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3 Reference Genres and Their Finding Devices The first new reference books to appear in print starting ca. 1500 were in- debted to ancient and medieval sources and models, but they also initiated a period of new experimentation and explosive growth in methods of information management. Printed compilations were larger than their medieval counterparts and often grew larger still in successive editions, while remaining commercially viable; reference books were steady sellers despite their considerable size and expense and despite being accessible only to the Latin- literate.1 The impressive size of many early modern reference books is a symptom of the same stockpiling mentality that motivated the large collections of reading notes. But while note- takers could rely on their memories to find their way around their notes, printed reference works needed to offer readers formalized finding devices with which to navigate materials they had not had a hand in preparing. These tools often came with instructions for use, which indicate that despite medieval precedents for some of them, readers of early printed books were not assumed to master them. For example, Conrad Gesner explained the reference function of his alphabeti- cally arranged natural history of animals in five volumes (Historia animalium, 1551): the “utility of lexica [like this] comes not from reading it from beginning to end, which would be more tedious than useful, but from consulting it from time to time [ut consulat ea per intervalla].”2 Here the classical Latin term consulere, usually applied to the consultation of people or oracles for advice, was applied to books; aware of introducing a new usage of the term Gesner added “per intervalla” to make clear the intermittent and nonsequential nature of the reading he had in mind. Before long such glosses and explanations were no longer necessary: the diffusion of reference works of many kinds, most of them in Latin, Copyright © 2010. Yale University Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights © 2010. Yale University Copyright in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, familiarized a broad range 117 Blair, Ann M.. Too Much to Know : Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age, Yale University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ufl/detail.action?docID=3420934. Created from ufl on 2021-01-20 10:03:30. 118 Reference Genres of educated readers with the techniques of consultation reading and the use of alphabetical order and various finding devices. In this chapter, I offer a portrait gallery of the major kinds of nonspecialist Latin reference works in print between 1500 and 1650. I have not included spe- cialist reference books, for example, in law, medicine, and theology, though these featured many of the same and sometimes more complex finding devices because they reached a narrower readership with more specific professional needs.3 The nonspecialist reference works, by contrast, offered access to the material that one had to master to be considered well- educated—Latin language and classical culture, and the wisdom accumulated in sententiae and historical examples (Christian and pagan) since antiquity. These were the best- selling learned genres of their day, yet they have attracted limited attention from scholars who have typically mined them for examples of commonly held beliefs rather than for evi- dence of methods of information management. In grouping various genres together as reference books I am using a modern term, first attested in 1889, a few decades after “books of reference” had become current, as one author explains in 1859, to designate “Collections, Encyclopae- dias, Lexicons, Dictionaries, etc.”4 The apparently similar term “book of refer- ences” is attested in 1612 but in a different sense, to designate the manuscript commonplace book that schoolchildren were enjoined to keep.5 Given the di- versity of related terms and concepts, it is useful to consider to what extent an equivalent to the modern concept of “reference book” existed during the early modern period. Today (despite the recent explosion of online reference tools) we might define reference books as those books shelved in a reference room. Certainly there were no reference rooms in medieval or early modern libraries—the first ones date from the mid- nineteenth century.6 Until the practice was abandoned (as early as 1615 at the Sorbonne, as late as 1757 at the Bodleian), many early modern libraries singled out certain books for chaining to desks, but chaining did not designate a reference book. Chaining was a security measure that prevented a book from being taken surreptitiously (in a few instances chained books were actually borrowed with their chains).7 Some smaller libraries, for example in the Paris colleges, chained all their holdings. Frequently the books of most value were chained: all folios at the Bodleian Library, for example, or all manuscripts at the library of the Abbey of Saint- Victor in Paris. In Oxford colleges, books not chained (including second copies of chained books) would be available for fel- lows to “elect” or borrow for the year, and these might include reference books.8 Due to their size, value, and desirability, reference books might often have been Copyright © 2010. Yale University Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights © 2010. Yale University Copyright among the chained books, but they were not treated separately from other valu- Blair, Ann M.. Too Much to Know : Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age, Yale University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ufl/detail.action?docID=3420934. Created from ufl on 2021-01-20 10:03:30. Reference Genres 119 able books, and conversely, reference books (especially in second copies) could also be available for circulation. Thomas Hyde’s 1674 catalog of the Bodleian reserved a section for “such books as lexica, concordances, law, councils: I dis- play a greater abundance of books of this kind and that because of their very common use.”9 Frequent use was the main criterion here for singling out not only humanist reference genres (like lexica) but also major resources in the professional fields of law and theology. There are few other examples of a category akin to reference books in library catalogs or other organized lists of books (e.g., auction catalogs). One medieval library catalog (c. 1389) approximated the category implicitly by devoting the last of its eight sections to schoolbooks, including classics, grammars, and dictionaries, but the category of “didactic” books appeared explicitly only starting in the seventeenth century.10 Most early modern catalogs of books (in libraries or for sale at auctions) were sorted by format and language and by discipline (rhetoric, philosophy, poetry, etc.), though no standard definitions for these were applied. The works I call reference books were all Latin folios, variously listed under grammar, rhetoric, or philology (typical for dictionaries and florilegia), or as “mixed Latin works” (for miscellaneously arranged works discussed below), or histories (e.g., for Zwinger’s Theatrum humanae vitae), but the precise categories and the placement of individual works within them varied in each listing.11 A category similar to our reference books is visible in the seventeenth century, especially in the new genre of books on how to form a library but also in complaints about the excessive reliance on reference books (discussed in more detail in chapter 5). One of the first and most influential books on forming a library was the Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque of 1627 by Gabriel Naudé (1600–1653), who served as secretary and librarian to various French grandees, including Mazarin. The work was reprinted in 1644, and in 1661 John Evelyn published an English translation of it entitled Advice on Erecting a Library. In his Advice, Naudé discussed the many kinds of books to collect in a library: including all the principal authors old and new, in the best editions, with their commentators; those who have offered the best treatment of a science or par- ticular topic; but also those who have attacked the principal authors or written on little- known topics, and even the important heretics. Naudé then specified: “Neither must you forget all sorts of Common places, Dictionaries, Mixtures, sev- eral Lections, Collections of Sentences, and other like Repertories; seeing it is as so much way gone, and Matter ready prepared for those who have the industry to use them with due advantage. In earnest, for my part, I esteem these Collec- tions extreamly profitable and necessary, considering [that] the brevity of our life Copyright © 2010. Yale University Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights © 2010. Yale University Copyright and the multitude of things which we are now obliged to know, e’re one can be Blair, Ann M.. Too Much to Know : Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age, Yale University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ufl/detail.action?docID=3420934. Created from ufl on 2021-01-20 10:03:30. 120 Reference Genres reckoned amongst the number of learned men, do not permit us to do all of our- selves.”12 Here Naudé’s term “répertoire” and Evelyn’s translation, “repertory,” are category terms that match our notion of “reference books” quite well: they encompass kinds of books Naudé enumerated that were meant to be consulted for linguistic and cultural information. “Repertory” and “répertoire” were directly formed from the medieval repertorium, from reperire, to find. “Repertorium” became common in the later Middle Ages to designate indexes, glossaries of words, or catalogs of books. Judging from definitions in early modern dictionaries, the Latin term and its vernacular equiva- lents retained the same range of meanings in the following centuries.13 The term was polyvalent, but Naudé’s use of it was well specified and was not idiosyn- cratic for his context.

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