Old Books

Our bookshop customers are always interested in seeing 'the oldest book in the shop'. For a while the oldest for us was a German Bible printed in 1540. We sold it a few months ago, but it was a spectacular example of 16th century craftsmanship. Folio sized, with original hand tooled binding, metal clasps, black letter printing, marginal notes (which were uncommon) and about four inches thick. It was in superb condition for a 440 year old book, perfectly readable and still able to be opened and closed with ease. It was quite an attraction here; people would come in and ask to see the Bible.

Today our oldest books are from the 17th century. One is a very curious volume titled Theologia Moralis Expurgata, by Cassianus, 1684, which is a book that was banned by the Church for heresy, and which still appears on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It is bound in vellum, very thick, in nice condition, printed and bound in Venice. I'll need to brush up on my Latin to decipher all of the heresies it contains! Another is Thucydides and Xenophon L'histoire de la Guerre du Peloponese, obviously in French, Paris, 1662, also vellum, in very nice condition for its age.

The intriguing thing about these books, aside from the impressive printing and binding, is the speculation about where they have been, who owned them, who read them, touched and held them, and for what purpose. Someone famous or infamous in history? A monk in a lonely library, a member of the Inquisition perhaps, a scholar researching history 400 years ago, a nobleman with an impressive library with rarely opened books? Most often these facts remain unknown, and yet there is a certain connection with the distant past that one feels when holding and thumbing through these books, a connection with a time, place, and persons we can only speculate about. The books have survived, to intrigue us, and with them survives the legacy of unknown printers, binders, authors, scholars, clerics, statesmen, princes and thieves. Did they dare imagine that such volumes would survive so long?

It's obvious we are entrusted with much more than caring for old books. We are more importantly the caretakers of the human inquisitiveness and achievement that created these magnificent volumes, conserved them throughout the turbulent centuries, and finally placed them so very gently in our hands.