Pointing the finger, or, A handy guide to manicules

A manicule, from the Latin maniculum or ‘little hand’, is a punctuation mark created by or for readers to assist in marking noteworthy passages or finding a section of text. Medieval and Renaissance scholars commonly used the symbol, consisting of a hand with an extended index finger, to direct attention to important text alongside other punctuation marks such as the trefoil (a three-leaved plant) and the asterisk.

The manicule, also known by numerous other names such as pointing hand, index and bishop’s fist, was in common usage between the 12^th and 18^th centuries, until its complex design appears to have made it too slow for handwriting and readers stopped taking the time to draw their little pointing hands.

Many of the earliest books in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection, including the incunabula currently being catalogued, have margins full of wonderful examples of hand-drawn and printed manicules which vary widely in size, shape and quality, ranging from a simple sketched outline to a detailed pointing hand complete with ornate sleeve and ruffled cuffs. William Sherman, who has traced the history of the manicule all the way back to Spanish medieval manuscripts, describes the hands used in fourteenth- and fifteen-century Italy, for example, as “shockingly fanciful and delightfully stylized”. Early printers, concerned with replicating the medieval traditions and aesthetics of book production as closely as possible, were careful to incorporate the pointing hand into their new typefaces.

Although now rarely used by readers, the manicule survives as a visual symbol in signage and printed advertisements and has made it into the digital world as a cursor on your computer screen. Even in this new digital environment, the little pointing hand is still performing the original purpose of the manicule, acting as an interface between the reader and the text.

A large engraved woodblock manicule for printing signage and posters

For more about the manicule, see: Sherman, William H. “Toward a History of the Manicule,” Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2008)

Incunabula: cataloguing the earliest printed texts in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection

Work has now started on the cataloguing of our important collection of nearly 200 incunabula, the earliest printed books held in Cardiff University Library’s Special Collections and Archives. Incunabula, from the Latin for ‘cradle’ or ‘swaddling clothes’, are defined as books printed before 1501, in the infancy of Western printing. Our collection includes books from the first major centres of printing in Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland and our earliest volumes date from around 1472, just 20 years after Johann Gutenberg printed his famous Bible, the first book printed in Europe with movable type.

Salvator Mundi from Rolevinck’s “Fasciculus temporum” (1474), with manuscript annotations.

The cataloguing project will create an individual record for each incunabulum in the library’s online catalogue with special emphasis on copy-specific information such as rubrication, hand-coloured decoration and illumination, binding, annotation and other provenance. Many of our incunabula show extensive evidence of former ownership in the form of bookplates, signatures, stamps and marginalia and these will be recorded in each record as an aid to research.

Our copy of Johannes de Bromyard’s “Opus trivium” (Lyon, 1500) is bound in a leaf of early music on vellum

The first printed books were typeset copies of manuscripts, often lacking title pages and even basic bibliographic information such as the author’s name or the date of publication. Sometimes details about the creation of an early work may be found in a colophon at the very end of the text, but as many as one-third of the surviving editions contain no information as to when, where or by whom they were printed. All of this makes the cataloguing of incunabula a highly complex and time-consuming process, but one which could potentially reveal new and fascinating information about the items we hold.

“Facsiculus temporum” by Werner Rolevinck, printed in Germany in 1474 with hand-colouring and illuminated initial letters.

I have already identified several books in our collection that are unique to the UK and some of these may even be the only extant copies in the world. For example, our copy of a 1500 Venetian edition of Guarino’s Regulae Grammaticales is the only complete copy listed in the British Library’s database of 15th century printing, the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC). As the oldest and often most valuable books held in libraries around the world, most major collections of incunabula have already been fully catalogued and documented. To be the first cataloguer to properly examine and describe some of these earliest printed books is a very rare and welcome opportunity and it will be very exciting to see what the project uncovers as it progresses.

Engravers of the Lost Ark

I have been fascinated by tales of the Ark of the Covenant from the first time Indiana Jones strapped on his bullwhip and picked up his fedora for Raiders of the Lost Ark (never go on an adventure without your hat!), so I was thrilled to discover an 18th century depiction of the Ark in a book I was cataloguing from the Cardiff Rare Books Collection. Intrigued to see how other engravers depicted this fabled lost artefact, I set out on a quest to unearth some more illustrations from the early printed books in our extensive collections.

An unusual depiction of the Ark from a 1708 edition of Josephus’ “Jewish history” showing the cherubim supporting the mercy seat or “footstool” which appears in some later descriptions. Also surprising to note that the angels here are depicted with hooves.

Copper engraving by Bleyswyk showing Aaron’s rod and a vessel of manna said to be deposited with the Ark

According to the biblical account from the Book of Exodus, the Ark of the Covenant was built at the command of God as a coffer for storing the original stone tablets given to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Exodus provides detailed instructions on how the Ark was to be constructed: it was to be made of shittim (acacia) wood, 2.5 cubits long, 1.5 wide and 1.5 high, and plated entirely in gold with a ring attached to each foot so that it could be carried aloft on wooden poles. A cover of solid gold adorned with two golden cherubim with their wings outstretched was to be placed over the top.

The Ark, veiled with blue cloth and skins, at the head of the Israelite army, from Augustin Calmet’s “Historical, critical, geographical, chronological, and etymological dictionary of the Holy Bible” (1732)

The Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert and many of their victories are attributed to its supernatural power, from parting the waters of the Jordan to bringing down the walls of Jericho. Priests carried the Ark, usually veiled in cloth and animal skins, in the vanguard of the army and when the host was encamped it had its own sacred tent, known as the Tabernacle. During the construction of King Solomon’s massive temple complex in Jerusalem, a special inner courtroom, called the Holy of Holies, was designed to house the Ark, where it stood as a throne for God’s rule on Earth.

The consecration of the Hebrew commonwealth with the Ark unveiled at the centre, from Calmet

The Ark is believed to have disappeared from Jerusalem after the Babylonians invaded and sacked the city in the sixth century A.D., but since then it  has continued to capture the imaginations of engravers, writers, film-makers, and even the occasional whip-wielding archaeologist!

Depiction of the Ark in the Holy of Holies and an inset showing the cloud between the two cherubim which was said to reveal God’s presence

Printers and bookbinders visit Special Collections and Archives

Special Collections and Archives recently hosted visits of the British Printing Society (South Wales branch) and the Society of Bookbinders (South West England branch). Both groups were particularly interested in our large collection of privately printed books, by presses such as Kelmscott, Eragny, Cuala, Ashendene, Essex House and Doves.

 

Both groups were delighted to have the opportunity to examine the collections.  It was fascinating to discuss these examples with members of the present-day book trade, all of whom were highly trained experts in their field.

Fore-edge paintings by John T. Beer in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection

I was delighted to discover this week that the Cardiff Rare Books Collection includes two books with fore-edge paintings by the artist John T. Beer. Fore-edge paintings are watercolour illustrations applied to the outside edges of a book’s pages; the technique dates back to before the invention of printing, possibly as early as the 10th century.

A painting of George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, arriving in Wales to a hostile reception appears on Cardiff’s copy of the third edition of Fox’s journals, published in 1765.

John T. Beer was a successful Merseyside clothier and an avid book collector, who turned to fore-edge painting after his retirement and produced hundreds of works between 1884 and 1900. As he was not a professional painter working on commission, Beer was able to select books from his own collection, including several incunabula, and decorate them to his own taste. As our examples show, he often took inspiration from the contents of the book.

“John preaching in the Wilderness”: Beer’s illustration on an early 16th century Latin Bible, printed at Lyon by Jacob Mareschal in 1514.

In the 1600s, some bookbinders even discovered they could paint just inside the fore-edges of a book then cover the outer edges with gilt to create a hidden illustration that was undetectable when the book was closed and visible only when the pages were fanned. Beer did not gild the fore-edges, but he did fan the pages before adding his illustration. Thus, the closed book shows a slightly squashed version of the scene, with the correct proportions only appearing with the pages are fanned open.

The “open” scene on Fox’s journal. The artist would have fanned the pages and gripped them in a vice before applying the watercolour.

Beer did not sell any of his works in his lifetime and left more than 200 fore-edge paintings and painted bindings when he died. His entire collection was sold by Sotheby’s auction house in November, 1903, when these two volumes were apparently purchased for Cardiff Library.

Fanning the pages of the Biblia Sacra to show the more “open” illustration.

Biblia Ectypa: Christoph Weigel’s remarkable engraved pictorial Bible (1695)

There are several hundred early printed Bibles in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection, but I was excited to find this very unusual edition as I was exploring our Early Continental works. The Biblia Ectypa is a fully engraved pictorial Bible, produced by the German artist Christoph Weigel and published in Augsburg in 1695. Instead of being an illustrated Bible (i.e. text embellished by illustrations), the Biblia Ectypa tells the whole Bible story entirely in beautifully-executed copper engravings.

More than 830 highly detailed engravings are employed to tell hundreds of Biblical tales, with authentic costumes, architecture and social customs all skillfully captured. Each illustration is also accompanied by a short caption in Latin and an engraved quotation from the German Bible.

Engraved Bibles attained wide circulation and great popularity in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries and southern Germany became a hub of copper engraving and Bible illustration. The Biblia Ectypa was a critical and commercial success for Weigel, who enjoyed a long career in Augsburg and Nuremburg as a map and print engraver and illustrator, and as publisher of at least seventy books.

Beard-haters, face-painters and eyebrow-abusers: the dangerous fashions of “Man transform’d, or, The artificial changeling” (1653)

Those of us who have been left bemused by the sudden rise of high-street botox booths, tanning shops, nail salons and eyebrow bars can take some comfort from this curious work by John Bulwer which suggests that, even as far back in 1653, people have always been astonished at the lengths to which some would go to transform their bodies in the name of fashion.  

In Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or The Artificial Changeling, Bulwer’s aim, according to the full title, is to expose the “mad and cruel gallantry, foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy fineness, and loathsome loveliness of most nations, fashioning & altering their bodies from the mould intended by nature”.  Bulwer describes in detail how people around the world artificially modify their appearance, noting that every nation has a “particular whimzey as touching corporall fashions of their own invention.”

Painter-stainers and auricular bravery

The book is divided into 23 sections covering all types of body modification and decoration, including tattooing, lip-piercing, binding, scarring, cosmetics, ear-piercing, and eyebrow shaping. Sections are accompanied by numerous woodcut illustrations contrasting ancient with modern or Old World with New.

“Eye-brows abus’d contrary to nature.”

In an appendix, The pedigree of the English gallant, the author looks more closely at how fashions in England have been influenced by practices in  remote parts of the world. Although containing a strong element of social commentary, Bulwer’s work can also be considered one of the first studies in comparative cultural anthropology. He is rarely directly critical of primitive peoples; rather, Bulwer uses the universal nature of body modification to demonstate similar behaviours of humans everywhere (Anthropometamorphosis literally meaning “humanity-changing”). Bulwer may view some practices of remote tribes as laughable or barbaric, but no more laughable or barbaric than those of the ‘civilised’ world.

Beard-haters of the world

The influence of indigenous peoples on Tudor cod-piece fashion?

Man Transform’d was Bulwer’s final book. A physician by trade, he chose to return to his calling as a pioneer of communication with the deaf, having previously published the first treatise on sign language, Chirologia: or The naturall language of the hand.

“Among those whoe corrupt and deforme the face some account musicians that play upon wind instruments.”

“Was it not the same conceit that the Macrones of Pontus … once had, among whom they were esteemed the best gentlemen who had the highest head?”

The hammer of witches: Montague Summers and the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection

In our rare book collections we have a number of curious works by Montague Summers (1880-1948), an eccentric Catholic clergyman, occultist and authority on English Restoration drama. Summers read theology at Oxford University and worked as a teacher of English and Latin before turning to writing, producing well-received scholarly works on 17th century theatre and publishing new editions of neglected plays by William Congreve, John Dryden and others.

After drama, Summers’ other great interest was in the occult. During his unusual career as a priest he assumed the persona of a modern-day Catholic witch-hunter and produced meticulous studies of witchcraft, vampires, and werewolves, all of which he professed to believe in. In 1928, he was responsible for the first English translation of Heinrich Kramer’s and James Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), a notorious Latin treatise on witch-hunting, first published in Germany in 1487.

The stated purpose of the original text was to educate courts on the procedures for identifying and convicting witches, to refute arguments that witchcraft does not exist and to discredit those who expressed disbelief. Assisted by the rise of the printing press, the Malleus spread throughout Europe to become a major influence on the witch crazes of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. As many as 30 editions of the book were published between 1487 and 1669, even though the Catholic Church condemned the Malleus as false just three years after its first appearance and even the Spanish Inquisition dismissed the work as pagan superstition.

In contrast to the scepticism of modern Catholicism, Montague Summers insisted that the reality of witchcraft is still an essential part of Catholic doctrine, and declared the Malleus Maleficarum to be an accurate account of witchcraft and the methods needed to combat it. His History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926) begins, “In the following pages, I have endeavoured to show the witch as she really was – an evil liver: a social pest and parasite: the devotee of a loathly and obscene creed: an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes.”

Summers’ own volumes on witches and vampires brought him considerable renown and critics admired the obvious depth of his learning, while not necessarily sharing his credulity. As a notable eccentric who walked the streets of London in the  sweeping robes and buckled shoes of an 18^th century cleric and was an acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, a self-proclaimed witch,  Montague Summers has inspired numerous legends, both malevolent and benign, which only add to his curious character.

Cardiff’s copy of Covent Garden Drollery, edited and signed by Montague Summers

In the Cardiff Rare Books Collection, we hold numbered copies of both Summers’ translation of the Malleus Maleficarum and his 1930 edition of Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft. They all feature in our current Special Collections and Archives exhibition on Shakespeare, magic and witchcraft.

The Poly-Olbion: an epic poem of England and Wales

 The Poly-Olbion is an vast poem by Michael Drayton (1563-1631) describing the topography, history and legends of England and Wales. The text is accompanied by a series of wonderfully unique maps engraved by William Hole on which towns, rivers and other topographical features are all depicted anthropomorphically.

Cities appear as maidens crowned with cathedrals, caves come complete with hermits and forests are shown as huntresses armed with bows. A bearded shepherd holding a staff sits on every hill and each river has its very own nymph!

Constructed as a tour of the kingdom, the poem consists of almost 15,000 lines of iambic hexameter verse divided into 30 songs, each describing one or more counties of England and Wales. The 1612 edition contains the first 18 songs with commentary by the renowned polymath, John Selden; our edition was reprinted in 1622 with the remaining songs added. Drayton originally intended to compose a third part covering Scotland, but this was sadly never completed.

A prolific poet and playwright and a contemporary of Ben Johnson and William Shakespeare, Drayton is now best remembered for his sonnet Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part. The Poly-Olbion, this unique and ambitious work of national description, has largely been forgotten.

Henry B. Wheatley: Pepys, indexing and bookplates

One of the joys of cataloguing rare books is coming across bookplates and signatures of people now deceased, and tracking down who they were.  While working on the Restoration Drama collection I came across the following bookplate in three items; with the words Bibliotheca Pepysiana secunda H B W 1904 underneath the picture of Samuel Pepys.  The image of Pepys comes from the J. Hayls oil painting completed in 1666.

H. B. W. turned out to be Henry Benjamin Wheatley (1838-1917), a prolific writer, editor and indexer.  To some he is known as “The father of British indexing” writing seminal texts on the art of indexing, and today his memory lives on with the annual awarding of the Wheatley medal – given for an outstanding index.

Henry B. Wheatley

Along with his brother, Benjamin Robert Wheatley, he was one of the founders of the Library Association (now known as CILIP – the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) in 1877 and remained on its Council for many years.  He was interested in bibliographies and cataloguing, and wrote an article on cataloguing, published in the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (1911-13; 12:25-37).

He was involved in numerious other societies over the years including the Early English Text Society, the New Shakespeare Society and the Samuel Pepys Club, which he was president of from 1903-1916.  He had a particular interest in Pepys, and was involved in editing and producing two editions of Pepys’ diary, as well as writing a life of Pepys, plus a host of articles and lectures on him.

Wheatley collected books, especially those with interesting or fine book bindings; thus, unsurprisingly, when he died in 1917  his library was sold off the following year by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge.  Of the three  items we have containing Wheatley’s Pepys bookplate, one is an armorial binding in calf with a central gilt stamped coat of arms of an anchor with the initials “S P” [i.e. Samuel Pepys] and “H. B. W.” [i.e. Henry Benjamin Wheatley],the other two also have a crest on the upper cover of their bindings that incorporates the dolphin and anchor of Manutius.

 According to Lee (2002, 86) Wheatley’s bookplate, designed by John Philipps Emslie in 1899, showed the man himself sitting in his library in Bedford Square.  Fifteen years later it appears he had a new bookplate, depicting Pepys.  Was he attempting to replicate or rival Pepys’ library? Or just to pay homage to the man he had so much respect and admiration for?

Lee, J. D. (2002) The father of British indexing: Henry Benjamin Wheatley.  The Indexer 23.2: 86-91.