The Devotion of Collecting

Forrest C. Strickland, Ph.D. (2020, University of St Andrews) is Adjunct Professor of Church History at Boyce College, Louisville, Kentucky. He has published several essays on ministers and the culture of print during the Dutch Golden Age.

Acknowledgements


List of Figures and Tables


Abbreviations


Conventions





1 Ministers and Their Books in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic


 1 The Rise of the Book Auction Catalogue in the Netherlands


 2 The Dutch Context


 3 Available with the Booksellers


 4 Sold at Auction





2 That All May Be Instructed


 1 Print and Piety


 2 The Difficulty of the ‘Reformed’ Republic


 3 Vainglorious and Irreverent Books


 4 ‘I Must Have the New Tidings’


 5 Printers and the Dissemination of Piety


 6 The Book and Pen


 7 Creatures of the Book





3 Buyers of Truth


 1 Between Opulence and Poverty


 2 Dusty Attics


 3 The Home of the Muses


 4 The Legion of Books


 5 Learned Men


 6 Dwelling in Sparta





4 Guardians of the Faith


 1 The Academy of Academies


 2 The More Sound Schoolmen


 3 Our Doctors


 4 Learning from the Britons


 5 Trained in Righteousness





5 Learned Servants


 1 Men of Letters


 2 The Philosophers


 3 Roads of the Sun


 4 Amateur Physicians


 5 They That Bear Silver


 6 Reading the Stars


 7 Learned Servants





Conclusion: The Ideal Ministerial Library


 1 Timeless and Timely Libraries


 2 Ministerial Libraries in a Golden Age


 3 The Ideal Ministerial Library




Appendix: Analysed Ministerial Library Catalogues


Bibliography


Illustrations


Index