Mastodawn

#History #libraries #ThirtyYearsWar #Bourdieu #CulturalHistory #TagDerBibliotheken #earlymodern #histodons #librarians #BookHistory

Libraries and especially princely and religious libraries were a highly sought after war booty, not only during the Thirty Years’ War.

This was not so much due to their material value but their social and cultural capital if one uses Bourdieu’s terminology. Libraries did not solely accumulate the knowledge of their time. Moreover, they were testimonies of their owners' wealth and cultural literacy. Libraries, thus, could manifest or increase their owners' cultural and social status. (2/5)

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As war booty, libraries and books could even increase their conquerors’ social and cultural capital.

Looted libraries and books bore witness of their conquerors’ brave deeds. Additionally, they testified on the looters’ fine education which allowed them to identify valuable books and could add to their social and cultural capital. What is more, if not kept but gifted to a prince, looted books and libraries did not only elevate the conqueror’s social status but also that of the recipient. That is why books and libraries were a coveted currency in the social bartering. (3/5)

https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004715851

There are many famous examples of looted books and libraries from the Thirty Years’ War.

The Bibliotheca Palatina, for example, was located in Heidelberg until 1623 and one of the most important German Renaissance libraries. It was seized when Catholic troops conquered Electoral Palatine and Heidelberg in 1622, and gifted to the Pope by duke Maximilian of Bavaria. In 1623 the library was transported to Rome by more than 200 hinnies and incorporated in the Bibliotheca Apostolocia Vaticana.

For the Swedish case, Peter Sjökvist researched the fate of books that were looted during the Thirty Years’ War such as the libraries in Mainz, Würzburg or Munich as well as Prague where Swedish troops among other books took the famous Codex Argenteus.

(4/5)

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https://www.uu.se/en/library/visit-and-contact/exhibitions/codex-argenteus

What has all this to do with the Peace of Westphalia?

The peace treaties contain provisions on the restitution of war booty such as archive materials and movable property (Art. 16,15 Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis). As libraries were movable property, they therefore actually should have been restored and left back to their former owners.

This did hardly ever happen. Due to their very high social and cultural capital, looted books and libraries remained (despite all protests) with their new owners and part of new collections. The Codex Argenteus is still part of the holdings of Uppsala University Library. (5/5)

#History #PeaceOfWestphalia #libraries #TagDerBibliotheken #histodons #librarians #BookHistory #earlyModern