The Practice of Community: Humanist Friendship during the Dutch Revolt

Abstract

In 1574 Abraham Ortelius, the renowned Flemish cartographer and antiquarian, began to collect signatures, inscriptions, and pictures from his international network of friends. They entered their contributions in an album, called an amicorum (book of friends). Given the lack of geographical mobility during the Dutch revolt, Ortelius's friends occasionally circulated this album amongst themselves. Others sent their contributions directly to him in Antwerp. As the album grew in scope and prestige over the following twenty-four years, inscriptions were included on behalf of deceased friends. Eventually an index was added by Ortelius's nephew, but as Ortelius reached the end of his life further entries were added. By the time he had died the album contained more than 130 names, making it one of the most distinguished signature collections of the time, including such illustrious figures as Jean Bodin, Justus Lipsius, William Camden, and Gerard Mercator.1 The contributors cross generational, geographical, and religious boundaries. What was the purpose of collecting such an album? What does it tell us about the humanist culture of the time? And why did a diverse group of academics, artisans, and merchant scholars decide to celebrate friendship? The first friendship albums (alba amicorum) were kept during the mid15408 by students at Wittenberg.2 These students used books (often the Emblem Book of Alciati, or a Bible, or a work by Melanchthon) as albums in which they collected autographs and insignia from professors in Wittenberg and the neighboring protestant universities that they visited in the course of their study. Entries were sometimes written in the margins of these books, sometimes on interleaved pages, and sometimes on liminary pages at the front or back. Most of the entries are brief salutations with short epigrams or quotations. These have been analyzed into various statistical forms by Wolfgang Klose.3 It is not surprising that most of the quotations come from classical sources. Ovid is the most frequently