Preparing a digital collection of any erudite 16th or 17th century book is a collective effort. That is why the project team of The School of Salamanca combines scholars with different backgrounds, from philosophy to computer science, from digital humanities to legal history. Every early modern author has his ideosyncracies, no two books translate into the digital format alike. But the experience of converting the seven print volumes of Luis de Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure into a digital edition (still a work in progress) turned out to be much more challenging than expected (you can read about other challenges of working on the digital edition of the School of Salamanca in our blog post here).
Introducing the Project The School of Salamanca: Preparing 16th Century Books for the Digital Collection of Sources
The project The School of Salamanca. A Digital Collection of Sources and a Dictionary of its Juridical-Political Language is a long-term project funded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz and carried out in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory and the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In the Digital Collection of Sources, we edit a number of works of Iberian scholasticism (read more about the School of Salamanca itself here) in full text transcriptions (and digital images) of – usually – the first editions, including Martín de Azpilcueta’s Manual de Confessores, and, still a work in progress, Luis de Molina’s opus magnum, De Iustitia et Iure.
Luis de Molina (1535-1600) was an early member of the newly founded Jesuit order, professor of theology in Coimbra, Alcalá and Madrid and one of the most influential and interesting thinkers of the 16th century. Among historians today, he is known mainly for his detailed and practical description and analysis of commercial practices and business ethics among Portuguese merchants trading with Africa and Brazil. One of his major works is the massive treatise De Iustitia et Iure, which contains Molina’s political and legal theory. It treats more than 1,000 “problems”, most of which concern “justice in exchange” (iustitia commutativa). The treatises De Iustitia et Iure came into fashion in the mid-16th century, and Molina’s was the first Jesuit contribution to this new and prestigious genre (Schuessler 2015, XXV). As such, it will be a key resource in the Salamanca project’s Digital Collection of Sources.
Let’s take a look at the challenges this Jesuit poses us even now, 400 years after his death. To start with, a few words about our digitization workflow in general and what the process of bringing the sources on the screen in the Digital Collection usually involves.
We work with about a hundred early modern prints in Spanish and Latin, and more often than not such texts have a complex structure. They may contain such entities as glosses, marginal notes, milestones, heavily nested indices, tables of contents, other tables, and so on. Moreover, these texts are rich in abbreviations. They also demonstrate great variance and instability in spelling and punctuation.
Our workflow usually starts in the libraries holding the originals of the first edition of a work we are interested in. After we acquire the digital facsimiles and got them transcribed, it is time for one of the most important steps in our workflow: the structural annotation, which requires a lot of precision and attention as well as manual work. Basically, we need to annotate each structural unit of the text, i.e. every heading, every chapter, every paragraph, etc., with the markup language XML so that the text can be correctly presented on the website or transformed into a pdf. To this end, we do quite a bit of text enrichment and normalisation like tagging special characters or hyphenated words.
A Special Case: Luis de Molina, De Iustitia et Iure
When we started to work on Molina’s book, it was clear from the beginning that this work was a special case. It consists of 7 volumes (units of print, i.e. books as physical objects) and 6 tomes (units of content structure), with tome No. 3 expanding over two volumes. Looking at the overall architecture, we see it divided into various tractatus (“chapters” in XML languages), where one tractatus (“chapter”) can stretch beyond the borders of a volume (and thus continue on to the next printed book). For example, Tractatus 2 starts in Vol 01 and continues up to Vol 04. At the next level, each tractatus/chapter is divided into disputations. So a disputation is our basic division unit overall, with some exceptions in Vol 02 and Vol 05 where some of the disputations are divided into even smaller sections.
Under the Bonnet: the Inner Workings of a Scholastic Classic
This complex overarching architecture has definitely to be taken into account when one is preparing a digital edition of such a work. However, if we go back from the bird eye’s view and look at the microstructure of a single disputation, we encounter a lot of complexity there, too.
For one, the inner structure of a disputation, our basic division unit, varies a lot from volume to volume. What we consider the standard structure, which can be often observed in this kind of early modern literature, can be encountered in Vols 04, 06 and 07. It typically includes a disputation heading followed by summaries followed by main text, with the summaries connected to main text with the help of milestones.
However, Vol 01 and Vol 02 skip summaries completely and do not utilise this reference mechanism, even though these two volumes are the biggest in size. Here the disputation title is followed directly by the main text with no summaries at all.
In Vol 03 summaries are present for the first time and the layout organisation follows the order: summaries – title – main text. In Volumes 04 to 07, the order of structural elements changes to title – summaries – main text. That, as we said earlier, is a standard structure in this kind of early modern literature.
If we take a closer look at the summaries and think about this unit in terms of XML markup, we note that the summaries basically form a list, where each reference constitutes a numbered item. These numbered items are ordered and counted one after another without any omissions. This kind of summary lists can be any size, starting from very short ones with only one item in them to very long ones up to 50 items and more. Each item corresponds to a certain part of the disputation text, indicated by a milestone.
Vol 05 employs a new referencing mechanism: in this volume, one summary item can refer to more than one parts of the main text. E.g. in Disputation 2, item 1 not only refers to item No. 1 in the main text, but also to item No. 2; item 5 refers to items Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, while item 11 also refers to item No. 12.
The structure of the summary here is adapted to the logic of argumentation in the text. Sometimes a topic is developed in more than only one paragraph, therefore additional numbers are being introduced to help the reader‘s orientation. But as the topic does not change, the various paragraphs fit under one and the same summarie item. Interestingly, this feature does not come up in any other volumes and Volumes 06 and 07 return to the more standardized orientation with title — summaries—text, following the strict numbering order inside the summaries.
All these apparent inconsistencies and changes from volume to volume made us curious about the printing history of the book and the possible reasons behind them.
It Started as a Lecture: How De Iustitia et Iure Came About
Books by Late Scholastic authors are never simple in structure, but the complexity of Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure surprised even those of us who had already consulted the book for various questions, but always just dipping in, never pausing to consider the work in its entirety. Legal historians tend to focus on the content of a book, and there are enough challenges and questions to keep one happily busy: from the highly technical Latin language, reflecting the long tradition of academic discourse among theologians, canonists, and jurists; to Thomas Aquinas‘ Summa Theologiae as the basic structure and pacemaker of the debate; to the problems discussed and their various arguments; and last but not least, to the contemporary historical, political, academic, economic context in which all this debate and book-writing took place. But that was clearly not enough to answer the questions we were now asking ourselves about Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure. And this was the moment we really took in the details of the publication itself: 6 tomes, printed in 7 volumes, by 4 different publishers in 2 cities, over a period of 16 years. Even for a multi-volume book from the 16th or 17th century, this is a lot!
So, how did the book come about? As a professor of theology at the university of Coimbra, Molina had spent the five years between 1577 and 1582 lecturing on the 31 questions on prudence and justice in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (IIa-IIae qq. 47-78; MacGregor 2018, 193; Decock, 142). The manuscript of his lectures was the basis for the eventual printed work, and Molina begun preparations for publication as early as 1583, soon after completing the course. From 1584 on, he lived in Lisbon and tried to arrange the printing of his De Iustitia et Iure with a local printer (Jäger, XIV). But then this manuscript was to throw his life out of kilter.
In the summer of 1585, Molina considered his work done and began the process of obtaining the Jesuit imprimatur. The reviewers, however, objected to various passages in which Molina presented his ideas of the relation between human freedom, predestination, and divine foreknowledge. The Jesuit superiors in Spain, Portugal, and Rome, to whom Molina had sent his manuscript, were sceptical and advised that these topics be removed (Jäger, XVII sq.). Molina complied and cut the controversial passages from De Iustitia et Iure. But rather than discard them, he prepared them as an independent publication and, after a long struggle with the Jesuit authorities, published them in Lisbon in 1588 as the Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina scientia, praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione (Decock, 142; MacGregor 2018, 194; Jäger, XIV sq.). The fallout from this book was swift and furious, sparking a fierce controversy involving the Portuguese and Spanish inquisitions (MacGregor 2018, 158 sqq.). The ensuing controversy over divine grace and human freedom lasted for more than twenty years and required a special papal commission set up by Clement VIII, the Congregatio de Auxiliis, to calm but not resolve it.
In 1591, at the height of the scandal, Molina retired to the Jesuit house of Cuenca, as his position as professor in Coimbra had become untenable. Cuenca was his hometown, his family was influential in the area, and he knew that the local authorities were on his side: all of which gave him at least some protection against the very real possibility of arrest by the Inquisition (MacGregor 2015, 173; MacGregor 2018, 194). In the years that followed, he kept a low profile in his provincial retreat, working as a simple parish priest with enough time for his writing activities (MacGregor 2015, 173). He produced an impressive amount of scholarly work, including the revision of the massive manuscript of De Iustitia et Iure and its successive printing. In the spring of 1600, his Jesuit superiors ordered him to come out of hiding and take up a professorship at the Jesuit college in Madrid. Molina left Cuenca but his time in Madrid was short: he passed away just a few months after his arrival, on 12 September 1600 (Jäger, XV).
The Long Way to Print: Starting in Cuenca, Vols 1-3
So, here is the reason why the first three volumes were printed by small printing presses in Cuenca, a Castilian provincial town of sheep breeders and wool traders and a surprisingly unacademic place for a publication of this calibre. The printing presses changed from volume to volume, according to the high fluctuation of printers in the town. The continuity of the printshop itself – as a physical place with all necessary tools and equipment – can be seen in the re-used printer’s mark for Vol 02 and Vol 03, even though the person of the printer has changed in between (Alfaro Torres, 53, 56). The absence of summaries at the beginning of each tractatus in these volumes (see above) may also be seen as a consequence of the non-academic printing habits of the Cuenca presses or it may hint at Molina working alone on the huge task of preparing the manuscript for print, not having an assistant who would take on the time-consuming task of preparing the summaries. They appear for the first time in Vol 03, printed in 1600 when Molina was already in close contact again with the academic world of colleges and universities, so we may paint a mental picture of an assistant from the Jesuit college helping Molina to draw up the helpful summaries.
Even though Molina had considered his manuscript ready to print already in 1585, he did not stop revising it and consequently, it grew enormously under his hands. In each of the prefaces to the first three volumes he himself prepared for print, he sounds surprised that it took him so long to finally complete the volume, each volume growing much more in size than he expected it to.
After Molina’s death in September 1600, the Jesuit college in Madrid decided to finish the edition of De Iustitia et Iure for him. In their preface to Vol 05, the Jesuits claim that they did nothing but to edit faithfully the manuscripts Molina had left behind, without any revisions or additions. So, very probably the text in these volumes is much closer to the original draft of 1585 – and certainly, these volumes are much shorter than the first three which had grown so much during Molina’s revisions.
The Shift to Antwerp, Vols 4-7
A final remark: the shift of the print from Cuenca to Antwerp is interesting in itself. After Molina’s death, there was no reason to carry on working with the very provincial print shops in Cuenca. The Madrid Jesuits instead preferred to entrust the publication of the books to one of the most prestigious printing houses in Antwerp which was in the hands of the Nutius family.
After the southern Netherlands had returned under Habsburg rule in 1585, the Antwerp printers entered a phase of increased production aimed at Catholic markets, especially within the Iberian world, creating networks of reliable contacts with cities such as Seville and Madrid (Manrique, 27). In the early years of the 17th century, the export of Antwerp books to the Iberian world increased, preferably books in Latin and many of them written by modern Spanish theologians. So there was an economic interest on the printers’s side in the works of such authors as Luis de Molina (Manrique, 32 sq.). As early as the middle of the 16th century, Martinus Nutius the Elder, one of the most important Antwerpian publishers, had developed an editorial Spanish line for export (Manrique, 30 Fn. 15). This business policy was continued by his widow and his son, Martinus II. Nutius, who undertook the Molina edition (Ulla, 74; Manrique, 36 Fn. 39).
In this, Martinus II. Nutius teamed up with his cousin, Juan Hasrey or He(r)tsroy: both their names are given on the title pages. This combination is significant because Juan Hasrey was the pre-eminent Antwerpian bookseller in Madrid until his death in 1615 (Manrique, 32, 36). Well connected with merchants, booksellers, publishers, and clients, he would have been familiar with Madrid’s Jesuit college and its presumably constant demand of books, and thus would have been the natural man to turn to for the huge undertaking of getting the remaining volumes of Molina’s work into print.
Antwerpian printers were also renowned for the quality of their work, especially for their typographical excellence (Manrique, 43). This attracted the Jesuits who liked the works published by Jesuit authors to be exemplary as scholarly correct and aesthetically pleasing books, contributing to the image of the Triumphant Church the order wanted to impress on the general public, just as in the proverbial splendour of Jesuit churches. Antwerpian printing houses not only had the technical and intellectual means to handle large and complicated book projects, but also the financial stamina to take on such prestige projects.
There are a lot of details we could not mention in this already long blog entry and many more we still have to find out about. But for us the process of preparing a digital edition of Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure has made the fundamental necessity of interdisciplinary team work in the digital humanities very clear. The discussions among the team and the things we learn when scholars from very different disciplines enter into a deep dialogue about the same objects, sharing observations, questions, and knowledge, certainly belong to the many joys of academic work.
Literature
Paloma Alfaro Torres: Tipobibliografia Conquense: 1528-1679. Tomo I. Tesis doctoral, Departamento de Filología Española, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Madrid 1996/97.
Wim Decock: De iustitia et iure tomi sex (Six Volumes on Justice and Right), 1593-1609, Luis de Molina, in: Serge Dauchy et al. (eds.), The Formation and Transmission of Western Legal Culture. 150 Books that Made the Law in the Age of Printing. Cham (Switzerland) 2016. pp. 142-144.
Christoph Jäger: Molina und das Problem des theologischen Determinismus, in: Luis de Molina, Göttlicher Plan und menschliche Freiheit. Concordia Disputation 52. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert von Christoph Jäger, Hans Kraml und Gerhard Leibold. Hamburg 2018. pp. XIII-CLXXVIII.
Kirk R. MacGregor: Luis de Molina. The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge. Grand Rapids (Michigan) 2015.
Kirk R. MacGregor: Luis de Molina, in: Rafael Domingo/Javier Martínez-Torrón (eds.), Great Christian Jurists in Spanish History. Cambridge 2018. pp. 190-208.
César Manrique Figueros: Printing in Antwerp in the Early Seventeenth Century and Its Connections with the Iberian World, in: Alexander S. Wilkinson/Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo (eds.), A Maturing Market. The Iberian Book World in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden 20217. pp. 26-44.
Rudolf Schuessler: Introduction, in: Luis de Molina, A Treatise on Money. Translated by Jeanning Emery. Grand Rapids (Michigan) 2015. pp. XXIII-XXXII.
Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo: Women and the Iberian Book Trade, 1472-1650, in: Alexander S. Wilkinson/Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo (eds.), A Maturing Market. The Iberian Book World in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden 20217. pp. 67-83.
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