Abstract
Abstract This contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of the earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular connected to the religious reform movement of the Devotio moderna. Studies of book ownership and book collections in these communities have tended to focus on manuscripts. From the last decades of the fifteenth century onwards, however, these religious women increasingly came in contact with printed books, even though the involvement of the Devotio moderna with the printing press was limited. The discussion focuses on the channels via which tertiaries and canonesses acquired books produced by commercially operating printers, the ways in which incunabula affected what these (semi-)religious women read, as well as the ratio between printed books in Latin and the vernacular, and their function(s) within these communities. Thus the essay intends to sketch a preliminary image of the role of incunabula in female convents, and advocates a more inclusive approach of female religious book ownership.
Highlights
In the last decades of the fifteenth century, the printing press, and its products, increasingly reached religious communities.[1]
Our aim is to provide a preliminary survey of incunabula in communities of canonesses regular and tertiaries that pertained to, or were associated with, the Devotio moderna, the influential reform movement in the late medieval Low Countries.[4]
Via free access printing press and the new dynamic of secular printing shops catering to a largely anonymous market affect the dissemination of texts in these communities? What can incunabula from female religious possession tell us about the channels of acquisition of the earliest printed books and about their mobility?
Summary
In the last decades of the fifteenth century, the printing press, and its products, increasingly reached religious communities.[1]. 1486–1521), and Schoonhoven (1495–1519) were run by male members of the movement (Brothers of the Common Life and canons regular) – that does not mean that incunabula produced by lay/secular printers and distributed via commercial channels passed by the houses that belonged to the circles of this influential reform movement.[5] Ed van der Vlist recently demonstrated how printed books formed an integral part of the book collections of male religious houses in the Low Countries toward the end of the fifteenth century His survey of the library collection of the Carthusians in Amsterdam shows that at least eight incunabula owned by the monks are still extant.[6] far, the presence of incunabula in women’s communities within the Devotio moderna has not received any specific attention. The second and third sections focus on the texts that were disseminated in communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular in incunabula and on the ratio between books in the Dutch vernacular and Latin respectively
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