Learning from Early Printed Books for Green Libraries Week 2024
For Green Libraries Week 2024 curators at the British Library selected items that address climate and sustainability. While the climate crisis is an issue we are facing today, historical holdings can help us understand the threats and effects of natural catastrophes better. Two 15th-century books from the British Library’s incunabula collection provide insights into how people experienced and interpreted such extreme natural events in the Early Modern era.
The Magdalene Flood of 1480 was a devastating disaster that struck the area around the Aare and the Rhine as well as other rivers in the Swiss Mittelland and Upper Rhine region in July 1480. According to the Bern Chronicle (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Mss. H.h.l.16), on the Thursday before St Mary Magdalene Feast Day (29 July 1480) it started raining for three days and three nights. The weather in the weeks before had been extremely hot so that 'glaciers and snowy mountains had warmed'. The flood caused extensive destruction of buildings and bridges leaving many without a home or their possessions.
Detail from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle showing the Middle Bridge in Basel. Liber chronicarum [German] Das Buch der Croniken und Geschichten. Tr: Georg Alt. Nuremberg : Anton Koberger, for Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, 23 Dec. 1493 (is00309000). London, British Library (IC.7458)
Hieronymus Brilinger (1469-1537) recollects that 'people standing on the bridge [in Basel] could easily wash their hands in the Rhine'. Looking at the city panorama in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), one of the most significant examples of 15th-century printing, puts this quote into perspective: we can spot the bridge in question and imagine the rising water, which eventually flooded large parts of the city centre. Environmental historians are able to use historical sources like these to reconstruct previous floods and to better prevent similar catastrophic events today. Literary texts, too, bear witness to the effects of catastrophic events. In Varia Carmina (1489), a collection of Latin poetry by Sebastian Brant, contains a poem about the 1480 flood: ‘De diluvio aquarum intimatio ad ecclesiam Basiliensem Anno domini. 1480’. It is an emotive appeal to Neptune, the Roman god of freshwater and the sea, asking him to 'stay in the depths of his kingdom'. 'You force the animals of the sea to visit the mountains – and the whales of Proteus (a sea god) have to graze in beech forests'. Using references to classical mythology, it is not a realistic account of the flood but instead uses literary features typical for learned humanist literature.
Opening in Sebastian Brant’s poetry collection showing the start of ‘De diluvio aquarum intimatio ad ecclesiam Basiliensem Anno domini. 1480’. Brant, Sebastian: Varia carmina. Add: Johann Bergmann. Basel : Johann Bergmann, de Olpe, 1 May [14]98 (ib01099000). London, British Library (IA.37949).
Alyssa Steiner
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections
Further reading:
Christian Pfister and Oliver Wetter: Das Jahrtausendhochwasser von 1480 an Aare und Rhein, in: Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte 04/11, pp. 41–49.