The devotion of collecting : ministers and the culture of print in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic

Abstract

This project is the first to analyze the known corpus of seventeenth-century Dutch ministerial
library catalogues, and it asks how these sources inform our understanding of the religious
and cultural climate during the Dutch Golden Age. Thousands of ministers served local
congregations in the Netherlands. They considered books and pamphlets necessary for a
godly life, and they were avid collectors of print. 236 catalogues of ministerial libraries,
nearly all that are known to survive, have been examined for this study. Fifty-five have been
transcribed in full. Ministers’ calling demanded that they pursue greater understanding of the
Bible, and they used their books in the pursuit of truth.

Ministers were central political and cultural figures in their communities, and they
turned to books and print for the fulfillment of their pastoral charge. Knowledge of the books
these ministers read sheds light on the history of the Netherlands, because it indicates the
expectations placed upon them by their congregations and by their colleagues. Professors of
theology, regional synods and even local congregations expected that their ministers would
continue to grow in knowledge and wisdom through the acquisition of books, and ministers
in turn took the information they gathered from their libraries and sought to encourage
greater godliness in all who would listen to their sermons or read their printed texts.
Protestant ministers worked under two primary assumptions: that Scripture was the final
authority of faith and life, and that the Christian faith was an all-encompassing worldview.
These assumptions induced many ministers to read books of nearly every variety. They
devoted precious time and money to acquiring and writing books. They built libraries and
they wrote books to fulfill their divine calling to guard the faith as it was entrusted to them
and to encourage others in sound doctrine.

Date of Award	30 Jul 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Andrew Pettegree (Supervisor)