Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt].

  • Ernst Philip Goldschmidt
Date:
1938
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we analyse the surviving books in his library. Of course, Schedel also iad his shelves full of medical books and even a notable number of important and early medical manuscripts; the classics, the great Latin poets and prose writers both of antiquity and of the Renaissance were here in even more impressive completeness than in Muenzer’s library. Indeed, the two collections are very similar in a way, and not only do we find copies of the same edition in both libraries in about 100 cases, \ hich shows that the two friends had about the same source of supply but that they even employed the same bookbinders. Both Schedel’s and Muenzer’s books have mostly survived in their solid original bindings, nd we see generally the same tools and the same decorations used on le majority of them. Roughly, one might say that Schedel had nearly cry book that Muenzer owned in either the same or a similar edition, but he had far more than Muenzer; and it is just in the field of history, f old chronicles, annals, local and general historical works, that Schedel’s brary clearly outdistances Muenzer’s. These historial books, moreover, were mostly not available in printed editions, and Schedel did not com me himself to purchasing such manuscripts, but with indefatigable ndustry wrote and copied such texts wherever he could find them. 1 )f Schedel’s 350 manuscripts now at Munich, probably nearly half are vritten in his own beautifully clear calligraphic handwriting. They >rm an unexhausted store of the most heterogeneous texts. In his eager /eal Schedel not only copied entire historical works, or the monastic nnals he found in the different abbeys, but letters, speeches, rhymes rid verses, epitaphs and inscriptions, in fact almost anything which could ;j transferred by pen to paper. It is through Schedel s passion for writing hat we have Muenzer’s “Travel Diary” and Ciriaco d’Ancona’s most recious collection of Roman inscriptions, mostly since destroyed, and n untold number of more or less important historical documents. Evcry car almost, one might say, some historical scholar manages to attract little attention by publishing some text “hitherto unedited from one »f Schedel’s manuscripts. If Schedel knew how much valuable historical material modern scholars have quarried from his manuscripts, and how 'hey rather condescendingly smile at his tremendous Nuernberg ( hronicleI do not think he would be either surprised or hurt. He onsciously undertook the “Chronicle” as a work for the popular dis- inination of historical knowledge, and would have been quite satisfied let his immortality rest on his achievements as a book-collector and