Of Lions, Avengers, and the Spirit of Amy Cooper:

Peril in the Study.

"We must reserve a backshop,
wholly our own and entirely free,
wherein to settle our true liberty,
our principal solitude and retreat."
— Michel de Montaigne,
"Of Solitude," Essays (1580), p. 109.

By Ron Fritze
February 25, 2008

One of the more vivid memories of my freshmen year* at Concordia College in River Forest was getting invited to the home of one of my professors, Walter Bouman. He was a professor of theology and had a Th.D. from the University of Heidelberg, which seemed pretty heady stuff to me at the time and, in fact, it was.

Professor Bouman was a very learned man. During the evening he invited me and the other two students up to see his study, which was a long narrow room that had been built over his garage. It was lined with books to the bursting point with windows at both ends. His desk was free-standing and covered with papers and books. Next to the desk stood a carousel bookcase, brimming with reference works.

In Search of a Study of One's Own.

At that stage in life, I was already a booklover. I didn't just want read books, I wanted to own them.

It seems like Professor Bouman's study would have been a wonderful place for him to work — and I am sure it was. Things weren't perfect; never are. An extra heater sat on the study floor to overcome the cold wrought by the room's architectural flaw of having three walls exposed to the outdoors. Intended most likely to serve as an attic storage area, the study was hard to heat, a minor inconvenience given the many wonders displayed there.

When I went on to graduate school, I dreamed of the day when I would have my own study. In my last three abodes, my dream came to fruition. I have actually managed to raise-up nice studies, and by doing so to satisfy one of ruling passions and assuage the mundane demands of the academic life.

I don't think I am alone in wanting a study. It is an academic's sort of thing, although I get the impression that scientists tend to dream of their own lab, rather than their own study.

A Place of Retreat.

The first time I read the Montaigne quote displayed at the beginning of this essay, I actually thought he was advocating that every man needed a study or a workshop, which is how the quote sounds in isolation. In fact, in the context of the whole essay, Montaigne is really talking about the ability to retreat inside of oneself and be self-sufficient, but I am sure he would readily concede that a study is a pretty good place to achieve that condition.

It is important to remember that the opportunity to have a book-lined study is a relatively recent pleasure. Prior to the invention of the printing press, private collections of books were largely the prerogative of kings, high-ranking churchmen, or very, very wealthy aristocrats. As the following quote from Chaucer shows, on the eve of printing, the Oxford clerk dreamed of a personal library of a mere twenty books.

"A clerk from Oxford was with us also,
Who'd turned to getting knowledge, long ago
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For he would rather have at his bed's head
Some twenty books, all bound in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery."

       —Geoffrey Chaucer, "Prologue: The Clerk," Canterbury Tales (c1390s)
 

A Lion in Jerome's Study.

St. Jerome is the patron saint of libraries as well as the translator of the Bible into Latin, the venerable Vulgate version. Hagiographic paintings and religious art frequently depict him at work, translating in his study. But if the paintings were done prior to the advent of printing, they seldom show him with many books around him.

There are certain items that do appear in these paintings because they are iconographic symbols. One of these items is a cardinal's red hat, which symbolizes Jerome's leadership in the Church. In fact, the cardinal's hat is an anachronism because Jerome was never a cardinal.

Another prevalent symbol is a lion. Yes, Jerome has a lion in his study! Now you might be guessing that the lion is the peril alluded to in the title of this essay, but you'd only be partly right. Legend has it that a limping lion came roaring into St. Jerome's study, but the room in question was probably a monastic scriptorium, not St. Jerome's personal study. Everyone but St. Jerome ran off in terror. Jerome welcomed the beast and examined its paw. The lion, sensing a holy man, allowed the examination. Jerome found a thorn embedded painfully in the lion's paw and managed to pull it out. The lion was much relieved, and from that point onward, the grateful creature became St. Jerome's loyal companion and guardian.

He Was a Well-Mannered Cat.

The closest I came to having a lion in my study was the presence of my faithful feline companion Flacius, a big black cat, who loved to jump on my desk and watch me work, or just take a lazy cat nap. Flacius was also a well-mannered cat in that he did not insist on sleeping right on top of the pages of my manuscripts. As for Jerome's lion in the study, the best advice is, don't try this at home kids.

For most of us, a study should be a place of contemplation, or creative work, or discovery — or even a refuge for the solitude alluded to by Montaigne. In that light, a study should be peaceful and calm and safe. Alas, that's not always the case.

The study in the board game Clue is not the only study where a detective might find a Mr. Body. This was particularly true in the early modern era of Peru. When the vast empire of the Incas fell to Francisco Pizarro and his companions, a small number of men, isolated from the mother country of Spain, became the lords of a fantastically wealthy land. Quarrels over plunder led to fighting, and fighting led to assassinations, and assassination led to civil war among the conquistadors. As more and more Spaniards arrived to seek their fortunes, the quickest way to wealth for many was to position one's ambitions on the backs of the conquered Native Americans.

The Mayor and the Conquistador:
A Tale of Punishment and Vengeance.

Laws were passed to protect the natives but laws are difficult to enforce in a lawless land. The chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca tells the story of how in 1548, a party of two hundred Spanish soldiers traveled from Potosi to Tucma, using involuntary labor provided by native porters to carry their equipment. It was illegal for the soldiers to press the natives into forced labor, but when the alcalde mayor of Potosi came out to inspect the expedition, he let all of the Spanish go but the last person, a conquistador named Aguirre, who was using two native porters.

Finding Aguirre guilty of breaking the laws regarding native labor, the alcalde fined the impecunious adventurer a hefty sum. Unable to pay, Aguirre faced the punishment of two hundred lashes. A desperate Aguirre tried to find a patron to pay his fine but failed. Poor but proud, Aguirre asked to be hanged rather than whipped. The alcalde declined the offer. Other Spaniards in the town implored the alcalde to remit the sentence. He refused. A delay of one week was all the alcalde would offer, but Aguirre insisted that the sentence be carried out as planned. Keep in mind, this sort of whipping was a very public event. The prisoner was stripped naked and mounted on an ass, which was led on a set route around the town with lashes being administered at predetermined points along the route. Aguirre took his punishment, but he swore that he would kill the alcalde, a licentiate named Esquivel.

How Far Can He Flee?

When Esquivel left office, his friends warned him that Aguirre intended to kill him, so he tried to put some distance between himself and Aguirre. He moved three or four hundred leagues away, which would have been around a thousand miles, but the distance 'tween the punisher and the punished was not enough. The relentless Aguirre followed. Esquivel moved again. Aguirre pursued with vengeance. The cat and mouse game continued for three years and four months, when at last a determined Esquivel decided to settle down in Cuzco, where he felt some degree of safety because it was the town with the sternest judge in all of Peru. As an added precaution Esquivel outfitted himself with chain mail armor. Undeterred, Aguirre made his way to Cuzco.

Friends warned Esquivel of Aguirre's arrival and offered protection, but he would not accept it. He had taken up residence in a comfortable house, which included a study to house his private library. Licentiate Esquivel enjoyed reading in his study, and that proved to be his undoing.

Aguirre entered Esquivel's house along a second floor balcony. Searching the house for his prey, he found the hapless licentiate asleep over a book in his study. The vengeful Aguirre stabbed Esquivel in the right temple, killing his longtime adversary. The angry Spaniard also attempted to stab his victim several times in the body, but the chain mail prevented the blade from inflicting further damage to the corpse.

Dazed by what he had done, Aguirre did not attempt to seek refuge for his crime in a church or monastery, but he found his escape nonetheless. Sympathizers hid him and then spirited him out of town. Some scholars have suggested that the Aguirre in this story is actually the Lope de Aguirre, who infamously led the expedition of Pedro de Ursua to destruction in the Amazon and Orinoco basin.

A Guard Dog Would Help.

The lesson is obvious: If some homicidal maniac is trying to kill you, and if you must hole-up in your study, then get a guard dog and install better locks than the ones in Esquivel's scholarly sanctuary in old Cuzco. And don't forget to gather a supply of fresh coffee and a book that won't put you to sleep.

Some perils in the study originate within the home but extend into the world at large through the power of the written word. The printing press made books significantly less expensive and available to the humble scholar, although most books were still hardly cheap. Printing also made it possible for more people to be authors. A case in point was the posting of the 95 Theses on a cathedral door in Germany in 1517 by a poor monk with a few books, some potent radical ideas, and the new fangled Gutenberg printing press awaiting exploitation. The Protestant Reformation began when Luther composed his 95 Theses, which gained immensely in their impact when they were translated into the vernacular and printed for popular consumption. Luther's ideas spread across Germany like a wild fire.

That same year of 1517 (probably; the date in not entirely agreed upon by scholars) marked the birth of a poor boy in Oxford, England, named Thomas Cooper. He managed to attend local schools as a chorister and proved to be a quite able Latinist. Entering Oxford University, he earned a fellowship at Magdalen College in 1543. Because he was a convinced Protestant, he did not take up the Holy Orders of the ministry, which would have allowed him to keep his fellowship. He wanted to get married, too, but entering into the state of connubial bliss would have invalidated his fellowship. Cooper's solution? He resigned the fellowship in 1545 and married a woman named Amy in 1546.

Amy Has Less Scholarly Interests.

Cooper also engaged in scholarship, revising a chronicle of world history and editing updates of Thomas Eliot's Latin dictionary. During the reign of Edward VI, the religious situation was far more congenial to his beliefs, which allowed him to gain the mastership of the school associated with Magdalen College. This position provided him with status and a good income.

Unfortunately, things were not all that happy in the Cooper home. Amy engaged in sexual infidelity with at least two men in Oxford, including a canon of Christ Church, who was placed under a legal order to avoid her company. Gossip buzzed around Oxford, but Cooper proved to be a stoic and ignored his wife's betrayal. Amy, however, did not have much sympathy for Cooper's life of scholarship, which she felt caused him to neglect her by working on his dictionary most evenings. As John Aubrey related the story,

"When he had halfe-donne it, she had the opportunity to gett into his studie, tooke all his paines [sheets of paper] out in her lap, and threw it into the fire, and burnt it."

It is possible that about this time Cooper might have paused to contemplate whether there might be something to be said for the celibacy of medieval monks and priests.

He Forgives — and Goes Back to Work.

Officials at Oxford University offered Cooper a divorce from Amy, but he refused and forgave his wife both her adultery and her arson. The indefatigable** Cooper also went back to work on his dictionary. By 1565 had produced his great Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae. Cooper continued to rise in the Elizabethan church, serving as Bishop of Lincoln from 1571-1584 and Bishop of Winchester from 1584 until his death in 1594. His contemporaries respected and even loved the saintly Cooper, who, true to form, provided amply for Amy in his will.

In this, our technological age, the dangers of an irate Amy Cooper are lessened by our ability to buy some extra flash drives, back up the files, and store them in a safe and secret place. Oh yeah!

The scholar's study is typically a place of intellectual adventure. Sometimes, however, it can be the site of a scholarly misadventure.

Consider that early printed books were often very heavy. The Bible was a huge book when it was printed with the technology and materials available before the nineteenth century. The rag paper of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is wonderful stuff. Go into a library with books from that era. Open one up and you will find you are holding a sturdy artifact. The paper, while it has yellowed a little with the passage of three, four, or even five hundred years, remains supple and does not crack or flake.

The Cheap Sub Is Indeed Cheap.

Compare those books, wrought by the early printer's attention to craftsmanship, with many of the paperbacks and cloth-bound tomes we own today. With no thanks to their acidic wood-based paper, these modern books are poor, fragile, and brittle things — and without heroic intervention, few if any will be around for too much longer. The offending pulp paper was developed in the nineteenth century as a cheap substitute for rag paper. And cheap it is.

Another nineteenth century invention was India paper. It is a very thin but sturdy stock, the sort used in most modern Bibles. India paper did not let ink bleed through to the other side, which could render a page of print unreadable. It was employed to make big books smaller and lighter.

Because sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printers used only the durable rag paper, their big books were both large and delivered in many volumes. As such they took up considerable space and also weighed a lot.

For anyone who owns a large number of books, shelves are a necessity. And they must be sturdy. Shelving boards of any length have to be fairly thick, and it helps if they are made from a harder wood. Oak is good, but pine is softer and can sag under the strain of heavy books. Bookshelves also need to be firmly anchored to the wall lest they fall over and damage the wall, objects in the study, or the unfortunate reader. Some scholars tried the skimp on the book shelves and the results could be disastrous. The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-1691) told how,

"As I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books broke down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down on every side of me, and not one of them hit me save upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight and greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, one of the shelves right over my head having the six volumes of Dr. Walton's Oriental Bible and all Austin's [St. Augustine of Hippo] Works, and the Bibliotheca Patrum and Marlorate, etc."

Baxter had a close call but the Dutch theologian and historian Gerhard Johann Vossius (1577-1649) was not so lucky. A collapse of some bookshelves in his Amsterdam study killed him.

A Dog, A Lion, and a Carpenter.

What have we learned from this perambulation through the perils in the study of the early modern era? First, if you get a conquistador angry, don't fall asleep in your study, but if you do, get a good guard dog or St. Jerome's lion. Second, if you are an author and you have reason to believe your spouse might be unhappy with you, keep your manuscript in a secure place. Third, hire a good carpenter when you put bookshelves in your study. It might be a good idea to store the larger books on the lower shelves.

In this age of modern technology, the books in our libraries will soon all be on Kindles. Then, some time in the future, a nuclear pulse or solar flare will wipe out all human knowledge. The spirit of Amy Cooper will have floated above the waters of the deep. At that point a chorus of voices will cry out from the void, "Tolle lege, tolle lege." It won't be an angelic choir, either, but the voices of members of the American Library Association.

NOTES:

* I will forego discussing such adventures as the guys from Milwaukee teaching me how to shot beer, seeing a roommate off at the Chicago bus terminal and surviving, and the terror of eating my first and last White Castle hamburger.
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** This marks first opportunity in my life to use the word "indefatigable" in a piece of writing. For the longest time, its usage seemed confined to being used as the name of an eighteenth century British warship.
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Click on the black panther to read Ron Fritze's previous essay,
"Of Madoc and Monitors: A Trip to Mobile Bay."