Cristina Dondi, Dorit Raines, Richard Sharpe (eds.), How the Secularization of Religious Houses Transformed the Libraries of Europe, 16th–19th Centuries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The collection of studies edited by Cristina Dondi, Dorit Raines and the late Richard Sharpe unveils new avenues of approaching post-dissolution libraries by using extant contemporary sources, copy specifics, and databases to map over three centuries of book dispersal across Europe and the Americas.Admittedly, the study of monastic and early modern libraries is a rather daunting task due to the lack of systematic information concerning the history of collections and individual items.Despite their economic and social relevance, books were not systematically present in pre-Reformation inventories, and during the upheavals of secularization, territorial expansion and continuous political changes.Additional difficulties arise due to deliberate effacement, in which case books were not worthy of attention and documentation, or due to common carelessness, leading to degradation and unsystematic use of library items.Consequently, efforts have been made to trace the movement of manuscripts, incunabula and later prints from the shelves of former religious institutions, through basements or temporary shelters, all the way to newly established private, royal, university and city libraries.Complications arise in the case of volumes hidden, alienated through theft, or completely untraceable due to precarious acquisition policies, such as large-scale sales, private auctions or illegal transactions.Aside from their materiality, books became instrumental in operating political, religious, economic, and social changes down the centuries, as this volume emphasizes.The fate and history of libraries is examined in seven different sections.The first part deals with temporal and territorial aspects pertaining to the dissolution.This inquiry incorporates an overview of the economic scene of religious establishments discussed from the standpoint of secularization politics and their monetary concerns.However, this study stresses one important aspect.Since books embodied a large part of the wealth of these dwellings, why were they rarely or never mentioned?In the midst of the earliest dispersal that took place in England, proclaimed under Henry VIII's government, entire libraries are believed to had been seized, but how many?Which titles were spared and which burnt?What was sold and what was kept, and by whom?At the time of the English dissolution, books did not receive much interest outside monastic circles due to the rapid changes making those libraries obsolete.The popularity of the printing press, new learning trends that rejected scholastic and theological views upheld until then, and the Reformation, not only endangered the preservation of books, but also of any record regarding their existence (47).Individual case studies on German-speaking Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Latin America illustrate different approaches to the dissolution, the general attitude towards collections, and contemplate the losses.This shows that the dissolution was pretty much a regional CARMEN OANEA
Author: Carmen Oanea
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4411580832