Billet rédigé par Marie Verbiest
Perusing an early sixteenth-century Heidelberg codex, we encounter – amid various literary and historiographical works – a printed news report of the 1522 siege of Rhodes. Printed on low-quality paper and sold at cheap prices, these newssheets were not necessarily intended to be preserved, which is why many of them have been lost over time. The ones that do survive, however, have been conserved in a wide variety of ways: compiled into small booklets with carton covers, folded and kept between the pages of another book, or, as in our Heidelberg case, bound together in a composite codex alongside other works. These kinds of recueils factices generate a multitude of compelling questions, not only about the ways in which texts were read, used and preserved, but also about the curatorial decisions – whether pragmatic and incidental or deliberate – that could shape the selection and compilation of different works into one volume. With regard to the mediatization of events, which news reports can be found in such composite volumes? Beyond revealing practices of conservation, what can this example tell us about the ways in which newsprints could be preserved and understood?
der hoch christenlichen stat Rhodis, printed by Hieronymus Höltzel in Nürnberg (1523),
Cod. Pal. germ. 127, fol. 114r, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.
Rhodes, newsprints, and the ‘Turkish threat’
After months of fighting with great effort to defend their stronghold on Rhodes, the Knights of St John were ultimately forced to surrender to the Ottoman army and withdrew from the island on January 1st, 1523. The siege, which had lasted over six months and had been especially destructive for the Ottoman army, ultimately lead to a redrawing of the boundaries between the spheres of influence of the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean1. At the time, this event was the subject of many news reports printed all over Europe, a large part of them editions and translations of a letter written by a certain nobleman from Candia (Crete) named Marx Bogngol on the 10th of October 1522. Newssheets continued to be published in the first months of 1523. In the years directly following the siege, several more comprehensive and historiographical works on the event were published as well.
From the medium’s inception and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the “Turkish threat” proved to be one of the most consistently covered topics in printed news reports. In the early sixteenth century in particular, a substantial proportion of newssheets printed in Northwestern Europe focused on events associated with the ongoing Turckenkriege against the expanding Ottoman Empire. They reported on/mediatised events such as the conquest of Negroponte (1470), the sieges of Rhodes (1480 and 1522), the battle of Mohács (1526), and the siege of Vienna (1529). In fact, the fall of Negroponte in 1470 was one of the first events to be widely covered by this novel news medium2. In general, the skirmishes with and the fear of the advancing Ottoman Empire appeared to make compelling news stories.
Hazine 1517, fol. 149r, Topkapi Palace Museum.
The newssheet about the 1522 events included in the Heidelberg codex is entitled Warhafftige newe Zeytung der ubermessigen und grossmechtigen belegerung und bestreyttung der hoch christenlichen stat Rhodis (So der herr der Turcken nechst vergangen zweyunndtzweintzigisten jars furgenomen und gethan hat), which roughly translates to “True new report of the excessive and mighty siege and assault of the highly Christian city of Rhodes, which the lord of the Turks undertook and carried out in the most recently passed twenty-second year”. It was published by Hieronymus Höltzel in Nürnberg in 1523, counting seven pages, and at least seven copies have survived. The newssheet recounts the siege from the moment Soleiman I arrived on the island on the 26th of June to the beginning of October. Although printed in 1523, the text does not yet seem to be aware that the Ottomans had indeed conquered the city on the 1st of January 1523, stating:
“wo der Thurck dise Stat erobern sölt, so werden wir Christen ein sölchen jamer sehen in der gantzen Christenheit dasz wir selbs eynander erbarmen werden. Welches wir aber yetzo nit also bedencken könden.”
“If the Turk were to conquer this city, we Christians would see such misery throughout all Christendom that we would pity one another – something we are not yet able to fully comprehend.”
As the exact and precise date of printing (the month, the day) is unknown, we are left to wonder if Hieronymus Höltzel himself knew that the news he published, was, at that point, already outdated. It is entirely possible that he was fully aware, yet considered the text still relevant enough to publish it. At any rate, the fact that the newsprint had been overtaken by the events, along with its preservation in the codex – effectively ‘freezing’ it, as it were, in time – makes this example particularly interesting from a temporal point of view.
A newsprint in a composite volume
In the Heidelberg codex, which counts over 300 folios filled with text, we can find eight different works of various genres: a travel account, two chronicles, one literary work of fiction, two conduct books or manuals, a short pamphlet-like document, and one newsprint. The works, all of them in German, are more or less chronologically organised, starting with the most recent text – a manuscript one – dated 1528, to the oldest ones at the end, dated 1483 and 1486. Although these texts cover a wide range of topics, two of them, alongside our newssheet, are on the subject of the Turks as well: Die Turkisch Chronica, “The Turkish Chronicle”, by Johannes Adelphus, and a short document entitled Notel einer gemeinen Anlag wider den Türcken, which translates to “Note on a common undertaking [or “military action”] against the Turks”. Interestingly, these three works find themselves organised one after the other in the codex, in the following order: the Turkisch Chronica, the Notel, and the Warhafftige newe Zeytung.
The “Turkish Chronicle” by Adelphus had first been published by Martin Flach in Strasbourg in the year 1513, but the version we find in the codex was printed in 1516 by Johannes Knobloch in the same city. The chronicle recounts the history of the Ottoman Empire, “from its origin, beginning, and rule up to the present time, together with its wars and conflicts waged against the Christians” (“von irem ursprung anefang und Regiment biß uff dise zeit, sampt yrem kriegen und streyten mit den Christen begangen”), as stated by its subtitle. In these conflicts with the Ottoman Empire, the Knights of St John played a very important role, especially in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Constantly competing for control of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and its many islands and ports, the Hospitallers on Rhodes had already been – albeit unsuccessfully – besieged by Ottoman forces in 1480, one of the last important episodes recounted by Adelphus’ chronicle. Alongside the fall of Negroponte in 1470, this first siege of Rhodes was among the first events that were extensively reported on in European printed newssheets at the time.
After the chronicle, we find the “Note on a common undertaking against the Turks”, describing the financial aspect of a common war against the Ottoman Empire, and how much money will have to be raised among people of all standing. The print itself does not specify its publisher, nor its place or date of printing. Both the USTC and the VD 16 databases have attributed the copy to the Regensburg printer Paul Kohl, who would have published it in 1524. However, considering that the same text had also been printed one year later in Nürnberg by Hieronymus Höltzel – the printer who published the newssheet immediately following the “Note” in the codex – it could be possible that the Notel can be attributed to Höltzel instead of Kohl.
The compilation of works into these kinds of recueils factices, most often done at a much later date, can generally be attributed to the owner of the texts themselves. The same applies most likely to our codex, although the Heidelberg archives have dated the volume to around the early sixteenth century – not that much later than many of the texts’ publication dates. In any case, the person who compiled all these works together chose to put the three documents on the Ottomans side by side. Not only does this suggest the compiler likely made a decision informed by the subject matter of the different works. It also means that, when reading the codex as it is arranged, the newssheet on the 1522 siege of Rhodes seems to pick up where the chronicle left off, presenting the news report as a kind of continuation of the chronicle on the same topic. The chronicle concludes its chronological account with the siege of Rhodes of 1480, while the Warhafftige newe Zeytung from 1523 almost resumes the narrative to offer the latest information on the ongoing conflict with the Ottoman Empire in Rhodes.
TO COME
I am grateful to Alexandre Goderniaux and Marion Pouspin for their guidance on the subject of the recueils factices. The questions regarding practices of reading and preserving newsprints in the early sixteenth century are part of my research on the mediatisation of events and its influence on the perception of time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources
Johannes Adelphus, Die Turckische Chronica, printed by Johannes Knobloch, Strasbourg (1516), Cod. Pal. germ. 127, fol. 60r-110r, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.
Notel einer gemeinen Anlag wider den Türcken (ca. 1524), Cod. Pal. germ. 127, 111r-113v, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.
Warhafftige newe Zeytung der ubermessigen und grossmechtigen belegerung und bestreyttung der hoch christenlichen stat Rhodis, printed by Hieronymus Höltzel, Nürnberg (1523), Cod. Pal. germ. 127, fol. 114r-117v, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.
Literature
Mathilde Bombart ed., Recueils factices. De la pratique de collection à la catégorie bibliographique, Pratiques & Formes Littéraires 16-18, vol. 18, 2021.
Margaret Meserve, “News from Negroponte: Politics, Popular Opinion, and Information Exchange in the First Decade of the Italian Press?”, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 59, n° 2 (2006/07), p. 440-480.
Octave Julien, “Construction et composition des recueils français du XVe siècle: apports de la codicologie quantitative”, La mise en recueil des textes médiévaux, vol. 16 (2007), p. 13-30.
Robert Douglas Smith, Kelly Devries, Rhodes Besieged. A New History, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2011.
Simon Philipps ed., The 1522 Siege of Rhodes: Causes, Course and Consequences, Routledge: London, 2022.
- Simon Philipps ed., The 1522 Siege of Rhodes: Causes, Course and Consequences, Routledge: London, 2022. [↩]
- Margaret Meserve, “News from Negroponte: Politics, Popular Opinion, and Information Exchange in the First Decade of the Italian Press?”, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 59, n° 2 (2006/07), p. 440-480. [↩]
