Bookbindings of the Bolton Library #4

by Olivia Lardner, Bolton Cataloguer

A name which features from time to time in the Bolton Library, part of his collection having been acquired by Archbishop William King¹ after his death, is one Isaac Basire (1607-1676).²

A French-born cleric who became royal chaplain to Charles I in 1641, Basire’s route from his birthplace of Rouen – this is more recently argued to be in fact Jersey³ – to the Church of England took him via Leiden University, where he was taught by two men whose works also feature in this collection: Gerard Vossius and Johannes Polyander. Shortly after his appointment as royal chaplain, the king’s position grew increasingly untenable, and Basire went into exile. What began, however, as an enforced departure from England metamorphosed into a mission, with Basire travelling to Eastern Europe and further afield in the 1650s in the hope of converting disaffected locals to the Anglican faith.⁴

Basire acquired Bolton Library K.8.24 in modern day Romania during this extended exile.

 

 

Heidelberg Catechism

Christianus lactens (Alba Iulia : Typis celsissimi principis, 1637) is a copy of the Heidelberg Catechism, a core text of Reformed belief in the region, and was composed for the confirmation of two of the sons of the Prince of Transylvania György Rákóczi I (1593–1648), namely György II (1621–1660) and Zsigmond (1622–1652).

Graeme Murdock (2013) states that the sons were publicly tested in 1637 on their religious knowledge using the Heidelberg Catechism.⁵ Their confirmation ‘in solenni examine, quod 15. Augusti anno 1637’ was that occasion.

 

 

Alba Iulia

The catechism is printed on paper milled locally. Bearing a crowned double-headed eagle watermark, the paper almost certainly originated in the mill established at Lancrǎm by Prince György I himself in the very year of the printing of this catechism.⁶

The royal printing house, founded in Alba Iulia in 1623, printed an estimated 24 such ‘celebration’ items, this one the work of Pál Keresztúri, tutor to the young princes.⁷

The binding is an opulent centre- and cornerpiece goatskin offering tooled in gold,⁸ for which our archbishop collector would pay six pence in 1710.⁹

The use of goatskin here is unsurprising, given the alpine dominance of the Carpathian Mountains locally, the perfect ecosystem for the raising of goats.

 

 

The front cover bears the dated gilt stamp:

 

Georgius Rakoci, Dei gratia, princeps Transylvaniæ partium regni Hungariæ Dominus, & siculorum comes &C. 1637

 

 

Inside the front cover, and bound as waste, the bookbinder has placed a cancel¹⁰ from the text: leaf c2.

 

 

Isaac Basire (1607-1676)

18 years later in 1655, Isaac Basire will become ‘ordinary professor of Divinity’ at the Bethlen Gábor Kollégium in Alba Iulia, having been headhunted from Constantinople by Prince György II the year before.¹¹ He was given his own house and an annual stipend of 1800 Hungarian florins for acting as rector primarius and lecturing duties.¹²

It can be hypothesised that this memento of his own confirmation was gifted by the prince to Basire on his arrival, as an illustration of the core religious beliefs of the town and his family. Basire’s initials can be seen on the title page.

 

 

Less than five years later, following a Turkish invasion,¹³ the Kollégium would be in ruins and the prince dead, and Basire’s thoughts would turn towards England.¹⁴

 

---

 

1. Read about William King and his collecting activities in A good eye.[↩]
2. Find the original catalogue of sale of Isaac Basire’s library in Bolton Library M.10.16(9), with desired items marked in the hand of Archbishop William King and his steward Henry Green.[↩]
3. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.[↩]
4. Brennen, C. (1987). The life and times of Isaac Basire. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. Available here.[↩]
5. Murdock, G. (2013). ‘Reformed orthodoxy in East-Central Europe’, in A Companion to reformed orthodoxy. Leiden: Brill., p. 305, available here.[↩]
6. Deletant, D. (1982). Rumanian presses and printing in the seventeenth century: I. The Slavonic and East European review, 60(4), pp. 486. Available here.[↩]
7. Bogdan, I.A. (2017). ‘Răspândirea cărţilor din tipografia princiară albaiuliană (altele decât cele chirilice) secolele XVI-XVIII’, in Revista Transilvania, available here.[↩]
8. Decoration with gold leaf impressed or painted onto binding material.[↩]
9. Matteson, R.S. (1995). Archbishop William King, Basiraeana & Lanaeana. The Library, 6(4), p. 339.[↩]
10. Replacement or substitution of leaves.[↩]
11. Brennen, C. (1987). Ibid, p. 92[↩]
12. Matteson, R.S. (1995). Ibid, p. 331.[↩]
13. Read more about the fall of Alba Iulia in Bolton Library C.13.22.[↩]
14. Murdock, G.G.N.J. (1996). International Calvinism and the Reformed church of Hungary and Transylvania, 1613-1658 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford), p. 46. Available here.[↩]