Keep
“IN the beginning was the word…and without it nothing was made that was made.” These two phrases, from the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, so well known, so repeated, contain, in addition to the first representation of God, the first way of understanding among his creatures. The words began to come together and gave meaning to life. Books are that, united words that reached a series of privileged people who created and transmitted thoughts, events, knowledge of the world around them. Written on papyrus, or engraved on clay, metal, wooden tablets and later on parchment, they formed great libraries, among which the one in Alexandria stood out for centuries, so beautifully described by Irene
Vallejo in his well-known and magnificent essay ‘Life in a Junco’. Great myths were created about the earth with its unknown seas, or about the sky with its great planets, or the Homeric writings with their legendary stories of heroes and tyrants. An ancient world reserved for a few that came to be revealed in 1440 with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. Years later, a Latin Bible was printed, a copy of the Vulgate, of which about two hundred copies were made. It was one of the most important revolutions in history because the world was shaped in the eyes of man with the truth of what was happening. Gone are myths and fantastic stories swept away by the reality of the great voyages of that unrepeatable era of the Discoveries begun by Columbus.
They may continue to knock down statues of the Genoese and smash his head, but no one will be able to take away the glory of having crossed the Atlantic for the first time, having made four voyages that aroused the expectation of the world, and having discovered an unknown and isolated continent. A continent that meant an unfinished journey and an irrepressible desire to reach the world of spices, which gave rise to another series of journeys that culminated in the Magellan-Elcano journey. Prepared trips in Seville, with the Casa de la Contratación at the forefront. A period in which, as a complement to the printing press and maritime expeditions, the world of the Renaissance was extensively designed in all its splendor. It is the moment of the book, in which the few incunabula give way to the great projection of the printing press, where books travel the seas and oceans in small ships. A few months after ‘Don Quixote’ went on sale in Madrid, 160 copies of this first edition traveled to America, and a few years later, people took it as an entertainment book for the journey. The spread of books was already unstoppable and treatises on astronomy, geography, maps and plans, botany, nautical and any branch of science opened the world at an unthinkable speed.
All this and much more has been exhibited by the University of Seville in an exhibition that, with the apt name of ‘Imago Mundi’, has dazzled the people of Seville in the Cicus center, part of the convent building of the Encarnación de las madres Dominicans, a baroque jewel that the University of Seville is restoring as a cultural center. The exhibition is an apotheosis of the book in which the most dazzling copies that this institution keeps in its extraordinary Library have been exhibited, together with several volumes of the Colombina Chapter Library that treasures the books of Hernando Colón, among which we must highlight those belonging to to D. Cristóbal, among them the ‘Imago Mundi’ work of Pierre d’Ailly French theologian of the first half of the fifteenth century, which collected the state of cosmography and geography of the time. All these incredible volumes, some never exhibited, accompanied by works from National Heritage, Seville Cathedral, with San Isidoro de Murillo, Santa Paula convent, private collections and some other institution formed a dazzling ensemble that is hard to forget.
A gift achieved with the effort and sensitivity of the curators, Luis Méndez Rodríguez and Luis F. Martínez-Montiel, who must be congratulated. A gift that makes you think and elevate the spirit.
–-58vbHl1p.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 "Covid-19: slight increase in hospitals, stagnation in critical care")
