While we were recently moving a series of rare items in the Brandeis Archives & Special Collections department, a small leaf of paper was discovered, which, from a cursory analysis of the paper and handwriting, likely dates to the sixteenth century. When an item such as this is donated or discovered, the task becomes to identify the item and determine, to the greatest degree possible, its age, rarity, provenance, and scholarly or historical importance. Because this manuscript was not immediately identifiable as being connected to any of the books with which we were working, our only information had to come initially from the manuscript itself. (You may enlarge the image below by clicking on it.)
This item is a small paper fragment, about 16 x 6 cm. in size, on the recto of which are several lines of Latin text written in black ink with some red embellishments in two distinct gothic hands. The verso also includes remnants of text in two very small hands and is heavily damaged, apparently from having been pasted to another surface, and thus is entirely unreadable. While some small amount of text on the recto has also been lost, the text in the center of the leaf, written neatly in a very readable gothic hand with moderate abbreviation, may be transcribed as follows:
Iste liber pertinet [c]o[n]ventui cruciferor[um] in valle S. Mathie al[ia] nigrepaludis dicto sito in territorio meroden[sis] prope dueren. Et [c]o[n]tinent in eo – [1] Sap[ientis] platine omnia opera ; [2] Iustin[us] de omnib[us] regnib[us] terraru[m] ; [3] [Text lost] de rebus romanibus.
In the Latin transcription above, the letters in brackets are those that have been elided in the text of the manuscript. This type of abbreviation was quite common in Latin manuscript documents from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and would have been attractive both as a time-saving technique for those who laboriously copied out manuscripts by hand and as a way of saving space, since writing materials such as paper and vellum were somewhat scarce and expensive resources. The abbreviations on this leaf are quite moderate and pose no difficulty for the translation:
This book belongs to the convent of the cross-bearers in the valley of Saint Matthias, otherwise called the valley of the black swamp, situated in the territory of [Him]merod, near Düren. And it contains in it: (the three following titles).
As is clear from the text, this item is thus a kind of early bookplate, a leaf of paper pasted into the front of a book that identifies its rightful owner: in this case, a community of monks. This, then, explains both the remnants of paste on the heavily damaged verso and the damage to the recto, likely done during the process of removing this label from a book. Handwritten bookplates of this sort are not necessarily unusual, and Brandeis Special Collections even has one example of a hand-drawn bookplate inside a medieval manuscript, the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas [Special Collections – Rare – Manus 9], seen below.
After transcribing and translating the text from the bookplate, the next task is to try to identify the monastic library where it originated. The text itself mentions a “Convent of the Cross-bearers” situated in the “Valley of St. Mathias...in the territory of Himmerod, near Düren.” Düren is an ancient German city, located on the Rur river between Cologne and Aachen, whose origins date to the time of the Roman Empire. In the early middle ages, Düren was under the authority of the Romans and then the Franks, but by the thirteenth century it was a prosperous free city that held sway over the surrounding lands. On the edge of this sphere of influence, about 100 km
. (60 mi.) south of Düren in the Salm river valley, is the Abtei Himmerod, or Himmerod Abbey, a Cistercian monastery that is almost certainly the place from which this bookplate comes. Himmerod Abbey was founded in the twelfth century by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the influential monastic reformer and preacher of the second crusade, who was later canonized and given the title “Doctor of the Church.” With reformist zeal, he, with the founding monks of the abbey, sought out a lonely, barren valley where the monks could, in penitential prayer and labor, live out their vocation of communion with God. 
This location corresponds to the information on the bookplate in several important points. First, the valley was well known as untamed marshland at the time of the monastery’s founding, thus accounting for its description as a “black swamp.” In addition, the monks report on their website (www.abtei-himmerod.de) that the monastery was founded as a Kloster der Heiligen, a “Convent of the Holy,” the modern German equivalent of the “Convent of the Cross-bearers” described in this manuscript. In the Renaissance, the abbey became an important center of learning, and in 1506 a large library was constructed; thus, a sixteenth-century bookplate fits this timeframe well. We can therefore say with some confidence that this library once housed this bookplate and the text it accompanied.
Now that the provenance of the item has been determined, the next project is to locate the text to which the label initially adhered. This would seem to be a daunting task, to find a single text that matches with this manuscript among the thousands of volumes in Special Collections. However, our manuscript again gives us a clue. The text mentions three books, the first being the Sap[ientis] Platine Omnia Opera, the collected works of Bartolomeo Sacchi de Platina. Among the works in the Spertus Collection of Hebraica, Judaica, and Early Printing is the Bap. Platinae Cremonensis De vitis ac gestis summorum pontificum, an edition of the works of Bartolomeo Sacchi de Platina published in 1540 in Cologne, Germany, just 40 km. (25 mi.) from Düren. 
The volume is bound in its original brown leather-covered oak boards, blind-stamped with a decorative border and several small roundels, some depicting the lamb and flag symbol of John the Baptist. The volume also boasts brass clasps for securing the text closed, and leather tabs indicate the divisions between books, making the volume easy to navigate. The text is printed in black with hand-drawn red embellishments and includes copious marginal notation in a sixteenth-century hand. On the title page is a crest with the biblical motto sicut lilium inter spinas (as a lily among the thorns).
The book shows heavy wear, and both covers are, unfortunately, detached. Possibly as a result, the original endpapers have been removed from the front and rear covers, perhaps explaining how the book label came to be separated from the volume. The connection between the bookplate and this book becomes virtually certain, however, when we notice that several printed pages from the De vitis ac gestis have been replaced by manuscript leaves, either because of damage to the printed text or because the owner desired to insert a correction or emendation. The handwriting on these leaves precisely matches the bold, dark hand in the center of the bookplate, as may be seen in the images below.
As mentioned above, the bookplate also includes several additional lines of text, which appear in a second hand both above and below the writing thus far transcribed. They appear to indicate that this book was transferred, at some point, to a second monastery, though unfortunately the name of this new location has not yet been identified. The name of the donor, however, remains clear, and these lines may be transcribed and translated thus:
Iste liber pertinet Conventui Cruciferorum [remaining text unreadable].... Iam titulo donation[i]s [p]ertinet a[d] Hermannu[m] Josephum Br[?] Judicem aquisgrani
This book belongs to the Convent of the Cross-bearers [remaining text unreadable]..... Now the honor of this donation belongs to Herman Joseph Br[text lost], Judge of Aachen.
All of the information recorded above is taken into account in preparing the finding aid entry for this manuscript, which may then be used by the Brandeis community and outside scholars to locate the item. The finding aid entry is appended below, and a quick glance shows how the research and description above is incorporated into this final stage of our process: preparing a catalogue record of the manuscript.
Language: Latin.
Date: c. 1540.
Title: [Book Label : Himmerod Abbey, Germany]
Creator: Unknown.
Place of creation: Himmerod Abbey, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Physical description: Paper, 1 leaf ; 6 x 16 cm.
Summary: A label once affixed to a book belonging to the monks of Himmerod Abbey in Germany. The text reads:
Iste liber pertinet [c]o[n]ventui cruciferor[um] in valle S. Mathie al[ia] nigrepaludis dicto sito in territorio meroden[sis] prope dueren. Et [c]o[n]tinent in eo – [1] Sap[ientis] platine omnia opera ; [2] Iustin[us] de omnib[us] regnib[us] terraru[m] ; [3] [Text lost] de rebus romanibus.
[This book belongs to the convent of the cross-bearers in the valley of Saint Matthias, also called the black swamp, situated in the territory of [Him]merod, near Düren. And it contains in it (the three following titles)].
Himmerod Abbey, founded in 1134, was the fourteenth monastery founded by Bernard of Clairvaux, and the first he established in Germany. Beginning in the twelfth century, it was a “convent of the Holy,” here rendered in the Latin as [c]o[n]ventui cruciferorum. As described in the history of the convent, the founding monks decided to build their monastery in the valley of the Salm river, relatively close (c. 100 km. [62 mi.]) to the important city of Düren (L. Dueren), because they wished for the seclusion and penitential hardship of living in the untamed swamp that covered this region. In this manuscript, the scribe writes of the abbey being “in the valley of Saint Matthias,” a quite pleasant name for the place, but called by others, it seems, nigrepaludib[us], or “the black swamp.” In the Renaissance, the abbey was an important center of learning in the region, and a library was dedicated at Himmerod in 1506, from which this label most likely comes. The label was almost certainly initially fixed to the Bap. Platinae Cremonensis, de Vitis ac Gestis Summorum of Bartolomeo de Sacchi di Piadena (Coloniae, 1540) [Temporary Call #: Spertus 51], which is the first work listed on the label. The names of the other texts mentioned do not appear in this volume and have not yet been matched to any standard texts, but it may well be that they are casual references to works that would be familiar to a scholar of the period. The second is likely the Historiarum Philippicarum of Marcus Junianus Justinus, or Justin, the famous Roman historian. There are three additional lines of script on the manuscript, written in a later hand, which appear to refer to a subsequent owner, apparently another abbey. While the name of this abbey has not been deciphered, the name of the donor is partially readable:
Iste liber pertinet Conventui Cruciferorum [remaining text unreadable].... Iam titulo donation[i]s [p]ertinet a[d] Hermannu[m] Josephum Br[?] Judicem aquisgrani
This book belongs to the Convent of the Cross-bearers [remaining text unreadable]..... Now the honor of this donation belongs to Herman Joseph Br[text lost], Judge of Aachen.
For more information, see Abtei Himmerod at www.abtei-himmerod.de.
Note: Small paper fragment, initially likely pasted to the inside cover of a book, and damaged from its removal ; almost certainly from Bartolomeo de Sacchi di Piadena’s Bap. Platinae Cremonensis, de Vitis ac Gestis Summorum (Coloniae, 1540) [Temporary Call #: Spertus 51]. Written in black with some red embellishment in two gothic hands. Verso also includes remnants of text in two very small hands, heavily damaged and thus entirely unreadable. The Maurice and Badona Spertus Collection of Judaica, Hebraica, and Early Printing. Gift of Maurice and Badona Spertus.
Call #: Manus 33
description by Adam Rutledge, Senior University Archives/Special Collections Assistant and PhD candidate in
English and American Literature
Photos of Himmerod Abbey www.abtei-himmerod.de
