Sleidanes Commentaries, translated and printed by John Day for Abraham Veale and Nicholas England
The earliest English book in the acquisition was printed in London in 1560 by John Day for Abraham Veale and Nicholas England. It is an English translation of De statu religionis et reipublicae, a work written by Johannes Sleidanus. The book is a contemporary account of the history of the Reformation during the reign of Emperor Charles V.
Print culture in 16th-century London revolved around Fleet Street and St. Paul's Churchyard. Fleet Street is a thoroughfare of London that dates back to Roman times when it was a highway. Its geographical position within the city made it an advantageous spot for 16th-century printers to set up shop. Surrounding the street were the city's legal, learned, and religious professions that created an unending demand for pamphlets, books, and all manners of printed material.
Fleet Street was also the principal highway that connected the City of Westminster and St. Paul's Cathedral, making it a busy street that all manner of people, including royalty and nobility, passed through.
Henry VIII had established the basic rules governing the licensing of books in 1538. He elected the responsibility for approving books for publication to his Privy Council. The Council in turn declared that any printer trying to print or sell an English book had to have it examined by William Cecil and the Secretaries of the Council.
Royal privileges were another manner a printer could secure the licensing to print works. The first royal privilege issued for books by an English monarch was granted by Henry VIII in late 1518, granting Richard Pynson the privilege to print different Latin Orations for the next two years under protection from competition.
By the 1530s, Henry VIII was granting broader privileges to individual printers. There grew to be so many books claiming to be printed cum privilegio regali (with royal privilege) that he ordered all such claims be followed with ad imprimendum solum (for printing only) to indicate that the privilege was solely for printing and not to necessarily imply royal approval of the book's content.
When the Stationers' Company received its charter in 1556-57, the guild obtained a monopoly over all the printing done in England, save for the output of the two university presses at Oxford and Cambridge. By granting the Company its charter, many printers along Fleet Street, including John Day, who was the 56th individual recorded on the list of members.
The Royal authority held by the Company allowed it to make its own laws for the regulation of the book trade. The charter essentially confirmed the current customs of the trade but was designed to keep the printing trade in England under further control than the Crown presently had. Books printed were supposed to be registered by the printer or publisher with the Stationers' Company, and a small fee was typically paid when this was done.
This title consists of a life's worth of dedicated work. Johannes Sleidanus amassed a large collection of papers related to the Reformation throughout his career; he made a copy of every paper he came across relating to the Reformation. Early Protestant reformers needed to both discredit the Papacy and establish the historical precedence and evidence that supported their choices and formulations as they related to Christianity.
Seeing Sleidanus's collection of papers, Martin Bucer proposed to Philip of Hesse that Sleidan be appointed historian of the Reformation, which would grant him a salary and access to any necessary documents he needed. The heads of the League of Schmalkalden, the alliance between the Protestant Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, eventually agreed to the proposal and Sleidan finished the first volume in 1545.
His great work was plagued by the very conflicts that arose from the subject matter he wrote about. As a diplomatic servant, he went to England in a French embassy to Henry VIII, attended the Diet of Frankfurt and Worms as the representative for Strausburg, and was among the representatives of Strausburg at the Council of Trent. The war of the League of Schmalkalden from 1547-47 further disrupted Sleidanus' work and prevented him from getting paid, so he applied to England for aid. Thomas Cranmer interceded on his behalf to grant him a yearly pension from Edward VI, but it was never paid out.
Sleidanus finished his history of the Reformation in 1554, though its printing was delayed until 1555 due to a lack of funding. He died the following year in October, 1556 at Strausbourg in poverty.
Our copy of Sleidanes Commentaries, as it is commonly called in English, is not in its original binding, but in this case, the bookbinder has left evidence of their identity. On the back cover by the gutter is a small bookbinder's ticket belonging to John Smart, a book restorer and binder in England.
John Smart Bookbinders is a family business that dates back to the early 20th century. The company was started by Charles E. Smart in the late 1930s and his son, John Smart, followed in his father's footsteps. In 1961, Charles passed away and John took over running the company. The company's name went through different iterations in subsequent years until it was changed to John Smart Bookbinders in 1982. It would likely have been around this point that our book passed through John's hands to be rebound.
In 2000, Richard Smart, grandson of Charles and son of John, relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, and founded the Old English Bindery, continuing the family tradition of bookbinding and restoration in Canada.