Sign of approval by the Spanish Inquisition
Book historian Erik Kwakkel found an intriguing snippet of text earlier this week, that bears unexpected evidence of some of the problems encoutered by early printers: censorship and the affiliated fuss of seeking and printing Church approval.
Boekhistoricus Erik Kwakkel vond eerder deze week een intrigerend tekstfragment dat onverwacht bewijs levert van een aantal problemen waar vroege boekdrukkers tegenaan liepen: censuur en het zoeken naar en printen van Kerkelijke goedkeuring.
Paper snippets
After the invention of printing, many handwritten books from the medieval period were cut up to be recycled for use in bookbindings. On his blog, medievalfragments, Kwakkel focuses on a book fragment he encountered in the University Library while studying twelfth-century material with his research team.
Earlier this week, they discovered paper snippets in the binding of a bible printed in Antwerp in 1614 carrying a 'stamp of approval' granted by the Spanish Inquisition. Such approbations needed to be included in printed books after the Spanish authorities had regained control in the Low Countries. The tiny fragment bears unexpected evidence of some of the problems encoutered by early printers: censorship and the affiliated fuss of seeking and printing Church approval.
Read the whole story on Medievalfragments