Latin Inscriptions by Justus Lipsius in Alba Amicorum

chapter 45 Latin Inscriptions by Justus Lipsius in Alba amicorum

Gilbert Tournoy

It was in Germany that the practice of keeping an album amicorum originated. Almost immediately it won common approval and – if we lend some credit to an apocryphal tradition – well before the middle of the sixteenth century. The story goes indeed that the Lutheran preacher Conrad Cordatus or Hertz (1480– 1546) asked the leading academic of the Reformation, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) for his view of the matter. The praeceptor Germaniae sent him the following answer:

Gewiss haben diese Büchlein ihren Nutzen, vor Allem den, dass sich die Besitzer der Personen erinnern und dabei die weisen Lehren in’s Gedächtniss rufen, die man ihnen einschreibt; dass sie den Jüngeren Erinnerungsmittel werden zum Fleisse, damit beim Abschiede der Lehrer ihnen ein günstiges, empfehlendes Wort einschreibe und dass sie auf dem ferneren Lebenswege stets wacker und tüchtig sich bewähren, angeregt, wenn auch nur durch den Namen der Guten, ihrem Beispiel zu folgen. Es lehrt aber auch der Spruch den Charakter des Schreibenden kennen, und gar nichts Seltenes ist es, dass in Stambüchern bedeutende Stellen aus sonst unbekannten und wenig gelesenen Autoren sich finden, und dass sie endlich Biographisches erhalten, welches man sonst verge- bens sucht.

A similar judgment, in Latin this time, is likewise ascribed to Melanchthon in various extant alba, underlining again the pedagogic and commemorative function of the genre: “Duas ob causas aliorum inscribimus libris rogati; primo, ut librorum possessores recordentur suisque posteris indicent, quibus in locis et quo tempore versati sint. Secundo, ut certa habeant testimonia, quibuscum familiariter vixerint, et qui vera amicitia illis fuerint conjuncti.”1

1 Robert und Richard Keil, Die deutschen Stammbücher des sechzehnten bis neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Ernst und Scherz, Weisheit und Schwank in Original-Mittheilungen zur deutschen Kultur-Geschichte (Berlin, 1893), 9–10. The two texts are also quoted, not without

From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, the custom of keeping an album rapidly spread throughout Europe, mainly among students from Germany and the Low Countries. Two types of alba can be discerned. One type, the principal one, consists of blank pages, most of the time gath- ered in a handsome binding. On the other hand, a small minority of owners used printed books, interleaving them or adding a number of fresh leaves at the beginning or end. Particularly in vogue for this purpose were copies of one of the numerous editions of the Emblemata by Alciato and of Les devises héroiques by Claude Paradin or its Latin translation. Printers soon began to notice the economic advantages of producing books especially designed to be used as alba amicorum. Thus, as early as 1558 the Lyons printer Jean de Tournes published a Thesaurus amicorum, followed by many subsequent editions. This is not the place to expatiate on other material features of the alba or their role in society, nor on the rich possibilities provided by the alba for research on autographic material, personal careers, social or cultural history, nor on delicate paintings, coats-of-arms and other illustrations found in these productions. In systematic research on alba several courses can be taken: one can study a historical or cultural phenomenon in a cluster of alba; or one can focus on an album of one single owner and unearth new data for the biography of the contributors or its owner, or previously unknown iconographical or poetical material by otherwise unknown or well-known artists and poets; finally, it might be revealing to take a closer look at all existent contributions inscribed by a humanist in the alba of others. Each of these different approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages. They all shed light on an intellectual network and most of these cover large parts of Europe. Studying the album of a single owner offers the opportunity to follow him in his travels and acquaintanceships, contributing in this way both to his biography and that of others. Examining all existing contributions of one person makes it possible to compare their similarities and differences in style and content, to form an idea of the extent and preferences of a person’s literary culture, and even to solve some very practical problems, such as recurring abbreviations. So, it is this approach I have taken for this paper. And, it will hardly come as a surprise for anyone who is at all familiar with the research projects con- ducted at the Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae since the late sixties of

some errors, by Felix Heinzer, “Das Album amicorum (1545–1569) des Claude de Senarclens,” in Stammbücher des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. W. Klose (Wiesbaden, 1989), 95–124, there 111. They are clearly identified as apocryphal by W.W. Schnabel, Das Stammbuch. Konstitution und Geschichte einer textsortenbezogenen Sammelform bis ins erste Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2003), 253–60.