Archives Alive - Rare Virtues & Most Ingenious Men: Benito Arias Montano, Christophe Plantin, and the Remarkable Emblem Book Humanae Salutis Monumenta

In 1568, the erudite priest and scholar Benito Arias Montano made the arduous journey from his homeland of Spain to the city of Antwerp to oversee the edition of the Polyglot Bible by the renowned press of Christophe Plantin. The two men struck up an ardent and enduring friendship while producing some of the most fascinating and historically significant texts of sixteenth-century Europe. McMaster University’s Archives and Research Collections holds several books resulting from this partnership, including two copies of Arias Montano’s Humanae Salutis Monumenta (Monuments of Human Salvation) — a lavishly illustrated emblem book with a complex publication history. Though both copies share the same title page, dated 1571, they are otherwise typographically and visually distinct. How can this be? Join us for an exploration of sixteenth-century emblem books, the friendship and working partnership of Arias Montano and Plantin, and the intricate and surprising differences between two copies of one book. We will examine typography, illustrations, decorative elements, bindings, provenance, and marks of use — and discuss how such distinguishing features are described in detail by cataloguers, bibliographers, and book historians. These analytical and descriptive processes are foundational to ongoing research: exploring the connections between cataloguing and scholarship will provide fresh insights into a time of great crisis and intellectual ferment.