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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1622: 'I cannot live without books': Personal Libraries and Manuscripts

Thursday 5 July 2018, 11.15-12.45

Moderator/Chairs:Christine E. Meek, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin
Mariken Teeuwen, Huygens Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (ING - KNAW), Amsterdam
Paper 1622-aVáclav Koranda the Younger: Utraquist Tradition and Memory
(Language: English)
Jindřich Marek, Faculty of Arts, Univerzita Karlova, Praha
Index terms: Bibliography, Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Printing History
Paper 1622-b'Ce livre fut a feu madame agnes': Memorial Inscriptions in Women's Books in Late 15th-Century France
(Language: English)
S. C. Kaplan, Center for Languages & Intercultural Communication, Rice University, Texas
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Women's Studies
Paper 1622-cAntonio Manetti's Library: The Making of a Memory of Communal Florence
(Language: English)
Patricia Meneses, Instituto de Artes e Design, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora
Index terms: Architecture - General, Language and Literature - Italian, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract

Paper -a:
Václav Koranda the Younger (1425-1519) was the representative of the third generation of Czech Utraquists. Koranda, who died just before the first reformation ideas from the German lands began to penetrate to Bohemia, was very active in defining Utraquist positions against Catholic opponents as well as radical reformation. He tried to build a specific Utraquist memory in several ways. Utraquism itself is promoted in Koranda's writings as 'Traditions of the Fathers'. His definition of Utraquism inherently included a national and religious identity: in his conception, Utraquism was simply an attribute of ethnic 'Czechs'. An important space of memory for Koranda was his personal library. During his long life, he gathered for his time a huge book collection, of which 71 volumes are now known, about two-thirds of which are manuscripts. Koranda not only actively built his library but also used it as a reader. Moreover, its content composition uniquely reflects the transition period of the book culture at that time, and at the same time - in a number of respects - the conservative character of the Czech Utraquist environment.

Paper -b:
The library of Agnes of Burgundy, duchess of Bourbon (1434–56), consists of 15 manuscripts, of which 11 contain the posthumous ex-libris, 'Ce livre fut a feu madame Agnes de Bourgoigne en son vivant duchesse de Bourbonnois et d'Auvergne'. We know that these books belonged to Agnes only because of these inscriptions, as there are few - if any - extant records pertaining to the books' acquisition. We also know from handwriting analysis, as well as from one longer inscription in BnF fr. 92, a copy of Les trois fils de rois, that most, if not all, of these ex-libris were written at the instigation of Joan of France, Agnes' daughter-in-law. Why did Joan feel the need to mark books that her mother-in-law did not? In this paper, which is part of a larger project studying the cultural force of Agnes of Burgundy and lay women's intellectual relationships in the Late Middle Ages, I explore what these inscriptions might tell us about the memorial(izing) function(s) of women's books in Bourbon and Burgundy during the latter half of the 15th century. I will consider the affective nature of such ex-libris as well as pragmatic possibilities, comparing these inscriptions to those in manuscripts belonging to women in Agnes' and Joan's immediate social circles, as I attempt to determine why a woman would bother to mark a book - but not as her own.

Paper -c:
Antonio di Tuccio Manetti (1423-1497) is most well known for his biography of architect Filippo Brunelleschi. But art and architecture were not his only interests. He studied astronomy, mathematics, and Florentine literature, especially the work of Dante Alighieri. His intellectual life evolved around two main goals: (1) forming a personal library by laboriously copying interesting manuscripts, and (2) commemorating notable Florentines from the past. In this paper I will consider the various titles and manuscripts in Manetti's library in order to discuss what memory of the city of Florence he intended to preserve for posterity.