The Quest for Haremius. Ghost Editions and Bibliographical Resources

In memory of Dennis Everard Rhodes (1923–2020)  ¹

A LITTLE WHILE AGO—’TWAS THE TIME of the great Coronavirus plague—I was teaching a Book History class online about bibliographical repertories, with an especial emphasis on incunabula, and so I showed the digital copy of volume II/1, containing letters H–O, of Hain’s Repertorium bibliographicum, published in 1831 and conjured up in Google books. Explaining that as well as the incunabula seen in person, usually because they were in the collections of the great library at Munich where he worked as a private scholar and thus are marked with an asterisk, Hain also included references for books he had not seen, sometimes of a more equivocal status.

To illustrate the point, I clicked on an example that just happened to be in the digital page I was browsing on, or this entry here:

8363. HAREMIUS (Florentius). Vitae christianae norma seu regula. s. l. a. et typ. n. 4 (c. 1494.)

Who? what? where? An unsatisfactory piece of information, though the sort of thing incunabulists consider their staple fare. My next move was inevitably to open the online Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) in order to find the entry corresponding to this book and to see what it really stood for. And this is where I ran smack into a brick wall. Boolean searches for ‘8363’ (the only really incontrovertible piece of information), ‘Haremius’, and selected words from the title supplied by Hain, albeit in the know ledge that ISTC does not base itself on transcriptions and incunabula do not have title pages anyway, gave no result. The book was decidedly not there. Of course the students, safely cached behind their personal computer screens, were gleeful at the display of my ‘deliberate mistake’ and I talked myself out of the quandary, as a professional teacher always does.

Nevertheless, the irritation at catching this informational crab persisted, and so during the online coffee break I conducted a more thorough search. The first stop in my quest for the mysterious and elusive Haremius was necessarily the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, where his existence is recorded, albeit treated with scepticism and not deserving a full-blown entry, as follows: ‘10 Sp.579a Haremius, Florentinus: Vitae christianae norma seu regula. [um 1494]. 4° H 8363. PA IV 130.516. Nicht nachweisbar. Möglicherweise Verwechslung mit GW 9273’ (vol. 10, published in 2000). It is a boon that GW systematically incorporates references to earlier sources, even if it suspects that the book might not exist, whereas ISTC only includes documented material, books that actually survive, a fact that has sometimes proved a bibliographical banana skin for scholars unaware of this apparently meaningless distinction. GW further points to the source for Hain’s entry, the immensely long drawn out Annales typographici ab artis inventae origine usque ad annum MDXXXVI by Georg Wolfgang Panzer (1755–1829), published in Nuremberg in eleven substantial volumes from 1793 to 1803 which, duly consulted, provided a further snippet of information, i.e. the origin of the information was the manuscript catalogue of the abbey at Buxheim.² Anyone who in the rare books reading room of some library has ever handled—I do not advise exploring it digitally—this precursor to Hain knows how exasperating it can be, as well as the flocks of ghostly imprints that haunt its bibliographical corridors. Its contents are frequently misleading; on the other hand, it sometimes preserves the record of editions of which the last surviving copies made it as far as the end of the eighteenth century, before quietly disappearing in that turbulent period. There fore, its information needs to be carefully sieved and assessed.

For some dark and mysterious reason, the print GW also transforms Haremius into a Florentine. Was this a mere slip in transcription? or did the offices in Berlin know something they do not choose to reveal? In which case this unknown work might perhaps belong to the plethora of pamphlet-style religious literature produced in Florence under the control of Savonarola. On the other hand, the alternative hypothesis advanced in their entry, i.e. that the muddle somehow involved the anonymous and unsigned edition known as the Eingang der Himmel, assigned to Peter Schoeffer in Mainz in about 1481, holds water only insofar as the fact that it is a quarto (see GW 9273, ISTC ie00028500). It is extremely unlikely that Panzer would have confused a German language text with a work for which he provides a Latin title. So this particular bout of checks proved far from illuminating and the identity of Haremius remained elusive.

The next step was to cast the net a bit wider, in the informational sense, and a quick scouring of online repertories for other centuries, in particular the Universal Short Title Catalogue and the Verzeichnis der Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, turned up the following item:

Vera ac syncera vitae christianae norma seu regula, omnibus Christo militantibus (quo vitam suam rectè ac piè instituere, & ad veram aeternamque salutem meliùs ac faciliùs contendere & peruenire possint) scitu cumprimìs necessaria, V. libris digesta, authore D. Florentio Harlemio, magnae pietatis ac eruditionis viro: interprete verò F. Laurentio Surio, Carthusiae coloniensis alumno. Cum indice copiosiss. – Coloniae: apud haeredes Ioannis Quentel, & Geruinum Calenium, mense Februario. 1559. – [32], 614, [2] p.; 8º – VD16 F 1661, USTC 700542 (7 copies listed).

Bingo! as one says. The electronic helpmeet resolved in seconds a search which otherwise might have taken years or, more likely, never been solved at all. For starters, the book is decidedly not an incunable and has nothing to do with Florence. The author, Florentius (Batavus) from Haarlem in some repertories, Floris Florisz van Haarlem in the Dutch ones, which know a bit better whom they are talking about, was born in Haarlem on a date unknown; he was a member of the Carthusian order and died in Louvain in Belgium in 1543. The work concerned was first published posthumously with the title Institutionis vitae christianae libri V by the heirs of Johann Quentel in Cologne in March 1552, with a chronological variant May 1553, and comparison shows that the 1559 version is in fact a reissue, with a punchier title for a work that evidently was not selling as well as hoped. Even this stratagem might not have proved successful, since in 1596 it was reissued once again, albeit with a partial reversion to the 1552 title. So we find several bibliographical entities, all in reality for one and the same edition, to which has to be added the misleading entry in the Repertorium bibliographicum.³

What was it precisely that led Panzer astray, and thus Hain, who followed blindly in his footsteps, given that not only the name of the author is deformed and the title truncated, but the format is given as quarto and a hypothetical date of 1494 is assigned? It is certain that, if either of these great German incunabulists had set eyes on the book, they would not have been fooled by it for an instant, and of course they were not the first, nor will they be the last, bibliographers who committed the seemingly venial sin of copying a notice from a secondary source without viewing the object itself. The source very plausibly was a copy of the 1559 issue, damaged on its title page, including the loss of the first three words, entered into the manuscript catalogue at Buxheim; from there, in a perverse but entirely understandable fashion, the bibliographical notice becomes an incunable by Haremius, who turns out to be a Dutchman from Haarlem rather than an Italian from Florence. The entry in Panzer and Hain was subsequently picked up by other compilers in the field, for instance by Jean George Théodore Graesse in his 1840 Lehrbuch einer allgemeinen Literärgeschichte aller bekannten Völker der Welt (p. 406), who, to give him credit, recognized that our mysterious author is the same person as Florentius from Haarlem.⁴ Otherwise, compared to some more vigorous bibliographical ectoplasms, Haremius has not had much of an existence.

So what have we got at the end of this elegant, but trifling, bibliographical exercise? A loose end that has been tidied up, more usefully than might perhaps seem. A rather perplexing entry in Panzer and Hain, that transited into GW, has been clarified two centuries after its first appearance, allowing the latter repertory, in its online manifestation, perhaps to take account of this tiny correction to its vast mosaic. Large bibliographical resources for continental books of the sixteenth and later centuries, such as VD16 and USTC, might note that what appear to be four separate imprints is in reality a single edition, in three distinct issues, with a variant of state in the first; and they could even append a note to the 1559 issue, remarking that it is the basis of a misleading entry in Hain. But this might be untowardly optimistic.

On the other hand, the example provides a chance to touch on the harvesting and upkeep of the information in specialist bibliographical data-bases, whose principal characteristic is that they are controlled centrally, rather than the contributing libraries forming separate hubs, as is the norm in large collective catalogues such as OCLC (Worldcat), the French CCFR, or the Italian SBN. It is not always appreciated, especially by younger scholars, that although many of these resources seem to be state of the art, the information in them is for the most part old and dusty, while the digestive systems of the same are often longer and slower than those of a python. GW is still chewing over and elaborating printed and manuscript materials that go back to the beginning of the twentieth century; ISTC is founded on Goff’s third census of American incunabula published in 1964, but in numerous respects reaches back to the second census conducted by Margaret Bingham Stillwell and published in 1940 (many of the private owners of incunabula listed therein died between fifty and eighty years ago, though they are still listed in the electronic grandchild);⁵ the English Short Title Catalogue builds on the huge achievements of the original Pollard and Redgrave STC for the period 1473–1640, published in 1926, superbly revised by Katharine Pantzer in the second edition of 1976–91, as well as the volumes of Donald Wing for the period 1641–1700 published 1945–51 (2nd edition, 1972–98), and then merged into Robin Alston’s Eighteenth-Century Online Catalogue, which usefully employed the same acronym; and the German VD16 likewise had a previous existence as a twenty-two-volume paper repertory published between 1983 and 1995. Their status is very different, therefore, compared to projects such as the Italian Edit16 (though even here there were paper volumes from 1985 to 2006 with letters A to F), the Dutch STCN, the Belgian STCV, and the German VD17, which essentially were conceived from the beginning as databases. In a category quite to itself is the overarching USTC, which is both an amalgam of published volumes for countries such as France and Spain produced in the St Andrews project, constructed by researchers working book in hand, and a metaopac that inter rogates other databases, and also throws in lots of information garnered from published catalogues of every imaginable variety: all differently defined universes. In what follows I make reference to small items of bibliographical flotsam and jetsam that I have collected in my own book-history peregrinations. Of course most scholars have specialist interests which mean that they work with one, or maybe two of these databases on a regular basis; my interests are more catholic, or less focused and less disciplined; I believe, however, that I can make a plausible claim to be the person who has contributed information and corrections to the widest number of resources.⁶ It has also led me to notice some strange overlaps, for instance, both ISTC and ESTC describe incunabula containing English or printed in England, but neither repertory talks to the other (and it is sufficient to compare the entries for the first printed book in the English language, Lefèvre’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in the translation by William Caxton, to find some marked differences of opinion). Another notorious limbo is the large number of editions sine notis or described from an imperfect copy, which at some point, as in the instance here, have been considered incunabula, but have subsequently been shown to be from the sixteenth century. Trying to identify the same book, however, both in the repertories for incunabula and in those for the subsequent period is at times a test for the most ingenious bibliographer.

All these resources declare, in ultramodern fashion, that they delight in receiving corrections and suggestions from the outside, sometimes furnishing a specific email address for such communications; on the other hand, it is an all-too-frequent complaint to hear that information has been sent and wholly ignored, and all too naturally and almost inevitably, once this has happened a few times, even the most eager outsider desists and potentially valuable material is lost. Although most of these databases have been freely available on the net for a number of years, thus facilitating not only the visualization of the data, but also communication from elsewhere, the input of data supplied by researchers from outside the project is not a matter that any of them have really addressed; and indeed, to my knowledge, the present article is the first in which the whys and the wherefores of an ostensibly simple, but in reality complex, operation is posed as a significant question.

It goes almost without saying that, when monies are being sought for all and any of these databases, large institutional organizations or funding bodies are rarely sympathetic to the argument that what is badly needed is someone permanently tasked with answering emails, though the job could be dressed up in a more fanciful fashion as ‘External Input Database Manager’. And, quite naturally, this is a damning indictment on public funding in humanist disciplines, which is far too often posited on the inappropriate model of the pure and applied sciences. Maintenance and the collection of external data should be a fundamental for any major database involving the humanities. The constant expansion of the relevant literature is beyond control and therefore the long-term solution has to be to make the information come to the resource, harnessing a potential army of volunteer workers, something that an alternative project, such as Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI), has brilliantly exploited. Launched a little over a decade ago as a vast copy-specific catalogue and ostensibly a graft onto the trunk of ISTC, MEI’s particularity is its exploitation of the Wiki factor and thus its extreme modernity (which has brought its own problems). Unlike all the other databases, it does not have a centralized control, but is open to volunteer contributions and also projects that are financed by satellites or by staff of individual libraries or even by roaming researchers—here a tribute is necessary to one eternally wandering bibliographer, John Lancaster—who are not affiliated institutionally with the library whose books they describe.⁷

Collecting information from the outside nevertheless needs a more rational approach, and it has to be understood that external input takes several different forms. It is important to distinguish between a correction to information already present in the database (a mistaken date or spelling,⁸ an erroneous format,⁹ a damaged copy that has become a ghost entry,¹⁰ and so on), and new information (a previously unknown edition, further copies of a known edition,¹¹ a significant purchase note, and so forth). It is also some thing of a truth, albeit not a positive one, that in some bibliographical resources, especially those without a long-standing previous tradition, quantity has been privileged at the expense of quality, and more valuable forms of analysis, such as the identification of variant states and issues, are not well received or for the most part ignored (as the example here of the four variant versions of Florentius Harlemius, documented but not resolved in any of the databases consulted here, suffices to show).

None of these corrections is of an earth-shaking significance, and information trouble-shooting is neither remunerative nor socially prestigious. Clutter is still clutter, however, while the instance of Haremius has been in the bibliographical system for over two hundred years, and several of the other corrections pointed out in this article rectify mistakes that have been knocking around for a century or so. Above all, the potentially cumulative force, not of these few trifling instances but of hundreds and hundreds of corrections along the same lines, is a worthwhile objective. Of particular importance, therefore, is the myriad of fragments of information that scholars working on early printed books uncover by handling the items, especially in less well known and specialist libraries, or sometimes by following up a moment of almost idle curiosity, as here. Such material, in appearance often insignificant, generally remains buried in the notes of individual researchers and never sees the light of day again, which has to be accounted a loss, since the very nature of big databases paradoxically makes them perfect containers for minute snippets of information.¹²

The best solution for such items is the signed note, a practice already extant in GW and ISTC, albeit as yet on a small scale. A signature establishes the authority and the provenance of the information (Professor A is more reliable than Professor B, and both are infinitely better than Professor C), absolving the database—at least morally, and perhaps intellectually—from eventual errors. The other major source of information is published scholarship, which either as its main object or more often in a passing footnote, establishes some bibliographical fact or other, usually not worth trumpeting from the rooftops, but still worthy of inclusion in some resource or other (given that all of them overlap in some respect or other). Researchers with a regular published output of course like to flatter themselves that everything they write, especially in authoritative journals such as this one, will immediately be ‘noticed’ by others; this conviction is usually illusory, even delusory, since experience teaches that, even when one takes the trouble to send copies of the offprint or monograph to all the people who might conceivably be interested, even then notice quite often fails to happen.

A major flaw in the data-collecting process has in fact been the blithe assumption that the staff of these resources have the time and the desire to go and look for the information relevant to the particular knowledge structure they are tasked to maintain. It simply doesn’t happen, since the major online bibliographical databases, for all their scholarly utility and prestige, are maintained for the most part with a skeleton staff, to which has to be added the all-important fact that in many cases they are scholars in their own right with their own interests to pursue. The task of ploughing through a lengthy article in order to extract a particular bibliographical snippet is moreover a time-consuming and not very exciting activity, while information from the outside has the further disadvantage that it is very difficult to control or to say what form it will take and also—a circumstance seldom appreciated—even when it comes from the most authoritative scholars, it still has to be checked, something that can involve time and effort for the staff of these projects.

If external information is going to be received and input in a more reliable fashion, major databases ought perhaps to think about better ground rules for procedure, especially for scholars entering in contact for the first time, and possibly a forum where information can be presented in an ordered fashion and be visible to other researchers. If, on the one hand, electronic communication has made it much easier to send in information, on the other, simply supplying an email address so that messages are printed out and accumulated in large piles until someone deals with them—as has been the standard practice in past for most databases—is going to be an ever less adequate way of handling incoming information. A drop-down menu is simple to provide and can act as a preliminary sifting mechanism: for instance, small correction, new edition, new copy, broken link to a digital copy (always a bugbear), additions to the secondary bibliography, and so on. A more public visibility might not only engender further corrections, but also responds to the fact that university academics increasingly have to report on their research activity and such pages can therefore be referenced. In much the same fashion, the communication of a published article is always welcome (preferably with a complete reference to where it has appeared), but it is even more helpful to receive a cover sheet with a precise syn thesis of the modifications and/or additions that, in the opinion of the external researcher, need to be made.

At the end of the day, therefore, bibliography is composed of information, even wrong information, and wrong pieces of information that remain in the system, as inevitably happens in the cataloguing of incunabula, where scholars are well aware of the enduring value of contributions such as Panzer and Hain, cause problems and so need to be sorted out. A lot of good and worthwhile bibliography is just tidying up, something Dennis Rhodes always did in a meritorious fashion and, if we continue along the same lines, it is the best way to honour his memory and his achievement.

For their comments and suggestions on this paper, I thank Falk Eisermann, John Goldfinch, Shanti Graheli, John Lancaster, Stephen Parkin, and Stephen Tabor.

Footnotes