{"id":903,"date":"2022-08-31T15:54:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T13:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frisia.rug.nl\/en\/?post_type=verhaal&p=586"},"modified":"2023-05-27T11:57:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-27T09:57:31","slug":"een-kroniek-aan-de-ketting","status":"publish","type":"verhaal","link":"https:\/\/frisia.rug.nl\/en\/stories\/een-kroniek-aan-de-ketting\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicle on a Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This Martini Church<\/a>\u00a0has been an important part of the city of Groningen since the early Middle Ages. The church\u2019s 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\u00a0Liber Cronicarum<\/em>, 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<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/span>Eschatology is a theological term for the teachings about the end of time. Various religions have completely different ideas of what will happen. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the three world religions, share the idea that there will be a prophet or a new Messiah. Christian eschatology, which is the subject of this World chronicle, focuses on the Second Coming of Christ and Judgement Day, the day on which God will judge everyone. In this chronicle, this process is described and illustrated extensively, as is the coming of the Antichrist. One illustration shows angels leading the fortunate ones to Heaven, while little devils are dragging people into their graves by their hair.<\/span>Schedel collaborated on this with a team of artists and scholars\u2014all of them humanists, like Schedel himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/span>Woodcuts are printed illustrations that are made using wood engraving. An image is cut into a piece of wood with a small chisel, after which it is covered with ink. The image is then printed on paper, which results in an ink illustration that is the mirror image of the wooden original. In Europe, the first woodcuts were made in the 14th century. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the technique was also used in book printing.<\/span>At the time, this made it the most illustrated book in the world. One example is the Danse Macabre<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> (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 \u2018groningen\u2019 by hand. Who added the name?<\/p>\n\n\n 
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