 (no. 25, p. 24-25; RemDoc, no. 4399) made by a notary inquiring about Rembrandt’s health, but the reason for this inquiry was not clear to Hofstede de Groot. In 1979 it became clear it had to do with a rent subscribed to by one hundred citizens with the stipulation the full sum would be paid back to the longest living subscriber.

The exhibit at the city archive shows a selection of documents around a number of themes and events in Rembrandt’s life. Often two documents are shown, with either a print next to them or an image of a painting in the background, most of them from the collections of the Rijksmuseum and the Rembrandthuis. With the tablet you can focus on a document and start a short podcast about the document or documents. Often you will see a seventeenth-century map in the background showing you the exact location in the inner city of Amsterdam. The image to the left centers on a document about the execution of Elsje Christiaens, a Danish servant convicted for murder hanging at the display gallows in 1664 on the other side of the IJ, the estuary to the north of Amsterdam. Rembrandt often made sketches in this region. He drew this young woman twice.

The exhibition shows some familiar documents, and although I had already some expectations, the legal nature of many documents is indeed striking. To mention just a few of them, the betrothal of Rembrandt and his first wife Saskia van Uijlenburgh in 1634, an ecclesiastical procedure about his later mistress Geertje, some testaments, the inventory of his bankruptcy in 1656, and the inventory of his house after his death in 1669 are all legal documents.

A page from the 1669 inventory – Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Archief Notarissen, subseries 113, Gerrit Steeman, inv.no. 2625C

The death-bed inventory of Rembrandt’s house in 1669 is rather special. It belongs to documents more or less damaged by the 1762 fire in the city hall. Several documents have now been restored and digitized. Until now the transcriptions of this document in RemDoc (no. 13471; Hofstede de Groot, no. 306) could only be incomplete. It is a reminder that a historical state of affairs can change indeed. Illegible or missing words can become clear. In the case mentioned above a document which seemed inexplicable can be studied anew, placed in a context and yield new information. The readability of old Dutch documents was the theme in a post I wrote earlier in 2018. I proposed to everyone wanting to learn online to decipher Dutch documents from the seventeenth century to start with the documents about Rembrandt. As an example I showed an image of an obligation Rembrandt had got into for the purchase in 1639 of his house in the Sint Anthoniebreesteeg for which he had failed in 1653 to pay four years of interest (RemDoc no. 4628). Even if not for all documents images and an English translation is available, a fair number of archival records can be used to gain also palaeographical skills.

Among the archival records on display I want to single out two documents. The first is a complaint from the Portuguese merchant Diego d’Andrada in 1654 about a portrait of a young lady Rembrandt had made for him (RemDoc, no. 1661) with clauses about the way Rembrandt was going to act to fulfill the wishes in accordance with the regulations of the painters guild.

The second document involved also the presence of Portuguese merchants in Amsterdam, the burial of Francisco d’Angola in 1659 who had lived in the same street with Selijelij Krablije. Rembrandt could meet in the very street where he lived black people who lived as servants in the houses of Portuguese merchants. In Amsterdam it was forbidden to have slaves, but one can assume in some cases such servants were in fact slaves. Amsterdam had become in the seventeenth century one of Europe’s most important financial and trade centers. You might encounter anyone and anything, and thus Rembrandt’s world stretched far beyond Holland.

More archival records

The Stadsarchief Amsterdam is rightly famous for its digitization service. Some 30 million images of archival records are currently available online. Indexes exist for a steadily growing number of record series, and in most cases they lead you to digital images, too. The ondertrouwregisters (betrothal registers) are probably the most praised record series of the municipal archive, because uniquely for this kind of resource the Amsterdam records often contain additional information about the partners, their professions, origin and family.

In 1906 Hofstede de Groot noted in the acknowledgements he had not used himself the notarial registers of Amsterdam, because this rich resource had not yet been adequately inventoried. He had mostly to rely on the transcriptions and editions of the people who had gained access to them thanks to the guidance of archivists. It is one thing to have now at your computer screen full access to digitized images of these registers using the finding aid (toegang 5075), but another thing to find quickly relevant acts. Here the crowdsourcing project Alle Amsterdamse Akten steps in which aims to digitize and create indexes for a staggering volume of notarial registers, good for 3,5 linear kilometer in 700 cupboards. The project overview gives a current number of nearly six million digitized pages, some 680 volunteers at the Dutch transcribing platform Vele Handen [Many Hands] and 267,000 documents. There are more than ten thousand registers from 731 notaries in the Early Modern period. The website contains special dossiers about six themes, among them Rembrandt and also slavery with highlights among the notarial acts, some of them newly found, others already known.

The search screen of Alle Amsterdamse Akten

After free registration you can start searching in the notarial registers from Amsterdam at the website Notarieel Archief Amsterdam. You can search for descriptions, type of act, first names and surnames for two persons, location, day, month and year, or choose a particular notary. When searching for Rembrandt van Rhijn you will immediately get a choice of variant spellings in a dropdown menu, both for Rembran(d)(t) and R(h)ijn. At this point I can no longer hide the fact that the exhibit can be visited in a Dutch and English version, but the other websites of the Stadsarchief Amsterdam are completely in Dutch. The press kit for the exhibit in four languages and the display texts for the documents are the exceptions, but the tablet scripts and transcriptions are only available online in Dutch. There is a strong case to add at least a search interface in one other language. It is some solace to be able to download the 1998 repertory of notaries in Amsterdam between 1524 and 1810 by A.J. Bosma. Earlier on an overview had been created of more than 5000 notarial acts in cases of gross avery between 1700 and 1810, damage to ships in emergency situations, an important resource next to an index on these cases of maritime law heard by a special court. I wrote a paragraph about these verdicts in an earlier post.

Rembrandt and Vermeer in documents

It seems wise to see Rembrandt not in isolation. John Michael Montias (1928-2005) was an economic historian who became an art historian focusing on the social context of art. He found and transcribed lots of Early Modern probate inventories mentioning works of art which can be searched in the Montias database of the Frick Museum, New York. The Meertens Institute for Dutch Ethnology has created the Boedelbank, a database with Dutch probate inventories from four regions seen as a resource for the history of material culture. In 1989 Montias published Vermeer and his milieu. A web of social history, translated into Dutch as Vermeer en zijn milieu (Amsterdam 1993). Over the years Montias had traced some 450 documents in seventeen Dutch and Belgian archives – not only in Delft! – with direct and indirect about information about Vermeer, his family and people associated with him. The Dutch edition contains as an appendix (pp. 331-403) an enlarged version of the list of documents with a number of full transcriptions. The number of documents for Vermeer is definitely lower than for Rembrandt. Even if such documents do not allow for strict conclusions about the content of his art works, they enormously raise the awareness about the multiple contexts of Dutch art in the seventeenth century.

In the face of an ocean of specialized art literature about Rembrandt and Vermeer the point I liked to make here is not only the legal nature of many archival records in the Amsterdam exhibition, but also the presence of many other persons in these documents. Rembrandt and Vermeer were supreme masters in portraying people who you seem to know and understand in an uncanny way. The Dutch historian Geert Mak wrote a book about the Six family [De levens van Jan Six. Een familiegeschiedenis, 2016; The many lives of Jan Six. A portrait of an Amsterdam dynasty, 2017], a merchant dynasty with Jan Six at its very heart, a friend of Rembrandt, portrayed twice by him. The painting is still owned by his descendants. Viewing someone in his familiar surroundings or in the streets of his hometown is also a metaphor for viewing law not as an isolated element of society, but vitally connected to its utmost veins. Finding and recreating such connections is surely challenging, but searching for a subject in vivo is more rewarding and revealing than staying content with results in a supposedly detached laboratory. At the end of 2018 I would almost say: Keep calm and study legal history!

Rembrandt Privé [Rembrandt Privately] – Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Vijzelstraat 32, Amsterdam – December 7, 2018 until April 7, 2019

Finding Frisia’s culture and legal history

Since many years the European Union gives every year two cities the title European Cultural Capital. Cities compete with elaborate bid-books to get this coveted title. In 2018 La Valletta, the capital of Malta, and Leeuwarden, the main city of the Dutch province Friesland (Frisia), share the honours. In this post I will look at Frisian culture and history. However varied the program of events, i would like to look at more enduring institutions and projects which bring Frisian culture and history to you. Legal history has its own place in this context.

A matter of languages, and much more

The most striking element of the portal Leeuwarden 2018 is the absence of Frisian as a language to view this commercial website. You can choose between Dutch, Frisian, English and German at another portal, Leeuwarden-Fryslân – European Capital of Culture 2018. Here, too, you will find a calendar of events, but their cultural dimensions are given more prominence. Among the cultural events the parade of three giants in Leeuwarden made a great visual impact. Events took place in many Frisian towns and villages, ranging from opera to a heroic solo swimming tour along eleven towns to raise money for the treatment of cancer. Building the community, mienskip, was a central theme.

Frisia’s legal history

It would be almost easy to foucs here on either medieval Frisian law, with remarkable texts such as the Lex Frisionum, late medieval regulations on water management or the Roman-Frisian law during the period of the Dutch Republic, Frisia’s own version of the Roman-Dutch law. Tresoar provides us also with an overview of sources at Alle Friezen (All Frisians), available in Frisian, Dutch and English. The links section of Tresoar is most useful, You might want to look at other Frisian archives as well, easily found using the Fries Archiefnet. However, I have chosen an other subject within Frisia’s long legal history.

Amidst all events for Leeuwarden 2018 you could easily miss the opening on October 19, 2018 of the exhibition at Tresoar, the Frisian archive and library in Leeuwarden, around a Frisian lawyer, and the uncovering of a statue in his honor by Herman van Rompuy.  Wigle van Aytta van Zuichem (1507-1577) latinized his first name to Viglius. He was born at the Barrahuis estate (stins) in Wirdum near Leeuwarden. His uncle Bernard Bucho was a councillor of the Hof van Holland in The Hague and saw to Viglius’ education. As many students from the Low Countries Viglius started his studies in Leuven (Louvain) where he arrived in 1522, but a few years later he went further abroad. In 1526 he was at the university of Dôle. In 1529 he received his doctoral degree in Valence. He continued his travels to Bourges to become a student and assistant of Andrea Alciato. Soon his career started. In 1532 and 1533 he taught the Institutiones Iustiniani in Padua, in 1534 he became the official (ecclesiastical judge) for the bishop of Münster, in 1535 and 1536 he was at the Reichskammergericht in Speyer before teaching law at Ingolstadt between 1537 and 1541.

Painting of Viglius van Aytta as chancellor of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 1564, by Jacob de Punder (1527-around 1570) – Leeuwarden, Fries Museum

His political career started at an amazingly high level in 1540 when he became a member of the Conseil Secret (Geheime Raad, Secret Council), one of the most important institutions in the Habsburgian Low Countries. In 1549 he became its president, first until 1569, and again from 1573 to 1575. Meanwhile he had joined in 1543 also the Groote Raad van Mechelen (Great Council of Malines), a very important high court for the Low Countries. He conducted the negotiations for Charles V for the Burgundian Treaty of 1548 which led to a more coherent status of the Low Countries in relation to the Holy Roman Empire. In 1554 he became the president of the Raad van State, the state council. At the abdication of Charles V in 1555 he wanted to step down from his functions, but king Philip II convinced him to stay with for example the promise to become abbot of the rich St. Bavon Abbey at Ghent. Viglius’ wife Jacqueline Damant had died in 1553,. In 1562 he had been ordained to the priesthood by Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, the trusted councillor of Philipp II and at the height of his powers as recently appointed archbishop of Malines. By now it will not surprise you Viglius presided since 1563 as chancellor of the Order of the Golden Fleece. I could have chosen a more sober portrait of him painted by Frans Pourbus the Elder, now in the Louvre, but the painting at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden is most telling.

Legal historians can encounter him as a legal humanist. In 1534 Viglius published the editio princeps of the Greek paraphrase by Theophilus of the Institutes (Institouta Theophilou antikēnsōros) [Institutionum iuris civilis in Gracam linguam per Theophilum antecessorem olim traductae (…) (Basel: in officina Frobeniana, 1534: online, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)], followed by a Latin translation in 1536. Also in 1534 appeared his lectures on the Institutes held in Padua, Commentaria Viglii Zuichemii Phrysii in decem titulos Institutionum (…), published in Basel by Froben (online, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). When you check the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC; University of St. Andrews) for early editions of works by Viglius you will find a notice about an edition Lyon 1533 held at Montauban, but the database of Lyon15-16. Bibliographie des éditions lyonnaises 1473-1600 makes clear this is probably an edition printed at Lyon in 1564. Only posthumously appeared a series of lectures held at Ingolstadt, Praelectiones in titulum pandectarum, de rebus creditis, et ad titulum codicis Justinianaei, de edicto divi Hadriani tollendo (Cologne: Gervinus Calenius and heirs of Johann Quentel, 1582; online, Universiteit Gent).

The USTC shows a number of pamphlets from 1543 by Viglius from the years on political matters. His Confutatio defensionis ducis Clivensis super jure ducatus Geldriae ac comitatus Zutphaniae (…) (Antwerp 1543), reprinted the same year as Serenissimae reginae Mariae contra ducem Clivensem justificatio also appeared in Dutch, De onschult der coninginnen vrou Marie regeerster der Erf Nederlanden tegen den hertoge van Cleve (…) (Antwerp 1543). Mary of Hungary, governor of the Low Countries, asked Viglius to act as her ambassador at Nuremberg and to speak up against the aggressive policies of duke William of Cleve who claimed the territory of the duchy Guelders (Gelre).

Finding out about Viglius

There is a considerable body of literature about Viglius life and works. The two volumes of the biography by Folkert Postma stand out, Viglius van Aytta als humanist en diplomaat 1507-1549, (Zutphen 1983) and Viglius van Aytta. De jaren met Granvelle 1549-1564 (Zutphen 2000). Not all of Viglius’ writings were published in the sixteenth century. At the multilingual portal site Dutch Revolt only the Dutch version has a section with numerous biographies, the one for Viglius mentions a number of relevant titles. The long article on Viglius by Postma in the Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek is available online, too, but alas this, too, is in Dutch [NBW VIII (1979), col. 837-855]. The Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences has created a bio-bibliographical lexicon of Dutch humanists between 1500 and 1700, but this resource, too, is only accessible in Dutch, as is the one for Viglius by Toon van Houdt. He notes for example an earlier pamphlet by Viglius dealing with the Cleve-Guelders controversy, Assertio ivris imperatoris Caroli hvivs nominis Quinti, in Geldrię ducatu, & Zutphaniæ comitatu (…) (Antwerp 1541; online, Universiteit Gent). Some works have received attentions only in the last decades. Regina Sprenger wrote about Viglius’ notes about his work as a judge (Assessor) at the Reichskammergericht, Viglius van Aytta und seine Notizen über Beratungen am Reichkammergericht (1535-1537) (Nijmegen 1988). This Protokollbuch is kept at Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms. Van der Gheyn, nos. 2837 to 2840. Paul Nève and Regina Sprenger have published together articles about his time in Speyer. Joost Pikkemaat has studied the lectures held at Ingolstadt [Viglius van Aytta als hoogleraar te Ingolstadt (Nijmegen 2009)]. Earlier he wrote for example about Viglius’ inaugural lecture at Ingoldstad [‘De inaugurale rede van Viglius van Aytta aan de universiteit van Ingolstadt’, in: Van oud en nieuw recht : handelingen van het XVde Belgisch-Nederlands rechtshistorisch congres, Dirk Heirbaut and Daniël Lambrecht (eds.) (Ghent 1998) 53-65]. There is a brief biographical article in English on Viglius by Michael Erbe in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, P.G. Bietenholz and T.B. Deutscher (eds.) (3 vol., Toronto 1985-1987; reprint 2003) III, 393-395, where Viglius’ position in the network around Erasmus is concisely charted.

Viglius is remarkable also for his historical work and an autobiography. He collected maps and he acted as the first librarian of the royal library in Brussels. A number of his letters, too, were published. You can consult four original letters sent to Viglius in the image library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The Kalliope guide for manuscripts and personal papers in Germany alerts to some letters and to 23 volumes at Göttingen, and to a volume with letters in Giessen. In Paris the BnF has among its archives et manuscrits a volume of the Manuscripta Zwichemiana (Nouv. acq. fr. 6168) and some letters from king Philip (Mélanges Colbert 409, VII, no. 817). If you search for Viglius at the Dutch archives portal you will find in particular in Leeuwarden and Utrecht archival records. When you use the Archives Portal Europe you will find even more. At Mémoire vive, the digital portal of the city Besançon you can find materials concerning Viglius within the Collection Granvelle. For those with access to the licensed Picarta resources, for instance via the Dutch Royal Library, you will find more letters in the Nederlandse Centrale Catalogus, and you will wonder why only two letters are listed in another Picarta resource, the Catalogus epistularum neerlandicarum, a database for finding Early Modern letters in a number of Dutch public collections. The two volumes of Postma will help you to trace even more.

It is entirely fitting a former president of the European Commission was asked to uncover the statue of Viglius at Leeuwarden. His published works were often reprinted during his life and some of them even afterwards. His letters and manuscripts ended in major libraries after periods in the hands of many scholars and collectors who appreciated Viglius’ contacts with celebrated humanists. Important archival records can be found in Brussels, Vienna and Simancas. Viglius’ life shows eminently how a an able man seemingly from a far-away corner of Europe could come close to the very nexus rerum of his time. Although he clearly felt much at home in Ghent he never forgot his Frisian roots. In this sense Leeuwarden can indeed claim to be a European capital. Once upon a time studies about Viglius were colored by nationalism and religious positions. If we see him now more as a true European with strong ties to his origin, this might teach us a lesson for our century. At some turns legal historians might have deplored his early goodbye to legal humanism, but it is more sensible to respect his efforts to steer clear of many problems in the middle of Europe’s political turmoil of his time which led to revolt and civil war in the Low Countries and many other parts of Europe.

E.T.A. Hoffmann, writer, composer, draughtsman and lawyer

The huge influence of German science and culture on the development of history as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century is something taken for granted. The image of a German professor lost in abstract thought in a country yearning for its romantic past is almost a caricature. However, not only professors walked through German university towns. In this post I will look at a well-known German writer who was also an active lawyer, serving as a judge. In December 2016 the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz launched the beta version of the E.T.A. Hoffmann portal. On December 12, 2017 its final version was revealed. Not only in Berlin events are currently organized around Hoffmann. Let’s look what will fit into one post!

A man of many talents

At the portal you will find the following quote by Hoffmann: “Die Wochentage bin ich Jurist und höchstens etwas Musiker, sonntags, am Tage wird gezeichnet, und abends bin ich ein sehr witziger Autor bis in die späte Nacht”, on weekdays I am a lawyer and at the best a tiny bit musician, on Sundays I am drawing, and in the evening I am a very funny author until late night. I fear any attempt at a short biography of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) will inevitably be much longer than this one revealing description. Hoffman was born in Köningsberg (now Kaliningrad). In 1792 he started studying law, but soon he used also his musical talents as a teacher. His study went well, bringing him already early on to Berlin, but he worked also in Poznan, Plock and Warsaw, in that period part of Prussia. A rather successful period in Poznan, where some of his compositions were received well, ended with an affair around anonymous caricatures behind which one suspected rightly Hoffmann.

The arrival of the French to Warsaw in 1806 brought a temporary end to his career as a Prussian servant. Eventually he settled in Bamberg as a conductor, and later he worked in the city theater. In 1816 he became a Kammergerichtsrat, but he unsuccessfully kept trying to work as a conductor, too. Meanwhile Hoffmann had started writing literary works. Under the restoration regime after the Napoleonic period he had in Berlin from 1819 onwards rather surprisingly the task to investigate people suspected of subversive plans. Hoffman used his knowledge of a particular case in his story Meister Floh, but he was charged with unlawful behaviour because he had allegedly publicized matters he was not allowed to divulge as a state official. Just before his case went on trial Hoffmann died after a prolonged illness.

If anything this brief overview shows in a nutshell many aspects of life and culture in Germany from around 1790 to around 1820. It is characteristic of Hoffmann to be aware of the many sides of his short life. Hoffmann’s sketch from 1815 of the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, the Kunz’scher Riss, is presented at the portal as an interactive map bringing you to a life with many facets. Hoffmann lived nearby this central square in Berlin with the Nationaltheater. In the following paragraphs I will look only at some sections of the Hoffmann portal, but in fact you can find interesting matters in every corner.

Earning his bread with law

During his short life Hoffmann earned most of his bread as a lawyer. The portal has a large section E.T.A. Hoffmann als Jurist by Hartmut Mangold. Hoffmann studied law only in Königsberg, and for just three years. We are used to German students visiting several universities during their student years, sometimes to hear the lectures of a particular professor, sometimes for other qualities of a city. Hoffmann made such rapid progress that he could start very quickly with the practical part of his legal education, first in 1795 as an Auskultator (hearer) at Glogau, and from 1798 onwards as a Referendar in Berlin. He earned enough praise to follow his career in 1800 as an assessor (judge) at the Obergericht of Poznan (Posen). However, within a month he had to move to the small town Plock because of the affair with the caricatures. The two years at Plock were unhappy, but his efforts were recognized by his superiors who sent him in 1804 as a Regierungsrat to Warsaw. The French occupation of Warsaw in 1806 ended a lucky period of hard work as a judge combined with eager cultural activities.

In 1814 Theodor von Hippel, a former friend from Königsberg, helped him to work again as a judge, first at a kind of minimum wage as a voluntary at the Berlin Kammergericht. Only after two years he got the full normal salary. His hard work brought him in 1819 a call to become a member of the special investigation committee, and in 1821 he moved to a rank at the coveted appeal court, the Oberappelationssenat. Mangold looks at Hoffmann’s views of the Schmolling case to assess his views as a judge in criminal cases. Hoffmann carefully analyzed a medical consultation which deemed Schmolling was not liable for his actions. In a following section you will see Hoffmann as a very conscientious member of the special committee which stood as one man against political influence and overruling by higher authorities. The committee had the task of a public attorney to bring legal actions against supposed offenders of the restrictions on political freedom. The committee saw in almost every case no criminal offense which could led to further persecution. He had to deal for example with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the man behind the popularity of gymnastics in Germany, often nicknamed Turnvater Jahn, who brough a case for defamation against Albert von Kamptz, a high Prussian official, who had slandered his name anonymously in two newspapers.

Hoffman dealt in a humourous way with Albert von Kamptz in his story Meister Floh [Master Flea]. The story ended with the dismissal of the mischievous official who had created a case out of a few words. However, Von Kamptz recognized himself quickly in Hoffmann’s publication, and started a disciplinary action against him with the argument that Hoffmann had broken his duty to reveal nothing from official procedures. Hoffmann defended himself by pleading for poetic freedom. He died before a trial against him could start. Mangold rightly stresses the way in which Hoffmann conformed to the ethos of Prussian law and lawyers.

A self-portrait drawing by Hoffmann instead of just signing a letter – collection E.T.A. Hofmann-Archiv, SBPK, Berlin

Writing about Hoffmann I noticed how my enthusiasm to know more about him and about his work as a Prussian lawyer steadily grew. You had better look yourself! A major part of the portal is a digital library for many of his works and papers. You will find letters, editions of his work, portraits, manuscripts, music scores, drawings and ex libris. In the corner Kurioses you will all kind of matters, from a massive wine bill by a Berlin firm to some funny drawings. Hoffman twice kept a diary, during 1803 and 1804 at Plock, and in the years spent between 1809 and 1815 in Bamberg, Dresden and other towns in Saxony.

It is great to find on this portal chapters accompanying the sections of the digital library. Thus you are enabled to look both at for example Hoffmann’s views on music as a discerning critic, gaining even approval and thanks from Beethoven, and at his compositions. His most successful opera Undine had a successful premiere in 1816 and gained high praise from Carl Maria von Weber, but unfortunately the Schauspielhaus burned down after the fourteenth performance. It marked the end of his career as a composer. Earlier on Hoffmann had changed his third name to Amadeus, a fair measure of the importance of music for him.

Large sections of the portal are devoted to research on Hoffmann. You can for example look at an attempt to reconstruct his personal library. His juridical books were restricted to almost exclusively works on contemporary Prussian law. He presumably used in Berlin other books from the library of the Kammergericht. I had expected to find legal materials also in the digital library of the Hoffmann portal, but these are simply absent, nor in printed form or in manuscript. Among all the qualities of the portal I missed references to the services of the Kalliope-Verbund, housed at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the great database with a German and English interface for searching personal papers and manuscripts of famous persons in the German-speaking world held by archives, libraries and museums. The Kalliope database rightfully alerts you to materials concerning Hoffmann in a substantial number of collections, with of course the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz at the first place.

Hoffmann in Berlin, Bamberg and Düsseldorf

The Staatsbibliothek in Berlin is the home of the E.T.A. Hoffmann archive. The Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, too, has holdings concerning Hoffmann. At the website of this library is a selection of drawings, early editions and letters. A look at the German Wikipedia page for Hoffmann brings me to a link for more works by Hoffman digitized at Bamberg. The page on Hoffmann as a lawyer leads only to the edition of his juridical works by Friedrich Schnapp [Juristische Arbeiten (Munich 1973)] and one article by Stefan Weichbrodt, ‘E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776 bis 1822)’. Juristische Schulung 2008/1, 7-13. Luckily Mangold gives us more at the Berlin portal. The E.T.A. Hoffmann Gesellschaft has made Hoffmann’s house in Bamberg into a museum. You can see six virtual exhibitions at their website, including one about the story of Meister Floh and its impact. With interfaces in seven languages you are bound to read something on the website of the Hoffmann Society which you can understand sufficiently.

In the last section I will turn to another story by Hoffmann which is now the heart of an exhibition at the Heinrich-Heine-Institut in Düsseldorf, Nussknacker und Mausekönig (Nutcracker and Mouse King), with much attention for the modern drawings for this story by Sabine Friedrichson. Hoffmann was and is famous for his certainly for Germany pioneering grisly tales. Combined with elements from other stories by Hoffmann a script was created for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, surely one of the most enduring and beloved ballet scores. Les contes de Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach is an opera in which at least two stories by Hoffmann have been used to create its libretto.

Some contemporaries concluded Hoffman was a bewildering figure, not to be taken seriously, but Hoffmann gained also admiration for his stories and music. Contemporary lawyers took him most seriously. If you look for some moments at Hoffmann’s life in a country suffering from the Napoleonic wars and its conservative aftermath you will recognize how sharp he saw the very different elements of life, war and society. In a romantic era his figure might at first seem romantic, but there is good reason to agree with Rüdiger Safranski in his masterful study Romantik. Eine deutsche Affäre [Romanticism. A German affair] (Munich 2007) that Hoffmann was a sceptic phantasy writer (“ein skeptischer Phantast”). In 1984 Safranski published a biography of Hoffmann with the same subtitle.

In this post with in the last paragraph a reference to a ballet which nowadays belongs to a particular period of the year, I bring you indeed to the end of this year. When you are weary of legal history, listening to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker or reading some of Hoffmann’s tales will hopefully bring you some moments of delight and wonder.

The many sides of Belgium’s legal history

In the ocean of legal websites you encounter very different sites. There are relatively few attempts at creating portals. When I saw the Digithemis portal for Belgian legal history and discovered its qualities it was only a matter of time before I would write about it here. Digithemis has been created by the Centre d’Histoire du Droit et de la Justice, Université Catholique Louvain-la-Neuve. Currently there is no portal site for Dutch legal history, and thus there is every reason, not only for Dutchmen, to look at this website. It might well inspire scholars in other countries, too.

Simple layout and rich contents

One of the powerful aspects of this website is its simple layout, with an implicit promise you will not get lost here. The subtitle Système numérique d’information historique sur la Justice is best translated as “digital system for historical information about justice”. Under the first heading Applications three databases are presented. The first, Belgian Magistrates, is concerned with officials in the Belgian judicial system. The database contains personal information, details about nominations, jurisdictions and institutions. Cubes, the second database, gives you judicial statistics, information about the number of cases and given verdicts in Belgian courts of justice. As a matter of fact I was hunting for websites with historical statistics when I ran into Digithemis. The third section brings us a bibliographical database for Belgium’s legal history. The database is the fruit of cooperation between the CHDJ at Louvain-la-Neuve and the project BeJust 2.0 – Justice et Populations.

In the second section, Ressources documentaires, you will find four subjects: legislation, doctrine, jurisprudence, and surprisingly again judicial statistics. Under Legislation you can find the French versions of the various codes of Belgian law, bulletins of the Ministry of Justice (circulaires), legislation concerning the judicial structure of Belgium, and a similar section for Congo during the colonial period. For doctrine you can look at a number of legal journals, at mercuriales, discourses pronounced at the start of the judicial season by the attorneys general, and there is a bibliographical database for criminology with some 8,500 entries. The corner with jurisprudence seemed at first straightforward: for arrêts of the Cour de cassation between 1832 and 1936 you can consult the Pasicrisie, alas currently not available, and for the period 1937-2011 there is a similar site, but here I can see only verdicts between 2002 and 2015. A very much contested period in Belgium’s history comes up with the online version of La jurisprudence belge depuis le 10 mai 1940. The section for judicial statistics is enhanced by a historical overview and a concise bibliography.

The section Expositions virtuelles contains two virtual exhibits. The first, Classified, looks at Belgian military intelligence forces. The second one, Mots de la Justice [Words of Justice] is concerned with images and imagery of law and justice. The accompanying congress in Bruges earlier this year has figured on this blog at the time the bilingual catalogue was published.

The next stop of this tour are the contributions, As for now there are only two scholarly articles. The Lignes de temps interactives show interactive timelines for three subjects, women and legal professions, the Belgian judicial organisation, and the jury d’assises. In particular the timeline for women in the legal profession is telling. Ten short videos with presentations in French and Dutch about recent research are the last element of this section.

Finally the links section of this website confirms its claim to be a portal for legal history. The concise choise of links concerns Belgium, France, digital resources, and some Transatlantic websites and projects. In the right sidebar you can browse for interesting items in a RSS feed. This portal does build on other major projects in Belgium, starting with BeJust 2.0. Other portals often have an events calendar, but it seems Françoise Muller and Xavier Rousseaux wisely have built a compact portal with space for future extensions. The footer of the portal mentions the 2016 prize of the Fonds Wernaers awarded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) for the best scientific website.

More statistics

I found the attention to statistics a strong feature of this portal. I could not help noticing that it might be useful to add a more general website for Belgian statistics to this portal. The University Ghent has created the Lokstat project, an abbreviation of Lokale statistieken, local statistics. This project currently offers local statistics taken from the 1900 census in Belgium, with additionally an agricultural census from 1895 and an industry census from 1896, this one accompanied with maps. It would be interesting to combine these data with judicial statistics.

As a Dutchman admiring these efforts of a neighbour country I have not yet found similar Dutch judicial statistics at a special platform. The Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) has made a fine website for Dutch Censuses 1795-1971, accessible in Dutch and English. At CBS Historische Collectie you can consult digitized reports from almost two centuries. For the field of law and justice there are mainly reports from the second half of the twentieth century, for example prison statistics (1950-2000), crimes between 1950 and 1981, juvenile criminality (1974-1981) and crime victims (1980-1984). A quick look at general publications since 1813 in this digital collection shows judicial statistics were part and parcel of the yearly overviews. For four Dutch provinces there are yearbooks since the 1840’s (Provinciale verslagen).

It is not because you find everything at particular websites, but because they help you to look further, to value information, to think about problems you want to study or to contact scholars or read their work, that portals such as Digithemis deserve a warm welcome and attentive followers. Digithemis should serve as an invitation for the creation of similar portals for other countries and regions, too.

Picturing the law

Legal iconography covers a wide choice of subjects. Illustrations in legal books form a class of its own. In the exhibition Law’s Picture Books at The Grolier Club in New York illustrated law books from the rich collection of Yale’s Lillian Goldman Law Library are put on display. In some previous posts here this collection has figured prominently, but this is the occasion to show more of its glories. The exhibition is accompanied by a number of online videos created by Mark Weiner and Mike Widener, curator of the Rare Book Room at Yale Law Library. You can consult online many images taken from legal books in this collection at Flickr. The blog of the Rare Book Room often present illustrated law books, too. Yale Law Library show a second related exhibition, Around the World with Law’s Picture Books, curated by Mike Widener and Emma Molina Widener, yet another reason to look here again at this great collection.

Mark Weiner, currently on leave from Rutgers University, is best known for his book The Rule of the Clan (2013) and his blog Worlds of Law. The Grolier Club of New York, was founded in 1884. It is one of America’s oldest and most active organizations for book collecting and bibliography, with an extensive library and collections concerning these fields.

Windows on the variety of law

For the exhibition in New York a full catalogue is available. On the blog of the Rare Book Room Mike Widener tells about the themes chosen for the exhibition. Weiner and Widener have grouped 140 books around ten themes. In the next paragraph you will see which choice I have made among them to give you an idea of both the book and the exhibition. By the way, the image of Lady Justice on the cover of the new catalogue is a reminder of the Justice as a Sign of the Law exhibit at Yale Law Library in 2011 around Judith Resnik’s and Dennis Curtis’ monograph Representing Justice. You can read online sections of their book and view an online version of this earlier exhibit. The new catalogue has been produced very handsomely. It is a joy to read the introductory essays, not only written by Weiner and Widener, but also by Jolande E. Goldberg (Library of Congress) and Erin C. Blake (Folger Shakespeare Library). They succeed in putting the exhibition under multiple perspectives.

Image from “Cases on appeals concerning the duties on houses and windows (…) (London 1782) – Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library

I will not give here a spoiler of all themes, and restrict myself to just one theme, “Arguing the Law” (chapter 7), with images of evidence used in court and illustrations used to influence public opinion. Here literally the force of the proverbial telling image is shown, for an image shows more than thousand words can say. You can look for example at the victims found in a ship wreck. There are two pictures with windows for cases concerning a tax on windows. Another image shows an early telephone in a case about the patent of Alexander Bell for his invention. Yet another drawing shows a neighbourhood around a block of houses where two of them had been destroyed to prevent a fire to bring even more damage. For an early twentieth-century trade mark case the image of the disputed packing of biscuits is the very core of the case. There is a beautiful drawing of a bridge which allegedly hindered steamboats on the Ohio, and a chilling image of the way torture was afflicted.

In one of the five videos you can see the preparations for both current exhibitions, with for example a discussion about the choice of the images for particular themes and the order of appearance in the showcases. It is particular interesting also to see Mike Widener in action both at Yale Law Library (“Two Ways to Work“) and during a visit to the New York antiquarian book fair. In a way the two exhibitions crown his collection policy which led him to create not just a good collection of illustrated law books, but a real great one from which scholars and student will benefit long afterwards.

Dutch and Flemish legal history come into view for example with an image taken from a seventeenth-century edition of Joost de Damhoudere’s Practycke in criminele saken where two men are busy moving illicitly poles marking roads. In fact numerous editions of his work are shown in New York and in the catalogue. I promised not to tell here everything, but I must point you to an image of Lady Justice seated on the Corpus Iuris Civilis, the Corpus Iuris Canonici and the Bible in an eighteenth-century Dutch translation of a work on criminal law by the German lawyer Benedict Carpzov. Among the things to note is the author of the engraving, the Dutch actor and artist Jan Punt (1711-1779).

It is difficult to stop here and not to continue showing you illustrations which offer you food for thought. For many illustrations Widener and Weiner have not stayed content with just a description, but they ask questions as well, sometimes a bit rhetorical, but more often real questions. The exhibitions in New York and New Haven help us to become more aware of the impact of images, and to see legal iconography as a substantial element of legal studies and legal history. Some newspapers and magazines use a system with stars in their reviews of books, exhibitions and recordings. This exhibition needs no further laurels!

Law’s Picture Books: The Yale Law Library Collection – New York, Grolier Club, September 13-November 18, 2017 – Around the World with Law’s Picture Books – Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, New Haven, CT, September 5-December 15, 2017

Between printed books and social media

On this blog digitization is often shown at its best when digital initiatives bring you closer to sources and texts which used to be difficult to access. Even though blogs themselves belong to the social media I have seldom commented here on their use or abuse in the field of legal history. Museum Meermanno in The Hague is host to an exhibition in cooperation with institutions in Göttingen, Antwerp and Hasselt to show books and other printed media from a period when printing itself could be dubbed the agent of change. Conn3ct: Impact van drukpers en sociale media has got “media” as the extension of its web address. With Erasmus (1469-1536) on the start page browsing a smart phone the message of this exhibition website becomes more personal. His presence reinforces the theme of the exhibition with communication and its manifestations in the sixteenth century as its heart. Erasmus’ role and position in the international scholarly community as a prince of letters and literature is indeed hardly conceivable without the printing press and public exchanges of views on many subjects. Interestingly, there is attention to law and justice, too, in this exhibition. The website can be viewed in Dutch, English and German.

The exhibition currently on display in The Hague has been created by the Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek [Flemish Heritage Library] in Antwerp and the Dutch Royal Library (The Hague) in cooperation with the Provinciale Bibliotheek Limburg in Hasselt and the Universiteit Antwerpen. The Dutch-Flemish presentation at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in 2016 was the occasion to organize the exhibit first shown in Göttingen thanks to the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.

Similar and different

The core of the Conn3ct website is the theme section with nine themes concerning communication and action. “Enter”, “Start” and “Change” are seemingly straightforward. With “Status”, “Follow” and “Control” you enter clearly the empire of the social media, and “Delete” “Community” and “Chat” follow naturally. Here I will look rather at random at some of these themes. “Change” brings a comparison between the early days of book printing, with books without a title page, and sixteenth-century books with title pages. Many features of the virtual world we now take for granted have come gradually within the first twenty-five years of the virtual world. Under “Control” you will find items concerning censorship, but also its counterpart, pirated editions and edition with a fictive printing address and origin. It is a useful reminder that not only ecclesiastical authorities acted against books when you see here for example an ordinance of emperor Charles V forbidding books [Mandament der Keyserlijcker Maiesteit. Met dintitulatie vanden gereprobeerde boecken (Leuven: Servaes van Sassen, 1546)], a decade before the first papal Index librorum prohibitorum. The virtual delete button brings you to subjects as printed ephemera, very rare editions and early bibliographies, even one created in 1523 by Erasmus of his own works, on one side, and notions such as anonymous internet surfing and the questions of virtual longevity.

The second main section, Books and videos at the Conn3ct website is more traditional. It offers a searchable overview of the books, videos and other media, just over one hundred items. You can choose at will among themes, media, technical aspects such as illustrations, general characteristics, for example bestsellers, de luxe-editions or corrected versions, language, year of publication, and contributing institution. I would almost forget you can connect any item quickly to actual social media or store them in your favorites. It is worth looking also at the section with ideas for digital initiatives of Dutch and Flemish schools for the arts.

It is easy to point to similarities between the sixteenth and the twenty-first century, but this exhibition show also the differences. In my view the juxtaposition of two periods helps to perceive the precise impact of the variety of forms of communications in print versus the proliferation of social media creating either a virtual reality or increasingly a normal part of the world. In a cartoon the two ducks Fokke and Sukke commented like medieval monks in their version of the Canon of Dutch History (2007) on the printing press: “This invention will not stay with us. People will always want to read handwritten books!”

The oldest museum for the history of the book

The Museum Meermanno at the Prinsessegracht, The Hague – image source: Monumentenzorg Den Haag

Two collections form the heart of the Museum Meermanno, in the twentieth century known under a longer name, Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum. Johan Meerman (1753-1815) had studied law in Leipzig, Göttingen and Leiden and became a politician, serving for example as a mayor of Rotterdam. His father, Gerard Meerman (1721-1772), pensionaris (city secretary) of Rotterdam, was also a lawyer. He had already started collecting books about law and jurisprudence which led to the publication of the Novus thesaurus juris civilis et canonici (7 vol., The Hague 1751-1753; online, Hathi Trust Digital Library). Gerard Meerman edited also the Epitome Gai in a very rare edition [Specimen animadversationum criticarum in Caii Jcti Institutiones (…) (Lutetiae Parisiorum: apud Merigot, 1747)] which I mentioned last year in a post about Pieter Gillis and Thomas More’s Utopia. Meerman’s edition was reprinted in the Novus thesaurus. Later on he started also collecting manuscripts and incunabula, books printed in the fifteenth century. In 1764 he bought for example the manuscript collection of the Jesuit college Louis le Grand. Gerard Meerman’s research into book history led to his study Origines typographicae (2 vol., The Hague 1765; online, Hathi Trust).

A nephew of Johan, Willem van Westreenen van Tiellandt (1783-1848), too, was an avid collector of books, coins and Egyptian artefacts. During the French period he served as an adjunct-archivist of the Kingdom Holland. In the new Kingdom of the Netherlands he became in 1815 the treasurer of the new Hoge Raad van Adel (High Council of Nobility) and in 1842 director of the Royal Library. He bought substantial parts of the Meerman collections at an auction in 1824, and in his will he bequeathed his collections and house to the Dutch nation. The location of the Museum Meermanno, close to the Royal Library, explains the easy cooperation between both institutions. Some of the most renown Dutch librarians served at both locations. The modern museum collects especially bibliophile and rare editions.

The world of law and justice is by all means not only a place of the spoken word, but also a world of words in print or in online databases and digital collections. It is only fitting that two lawyers created book collections which are still the central features of a remarkable museum. The exhibition is certainly worth your virtual visit, and it should be a good reason to visit The Hague, too.

The Hague, Museum Meermanno: Conn3ct, impact van drukpers en sociale media – February 24-May 21, 2017 – from June 22 at Antwerp and from October 14 in Hasselt