Important people

Sketch of the Librije by Slindewater

Conrad Slindewater

Conrad Slindewater, church warden from 1530 to 1559, was deeply concerned about the sweeping Reformation. He had an original idea to do something about this and came up with the idea: now that the printing press has been invented, we can make the right books available relatively cheaply. And to do so we´ll build a new library, a librije. Whoever wants access will receive a key. And that’s how it happened. Shortly after the opening, presumably due to success, lecterns had to be added.

The Librije is therefore also intended as a defence against the Reformation, with for that time modern means.. This explains why there are books about theology, bibles, bible commentaries, legends of saints, but also about law and history. (See further under Collection) That is why there are hardly any manuscripts. Originally there were 23. Of these, eight remain.

Herman Berner

The Berner family were aldermen or councilors in the administration of Zutphen. Since 1472, the Berners owned the estate ‘de Veltcamp’, as the house ‘Ross’ was called. This house was located in the municipality of Lochem and the site was bordered by the Rossweg in the north and the Dochteerenseweg in the east. All this appears from loan books from Mr van Keppel.

Source: Jan Harenberg, ‘Familie Wolbert’, Eens bolwerk van de adel, kastelen en landhuizen in de Achterhoek en Liemers (Alphen a/d Rijn, 1999).

Koenraad Oege Meinsma

It is thanks to Koenraad Oege Meinsma (1865 – 1929) that the library, neglected in the 19th century, has been restored to its former glory. He had the books, that had been transferred to the municipal archives in 1858, placed back in the Librije. He also published a new catalog in 1903: Catalogus van de Librye der St. Walburgiskerk te Zutphen.

Koenraad Oege Meinsma started as a teacher in a small Overijssel village. He took his state examination at the gymnasium in 1889, obtained his doctorate in letters in Amsterdam in 1900 and received his doctorate two years later for his dissertation Middeleeuwsche bibliotheken (medieval libraries). In 1899 he was appointed archivist and librarian of the Librije.

Meinsma was a freethinker and studied Spinoza for years. His publication Spinoza en zijn kring (1896) is still seen as a standard work.

The printed catalogue from 2008

In 1997 the book historians Joke Renting-Kuijpers and Anne Dirk Renting were commissioned to compile a scientific catalog of the holdings of the only Dutch chained library. It became a project they worked on for 10 years. In the Catalog Librije Zutphen, the entire collection of books is described, explained and depicted according to current scientific standards. This catalog replaces after more than 100 years the first printed catalog of K.O. Meinsma from 1903.

During their research, it turned out that a lot of relevant information was missing. The researchers collected this information from numerous libraries. They often searched the university libraries in Nijmegen, Amsterdam and Groningen for additions. The two found valuable additional information for the many German works in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, among other places.

With 896 pages and two hundred illustrations, the catalog is an impressive work. The extensive reference work does justice to the importance of the Librije Zutphen. The catalog in book form was published by the Stichting Uitgeverij Philip Elchers in Groningen and was presented on 23 May 2008 in the Walburgiskerk in Zutphen. In 2019, the content of the catalog was also made available online on this website of the Librije, under the section catalog.