Axel Oxenstierna and books

Sixteenth Century Journal

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 705-728

  Thomson, Erik ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950665348     PISSN: 03610160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20478484     Document Type: Article

References (105)

1. Svenska Riksrådets Protokoll (hereafter SRP), ed. Severin Bergh et al. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1878-1923), 14:390 (1 November 1650), "Hvad är en academisch persohn, en tröja och par böxor och några böcker."
2. Seneca Epistulae morales 2.3. See Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 24-27
3. Gunnar Wetterberg has written the first full modern biography of Oxenstierna, Kanslern: Axel Oxenstierna i sin tid (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002). The Swedish Royal Archives and the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities have resumed the project of editing his papers and letters, and some images of letters, transcriptions, and a database are now available at http://www.statensarkiv.se/default.asp?id=8359&refid=4095 (accessed 2 August 2007). The database compiles his extant correspondence and concentrates on the public correspondence, not the book notes, lists, and familial letters used in this paper
4. I.A.A. Thompson, "The Institutional Background to the Rise of the Minister-Favourite," in The World of the Favourite, ed. J. H. Elliott and L.W.B. Brockliss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 13-25
5. Robert Damien, Bibliothèque et État: Naissance d'une raison politique dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1995)
6. "Written word" is better than "print culture" given the importance of manuscript collections in noble libraries. See Christian Callmer, Königin Christina, ihre Bibliothekare und ihre Handschriften: Beiträge zur europäischen Bibliotheksgeschichte (Stockholm: Kungliga, 1977)
7. T.A. Birrell, English Monarchs and Their Books: From Henry VII to Charles II: The Panizzi Lectures, 1986 (London: British Library, 1987)
8. Jörg Wollenberg, Les trios Richelieu, servir Dieu, le Roi et la Raison, trans. Edouard Husson (Paris: Guibert, 1995)
9. and James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives (London: British Library, 2004)
10. The pioneering work was done by Arne Losman, Carl Gustaf Wrangel och Europa: Studier I kulturförbindelser kring en 1600-talsmagnat (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1980)
11. See also the special issue on "Cultural Traffic and Cultural Transformations around the Baltic Sea, 1450-1720," in Scandinavian Journal of History 28 (2003): 151-272
12. and Susan Lewis Hammond, Daniel Riches, and Erik Thomson, "Emulation and Competition: Early Modern Scandinavian Transformations of European Examples," Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005): 327-30, and the references there
13. See, generally, Margareta Björkman, "A Survey of Swedish Research on the History of Books," Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte 20 (1995): 89-124
14. For the seventeenth century, see Otto Walde, Storhetstidens Litterära Krigsbyten: En Kulturhistorisk-Bibliografisk Studie (Uppsala, 1916-20)
15. "Rosenhanarne som boksamlare: På grundval av forskningar i Gyllenhielmska biblioteket skildrade," in Symbola Litteraria: Hyllningsskrift till Uppsala Universitet vid Jubelfesten 1927 (Uppsala, 1927), 69-101
16. and "Om Georg Stiernhielms Bibliotek: Några Anteckningar," in Donum Grapcanum: Festskrift tillägnad överbibliotekarien Anders Grape på Sextiofemårsdagen den 7 mars 1945 (Uppsala, 1945), 107-41
17. See also Arne Losman, "Drei schwedische Eüchersammeler des 17. Jahrhunderts: Per Brahe d. J., Carl Gustaf Wrangel und Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie," in Arte et Marte: Studien zur Adelskultur des Barockzeitalters in Schwedne, Dänemark und Schleswig-Holstein, ed. Dieter Lohmeier (Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz, 1978)
18. See also Nils Runeby, Monarchia Mixta: Maktfördelningsdebatt i Sverige under den tidigare stormaktstiden (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1962), 194
19. Sam. Clason, "Studier i 1600-talets svenska statsrätt: Johannes Loccenius och hans lära om rikets 'fundamentallagar,'" Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 4 (1901): 109-28, 176-97
20. and Stig Axel Fridolf Jägerskiöld, Utländsk Juridisk Litteratur i Svenska Juristbibliotek från tiden före år 1734 (Stockholm: Göteborg, 1965)
21. These lists are not used to reconstruct a catalogue of Oxenstierna's library; such an (impossible?) project would require comparing the lists, the manuscript catalogues of the Tidö library in the Riksarkivet (hereafter RA), Tidö Arkivet, vol. 2, from the second half of the seventeenth century, and eighteenth-century printed sale catalogues of which Catalogus Librorum Qui in Bibliothecis Illustrium gorundam Virorum hoc tempore repriuntur, & Holmiae vel simul, tota Bibliotheca, vel separatim per partes, indigenis et exoticis, jam nunc usque ad finem mensis Junnii anni subsequentis venduntur (Stockholm, 1732), in the Kunliga Biblioteket's (hereafter KB) uncatalogued collection, with the collections of Swedish libraries and those abroad. It is some testimony to Otto Walde's energy that he had begun to compare the 1732 catalogue with books that he found in libraries; see his ex libris register, kept in Uppsala University Library's manuscript department. On the fate of Oxenstierna's library after his death, see Tham, Axel Oxenstierna, xviii
22. C.M. Carlander, Svenska Bibliotek och Ex-Libris, 2nd ed. (Stockholm, 1904), 2:56-59
23. Walde, Storhetstidens Litterära Krigsbyten, 2:44-45
24. and O. Walde, "De Svenska Bibliotekens Historia," in Svend Dahls Bibliotekshandbok översatt, bearbetad och med bidrag av svenska fackmän, utgiven av Samuel E. Bring ... (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1931), 95-98
25. O. Walde, "De Svenska Bibliotekens Historia," 97. More precision is impossible
26. Arne Losman, "En tämnielig myckenhet sköna böcker: Några anteckningar från brahewrangelska delen av Skoklosters bibliotek," Biblis (1967): 127-44, and slightly greater than the approximately 250 books owned by Henrik Matsson Huggut
27. Tehri Kiiskinen, The Library of the Finnish Nobleman, Royal Secretary and Trustee Henrik Matsson (ca. 1540-1617) (Helsinki: Academica Scientiarum Fennica, 2003), 21-25
28. Bo Bennich-Björkman, "Eliternas gata och handeln på broar och marknader: Systemen för spridning av böcker i Sverige, 1600-1850," in Bokens vägar: Seelig & Co 150 år, ed. Jan-Erik Pettersson (Solna: AB Seeligo, 1998), 13-81
29. For comparison, the library of the de Thou contained 6,600 volumes in 1617, 8,000 in 1643, and probably passed 10,000 volumes at midcentury. See Antoine Coron, "'Ut prosint aliis' Jacques-Augustuste de Thou et sa bibliothèque," in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, Les bibliothèques sous l'Ancien Régime, 1530-1789 (Paris: Promodis, 1988), 107
30. The 1643 inventory of Richelieu's library at the Palais Cardinal contained approximately 6,500 volumes; see Wollenberg, Les trios Richelieu, 56
31. Oxenstierna could not compete with Mazarin's library of the 1640s. See Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 119-27
32. See Jacques Revel, "Entre deux mondes: La bibliothèque de Gabriel Naudé" in Le pouvoir des bibliothèque: La mémoire des livres en Occident, ed. Marc Baratin and Christian Jacob (Paris: Albin Michelle, 1996), 243-50
33. and Grafton, Commerce with the Classics, 22-33
34. Gabriel Naude, Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1644), 18
35. Naudé, Advis pour dresser, 106-7, 110-12
36. Naudé, Advis pour dresser, 148
37. Lars Gustafsson, "Den litterate adelsmannen i den äldre stormaktstidens litteratur," Lychnos (1959): 1-39
38. and idem, "Dienstadel, Tugendadel, und Politesse mondaine: Aristokratische Bildungsideale in der schwedischen Großmachtzeit," in Arte et Marte, 109-27
39. See Losman, Carl Gustaf Wrangel och Europa
40. and Bennich-Björkman, "Eliternas gata," 13-81
41. Letter of Bengt Baaz to Johan Casimir, quoted in Hilding Rosengren, Karl X Gustaf före Tronbestigningen: Pfalzgrefven intill Tronföljarvalet 1649 (Uppsala: K. W. Appelberg, 1913), 15: "nya auctores, vackra libri, globos and mappas ... på studentevis."
42. AOSB, ser. 1, 1:665, "gambla myntt, skoupenningar och andre rariteter ... finnes här och där i mine chattuller och contorer, doch enkannerligen i ett gammalt stoort skriffskriijn." On writing chests, see Johan Knutsson, Kabinettskåp på Skokloster (Bålsta: Skokloster Slott, 1985), 10-13
43. RA, Tidö arkivet, vol. 2, "Catalog på Biblioteket opprättadt opå Tydöö Anno 1687 in Januario af V. Assessoren Peter Bromeen, Magist. Johan Wallenius och Secret. Lagerbohm." The furnishings of the library in this catalog mainly date from after Axel Oxenstierna's time, as it includes a "glaaßSkåp" which must postdate him. See William Karlson, Ståt och Vardag i Stormaktstidens Herremanshem (Lund: G. W. K. Gleerup, 1945), 186-87
44. and Peter Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 306
45. Krzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs, et curieux: Paris, Venise: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1987)
46. It might be noted that Petrus Piscator, the Jena professor of Hebrew and theology in whose house Axel and his brother lived in 1603, wrote a biblical verse in Hebrew in Axel's Album amicorum. See Lotte Kuras, ed., Axel Oxenstiemas Album amicorum und seine eigenen Stammbucheintrüge: Reproduktion mit Transkription, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets, Historie och Antikvitets Akadamien, 2004), 131
47. I. Collijn, "En Axel Oxenstierna tillhörig bok i universitetsbiblioteket i Prag," Nordisk Tidskrift för Bok- och Biblioteksväsen 17 (1930): 173-74
48. List among "Bok kataloger," heading "aff deb tryckta Cathalogo"; Arne Losman notes that Axel's cousin used these catalogues in "Bibliotek i morgonljus: Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstiernas och Anna Banérs böcker på Mörby," in Ericsbergsarkivet: Sveriges förnämsta enskilda handskriftssamling, Biblis Biblioteket 4 (Stockholm, 1999), 3
49. See most generally Günter Richter, "Buchhändlerische Kataloge vom 15. bis um die Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts," in Bücherkataloge als buchgeschichtliche Quellen in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Reinhard Wittman (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 33-59
50. and B. Van Selm, Een menighte trefflijcke Boekken: Nederlandse boekhandelscatalogi in het begin van de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht: H&S, 1987)
51. A.O.'s memorial for Gabriel [Gabrielsson] Oxenstierna (12 January 1643), AOSB, ser. 1, 1:344-46, "manuscripta, och dee bästa authores ... förbättra bibliotheken uthi Rijkzens academier och gymnasier."
52. See Walde, Storhetstidens, 1:20-21
53. Jozef IJsewijn, "Humanistic Relations between Scandinavia and the Low Countries," in Reformation and Latin Literature in Northern Europe (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996), 1-18
54. Kuras, Axel Oxenstiernas Album, 5
55. Nils Ahnlund, "Drottingen och kanslern," in Tradition och Historia (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1956), 132-33
56. For dedications, see Stina Hansson, "Böckernas beskyddare under svenskt 1600-tal," in Klient och Patron: Befordringsvägar och ståndscirkulation i det gamla Sverige, ed. Magnus von Platen (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1988), 64-74
57. Walde's ex libris. The book is in KB, Raritets-Kammaren: Theodor Graswinckel, De Iure Maiestatis Dissertatio. (Hagae Comitis: Theodori Maire, 1642)
58. Christina's book and the minority government's copy were sent by Peter Spirinck; Oxenstierna's copy was sent in 1644 by Michel Le Blon; RA, Oxen. Sam. E645, letter dated Amsterdam, 7 May 1644. On Spieringk's role, see Badloch Noldus, "Unvergleichbarer Leibhaber: Peter Spierinck, the Art-Dealing Diplomat," Scandinavian Journal of History 31(2006): 173-85
59. E. Wrangel, Sveriges Litterära Förbindelser med Holland: Särdeles under 1600-talet (Lund, 1897), 13, 30-31
60. See also Badeloch Noldus, "Dealings in Politics and Art: Agents between Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Stockholm," Scandinavian Journal of History 28 (2003): 215-25
61. Arne Danielsson, "Erinringar om ett försvunnet porträtt av Axel Oxenstierna av David Beck," Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 61 (1992): 145-51, at 150
62. On Le Blon, see Karl Erik Steneberg, "Le Blon, Quellinus, Millich och 'den svenska hovparnassen,'" Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap 28(1952): 54-105
63. and idem, Kristinatidens måleri (Malmö: Allhems, 1955), 59-76
64. Salvius to Oxenstierna, RA, Oxen. Sam. E708 b, Hamburg, 20 June 1640. Books could also be telling signs of disloyalty. When Schmältz left Swedish service, Salvius thought it important to inform Oxenstierna that among the agent's books was a "Papitisk, Jesuitae Canisij Cathechismus." The letter is in the same volume, Hamburg, 14 December 1639
65. Fabian Persson, Servants of Fortune: The Swedish Court between 1598 and 1721 (Lund: Wallin & Dalholm, 1999), is interested more in the court as a place of brokerage than as a cultural location
66. O. Walde, "Om Georg Stiernhielms Bibliotek," 110-11
67. Isaac Rothovius's son Abraham lodged in Oxenstierna's residence in Stockholm, immediately following his studies and waiting for some permanent position; he waited till death. AOSB, ser. 2, 12:261-64
68. Little is known about the lives and fortunes of noble pages; see Esther Jacobson, "Ett aristokratisk 'upp-fostringsverk': De kungliga pagema i 1600-och 1700-talens Sverige," Rig 18 (1935): 188-206
69. and Frieda Gallati, "Der Königlich Schwedische in Teutschland geführte Krieg" des Bogislav Philipp von Chemnitz (Frauenfeld, 1902), 12
70. Gallati, "Der Königlich Schwedische in Teutschland geführte Krieg," chap. 2
71. The book was published under the alias of Hippolithus a Lapide, and the first edition states that it was printed in 1640, before Chemnitz seems to have arrived in Sweden. However, internal evidence, as well as some statements of Hermann Conring, point to the book's being published a year later and suggest Chemnitz was in Sweden during its composition (Gallati, "Der Königlich Schwedische in Teutschland geführte Krieg," 10-11, esp. n3)
72. The work accords with Oxenstierna's position about the peace; see Fritz Dickmann, Der Westfälische Frieden (Münster: Ashendorf, 1959), 136-37
73. Chemnitz's work has been most probingly studied by Rudolf Hoke, "Staatsräson und Reichsverfassung bei Hippolithus a Lapide," Staatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politischen Begriffs, ed. Roman Schnur (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1975), 407-25
74. and set in one of its contexts by Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland: Reichspublizistik und Policeywissenschaft 1600-1800 (Munich: Beck, 1988), 1:203-7
75. On Oxenstierna's Stockholm residences see Sten Karling, "Axel Oxenstiemas Palats i Stockholm," Samfundet S:t Eriks Årsbok (1933): 41-76
76. John Bernström, "Fakta om Axel Oxenstiernas palats i Stockholm," Samfundet S:t Eriks årsbok (1955): 79-90
77. and Claes Ellehag, Palatsen i Stockholm under stonnaktstiden (Lund: Signum, 1998), 31-35
78. AOSB, ser. 1, 4:336-37 (20 January 1629)
79. Gabriel Gustafssons's letters are in AOSB, ser. 2, 3:168-69, "sa haffuer jag i hvalffuen ståendhes mine besthe saker och eliest i camrarne mine böcker," and 172, "ded jag ock väl ähr till fredz medh.... Allenast sosom min B. sijr, att jag hafver mine böker i mine bokekammare liggendhe och eliest någott ded våre i hvalffuedt ståendhe, beder att där motte sijs efter, att mig icke skeer någon skadha aff ovulett folk, som kanskee Felttherren icke mindhre hafver ähn jag."
80. Orest Ranum, "The Refuges of Intimacy," in A History of Private Life, vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 207-63, at 217
81. Åke Nisbeth, "Tidö," in Slott och Herresäten i Sverige: Närke, Västmanland (Malmö: Allhem, 1969), 396-97
82. For one attempt to locate Oxenstierna's library at Tidö, see F. U. Wrangel, Anteckningar om Rytterns Socken (Stockholm, 1886), 153-54n1. A 1692 catalogue from Tidö, written shortly before the renovations, listed some books as being located in the "kleine Bibliothec." RA, Tidö arkivet 2, "Catalogus und Inventarium so uber deß hoch wolgebohren Herren Graffwen herr Graff Carl Gustav zu Tydöön stehend kleine Bibliothec in gewist ordnung gesetze büchern, vnd waß alles mehr in solchen gemach zu finden von mir Georg Ludwig Chirsteuste A 1692 in Sommar zu besagten Tydöön verfertiget worden."
83. Nordberg comments that Tidö's and the Fiholm project's "Bostadsvåning och den översta våningen hade i huvudsak samma planlösning." Tord Olsson Nordberg, De la Vallée: En arkitektfamilj i Frankrike, Holland och Sverige (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970), 220
84. See discussions and plans in Erik Lundberg, Byggnadskosten i Sverige: Sengotik och renässans 1400-1650 (Stockholm: Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1948), 540-41
85. and Claes Ellehag, Fem svenska stormanshem under 1600-talet (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1994), 77
86. the writing cabinet in Erik Gyllenstierna's Nynäs was also off the main dining room. Gabriel Magnus De la Gardie referred to the room at Makalös that had contained his father's curioisity cabinet as the "Bibliothec"; his "studerkammare" was off the palace's largest presentation room, next to his bedchamber, but this was in Stockholm, where views of the courtyard would be less important. Göran Axel-Nilsson, Makalös: Fältherren greve Jacob De la Gardies hus i Stockholm Stockholmsmonografier (Borås: Stockholmsstad, 1984), 132-33, 138-39
87. See George Hoffmann, Montaigne's Career (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 8-38
88. Dona Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)
89. and P. Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration, 303-15, for its spread
90. Montaigne, Essais, 2.10
91. Hoffmann, Montaigne's Career, 8-38
92. Bernard Beugnot, Le discours de la retraite au XVIIe siècle «Loin du monde et du bruit» (Paris: PUF, 1996)
93. See, for example, Nannerl Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 98-116, for the argument that Montaigne's withdrawal, the moment of the birth of "modern individualism," was a necessary counterpart of absolutism; the cultivation of the person became a poor substitute for civic activism, and narcissism thus entailed a species of consent to the silence of the tyrant
94. The following section is generally indebted to recent works in the history of reading. I found Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker," Introduction: Discovering the Renaissance Reader," in their Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-37, a useful summary of the current historiographical moment
95. the basic work on neo-Aristotelianism remains Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983)
96. See the classic Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)
97. and more recently the work of Anne Moss, The Printed Commonplace-Book and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
98. and "The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-Book," Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (1998): 421-36
99. and, in Sweden, the excellent Leif Åslund, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie och vältaligheten (Uppsala: Litteraturvetenskapliga Institutionen, 1992), 31-42
100. See Ann Blair. "Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 1550-1700," Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 11-28
101. and idem, "Note Taking as an Art of Transmission," Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): 85-107
102. Bulstrode Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, ed. Charles Morton (London, 1855), 303
103. Kurt Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken: Studier i Svensk Barock (Stockholm: Almquist & Wicksell, 1968), 230, "en riktig bild av hur 1600-talets Politiker upplevde reträtten: deras många gånger odiskutabla fromhet och längtan att hänge sig åt ett inre liv stod i olöslig konflikt till den ärelystnad och politiska målmedvetenhet som genomsyrade hela den aristokratiska livsmiljön. Den stoiskt fägade resignationen och likgiltigheten inför världens domar kunde aldrig helt dölja hoppet om att kunna återvända till offentligheten och makten."
104. Studies of how laypeople read the Bible are comparatively rare; see, however, Kevin Sharpe, "Reading Revelations: Prophecy, Hermeneutics and Politics in Early Modern Britain," in Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, 122-63
105. "Dagbok, förd vid 1650års Riksdag i Stockholm, af Riksdagsmannen, Doctor Jonas Petri, Pastor i Hassle," in Handlingar rörande Skandinaviens Historia (Stockholm: Hörbergska Boktryckeriet, 1837), 22:60-253: at 111 (9 August) "sadhe Her Arffwid sig förwisso haffua hördt aff een sanfärdigh mans berettelse, ath een fömemblig Herre, dhen han dhå inthet nempna wille, skulle haffua sagt, ath om ständerna alle sampteligen lempade sigh effter dhen helige Prophetens Ezechielis ord, beskreffne i dhet 45 capitelet, venu 7, 8 & 9, dhå skulle dhet alt wäll gåå; och förstod någorlunda, ath Hans Excellentia Rickzcanzleren dhetha skall haffua sagt."