Rare Books and Manuscripts Library

 

Savants throughout history (along with a fair number of quacks and hucksters) have interpreted comets streaking across the sky as heralds of doom or harbingers of great change. Perhaps had we here at OSU’s Rare Books Library been wearing our divinators’ hats earlier this month we would have associated the arrival on our doorstep of an extremely rare seventeenth-century book about comets with the current world financial crisis (doom indeed?) or the imminent 2008 Presidential election (great change?). Prophets and soothsayers we are not, however, and the book that sped through the ether from New York to Columbus (courtesy of FedEx—one of the Prime Mover’s many tertiary subordinates) hopefully heralds no changes other than the influence it might have on the research agendas of scholars interested in historical astronomy. The book in question—Hypographe: Flagelli Saturni & Martis. Das ist: Beschreibung des erschrecklichen Cometsterns, welcher im Octobri, Novembri und Decembri des 1618…, published in Leipzig by N. & C. Nerlich in 1619—is a small quarto volume consisting of 12 leaves of black-letter German text and a woodcut vignette on the title page depicting the comet and its tail. The author, Paul Hintzsch—a German doctor and astronomer, provides modern researchers with a tidy summation of the astrological and astronomical observations of and discussions surrounding the appearance of the “Great Comet of 1618”, also known as “the Angry Star” due to its extremely long tail, reddish hue, and lengthy duration (it was visible to the naked eye for over seven weeks in late 1618 and early 1619, even remaining discernible during the day). Astronomers across Europe commented on the cosmic phenomenon, astrologers everywhere excitedly interpreted its meaning, and doomsayers and pessimists from Scotland to Sicily witnessed portents and prodigies in its fiery tail. Even King James I of England wrote about it, penning a poem that reminded its readers that even if the comet were a celestial sign, it would remain unintelligible to mere mortals:

Yee men of Brittayne wherefore gaze yee so,

Vpon an angry starre? When as yee knowe

The Sun must turne to darke, the Moone to

bloode,

And then t’will bee to late to turne to good.

O bee so happy then whilst time doth last,

As to remember Doomesday is not past:

And misinterpret not with vayne conceyte

The character you see of Heauen’s heighte:

Which though it bringe the World some newes

from fate,

The letter is such as none can it translate:

And for to guesse at God Almighties minde

Were such a thinge might cosen all mankinde:

Therefore I wish the curious man to Keepe

His rash imaginations till hee sleepe…

Perhaps we should all remember the gist of King James’s lines when trying to predict who will be the next President or how the world’s financial ship will right itself. As for me, I’ll limit my “rash imaginations” to dreaming of the books that in future will become part of OSU’s rare book constellation.

Eric J. Johnson, Associate Curator

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, was one of sixteenth-century England’s most influential religious and political figures. Best known, perhaps, for writing and compiling the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, the summation and embodiment of the Reformed English liturgy, Cranmer also wrote a variety of other treatises, including a text that OSU has recently acquired and added to its outstanding Reformation collection. Cranmer’s Defensio verae et Catholicae doctrinae de Sacramento corporis et sanguinis Christi Seruatoris nostri…, is a later Latin translation of his English exploration of the controversial doctrine of the Eucharist (A defence of the true and catholike doctrine of the sacrament of the body and bloud of our Saviour Christ, 1550). Cranmer’s English original was translated by Sir John Cheke, one-time tutor to Edward VI, secretary of state, member of the Privy Council, and noted author in his own right. OSU’s copy is a 1557 second edition of Cheke’s translation, and unlike the first edition—originally issued in London in 1553—it was published abroad (in Emden, Germany) because of the catholic Queen Mary I’s accession to the English throne, her regime’s hostility toward Protestantism, and her imprisonment and execution of Cranmer in 1556. As the title page states, Cranmer revised and approved this second edition from his prison cell: “ab autore in vinculis recognita & aucta”. Bound in with Cranmer’s text is a Latin work by John Foxe (of Book of Martyrs fame) printed ca. 1580 by John Day. The book, Syllogisticon hoc est: Argumenta, seu probationes et resolutiones…De re et Materia Sacramenti Eucharistici, is a treatise consisting of a series of brief arguments and responses discussing various contentious points lying at the heart of the Eucharistic controversy that dominated Catholic and Protestant polemic alike throughout the Reformation.

Our conjoined copy of these two texts is bound in contemporary English calf with oval arabesque ornaments in the center of both the front and back covers. As an extra bonus, the sixteenth-century binder was considerate enough to include a pair of very interesting parchment end-leaves that had previously seen life as part of a glossed thirteenth-century Latin Psalter. The leaves bear text from Psalm 89 and its corresponding gloss. Also included is a heraldic bookplate revealing that this volume was once part of the private library of Hugh Cecil Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale (1857-1944), first president of England’s National Sporting Club, Arctic explorer, friend to Kaiser Wilhelm, and flashy man-about-town famous for his liaisons with some of the more famous actresses of his day.

All in all, I think it’s safe to say that this is an interesting book…

Eric J. Johnson, Associate Curator

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library has acquired this past summer a complete run of The Paris Review from its very first issue in 1953 through the Spring issue of 2008.   The Paris Review is arguably the most pretigious and influential literary journal of the latter half of the twentieth century.  Its contributors form the pantheon of twenthieth-century iconic writers and include Nobel Prize, Pultizer Prize and National Book Award winners in addition to winners of virtually every international literary award.  A select, very seclect list of those writers will indicate the distinction of The Paris Review:  Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Gabrial Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, Vladimire Nabokov and Harold Pinter.  And, I reiterate, these are just a few of the hundreds of contributors to The Paris Review over the past 55 years.  In addition to the writing, the decorative design of the literary review is remarkable and will please students of the book arts.  The collection, which is in very good condition, was acquired from Ralph Sipper Books in Santa Barbara, California.