Printed Pages, Perfect Souls? Ideals and Instructions for the Devout Home in the First Books Printed in Dutch

Anna Dlabačová

doi:10.3390/rel11010045

Abstract

This article studies the role of the earliest books printed in the Dutch vernacular in the religious practice of lay individuals and the devout home. Many of the texts disseminated in these early printed books have received little attention and scholars have tended to view them within the sphere of the Modern Devotion, even though often there is no direct link to this religious reform movement. This article attempts to show that the first books printed in Dutch offer an interesting lens through which to study domestic devotion in the Low Countries in the last decades of the fifteenth century. It argues that these books bridged the gap between catechetical instruction and the private home, literally bringing home many of the ideals and instructions that the clergy would have offered in church and thus increasingly ‘textualizing’ the lives of the late medieval laity. Printers such as Gerard Leeu and his contemporaries acquainted Christians to the use of printed books for personal and practical religious instruction and knowledge and thus paved the way for developments in the sixteenth century.

Highlights

With regard to devotion and religion, the impact of the early printing press is still often associated with the Protestant Reformation (Wandel 2016, p. 18; Pettegree 2015; Füssel 2003, pp. 159–93)
Relatively little attention has been paid to the many printed books and booklets published in the Dutch vernacular before the start of the sixteenth century that were not pastoralia—works primarily intended to instruct the clergy
At the end of one of the meditative lives of Christ first published by Gerard Leeu we find a song “on the most sweet name Jesus Jesus Jesus”—a vernacularization of the hymn Ihesu dulcis memoria—preceded by a woodcut of the IHS-monogram (Tboeck 1487, oo4v-oo6r; on this edition see Dlabačová 2008, pp. 330–46)10

Summary

Introduction

With regard to devotion and religion, the impact of the early printing press is still often associated with the Protestant Reformation (Wandel 2016, p. 18; Pettegree 2015; Füssel 2003, pp. 159–93). Only three religious houses connected to the Modern Devotion and located in the Low Countries ran a printing press—in Brussels, Gouda, and Schoonhoven (near Gouda) Their reason for existence, was never the provision of vernacular books to lay people—rather, their core business appears to have been liturgical texts. While my primary focus in this essay is on the former (ideals and instructions), if we are to better understand the role of the religious printed books in lay households, the latter should not be ignored Printed books with both kinds of texts would often have functioned as objects of domestic devotion, alongside manuscripts. The Soul’s Consolation: prayer and meditation, and family life within a religious household

Bringing the Ten Commandments Home

Prayer and Meditation

Family Life in a Devout Home

Conclusions