This guide provides an introduction to the European History to 1600 (HIST 1011) through the lens of manuscripts and early printed works held in Special Collections, Collections of Distinction, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries.
This guide includes images of works from our collections as well as digitized copies of key manuscripts held by the British Library and Cambridge University and elsewhere. To navigate this site, use the tabs at the left to navigate by time period and subject.
See below for links to our collections and to other primary sources.
Guide and text by Susan Guinn-Chipman, 2021. Edits by Sean Babbs, 2022.
'Dragon Leaf,' detail. MS 314, Latin Bible, Northern France, c. 1240
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
To search the Rare Books Collection's early modern manuscripts and early printed books:
To locate a vast array of early modern and modern printed works, available in full text:
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online:
Nineteenth Century Collections Online:
Cuneiform 1 and 2, c. 2000 BCE
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
MS 105, Receipt from a Dike Tax, Northern Egypt, c. 160CE.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
MS 106, List of Books on Papyrus, Egypt, 6th Century
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
The cuneiform tablets above date from the second millennium BCE of Mesopotamia. Cuneiform I, made of unbaked clay, originated from the city of Ur, during the reign of Ibi-Sin, c. 2000 BCE. A receipt for a shekel of silver - the ancient equivalent of a grocery receipt - this tablet is tangible evidence of the palace redistributive economy of this period of Mesopotamia. It shows the remnants of 4000 year-old finger prints on each side. Both are very small - the smallest of the two - Cuneiform 2 - is not much larger than a small piece of 'Rice Chex.'
Papyrus had been in use as a writing surface in Egypt from roughly 3,000 BCE.. It retained its usefulness in Greece and Rome until late antiquity, roughly coinciding with the decline of the western Roman Empire.
The Roman natural historian Pliny describes the process as one in which the inside of the triangular stalk of the plant would be cut or peeled into long strips, which were then laid in a grid pattern, dampened, pressed, dried, and polished. This process created a smooth surface, which would take ink. As seen by the two papyri held by Special Collections above, papyrus tends to become brittle and fragment over time. MS 105 is a receipt from a dike tax from northern Egypt, which dates 160 CE; MS 106 is a list of books, which dates from the 6th century CE.
Many early Christian works, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bodmer Papyri (c. 200 CE) above, were written on a similar surface.
John 19:7-12, Latin Bible, c. 1100-1160, Switzerland, Ege 1,
Gift of Diane and Robert Greenlee in honor of Professor Amy Vandersall
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Over the course of the late Roman Empire, vellum - or animal skin - bound into the form of a codex - the form of our modern-day book - would become the preferred writing surface. A number of factors may have led to this change. The decline of the Roman Empire in the west and related unrest in the Mediterranean may have made the acquisition of papyrus - much of it grown in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean - more difficult. Moreover, as a product, a leather bound codex is more durable than a scroll made of papyrus. The rise of Christianity, too, seemed to play a role.
Vellum, however, was neither economical nor easy to prepare. It has been estimated that one Bible requires roughly 200 animal skins, each requiring soaking in lime, stretching, and repeated scraping with a lunellum - a crescent-shaped knife - to prepare the surface for writing.
The ink (see demonstration, British Library) was made of oak galls, gum Arabic, and iron sulfate.
See oak gall - the spherical protrusion - on the small branch
The durability of vellum was also conducive to illumination or decoration. Gold leaf, minerals such as malachite (green) and lapis lazuli (blue), the lapis imported into Europe from Afghanistan, and the Polish cochineal or louse (red) provided vibrant colors. Beyond medieval books highly decorative illuminated initials, many included historiated initials, or decorative initials that helped tell the story of the text that followed, such a the scene below showing Job sitting on a dung heap.
Latin Bible (Jerome, Prologue to Job - Job 5: 9). Paris, c. 1220-30, MS 317
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
'Dragon Leaf,' Latin Bible, N. France, c. 1240. MS 314 (left)
Gutenberg Leaf, Latin Bible, 1455 (right)
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Displayed side-by-side, the two bible leaves shown above - Special Collections' 'Dragon Leaf' and 'Gutenberg Leaf' - demonstrate the desire by Johannes Gutenberg to produce a product that was both revolutionary in its technology and traditional in its appearance. Special Collections' 'Dragon Leaf' on the left was created on vellum, written using oak gall ink, and decorated with gold leaf and lapis in the early 13th century. Special Collections' 'Gutenberg Leaf' was letterpress printed by Johannes Gutenberg, using the moveable type made of lead, tin, antimony, set on a composing stick (see below), organized onto a galley, and printed on a press fashioned from a design with a screw-type lever similar to that of a grape press.
The result was a bible very similar in its page structure and design to the earlier bibles that had graced the altars of cathedrals for centuries: double-columned, decorated with illuminated initials, and with a type-face (fractur) very close to that of manuscript writing of northern Europe.
Gutenberg's development of moveable type revolutionized the process of communicating ideas. During the three years he was in business, he was able to print 180 bibles, roughly 180 times the speed of the copying of a bible before 1450.
Virgil's Aeneid, Book VII, 139-198, Italy, c, . 1350, MS 12, James Hayes Collection
Special Collections, CU Boulder Libraries
Writing c. 19 BCE during the rule of Caesar Augustus (27 BCE-CE 14), Virgil draws a parallel between Aeneas, the Trojan founder of Rome, and Augustus, founder of a new Rome and heir to Aeneas and the goddess Venus. The story recounts the flight of Aeneas and fellow Trojans from their destroyed city to Rome.
Special Collections' leaf of Book VII (c. 1350), shown above, displays the annotations and doodles characteristic of a heavily used manuscript.
Virgil's Aeneid, Book XII, Italy, late 15th Century, MS 112, James Hayes Collection
Special Collections, CU Boulder Libraries
In this late fifteenth-century edition Book XII of Virgil's Aeneid, annotations and glosses are now printed.
Special Collections' etchings of the Aeneid, several of which are included below, are part of a bound volume of Virgil's Aeneid, that offers of pictorial view with a previous owner's hand-written descriptions of Aeneas' encounters from Troy, Carthage, and Italy. Although there is no signature, the etchings appear to be those of Pietro Santi Bartoli, who worked in the late seventeenth century. A later owner - probably late seventeenth or early eighteenth century - has added handwritten quotations from the chapters and verses of the Aeneid.
For a full text English translation of Virgil's Aeneid, see the Internet Classics Archive, MIT.
Virgil's Aeneid. Engravings by Pietro Santi Bartoli (?), late seventeenth century.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum, Anton Koberger, 1493, fols., 57v-58r.
Special Collections, CU Boulder Libraries
The Liber Chronicarum, authored by Hartmann Schedel, offers a history of the Christian world from the beginning of times to the early 1490s. It was first written in Latin, then translated into German, by the Nuremberg physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514). Due to the substantial expense of publishing such a large, illustrated volume, Schedel's work was supported by Nuremberg merchants Sebald Schreyer (1446-1520) and Sebastian Kammermeister (1446-1503).
The Nuremberg Chronicle - as Liber Chronicarum is commonly called - drew from medieval and Renaissance sources, such as Bede, Vincent of Beauvais, Martin of Tropaua', Flavius Blondus, Bartolomeo Platina and Philippus de Bergamo (Iacopo Filippo Foresta).
Divided into the ages of the world, the volume was lavishly illustrated by images of biblical and historical events. Engravers Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and Albrecht Dürer (?) provided topographical illustrations created out of woodcuts that show views of towns in Europe and the Middle East, some of which are duplicates.
Portraits of key figures from Biblical history, the history of Greece and Rome (see below), and the history of the Middle Ages are also included.
Latin Bible, Psalm 51, or Psalter. c. 1210-1220?
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Special Collections holds the S. Harrison Thomson, the James Hayes, and Otto Ege Collections as well as a number of miscellaneous manuscripts. These range in date between the 12th and the 16th centuries and include both full codices - or bound volumes - and individual leaves - or pages - of Latin Bibles, Graduals, Breviaries, Psalters, and Books of Hours (for our Books of Hours, see the following section of this guide) copied and illustrated before 1600.
This section highlights just a few of the medieval Bibles, Missals, Graduals, Psalters, and Breviaries held by Special Collections. Some background:
To browse or search our collections of 182 medieval leaves spanning the 12th-17th centuries, see the CU Boulder Digital Library Medieval Leaves Collection. Note, this site does not include Special Collections' bound codices: two thirteenth-century Latin Bibles and one complete, bound, fifteenth-century Book of Hours.
Latin Bible, 'Dragon Leaf,' Northern France, c. 1240, MS 314
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Latin Bible (Jerome, Prologue to Job - Job 5: 9). Paris, c. 1220-30, MS 317
Book of Job, depicting naked, diseased Job on dung heap, with his wife, three sons, and the devil,
Special Collections, CU Boulder Libraries
'Conversion of Paul,' Latin Bible, Paris, c. 1235, MS 360
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Latin Missal, Amiens, France, 1266-1300, Ege 13
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Latin Gradual, 15th century Italy, Ege 27
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Latin Psalter, recto: Psalm 40: 7-12; verso: Psalms 40: 13--41: 4, Netherlands, 1301-1333, Ege 20
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Latin Breviary, 15th century England with early 17th century handwriting, Thomson 74
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
For medieval manuscript leaves held by Special Collections, see:
For medieval manuscripts held in other collections, see:
The Martyrdom of St. Eustace, MS 315, Book of Hours, c. 1435
Gift of John Feldman
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
With thousands of Books of Hours handwritten and illuminated between 1550 and 1700, they were the best sellers of the late Middle Ages. Created as a focus for professional devotion, these small books include a set of prayers - the Hours of the Virgin - in eight sections for the owner to use in meditation at regular intervals throughout the day.
The patrons of Books of Hours were most often members of the nobility, however with the rise in literacy and the expansion wealth among the merchant class in the fifteenth century, books of hours were sometimes also commissioned and owned by those of lesser means. Women were frequently the owners of these small works of art. Although many medieval Books of Hours were the product of the scriptoria of monasteries and abbeys, the manufacture of manuscripts such as books of hours increasingly shifted to a professional class of scribes and artists.
Special Collections holds numerous illuminated leaves - or pages - such as the leaf below depicting the martyrdom of St. Eustace in a bronze bull (see above). According to tradition, the soldier, Eustace, converted to Christianity. He refused to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor Hadrian and was put to death. Other illuminated leaves showed scenes from everyday life, including these images of burial and the calendar pages of 'Mars' - with men planting trees - and 'Avril' with women seating in an enclosed garden or hortus conclusus, a common medieval motif, symbolic of chastity, particularly for noble women.
Book of Hours, Burial Scenes. Paris, 1440s.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Book of Hours, Calendar Pages, March and April. Northern France (Paris?), c. 1460s.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Special Collections also holds one complete handwritten, illuminated Book of Hours dating from the mid-fifteenth-century and one early printed and engraved Book of Hours, printed by Simon Vostre in Paris, 1498. This printed Book of Hours is one of only four copies known, the others held by the British Library (London), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), and the Morgan Pierpont Library (New York).
For more information and to view more of our collection's illuminated leaves, see the linked presentation below.
See also below for access to Special Collections' Digital Library and to digitized collections of medieval leaves housed in the British Library, at Yale's Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, and at Harvard's Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Library.
Book of Hours, 1420-1440, [Paris/Amiens?], Hayes 7
James Hayes Collection
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Heures a l'Usage de Paris. Book of Hours, 1498. Published by Simon Nostre
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
For medieval manuscript leaves held by Special Collections, see:
For medieval manuscripts held in other collections, see:
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Early printed Christian works, such as those seen here, share in common a focus on late medieval piety. Unlike the manuscript bibles, psalters, and breviaries created for the Church, and unlike the higher-end Books of Hours affordable by only the well-to-do, these early printed pieces were tailored to those of somewhat lesser means, a population of an increasingly literate common man and woman.
Books printed within the first fifty years of printing, such as Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea and Thomas a Kempis' Imitatio Christi, are, like Gutenberg's Bible and Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, termed incunabula - essentially, in the cradle of printing.
Jacobus de Voragine (1230-1298) entered the Order of St. Dominic in 1244, later serving as Archbishop of Genoa. He is best known for his lives of the saints, a book of devotion written for common people, first titled, Legenda Sanctorum, later known as Legenda Aurea, or the Golden Legend, worth its weight in gold. Special Collections' leaves of the Golden Legend were printed by Wynkyn de Worde, apprentice and heir to the first print established in Britain by William Caxton.
For late medieval manuscript copies of the Legenda Aurea, or the Golden Legend, see the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library.
For the first edition printed in Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde, with downloadable, fairly high-resolution jpegs, see the British Library.
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Thomas a Kempis, Imitatio Christi
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) was a follower of Devotio Moderno, a late medieval spiritual movement led by Gerard Groote that focused on apostolic renewal through the practice of humility and the leading of a simple life.
Imitatio Christi focuses on an interior life of piety and devotion to the Eucharist. It was enormously popular, with over seven hundred editions printed before 1650. Special Collections' copy was published in 1501.
Hans Schaufelein, Doctrina, Vita, et Passio Jesu Christi, 1537
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Hans Schäufelein (c. 1480-1539) was part of the workshops of Northern Renaissance artists Albrecht Durer, Nuremberg, and Hans Holbein the Elder, Augsburg. Schäufelein's works also included painting: the high altarpiece for the Benedictine abbey at Auhausen and the Ziegler altarpiece (1521) in Nördlingen. His Doctrina, Vita, et Passio Jesu Christi reflects his interest in depicting sacred stories, here a depiction of the life and Passion of Christ, with both Latin and German titles.
For a full text version, see Google Books. For other works attributed to Hans Schäufelein, see the British Museum.
Surah of the Qur'an, c. 1500
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
This single hand-written surah, or chapter, of the Qur'an dates from roughly 1500. It is unusual both because it is a bound, single chapter as opposed to the full Qur'an but also because it features both Arabic (the black script) and Persian (the red script).
The Works of Katibi of Nishapur, MS 83, 984 (A.H) or 1605 (CE)
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
This collection of the works of Muhammad Abdullah Katibi of Nishapur (c. 1435) was donated by Prof. Mehdi Nakosteen, History and Philosophy of Education, University of Colorado in 1968. Katibi was a poet of the later Timurid period. The volume includes the two major works of the poet, Book of the Divine and The Observer and the Observed, together with five of his other writings. The manuscript is on paper, in natal’liq script.
Among the seven books, Ehahi-Nameh, or the Book of the Divine, concerned with divine philosophy, and Nazer-o-Manzoor, or the book of the Observer and the Observed, are the better known works by the poet. The other five works deal with Sufi thought, morals, lyrics, and stories, etc.
The date of completion of the calligraphy is stated 984 (A.H) or 1605 (CE). Prof. Nakosteen suggested that it might have taken twenty-five years to complete the calligraphy and the illuminated designs. Nakosteen also argued that the designer and the calligrapher must have been two different individuals collaborating. He writes: “On the outside leather cover of the manuscript we find what appears to be two names decoratively pressed on the leather four times – two on each side of the cover, on above and one below the larger design which appears in the center of each cover.” The two names appear to be Mohammad Naser and Abd Omid Asfared.
The Works of Katibi of Nishapur, MS 83, c. 1600
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Morgan Pierpont Crusader Bible, Folio 23r.
Morgan Pierpont Library
The Morgan Crusader Bible illustrates portions of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Samuel, focusing on important figures of Israel: Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, and David. The scenes, however, reflect images of war that would have been familiar to the knights of thirteenth-century France.
Although originally commissioned as a picture book, over time the Crusader Bible acquired Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian inscriptions. The Morgan Pierpont Library describes the Crusader Bible's provenance and the source of its inscriptions:
"After the death of Louis IX (1270), the manuscript went to Italy, where the Latin inscriptions were added in the fourteenth century. Fourteen of the scenes were incorrectly identified. After Shah ‘Abbas received the book in Isfahan as a diplomatic gift in 1608, he had the Persian inscriptions added. After Afghans sacked Isfahan and its Royal Library in 1722, the book fell into the hands of a Persian-speaking Jew, who added the Judeo-Persian inscriptions."
Special Collections holds a facsimile of the Crusader Bible but a fully digitized copy of the Morgan Crusader Bible, complete with discussion, transcriptions, and translations is available through the Morgan Pierpont Library website.
Other contemporary works such as William of Tyre's The History of Godefry of Boloyne and the Conquest of Iherusalem (Special Collections copy printed by the Kelmscott Press, 1893) maintained their relevance in early modern Europe. The late fifteenth-century printing of William of Tyre's History of Godefrey (1481) by William Caxton, who learned the art of printing in Cologne, Germany and established the first English press in Westminster, was intended to support an anti-Turkish crusade. Caxton's prologue reads:
Thenn for thexhortacion of alle Cristen prynces / Lordes / Barons / Knyghtes / Gentilmen / Marchanntes / and all the comyn peple of this noble Royamme, walys & yrlond, I haue emprysed to translate this book of the conquest of Iherusalem out of ffrenssh in to our maternal tongue, to thentente tencourage them by the redyng and heeryng of the merueyllous historyes herin comprysed, and of the holy myracles shewyd that euery man in his partye endeuoyre theym vnto the resistence afore sayd, And recuperacion of the sayd holy londe. (4.20-28, reprinted in Norako)
Caxton's printing of the History of Godefrey accompanied his printing of crusading indulgences, with "at least nine indulgences in total, six of which were aimed at raising money to aid in defense against Turkish advances in the Mediterranean” (Kuskin, 1999, 546 n. 22).
The indulgence below, printed in Catalan in Toledo, Spain in 1510, serves as a prime example.
Plenary Indulgence for fighting against Ottoman Turks.
Toledo, Spain, 9 March 1510
Special Collection, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Special Collections' Plenaria indulgencia e remissio de tots los peccats : aquella que los sants papes donan, a aquells qui van en aiuda dela Terra santa e segons se guanya en Roma lany quey ha Iubilen, printed in 1510 at the monastery of St. Peter Martyr in Toledo, Spain, provides for a remission of sins for those who would take part in a proposed war against the Ottoman Turks. This plenary indulgence was signed by the bishop of Majorca in his capacity as the royally appointed commissary of the Bull of the Cruzade.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary works relied on the Crusades as both setting for dramatizations of the Crusades themselves and as backdrop for tales of adventure and romance. Special Collections' highlights include Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1580), Torquato Tasso's la Gierusalemme Liberata (1590), and Miguel de Cervantes' Vida y hechos de ingenioso cavallero D. Quixote de la Mancha, first published in 1605. Cervantes himself fought against the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and, while sailing home, was captured by Barbary pirates, experiences that made their way into his writing.
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Written by Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso was first published in 1516. It recounts the adventures of Orlando and Angelica, the daughter of the king of Cathay, during the reign of Charlemagne. Angelica lures Orlando away from this crusade and the battle against the Saracen King Agramante and drives him to madness. Orlando Furioso was translated into English by Elizabethan courtier Sir James Harington, a fully digitized copy available through the British Library.
Torquanto Tasso, Gersalemme Liberata, 1581.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Tasso began his work on Gersalemme Liberata following the news of the European victory in the Gulf of Lepanto in 1570. Unlike Ariosto's poetry, which was set against the war against the Saracen army during the reign of Charlemagne, Tasso's takes place during the Siege of Jerusalem of the First Crusade.
Later historical accounts of the Crusades, too, reflect historians' socio-political milieux: Thomas Fuller's Historie of the Holy Warre (1640), a post-Reformation, Anglican view, was written on the eve of the English Civil War; and Joseph Francois Michaud's History of the Crusades, a French royalist and nationalist view, was written in 1811 in the wake of the French Revolution.
Thomas Fuller, Historie of the Holy Warre
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Thomas Fuller's Historie of the Holy Warre (1640) provides one of the earliest accounts of the Crusades written from an Anglican point of view. For a digitized copy of this edition, similar to Special Collections' copy, though lacking the frontispiece shown here, see HathiTrust.
Michaud, History of the Crusades, Illustrated by Gustave Dore
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Joseph Francois Michaud's multi-volume History of the Crusades was translated into English, German, Italian, and Russian. Special Collections holds the English translation lavishly illustrated with the engravings of Gustave Dore, such as the scene above portraying Godfrey entering Jerusalem. Digitized copies of Michaud's and Dore's History are available at HathiTrust.
For more information on the Crusades in literature, see the University of Rochester's Robbins Library Crusades Project.
For sources on the history of the Crusades, see Dartmouth's Sources for Crusades History and Resources for Studying the Crusades, Queen Mary, University of London.
For Islamic sources and perspectives on the Crusades, see Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives and Paul Halsall's Internet Islamic History Sourcebook's 'Interaction with the West.'
"The Temple of Solomon," Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum (the Nuremberg Chronicle), 1493
Special Collections, Rare & Distinctive Collections
The Liber Chronicarum, authored by Hartmann Schedel, offers a history of the Christian world from the beginning of times to the early 1490s. It was first written in Latin, then translated into German, by the Nuremberg physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514). Due to the substantial expense of publishing such a large, illustrated volume, Schedel's work was supported by Nuremberg merchants Sebald Schreyer (1446-1520) and Sebastian Kammermeister (1446-1503).
The Nuremberg Chronicle - as Liber Chronicarum is commonly called - drew from medieval and Renaissance sources, such as Bede, Vincent of Beauvais, Martin of Tropaua', Flavius Blondus, Bartolomeo Platina and Philippus de Bergamo (Iacopo Filippo Foresta).
Divided into the ages of the world, the volume was lavishly illustrated by images of biblical and historical events.
Engravers Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and Albrecht Dürer (?) provided topographical illustrations created out of woodcuts that show views of towns in Europe and the Middle East, some of which are duplicates. Portraits of key figures from Biblical history, the history of Greece and Rome, and the history of the Middle Ages are also included in the volume.
See above for an image of what Schedel's engravers believed to be the Temple of Solomon. The structure is, in fact, the centrally-planned Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock (in Arabic, the Qubbat al-Ṣakhrah, Jerusalem, built by the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, late 7th century ce.).
See below for scenes from early Christianity, including the life of Christ, the martyrdom of the saints, and the Council of Trent from the copy held by Special Collections.
And finally, see below for the Nuremberg Chronicle's Septima Estas Mundi (the Seventh Age of the World), which depicts the chilling events surrounding the end of times including the coming of the Anti-Christ, as described in the Book of Revelation.
For detailed information on the copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle held by Special Collections, see:
For a fully digitized, hand-colored copy of the the Nuremberg Chronicle, see:
For a complete, full-text, English translation of the Nuremberg Chronicle, see:
Scenes from the Life of Christ (folio 95v, left) and from the Stoning of Stephen
and the Conversion of Paul (folio 103v, right).
Portrait of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (folio 129r, left)
and the Council of Trent (folio, 130v, right).
Francesco di Giorgio Martini
Trattati di Architettura Ingegneria e Arte Militare
Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library
Trattato di Architettura, Facsimile Edition
Special Collections, CU Boulder Libraries
Vitruvius served as a military engineer, architect, and theoretician under Caesar Augustus in the first century BCE. His Ten Books on Architecture (de Architectura), written roughly 20-30 BCE, focused on the following themes: firmitas (strength), utilitas (functionality), and venustas (beauty). Although critical to architectural theory for over two millennia, Vitruvius' ten books were rooted in the experiential knowledge of craftsmanship, with engineering and the materials of building a focus in eight of the ten books. Most familiar to modern readers are Vitruvius' renditions of the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman architectural orders: Doric, Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite.
The only work on architecture to survive antiquity, de Architectura was lost for much of the Middle Ages before being rediscovered by Poggio Braccolini (secretary to one of three contenders for the papacy during the Council of Constance) in 1416/17 in the library of the monastery of St. Gall. The rediscovered theoretical and practical work of Vitruvius proved to be highly influential among Renaissance and modern architects. To name only a few, Leonardo da Vinci, Francisco di Giorgio Martini, Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Thomas Jefferson, incorporated both Vitruvian design and theory that built on the relationship between the human form and the built environment.
The British Library holds an early manuscript of Vitruvius' treatise, which may have been copied at the scriptorium associated with the court of Charlemagne and which may have served as the source for later manuscripts.
Vitruvius' work is readily available in print, translated and augmented by later architects. Special Collections holds Claude Perrault's Les Dix Livre d'Architecture de Vitruve (1684), for example, which includes Perrault's copious notes and detailed engravings, that below detailing the development of the Corinthian order.
A fully digitized, searchable copy of this French edition is available through the Internet Archive.
Vitruvius, Les Dix Livre d'Architecture de Vitruve, Paris: Coignard, 1684.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Special Collections holds early printed editions of the work of Sebastiano Serlio (Terzo libro di Sabastiano Serlio Bolognese) and Andrea Palladio (The First Book of Architecture), both of which are featured below.
Access Sebastiano Serlio's work at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University (The Digital Serlio Project), which features his manuscripts and published editions as well as essays on his work.
Sebastiano Serlio, di Architettura di Sebastiano Serio di Bolognese, Venice, 1555.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Andrea Palladio's First Book of Architecture (this first English edition was published by Godfrey Richards in 1663) features an engraved title page, with a muse holding a dividing compass and detailed architectural plans.
Access Special Collections' digitized copy of Palladio's First Book on Architecture here.
Andrea Palladio, The First Book of Architecture, London, 1663
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
Martin Luther, Ain Sermon von dem Sacrament der Puss (1520); Bulla Contra Errores Martini Luther (15 June 1521).
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
In a sermon written three years after he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on 31 October 1517 to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, Martin Luther's Ain Sermon von dem Sacrament der Puss addresses one of his prime concerns: the Sacraments. In response, the Catholic Church issued Bulla contra errores Martini Luther & sequatium, dated 15 June, 1521, a papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication.
Rulers throughout Europe took sides, including Henry VIII of England, whose Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Mart. Lutherum, which took issue with Luther's pronouncement that there were only two sacraments instituted by Christ rather than the seven asserted by the Church, was first published in the summer of 1521.
Assertio septem sacramentorum earned Henry VIII the title 'Fidei Defensor' (Defender of the Faith), despite his role just a few years later in breaking from the Roman Church. Special Collections copy was published in Paris in 1562, a timely reprint as the French Wars of Religion heated up.
For access to Luther's Ain Sermon von dem Sacrament der Puss, see Google Books.
For access to a range of post-Reformation works, see the Post-Reformation Digital Library.
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, Persecutions of the Primitive Church
Huntington Library
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, Henry VIII and the Roman Church
Huntington Library
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, [1641?].
View of Windsor Castle, with Anthony Person, Testwood and Filmer being burned alive in a pyre.
Written during perhaps the most contentious years of the English Reformation, John Foxes' Acts and Monuments records Christian history from a distinctly Protestant perspective. Beginning with the early Church and ending during the reign of Elizabeth I, Foxes' Actes and Monuments provided a highly polemical Protestant account. Commonly referred to as the Book of Martyrs, Foxes' work included views of persecutions and executions, with a focus on those that took place under the Catholic Queen Mary (r. 1553-8). John Foxe was among a number of other Protestants to leave England for Protestant regions of Continental Europe when Mary Tudor came to the throne.
Special Collections edition of Actes and Monuments, which dates from 1596, was heavily used by the Puritan Samuel Bull family, who carried the volume with them in their emigration from Britain to North America. Many woodcuts are partially damaged and the volume is lacking substantial portions of the beginning and the end.
For select hand-colored woodcuts from of Foxes' Actes Fand Monuments, see the University of Cambridge Digital Library.
For access to the text of the 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583 editions that is keyword searchable, see The Acts and Monuments Online.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Catholic- or Counter-Reformation depended on similar strategies. Writing in the late seventeenth century, Mathias Tanner highlights those who suffered for the Catholic faith. His Societas Jesu apostolorum imitatrix, sive, Gesta praeclara et virtutes eorum, qui è Societate Jesu in procuranda salute animarum, per apostolicas missiones, conciones, sacramentorum ministeria, evangelij inter fideles & infideles propagationem, ceteráque munia apostolica, per totum orbem terrarum speciali zelo desudâ[ve]runt records the lives of those involved in the Jesuit mission to England. John Gerard, seen below, was arrested under Elizabeth I, and imprisoned and tortured in the Tower of London before escaping to the Continent.
For a digitized copy of this edition, see HathiTrust Digital Library.
Mathias Tanner. Johannes Gerardi, Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imiatrix sive Gesta Praeclara et Virtutes Eorum Qui e Societate Jesu, 1594.
Special Collections, Rare and Distinctive Collections
