A starters’ guide to old scripts in Belgium

Sometimes an odd chance brings you suddenly to a subject or book. In April I spotted a new primer for Belgian palaeography tucked away among books on linguistics in a large book store. I was happy to find Oud schrift voor beginners. Een inleiding tot de paleografie [Old script for starters. An introduction to palaeography], edited by Georges Declercq and Hanne Roose (Ghent 2023), but I could not help pointing out its misplacement at the sales desk. In this post I will look at the promises and qualities of this new book.

Setting limits

Both Georges Declercq and Hanne Roose teach medieval history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In their book they aim explicitly at anyone starting to decipher old scripts in archival records, be they students, local amateur historians or genealogists. The authors firmly believe people can learn by patient exercise and training to read scripts from earlier ages, something which tends to be neglected nowadays when artifical intelligence helps computers to decipher old scripts with evermore sophisticated algorithms. However, Declercq and Roose do not include scripts from the entire medieval period. They choose to start with texts in medieval Flemish from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Substantial space is devoted to texts from the sixteenth century because of the great changes in writing, and the most recent document shown is taken from the mid-eighteenth century.

A proof of the concern to guide the first steps in dealing with old scripts is shown by the relative weight and length of the introductory chapters, sixty of the 224 pages. When the two authors mention further literature in these chapters they wisely refer to just one or a few selected titles, and they do likewise in the section for further reading. Giving a commented select overview is indeed wiser at first than presenting a seemingly complete list of titles without further indications or guidance.

The great strength of this book is the detailed treatment of just seventeen examples of old scripts, five of them in French. For each item a general introduction to the source genre and its context is given, followed by an image of the source and a transcription. To these element they add paragraphs on specific characteristics, abbreviations used, diacritic signs, letter forms and a textual exegesis. Thus they show palaeography as a full-grown auxiliary science for history which takes you beyond merely producing a transcription and quickly going to the information given by a source which might be all you wanted initially. It shows neophytes graphically you have to study your sources before you can reach your prized information.

Declercq and Roose do mention the most recent manuals dealing with Belgian – and Dutch – palaeography, starting with Paul Kempeneers, Oud schrift: lezen, begrijpen, overzetten (Antwerpen-Apeldoorn 2006). They clearly state they did not want to offer a palaeographical atlas as created by C. Dekker, R. Baetens and S. Maarschalkerweerd-Dechamps, Album palaeographicum XVII Neerlandicarum (Turnhout-Utrecht 1992) or the Schriftspiegel by J.P. Sigmond and P. Horsman in its recent third edition (Hilversum 2022), reviewed here last year. The magnificent Album palaeographicum deals with sources in Dutch, Flemish, Latin and French; the introduction and explanations are in Dutch and French. The detailed attention provided by Declercq and Roose for each script example is indeed proof they want to offer an introductory manual. They explain also the value of a number of older printed manuals. The dimensions of Oud schrift voor beginners, 17 by 24 cm, are more modest than those of the Schriftspiegel and the Album. Declercq and Roose mostly show only a part of a document or they had to resize an image substantially.

A few remarks

With all these qualities it is hard to fault Declercq and Roose on any point, but surely some remarks are possible or even necessary. The authors rightly strees the need to deal with older forms of Flemish, Dutch and French. They point to the website Middelnederlands Digitaal created by Veerle Uyttersprot (Universiteit Gent), but they disregarded the fact you can only view the exercises as a student at Ghent after registration. You could have a look at the website MOOC Middelnederlands or at the digitized version of the manual by Maaike Hogehout-Mulder, Cursus Middelnederlands (Groningen 1983).

Declercq and Roose distinguish between a diplomatic and a historical transcription. For the latter they give some basic transcription rules. They point also to the official guidelines for Belgian historians. However, curiously one particular element is missing in their explanations and comments to the examples. They do not point out the need for a proper reference to the very source of transcription as an integral and essential part of any transcription. Perhaps they did not see the need to do this in this manual, because they choose source examples from a private collection. Perhaps they deem it an element of historical heuristics, but in my view you cannot teach early enough the need to and the way how to refer to archival sources. References to sources and objects in libraries and museums seem much more normal for people than archival references with elements pointing to a context or a collection, which can be a source of confusion. I still remember from my student’ years a reference to a charter in a Flemish collection, Charters blauw [Charters Blue]! To use a Flemish word, Amai, this omission is certainly painful. It helps to perpetuate the myth of sources “hidden” in archives instead of making clear the need to explain such references to a student or scholar, to someone creating a family tree or a volunter for local history.

However, this manual scores high notes for its attention to sources for legal history. Even their real or supposed difficult nature did not stop Declercq and Roose from explaining basic facts about them, and rightly so. They present for example a feudal dénombrement from 1436 (no. 4), the document of a woman with directions about her goods upon entering a monastery as a nun in 1501 (no. 6), a verdict of the schepenen (échevins, aldermen) of Ghent from1650 (no. 12), an attestation by the bishop of Doornik (Tournai) in 1665 (no. 13), and a mandate issued in 1756 by the Raad van Vlaanderen, the Flemish supreme court (no. 17). In this example the schepenen of Ghent figure again, but they are not identical officials. The existence of two kinds of schepenen in Ghent, van de keure and van gedele, could have been highlighted.

The Flemish television network VRT created in 2022 a series called Het verhaal van Vlaanderen [The story of Flanders], narrated by Tom Waes, well known for his travel documentaries, not just of places in Belgium, and showing re-enacted scenes from Flemish history; this series is currently shown on Dutch television, too. The diversity of Flemish locations in the documents in the manual by Declercq and Roose wets your appetite to know more about Flemish history. Their choice helps to create at the start of your own adventures with the rich history of Flanders a sense of wonder about and respect for the variety of sources that have survived and can be found in both public and other archives. Many resources for ecclesiastical history in Flanders are kept at diocesan archives. Declercq and Roose deserve thanks for inviting anyone to go that road by learning yourself – perhaps slowly but also diligently! – ways to deal with old scripts. Online tools may decipher scripts in many languages with remarkable results, but for the creation of complete and sensible transcriptions still other skills are needed beyond the scope of these tools.

Georges Declercq and Hanne Roose, Oud schrift voor beginners. Een inleiding tot de paleografie (Ghent: Academia Press, 2023; ISBN 978 94 014 91297; 224 pp.)

A mirror of Dutch scripts: Some thoughts around a manual for palaeography

This month at long last the third edition appeared of a renown manual for Dutch palaeography from 1500 to the mid-eighteenth century by Peter Horsman and Peter Sigmond, Schriftspiegel. Oud-Nederlandse handschriften van de 13de tot in de 18de eeuw (3rd edition, Hilversum, 2022). For at least ten years no new manual of its kind had been published in the Netherlands and Belgium, and thus I was immediately curious about this revised edition, announced last year but printed and published only now. Which differences can be found between the last and this edition? What are its qualities, and where can one wish for more? Recently reading old scripts has developed for me a new dimension making me more aware of things to be expected in guidance when reading old archival records.

Both authors of the new Schriftspiegel [Mirror of scripts] are well known for their achievements. Peter Horsman worked as an archivist at the Dordrecht archives and taught at the Archiefschool and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Historian Peter Sigmond taught at the former Rijksarchiefschool and ended his professional career as head of collections at the Rijksmuseum. As a specialist of maritime history he taught also cultural history at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Thus it is only natural their manual shows a bit more examples of records from the Regionaal Archief Dordrecht and on maritime history than you would expect otherwise, and these are valuable elements of this book.

The use of calligraphy books in this manual attracted my attention so much that I decided to look at some length at this subject. The paragraph on Early Modern Dutch calligraphy follows directly after my review of the new Schriftspiegel which takes its name from a seventeenth-century namesake.

Safe guidance to old scripts

I was really anxious about the way Horsman and Sigmond would introduce old scripts in this edition. They opt for a rather concise introduction aiming at clarity for novice readers, and rightly so. It is wonderful how they use the calligraphy of scripts in two early sixteenth-century manuals, among them the Spieghel der schrijfkonste (…) by Jan van de Velde (Amsterdam 1608) as a key element to familiarize readers with examples of Dutch scripts. They did not forget to include also examples of scripts closer to Germany. Some texts are even written in German. The choice of further literature is very good, even if it a bit strange to find a number of manuals dealing with both Dutch palaeography and Early Modern archival records under the heading Taal en tekstverklaring [Language and textual interpretation]. Four examples of online manuals for Dutch palaeography are mentioned, three of them without the actual URL. Among the books on Dutch chronology the authors have not added the concise work by C.C. de Glopper-Zuiderland, In tijd gemeten. Inleiding tot de chronologie (Den Haag 1999). However, I did not really know about P.G.J. Sterkenburg, Een glossarium van zeventiende-eeuws Nederlands (3rd impr., The Hague, 1981), mentioned as available also online, but this book has not been digitized for the Digitale Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Letteren nor at Delpher incidentally. Some fact checking and editorial control would have helped to avoid such glitches and the impression both authors belong to an older generation.

In my view the best part of the introduction is the very good presentation of letter forms and the development of letters. Using color photographs of documents takes this certainly to a new level. The four pages on abbreviations are pretty good, although the typography could have been clearer. Here, too, the column with colorful examples redeems this easily, although using at some points a black or grey font on a blue background is not ideal. A list of often encountered abbreviations would have been most welcome.

The variety of Dutch scripts and archival records

Of course attention should now rapidly go to the 134 examples of Dutch scripts shown in this book, going from 1279 to 1753. The authors want to show texts in Dutch, and medieval texts in Latin have not been included at all. No. 100 from 1645 is in German. There are just two texts from the late thirteenth century, twelve from the fourteenth century, and seventeen from the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century is presented with 40 examples, and for the seventeenth century 55 texts and images are shown. By the way, for some longer texts two images are shown, always accompanied by transcriptions on the left page. The eighteenth century figures with just eight examples up to 1753, an addition to the edition Zutphen 1986 which ended in 1700. As in earlier editions you can find an explanation where to start in growing order of difficulty, going from the eighteenth century to the Middle Ages.

The choice and numbering of items has changed at a few points. A rather visible oddity are some dubious references. Take the very first item, a charter from 1279, “Stadsarchief Breda, VZ0010, inv.nr. 582”. The city archive in Breda has two collections with miscellaneous additions called Varia. This reference points to collection Varia 1; compare “V-1, collectie varia” in the edition 1986. The reference to item no. 133 is simply incomplete: With “Oud-Rechterlijk Archief Haarlem, inventarisnummer 3111” they do not indicate the inventory number, this is lacking. Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief, 3111, Oud-Rechterlijke Archief Haarlem, inv.no. …” would be correct. It is a nice challenge to find the correct item number in the inventory, probably no. 780 (accounts, 1748).

You might guess correctly Tresoar is located at Leeuwarden which you could mistake easily for the Leeuwarden city archives, the Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden. The two locations of the Historisch Centrum Overijssel in Zwolle and Deventer are not sufficiently indicated, too. Two former professors at the Dutch school for archivists should realize adding the location is not just a wish or a whim but a necessary element in a transcription. Such infelicities should not hide the fact the authors have chosen documents from a wide range of Dutch archives, not only from the Nationaal Archief, The Hague and the provincial capitals, but also from other city and regional archives. Only Brabant and Limburg could have been presented with more items from regional archives.

In a book written by a specialist of Dutch maritime history you will be happy to see for instance a ship journal kept by Michiel Adriaansz. de Ruyter, in document no. 95 from 1633 still a young chief mate. With a view to the large overseas trade and the Dutch colonial empire some attention to Dutch connections with other countries outside Europe is only natural. As no. 90 you see the famous letter about the transaction bringing ownership of Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626. For example, no. 128 from 1703 is an attestation with the views of a Dutch woman about de swarten, “the blacks” in India. No. 123 is a document about paying ransoms for Dutch slaves in Morocco in 1687, and no. 134 from 1753 tells you about slaves in the Cape colony.

Is there any comparable manual for Dutch palaeography? The only serious competitor to this manual was published thirty years ago, the Album paleographicum XVIII Neerlandicarum. Paleografisch album van Nederland, België, Luxemburg en Frankrijk, edited by R. Baetens, C. Dekker and S. Maarschalkerweerd-Dechamps (Turnhout-Utrecht 1992) which includes also medieval documents from the tenth century onwards and documents written in Latin, Dutch, French and German. Its introduction is given in Dutch and French. It reminds me about the very real need for people not fluent in Dutch all over the world for a concise introduction in English. Horsman’s and Sigmond’s introduction deserves an English translation.

The length and details of this post should be a sure indication I think this book deserves both close inspection and a warm welcome! The strength of this manual was and remains the choice of a splendidly wide variety of documents, not in the least for those documents touching on legal history. The authors have listed them conveniently. For example, the range of document types for notarial acts is very large. Horsman and Sigmond rightly refer for more on this subject to A.F. Gehlen’s guide Notariële akten uit de 17de en 18de eeuw. Handleiding voor gebruikers (Zutphen 1986). The glossary of terms and old words brings you many words with a legal nature, a feature of earlier editions, too. Each item in the manual is given with a short and helpful introduction. The way letter forms are explained is the most salient visual change as are the color photographs, and also the format is slightly larger. I expected the highest possible quality of this new edition of a classic work for doing Dutch history, certainly when you realize it was prepared during a period with lockdowns. Surely I agree this new edition improves on the second edition.

Ironically, some things I applaud here were the very points criticized by J.L. van der Gouw in his review for the Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 98 (1985) 414-415 of the first edition (Zutphen 1984). His prophecy that things helping amateurs and students would make them lazy is alluring, but I honestly think good guidance is not amiss when starting and long afterwards. You might almost think Horsman and Sigmond as a small revenge did not give the publication year of the third edition of Van der Gouw’s Oud schrift in Nederland (Alphen aan de Rijn, 1980).

Since July 2022 I work at the Regionaal Archief Zuid-Utrecht, Wijk bij Duurstede. Among other tasks I will help volunteers with transcribing archival records, an important recent tradition of this regional archive. Both my young and senior colleagues rightly greeted the new edition of the Schriftspiegel with enthusiasm as a valuable and serviceable manual for newcomers to old Dutch scripts, professionals and even the general public.

P.J. Horsman and J.P. Sigmond, Schriftspiegel. Oud-Nederlandse handschriften van de 13de tot in de 18de eeuw (3rd edition, Hilversum: Verloren, 2022; 296 pp.; ISBN 9789087049607).

A bibliographical excursion on Dutch Early Modern calligraphy

Cover of Jan van den Velde, Spieghel der schrijfkonste (…) (Rotterdam: Van Waesberghe, 1605) – image source STCN

Using calligraphy as a start and only almost as an afterthought actual archival records is sound for a didactic purpose, going thus from the easy and recognizable to more common and even ugly scripts you encounter in actual research. I thought it would be helpful to guide you here to a digital copy of the marvellous Spieghel der schrijfkonste by Jan van der Velde, and this led me to a discovery I would have liked to avoid. I wonder very much why the authors made the mistake to state the Rijksmuseum copy shown in their manual was printed at Amsterdam in 1608. The library catalogue clearly shows as location and date of printing Rotterdam 1605, published in three parts. The Universal Short Tile Catalogue (USTC) does not mention this copy (no. 1028389). The three editions mentioned in the USTC have all derived printing locations, dates and printers.

The only digital copy I found at Umeå Universitet of this edition shows only two parts from 1605 (part I, scripts, 75 pp., and part III, scripts, 147 pp.). When you check the Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN) for no. 833360815 it becomes clear the Rijksmuseum has taken its information from three separate STCN items for its library catalogue entry, but in its turn the STCN shows clearly the Rijksmuseum has several copies of this beautiful work, not only the one stemming from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap. Luckily the value of the introduction does not mar other qualities of the new Schriftspiegel, but a bit more carefulness with the very book the authors took as one of their models would have been right. Dealing with a book without a clear location and printing date – and changing titles! – is a difficult matter, in particular for a multi volume set like this one. In addition this work has also been translated soon, another thing to complicate matters to be investigated. I will not try to solve these bibliographical questions here entirely, but just wanting to give you a link to a digitized version led me to this addendum.

Let’s end here with sending those interested in seventeenth-century calligraphy to the fine commented list of (digitized) works at Penna Volans. This particular Van de Velde edition does not figure in it with a link to a digital version, only for its title page. However, the Allard Pierson at Amsterdam, the combined special collections and university museum of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, put images of it online at Flickr among their calligraphy albums, alas with few meta-data, thus leaving you in the dark which of their three copies they used.

Horsman and Sigmond also give some examples from Cornelis Dirckz. Boissens’ Exemplaren van veelderhande nederlantsche gheschriften (…) (Amsterdam 1617), and here, too, you face the challenge of finding a copy at all. The STCN nor the USTC does mention it. The Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog lists copies at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin [Kunstbibliothek, OS 5016 quer] and the Bibliothèque nationale universitaire at Strasbourg. The Berlin catalogue clearly indicated the place of printing and date have been inferred, and adds question marks. It leaves me wondering a bit what book the authors really saw. In view of its rarity and the changing titles of editions a clear reference to the copy used is simply necessary. These Early Modern calligraphy books remain a feast for the eye and a bibliographical challenge.

A postscript

The Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem has digitized its copies of several caliigraphy books created by Jan van de Velde (1568-1623), among them its copy of the Spieghel der Schrijfkonste, dated 1605 (part I, signature 185 H 22:1).

A great institution at 200: The École des Chartes

Jubilees come in various forms. Some are obviously too arbitrary or only remotely interesting, others call rigthly for your time and attention. Among French educational institutions the grandes établissements take pride of place. The École nationale des chartes (ENC) in Paris is surely very special among them. In 2021 it celebrates its bicentenary. Although it is obvious to make a comparison with the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich, commemorated here in 2019 for its own bicentenary, the ENC distinguishes itself by being a school for archivists and paleographers. In this post I will look at the fundamental aspects of the ENC, some of its former pupils and at some famous episodes from its history.

The institutional setting

The royal ordinance of February 22, 1821 for the foundation of the ENC – image ENC

Fairly recently the ENC became a part of the Université PSL (Paris Sciences & Lettres) after a period as part of the university Paris Sorbonne, hence the different URL’s for some elements of its current digital presence. I had better start here with stating that the ENC is formally not a grande école or grand établissement with an independent status, but it ranks decidedly with its equals. I should tell you also immediately I am deeply impressed by a work on the development of history as a profession in France during the nineteenth century, written by Pim den Boer, Geschiedenis als beroep. De professionalisering van de geschiedbeoefening in Frankrijk (1818-1914) (NIjmegen 1987). This study helps you very much to see major institutions, minor and major figures and developments in their context. During the nineteenth century the ENC provided France in the first place with archivists and paleographers who put their work in archives at the service of historians. The chartistes did write theses, but these stayed closed to the documents; aktengemäss was Den Boer’s vignette for their production. We tend to associate the ENC with critical source editions, but producing book length editions is a much later development. The ENC shows its core qualities in the new critical edition of the royal ordinance of February 22, 1821 founding this institution, available online as a PDF and introduced with a video.

The creation of a journal by the ENC, the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes (BEC) in 1839 was an initiative of the newly founded Société de l’École des Chartes. It is one of the oldest still existing scientific journals. You can find digitized issues at the Persée portal up to 2015. Among the issues from this century are some thematic volumes. With its training in the auxiliary historical sciences and its insistence on using historical research methods the ENC soon became a model institution. Dlplomatics, paleography, chronolology and sigillography are perhaps the best known auxiliary sciences for historians. These disciplines are still taught at the ENC, but next to the classic training for archivists the ENC offers four other masters. digital humanities for historians, digital humanities, transnational history and medieval studies. At the Theleme portal the ENC offers course materials, dossiers on several themes, and a number of bibliographies. You can benefit for example from the materials on book history in the Cours section. When reading Early Modern French documents you will encounter abbreviations listed in the Dictionnaire des abréviations françaises.

The ENC uniquely has both a library and a journal called bibliothèque, and both deserve some attention here. Its collections brought the library a recognition for excellence (Collections d’Excellence). Of course there is also a bibliothèque numérique, with apart form licensed resources also three digital collections from its own holdings, and three virtual exhibits. For the theses of students the library has created a subdomain in its digital library called ThENC@. On a second subdomain Theses you search in all these since 1840. PhD theses defended at the ENC between 2013 and 2020 are conveniently mentioned in a list.

Celebrating a bicentenaire

Of course it is clear the projected celebrations for the bicentenaire could only partially proceed in its original planned format. I will therefore skip presenting the program, except for the special issue on the jubilee published by the history journal L’Histoire (PDF). It is much more interesting to look at some of the educational platforms creaetd by the ENC, one of them put online only a few weeks ago.

The French sense for structure has led the ENC to create yet another subdomain for is applications with the nice abbreviation DH, because a number of them are a part of digital humanities. You can have a look at applications under development, too. The best known is perhaps Éditions en ligne de l’École des chartes (Élec), with currently 32 electronic editions. A few years ago I wrote here a contribution about Graziella Pastore’s edition of the Livre de jostice et de plet. The most used online edition is probably the great dictionary – actually formally only a glossary – for medieval Latin created by Charles de Fresne du Cange. The theme range of the editions is really wide. There are also some acts of scientific congresses, and for example a repertory for medieval French translations of texts in classical Latin and Greek. Among other projects I simply did not know about the online version of the Dictionnaire topographique de la France (DicoTopo,) a very useful tool for tracing French (historical) geographical locations.

I had expected to find here also a reference to the Theleme portal, but the ENC views this as an educational resource. Theleme stands for Techniques pour l’Histoire en Ligne:: Études, Manuels, Exercices, Bibliographies, a host of things much needed by (French) historians. The bibliographies for the historical auxiliary disciplines are splendid. Among the tutorials (cours) I would single out those dealing with book and printing history. The Dictionnaire des abréviations françaises should inspire palaeographers worldwide to create similar tools showing abbreviations for their own country and language. The dossiers documentaires offer both historical and palaeographic commentaries for images of charters and other documents in French and Latin from France. They offer students a most useful introduction in studying medieval and later documents.

The latest addition to the fleet of subdomains and digital projects of the ENC is ADELE (Album de diplomatique en ligne), an online project providing images of medieval charters for diplomatics, the study of charters as an auxiliary historical discipline, a classic activity at the ENC since its foundation.

Beyond reading old scripts

Being able to study old scripts was perhaps the thing most clear to outsiders about chartistes. It was not a coincidence professors at and former students of the ENC got involved in looking at the infamous document posing itself as evidence in the Dreyfus case around 1900. Interestingly chartistes were found both among the dreyfusards, those defending captain Dreyfus, and among his fierce opponents. In an earlier contribution I looked at this case and the importance of a newly found secret dossier. I remember in particular reading the article about the position of former élèves by Bertrand Joly, ‘L’École des Chartes et l’Affaire Dreyfus’, BEC 147 (1989) 611-671 (online, Persée).

It is not entirely by chance that the scientist René Girard (1923-2015) , one of the most famous former students of the ENC, became interested in the role and importance of mechanisms for blaming people. His theories about scapegoat mechanisms made him most interesting for anthropologists, but legal historians, too, have to be aware of such phenomena, and not only when dealing with criminal law. Roger Martin du Gard (1881-1958) became an author of famous novels, foremost the series Les Thibaut (1922-1940), which brought him in 1937 the Nobel Prize for literature.

The ENC does not have its own various series of source editions like its slightly older German counterpart, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but its professors and former students certainly produced numerous critical editions in the classic French series such as the Classiques de l’Histoire de France. Many theses defended at the ENC have as its core a source edition. Today the ENC offers four master degrees, including a degree for digital humanities, beside the original course for archiviste-paléographe. Its horizon goes beyond the Middle Ages. The MGH offer currently summer schools in the historical auxiliary sciences, but the institute does not have a school. A number of German historians did contributed editions for the MGH or were at some time a staff member. Both institutions have their own distinctive qualities and know an equally rich history with sometimes dramatic periods. Both deserve laurels as pioneers and models for contributing to historical research in Europe. For me 2021 would not be complete here without a commemoration of the ENC’s bicentennial!

A parade of Belgian and Dutch legal history

Among the postponed scholarly events of 2020 were also the 23rd Belgian-Dutch Legal History Days in Rotterdam. Finally it took place as an online event on December 16 and 17, 2021. With some fifty participants and most of the time two parallel sessions the program was certainly substantial and varied. This event upheld its tradition of giving first of all space for graduate students to present their research, but other scholars contributed to it as well. In this post I will offer some impressions of the two days organized by Tammo Wallinga.

Hearing new voices

Presenting in front of a computer screen is by now common practice for scholars, but your first paper at a larger event will remain special. In some cases both senior scholars and young aspiring researchers had to deal with some technical problems, but most of them succeeded in presenting a fine PowerPoint and a well-structured paper. It is impossible to do here justice to the variety of subjects and sessions, also in view of a total of thirty-five papers in the program… At Twitter Frederik Dhondt (@HerakleitosMD, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels) bravely attempted to report live from parallel sessions, but I will not imitate his efforts at virtual bilocation! I have uploaded the abstracts, most of them are in Dutch.

Dirk Heirbaut (Universiteit Gent) opened the conference with a paper on the rather curious difference in approach to attempts in European countries at codification. Some countries seem to see it as a feat for victorious generals and former generals. In Belgium one cannot imagine a committee creating a code, but in the Netherlands one is sceptic about the feasibility a one-man codification. In this respect comparisons can enormously widen the horizons of lawyers and scholars. Vincent van Hoof (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) did look at the image of the schepenen (aldermen) of Amsterdam and their supposed favor for Roman law in preferring their acts ratifying security arrangements above notarial acts. Amsterdam was not unique in its policies. Other capitals and main harbors of Western Europe followed similar policies.

Some sessions combined very different subjects, others were clearly focused around one theme. You will see here in particular young scholars working at Flemish universities, but also scholars from other countries, as in the first parallel session I attended. Marvin Wiegand (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) is a German scholar studying the influence of Roman law on late medieval Frisian law. In the case he presented a widow arguing for prolongation of her guardianship could successfully use a wrongly chosen text from Roman law… Pedro Ricardo de Salvo Santos (Leuven) talked about the seventeenth-century Leuven law professor Petrus Gudelinus and his views cocnerning sovereignty and public law.

In a following session I heard Tom Bervoets (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) speaking on the reforms of parishes in eighteenth-century Brabant and the role of the Raad van Brabant in making changes happen or not. Paul Nève (emeritus professor, Nijmegen) spoke about the research he did during twenty years with Michel Oosterbosch on the history of notaries in Europe. Notaries were sometimes subjected to quite different regulations for qualification. In the Dutch Republic the provinces took over the task of maintaining standards and admitting new notaries. With Oosterbosch Nève has created a biographical repertory for a particular kind of notaries, the apostolic protonotaries and the paltsgraven (comites palatini). Pim Oosterhuis (Maastricht University) presented a paper on the changing place of commercial law as a separate field within private law since the early nineteenth century. Was it really exclusively the law of and for a particular segment of society?

In a following session I presented a paper on legal consultations from the seventeenth century in the province Utrecht. Recently I studied a number of manuscripts held at Utrecht University Library and Het Utrechts Archief. You can choose from several sets of manuscripts with either only copies or also originals of legal consultations. I could report already on some surprising findings, and it is clear a follow-up will yield even more interesting results and certainly more context to understand things that seem now special or odd. Manon Moerman (Maatsricht) spoke about Early Modern contracts for investment partnerships and companies in Amsterdam. Not only financial motives played a role in creating companies. Flip Batselé (Ghent and Brussels) took his audience to the twentieth century for his paper on international investment law and Royal Dutch Shell between 1955 and 1989. A group of oil companies and banks tried to influence politicians and lawyers, with sometimes a major role for Shell and its staff members.

Variety and focus

On Friday December 17, 2021 three sets with two parallel sessions were held and a closing section with one plenary. From the riches I have chosen here at will some sessions. The first session I want to mention briefly brought two papers. Together Wouter Druwé and Geert Sluijs (Leuven) presented a paper on educational reform at the seventeenth-century law faculty in Louvain and the view in this respect of Diodorus Tuldenus (1594-1645). An ordinance of the Habsburgian archdukes in 1617 prompted efforts for reform. Tuldenus showed hi as critical of the moral standards of aspiring law students, pleaded for stricter admission standards and wanted them also to use handbooks. In his view public law, too, should become a part of the curriculum. Interestingly, the second paper in this session, too, involved legal education. Bruno Debaenst (Uppsala) reported on his Swedish experience with law students tackling subjects in legal history in the master phase. It seems some retired professors of legal history in Sweden did not supervise at all student papers and theses for legal history. Debaenst found his students quite interested to set their first steps in Swedish legal history. This fact becomes important also for the Netherlands where for instance at Rotterdam legal history will no longer be an obligatory subject for bachelor students.

In the last full section I want to mention here three graduate students at Louvain focused in particular on the history of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In her paper Shiri Roelofs discussed the views of theologian Robertus Bellarminus (1542-1621) on letters of exchange and their admissability. He took over parts of later medieval theologians, but added also his own distinctions. Wout Vandermeulen took us to another professor of theology, Johannes Malderus (1563-1633) and his views on monopolies. The School of Salamanca seems the wider context of these views, and Vandermeulen looked also at possible connection between this movement and the origins of current law on monoplies in the European Union where he will try to pinpoint the influence of German lawyers. Martijn Vermeersch took Balthazar de Ayala (around 1548-1584) as the key figure for his paper, a man who became the auditor-general of the Spanish army in Flanders under Alexander Farnese. His treatise De iure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari libri tres. In his work he combined the laws of war, military strategy and discipline in a new way. De Ayala’s penchant for the mere legality of actions by princes has been criticized in the past. His views seemed unjust and too much influenced by the Spanish and his own position. However, his work gives the rare opportunity to gain a perspective from someone actually taking part in warlike situation such as the Dutch Revolt.

In the closing lecture Laurens Winkel (professor emeritus, Rotterdam) sketched a mighty tableau of fundamental questions concerning the degrees of culpability in criminal law from the Romans up to the present. His determination to tackle large questions and to opt for a kind of Big Legal History affirmed how much alive legal history can be and how wide in its aims. It was not only exemplary for his scholarship, but also an example for others to bravely approach large subjects by going from the earliest foundations to our present.

Promises for the future

In my brief contribution I have scarcely dealt with one half of all contributions, but luckily I can provide you at least with all abstracts. For me it was a most welcome thing to a varied and rich choice of subjects currently under close scrutiny by graduate students. Some senior and very senior scholars showed here a number of larger subjects, but some research student, too, show a willingness to use wider perspectives. No apologies are needed for looking here at many contributions from or about Leuven, because for many centuries Leuven was simply the only university in the Southern Low Countries. At the end of the conference Wouter Druwé could express our shared thankfulness to Tammo Walinga for his calm leadership in organizing this online conference and steering it not through the Meuse river within Rotterdam, but certainly in stormy times to a good and promising end. In 2023 the next Belgian-Dutch Legal History Days will take place in Leuven.

Studying the American constitution

At a moment when the turmoil around the election of a new president of the United States of America is still living history, thoughts naturally turn to the key elements in the administration and government. The nomination of a new judge to the Supreme Court did not immediately lead to more stability. Political division in the Congress seems to harden. It is no wonder people look at the American constitution as a beacon of light and direction. In this post I will look at some of the online resources for studying the American constitution, in particular ConSource, just before it will become fully integrated with The Quill Project (Pembroke College, Oxford). At some points I will look also at other useful resources.

Digital resources for and around the US constitution

The Quill Project of Pembroke College, University of Oxford, the new home for ConSource created by the Center for Constitutional Studies, Utah Valley University, has certainly the US constitution as its core, but it is also home to other projects concerning legislation and constitutional history. I confess my surprise about the presence of these projects. The American constitution has so many aspects that even a dedicated website can touch only a number of them. A look at the original ConSource website can help to keep a clear focus.

At ConSource you can choose items in the menu bar at the top of the screen or go to the four sections indicated at the start page. The Library is the central element where you can use a research browser or enter eight different collections, for example for the constitution, the Bill of Rights and the amendments, constitutional debates, the Federalist Papers and reactions to them, and state constitutions and charters. The Index is an index in three sections, for the constitution, the Bill of Rights and the first ten amendments, and a section for the amendments 10 to 27. The section on education contains videos, lessons plans and information on some other projects concerning education about civil society.

The Federalist Paper No. 1, 17, 1787 – images source: ConSource

The other approach at ConSource goes through four sections, starting with Documents which turns out to be the Library, the Constitutional Index, the videos and the lesson plans. There are several ways to search and filter the documents collections. It is good to see here also a collection concerning Magna Charta. Interestingly, both the original edition of the Federalist Papers and transcriptions of these pamphlets are given. Resources with original documents are indicated with a scroll icon. There are 21 videos for a wide range of topics, among them one concerning the role of legal history for interpreting the constitution. The lesson plans contain not only units concerning the constitution, but also for the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention and the history of the constitution in the early republic.

Finding the constitution in a new context

How do these rich resource figure at The Quill Project after conversion? Even without looking deeply into the new online presence it is good to see immediately a user guide. One of the main differences with ConSource is the navigation. In my view it is wise to start with the items in the top menu bar, unless your item of choice is visible in the selection at the start page. Here the Library has two main sections, one for resource collections and one for commentary collections. However, the layout below the links to these section starts with a section labelled Negotiations. You can find here five collections concerning the constitutions and related central documents, and also two section on Utah legislative history. For some unclear reason there is no alphabetical or chronological order, nor have the Utah items be marked with a different symbol or color, things that can be easily mended. With such riches at your finger tips you will want to benefit also from the Reader’s Tools. At this web page you will find things in a very clear and sober layout. The Compare Tool is surely one of the things you will like to use.

When you see some minor problems with the layout in the paragraph here above it is not entirely by chance the overview of resource collections contains some elements which had better been set apart quickly, such as Quill Project News and Forthcoming Events. There is no clear order for the 33 collections, but you will smile when seeing the weather reports collection during the constitutional convention! It is great to have access here to letters edited for the Electronic Enlightenment project. There are eight commentary collections, a number with less chances for confusion or unclear layout, yet I cannot honestly detect a clear order here, too. The inclusion of materials about the creation of the electoral college for the election of the US president is most welcome. If you think I jotted down only some quibbles you might try to find a specific resource using the Reader’s Tools. I tried to locate the Federalist Papers, but alas I could not find them, maybe because some search index does not work correctly, but more probably they have not or not yet been transferred to the new platform.

Negotiations are the central theme at The Quill Project. Being somewhat an outsider to American legal history I can only applaud the attention to the fact the major documents of Early American legal history are the fruits not just of Founding Fathers defending principles with their best qualities, but of debates which did not happen in a laboratory. Decisions were made, postponed or cancelled under live conditions of debate, shrewd or honest use of rhetorical powers, and even under changing weather conditions, and in some years facing clear and present dangers. In my view The Quill Project does help with its resources in open access to break current debates about the American constitution and some of the amendments out of a straightjacket focusing too narrow on a restricted number of resources. The label originalism should indeed be reserved for that kind of framework. This portal helps you to see how origins are elements among many other things. It shows the constitution as an historical document coming into existence after many years of political and legal experience and debates.

At the end of this post you might be waiting for my usual service of a variety of other relevant links. However, in this case it would be foolish to make your own selection of links. A number of libraries at American law schools provide you with sure guidance to materials for constitutional history, a number of them in open access, others licensed and often only accessible at universities and research libraries. I mentioned a number of resources for legal history in open access in my post about the resources portal for the history of slavery in the United States. The Law Library of Congress is the obvious starting point for any research touching upon the US constitution. Its logo deserves a place at the very start page of the Library of Congress!

For those more interested in actual political action around the constitution in the early American republic and the way one of the Founding Fathers worked I would like to point to the digital collection Jefferson’s Three Volumes created by Princeton University. It offers apart from the history of three volumes of papers purposedly and explicitly put together by Jefferson himself and disastrously torn apart by the action of archivists a kind of time capsule. These documents in “3. volumes bound in Marbled paper” stem from his period as Secretary of State between 1790 and 1793. They show graphically the kind of information he daily received, his drafts and sometimes neat copies of his reactions and own actions. For me these documents make him more human. They do not diminish the fact he was indeed a Founding Father. In view of the fact resources can be part of licensed online collections you might want to consult my generous selections of resources for American history in open access in the form of digital libraries and digital archives at my legal history portal Rechtshistorie.

Canada´s confederation at 150 years

With the summer approaching you can be busy enough to almost miss events such as centenary celebrations. Thus the celebration of 150 years Canadian confederation, a major step to Canada´s independence almost escaped my attention. Centenary celebrations should not stand in the way of other subjects, but I think this one is interesting enough for a post here. At the heart of this contributions are the main constitutional documents in Canadian history, both before and after 1867. It will be instructive to make a tour of the major online portals with historic and current constitutions.

Before and after 1867

The websites which bring us online versions of constitutions worldwide often restrict themselves to current versions, but happily there are exceptions. Some portals give primarily historical versions. The Archivio delle Costituzione Storiche (Università di Torino) gives for Canada only documents from 1871 to 1943, and only in English. The Digithèque MJP (Université Perpignan) gives a very generous selection of constitutional documents concerning Canada, a number of them located at this portal and other elsewhere. The wealth of information from Perpignan, including an overview of major facts in Canadian history, is such that it is helpful to have a direct link to its version of the 1867 act. Canada is absent among the German translations at Verfassungen der Welt, but the English version is present at its Anglophone counterpart, International Constitutional Law (Universität Bern). I could not find quickly any Canadian document in the Avalon Project (Yale Law School).

William F. Maton created the webpage Canadian Constitutional Documents, with first of all a consolidated version of the British North America Act 1867, followed by later constitutional documents up to 2001. Alas the Spanish page gives no Spanish translations of the texts, only a translation of the introductions and explanatory notes. The Constitutional Society offers only the English version of the 1867 act. Among the facsimiles at The Rise of Modern Constitutionalism, 1776-1849 there are simply no documents relating to Canada, which helps to create the false impression no such documents came into being before the mid-nineteenth century. The Constitution Finder (University of Richmond School of Law) contains for Canada seven documents (1867, 1982, 2011). In the Constitute Project of the University of Texas at Austin you will find only the current version of the Canadian 1867 act. A Russian project for constitutions worldwide brings you Russian and French translations of the Canadian constitution (1867, 1982, 1989).

I made this tour of websites for the history of constitutions because it appeared that the URL for Canada in the Making at the digital portal Canadiana was broken, and also for checking the other web addresses of constitutional portals. The English version of Verfassungen der Welt had moved to a new URL, and I had to update the page for digital libraries at Rechtshistorie where you can find a section with these portal sites. The Internet Archive saved the pages of Canada in the Making, evidently an educational resource which got skipped at Canadiana without a trace. It seems there has developed a paradox between its absence and the abundance of sister portals for Canadiana, a general portal for online resources, the Héritage/Heritage portal for archival collections, and Early Canadiana Online, to mention only the most important offsprings. If you search for the word constitution at Early Canadiana Online you will get nearly 3,000 results.

Canada in the Making featured not only Canadian constitutional history, but also sections on aboriginal treaties and relations, and on pioneers and immigrants. The very words used for these two sections can cause frowns, and you might guess they explain at least a part of its disappearance. The section on constitutional history starts its story in the seventeenth century, and makes it sufficiently clear that the 1867 act is surely a milestone, but decidedly not the only one in Canadian history.

For a concise introduction to Canada’s constitutional history the page of the online Canadian Encyclopedia on this subject and separate pages about the 1867 constitution and other major acts are most rewarding. Dutch readers will recognize in particular the role of unwritten conventions in Canadian law which closely resemble Dutch constitutional law.

One of the gateways to educational resources for Canadian history is the bilingual portal Then/Hier. You might expect some attention to the current celebrations, but this portal shows no signs of them. Among the teaching resources is a section on constitutional history, and if this is not enough for your taste you might have a look at the generous selection of links at Then/Hier, both in Canada and elsewhere.

If you want to continue a search for digital resources you should have a look at the Canadian National Digital Heritage Index (CNDHI), a portal for searching digital collections. At its start the number of collections included was rather small, but now it seems the team behind CNDHI has put in a lot of effort to create a sensible covering of available digital collections. A simple search with the word constitution resulted in nearly 500 hits.

On my legal history portal I put on the digital archives page the CNDHI among the general resources concerning Canadian archives. The first section of this page leads you to general overviews and gateways to digital inventories and finding aids, the second section brings you to digital archival collections. The links for Canada should help you to pursue your own interests. In the final section you will find among specific tools, sites and societies of archivists also The Association of Canadian Archivists. Writing here about Canadian history has been for me a stimulus to continue to make my overviews of digital archives and libraries better tuned to the needs of legal historians. I can recommend visiting the Borealia blog for much more information about current research on early Canadian history.

A postscript

Some sessions at the upcoming conference Canada’s Legal Past: Future Directions in Canadain Legal History (Calgary, July 17-18, 2017) will deal with Canada’s constitutional history. The Law Society of Upper Canada will organize on September 27, 2017 at Toronto the symposium Lawyers and Canada at 150. The blog of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History keeps you informed about scholarly events and publications.

Two laws and one trial

Sometimes even a history blog cannot escape from current affairs, but the opposite happens, too: a historical event comes unexpectedly into view and you keep thinking about it. A few weeks ago I encountered the project The Amboyna Conspiracy Trial (Monash University) about a famous trial in 1623 on the island Ambon, part of the Moluccas islands in the southeastern part of the vast Indonesian archipelago, close to Sulawesi, East Timor, New Guinea and Australia, thus explaining the interest of a team at an Australian university led by Adam Clulow. Among the partners for this project launched in 2016 were the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the Dutch Nationaal Archief in The Hague and the India Office Records of the British Library. The website of the project invites the users to ponder the question on which side they stand. In particular the educational aspects of this website merit attention. Here I use both Ambon and Amboina to refer to the island.

Yet another reason to write here about the Dutch East India Company is the upcoming exhibition at the Nationaal Archief in The Hague, De wereld van de VOC [The World of the VOC] that will be on display from February 24, 2017 to January 7, 2018.

A clash of emerging empires

The story of the trial in 1623 is seemingly simple and straightforward. The Dutch authorities on the island Ambon, officials of the Dutch East Indian Company, arrested a Japanese soldier who had behaved suspiciously. Under torture he and fellow Japanese mercenaries confessed to know about a conspiracy of the English to capture the Dutch fortress. In a span of two weeks Englishmen, too, were captured and tortured to gain confessions. Under Dutch criminal law torture was considered one of the legal means in a trial. The Early Modern maxim “Tortura est regina probationum”, torture is the queen of proves, is not mentioned at the project website. On March 9, 1623 twenty prisoners were executed by the Dutch.

The creators of the Amboyna website are quite right in seeing this trial as a focus point of history. The Dutch and the English competed for the most profitable trade in spice. In fact the name of the Moluccas in Dutch – now in Dutch Molukken – was for many years “Specerij-eilanden”, The Spice Islands. A treaty signed in 1616 seemed a rather peaceful start of Dutch relations with the inhabitants of the Moluccan Islands, but in 1621 governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen decided to invade these islands, aiming in particular at Banda, known for its nutmeg, apart from Grenada the only spot on earth where you can find large quantities of this fruit which also produces yet another spice, mace.

From 1610 to 1619 Ambon was the central location of the Dutch overseas empire in South East Asia. Coen and his troops killed in 1621 thousands inhabitants of Banda and the surroundings islands on the pretext that they had broken the treaty by trading with other nations than the Dutch, be they English, Spanish or Portuguese. This background of ferocious and ruthless violence close to genocide did not predict a peaceful continuation of relations with the indigenous people nor with other European countries. It is indeed the very story that forever divides those applauding the Dutch energy and colonial expansion, and those who condemn the events and the whole period as an unforgivable and inhuman step in mankind’s history. A few years ago one of the episodes of the television series on the Dutch Gouden Eeuw (Golden Age) centered around the 1621 massacre at Banda (the fifth episode, Een wereldonderneming [A world enterprise]. In January 1623 Coen was succeeded as governor of the Dutch Indies by Pieter de Carpentier.

The website of The Amboyna Conspiracy Trial gives you a timeline with for each day the texts of the confessions made by the arrested suspects. Four exhibits give you a chance to deepen your knowledges about the two East India companies and the spice trade, the role of Japanese mercenaries, trials in Dutch and English law and the uses and role of torture, and the publicity about the trial. Adam Clulow wrote about the Japanese soldiers in his article ‘Unjust, cruel and barbarous proceedings : Japanese mercenaries and the Amboyna incident of 1623’. Itinerario 31 (2007) 15-34. More recently he published The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (New York, 2014), reviewed for example by Martine van Ittersum for the Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden / Low Countries Historical Review 130/4 (2015). Her main criticism is Clulow’s insufficient information about sources in Dutch and Japanese archives. When eventually news of the trial reached Europe, it sparked off a stream of publications. Just browsing the Knuttel, the famous catalogue of Dutch pamphlets shows you a substantial rise in the number of pamphlets issued in 1624 and 1625, but English pamphleteers were even more active. The website features in the “Archive” section only pamphlets in English. You will find in this section some twenty-five sources and a number of paintings and portraits.

“Placcaet…”, an ordinance against the first pamphlet concerning the Amboina trial – Knuttel no. 3548 – copy Royal Library, The Hague – image: The Memory of the Netherlands

The presentation of sources for The Amboyna Conspiracy Trial should indeed alert you to what you see and read. For many documents a brief analysis of the text and impact is given, but not for all documents. Some items show just one page of a pamphlet or archival record. No pamphlet is presented here in its entirety. For documents in Dutch a partial translation is given, but no transcription. One of the pamphlets, Waerachtich verhael vande tijdinghen gecomen wt de Oost-Indien (…). Aengaende de conspiratie ontdeckt inde eylanden van Amboyna (Knuttel no. 3547), online at the portal The Memory of the Netherlands, originally printed in Gothic script (Knuttel no. 3546) was quickly translated into English as a part of the pamphlet A true relation of the unjust, cruell, and barbarous proceedings against the English at Amboyna in the East-Indies (London 1624; digital version at The Memory of the Netherlands). In its turn a Dutch translation appeared of this English reaction (Knuttel no. 3549, online version). The Amboyna project site does not mention nor contain the ordinance (plakkaat) of the Dutch General States forbidding in August 1624 the distribution of the first pamphlet because it would harm the relations between the Dutch and English East India companies [Placcaet… (The Hague 1624; Knuttel no. 3548, online version)]. Clearly this act did not work to suppress the news of the events in the East. Anyway thanks to the original contemporary translations it is substantially but not completely possible to rely on them.

The database The Early Modern Pamphlets Online for Dutch pamphlets and the German Flugschriften does still work despite an announcement about it being shut down on January 1, 2017. You can freely use this online catalogue, instead of going to the subscribers-only commercial version. The Hathi Trust Digital Library has digitized the catalogue of pamphlets held at the Dutch Royal Library [W.P.C. Knuttel (ed.), Catalogus van de pamfletten-verzameling berustende in de Koninklijke bibliotheek (9 vol., The Hague 1890-1920)], and you can use the search function of this version to search in its text.

The “citations” for the archival items and documents at the Amboina website are the titles of the items, with sometimes a very much abbreviated indication of the location and archive. For the colorful painting in the Museum Rumah Budaya in Banda Neira no indication is given when it was created. I can imagine this is exactly the question teachers or instructors want their students to solve. The image of the 1616 treaty with Banda above is marked “Contract with Banda, 3 May 1616”. Here, too, you might think it would spoil the things students have to do if I would give here more information about this source. I had expected a list with full references for all items in an appendix to the project, tucked away in the teachers’ corner. The start page of the digital project shows part of an engraving showing the torturers and their victims. In a corner of the image you can find a reference in small print giving the reference to this image from the collections of the Rijksmuseum (object no. RP-P-OB-68.279, cat. no. FMH 2328-7). The engraving was published in 1673, not nearly fifty years earlier.

However, when you start checking you will find several textual witnesses to this treaty, thus making it seem that the image of this treaty – or any other archival record – was taken at random among the registers and originals held at the Dutch Nationaal Archief. The TANAP portal is a great gateway to search for many aspects of the Dutch East India Company both in Dutch, British, Sri Lankan and Indonesian archives. In the combined inventories you will find at least three items with the 1616 contract. The important point is that these inventories do not provide you with digitized images, hence the need for good references for documents and images. I would almost leave it to you to search in the TANAP portal for the events at Ambon, but I feel rather certain one of the registers used is Nationaal Archief, inventory 1.04.2, no. 1080, because “VOC 1080” is often mentioned in the citations. Inventory 1.04.02 at the website of the Nationaal Archief contains more than 4 million scanned pages, but not for this register.

If you want more images at your screen you can combine the riches of The Memory of the Netherlands with for example the portal Atlas of Mutual Heritage. The TANAP portal has a fine links selection, and the introduction to the history of the VOC by F.S. Gaastra is most substantial and supported by a fine bibliography. For more links you should visit the site of the VOC-Kenniscentrum. An important general source are the reports of the governors of Ambon, edited by G.J. Knaap, Memories van overgave van gouverneurs van Ambon in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (The Hague 1987), digitized by the Huygens Instituut, and you will no doubt be interested in the digitized resolutions of the Dutch Staten Generaal from 1575-1630.

The educational purpose of the trial website is very clear in the section Your Verdict. Six major questions are fired at you to help you to come to a balanced verdict about the trial. In my view it is one thing to ask these questions, and another thing to create real full access to relevant documents. However judicious the choice of selections, however wise the suggestions for analysis, you will learn from having at your disposal images of the complete documents, transcriptions and translations, with full references to track them again, and this holds true also for paintings and portraits. This lack of exact information mars the quality of this digital collection. The team has in mind to create similar projects around two other conspiracy trials, but now it seems at some turns that some basic information has been left out to create a smooth and convincing selection. Your judgment on these matters will also depend on your preference for a working educational project which stresses the importance of independent thinking and weighing of facts and views, certainly a major and important aim, or a preference to create a showcase for doing real historical research around a historical cause célèbre.

Amidst of all things surroundings this case it is instructive to see the shocked reaction at Batavia (Jakarta), since 1619 the VOC headquarter at Java, of the superiors of Isaacq de Bruijn, the Dutch advocate-fiscal, the senior officer leading the investigation at Ambon. We have to bear in mind that the position of the various members of the VOC united in a number of kamers (chambers) in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other cities, and the Staten Generaal in The Hague was many thousand miles away. The interaction between the two circles, and even between Java and Ambon was not quick, to say the least. It reminded me of a famous article by the late Cees Fasseur (1938-2016), ‘Een koloniale paradox. De Nederlandse expansie in de Indonesische archipel in het midden van de negentiende eeuw (1830-1870)’ [A colonial paradox. The Dutch expansion in the Indonesian archipelago in the mid-nineteenth century (1830-1870)], Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 92 (1979) 162-186. It is the model article in a student guide by P. de Buck for writing history papers and master theses, Zoeken en schrijven : handleiding bij het maken van een historisch werkstuk (first edition Haarlem 1982). It seems this configuration of powers and distances can be dated two centuries earlier.

Meanwhile in Holland

Is this only a Utrecht view of things? Let me at least bring you to a diary of someone from Utrecht who could in principle have had first hand knowledge. Aernout van Buchell (Buchelius) (1565-1641) from Utrecht has figured here a few times already. He was not only interested in history, but was also between 1619 and 1621 a member of the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch East India Company as a delegate of the States of Utrecht. In 2011 Kees Smit made a transcription (PDF) of a manuscript by Van Buchell at the Nationaal Archief [1.11.01.01, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, 256 (old 1882 A VI 8 2)]. It contains some drawings, including a map showing Ambon and a drawing of Fort Amboyna (f. 37v-38r). At f. 102v he wrote in May 1624: “Het jacht, dat den 4. januarii 1624 was van de stat Nieu Batavia ofte Jacatra uuyt Java geseilt, is in mayo gearriveert, brengende tijdinge dat drie schepen, wel geladen, veertien dagen ofte drie weecken, als men verhoopten, soude volgen, ende noch drie schepen bijcans toegerust lagen op de custen van Cormandel. Verhaelden meede van eene conspiratio bij eenige Engelsche ende inwoonders op Amboyna, meinende het casteel aldaer te veroveren. Maer waren gemelt, eenige gevangen, sommige gejusticeert, oeck Engelse. Waerover men seyt, dat den coninc van Groot-Britanniën qualic soude tevreden wesen, van sijne oorblasers opgeritzt. Alsofte men de quaetdoenders niet en behoorden te straffen! Ende die mosten in Engelant geremitteert worden.”

Van Buchell starts telling about the yacht arriving from Batavia on January 1624, and six more ships following within a number of weeks. From “Verhaelden” onwards he jotted down notes about the events at Ambon and his opinion, in my translation: “[They] told also about a conspiracy – note the Latin conspiratio, OV – of some Englishmen and inhabitants of Amboina who aimed at capturing the castle. But they were denounced, some captured, some judged, Englishmen too. As to this it was said the king of Great Britain would hardly be pleased, but – more likely – provoked by his advisors whispering in his ears. As if these wrongdoers did not need to be punished! Most of them are being pardoned in England”. Alas these are only notes about this affair, he does not mention it anymore. To me this one note is tantalizing for all the things Van Buchell does not mention, but it is in my view a superficial report showing his first impressions after hearing something about the fateful events at Ambon. By the way, he mentions Ambon sixty times in this diary.

Perhaps more telling are lines in an undated Latin poem Van Buchell wrote in his diary (f. 74r): Vidimus, Oceanus salsis quod circuit undis / Incola odoriferos ter ubi capit arbore fructus / Amboynae Batavus leges ubi condidit aequas / Fragrantes interque nuces collesque calentes / Bandanos domuit populos, gentique dolosae / Imposuit frenum Javae, regemque fateri / Compulit, aut victum se aut armis esse minorem (…). A quick translation of my hand: “We see how the Ocean goes around with salty waves where an inhabitant takes thrice a year wonderful smelling fruits from a tree, where the Batave has set equal laws for Amboina, and [where] there are perfumed nuts amidst the hot hills; he rules the peoples of Banda, and he imposed a rein on the treacherous people of Java, and he forced the king to yield, be it as conquered or smaller in arms (…)”. The combination of being sure about the qualities of your own laws, and a conviction that peoples on these isles are treacherous, is potentially lethal. It is striking how often Van Buchell writes in this diary about the Protestant missionaries in the Moluccas. There is another VOC diary by Van Buchell yet to be explored [The Hague, Nationaal Archief, inventory 1.11.01.01, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, no. 255 (old 1882 A VI 8 1)].

Now you might want me to leave out Van Buchell, but in fact it helped me to notice the most obvious gap of the trial website. It is rather strange to bother about the full texts, complete transcriptions and translations of documents, and to accept at face value the statements about the differences in criminal procedure in Dutch law and the common law. Instead of translating Van Buchell writing about an analysis by Hugo Grotius would be most welcome. You can consult his correspondence online at the eLaborate platform of the Huygens Instituut. However, Grotius does mention the Amboyna case in his letters only casually. In 1609 Grotius published Mare Liberum, and in 1625 De iure belli ac pacis. His Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche rechts-geleerdheid appeared only in 1631, but this book deals only with private law. Clulow mentions Grotius and the Amboina case in his 2014 study. In an earlier contribution about Grotius I provided ample information about the first editions, online versions and translations of his works. Simon van Leeuwen’s classic handbook for Roman-Dutch law, Paratitla iuris novissimi dat is een kort begrip van het Rooms-Hollands reght (..) appeared only in 1651.

While pondering the Amboina case and the project website I remembered another Utrecht view of things. My first steps in the fields of legal history were led by Marijke van de Vrugt at Utrecht, the author of a book about De criminele ordonnantie van 1570 (Zutphen 1978), a study about the ordinance for criminal procedure issued by Philips II of Spain. A few years later she contributed to the series Rechtshistorische cahiers the volume Aengaende Criminele Saken [About Criminal Matters] (Deventer 1982) about the history of criminal law, with a chapter about the 1570 ordinance, and also one about Antonius Matthaeus II (1601-1654), a famous law professor at Utrecht, author of De criminibus (first edition 1644). Van de Vrugt provided judiciously chosen relevant text fragments. She discussed in detail ch. 42 of the 1570 Criminal Ordinance and explains its fateful ambiguity due to unclear words about the exceptional use of torture. Matthaeus questioned the eagerness to use torture. Would it not be most natural to provide for both Dutch and common law more precise information when they clearly were crucial for the whole affair? Lack of space and consideration for the stamina of my readers are the practical reasons to leave out here a paragraph about the common law. Clulow mentioned in 2014 the Amboina case to compare it with a later case in Japan, and pointed for good reasons to Grotius. Alas incomplete understanding and investigating the pivotal role of legal matters for the Amboina case mars the trial website.

Some conclusions

Despite my remarks and misgivings about a number of aspect of the Amboyna digital collection I think we should salute it as a welcome addition to the materials available for educational purposes. It makes also a number of documents and images easy available for doing research about the Dutch and British East India companies. At the end of this post I wonder a bit what the input of the India Office Records has been. The absence of records from the British National Archives might cause a frown, too. Adding a full list of references for the documents, archival records and images in this digital collection would redeem a clear gap. The Amboina Conspiracy Trial makes you muse about current ideas about conspiracies and the role of one-sided or full information. It is an example of two laws clashing, Dutch civil law administered by officers of a commercial company granted sovereign powers and the common law. It is chilling to note how this example of quick action led to torture and judicial killings of people where other ways to approach the situation were open.

The Amboina trial website shows many aspects in a colourful way, but it lacks some crucial information about and attention to the very crux of the matters at stake. It would be relatively simple to provide some background about the Dutch law and the common law, instead of just a few sentences. It might seem evident to focus on the trial itself, but you will have to show even in an educational setting more of the background and relevant sources. Only for Isaacq de Bruijn, the infamous Dutch official, things seemed simple. Our world is complicated, and we had better face it. In my recent contribution about presidential libraries I mentioned the replica of the Situation Room. You will need access to all relevant information, time and wisdom to judge a situation correctly and act accordingly.

A postscript

Even this long post did lack at least something very important concerning Dutch law, the collection of ordinances and placards edited by Jacobus Anne van der Chijs, Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakaatboek 1602-1811 (17 vol., Batavia, 1885-1901), also available online completely at Sejarah Nusantara, a portal for seventeeth and eighteenth-century history created by the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, with both browse and search functions.

Soon after publishing my post Adam Clulow contacted me. He has taken the time and trouble to add some of the explications on legal matters I deemed necessary, and he added clear references to the original sources. These changes help indeed to make the Amboyna Conspiracy Trial well worth your attention!

Images, words and the law

However seducing texts are as sources to gain new knowledge, images do rightfully claim our attention, too, nay stronger, they are even more seducing and intoxicating than texts. Legal iconography is the auxiliary science to history and law which studies the uses and abuses of imagery in law and justice. A few months ago I was attracted to a building with both images and texts in an intriguing combination. Very close to it is a statue of a man who has been responsible as few others before him for introducing images as an educational tool. Here I would like to share with you a few thoughts about this building and about the role of images in teaching and research.

The town hall at Naarden

This summer I visited the town of Naarden, some twenty kilometers to the south-east of Amsterdam. Jacob van Deventer’s map of Naarden, part of the cartographic project for the Spanish king Philip II, shows a town with medieval city walls, no match for the modern weapons of the sixteenth century. During the Dutch Revolt Spanish armed forces attacked Naarden in 1572 with brutal force. The soldiers murdered the inhabitants and destroyed the city almost completely. The Grote of St. Vituskerk with its famous painted wooden vaults survived. Afterwards Naarden became a fortified town, even an archetype of the Dutch fortification system, as you can see when visiting the Vestingmuseum.

Among the buildings rebuilt in Naarden after 1572 is the town hall in Dutch Renaissance style, completed in 1601, almost thirty years after the tragic events. Whatever form the medieval town hall might have had, its new incarnation still looks splendid. On the facade not just blazons and statues all convey their particular visual message, Three texts have been added to bring yet another message.

On closer inspection two of these texts are really two versions of the same message. The Latin text to the left has been superbly condensed into Early Modern Dutch. The Latin reads: Quidquid erit superanda / omnis fortuna ferendo est, “whatever the event may be, every turn of fortune has to be subdued by bearing it”, a quote from Vergil’s Aeneid (V,710). Surprisingly the Dutch is much more condensed, but succeeds in adding also a significant twist: Ist lyden ist vreucht / Draeght soo’t God vuegt, “be it suffering or joy, bear it when God brings it”. Here classical Antiquity is invoked at the service of the civil authorities, but at the same time subtly christianised.

The pious overtones are much clearer in the inscription below the tympanum above the entrance, Godt regiert al anno 1601, “God governs everything, in the year 1601”. The tympanum is crowned by allegorical statues representing Faith, Hope and Justice, the latter in the middle portrayed in the familiar way of a blindfolded woman with a balance and a sword. On the top of the left part of the facade is an allegorical statue of Love, the right part is crowned by the Dutch lion. The blazons below the first floor windows are those of the county of Holland (a lion rampant), of prince Maurice of Oranje, and West-Friesland. In the tympanum you can see the blazon of the Habsburg emperors, the Austrian Doppeladler, the double eagle, which is also the blazon of the city of Naarden.

Emblems: combining images and text

Combining texts and images is of course not something new, but in a way it is here at least a bit unexpected. At first the brief Latin proverb and its wonderful crisp and concise Dutch rendering led me to speculate about a very particular influence. Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), the great Flemish political theoretician who taught some years at Leiden was also known as an editor of Tacitus. He influenced Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft (1581-1647), a prolific author and for forty years bailiff of Muiden Castle near Naarden. He wrote his Nederlandsche Historiën, a history of the Low Countries in difficult prose, clearly modelled on Tacitus’ works. Hooft published in 1611 Emblemata amatoria, a volume of emblems, symbolic images with a motto and didactic verses. However, we must rule out this argument as a possible source of influence for the decoration of the town hall in Naarden, simply because Hooft was much too young in 1601 to exercise any influence. I was genuinely surprised, too, to find Vergil as the author of the quote, not Tacitus. Instead one could perhaps better look at the early works of Hugo de Groot (1583-1645). A search for possible direct influences at Naarden can be quite long. A quick search for Dutch literature citing Vergil’s words in the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL) brought me to Jacob Andriesz. Boelens (1554-1621), a burgomaster of Amsterdam often active on special missions in the early seventeenth century whose motto was Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo. It is a tantalizing hint which needs further corroboration.

The literary genre of emblematic literature was launched by one of the most famous humanist lawyers, Andrea Alciato (1592-1550) with his volume Emblemata (first edition Augsburg: Steyner, 1531). In 1529 he had already published Selecta epigrammata Graeca Latine versa (..) (Basel: Bebel, 1529; online in Göttingen). It is intriguing to look for an emblem which might have influenced the choice of a text at Naarden. Access to early editions of emblem books is much helped by four major online projects, at Glasgow for Italian and French books, at Utrecht for Dutch books, mainly from the seventeenth century, the project Emblematica Online of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, and the Biblioteca Digital de Emblemática Hispánica of the Universidade da Coruña.

Et toleranda homini tristis fortuna ferendo est, Et nimium felix saepe timenda fuit. Sustine (Epictetus dicebat) et abstine. Oportet Multa pati, illicitis absque tenere manus. Sic ducis imperium vinctus fert poplite taurus In dextro: sic se continet a gravidis.

The online collections at Glasgow has a separate section for Alciato. The first line Et toleranda homini tristis fortuna ferendo est of an emblem appearing in the section Fortitudo of Alciato’s collection comes closest to the quote from Vergil. In the edition Venice 1546 you will find this as no. 34, the emblem Anechou kai apechou / Sustine et abstine, at fol. 29v. In later editions this emblem has either no number or it appears with a different number, and thus it is really necessary to indicate exactly which edition you happen to use. For our emblem you would find it for example in the Paris 1550 edition on page 41. The image shows a farmer who keeps bulls away from cows. The Glasgow project has a useful list of the mottos and their occurrences in the main editions of Alciato’s text, and the Alciato website by William Barker is also most helpful in tracking emblems, mottos and verses; you can even find an English version of this emblem. However, this is only a possible indirect source or inspiration behind the choice for a verse with an admittedly more pointed and direct meaning, The emblems in the section Fortuna might be the first spur for searching a text, in particular the emblem Semper praesto esse infortunia.

Teaching by images

Why do I refer here at length to Alciato’s work and the role of images in connection with the town hall in Naarden? Across the street with the town hall of Naarden is the Grote or St. Vituskerk, and between the church and the town hall is a statue commemorating the Czech theologian, philosopher and pedagogue Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670). From 1656 onwards he had found a refuge at Amsterdam. Comenius had contacts in Naarden, and he was buried in a church at Naarden. The Comeniusmuseum keeps his memory alive. Among his works are books such as the Ianua linguarum reserata [The open entrance of languages] (1631) which developed a new model for teaching Latin and other languages, and the Didactica magna (1633-1638), his opus magnum with a new comprehensive view of children’s education. The possible connection between Comenius and legal iconography is offered in particular by his Orbis sensualium pictus [The world of senses in images] (1658), the first book recommending and exemplifying the systematic educational use of images. In this work he uses for example pictures to help children learning the alphabet. In the space of this posting I can at least point you to the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung in Berlin. Its digital library contains among other things early illustrations from pedagogical works.

More than a century before Comenius Alciato and others had introduced first a learned public and later also a wider public to a very successful combination of images and texts. The taste for this genre was at least sometimes mirrored by architecture. Alciato brought to the new emblematic literature his own legal background which made it a potential useful resource for anyone looking for outspoken combinations of images, concise proverbial sayings and often exquisite poetry. Somehow the presence of this literary genre makes it far more conceivable that lines from classical poetry can embellish buildings. As for which specific emblems collection provided Dutch people the clue for their choice I suppose you will need to look at many different collections, not just the Latin collections, but also those in Dutch and French, and even collections published in Spain.

Promises of more…

Sofar we have only looked at the facade of the town hall in Naarden. It would be really interesting to look also inside the town hall at the interior where you can find for example two seventeenth-century paintings in the city court room. I am sure you cannot separate them completely from the intriguing facade. The digital portal Memory of the Netherlands offers you a very quick entrance to images of both inside and outside the stadhuis at Naarden. Some photographs are already a bit older and reflect to some extent earlier scholarly approaches. For further research you will no doubt benefit from the resources at the municipal and regional archives in the Gooi- en Vechtstreek, located in Naarden and Hilversum.

This week I saw the 2013 online exhibition The Nomos of Images. Manifestations of the law in picture atlases and photo archives created by the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. Some images in this virtual exhibition come from the Sammlung Karl Frölich at the Max-Plank-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main, a collection with photographs taken between 1930 and 1950 which eventually will be digitized. In my view it can be most helpful to use both older resources and new materials to help research in the field of legal iconography. This post gives only some indications of directions you might choose for further investigations, but hopefully it helps you to get a taste of them.

A postscript

At the blog Interfaces/Livres anciens de l’Université de Lyon appeared on November 24, 2014 a very interesting contribution about Comenius, ‘Comenius, un pédagogue de l’avant-garde’. This year the digitization of the Sammlung Karl Frölich has been completed. In 2015 I have published a post about this collection.

A holiday round-up

After a rather long time, almost four weeks without any new posting, I am back at my desk to continue writing for this blog. I have been on a holiday with a rich variety of landscapes, weather types and people. It is still summer. A first quick check for new things learned me that even the ever busy Legal History Blog had slowed down its usual pace of new postings. One of the strong features is the weekly Round-Up in which you can find all kind of things which touch upon legal history but somehow had nearly escaped the alertness of the editorial team led by Mary L. Dudziak and Dan Ernst. My post today proposes to salute their weekly efforts in a more leisurely way fitting this summertime, which, however, has by now taken some very serious turns. Events worldwide will no doubt soon influence this blog. I would like to reassure you I will not turn away from these developments, but it will do no good to react here immediately. Anyway, my list with plans for new postings has a nice length and a variety of subjects from many corners.

Looking closely at pictures

In this post I want to present just a few websites and blogs which came to my attention lately. You will notice quickly that they are not solely, in fact often only rather loosely connected with legal history. I cannot help pointing again to Klaus Graf and his Archivalia blog – does he ever take a holiday?! Anyway a week ago he posted a message on the section on photo tampering in history at Four and Six. At this website you will find an impressive collection of both historical photographs and modern advertisements with images which have been tampered with. I suppose contemporary lawyers will be more interested in the latter. On this website some photographs have been explicitly tagged with the label “Law”, but it is worth looking around for more. On close inspection photographs can tell a sometimes very different story than one suspects at first. We all are aware of the telling power of images. They can conjure up a story more quickly and more dramatically than many well-phrased paragraphs. It is easy to forget about the possibility of tampering with photos when craving for images to convey your message.

Comics and the law

As a faithful reader of the Rare Book Room blog of the Lilian Goldman Law School Library at Yale University I was initially surprised by the efforts to collect child books touching upon law and even comics. In 2010 a series of blog postings accompanying the exhibition Superheroes in Court was even devoted to the alleged Yale Law School degree of Batman shown in a particular story! The point of collecting books on seemingly fringe subjects is to do it in a most sensible way, and here Yale surely succeeds.

I was reminded of the collections at the Yale Law School Rare Book Room because the Freshly Pressed section of my provider’s blog featured a post from Bear Lawyer LLC. Thomas E. Körp is the creator of this blog about a bear who makes a living from law. This blog goes with a nice sprinkling of real American law websites and links to other comics blog and websites.

Lately Et Seq., the blog of the Harvard Law School Library, published the image of a drawing in an old legal book. The image in question is a drawing in a copy of a 1615 edition of the Corpus Iuris Canonici, the multivolume collection of canon law sources printed from the early sixteenth century up to the nineteenth century. The “Weekly Special” of Et Seq. is often devoted to rare law books with an intriguing history or story. In the story entitled A Canon and its Cannon its author Lesley Schoenfield very much wonders about the drawing showing a castle with a firing cannon. I myself have my view of the riddle behind it, but in order not to spoil your own investigation of it I will not give away my solution here…

Searching images

From Harvard back to Yale. Apart from the superb digital collections of the Harvard Law School Library Harvard University has a most impressive and very diverse range of digitized collections, fortified by the digital collections at Harvard College Library. It seems very difficult to outdo these efforts but Yale, too, can proudly present its digital collections. Not only the university library at Yale but also several other Yale libraries offer access to digital visual resource collections. Recently the website Yale Digital Commons has been launched where one can search in the image resources of five Yale institutions. Legal historians cannot neglect the Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal when researching this subject, and when you need documents in English translation you will often turn to Yale Law School’s Avalon Project: Documents for Law, History and Diplomacy. The Lewis Walpole Library has started the Yale Indian Papers Project with digitized materials from several Yale institutions. It is hard to say which university is winning this battle of giants in the field of digital collections.

In the field of legal iconography Yale Law School can point to the Documents sections of its website which has been created for the image collection Representing Justice. Harvard Law School Library has digitized over 4,000 images of lawyers in the digital collection Legal Portraits Online.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about online exhibitions concerning legal history. On my website I have a created a new page about virtual exhibitions in which I have put things from this post in a more orderly fashion. By the way, of course not only Harvard and Yale, and not only the other Ivy League universities are most actively involved in the field of digital collections. In my latest post almost four weeks ago the University of California, Santa Barbara came into the spotlights with an impressive number of interesting digital collections, pace Berkeley and Stanford. It can depend on a lot of factors which universities happen to make the largest presence in your perception.

The debt crisis in the United States and Europe, the riots in London and other English cities, the aftermath of the terrifying violence against innocent people in Norway, the spreading fierceness of the political climate in my own country, the fear in many European countries for drastic cuts in the budgets for education, research, culture and social welfare, the ongoing fight for democracy in many countries surrounding the Mediterranean and the violent suppression of legitimate protests in Libya and Syria, the troubles in the Middle East, the droughts and famine in East Africa, the anarchy in countries like Somalia, and much more are these days the background of any serious legal and historical research. This might well determine to some extent its shape and direction, too.

Following the trail of criminals in Frankfurt

Sometimes finding a subject for a blog post resembles stumbling into a theme, an event or something else worth writing about. Looking again at the congress calendar of this blog suddenly the number of events in German-speaking countries struck me as impossible low. It seems I have overlooked some of the German websites with announcements of congresses, symposia, Arbeitsgespräche and similar events. A number of events is held yearly and I am happy to point you for them to the links collection of the committee for the legal history of Austria. A few weeks ago I added the Wiener Rechtsgeschichtliche Gesellschaft to my blog roll after removing the link to a blog of another German legal society because of its apparent sleeping state. I leave it to your own discretion to figure out which society seems to have no time for blogging. The events organized at the Max-Planck-Institute für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main has a prominent place on the page of the congress calendar because of its continuity and variation. However, on this Frankfurt page you will not find anything on the subject I bumped into today, although this, too, happens on the borders of the Main.

Surely Frankfurt is not the only European city which organizes activities concerning legal history, and it is not completely new that such activities tend to focus on criminal law. Long ago I visited York and of course I passed the spot where tourists can join the daily Murder Mystery Trail. Back to Frankfurt: Frankfurt Stadtevents organizes in May 2011 an activity called “Tatort Frankfurt: Frankfurter Kriminalfälle und Rechtsgeschichte“. The goal is to create a kind of guided tour through the city in a span of one and a half hour visiting and seeing the places where murders took place, criminals were executed and famous cases happened. Some of the courts and the places where the black market flourished will also be visited, and you can imagine other interesting spots and persons. The names of Kaspar Hauser and Anselm Feuerbach are well-known indeed. The tour starts at the Hauptwache, the square named after the former main guard-house of the city, nowadays also the name of a subway station. Perhaps the mentioning on this website of a firm which teases you to taste their drink is the clearest sign that legal historians are not directly involved in the creation of this walk.

Before we might start quibbling about the academic level of this proposal in Frankfurt I would like to ask a few questions. What if professional legal historians did organize an outdoor event in a city with a rich or eventful past? How about leaving your department or research institute, and trying to present a subject to people who are willing to listen and to be informed about something which obviously interests you? Why not make people happy with your hopefully evident enthusiasm about, knowledge of and involvement with legal history? Those within the trade know about the importance of this scientific discipline, but any try to explain it yet again or to present it in a new way or to a different public offers you a chance to develop skills in presenting and guiding, in creating a kind of script which you can quickly tune to your actual public, or even to the weather and your own stamina! And speaking of academic audiences, should one not be aware of the specific challenges to communicate truly with them? Does this not involve at least some of the same qualities a city guide or a museum staff member must have? Anyway as a visitor of a scientific events I really hope speakers have prepared themselves not just to present a paper, but to invite reactions and discussion, and first of all to keep people interested.

What strikes me is the apparent ease in creating this tour in Frankfurt, which in the short description on-screen seems to succeed in taking examples not exclusively from the history of criminal law, to mention only one obvious thing. Some German legal historians have not hesitated to write also for the proverbial general public, and these publications have certainly been used in preparing this tour, and if not, I am sorry to be mistaken. The resources for doing legal history in Frankfurt are not restricted to the wealth of information and materials at the Max-Planck-Institute for European legal history, and getting to know Frankfurt’s history is really worthwhile. I simply refuse to believe you cannot try to create something either similar or even more attractive elsewhere, nor do such tours only qualify as misguided forms of tourism and a waste of time for people with higher education.

For anybody wondering about finding information about current academic events in Germany and surrounding countries, and more particular in the field of legal history, I have to point first of all to the website of HSoz-u-Kult at the Humboldt University, Berlin. The section with Termine (literally appointments or deadlines) has a events calendar showing a relatively restricted number of upcoming events in Germany. Zeitgeschichte-Online is a website with many facets but without a Terminkalender. Clio-Online ia a very useful portal for historians, but alas also without a congress calendar. I have spent several periods in Germany, I have visited Switzerland and Austria, too, but it took me some time before hitting upon the word Wissenschaftskalender. The Informationsdienst Wissenschaft has a website with an interface in German and English with a calendar of scientific events. Austria has its own Wissenschaftskalender. Because of the advanced hour I will not add any events concerning legal history from it to my blog today, but I do like to single out among the news items on the IDW website the news on the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Among the winning young scholars of this year who received their prizes in Berlin on May 9, 2011, is a historian, Henrike Manuwald from Freiburg, who crosses the borders between the history of medieval literature and law. Let’s hope her example invites other scholars as well to find new approaches, to walk unfamiliar roads and to handle both classic sources and newly found materials with fresh inspiration!

A postscript

Only a year later I became aware of a painful omission in this post: the quality of the tour described here cannot be qualified properly without including the Kriminalmuseum Frankfurt am Main. In two posts on museums and legal history I discuss the role and position of these institutions.