Learned Love
Proceedings of the Emblem Project Utrecht Conference on
Dutch Love Emblems and the Internet (November 2006)
Edited by
Els Stronks and Peter Boot,
assisted by
Dagmar Stiebral
DANS Symposium Publications 1
The Hague, 2007
ARCHIVEREN VAN DIGITAAL ACADEMISCH ERFGOED
iii
Contents
he Dutch love emblem on the internet: an introduction –
Els Stronks and Peter Boot 1
PART 1 THE DUTCH LOvE EmBLEm
Creator of the earliest collection of love emblems? – Alison Saunders 13
Commonplaces of Catholic love – Arnoud visser 33
Encoding the emblematic tradition of love – marc van vaeck 49
Churches as indicators of a larger phenomenon – Els Stronks 73
he Spanish epigrams in vaenius’s Amoris divini emblemata – Sagrario López Poza 93
Love emblems and a web of intertextuality – Jan Bloemendal 111
he Ambacht van Cupido from 1615 in Wroclaw (Poland) –
Stefan Kiedron and Joanna Skubisz 119
investing in your relationship – Arie Jan Gelderblom 131
he love emblem applied – Peter Boot 143
PART 2 THE DiGiTiSATiON OF THE EmBLEm
he Emblem Project Utrecht as a knowledge site – Els Stronks 151
Traditional editorial standards and the digital edition – Edward vanhoutte 157
he technical backbone of the Emblem Project Utrecht – Johan Tilstra 175
Digitising Dutch love emblems – Peter m. Daly 183
Setting the emblem schema to work – homas Stäcker 201
mesotext. Framing and exploring annotations – Peter Boot 211
Colour plates
Commonplaces of Catholic love. Otto van Veen, Michel
Hoyer and St Augustine between humanism and the
Counter Reformation
Arnoud Visser, University of St Andrews
What does an innovative scholar have in common with the mythological igure of
Narcissus? his slightly disturbing comparison was irst made not by one of the fathers of modern psychology, Freud or Jung, but by the father of the emblem, the
legal humanist and antiquarian Andrea Alciato. in his emblem ‘Φιλαυτία’ (Fig.
1), he places the intellectual innovator on the therapeutic couch to deliver a grim
diagnosis: rejecting traditional methods and pursuing new doctrines are signs of
‘self-love’, a condition of serious intellectual decay (‘ingenii est marcor cladesque’)
of the type that caused the beautiful Narcissus to turn into the lower known for its
mind-numbing, narcotic qualities. Similarly, Alciato argues, scholars seeking new
paths are high on themselves, chasing merely their own shadows.1
Alciato’s appeal to ‘old learning’ is perfectly in tune with the humanist agenda
of restoring the classical heritage. For the humanists, the past should show the
way, that is, Classical Antiquity, rather than the new methods developed in the
medieval schools. hese modern scholastic inventions, they believed, were of no
practical use, and represented a form of intellectual autism. Yet ironically, Alciato’s Narcissus emblem also complicates the humanists’s own call for a return to
the sources, ‘Ad fontes!’. For how do they avoid the same trap? Can they be free
from the wrath of Echo and avoid their own relection in their studies? Obviously,
they could not and for this both the philologist and the cultural historian of today
should be very grateful. in fact, electronic editions of emblem books exemplify just
how fruitful it is to study the relationship between ancient models and the development of a new literary genre. indeed, it might even give us some dangerously
interesting relections of ourselves...
his paper is concerned with the uses of ancient sources in devotional love emblems. it proceeds from the idea that these emblems constitute a signiicant index
to religious practices in early seventeenth-century Europe. it is my aim to identify
some forms and functions of the devotional emblem, by focusing on two collections in particular: Otto van veen’s Amoris divini emblemata, and the little-studied, but more oten reprinted Flammulae amoris by michel Hoyer. in both collections the early Christian church father Augustine of Hippo takes a central place.
Why? What does the prominence of Augustine tell us of the confessional status of
these emblems? What are Augustine’s lessons in love and what do they teach us
about the learned side of the emblem? hese are the questions we will try to answer, but before doing so, we need to sketch the contours of Augustine’s authority
in the Reformation era.
1 Alciato 1988, emblem 69.
Arnoud Visser
33
Fig. 1: A. Alciato, ‘Φιλαυτία’, in: Emblema (Paris, 1584;
French Emblems at Glasgow site)
Augustine in the Reformation
modern historians have long recognised the importance of Augustine’s thought
for the Reformation. if it was ‘the explosive power of an idea’ that sparked the religious revolution, as Diarmaid macCulloch put it, this idea was in fact ‘a new
statement of Augustine’s ideas on salvation’. For the young Luther the church father was a seminal guide to scripture, in particular to the letters of Paul.2 However,
Luther’s opponents were equally informed by Augustinian thought, appealing in
particular to his ideas about obedience to the church and the sacraments.3 hus,
the Reformation could once be summarized as the ‘ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.’4 he dissemination
of his works illustrates the Church father’s importance. No fewer than sixteen monumental opera omnia editions were published in the sixteenth century, and, more
signiicantly, he beats the other fathers in patristic anthologies. more than sixty
percent of the quotations in these collections refer to his works, including texts
falsely attributed to him.5
2
3
4
5
34
Good overviews of Luther’s reception of Augustine are Krey 1999, and Hendrix 2004, 41-42.
See for example moore 1982.
macCulloch 2003, 107-114; mcGrath 1987, 175-182.
Index Aureliensis: Catalogus librorum sedecimo saeculo impressorum 1966, part 1, 1: 397-445;
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Augustine’s overwhelming presence has thus created the image of a monolithic
and impenetrable inluence. his is further reinforced by the use of the term ‘Augustinianism’. it is hardly surprising, therefore, that some have given up hope of
coming to a more precise picture of Augustine’s signiicance. in the Oxford Dictionary of the Reformation, Hans-Ulrich Delius, for example, considers it ‘a moot
question, for all the reformers owed an indirect debt to Augustinian traditions in
ways that today can no longer be calculated.’
i believe, however, that this scepticism should be challenged. Although ‘Augustinian traditions’ are surely diicult to disentangle, it is not evident that the
works of Augustine were equally inluential. indeed, the sheer diversity of ideas
for which Augustine’s authority was lined up contradicts a monolithic inluence.
What caused this diverse, even contrasting reception? Two factors in particular
seem to be responsible.
First, the vast range of the church father’s oeuvre. Apart from unique works like
his spiritual autobiography, Confessions and the encyclopaedic apology of City of
God, his works can roughly be organised around three polemics, that against the
manicheans, the Donatists and the Pelagians. Each of these polemics shaped Augustine’s thought in a diferent way, allowing the reader to select his favourite perspective. he broad scope of the oeuvre and his personal development make it in
fact diicult to speak of one Augustine.
Second, for his early modern readers Augustine was not just an author but an
authority. most of his readers did not plough through his full oeuvre but cited the
useful bits. in fact, they may never have read the ‘real’ Augustine at all. Countless
printed anthologies ofered a storehouse of quotations, useful for a wide variety
of arguments. his practice of commonplacing, a term referring to the rhetorical
concept of locus communis, thus qualiies the humanist claim of a return to the
sources.6 For scholars of the emblem this is nothing new. Emblem books were part
and parcel of this rhetorical culture, trading in portable quotations, which could
be applied to all sorts of arguments. And yet, although we know of their role in
producing emblem books, we have paid less attention to the implications of this
practice. What does it mean, for instance, when van veen quotes Augustine? his
is especially interesting in the ield of religious emblems, which appeared in an age
of increasing confessional divisions. he example of Augustine, who, as we just
saw, had a remarkably lexible authority in the Reformation, will help us to identify
the forms and functions of ‘learned love’.
Otto van Veen (1556-1629)
he irst collection of devotional love emblems, Otto van veen’s Amoris divini emblemata (Antwerp 1615), features the igures of Divine Love, represented as a haloed Cupid, and ‘Anima’, the human soul, in the form of a young girl. Perhaps less
Lane 1993, 69-95.
6 moss 1996, moss 2003.
Arnoud Visser
35
Figs. 2 and 3: O. vaenius, ‘Conscientia testis’, in: Amoris divini emblemata (EPU site)
obvious behind the presence of these allegorical children is the fatherly authority
of Augustine. in a total of 60 emblems he is cited no less than 82 times from twenty
diferent works.7 his makes him by far the most cited authority of the collection,
more prominent, for example, than the Bible. moreover, for roughly a quarter of
the emblems (16 examples) Augustine seems to have prompted the invention.8
A clear example is ‘Conscientia testis’ (‘Conscience is a witness’, van veen 1615,
110-111, Figs. 2 and 3), which exempliies Augustine’s seminal image of the two
cities. his image, most fully developed in his City of God, distinguished between
two spiritual realms, Jerusalem and Babylon. Citizens of the heavenly city were
those who loved God and obeyed His word, while self-love and presumed independence characterized the inhabitant of Babylon. in the pictura of van veen’s
emblem the diference between the two cities is clear: he high heavenly city with
its prominent church can only be reached by a steep, narrow road. On this road
stands Divine Love, his gaze ixed upon the cross he is holding in his hand, while
keeping a globe irmly under his foot. By contrast, in Babylon buildings are on ire,
creating huge black clouds above it. On the road to it, Cupid, treasuring a globe in
his arms, casts a beguiling look at Anima, who is examining her conscience. All
these components closely match the accompanying quotation from Augustine’s
Explanations of the Psalms.
7 his includes spurious works and untraceable quotations.
8 ‘Amor rectus’, ‘Amor aeternus’, ‘mentis amor sol dei’, ‘Amor docet’, ‘in unitate perfectio’, ‘Amor
vinculum perfectionis’, ‘Gravata respuit’, ‘Facit muniicum’, ‘Nihil amanti grave’, ‘Amoris lagellum dulce’, ‘Amor omnia rectiicat’, ‘Sitim extinguit’, ‘Odit timorem’, ‘Conscientia testis’, ‘Par
pari’ and ‘virtutum fons est et scaturigo’.
36
Commonplaces of Catholic love
How, then, does Augustine contribute to the religious identity of van veen’s
book? is ‘the great herald of divine love’, to borrow Karel Porteman’s words, simply
an unavoidable authority, is he a medium for a mystical message, or could we perhaps even detect that other persona, that of the ‘doctor of grace’?9
he irst step to an answer is to consider van veen’s historical world. he
Amoris divini emblemata appeared at a time when Protestant and Catholic authorities were ‘ishing for souls’, to use Adriaan van de venne’s famous image. With
Antwerp, its place of publication, we ind ourselves in one of the centres of the
Counter-Reformation in Europe. Apart from the activities of the religious orders,
such as the Jesuits with their emphasis on education, the secular authorities set up
their campaigns for recatholization and consolidation of their own power. in their
public devotion the archdukes Albert and isabella emphasised some elements in
particular, which may help us to position van veen. hese included the cult of the
Eucharist, the veneration of the virgin mary, especially the immaculate Conception and the Lady of Sorrows, as well as a renewed veneration of several carefully
selected local saints and relics.10 in communicating this devotional programme the
visual arts played a vital role.
How should we place van veen in this context? Against the backdrop of these
institutional campaigns, two characteristics of van veen’s style emerge: his humanist approach and his sober use of Catholic devotional imagery. van veen’s connection with humanist circles is well known.11 Although his loyalty to the Catholic
court of Albert and isabella is not in doubt – indeed his social credit at court was
associated with his status as a religious refugee – his work is more devoted to preserving classical standards than to reviving Catholic piety.12 in fact, his work sometimes bridged the confessional divides in unexpected ways. For the States General
of the Dutch Republic, for example, surely an openly Calvinist institution, he even
produced a series of twelve paintings about the Revolt of Claudius Civilis (1613),
based on his album with engravings about the same subject.13
it is intriguing, therefore, to read that isabella herself may be behind the invention of the spiritual love emblem. in the preface to his latest collection, van veen
describes how the archduchess was ofered a copy of the secular emblems, and
had wondered whether they could also address Divine Love. if this were true, the
Amoris divini emblemata would be part of the court’s devotional campaign. Yet the
idea is problematic. Not only is the anecdote based on hearsay – van veen obvi9 Porteman 1977, 103.
10 Duerloo 1998.
11 Porteman 1996a, 1-2.
12 See the internal report to a request by van veen to the Archdukes, dating from 1619, and
printed in De maeyer 1955, 347-348. Another fascinating example of van veen’s idiosyncratic
religious quest is his attempt to explain the theological problems of predestination and free will
in a geometrical system, published in van veen 1621, see Geissmar 1993.
13 he paintings are now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, object numbers SK-A-421-432.
See further morford 2001, 57-74.
Arnoud Visser
37
ously did not verify it with isabella – it is also presented in the context of a dedication. van veen needed to attract isabella’s attention, for since the return of Peter
Paul Rubens from italy, he was increasingly overshadowed by his talented former
pupil.14 He received some support from the Archdukes, but he was not one of the
oicial court painters.15 van veen’s quest for patronage is relected in his dedications of the Emblemata horatiana to Albert and the Amoris divini emblemata to
isabella.
in modern research, van veen’s message has been associated with a variety of
mystical traditions. margit høfner suggested a conscious link with the thought of
Teresa of Ávila, for whose canonization isabella was campaigning.16 Jan Bloemendal placed the work in the context of ‘Jesuit and pietist religiosity’.17 most recently,
Anne Buschhof tried to identify several spiritual and mystical traditions that ‘inluenced’ the work, including that of medieval bridal mysticism.18 Although these
traditions constitute a signiicant general context for devotional literature of this
period, i believe that we can locate the work more precisely in its religious landscape. As his use of Augustine will show, van veen’s book should be seen as a
thoroughly humanistic product advancing a practical form of piety, rather than a
mystical programme. i will make two points in support of this case, one regarding
formal aspects and the other its content.
First of all, van veen’s collection reveals a humanist concern for copia. A substantial number of emblems, for instance, take their cue from the loci van veen
had exploited before, in his secular love emblems. its composition also resembles
van veen’s other emblematic achievement, the Emblemata Horatiana. in each of
these works van veen heavily relies on the principle of commonplacing.19 in his
analysis of the devotional emblems Jan Bloemendal has demonstrated how van
veen took many of his quotations from Josephus Langius’ commonplace bible.20
his compositional practice has fascinating implications. it undermines the
idea of deliberate intertextual allusions to the original classics. instead, we see
these sources used as a storehouse, which the user accessed through a range of
general of topoi. it is important to realise that the principle of commonplacing is
not just a curious aspect of the genesis of these works, it also pervades their subsequent presentation and anticipates their intended use: in other words, van veen
not only relies on commonplace books, he produces them.21
14 Rubens had returned from italy in 1608, see Buschhof 2004, 139.
15 van Sprang 2005, 37; de maeyer 1955, 62-82.
16 høfner 2002, 83 and 101.
17 Bloemendal 2002, 277.
18 Buschhof 2004, 151-178.
19 Enenkel 2006, 20-25.
20 Bloemendal 2002; Buschhof 2004, esp. 360-393, further ofers a systematic account of van
veen’s sources, including his use of commonplace books.
21 For van veen’s use of commonplace collections, see Buschhof 2004, 181, Bloemendal 2002
and Gerards-Nelissen 1971.
38
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Fig. 4: O. vaenius, ‘Amor aediicat’, in: Amoris divini emblemata (EPU site)
moving from form to content, my second point is that van veen’s collection of
quotations is meant to combine piety with pleasure. Rather than showing a path to
mystical union with God, and taking the reader through the steps of puriication,
illumination and union, many of the emblems in fact promote what i would call
practical forms of piety, oten with a neostoic edge.22 hey advise to follow the path
of virtue (in ‘Amor rectus’), to spurn earthly riches (in ‘Amor thesaurus’, ‘Amor
spernit’), and explain that love makes steadfast in need (as for instance in ‘Amor
docet’). hey associate virtue with good works (‘virtus character amoris’, ‘Ab uno
amore multa bona’) and invite concrete action, such as giving alms to the poor
(‘muniicum facit’). Even penitence is presented as a social practice, when van
veen uses the image of lagellation to stress the virtues of criticism from a friend
(‘Amoris lagellum dulce’).
One inal example may suice. in ‘Amor aediicat’ (van veen 1615, 78-79),
Paul’s words to the Corinthians (i Cor. 8:1), ‘Charity builds up’ prompts van veen
to depict Divine Love and Soul as construction workers (Fig. 4), with Divine Love
22 Pace Buschhof, who argues that the irst group of eight emblems are meant to lead the
reader to ‘mystical contemplation’ (Buschhof 1999, 40-44; Buschhof 2004, 183-198). Yet, van
veen’s references to the three steps of this process would be rather vague, and especially the
themes of purgation and penitence are conspicuously absent. in fact, the clearest example of
penitence only follows on page 62-63.
Arnoud Visser
39
providing the cement (in a rather sturdy fashion) to the bricklaying Soul.23 he
accompanying selection of quotations expresses ethical, rather than mystical concerns, such as the passage from Paul’s letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 4:12): ‘be thou an
example of the faithful, in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity
[...].’ in his Dutch poem van veen proceeds from the image of building to make a
similar point:
he soul in love always fancies building and founding
something which brings virtue, prosperity or peace
to lighten someone else’s heart:
God’s love gives the grace to do this
And provides the means to build.
it gives a blessed life to him
Who irmly can trust in its basis.24
his is not the afective, mystical language we are used from later devotional
love emblems. True, Augustine is a source of some of the most successful mystical
imagery: it was he who wrote how God had ‘pierced [his] heart with the arrows
of [His] love’, and who had compared his religious enthusiasm to a strong burning ire that could not be put out by any ‘cunning tongue’.25 his imagery was taken
up in Teresian mysticism, for example. But that is not what van veen shows to
his audience. he archduchess isabella, for one, would have found ample trace of
Catholic spirituality, but no references to the Eucharist or the Lady of Sorrows. She
would have seen no arrows piercing through hearts, or references to holy relics.26
Rather than promoting a speciic confessional message, van veen ofers an elegant guide to Catholic piety for an international readership. Augustine’s commonplaces, i would say, are meant to lend universal authority to this spiritual manual,
aimed at an international elite.
23 it is interesting to see that the irst part of Paul’s phrase is not exploited: ‘Scientia inlat,
charitas aediicat’, ‘Knowledge pufs up, charity builds up.’ See also Els Stronks’s discussion of
this emblem elsewhere in this volume, comparing it to montenay’s ‘Sapiens mulier aediicat
domum’, based on Prov. 14:1.
24 van veen 1615, 78: ‘De siel verliet heet altijdt lust / Om yet te bouwen en te stichten, / Tot
deught, tot weluaert, ote rust, / Om andre t’herte te verlichten: / Godts liefde daer toe gratie
gheet, / En brenght de middel om te bouwen, / En maeckt dat die hier salich leet, / Die op
sijn gront kan vast betrouwen.’
25 Confessiones, 9.2.3, quoted from Augustine 1961, 182.
26 in ‘Agitatus fortior’, van veen cites Augustine’s image of the heart pierced by arrows of love,
not to signify a mystical experience, however, but the efect of external hardship on faith. in
the pictura sacred love and the human soul cling to a big tree during a storm. van veen 1615,
92-93.
40
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Fig. 5: m. Hoyer, titlepage, in: Flammulae amoris
(private collection). (See also colour plate 1)
Michel Hoyer (1593-1650)
in our second case, however, the afective language of Catholic devotion is very
much present. he little-studied collection of Flammulae amoris, or Sparkles of
Augustine’s love, brings us to the world of penitent tears, chaste sighs, and pious
desire (Fig. 5).27 he work was composed by the Augustinian hermit michel Hoyer,
and published in Antwerp in 1629.28 it contains 25 emblems about Augustine’s remarkable career from sinner to saint. Each of these starts with a ine engraving by
Guillaume Collaert, followed by quite extensive Latin poems and a short selection
of commonplaces from Augustine’s works.
Compared to van veen, Hoyer’s use of Augustine is more focused: he draws
primarily on the Confessions and a few pseudo-Augustinian texts of a similar slant.
He shows us not only the authoritative Father of the Church, but also the man who
struggled with worldly temptations, the adolescent who once prayed to God: ‘Give
27 Hoyer 1629; Rubio Álvarez 1970; Courcelle 1972; Hebert 1987.
28 De meijer 1993; Gerlo and vervliet 1972.
Arnoud Visser
41
Fig. 6: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no.
5, in: Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also
colour plate 2)
Fig. 7: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no. 8, in:
Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also colour
plate 3)
me chastity and continence, but not yet.’29 Especially the irst section of emblems
deals with this long spiritual crisis. For example, one emblem (Hoyer 1629, emblem 5) shows Augustine as a Roman soldier, wounded by one of Cupid’s arrows
(Fig. 6). he blindfolded perpetrator of this crime is still lying around, and visible
in the let corner. meanwhile, irst aid is delivered by a winged physician in the
form of Divine Love, (a role we recognise from one of Herman Hugo’s emblems).
in the background we see another victim, a wounded stag, with a similar spiritual
condition.
in comparison, the pictura illustrating Augustine’s famous conversion seems
slightly disappointing (Fig. 7). in the Confessions the episode, presented at the end
of book 8, forms the climax of the book (in fact to such an extent that generations
of readers never inished the last, more philosophical books). it describes how a
depressed Augustine had retreated into the garden of a friend’s house when he
suddenly heard a child singing the words ‘Pick up and read’ (‘Tolle, lege’), which
he took as a divine command to take up the Scripture to address his problems.
in Hoyer’s emblem of this tolle-lege episode, the pictura represents the scene in a
straightforward way, depicting Augustine as a melancholic young man, weeping
29 Confessiones, 7.7, quoted from Augustine 1961, 169.
42
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Fig. 8: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no. 19 in:
Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also colour
plate 4)
Fig. 9: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no.
24, in: Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also
colour plate 5)
under a tree. he divine command literally comes from the heaven in upper right
corner. Perhaps one of the most suggestive features is the Flemish monastery on
the let in the background.
With its close focus on Augustine’s life, Hoyer’s Flammulae can partly be seen
as a transformation of the genre of the saint’s life into emblems.30 As such, it belongs to a diferent cultural world than van veen’s devotional emblems. We see
this relected in the use of Augustine’s works. Whereas van veen used the church
father as a resource for topical quotations, Hoyer preserved the coherence of Augustine’s original text. His references are clearly based on sustained reading of the
original. his diferent approach to the sources points to diferent functions of the
book, two of which can be singled out.
he irst concerns the institutional proile of the Flammulae. Hoyer was an Augustinian hermit and his book is clearly meant to strengthen the identity of the
order in a local context. For example, in several picturae Augustine is dressed as
a Flemish hermit, with the characteristic wide-brimmed hat and black habit (Fig.
8). in one of the inal emblems (Hoyer, emblem 24, Fig. 9), glorifying Augustine
as the fountain of wisdom, the pictura even implies a hierarchy: we see a hermit
drinking irst from the fount, next in the queue is a Dominican (dressed in a white
habit and a black cape), followed by a canon (or possibly a Jesuit) and a Franciscan
30 See Guiderdoni-Bruslé in Stopp 2005, 15-16; Knapp and Tüskés 1998.
Arnoud Visser
43
(wearing a brown habit). he local, institutional orientation is also relected in the
dedication of the book to fellow-Augustinians.31 in his dedicatory letter, signed on
Augustine’s name day, Hoyer quotes yet again other fellow-Augustinians.32 All this
makes the book an emphatically Augustinian venture.
From a functional perspective, one could regard the Flammulae as motivational literature, which provided a welcome boost to the conidence of the order. he
Augustinians had sufered big losses in the Reformation caused by their fellowbrother Luther; in fact, nearly all of their monasteries in Germany and England.33
in the Low Countries, they lost half their buildings, while the number of Augustinian monks was decimated. Since 1585, when Alexander Farnese freed Brussels
from Calvinist rule, the Provincia Belgica of the order had been working steadily and highly successfully on its restoration, mainly through education.34 moreover, apart from bolstering internal conidence, clerical competition may also have
been a consideration for Hoyer. Other orders were ishing for the same souls. he
Jesuits in particular were ierce competitors, with an infrastructure, which was
slightly bigger than that of the Augustinians. Around 1625 the Augustinians ran
13 schools for humanities in the Southern Netherlands, providing education to
2,444 pupils. he Jesuits, however, had 16 colleges in their Flemish province and
another 18 in the Walloon area. here are numerous traces of institutional rivalry
on the educational front, including violent clashes between students.35 Of course,
the Jesuits were also highly successful in their appropriation of the genre of the
emblem.36
he second function of Hoyer’s Flammulae is that of pedagogical instrument.
Hoyer was a teacher, lecturing at the time at the Augustinian college of Brussels.37
Paratextual pointers guide us to this social context: the preliminaries include poems by some of his students, among whom we ind Albertus Rubens. his publication, his irst, was soon followed by other didactic works, including saints’ lives
and Latin plays with revealing titles such as heatrum castitatis.38 his concrete
pedagogical background informs the emblematic style. Hoyer’s poems are perfect
examples of the imitation exercises he must have set his students on a daily basis. hey combine classical allusions and various metrical forms, with a distinctly
31 Franciscus vander Eycken, one of isabella’s chaplains, and dean of Yper cathedral, the town
where Hoyer was ordained as priest.
32 homas of villanova, the Spanish bishop who would soon be canonized.
33 Po-Chia Hsia 1998, 28.
34 vermeulen 1964, 18, n. 52 indicates the number of members was reduced from over 500
before the religious conlicts to 62 in 1589; for the restoration of the order in Brussels, see vermeulen 1964, 17-22. For the essential role of education in restoring the order, see Leyder 1997.
35 vermeulen 1964, 24-25, 38-49.
36 Porteman 1996b.
37 vermeulen 1964, 22-28; the pedagogical purpose is explicitly mentioned by the printer’s
preface in the third edition from 1708: ‘quondam ad Juventutis studia promovenda [...] Typis
commissae’ (fol. *3ro).
38 De meijer 1993.
44
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Augustinian moral. his made Hoyer’s Flammulae a practical book for students,
teachers and preachers.
Conclusion
What, then, do these examples tell us about the learned side of the Dutch love emblem? First of all, the case of Augustine has revealed that quotations should not necessarily be taken as intertextual allusions to coherent, ‘original’ contexts. Rather,
the signiicance of emblematic sources depends on textual transmission and cultural reading practices. he Augustine van veen used was the one that others had
selected for him, culled from all the major medieval ecclesiastical writers. Here,
Augustine does not represent one of the theological positions he became associated with during the sixteenth century, but serves as a commonplace authority furnishing edifying quotations.
he second point concerns confessional identity: by tracing the use of one
source through several works it has become clear how very diferently the same
author could be read and appropriated. van veen and Hoyer used the same literary genre and the same source to target diferent niches in the religious market.
his exempliies the confessional lexibility of the genre, a feature which is further
relected in the reception of religious emblem books. Hoyer’s emblems, for example, formed the basis for the rational inquiries of the Anglican John Hall, intended
to please the scientist Robert Boyle.39 All this illustrates how the learning behind
the love emblem was not a static quality, ofering mere erudition for modern footnotes. it was a creative principle.
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48
Commonplaces of Catholic love
Plate 1: m. Hoyer, titlepage, in: Flammulae amoris (private collection). (See also Fig. 5
on page 41)
2
Colour plates
Plate 2: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no. 5, in: Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also Fig. 6
on page 42)
Colour plates
3
Plate 3: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no 8 in: Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also Fig. 7
on page 42)
4
Colour plates
Plate 4: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no. 19 in: Flammulae amoris (idem).
(See also Fig. 8 on page 43)
Colour plates
5
Plate 5: m. Hoyer, pictura of emblem no. 24, in: Flammulae amoris (idem). (See also Fig. 9
on page 44)
6
Colour plates