This Martini Church has been an important part of the city of Groningen since the early Middle Ages. The church’s library was filled with books that were mainly used as reference works by the clergymen of the city, but the library may have acted as a municipal library as well. In the 16th century, the Liber Cronicarum, or the Nuremberg Chronicle, was kept in the library for a long time. Books like these were put on a chain: one end of the chain was attached to the book cover and the other end to a bookcase, to prevent people from taking books with them. How did this book end up in the library of the Martini Church?
This world chronicle was written by Hartmann Schedel, a physician from Nuremberg with a broad interest in art and science. It was published in 1493. He wanted to describe the history of the world, followed by the Apocalypse, based on Christian eschatology.Schedel collaborated on this with a team of artists and scholars—all of them humanists, like Schedel himself.
The book was printed in Nuremberg by Anton Koberger, one of the most successful printers in Germany, and it became a bestseller. The pages of this world chronicle are decorated with hundreds of illustrations in black and white, made using woodcuts.At the time, this made it the most illustrated book in the world. One example is the Danse Macabre, the Dance of Death, a theme often used in medieval art. We see five skeletons, three of which are dancing happily while the fourth is playing an instrument and the fifth is just crawling out of its grave. This illustration is still very popular and is even printed on T-shirts.
In our copy, the illustrations at the beginning of the book have been hand-coloured, but the later illustrations are in black and white. Maybe a bookseller commissioned the colouring and it was never finished. Or maybe one of the earlier owners started it? The copy also contains lots of notes in the margins and some phrases have been underlined: Angeli primo creati (The angels were created first) is written in one of the margins. Also remarkable is the world map at the back of the book. It includes the current territory of the Netherlands, with a small island printed above Frisia, which is marked ‘groningen’ by hand. Who added the name?
It could have been Rodolphus Kannegheter, who was a priest in Noordlaren at the end of the 15th century. Kannegheter was also a member of the prestigious society of Kalands Brethrenwhich would sometimes meet in the Martinikerk. This means that he was from Groningen and that he was involved in a spiritual community in Groningen. Did he put Groningen on the map? Maybe Kannegheter was the first owner of this copy, but there may have been another owner before him: the text anno domini 1500 has been written at the front of the book, possibly by someone who owned the book before Kannegheter.
Kannegheter died in 1506 and that is how the book ended up in the library of the Martinikerk: he bequeathed it to the library in his will. Later, the book was briefly owned by someone called Jacob Canter, but it is unknown how the book got into his possession. Maybe he was the one who made the notes. We do know that in 1683 Canter gave the book to Julius Schelto van Aitzema.
This Julius Schelto van Aitzema was mayor of Dokkum in the 17th century. In 2021, a painting of him as mayor was displayed in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam as part of the Slavery exhibition. The artist Gerard Wigmana made this painting of the mayor, his family and servants, and an unknown, but seemingly important guest in 1697. The painting can normally be seen in the Dokkum town hall. Van Aitzema died in 1714. In 1758, the chronicle is first mentioned in the catalogue of the University of Groningen Library.
Author: Kjelda Glimmerveen
