"Antwerp is a colonial city"

Historian Bas De Roo has been scouring our collection for books on Belgium’s colonial past for his dissertation on the flow of taxes and customs duties in Congo Free State. After his dissertation, De Roo worked at the University of Leipzig, where he researched the role of the Congolese elite in the governance of the Free State and Belgian Congo. Today, De Roo is a researcher at Geheugen Collectief, which offers historical research in an accessible way to a broad public in the form of exhibitions, historical walks, apps, publications ...

City of Antwerp and Google put more than 100,000 books online

The City of Antwerp and Google signed an agreement to digitise a large portion of the collections of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Two manuscripts added to list of Flemish Masterworks

Two early modern manuscripts from the collection of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library have been added to the register of official Flemish Masterworks (‘topstukkenlijst’). The Minister for Culture recognizes the importance of these books for Flemish cultural history.

A Dog of Flanders

Recently, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library could add some fine titles to its collection of A Dog of Flanders-publications, including a Japanese version of the Suske & Wiske-comic featuring Nello and Patrasche.

The trajectories of a sixteenth-century physician’s books

Upon opening a copy of the 1572 Venetian edition of Natale Conti’s Historiarum sui temporis libri decem, the ex-libris caught the attention of Dr. Nina Lamal. Opposite the title page of the book there was an engraved portrait of Alvarus Nonnius by Jan Wierix, dated 1586. In the following weeks, she came across the same portrait pasted in several other books in the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. Her interest was piqued: she wanted to reconstruct Nonnius’ library and investigate how his books became part of the collection of the Conscience library. This short blog offers the first results of that quest.

Provenance research in the Conscience Library

Some books contain traces of earlier owners or users. These provenance marks can be used to research the way a book or text functioned in society, or to reconstruct the reading behaviour or book ownership of a person or a group of people.

Many marvellous histories

An anonymous 18th century manuscript has popped up

At Van De Wiele Auctions a remarkable eighteenth-century anonymous manuscript turned up earlier this year. It bears the title ‘Hier worden verhaelt veel wonderbaere gheschiedenissen’ [Herein many marvellous histories are told]. At the last minute, we were able to look into this manuscript and acquire it later on.

Porn, pulp & literature

Online exhibit

In December 2019, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library presented an unknown and long-hidden part of Flemish literature and cultural history: pornographic literature with the exhibition "Porn, pulp & literature". View the online exhibition here.

New acquisition: Albertanus de Brescia, Liber de arte loquendi et tacendi

In December 2018 the Endowment Fund for Books and Literature acquired a rare Antwerp incunable, which it donated to the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. The Liber de arte loquendi et tacendi by Albertanus of Brescia was printed in Antwerp in 1485 by Gerard Leeu.

Podcasts Miraeus Lectures

Together with the Flanders Book Historical Society and the Antwerp Bibliophile Society, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library organizes book-historical lectures that place book history in the Netherlands in an international perspective. Browse our archive of a few past lectures and listen to the podcasts.