Froben Prints and Polemics on Religion in Early Modern Eastern Europe

Abstract

The article explores the Froben prints stored at the Rare Books Department of the Library of the Russian Academy of Science (Biblioteka Akademii Nauk) in Saint Petersburg. For three generations in the 16th century, Basel printers the Frobens influenced European intellectual life like no other publishing establishment, contributing to the spread of early Latin and Greek Christian literature, which determined both the development of theology and the humanities. Some copies of Froben prints are conspicuous for the history of their use which is intrinsically connected with various kinds of religious polemics in 16th and 17th century Eastern Europe. The focus of the article is the copies of Froben’s Opera omnia of St Augustine which underwent censorship in monastic libraries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th century. The article traces the history of a number of Froben copies which belonged to notable Polish Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries (Andrzej Trzecieski, Nicholas Radziwill the Black (“Czarny”), Andrzej Dobrzanski). The examination of the connections of Eastern European Protestants, which enabled vigorous exchange of books with Western Europe, bringing, for instance, a book from the library of the great Dutch cartographer Gerhard Mercator to the hands of a provincial Polish pastor, is carried out. Finally, the article addresses the marginalia left by Simeon of Polotsk on one of his books. These marginalia throw some new light on the question of Simeon’s genuine theological views. By examining the history of the copies from the Library of the Russian Academy of Science through the marginalia left in the 16th and 17th centuries by people of various religions, the article assesses Froben copies as a source on confessional and intellectual history of the period.