'The Manuscripts of Thomas Erpenius', In

THEI{ANUSCRIPTS OF THOI,'IASERPENIUS

By J. C. T. Oates

l,ly subject is a coLlection of manuscrlpts written in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Syriacr Hebrew, Coptic, Javanese' and ualayt ancl I bring to it a mincl guite unclouded by any knowledge of any of those tong'ues. I make this confession not because I have any objection to being thought more learned than I am, but because some of you certainly understand some of those languages, and would guickly perceive that I do not; and if I were discovered affecting to understand those things which I do not understand, you might perhaps go on to infer that I also do not understand those things which I think I do unclerstand' And so my last state would be worse than my first'

These rnanuscripts were collected by Thomas van Erpe, conunonly catfed Thomas Erpenius, professor of oriental langTuages at the unlversity of Leyden, who dieil of the plaque on 13 Novem- ber 1624, a few weeks after his fortieth birthday' He Possessed' as well as rnanuscrJ.pts, a library of printed books and a Press which he had equipped at his own exPense for the production of oriental texts.

I shall begin by stating in outline what happened to Erpenlusrs manuscrlpts after his cleath. I shal1 then cite a number of learned authorities in support of my statsnent of these facts, anil to show that it is inconceLvable that they should ever hawe been lgnored, forgotten, or mlsunderstood' I sha1l then cite other authorities' equally learned, to show that they have nevertheless been misunderstoocl, forgotten and lgnored' And I shall end by trying to reconstruct the facts in greater detall. My method will necessarily entail sorne repetition' and this I hoPe You will forgive.

Erpenius, then, died on 13 Novenber 1624' Two days later Gerardus Johannes Vossius delivered in the theological lecture- ha11 of Leyden University a funeral oratlon in honour of hls j-n dead colleague, describing moving words his life and hls Iife's work, and the projects of his printing-press left uncom- pleted by his untimely death- This oration, )r'atio in olvLtun 'L)L!-- ZLar"Lssi*i ac pr.aestantissiwL Thomae Erpenii, was published ee offieina Erpeniana in 1525, and to it were added a number of funerary verses and a catalognle cf Erpenius's books, both manuscript and printed. This collec*-i-cn of verses , Petr"L SevtLDerLi Manei Erpeniani. Quibus acceiur: i;teedia uat"torum, has its own title-page and collation, A-F-, the catalognre of Erpenius's library beginning on El recto benea'-h its own drop-title and occupying sheets E and F; but the :ltle-page of the )v'atio --he makes it clear that tlne 1z'atio ani llanes form one public- ation, though in two parts: Aeee 1'.,.-.:.'.nebrLa anicortm CaTnrLtn. iten'Catalogus Libv'oin orLenLaTi-.-, : ':' tel mfrtuscrtpti' DeL edtti, in bibLi.otheea Erpeni-ana e:e:.--' Ambigulties in the i.ay-out of the CataLogus and j.n the description of sorne itsns make exact enumeratl,on lmposslble, but the number of manuscrlpt volumes listed is not less than nJ.nety-three, and the number cf printed books is about 150.

Leyden University, which already owned the orientalia bequeathed to it in 1609 by J. J. Scaliger' was of course anxious to add Erpenlusrs books to its library. Neqotiatlons fcr their purchase were begrun in l4ay 1525 and continuecl until the following November, $rhen they suddenly ceased, at a moment when it seered likely that agrednent was about to be reached: and they ceased because the Duke of Buckingham' who was staying at The Hague in November and Decsnber 1625, ungxpectedly inter- vened and bought the manuscripts. on June 1st of the following year (1625) BuckinEham was elected Chancellor of Cdnbridge IJniversity, which now looked to him for some spectacular bene- fa.ctj-on. There was talk of his intention of building a new Lrniv:rslty library and of bes+-owing Erpeniusrs manuscripts ripon it; but- he had done nothing by 23 August 1628, the date 1 )-ris assassination by John Felton at Portsmouth. Erpeniusrs manuscripts thus passed to his widowed duchess, who eventually qresented them to the university in June 1632. They were I s;relved, as the university accounts show, in a press made spor:raLIy for them, on which was pJ-aced a connenorative inscrip- i i.in;

Iten paici Lo Ed.oarde Woofuuffe foz, a pt,esse for the Areb,!.cke book.es e6-O-0j lten to the Snith for Lockes, l;tt'r,es ar.d plates fon the presse in the Ltbratg fot' l:he thtkes bookes €I-4-O; Iten for urtghtir,g the D:.Lkes 'tnscrti.^1:ior. upcn his deske cf bcokes tn the i,LD)'Art, U-IU-U.

when about 1650 an industrious under-Iibrary-keeper named .ionathan Pi.ndar compiled the vol'.:me known as the Donors' Book he l.isted the Dukers books cn his first ttrree pages, preceded rrl_-v by the copy of hls own works which King James I qave in l'2a. Thcy number eighty-seven voh:rnes. Five of them are not ;rlrnt-ifiable in the Vossius-Scriverius CataLogus of L625i anJ

r ., r f .l^F ,rFmc nyi--^r .^. qtv?4'--- , g PrrriLEu tq are not identifiable lr '.,)e l)onors' Book; but of the eighty-seven volumes listed in ir. i)()nors' Book all save one are identifiable in the Library ( tay, fhe mrssinc iLem being the ejghty-srxth, which Pindar .- :rc f such ncvel, though incomprehensible, interest that he "Some ri's-rlbed it at ]ength, thus: rharacters upon reeds br;nd in with two sticks and strings or rather of the Leaves 'i a Toddy tree writt in the Industan Character consisting of .2.1 ]eaves eight and twent-ie loose leaves in folio and paper." rt the eighty-six identifiabfe vofr.:rnes, some contain Erpenius's : rindranh- nr dcqerintive titles in latin and other notes in i,is hand; others contain descriptive titles and notes in the :'rrri of Abrahan Whelock, a scholar in Arabic (and in Anglo- '.r:cn) who was University t-ibrarian from 1629 to 1653. These ." r.,-riofiv+ tiflcs are sornetimes abbreviated from the Vossius- J

Scriverius Catalogtts i and further abbreviated they are always the source of Jonathan Pind.arts entries 1n the Donorsr Book.

The special bookcase which the Library naile and its inscriptj-on r.rere destroyed more than two centuries ago: yet if the Library hacl contrivecl to lose, not one of Erpenius's manuscripts, but all of thsn' along with the relevant archives and documents, there would still be arnple evidence that Buckingham bought thefl and that the Llbrary once Possessed them. In 1627 Vossius publtshed hj-s De histo?icis Latinie Libt"L tres, dedrc- ati.ng it to Buckinghdn, of whose encouragement of learning he "There writes thus: was a clanger that the manuscripts tthich my dear colleague the late Thomas Erpenius hacl collected over the years at great risks and expense from the East and from Africa and elsewhere might be unhappily scattered, to the detriment of the republic of letters. As soon as you became aware of this' at your Highness's bidding and as a result of your great bounty, this noble library was ransomed from the unclerworld' as it were, for the public Aooal and especially for that of the University of carnbridge."l Sirnilarly in L642 John Selclen writes in the preface to his eclition of Eutychius that, whereas there j-s no rnanuscrj.pt of this author in the rich oriental collections at Leyden, or in the Isnbrosiana at llllan, or in the Escorial-, or j-n the Bod1eian, or ln the library of the Earl of Arunalel, there is nevertheless one ln the University Library of Carnbridge, among the books which forrnerly belongecl to Erpenl-us and were gj.ven to it by the Duke of Buckingham;1 and although Selden hin- self did not use the Cambrldge manuscript, Pococke took some readings frorn it for his own eclitl-on of 1625, in which he reprinted much of Seldenrs preface, incluiling the passage I have just quoted. Meanwhile in L642 Sir Henry Wotton had given in his Short Vieu of the Life and Death of George ViLLers (which was four times reprintecl before 1585 in rhe ReLi'quiae Wottonianae) a ci.rcumstantlal accountr to which I sha1l return, of the Duke's purchase of the manuscripts and of their presentation to Canb- ridge by the ilowager duchess. Nor is there lack of other testin- onies. Brian walton, in the Pt'oLegomena to his Pol-yglott Bible of 1557-50 descrlbes a volume of the Hebrew bible dated 1347 at "one Cambridge , he says, of the books belonging to Erpenius {hich the Duke of Buckingham gave to the University."J J. H. Hottinger, in nis BibLiothecarius quadl"tpat'titus, published at Z.iirich in 1564rwrites, ln his paragraph on the libraries of cambridge: "Biblt,otheca publica, quan Bucl{inghoniae Dw' occas- ione Bibliothecae Etpenianae distraetae, aurit, mtltos Codices possidet Arabicos."a This I give in latin because I cannot be sure what Hottinger meant by the word distraetae. Did he rnean simply dtuided, in the sense that Erpenlus's manuscrl-pts were separatedl after his cleath from his printed books? Or clid he mean, in accordance vrith a contrnonusage of the word in classical Latln, soLd off in paz'celsz The questions are not rhetorical, and at the end of this paper I shall try to answer them.

I do not doubt that it would be possible to cull many other references sirnil-ar to these from the works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century orientaList scholars, and I shalI not labour the point much further; but If any doubts yet linger some confirmatory hints may be founcl in Bernard's Catalogi. of !697, where his list of rnanuscrj-pts in the University Llbrary, ltself reprinted from James'g Eeloga of 1600, ls extended by an Aucta- z,iwn of sixty-three volumes e bibLiotlpcd oiz"i clariesi,nri Tlnmae Erpenii,; in Le Long's BibLiotheea Bac?a, first published at Leipzig in 1709;) in the Bibliotheea bibliothecarutn of ttontfauc- on (Paris, 1739), being abbre,vlateil selections from Bernaril; and in the travel diaries, posthnously published in I?53-4, of the informative but unlikeable zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who in 1710 visited the Unj-versity l,lbrary and saw Erpenius's manuscripts (though his gnricle Thomas Baker could not te11 him whether a1I of them had come to Canrbridge), and moreover copied down the conmemorative inscription written on vellum and hanging in a frame at the end of the bookcase.6

By the middle of the eighteenth century therefore the pres- ence of Erpenius's manuscripts at Cambridge had been clocumented and publicised beyond any apparent possibility of misunderstanding or doubt; and the facts have of course been stated and re- stated since then, brlefly by Henry Bratlshaw in his historical "The sketch University Library" (flrst printed in the Canbr4dge Ihtioersttg Cazette in February anal March 1869 and reprlnted both in 188I as his Memorandwn 1Vo.6 and ln 1889 in hi.s CoLLeeted Pqers) and in greater detail by E. c. Browne in an article which he pri.nted in the Joutnal of the RoyaL As.)atic Soaiety in 1894 ("Description of an Olil Persian Comnentary on the Ku'ran") and in 1896 in the j-ntroductLon to his CataLogute of the Persian Manusct Lpts in the Library of the tlnioersitg of Canbridge. Sone initial bewilderment among the citizens of Leyden was of course inevitable, since the Duke made his purchase unexpectedly. guickly, and secretly at the very moment when their own negotiations seerned to be about to be successfully concluded: and we nay suppose that the usual we1l-inforrned sources did not keep silent. One of thern was Erpenius's friend Andreas Rivetus, who in a letter written from Leyden on 29 January 1626 told Johannes Meursius that Buckingham had bought the books and presented them to Oxford.' ThLs apart, I do not fincl any positive misinforma- tion in print until the nineteenth century, It is, however, curious that \^rhenin 1658 J. H. Hottinger printed in the appen- dix to his Prontuat Lutn siqe bibLiotheca orientaLis the catalo- gues of four oriental collections, he chose not to state the location of the Bibliotheca Etpeniana (the contents of which he reprinted, abbreviating many entries and omitting three altog- ether, either from the Vossl-us-scriverius Catalcgtts or from some other source very similar to it), though he refers in his text (p.72) to Erpenius's manuscrlpt of Eutychius, 'which I saw in England at Cambridge', and, as we have seen, made no bones about statj.ng in 1564 that Cambriilge possessed. the whole collection. It is certainly possible that later generations were misled by ltrhe senno aeadenieus delivered on 29 October 1674 by lriedrich 5

Spanheim before the University of Leyden and printed^in the catalogue of its library which was published that year.o This address is written in the kind of hot-house tatin which causes the reader's spectacles to steam over while simultaneously reducing his brain to the consistency of boiled cabbage; but it is still possible to cllscern that in one passaqe Spanheim attrib- utes the riches of the oriental collections at Leyden to the successive agencJ.es of Scaliger, Erpenius, and Golius (parar"Lo prLnlbn Scal'Lgero, tfrn Urpenio . . - ac tandem Jacobo GoLioal . Scal-iger bequeathed books to the University, and Golius travelled to the east in oraler to buy then with the University's money; Erpenius doubtless encouraged the University's acquisition of oriental books whenever he could. But whether Spanheim believed that Erpenius dicl more than this is something which only Spanheim could tell us. There is certainly no ment.ion of Erpenius in the Speatmen catalogi codLcwn WS, oz"LentaLiun BibLiothecae Aeademiae Lugduno-Batauae p.u:- out by H. A. Hamaker in 1820, where the pre- gninence of the oriental collections at Leyden is unarnbiguously ascribed to the Judgment and generosity of Golius, Scaliger' and Levlnus warner (Nec ilLud profecto aLiter fi-et"L potuit' Quippe eLar"Lssina seculi decini septinrL ingenia, Golius, SeaLiger' et llarmerws, nagna judicLo in eligendits, sulftne LibeTaLitate i.n cobnen- dis MSS. ueriati suntz see the beginning of the Pt'aefatio) '

The first Dutch writer to attempt an account of the events concerning Erpenius's library after his death was Matthijs Sieg- enbeek in the second voltmte, published in 1832, of his history of Leiden University.l0 Erpenius, he says, had arranged for his whole collection of oriental books, both manuscript and printed' "and," "although to be offered to the University, he continues' they decided to buy thsn and fixed a generous price of 5,OOO guilders, no further pfggress was made in the matter: for what reason, I cannot saY."tt

Siegenbeek, then, knew nothing about the Duke of Buckingharnrs part in the affair; no more did the author of the first two volumes of the catalogrue of oriental manuscripts at Leiden which - cornmencedpublication j-n 1851. This distinquished scholar accord.ing to his title-page he was a Master of Theoretical Philos- nnhw - a nnetor or Hrmane Letters ' a corresponding member of thc Royal Dutch Academy and of the Acaderny of History of Madrid, an Honorary Fe11ow of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and in the Unlv- ersity of Leyden Professor of History and Assistant Exposator of the warner Bequest - this distinguished scholar, whose anticlxac- tic narne r.tas Dozy, introduced the first volume of his catalogue with an account of the collection's history and growth' Of Er'pen- ius's library he writes thus: Erpenius had left a nurnber of books, both printetl and manuscript . Gol.ius (who had been elected !o succeed him as Professor of orientaf Languages) was anxious to keep then for the University. He told the Curators that both the prlnted books and the manuscripts were essential for the performance of his duties as a teacher, and that one of Erpenius's last instructions to his wife hail been that she was to give the Universlty the preference above aIl other potential pur- chasers. tte added that foreign dealers had made known their wish to buy the library for the PaPal ltuncio' but that the widow preferred to sel1 to the curators and was asking 4,000 florins, which was ErpenJ-us's own valuationt she wanted I1000 florins paid down, and the rsnainder in three annual instalments of the same amount. The curators were very willing to buy, but lacked the money. Finally the Council of the States of Holland and llest Friesland made it possible for the Curators to buy by rnaking them an irrcnediate grant of I,000 florins from public funds, the 3'OOO florins outstanding to be paid off half "one from public funds and half by the university.l2 might "that suppose therefore," Dozy concludes, aII Erpenius's manuscripts are in our library, rnixed up with Golius's: but a con- parison with the catalogue appended to Vossius's speech shows that the opposite is the case. we do not possess, for example' the two copies of the dictionary of al-Jawhari, one written in Baghdad A.H.673, the other in four volunes in quarto' lacking the second volume; we do not possess, either, the seven volumes of the Universal History of l4irchond, or the turkish translation of Tabari - in a word, all the mam:scripts which were of some value. Some of Erpenius's manuscripts, if not all of them, have made their way to the Canbrialge University Library, I know not how"; and he then cites Erpenius's celebraLed manuscript of Eutychius and his manuscript of fmra'url-Qays, which Reiske in 1742 had stated to be at Cambridge.')

rn the first of the AddenCa c't enendantia published in the fiftlr volume of this catalogue in 1873 Dozy ^ffered a partial correction of this narratlve, quoting Sieqenbeek's statement that for reasons unknown the Universlty failed to buy the manuscripts. 1t. is some illust-ration of the danqers of over-sie.ial- ization in scholarshiF rhat fifteen years earlier "f. A. V:n Crr -h^ r- a-. -.,Lri-h^4 ro:q.ns:r.ite e+!q!rrcleaflV f:-',.e rt_-:-lf f. dd ,Iau tsuulrrrrcq Yur uc Erpeni.us in the fourth voLume of his dicti-onary c: DJtch nd:ional biography, though he makes the mistake of supposing that Buckingham bought, not the manr:scripts onlyr but the whole library. ' -

Dozy's narrative was first ampli,'ied in 1888 by Martin I'heodor Houtsma, who pubiishod from a ranuscLrpt at LeYden sel- ected letters written bY grpenlus. Golj-rrs, and warner.'" In his very brief accotrnt of *.he negotiations between the Univer- s1ty and the widow hc refers to a docment, published in 1696, fron which it appears that the Universltv uished to acquire nct t.hc manuscriDt-s onlv but the whole librar-v and also the oriental press, wh-ich the widow was required *-o grua:aa+-eewourd remain in Leyd.en; and from this he deduced thai- the Lrrvcrsity's primary object- was to secure the press, and that when its safety was assured by its purchase by the Elzevirs, negctiatiDns for Lhe llbrary were abandoned as of only ninor importance." Erpetritrs's manuscripts, he continues, were sold and

Marsh, who bought lt at Gotius's sale) and others by Cambridge (here he points to Hottinger's reference in his Pnamtum"tun Eo the manuscript of Eutychius, and to Erpeniusts manuscript of the psalms in Syriac, "which was also at cambridge when the London Polyglott was printed."17)

The next move in this garne of historical snakes and ladders was made in 1905 by P. C. l{olhuysen, who j-n his history of the Leyden Universlty Llbrary asserted that that library had bought the whole of Erpenius's library in 1625.ro Since Molhuysen was Keeper of Manuscripts at Leyden this egregious untruth doubtless carried conviction to some; but we must give him credit for real- ising his mLstake and for acknowledging it in 1915 in the second volume of his excellent edition of the Leyden University archives: Erpenius's library, he there writes, I^ras not bought by Leydent it was bought by the Duke of Buckingham, who gave it to Oxford' according to a letter which Rivetus wrote to Meursius on 29 Jan- uary 1626. And so the first misinforrned rumour was revived nearly three centuries after its first propagation.

By this tlme you may well have concluded that in this matter the fault of the Dutch ls reading too little and writing too much, so I r^rll1 add only three further examples to show that error and confusion stl1l persist: j-n 1925 P. S. van Ronkel described the provenance of Erpenius's Malay manuscrapts correctly in his textr20 but stated in his English suntrnary that they had been bought and given to Cambriclge by the Drke of Wellington (thus eclipsing the performance of Sanue1 Lee, who in his polyglott Bible of I83l attributed Buckingham's benefaction to the Duke of Somerset); the current Dutch clictionary of national biography says (1930) that Buckingham gave Cambridge Erpenius's printed books as well as his manuscripts;zr and a standard guj-de to the history of Arabic studies in Europe, published at leipzig in 1955, follows Dozy's error of just ovef a century ago in asserting that the whereabouts of Erpenius's manuscripts of l4irchond and the Turkish Tabari is unknown. 22

lII

Among the archivaf material- of Leyden University Fublisl-.ec by Molhuysen are the minutes of decisions taken by the curatcrs of the University, and in these the course of the negotratlons between the widow Erpenius and the University can clearly be :c-- Iovred (Mo1huysen, Brannen, pp. L22-4). The representatives :: the two partles first rnet on 13 l'lay 1625, when Professor Thysr:s and Hieronymus ale Backere, acting for the widow, offered to sel-l to the University "the arabic and other oriental books left by Erpenius and about elghty-four in number" (de Arabisehen enle avtdere )r'LentaeLsche boecken, by den uoozn. Erpenio naegeLaeter-, tt ende omtrent oien ende tachtieh in getall; the price asked was 4,OOO guilders, of which one quarter was to be paid inrned- lately and the remaining three quarters in three annual instalments. The Curators declcled to seek a subvention from the province of Hollanal and West ?rieslancl, and appointed ilelegates to' negotiate with the provincial go(TerrEnent. Both partles then agreecl to adjourn fulther dlscussions for a fortnight.

The curators' delegates put their case before the councll of the states of Ho1land and west ?rlesland at The Ha$re on 16 May. Their meeting is recorded both in the minutes of the Curators and in the mlnutes of the Council tBtonnen, pp. 205-6). The Curators explained that Gollus neecleil the books for the proper performance of hls professional duties; that it had been Erpenius's own wish that his books should, if possible, remaln in the University; that certain forelgn alealers were seeking to buy thern for the Papal Nuncio; that the wiclow hail offered to sell then at Erpeniusrs o$rn valuation of 4,000 guilders, payable in four annual instalments; anal that the University now sought the Councilrs direction and advice since it haal no money. The curators and the Council then discussed, and rejected, the advisability of applying for a subvention to the states Generaf also - i.e. to the central goverrsnent of the Netherlanils. The Council agreed that it was not desirabl-e to allow the books to fall into strange hancls or to leave the province' and therefore authorjsed the curators to proceed with the purchase, the province to provide 1,000 guilders insnediately ancl 1,500 guilders over three years provlcled that the university raise another 1,500 gmilders over three years also.

There is no record that the Curators and the widow's representatives met on 27 Nlay, as they had agreed to do: but if any meeting betvleen them took place on that day they certainly found themselves at cross purposes, fot the Curatc)rs discovered, as is shown in their minutes of 12 Aug:ust, that they had complet- ely misunderstood what it was that the widow was offering to se11. According to their own record of their meeting of 13 May they were negotiating for "the arablc and other oriental books left by Erpenius and about elghty-four ln m-nnber." This, they now explained, they had understood to mean both the rnanuscripts and the printed books, though how they can have supposed that the entire Iibrary consj-stecl of about eighty-four volunes when the Vossius- Scriverius CataLogus shows that it contained three times as many passes comprehension. At any rate the wiclow's representatives made it clear that what they had offered to sell for 4,000 guilders was the collection of manuscripts only. On 12 August therefore the Curators referred their difficulty to Rochus van der Honert, who had been one of their delegates to the Council of the States of Holland and west FrLesland on 16 l'lay: if he had understood that the original offer snbraced only the manuscriptsl then their purchase was to be proceeded with on the terms already arrangecl, on conditlon that Erpenius's press rernained in Leyden; if he had understood that the offer hatl included the printed books as weI1, then Golius was to be asked to examine them and to put a valuation on such as he thought r./ould be useful to the University, so that a reasonable adclltional palment might be authorised. . The last meeting between the two parties took place on 14 November. Thysius and Golius declared on behal-f of the widow that they were willing to aI1ow the Curators to select and retain such printed books as they thought useful for an additional pa1'rnent of 150 guilders. At this the Curators made an - entirely new proposal: they would pay the widow 5'200 guilders I,000 guilders down and the rsnainiler in six annual instalments of 700 guilders each - provided she caused Erpenius's press to remain at Leyden, in return for the oriental books, both manuscript and printed, together with a1l such books, whatever their language, as might serve to il-lustrate oriental languages and Iikewise aL1 those books which were cleared out on Erpenius's death and deposlteil with hls widorc, it being understood that she would retain the prlce of such oriental printed books as she had sold since her husband's death. Thysius and Golius agreed to consult the widow; but negotiations were never resutned. They had been bedevilled by an inltial misunderstanding, and they had been too protracted; and the University had tried to drive +-oo hard a bargain - these, in fact, are precisely the reasons gaven by Rivetus in his letter. to Meursius for the Universityrs failure "BibLiatheca to buy the books: Erpeniana' qu@n & etisti'naueranus Academi.oaeBibliotheeae accessuron' prout decretum fuerat, ninia iniecta moz,a, & dut"iorLbus conditionibus tiduae propositis' aessit Acadenr[ae Axoniensi " AIso, the widow had received a better offer.

Buckingham arrived in The Hagrue on 9 November and stayed there until the third week of December. The purposes of his mission, in which he failed, were to persuade the Danish ambass- ador that the English exchequer could no longer afford to give the King of Denrnark the promised monthly subsidy of 830'000 in money or men, to bring about a grand al-liance against Spain and the Empire, and, if necessaryr to pawn the crown jewels. It is not to be supposed that a statesman - even of Euckrngham's calibre - should turn spontaneously to the buying of oriental manuscripts when engaged in such high matters as these. The irnpulse came, not from Ussher' as Bradshaw plausibly suggested'^. but from a member of Sir Henry wotton's household. John Dinley'z' who afterwards becane secretary to the Queen of Bohemiat and it "this lies in a letter, exasperatingly dated Saterday mornir'g' 1625," tn the Public Record office G. P. 84/122). The credit for discovering it must be given to w. N. sainsbury. who published it in 1859 in his OriginaL unpubLi'shed Papers illustz'atiue af the Li..fe of futbensta and to Sainsbury al-so must be given the discredit of as complacently incurious an editorial annotation as I have ever seen: "We are unable to say whether lthe suqgestion that the Duke purchase the manuscriptsl was carried into effect"; and the credit for noticing the relevance of this letter to the history of the University Library must be given to Charles Say1e, who found it too late for incorporation in his Anr,cie r:f C,zrnbrLdge IJnioet'sity Lib- Tar"lt (:.916). It is addressed to Sir Dudley Carleton from Leyden' and reads thus: 10

Rioht Hon"^-:

Erpennius, who pelhaps was knowne to Yr LP by sight; to mee onely by fame, left a famous Librarie of Manu- scripts in the Easterne Languages, to be offered (by his owne orcler) first unto the States. They, upon hls death, referred it to the Curators of this Universltle; who all this while have kept the wldow j-n suspence & now pretend their stock is exhausteal & have left her to her best Chapman. Yesterday they gave her libertle; and then I stas brought to have a sight of thern. I was told that the Jesuites of Antwerpe, of Spaine & Rome too, have underhand inployed some Merchants to buy them in a poke; and surely they have no good end to hunt after such Originalls. I know not.what they are, my juclgrment goeth not beyond my eies, wch can onely tell,Yr LP that they are fairely written, in rare paper & wEn exquisite diligence; & so much they deserved in the owners estirna- tion, that besides the great chardge c inquisition over the world to purchase then, he raised of his owne purse, a howse, & a matrix of letters for their impression. The rate of them is 4,000 guilders or 400 pounds; upon his death-bed he reckoned that they cost hirn nere 5,000 gildrs & told his wife that the Bish. of Winchester ll,ancelot Andrewes] would give her the monie for them. They seeme to be a treasure of the Orientall toungs & are not lj-ke]y to lie long on the boord. Whereupon I thought it ny dutie to Yor LoP g to our Universities f^ diva \r^rr irct.n+ nntiaa fhar^f fh'+ if r,^,, ^L^ll finde it fittinge., you would then please acguaint the Duke his Grace wcn the occasion u perswade him that he cannot lay out so smalf a sufltrne,rnore for his ot'ne honour. Yr l,P wilbee a Benefactour too, if you can helpe them into England. f have sent annexed a Cata- . ^f +h^ hyih+^i +^^ rhrf vr T nidht coa tug uE u r Lrrslt , d u! Lllc I,! rir Lcq L99 , L..* _ all, but the Iast are of small moment. I shall humbly attend Yr L,ps order, rth r bos"..h nav bee hastcned wlh Yr IPS convenience, that wee be not pievented. . . .

The widow, I suggest, was no mean sales$romar. And now the story is taken up by Sir Henry wotton:

Here, it were iniurious to oversfip a Noble Act in the Duke during this inployment, which T must for my n:rf .alphre1-o :l^nve al I his exnenses: thefe was a Collection of certain rare Manuscripts, exguisitly written in erabique and sought in the most remote parts by the diligence of Erpinius, the most Excellent Linguist, these had beene left to the Widdow of the said Erpinius, and were upon saile to the Jesuits at Antwerper Licourish Chapmen of such Ware. Whereof the Duke getting knowledge, by his worthy and l-earned Secretary Doctor Mason, Inter- verted the bargaine, and gave the poore widdow for them five hlrndred pounds, a sunme above their welght in s.iIver. and a mixed act both of bounty anC charity, the more laud- 1L

able being fiuch out of his naturall Element' These were they' which after his death were as Nobly presented, as they had been bought, to the University of Carnbridge, by the Dutchesse Dowager, as soone as she unalerstood by the aforesaid Doctor Mason' her husbands intention. . . . .z)

And so towards the end of 1625 Buckingham helped Erpenius's manuscripts into England, as Dj-nley had suggested' Six months later, on 1 June 1626, al the King's wish and after the members (in of the Senate had been subjected to great pressures which l4ason hras an actlve agent for the tluke) , Buckingham was elected chancellor of the university by 108 votes to 102. He inunediately "And declared himself anxious to serve the Unlversity: since I "r am so far ingag'd unto yow," he wrote, wlll presume upon a further courtesie, which is; that yolt woulcl be pleased to suppl-y me with your advice, and suggest a waye unto me (as my selfe likewise shall not fayle to think upon some meanes) how wee may make posteratye remsnber, yow had a thankfull Chancellor' and one that really both loved yow-& your Universitye'"26

The University repl.ied, in snivelllnq latin composed by George Herbert, that to answer such a questlon from so exalted a questioner was entirely beyond the capacity of their own hur'ble intelligences. Nevertheless there was comrnontalk of the Duke's intention of bullding a new llbrary and of bestowinc Erpenrus's manuscripts upon it. Dr. John Preston' the Master of Emranuel' to his removed from Cambridge to L.incoln's Inn, because, according biographer Thomas Ba]1r"the Duke was chancel-l-or, and would enceav- ^rrr f6 iroratiate himself, and be a Benefactor; and had brought to found a Lib- [sz]cl rrpenius Manuscripts, and did verily intend of rary; and so it would be easie, and in his power, to out him' the college and Universitl'."27 Ussher himself was active in prodding the Duke onward' as may be seen from two tetters which he wrote in June 1626 ta Sa:rruel ward, the Master of Sidney Sussex: "I have dealt with your chancellor very effectually for the erect- ing of your library, to which he is of himself exceeding foruard: r have procured him to send unto Leyden for all the printed Hebrew books of Erpenius his library; which together with his manuscripts' which he harh aLready, he purposeth to bestow upon your university' I have also persuaded him to send thither for the matrices of the Syriac, Arabic, AEthiopic, and Samaritan lettersr and to bestow them l-ikewise upon you" (16 June) ; but on 23 June Ussher reported to ward that news had reached hj-m from Leyden that all Erpenius's printed books were already sol-d, and that the oriental matrices "so had been bought by the Elzevirs, that now you must content yourselves with his maruscripts only' which are a very rare treasure indeed, and for which^your university shall rest much behofden to Your chancellor."'o

None of these hopeful intentions had been translated into action before the Dukers assassination on 23 Auqtust 1628' :lrpenius's manuscripts now passed intr the possession of the 1t

duchess, and a new stage in their history began. Early in 1629 we find Ussher suggesting to an unnaned correspondent that if the King might be persuacled to buy the Barocci manuscripts, "now brought into England by ur. Fetherstone the stationer," and to add the Erpenius collection to thern, "it would make that of his l*{ajesty a royal library indeed" Ulhole Vonks, r,I , 42I). Whether Charles ever considered this suggestion I do not know; but if he did so, then the Earl of Pdnbroke, who bought the Barocci manuscripts for the Bodleian, deserves the thanks of Cambridqe as well as of Oxford.

Abraham Whelock was elected University t,ibrarian at cambridge in the late surnmer of. L629, and early in 1532 he became the first holder of the Readership in Arabic foundecl by his patron sir Thomas Adams. As yet, however, the University Lib- rary possessed but one Arabic manuscript (a Koran, presented by willian Bedwell in 153I) and perhaps two printed books (Erpenius's editions of tf'e Pentateuch and New Testarent), so that' the acqulsition of additional tsxts being now of urgent importance' j-hc T,ihrervrs fripndq turned their minds once more to the manu- qnrini-q nf Frnanirrq and t^ tha arfe nf nor5g65l6p. Their chief agent was Richard Holdsworth, a future Master of Emanuel and benefactor of the Library, at this time rector of the London parish of St. Peter-le-Poer and Professor of Drvinity at Greshan College; and it is in his letters to whelock (preserved in sancroft's transcripts in the Bodleian) and in Sir Thomas Adarns's letters to Whelock (in the Cambridge University Library) that the course of these final negotiations rnay be traced, though imper- fectly, since Whelock's own part in the correspondence has not (so far as I can discover) survived.

The earliest reference is in a letter written by Adams to Whelock on 16 March 163l/2: "Your letter I received with the inclosed to Mr, Howlesworth, who is gone this afterncone about the busines you mentioned & is minded. to let you heare from him next wicke."zY on the 23rd Adams reported that Holdsworth "tou1d ne the last wicke he was going about the bookes you mentioned but as I remember the vallew of them was not tould me above the one half of the summe you mentioned. Howsoever it is very well they are obtained for your Universitie, & I conceive the present fruiti- tion [szc] of them will be most cormnodious for your self & much conducinq to the furtherance of the worke intended" (Dd. 3. 12, rV, r'ro.6i , This letter is a&nittedly obsc'ure, and Adams seems to be counting chickens as yet unhatched. ljjs next letter (ibid., No.22), of 30 March 1632, is however clear encugh:

whatsoever the feare at Cambridge be Least these orientall bookes will be diverted, yet I hope your Unaversitj-e is in better likelihood to have them in regard cf some late endeavours than in truth it was formerl-y. Howsoever suppose otherwaies, the certainty is this, Mr Houlsworth 'l rrnn^n tha ra.ai ni- nf wnrrr I F1-t pr wi ckpq :coe I aq T i. eka

fL/i +\ ,.i^-rwErrL rluilEuaaLclli*^^i -f 6l i' f^ f h6 hnrrco nf f ha +rri-ho< ur Jyq^ucn.La to Mr Bowles her Chaplain who :rcr:rsed his furtherance & 13

to moove the dutches about them within a few daies, & Mr Houlesworth replying that my L: of Lincolne lBishop John williams, a benefactor of the library of St. John's, Carnbridgel had already made way to the dutches about them, t1n Bo\.rles answered, I wish he had spake with her, but'he dld not, onely he acknowledged he spake unto him about them, the second time Mr Holsworth repayring thither recd this answere from Mr Bo\^rles tha! the dutches replyed that shee would consider of it, then did Mr Holsttorth understand privately that there was qreat meanes used to gaine the bookes for oxford, the 3d tlme Mr Holsworth went to l"1r Bovtles for the dutches resolution wch was that shee would speake to the xing about thern, thereuppon l4r Holsworth acquainted the Earle of Dover lHenry Careyl being his parissioner wth the busi-nes & prepared him wtn severall arguments to the dutches but not neeting wtn her he went to my Lord of Holland lHenry Rich, Earl of Holland, Chancellor of the UniversityJ by whom meanes was used to his maiestie, & thus it is hoped that the iewells will be reserved for Cambridge & to morrow this nobleman afore- named will stir againe about ,it & we hope we sha11 understand the danger is prevented thus you will still say Praised be the Lord daily even the C'od that helpeth us & poureth his benifites uppon us. . ."

Who is doing what, or saying what to whom, is perhaps not always crystal clear. However, Ada,ns continued to keep Whelock "I fu11y informed of what was being done: cn 6 Aprrl' spoke Lhis day to Mr Holsworth touchino the bookes, & he assured me that he hath bine 3 times this wicke about them & that my Lord of Holfand is sol-licited & promiseth his best endeavour, & he hopeth they will be shortly obtained, he doth defer to wrrte (ibid., on unto you untill he hath certeine newes" No.7); and !L "This t4 April, day I spoke to Mr Holsworth & he acquainted me w"" *-c;ching r-he the se'Jerall passages the last wick occurrinc bookes 'J:1"'ersr'-l' r-hat & doth assure me that they will be had for ycur N there is no cause to feare the disposell o:- then eLswhere oneil touching the manner to obtain them wtn expedition he wlli write the next wrcke tc the Vice Chancellor if this succeedrng wrcke do not open the way in a cleare course . - . Mr Houlesworth is lrc lesse solfrcitous then your self for the safe & speedie lrc':rrrlc " cf then (ibid., No.8)

Soon after this the University addressed a petition to the "a Duchess in English, beqging her to grant it favour once intend'ed, "there as we have often heard, by your Gr: noble Husband deceased"; wanteth now," the petition continues, since private generosity has "but found the stipend for an Arabic professor, matter and store. of Bookes to encourage and cherish this new studdy amongst us'"'" This approach proved to be not entirely tactful or opportune, and ". the Duchess's reply carries some air of rebuke: ' ' the Manu- scripts you desire, are not as yett in rny power, yett I will endeavour to gett them, and prevent your sending aqaine unto mee 14

in this particular. In the meantime ny conscience beares mee witness I that I have been l-n all things hitherto zealous to further the executj.on of whatsoever I have understood to bee my Deare Lords Intentions. And in due tine I hope, there will be reason to have my faithfulnesse in that poynte. (soe farre as I am able) approved even by Cambridge itselfe."rr Holdsworth, too, Lhought the Universityrs petition untinely, writing on 11 May to whelock: "I could have wisht the University had stayed their letter, till we had gott the King to have moved Ye Dutchess: but now that they have broken the ice, they nust needs helpe to close it & strengthen it againe, by another Ietter to the Chancellor, that he would move the King to give his royall assent for there it only staies: This good in the rneane time hath come by the paines vrhich hath been taken, that the books are saved. Otherr.rise there is some cause to feare they had been transferred to Oxford but that it was prevented by timely interpositiot',=.'r32 Finally, aLI came to a happy out- come on 8 June, when Holdsworth wrote again to Whelock "with all thanks for your great love, e aII well wishes of comfort in your place, & all ioy for the Arabick books which are this day sent down to Cambrige'r; the University, he added, should not omit to send a letter of thanks to the Duchess, and the Vice- Chancellor should write to l''1r Bor.rles, "who hath bene a great advancer of this business." Adams confirmed the news to Whelock in a letter of the sane date (ULC, l4S. M. 3.12. IV, No.IOl. On 13 June the University sent to the Duchess an unexceptionable expression of its gratitude in a l-atin letter full of abstruse words and convoluted constructions composed by the Public Orator Robert Creighton; and Creighton delivered hefnre i-ha ITniltorqifw in fha nraqon.a ^f p^l-\arf M^c^n ^n.6 fh6 Duke's secretary and now the Duchessrs representatj.ve, a speech announcing wrth many superfluous rhetorical questions the Duchess's gift, recalling how the Duke had outbid the Jesuits of Antwerp - iLLi quiden pretia a Duce superati c,1,ttrel,i Teeess- e:Ltunt - and how (a new detail) after the manuscripts had been hrnrrahf t^ Fnd'l:n.l tha\r h:ri honn c^rrdht l-\r' tho IIni rrorci irr nf Paris, as weII as by envious competitors at home, and paying tribute to those who had supported the University's cause, narning, however, among them - and you will remember that Wotton named him also - only Mason himself.

There is stiIl' however, one questlon which remaj-ns unanswered. In Uffenbachrs copy of tho inscription which was placed on the Dukers bookcase at Cambridge the manuscripts were described as ad hastan Locatos, which is the classical- latin for "put up for auction": and so the question must be briefly ccnsidered - was there a public auction of Erpenius's mam:scripts? I think not/ for j-t is a very fortunate and very bold bidder who at a sale of manuscripts, "about eighty-four in nr:mber", secures elghty-seven of them for the curiously round fig.ure of E500. \evertheless, Hottinger described Erpeniusrs Iibrary in 1664 as C'srracto, which rnight mean 'sold off in lotsr; and Dinley enclosed in his letter to Carleton a catalog'ue of the manuscripts, '& of the printed toor: but this rniqht have been a written list. or nore probably the 15

printed catalogue of the library which occupied the last tlto sheets of Vossius's ?ratio. I think it possible that Erpenius's widow had some extra copies of these t\ro sheets struck off - after all, she owned the press that prj.nteal thsn - for the bene- fit of such licourj.sh chapmen as might make an offer: and it may be one of these extra copies that found its way into the library of Petrus Francius, whose auction-catalogue Lists as Iot 1270 anong the quartos a voh:ne or bundle of catalogrues described as T, Ervenii: J, Rutqersii: D. Heinsii: G.I. Vossl:i: A. RLoeti: ?. Scr|ierii;33 brrt r do not believe that any formal auction was held; and if an auction was heJ.d, or contemplated, I cannot find any auction-catalogue survivinq to prove it.

There the stcry ends. On the l-owest level of practicality it demonstrates the folly of keeping a widow waiting too 1ong. For researchers in the humanities it shows how much time a grown man can waste an assetnbling material which he will eventually red.uce to a mere footnote. It demonstrates beyond a doubt that nuch of what we find stated as plausible and authentic natters of fact is 1ikely to be untrue and that once a falsehood has got rnto print it ls likely to be accepted and repeated by respectable scholars r:ntil it becomes almost impossible to eradicate j-t.

NOTES

rPerLculun erat, ne, Reip. Literat"Lae ddrmo, niserb dLsper- L.te:r,enturLinguaril OrLentali'um todices; quas sultnrusuir, & atrLciss- lmus eollega mea, ThomasErpenlus 6 paxopirng , ex artente' Aft"tca, terrLs aLiis, tot cnnis, marLnis periculis & inrpensis, eongessi'sset' Vi,x iLLud eogn1ras, cttn ecee, CeLsitudinis tuae jussu, ac Libet:alit- ate sunrnA, nabiLis bibliotheca, publico, ac irtpr"Lmis Cantabz*Lgiensis Academ|ae bono, quasi ab 01'co t'edin'ttuv'.

2Sed uerb in Bibliotheea CqntabrLgiensi publiec, ErettpLat" AnnaLium eius reperia)r' inter Libz'os BLbLiothecae- Cri'ettal"s ihcrra'. Erpenii, quibus iLLa pr"iden donata est a GeorEa. ::t.. !1a3)"t-ii.;7-';;', ejusden Aead.errtaeCancelLar"Lo, ' - 3"Entant etian in BibLiotheca CantabrLg, t)t'-er ::'::-"' :: quas Acaden';aedonalit Dur Buckinganius,Biblia he':r:'-3i '" section xrr, De Lingun ChaLdai.caet Targtttnim,p. 85.

4cap. rr , De uarLis bibLiotheais in genet'e' p. 16. '5- 5s.. pp. '7a'5t "BibLia Hebt'aea. , . Ertat cun ceter': ' br dano Duais Buekinghonii in BibL. publica Cc'.:-:-'.- Erpenianis "-:'":--' iensi," with references to Bernard and walton; and p' 23I: Atabicb eharaetette SA?o . . Hic codet una cum reLiquis Ir;-'-;-": BibL. Cantabz"Lgiensipubltcaei.Llatus est," wiLt' a reference t: Bernard.

,Merkul'Lz:digeReieen, rrr,22, 38-9; Canbridge under C\e.'' Anne, ed. J. E. B. Mayor (cambridqe.I9Il), pp. f42, I57-8. lo

'Meursius, Opera, ed. G. Lami, 12 voIs. (Florentiae, 174I- 63), xr, 447-8.

a^ , - 6C ataLo gus Bibliothe eae Publi eae Lug dano -Batao ae noli t e! z.ecognitus. Aecessit ineornpatabllis thesanzws Librorwn o?Lenta- Liun, praecipue I'ISS, gspanheim, sig. **2 verso.

rjceschiedenis den Leidsehe Hoogesehool, rr, 13.

llDo.h, hoewel tot dlen koop besloten, en daartoe eene som van ruim f5000 bepaald werd, had dezelve nogtans (om welke reden is rnij niet gebleken) geenen voortgang.

12^ , e ' zCataLogus codieun oy"ientaliwn BibLiothecae AcademLae Lugduno Batauae, r, vii-ix.

r3Tha.z,aphaeMoalLakah cun seholits Nahas, ed. J. J. Reiske (Lugd. Bat., L742), p.xxvi.

14"De uitmuntende verzameling boeken, waarin vele zeldzarne werken gevonden worden, is doordenHertog van Buckingham, ten dienste van de Academie van Cambridge, aangekocht." Eiographisch Wootdenboek det, Nede?Landen, v, 2t2.

t5"Uit d. oostersche Correspondentie van Th. Erpenius, Jac. Golius en Lev. warner," ln Vet'handeLingen der Koninklijke Akadenie tot I'letensch.qpen, AfA. Letterkunde, 17de deel.

i6cf . l,t. J. de C,oeje and M.Th. Houtsma, Catai:3:^.- eodieun Az,abi co tun Bib Li o the cae Acadeni ae Lugduno - BataD ae, 2na ed. (Leiden, 1888) , T, iv-v, n.: e quibus pate,l, ncn tcmtwr, actun fuisse de Erpenii Coiicibus, sed imprLmis Ce tgcogrcrphia Erpeniuta quan postea ElzeuierL enerunt. Quwn auten constay,et hanc supelLectiLen in uy,be Leida.e manlur@n esse, nulLa cvrplius erat quare es aerarLa pubLieo ueL acadenico nagni iLLi swnptus essent faciendL," 17col. d. Syrische Propheten-codex . . bevond. zich reeds aldaar toen de Londensche Polyglot gedrukt werd,

I q^ ' aGes ehtedenLs .r.er',J,'i) et'siteits -El a :;-c ti'.eek i.e Leiden, p. 24: De verzameling Oostersche handschriften werd in 1625 uitgebreid d.oor den aankoop der bibliotheek van Th, Erpenius . . na eenig loven en bieden, daar Curatoren ook zijn gedrukte boeken wilden koopen, ging zijn geheele oostersche bibliotheek voor f.5200 aan de Universi-teit over.

"bronnen Tat de

zaMededeelingen d.er k. Akad. Ddn r/et., Afd. letterkunde 59, Serie A, no. 8. ' 2rNi.eu-x Ned.erlonsch biogrqhiseh Wootd.enboek, yrrr, 496: zrln groote verzameling boeken en handschrlften is gekocht door den hertog van Buckingham en geschonken aan de academie te Cambridge.

22Joh"r,n llick, DLe ayabisehen Studien in Eutopa, ac., p. 71, n.188: Von beiden Werken besasz Elrpenius] Handschriften, iiber deren Verblelb nichts bekannt ist, s. Dozy irn Vorwort zum Katalog der arabischen Handschriften der Leydener Bibliothek.

23cf. c. s. P. Dom., :.62e-g, p. 44a.

2app. 358-60.

zsshort Via'; of the Life utd Death of Geoz,ge ViLLers (r.ondon, 1642), p.I6.

26see C. H. cooper, AnnaLs of Canbz,idge (Cambridge, 1842-r9OB) ,

27see "The Samue1 Clarke, Lives of Thirty-two English Divines", p.108, appended to his Geneyal MartyroLogie, 3rd ed., (London, 1677) .

28ussher, The WhoLe Works, ed. c. R. Elrlnqtcn (DubI:-n, ji{:- 64) , r,r, 339-42.

29utc, t*,rs.Dd. 3.12, w, No.r; printed by Srr ti. E1Lrs, )r+EinaL Letters of eminent Literary .'.!a'l, camden Soc. , 1843, r.ic. LIf, and with other extracts fron the Adams-v{helock correspondence by P. M. H)IL, Studies in thp, history of the Nea.r,East (I9j3), pp.37-42.

lOULC, B.k".'s transcript,

31rbia., p. 215.

32godl.ian, 1.1s.Rawiinson D.lI04, foI.I6.

-t3iai,o.t:Vrs :'lbrcy.un Petti lrotsti . Hottm ormiwr, fiet ->"ctic n : , ).-r',', ;.pt-tlis CIi ii CCV. & seqq, Amstelaedami , ex officina Wetstenianar l-704 and L705, p. 2A2. The Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand

OccasionalPublication I

THE MANUSCRIPTSOF THOMAS ERPENIUS

J. C. T. Oates

PIETER NUYTS AND HIS "ALBUM AMTCORUM''

John Fletcher

Melbourne.197.{