De verzegelde kisten van de Vrouwe Adriana. De abdijbibliotheek van Tongerlo en de patrimonialisering van het boek in het Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden

The sealed chests of the Lady Adriana Tongerlo Abbey Library and the patrimonialisation of the book in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands In 1827, the government of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands bought the remainings of the once famous library of the abbey of Tongerlo, located in Belgium, some 50 kilometers east of Antwerp. The Premonstratensian abbey had been closed by the French revolutionary regime in 1796. Its library collection had been seized and transported to Antwerp in order to become part of the library of the departmental ‘école centrale’. However, before the French occupation (1794), the fathers had managed to hide substantial parts of the abbey library in a great diversity of places, for instance in the many farms Tongerlo owned, or in more distant parishes that depended on the abbey. After the fall of the French regime, and when it became clear that king William I would never restore the old monasteries, the dispersed fathers decided to retrieve the hidden books and have them sold. That was risky, as the Dutch regime considered that it had inherited the ownership from its French predecessor, and had demonstrated this by seizing hidden books of another Premonstratensian abbey, Averbode, in 1818. Several anonimous auctions were held in Antwerp, during which important lots of manuscripts and 15th- and 16th-century books attracted famous book collectors. Another significant collection of early books and manuscripts was assembled in the De Merode-castle at Westerlo. An agent of the government succeeded in gaining the fathers’ confidence and bought the integral collection for 8000 guilders. The manuscripts were sent to Brussels, the printed books were loaded on the ship Lady Adriana and shipped to The Hague, where they would enter the Royal Library or Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The archival documents show that the government’s intention was not only to enrich the Royal Library’s collection, but also to continue the collaboration with the fathers so as to receive letters by which it would be able to reclaim other, more substantial goods that had once been owned by the abbey. The article analyses the contents of the acquisition, studying a handwritten catalogue in which 4296 items were recorded some years after their arrival in The Hague, and which is still kept at the Dutch Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The collection consisted mainly of large-format Latin and French books printed in the Southern Low Countries and France in the 17th century. Its main focus was theology, next to canon law and church history – although the figures in the different tables are also proof of the collection’s geographical, chronological, linguistic and thematic diversity. Furthermore, as the majority of the works is still present in The Hague, it is possible to gain an insight into Tongerlo’s book culture. It appears to have been characterized by a huge respect for the printed text, with annotations being limited to provenance marks at the start of the volumes or to ex-donos by the successive abbots. The article concludes by pointing towards several elements in the narrative which illustrate that when leaving their original setting and being shipped to The Hague, the books lost their original functions. Both the Dutch authorities and the librarian at The Hague considered the earliest books, the incunabula and postincunabula and one very rare blockbook, to be the main parts of the collection. Their contents were not that interesting, but their age, relating them to the earliest years of printing, made them a source of admiration and pride. When they arrived at The Hague, the remainings of Tongerlo Abbey Library had lost their original functions and had become heritage objects. Their shipping on the Lady Adriana, then, is to be understood as an allegory of what French historians have called ‘la patrimonialisation’.status: publishe