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A new exhibition, "Beyond the Map". Descriptions of the non-European World in Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior”.

Summer opening hours UB 2024

Recently, Groningen University Library was gifted a fifteenth-century manuscript, a book of hours. At the time of its creation, books of hours were incredibly popular in the Low Countries for use in private worship. People believed that reading the prayers in the book (out loud) at set times helped one to be a good Christian. One of these people was Brecht, the first owner of this book of hours. Her book has a remarkable history and connection with Groningen.

Historical annotations, graffiti, doodles, and drawings never cease to intrigue both historians and the public alike; they speak to a shared human experience that echoes through millennia. This exhibition focuses specifically on annotations within a manuscript and a printed document that were produced at pivotal moments in the development of Christian scholarship and theology. However, whilst they are often thought provoking and charming, marks that appear in these texts are not always the subject of extensive historical analysis, instead, they are regularly left for specialists to interpret.