Book Collectors and Collections Universities and Schools

Chapter 4 Book Collectors and Collections Universities and Schools

One of the most persistent theories about book acquisition in Scandinavia is that most books with pre-Reformation provenance were privately acquired by students during their studies or travels abroad. The number of Scandinavian students identified as having studied abroad in the decades before the Reformation is indeed impressive. Nils Hybel records at least 1649 Danish students at German universities during the years 1451 to 1535.1 According to Ellen Jørgensen, 2016 Danish, 644 Swedish and 183 Norwegian students enrolled at German universities in the early modern period.2 Tore Frängsmyr estimated that at least 65 Swedish students were inscribed each year at foreign, mostly German, universities during the fifteenth century,3 which would give a figure of at least 800 students over the course of the second half of the fifteenth century, all of whom would have been potential buyers of printed books. Students may well have bought books during their years of study and returned home with their purchases, although provenance marks do not provide much evi- dence that this was the case. We also do not know how many books made the journey to Scandinavia with a returning student. Certainly, that number was insufficient to still the hunger of the educated academics and clerics or feed the needs of the cathedrals, religious orders and Latin schools. The very existence of schools and universities in Scandinavia in the pre-Reformation period indicates that a variety of literature must have been available to students and pupils, which in turn suggests the existence of an infrastructure comprising printers, booksellers and book collections. This chapter looks first at books known to have been in the possession of Scandinavian schools, and in some cases of individual teachers and professors. The few Latin schools in Scandinavia could usually be found in the vicinity of cathedrals, although there were schools in other towns as well. We know of eight cathedral and ten Latin schools in Denmark before the Reformation. The corresponding figures for the rest of Scandinavia are Norway, five cathedral

1 Nils Hybel, The Danish Resources c. 1000–1550: Growth and Recession (Leiden and Boston 2007), 109. 2 Jørgensen, ‘Nogle Bemaerkninger’. 3 Tore Frängsmyr, Svensk idéhistoria: Bildning och vetenskap under tusen år. Vol. 1: 1000–1809 (Stockholm 2000), 33.

194 Chapter 4 and no Latin schools; Sweden, six cathedral and twelve Latin schools; and Finland, one cathedral and three Latin schools. These schools do not appear to have held large collections of books. Learning was largely by rote, although even then, pupils needed books. Scandinavian printers became involved in the production of educational literature suitable for teaching and learning Latin. The project to which Hans Urne, dean at Odense and Roskilde cathedrals, devoted a large sum of money was a. o. the production of 200 schoolbooks, to be distributed among poor students in Roskilde. The demand for educational literature grew steadily. A good number of titles were exported to Denmark from Paris, Cologne, Leipzig and Rostock. Monastery book collections also bear witness to this demand for pedagogical literature. The remnants of a Benedictine schoolbook collection are preserved in Næstved, an unusual situ- ation as usually such printed works were consumed very quickly and have therefore seldom survived. The extant school works from Denmark, Norway and Sweden suggest that more substantial titles had much better chance of survival than a basic Donatus, Remigius or Alexander, three typical classical student works (Table 4.1).

Table 4.1 Books belonging to Scandinavian pre-Reformation schools.

Author/title Place Printer Date Provenance

Kanutus Expositiones Ribe Brandis 1504 Aalborg cathedral circa ledes Jutiae school, Denmark Pedersen Epistler og Leipzig Lotter 1518 Aarhus cathedral Evangelier school, Denmark Pedersen Epistler og Paris Badius 1515 Horsens school, Evangelier Denmark Sjaellandske Lov Copenhagen Govert van 1505 Odense cathedral Ghemen school, Denmark Ambrosius Calepinus Unknown Unknown Unknown Ribe cathedral Dictionarius school, Denmark Saxo Historia Danica Paris Badius 1514 Sorø school, Denmark Sjaellandske Lov Copenhagen Govert van 1505 Sorø school, Ghemen Denmark Antoninus Florentinus Nuremberg Koberger 1484 Stockholm Chronicon cathedral school, Sweden (Continued)