#12 Book with Handprint

Anyone who visited the library in early 2024 might remember our display on The Fragility of a Book’s Anatomy, exploring all the ways that books get marked, damaged and broken. One of those books has such an interesting piece of damage that we thought it was worth digging into it a bit further.

1. The book is by Antonio Agustín y Albanell, a Catholic Archbishop as well as a scholar of canon law.

2. This is a later edition of his original text on canon law, which was from 1576. This volume is from 1621 and says it has corrections and emendations to that work.

3. It was printed in Paris.

4. It measures 350 by 230mm

5. The binding is vellum which has stiffened over the years, making the book difficult to open.

6. The most distinctive thing about the book is the very visible handprint of a previous user. Four finger marks are on the front, with a thumb print on the back, indicating that it was once held by a very dirty right hand.

7. Unusually for books of this age, and despite the handprint, the book has no annotations anywhere in it, suggesting it was not a frequently used text!

8. The printer, Sebastian Cramoisy, was the favoured printer of Cardinal Richeleu, and eventually become a preferred printer of the King of France.

9. The large illustration is the printers mark, including the Cramoisy coat of arms, a more traditional printer’s mark, and ‘aux deux cigognes’ (two storks) which are usually shown on Cramoisy books.

10. The remaining images are of filial piety, including Aeneas, Tobias and the traditional story of ‘Roman Charity’ where a daughter is shown breastfeeding a parent. This matches the quotation on the mark, which reads in Latin ‘Honour your father and mother that your days may be long in the land’ (Exodus 20:12, from the Vulgate)