NaCraMaMo and the Zutphen chained library

[antuhsa]

It’s October, which means the time of month-long art and craft related challenges is upon us. When I was mindlessly browsing the internet, I’ve seen Inktober (for drawing with ink), Oiltober (oil painting), Kinktober (kinky fic writing) and Angstober (angsty fic writing), and those are only the ones I’ve come across. Even though all these October challenges can get a bit tiresome, I’ve decided to participate in one. Mine is called NaCraMaMo, which stands for National Craft-Making Month. The idea is to do something crafty every day throughout the month. There’s a community for this challenge in the journals, and as far as I know, that’s all there is, so it’s very small. I’ve been steadily doing crafty activities for the past 1,5 week and am enjoying it. Though I must admit that between bookbinding, which I’m doing three days a week now, and another favourite hobby of mine (cooking), which I’m experimenting with so often I might as well put my bed in the kitchen, it’s not that hard to do something craft-related every day.

Anyway, if you’re interested what I've been up to, feel free to take a look at my weekly posts in the nacramamo comm. I’m not going to be sharing more about the challenge on my own journal, because I’d like to take the opportunity to experiment with posting non-craft-related articles here, starting today.

Visiting the Zutphen chained library

Quick disclaimer: my own photos were too dark, so all the images in this post were taken from the internet.

I’ve wanted to visit the chained library in Zutphen since I first heard of its existence. I learned about chained libraries during my Bachelor’s in Medieval studies and have always found them fascinating. So when I discovered there was one on a mere 75-minute train ride away from me, I had to go.

I don’t know when the first chained library was built, but the ones still existing date from the 15^th, 16th and 17^th century. Back then, there were much less books than there are today because production time was much, much longer. As a result, books were very expensive, which means stealing them could be very lucrative. The problem is, people still needed libraries at the time. With the rise of universities there were more and more students and scholars, who couldn’t afford all the books they needed, so reference libraries were the way to go for them. However, since books were regularly stolen, the libraries had to do something to protect their collection. The solution was to chain the books to the shelves they were standing on, and that’s where the name ‘chained library’ comes from. These chains were long enough that you could pick the books off the shelves and read them, but you couldn’t take them with you, so stealing them must have been a challenge.


The chained library of Hereford Cathedral, England, so you can see how this works. Visiting this place is high on my bucket list. Image source.

I don’t know how many chained libraries there used to be, but certainly many more than there are now. The big problem with these libraries was that the chains made it almost impossible to save the books quickly in case of fire or flooding, which is how many of them were lost. If you look up chained libraries online, you’ll probably find quite a few, but a lot of those were reconstructed at a later date. Only fourteen still have their original shelves, chains and collection. However, of those fourteen, only two are still in their original location. One of them is in Cesena, Italy. And the other? Zutphen, the Netherlands.

The chained library in Zutphen was built between 1561 and 1564 as a side chamber to the already existing St. Walburgis church. The library has two floors, but only the first is open to the general public. The second floor is where the most valuable books are housed. You can get in there, but only if you make a special appointment. I’d love to do that one day, but on my recent visit I stayed on the first floor, which was exciting enough.

Since the library is inside the church, the ticket you have to buy to get access to the library also gives you access to the church. I had to wait for a while before the guided tour for the library started, so I roamed around the church for a bit. There was a nice exhibition in the back about bookbinding and 16^th century printing where I could amuse myself while keeping half an eye on the library entrance to be alerted of the tour guide’s arrival. The entrance to the library was this red, wooden door in a corner of the church with replicas of chained books in front of it to get you in the mood. Eventually the tour guide returned, opened the door and we entered this small, white room that looked very much like a gothic church, with its vaulted ceiling, pillars and arched windows. It also had these wooden benches that Catholic churches have. The only difference was that the shelves in front of the benches that you’d normally use to put your bible on, were now filled with books. Books on chains.


The Zutphen chained library. Image source

We spent half an hour in there while the tour guide told us about the history of the place, the collection and pointed out some interesting features in the room, like the sculptures on the wall. He also showed us how to get the books off the shelves, which requires the use of this huge, ancient looking key that still worked without a hitch. He showed us that when you take the books off the shelves the chains come with them, because they are actually part of the structure of the books themselves and cannot be taken off. Sometimes in high-class art fairs, like TEFAF, you can still find books with chains attached, which means they were part of a chained library once.


Chained books in Zutphen. If you want to get the books off the shelves, you have to slide the rod they're attached to out. Source

Fun fact, when Harry visits the Restricted Section in the first Harry Potter book, some of the books he sees are mentioned to have chains on them. So either these books were taken from a chained library or the Restricted Section itself is a chained library. I personally like the second interpretation very much and imagine the Restriced Section to look somewhat like the Hereford Cathedral library.

After his talk, the guide gave us a few minutes to roam around the room and take pictures, as long as we didn’t touch anything. Shame, because I’d have loved to sit on one of those benches, hear the rattle of the chains when I pulled a book towards me, and settled down to study it. Maybe one day I’ll have made enough of a name for myself in whichever book-related field that they’ll allow me to do that. Anyway, I loved the place. I’m glad I finally had the opportunity to visit Zutphen and the library and hope I can return one day to explore the second floor!