Featured - The incunabulum of 'On the Consolation of Philosophy' by Boëthius
Around the same period that the printing press swept through Europe, humanism began to take hold. The period following the Middle Ages is referred to as the "Renaissance," literally meaning "rebirth." This era saw a renewed interest in texts from Classical Antiquity. Humanists studied these texts not to base their morality on them, but to discover and refine rhetorical techniques. Their goal was to emotionally engage their audience through the studia humanitatis (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy). Convinced that only readers could give meaning to these texts, they embraced the printing press as a means to make them accessible to a wider audience.
Heritage highlight
One of those an early prints, a so-called incunabula, is this version of 'On the Consolation of Philosophy'
by scholar and philosopher Boëthius (c. 480-524) at the beginning of the sixth century. The three editions held in the Boekentoren were printed in the second half of the fifteenth century using individual lead letters and illuminated by hand.
The craft of the incunable
The editions held in the Booktower were printed in 1485 by Arend De Keysere (1450-1490), also called the “Ghent Gutenberg”. Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468) was the first person to introduce the technique of printing with individual lead letters in Europe. The nickname is thus, for this Flemish book printer, quite a compliment.
De Keysere presumably went bankrupt producing this incunable, as after his death one hundred of the four hundred copies remained unsold. De Booktower currently holds three out of those four hundred. One of those is fully finished, with beautiful miniatures and initials.
The other two reveal exactly how the book was made. Firstly, the text was printed using those individual lead letters, which at first glance resemble handwriting. During this process, blank spaces were left for the illustrations, which were added by hand afterwards. So, the printing press accelerated a big part of production, but a great deal of time still had to be invested.
On display
You can now admire the incunabula 'Consolation of Philosophy' in the Boekentoren, where four display cases provide a cross-section of the rich heritage collection.
Would you like to browse through the book at your leisure at home? Then you can consult the fully digitized version in our catalogue.