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Epilogue

Anthropodermic Bibliopegy in the Early Modern Period

Perry Neil Harrison

Flesh, as a signifier, is fluid. As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, both the act of flaying and the removed skin itself represent a vast

range of signifiers, sometimes seemingly contradictory. When practised as a punishment, Larissa Tracy correctly asserts that flaying serves to

‘figuratively [excise] the crimes and the identity of the accused’. 1 However, the significance of the flayed skin does not end at the removal of identity; the dehumanizing act also provides the opportunity for transformation. For the monsters depicted in medieval Icelandic sagas, the removal of skin ‘enables them to act in support of, rather than opposition to, the heroes in each saga’, allowing them fluidly to shift their roles in the romances away from the monstrous.2 Yet, the victim of the flaying was not always the only one to undergo change. As Frederika Bain observes, for both the real-life Aztecs and the characters in literary works such as Salman und Morolf, the wearing of flayed skin is a way to undergo a personal metamorphosis, and ‘skin-wearing is assumed to facilitate passage to an alternative state of being’. 3 Flaying has grave consequences for flayed and flayer alike, as Michael Livingston and Emily Leverett explain.4 Finally, as several contributions to this volume suggest, the representation of Christ and St Bartholomew’s flayed skins in art and literature provide audiences with means to witness and better understand both the human and the divine.5

I would like to extend a special thanks to Ed Frank, curator of the Special Collections of the University of Memphis Library, for his cooperation and generosity during the conducting of this study. I would also like to thank Megan May of the Abilene Christian University Brown Library for her assistance while researching this project.

1 Larissa Tracy, ‘Face Off: Flaying and Identity in Medieval Romance’, pp. XX–XX at p. X, in this volume.

2 Ibid., p. X. 3 Frederika Bain, ‘Skin on Skin: Wearing Flayed Remains’, in this volume,

pp. XX–XX at p. X. 4 Michael Livingston, ‘Losing Face: Flayed Beards and Gendered Power

in Arthurian Literature’, pp. XX–XX; and Emily Leverett, ‘Reading the Consumed: Flayed and Cannibalized Bodies in The Siege of Jerusalem and Richard Coer de Lyon’, pp. XX–XX, in this volume.

5 In this collection, see: Peter Dent, ‘A Window for the Pain: Surface, Interiority and Christ’s Flagellated Skin in Late Medieval Sculpture’,

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Epilogue: Anthropodermic Bibliopegy in the Early Modern Period 367

Skin is also the substance of texts themselves – cured, scraped, stretched – it is the surface upon which these narratives, and all their incumbent meanings, are inscribed. The variety of meanings this sign takes on is exemplified in the process of anthropodermic bibliopegy – the act of binding books in human skin. Like the flayed skin that makes up their binding, the owners of the books used them in a plethora of ways – to construct their own social and religious identity, to strike out against and dehumanize those with competing ideologies and to situate themselves within a larger social tradition. Yet, despite its variety of uses and prevalence as a plot device in modern works of horror fiction, anthropodermic bibliopegy was a historically rare occurrence. The rarity of the act notwithstanding, consistently recorded instances of its practice range from the Middle Ages until the present day, with purported examples residing in public and private libraries in both Europe and the United States.6 Historically, the most prominent documented periods of the practice are during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as well as a revival of popularity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While researchers have conducted tests on individual documents in order to determine their validity as artefacts, scholars have previously paid little critical attention to the reasons why this act would have been appealing. As a stark reminder of the mutable nature of the human form, anthropodermic bibliopegy has served as an effective way for the owners and creators of these artefacts to both reinforce their own identity and assault the identities of ideological Others. While creators of the earliest purported anthropodermic books used the binding largely to establish their own religious identity, the surge of prominence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries used the practice as a weapon against opposing beliefs. A skin-bound edition of Louis Richeome’s L’Idolatrie Huguenote, an early-seventeenth-century anti-Protestant polemic, demon-strates how this technique was used to both lionize the owner’s own identity and demonize threats to these beliefs. Conversely, doctors in

pp. XX–XX; Valerie Gramling, ‘ “ Flesche withowtyn hyde”: The Removal and Transformation of Jesus’ Skin in the English Cycle Passion Plays’, pp. XX–XX; Sherry C. M. Lindquist, ‘Masculinist Devotion: Flaying and Flagellation in the Belles Heures’, pp. XX–XX; and Asa Simon Mittman and Christine Sciacca, ‘Robed in Martyrdom: The Flaying of St Bartholomew in the Laudario of Sant’Agnese’, pp. XX–XX.

6 Lawrence S. Thompson, ‘Promptuary of Anthropodermic Bibliopegy’, The Book Collector’s Packet 4.2 (Oct. 1946): 15–17 at p. 17. In this article, Lawrence cites examples from ‘The Newberry Library, the White Collection of the Cleveland Public, the University of California at Los Angeles Library, the Watkinson Library of Hartford, Connecticut, and the Library of Congress’ (p. 17). However, he makes no claims regarding the validity of any of these documents.

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Perry Neil Harrison368

the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries crafted anthropodermic books predominantly as a way to indicate their own social status and skill. Finally, the present-day creation of ‘Cryobooks’ subverts the historical applications of the practice by reaffirming the values of the bindings’ contributors and fostering new forms of communication. These varied uses of anthropodermic bibliopegy over the course of six centuries represent the potential for human skin to serve as a mutable, but always powerful, indicator of personal identity. Undoubtedly, the greatest source of difficulty for researchers of anthropodermic texts is the question of validity. The claim that a certain book is made of human skin is frequently unverified, and declarations regarding such bindings often do not hold up under scientific analysis. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel has remarked that, due to the unconfirmed nature of many of the bindings of this type, he ‘thought this practice […] was a myth’. 7 Regarding the difficulty of establishing the true, skin-bound nature of the books, Carolyn Marvin notes, ‘Because there is nothing perceptibly obvious about a book bound in human skin to suggest its composition […] it [is] especially difficult to distinguish fantasy from fact.’ 8 In particular, human skin is, in many ways, similar to bovine skin, so validating claims without modern laboratory testing is nearly impossible, leading to false claims of anthropodermic bibliopegy. For example, the Scrutinium Scriptuarum currently held in the United States Library of Congress was renowned for having been bound in human skin, but, like a great number of these misleading artefacts, the book is actually bound in bull’s hide.9 Scientifically verified examples of the practice during the Middle Ages are exceedingly rare, and perhaps even non-existent. Among the earliest known books believed to be bound in human skin is a French Bible dating from the late thirteenth century, though there is no available information that confirms the binding material.10 While authentic examples of anthropodermic medieval texts are elusive, the presence

7 Erik Kwakkel, ‘Halloween (2): Bound in Human Skin’, Erik Kwakkel (blog) (28 Oct. 2013), accessible through http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com (accessed 30 Mar. 2015). In addition to the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, several additional books have undergone similar testing to verify the nature of their binding. Harvard, in particular, discovered three skin-bound documents as recently as 2014. For more information about these recent findings, see: Heather Cole, ‘The Science of Anthropodermic Binding’, Houghton Library Blog, 4 Jun. 2014, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/houghton/2014/06/04/caveat-lecter/ (accessed 30 Mar. 2015).

8 Carolyn Marvin, ‘The Body of the Text: Literacy’s Corporeal Constant’, The Quarterly Journal of Speech 80.2 (May 1994): 129–49 at p. 133.

9 Ibid., pp. 133–4. 10 Samuel P. Jacobs, ‘The Skinny on Harvard’s Rare Book Collection’,

The Harvard Crimson (2 Feb. 2006), http://www.thecrimson.com/

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of fabricated and unverified documents does prove that the idea held a place in the medieval imagination. The available accounts of this binding practice indicate a correlation between the act and religious texts, a link that would become increasingly important as anthropodermic bibliopegy became more common in subsequent centuries. In particular, a number of scientifically confirmed anthropodermic books originate from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. While the relatively small number of existing examples indicates that this manner of binding was still unusual, it became frequent enough that commonalities began to emerge. Like their medieval ancestors, many early modern documents that have been verified are religious texts of some description. One of these religious texts truly bound in human skin, currently held in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, is a seventeenth-century prayer book bound during the course of the French Revolution.11 In fact, several of these anthropodermic books are of French origin, which is not entirely surprising given their religious bent and the religious, political and social turmoil facing that country during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.12 The French Religious Wars of the sixteenth century provided a ripe staging ground for a great many public acts of mutilation and brutality. As early as 1546 the French Parlement exercised jurisdiction over the punishments of those it deemed heretics. These punishments were highly visible and violent. In response to the discovery of a private gathering of Protestants in 1546, ‘fourteen men were tortured and burned alive. A fifteenth was sentenced to witness the executions, hung by his armpits, then flogged and imprisoned.’ 13 This violence was not limited to state actions. In a particularly brutal instance of mob violence, ‘Two [Huguenot] lawyers […] were hanged in the marketplace in September 1562. The crowd cut them down and mutilated them before throwing them into the river.’ 14 Mutilation was a common theme in mob-related violence, particularly during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572. As Geoffrey Treasure notes, during the massacre, ‘bodies were stripped, sometimes mutilated,

article/2006/2/2/the-skinny-on-harvards-rare-book/ (accessed 30 Mar. 2015).

11 Richard A. Lovett, ‘Photo in the News: Book Bound in Human Skin’, National Geographic News (11 Apr. 2006), accessible through http://news.nationalgeographic.com (accessed 30 Mar. 2015).

12 While the majority of examples of anthropodermic bibliopegy are of French or British origin, these are by no means the only countries to have produced such artifacts. For example, Spain and Germany are each the source of verified anthropodermic books.

13 G. R. R. Treasure, The Huguenots (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 73.

14 Ibid., p. 154.

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dragged along the street and thrown into the Seine’. 15 Though this manner of public violence tapered off greatly following the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which gave Huguenots significant freedoms and made them ‘in some respects a separate political entity’, 16 these highly visible acts of violence were still alive in the public imagination of the early seventeenth century. In spite of the violence during the period, there are no examples of flaying being used as a punishment during the Religious Wars. Instead, medieval ideas about the removal of skin and the crimes associated with the act led to the rise in production of anthropodermic books in France during this time. Nonetheless, the chapters of this volume prove that assigning a single, static meaning to either the act of removing flesh or the removed organ itself is far from a simple endeavour. Despite these differing shades of significance, each contributor points to the practice’s larger, unifying meaning – the presence of skin, on some level, defines human identity, and the removal of this skin alters, transfers or removes this source of identity. In the words of Katie L. Walters, ‘[skin] also provides ways for thinking about the self, supporting but also belying the fantasy of the self ’s wholeness or unity’. 17 Robert Mills further explores the consequences inherent in the removal of this medium of self-perception and unity, stating,

‘removing the outer surface of a human being deprives that being of its humanity, exposing the potential for an animalized, identity-less existence beneath the surface’. 18 Thus, while the act of flaying is multivalent, it can be seen as a deliberate act of dehumanization, one that removes identifying social and physical traits and transfers the victim into a subhuman stratum characterized by anonymity. In contrast to the modern-day image of medieval brutality, Mills is quick to point out that, ‘as a legal penalty, flaying seems to have played a much greater role in the imaginations of medieval people than it did in actual judicial practice’. 19 Tracy reaffirms its extraordinary use, remarking that

‘flaying […] was rarely practiced as a method of capital punishment in the medieval period’. 20 Mary Rambaran-Olm dispels the mythology of flaying

15 Ibid., p. 172. 16 Ibid., p. 228. 17 Katie L. Walter, Introduction to Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and

Culture, ed. Walter (New York: Palgrave, 2013), pp. 1–10 at p. 2. 18 Robert Mills, ‘Havelok’s Bare Life and the Significance of Skin’, in Reading

Skin, ed. Walter, pp. 57–80 at p. 62. 19 Ibid. 20 Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S.

Brewer, 2012), pp. 62–3. While punitive instances of flaying are rare, they are not completely unknown. For an account of the flaying of Peter Stubbe in sixteenth-century Germany, see in this collection: Susan Small, ‘Flesh and Death in Early Modern Bedburg’, pp. XX–XX; for that of Marcantonio Bragadin, see: Kelly DeVries, ‘A Tale of Venetian Skin: The Flaying of Marcantonio Bragadin’, pp. XX–XX; William Sayers, also in this volume,

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in Anglo-Saxon England, while Kelly DeVries and Susan Small offer unique examples from sixteenth-century Cyprus and Germany.21 Yet, while flaying criminals as a form of punishment was historically rare, there is an influx of anthropodermic books in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, and literary works of the medieval period give these early modern artefacts their most prominent source of rhetorical meaning. The dehumanizing aspects of flaying are highlighted by the crimes with which the act was associated in the literature and imagination in the Middle Ages. Several of the contributors here have reinforced W. R. J. Barron’s contention that, in literature, the crime that most commonly results in the punishment of flaying was treason.22 Literary skin removal accentuates the severity of the crime that warranted such an extreme act. Consequently, flaying as a form of capital punishment can, in part, reassert the authoritative identity of the state as well as strip the identity of the traitor. Interestingly (and perhaps fittingly) enough, just as the majority of anthropodermic bindings show signs of French origins, ‘it is the French authors […] who appear to have made most creative use of flaying as a thematic motif ’: Chrétien de Troyes’ telling of the story of Lancelot, and Jehan Maillart’s Le Roman du comte d’Anjou, among others, refer to flaying as a legal punishment.23 The association of flaying with traitorous action provides a lens through which to examine the human-skin-bound books of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. The extant corpus of confirmed anthropodermic volumes is too small and varied (and the history of the confirmed volumes often too uncertain) to make comprehensive statements about the actual binding practice. However, the study of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote establishes a number of the techniques’ key rhetorical qualities. This document is a tremendously useful tool for discussing the context and details of anthropodermic bibliopegy, as laboratory tests have verified the book’s binding.24 The University of Memphis’ Ned McWherter Library purchased the book from Burke’s Bookstore of Memphis in 1985, after it had been displayed in the

analyses the absence of examples in Irish sources. See: ‘No Skin in the Game: Flaying and Early Irish Law and Epic’, pp. XX–XX.

21 Mary Rambaran-Olm, ‘Medievalism and the “Flayed Dane” Myth: English Perspectives between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, pp. XX–XX; DeVries, ‘A Tale of Venetian Skin’; and Small, ‘Flesh and Death’.

22 Though his study is often hampered by a lack of available historical information, W. R. J. Barron provides a useful perspective regarding flaying as a punishment for treason in medieval culture, see: ‘The Penalties for Treason in Medieval Life and Literature’, Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 187–202.

23 Ibid., pp. 194–7. 24 A permanent link to the catalogue entry of University of Memphis’

anthropodermic copy of this book is found at: http://catalogquicksearch.memphis.edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1446125 (accessed 30 Mar. 2015).

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personal museum of the noted Memphis world traveller Barry Brooks for many years.25 In order to validate the book’s binding for the sale, Burke’s sent a sample of the cover to Jerold M. Lowenstein of the San Francisco School of Medicine, University of California. Following tests on three separate proteins found on the sample, Lowenstein concluded that he

‘[had] no doubt that the binding in question was made from human skin’ (Fig. 15.1).26 Unfortunately, there is no information pre-dating Brooks’ purchase of the volume; the name of the book’s original owner and the identity of the binding’s unfortunate ‘donor’ are lost to us.27 Nonetheless, Lowenstein’s verification of the binding as human skin is particularly important, allowing

25 All information pertaining to the history of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote is drawn from personal communication with Ed Frank (Curator of University of Memphis Special Collections), 18 Dec. 2013.

26 Jerold M. Lowenstein, ‘Letter to Burke’s Bookstore’, University of Memphis McWherter Library, Memphis, 3 May 1985. While early twentieth-century tests used hair remnants to verify artifacts made from human skin, leading to false confirmations of artifacts, Lowenstein’s protein analysis specifically identifies proteins unique to human skin. Because of this, this test allows for a much greater degree of confidence about claims of validity. For information about falsely identified human skins, see: Rambaran-Olm,

‘Medievalism and the “Flayed Dane” Myth’. 27 For a more complete description of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie

Huguenote’s physical features, storage, and provenance, see: Perry Neil Harrison, ‘On the Binding of the University of Memphis’ L’idolatrie Huguenote’, Notes & Queries 62.4 (Winter 2015): 589–91.

Fig. 15.1 Front cover of the anthropodermic L’Idolotrie Huguenote

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researchers to confidently place the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote’s binding and physical evidence within the larger context of the political and religious landscape of early seventeenth-century France. This, in turn, sheds significant light on the circumstances under which the book was produced, on the flayed skin used as its binding, and on the overall emergence of the practice. The history surrounding the book’s author, Louis Richeome, is undoubtedly the most accessible aspect of the document’s past. Richeome, a Provincial Jesuit and a vehement opponent of Protestantism, wrote a number of works defending the theological beliefs and legitimacy of Catholicism and attacking those he saw to be enemies of the faith. Richeome was noted for his highly incendiary writings that actively sought to demonize the Huguenots, and he was a major contributor to a much larger ideological war between Catholicism and Protestantism that utilized polemics as its most prominent battlefield.28 Jonathan L. Pearl reports that, in the 1603 Plainte apologétique, ‘Richeome accused the [ Jesuit] order’s enemies of being “the most notable calumniators that France has seen since Luther gave birth to monsters extreme in impudence, in ignorance [and] in malice”.’ 29 The vilification of religious opponents persists in L’Idolatrie Huguenote, in which Richeome ‘[draws] correspondences between the pagan oracles and the Protestants’, particularly the Oracle at Delphi.30 For Richeome, this correlation was particularly damning, as he and other Catholic polemical treatise-writers of the period were of the mind that ‘the Devil, in rivalry with God’s prophets, established his false oracle at Delphi’. 31 Richeome’s association of his political opponents with pagans and demons exemplifies, but by no means encompasses, the vitriolic nature of his writings. In short, Richeome’s works were drafted for an audience who shared his hatred of the Protestants – an audience of which the owner of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote would have been a part – as a direct assault on the Huguenots. Richeome’s reputation clarifies why the owner chose to bind the book in human skin, as the presence of flayed flesh would make tangible the threat of physical violence contained within the polemic’s pages.

28 In the years leading up to Richeome’s writing of the L’Idolatrie Huguenote, the Huguenots often used polemics to portray themselves in beneficent opposition to the vilified Catholic Church through the commonly used construction of the Papal Antichrist. For more complete view of this debate, see: Lawrence P. Buck, The Roman Monster: An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2014).

29 Jonathan L. Pearl, ‘Demons and Politics in France, 1560–1630’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 12.2 (Summer 1985): 241–51 at p. 248.

30 Anthony Ossa-Richardson, The Devil’s Tabernacle: The Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 71.

31 Ibid., p. 67.

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The book’s spine shows that the anthropodermic cover was not the codex’s original binding (Fig. 15.2).32 This is not surprising, because many books in this period were purchased without a cover and later bound to the purchaser’s liking;33 however, this reveals a great deal about the artefact’s original owner. A particular reader made a deliberate decision to bind this book in human skin to suit his or her own preferences. The ‘customized’ aspect of the book is further highlighted by the text printed on the book’s spine. Rather than reproducing the title and author of the book, the spine bears the words ‘Paolemic Huguenote par [d’Louis] Richoeme’. 34 The inside of the book, however, shows no signs that it was ever read: there are no marginalia, no passages underlined, and the pages show no signs of wear or discoloration. This suggests that the piece was specially commissioned for display.

32 It is important to note that, while the volume is in an overall excellent state of preservation, the spine of the book has begun to pull away from its binding. In large part this is due to the stiffness of the cover and the handling of the book by modern researchers. This, however, corroborates the theory that the book was bound in skin shortly after its publication – the weakest part of the otherwise well-preserved book is in its binding, indicating previous work in that region.

33 Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 146–7.

34 Due to age and handling, the text indicating author’s first name has been rendered illegible. However, the remaining legible words leave little doubt that the obscured word is either ‘Louis’ or some variant of the name.

Fig. 15.2 Spine and tail edge of the anthropodermic L’Idolotrie Huguenote

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This idea is reinforced by the words printed on the book’s spine – substituted for the document’s actual title. For this owner, the author and genre (a polemic by Louis Richeome) was more important than the fact that the book was a particular document, L’Idolatrie Huguenote. By the time of this book’s binding, Richeome was an infamous polemical writer, and the claim on the spine that this is a ‘polemic authored by Louis Richeome’ would have called to mind his zealous political and theological stances. The ownership and display of Richeome’s polemic, wrapped in human skin, aligned the book’s owner with Richeome’s extreme, often violent, views in a highly sensational manner – visual propaganda that reinforced the perceived animalistic qualities of the dissenting Protestants. This artefact was also certainly crafted as a response to the Huguenots themselves, who cherished polemics as a means of defining their beliefs within the wider religious discourse of persecution. Luc Recaunt notes, ‘Huguenot self-perception and identity relied heavily on the production of alternative histories’, and a particularly important and effective method of generating these alternate histories was through the writing and distributing of polemical documents.35 Huguenots situated themselves within the larger narrative of Christian history by setting their own suffering into the lineage of the Christian martyrs.36 Huguenots sought to present themselves as innocent victims of religious oppression and, later, as being justified in their armed opposition to the Catholic Crown. Thus, the Catholic writers who rebutted the Protestant propaganda with their own polemics did not simply challenge their opponents on theological grounds, but did so on the very stage on which Huguenot identity was created and directed. In this instance, the owner of the book literally wraps his polemical response in a direct threat to the Huguenots’ physical safety. The information available about the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote suggests a complex relationship between the owner’s social identity and the document itself. Obviously, the owner wanted to display openly his or her anti-Huguenot sentiments through the possession and display of the book. More specifically, the most obvious reason for commissioning the binding is to instil fear because of its creation and existence. However, this trepidation extends beyond a simple fear of the grotesque nature of the artefact. While it is impossible to determine the origin of the book’s anthropodermic cover, the knowledge that the owner primarily valued the book for its unique aesthetic rather than its words reveals much about how that owner wished others to view the binding. By binding an anti-Protestant text in human skin – and openly

35 Luc Recaunt, ‘Religious Polemic and Huguenot Identity: 1554–1619’, in Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685, ed. Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 29–43 at p. 41.

36 Ibid., p. 30.

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labelling it as a polemic against the Huguenots’ beliefs – the owner clearly wished to suggest that the skin itself came from a Huguenot. Bound to the book’s violent content, the flayed skin, lacking any other identifying feature, becomes associated with the subject of the book’s violence, a fact that would not have been lost on its owner. Like other contemporary anthropodermic texts, there is nothing that outwardly suggests that the book is bound in human skin; however, an owner willing to invest the money to bind a book in this rare material would presumably have had little apprehension about identifying the binding’s material to curious visitors. Regardless of the source of the book’s cover, the implication that the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote is bound in the skin of a Huguenot places it into the lineage of the flayed ‘Dane-skins’ displayed on English church doors, detailed in Mary Rambaran-Olm’s contribution to this collection. Much like English nationalists during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, who used these ‘Dane skins’ to ‘continue a historical narrative about national character and race as unifying elements in English history’, 37 the owner of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote desired to provide a public and visceral way to define his beliefs against an outside force. In each case, it is not the presence of identifying features that grant the removed skin its rhetorical significance. Rather, the new location of the skin, coupled with a cultural desire to utilize the flesh as a source of personal and group identity, work to transform the skin into a source of propaganda. Beyond its use in defining its owner against an ideological ‘Other’, creating the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote from the skin of a Huguenot closely links the artefact to literary flaying, the stripping of identity and the crime of treason. Since the removal of human skin carried cultural connotations of religious or social deviance, the book’s cover may have been commissioned in part to associate the Huguenot ‘idolaters’ with the deviancies that were punished by the removal or mutilation of the flesh. Given the tumultuous political and religious climate at the time of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote’s production, a large number of the Huguenots’ opponents would have certainly welcomed this association. During the early 1600s tensions were again stirring in France. While the Edict of Nantes’ concessions went far in placating a great number of Protestants, many of the Edict’s articles, such as the requirement of tithes to the Catholic Church and the reestablishment of Mass throughout the whole of France, ensured that a substantial degree of potentially volatile resentment remained. These tensions reached their tipping point with the Huguenot Rebellion of the 1620s.38 This rebellion led to a renewed

37 Rambaran-Olm, ‘Medievalism and the “Flayed Dane” Myth’, p. X. 38 For information regarding the Huguenot rebellions, see: Treasure, The

Huguenots, pp. 244–68.

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armed conflict between the Catholic Crown and the Protestants. With the Religious Wars, the grant to the Huguenots of social and political freedoms, and the Protestant’s continued resistance all very much alive in the public mind, supporters of the zealously Catholic Richeome would have found binding the textual proof of the Huguenot’s treachery in a literary symbol of treason a fitting way to assert their own anti-Protestant beliefs. The allegation of treason extends beyond the implication of crimes committed by an individual Protestant. By surrounding the text with skin that has been stripped of its identity, the creator of the text has ensured that the exterior works in unison with the interior content to attack the Huguenots on a larger scale. Binding a book containing assaults on the Protestant’s religious beliefs with a skin allegedly drawn from a symbolic traitor threatens the owner’s enemies on a spiritual, political and physical level. The flayed skin surrounding the book’s exterior suggests the possibility for other ‘traitors’ to suffer the same fate, while the interior text confronts and destabilizes the Protestants’ spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, the anthropodermic binding draws upon the dual purposes behind flaying treasonous criminals; by creating this tome, the owner dehumanizes the individual ‘Huguenot’ making up the book’s cover and the ‘Huguenots’ as a religious entity while, at the same time, reinforcing the owner’s own anti-Protestant beliefs. Additionally, wrapping Richeome’s writing in the skin of a Huguenot is tantamount to appropriating Huguenot identity for the uses of the artefact’s creator. Having been stripped of the identity contained within his/her own flesh by the act of flaying, this ‘Huguenot’s’ skin instead becomes a weapon against his or her former political and religious faction. Therefore, the most chilling message conveyed by the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote is not the physical violence of flaying, the stripping of all forms of identifying associations, or the allegations of political, religious or social deviancy, but rather the understanding that all these threats are conveyed through a medium that once shared the identity and beliefs it now oppresses. This weapon was designed to strike Huguenots on a deeply personal level as it took the form of a particularly volatile polemic – the way Huguenots traditionally established their own identity in opposition to Catholicism. As a result, by binding this document in human skin, the owner effectively attacks the Huguenots on multiple levels, stripping them of their identity and simultaneously reappropriating their bodily form, unsettling the grounds on which they primarily establish their beliefs. While the emphasis on religious ideology would fall by the wayside, the early modern tendency for anthropodermic bibliopegy to serve as a vivid assertion of personal identity would persist during its revival in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As early as 1944 Lawrence S. Thompson noted that ‘the integument of homo sapiens was used time and again during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for covering

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books, often titles with macabre contents to match the covers’. 39 A great number of books from this time are commonly thought to be bound in human skin; however, like their early modern counterparts, many have not been scientifically verified. A number of these documents were tested and their binding material supposedly confirmed, but the methods available during the first half of the twentieth century are dubious at best. Thompson specifically cites ‘the familiar technique of microscopic examination of vestigial remnants of hairs still clinging to the skin’, used to initially confirm the validity of supposed ‘Dane’ skins nailed to English church doors.40 As Rambaran-Olm has shown here, these findings have not withstood the test of time.41 Nonetheless, the uncertain nature of the books’ binding does not diminish their rhetorical significance. By claiming that these books are bound in human skin in notes on the books’ flyleaves, the artefacts’ creators encourage the perception that their items are authentic. For example, one early twentieth-century flyleaf reads: ‘This book was bound by me in human skin. Berlin. 1 June 1920. Paul Kersten.’ 42 These notes shape the reader’s perception of the text and place the artefacts into the lineage of the anthropodermic documents of early modern France, regardless of the items’ validity. Like their predecessors, the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books also reinforce the owners’ personal beliefs through the removal of the flayed victims’ individuality. In one of the only dedicated studies on anthropodermic bibliopegy, Carolyn Marvin examines these nineteenth-century books, observing that the collectors of skin-bound texts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ‘were often medical practitioners, a number of whom tanned the skin for the bindings themselves’. 43 Thompson also remarks on this affinity for tanning human skin: ‘Toward the latter part of the nineteenth century several prominent American physicians began to show a pronounced interest in anthropodermic bibliopegy. At least three such volumes are in the library of the Philadelphia College of Physicians.’ 44 As opposed to the anonymous owner of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, these

39 Lawrence S. Thompson, Bibliologia comica; or, Humorous Aspects of the Caparisoning and Conversation of Books (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1968), p. 35. For this article’s initial publication, see: Lawrence S. Thompson,

‘Notes on Bibliokleptomania’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library 48.9 (Sept. 1944): 723–60.

40 Lawrence S. Thompson, ‘Tanned Human Skin’, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 34 (1946): 93–102 at p. 96.

41 Rambaran-Olm, ‘Medievalism and the “Flayed Dane” Myth’, p. X. 42 Qtd. in Marvin, ‘Body of the Text’, p. 134. The text of this inscription

was translated from German by Betty Vadeboncœur during personal communications with Carolyn Marvin.

43 Ibid., p. 134. 44 Thompson, ‘Tanned Human Skin’, p. 97.

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physicians openly associated themselves with the creation of skin-bound codices, potentially because of the scientific value of such texts. While the older book identifies the text’s author and genre as a means of defining the owner in opposition to an ‘Other’, the physicians often use their books’ flyleaves to draw attention to both themselves and their own actions, and to identify the source of their binding. While it seems bizarre that these physicians would deliberately associate themselves with skin-bound books, they created and commissioned these anthropodermic artefacts to reinforce their professional image. Marvin suggests that physicians possessed ‘a desire for personal recognition within a textual tradition of medical expertise’. 45 As medical professionals, the ability to demonstrate their access to a number of cadavers, and by extension a way to regularly hone their surgical skills, would have been an obvious benefit of associating themselves with these books.46 Beyond this, creating and tanning their own texts showcased the physicians’ skill at dissection, which potential clients would have admired. Overall, the textual notes demonstrate a great deal of pride in the act of creating anthropodermic books. Kersten proudly informs the reader that he performed the task of binding himself. Additionally, he claimed to have created six books in such a manner.47 In response, flyleaves written by owners who did not create, but rather purchased, anthropodermic books also place a tremendous emphasis on the physicians’ craft. A book signed ‘mon cher docteur Bouland’ expounds the merits and features of an anthropodermic book in his collection; the creator made his book by crafting the skin into vellum rather than tanning it.48 He then directly compares this work to another tanned anthropodermic text located within his personal library.49 Bouland’s praise of the excellence of the artefact’s

45 Marvin, ‘The Body of the Text’, p. 136. 46 The association with flayed flesh with medical expertise is not limited to

nineteenth-century anthropodermic texts. For a discussion of the flayed bodies with surgery and surgeons in medieval France, see in this collection: Jack Hartnell, ‘Tools of the Puncture: Skin, Knife, Bone, Hand’, pp. XX–XX.

47 Lawrence notes more than ten additional physician-produced anthropodermic books. However, these were identified using the unreliable tests prevalent during the early twentieth century. See: Thompson, ‘Tanned Human Skin’, pp. 96–100. Cf. Rambaran-Olm’s discussion of the methods used to test such artifacts in ‘Medievalism and the “Flayed Dane” Myth’, p. X.

48 The document’s provenance identifies ‘docteur Bouland’ as Ludovic Bouland, a doctor and book collector who purchased many anthropodermic books. See: Michael Winter, ‘Confirmed: Harvard Book Bound in Human Skin’, USA Today, 4 Jun. 2014 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/04/harvard-book-bound-human-flesh/9981335/ (accessed 31 Mar. 2015).

49 Marvin, ‘The Body of the Text’, pp. 134–5.

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creation confirms these books were admired in a variety of circles; in some way, these items garnered some of the admiration that the doctors sought to gain through their creation. For the nineteenth- and twentieth-century physicians associated with anthropodermic bibliopegy, the possessing and creating of these artefacts represented a strong, perhaps ostentatious, assertion of their own professional skill and value. Additionally, Marvin suggests that the books’ subject matter further assisted the physicians in shaping their social identities. She argues that the owners wished to place themselves within the ‘upper-class avocation of rare-book collecting’. 50 To do this, the physicians chose to affix their anthropodermic bindings to ‘rare or high culture texts’. 51 Marvin cites a human-skin-bound edition of Des destineés de l’âme by Arsène Houssaye, an author whose writings were popular with upper-class French society during the nineteenth century.52 Customizing this book in such a highly individualized way indicates the owner’s familiarity with the text itself, and by wrapping a book associated with high social status in a binding exemplifying the owner’s expertise in his craft, the owner directly links himself and his profession with an elite social stratum. Thus, much like the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, one of the primary reasons physicians created their own skin-bound tomes was to construct and to define their own identity. Furthermore, just as for their French predecessor, the physicians’ books bolster the owners’ identity while dehumanizing the flayed victims and stripping them of their identity. Occasionally, the creator’s notes identify the source of the binding – at least that it is human, in some sense creating an alternative identity for the flayed flesh. Joseph Leidy’s anthropodermic Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy claims that its binding is fashioned from human skin and Marvin notes that, if this is true, Leidy likely gained the integument from a ‘solider who died in the great Southern rebellion’ during the doctor’s time as a physician at the Union Army’s Satterlee Army General Hospital.53 Similarly,

50 Ibid., p. 136. 51 Ibid., p. 134. 52 In 2014, Bill Lane, of Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Protoemics Resource

Laboratory, and Daniel Kirby, of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, confirmed the book’s binding as human skin. Regarding the binding, Lane remarks, ‘The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of Des destineés de l’âme, make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human’. Qtd. in Cole, ‘The Science of Anthropodermic Binding’.

53 Marvin, ‘The Body of the Text’, p. 135. Joseph Leidy’s anthropodermic Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy was published by Lippincott, in Philadelphia in 1861. Cf. Thompson, ‘Tanned Human Skin’, p. 97. Thompson notes that the book is inscribed: ‘The leather with which this book is bound is human skin, from a soldier who died during the great Southern rebellion’.

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physicians engaging in anthropodermic book-binding frequently drew their material from corpses that they had personally autopsied, and identified the donor as a means of commemorating their medical knowledge and practice. For instance, John Stockton Hough obtained the skin for a late 1880s anthropodermic edition of Speculations on the Mode and Appearances of Impregnation in the Human Female from ‘Mary Lynn […] a twenty-eight-year-old Irish widow dead of consumption at Philadelphia Hospital, the Almshouse facility where resident physicians learned their medical skills on paupers’ bodies.’ 54 Being reduced to the binding of a medical text, the only testament to her existence, also emphasizes Mary Lynn’s poverty. Their existence on the bottom end of the social scale made the corpses of the poor prime targets for physicians looking to try their hands at anthropodermic bibliopegy, depriving the paupers of their humanizing integument and the last remnants of their living identity. The primary similarity shared by these cadavers used for the binding of books is their difference – socially and religiously – from the books’ creators. Marvin notes, ‘the medical violation of the pauper’s body marked it as an Other by depriving it of the dignity of its own physical boundaries’. 55 Even before they were ‘Othered’ on the autopsy tables, Mary Lynn and the southern soldier represented a world distinct from that of the doctors. For Hough, the corpse of an Irish pauper would have symbolized the lower class from which he was separated as an educated physician, his status and practice reified by creating anthropodermic books. Similarly, the deceased Confederate soldier would have represented an ideological opponent for Leidy, a physician at a prominent Union military hospital. Much like the owner of the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, who attacked the Huguenots by surrounding his book with their supposed skin, the physicians who crafted the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century skin-bound documents clearly sought to separate themselves on a social or ideological level from the binding’s source material through their creation of the artefact, tearing the flesh from those they deemed unworthy (or inferior) and putting it to ‘better’ use. While this transformation is less actively combative than the threat of violence implied in the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, it still shares a fundamental intent. In each case, the creator is shaping and furthering his or her own desired identity through the stripping of the identity of an ideological ‘Other’. It is in this way that the physicians who crafted skin-bound texts during the nineteenth century most actively participated in the anthropodermic tradition previously exhibited in early modern France. While a large number of the creators of anthropodermic books practised their craft as a way to oppress an ideological ‘Other’ while strengthening their own individual identity and worth, the ‘Cryobooks’

54 Marvin, ‘The Body of the Text’, p. 136. 55 Ibid., p. 141.

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of the twenty-first century invert these purposes through the voluntary involvement of the bindings’ contributors and the deliberate perpetuation of their identity and ideals. Through the wilful donation of skin, these documents use flesh as a medium for communication and scientific research. Cryobooks are ‘small, handmade books created from human skin, pigskin, and paper’. 56 The human skin is obtained through voluntary donations from cosmetic-surgery patients, and the pages contain information on a non-pathogenic strain of HIV.57 In these books, the details of both the donated skin and the virus are preserved for research purposes, ideally so that the artefacts will help further ongoing research on virality. At their core, these Cryobooks ‘[aim] to explore first hand how current use and application of retroviruses might bring another perspective to, and reconsideration of, virality as an alternative mode of inscription’. 58 Unlike the anthropodermic L’Idolatrie Huguenote, whose owner’s oppressive intent seeks to destroy a competing identity for the sake of reinforcing his or her beliefs, Cryobooks broaden the scope of communication through the efforts of multiple willing donors. In addition to this overall subversion, Cryobooks represent the reversal of past instances of anthropodermic bibliopegy due to both the intent of the study and the voluntary nature of the contributions of fleshly material. Also, in a turn vastly different from any previous instance of anthropodermic bibliopegy, Cryobooks do not seem to have a single ‘owner’, but rather are communally owned for the purpose of research; as such, the books extend their role as a signifier beyond the limits of an owner. Also, through the active donation of skin, Cryobooks seek to preserve an element of their contributors’ identities as a monument to the donor, not the physician. While each artefact is made up the skin of several anonymous individuals, the books themselves nonetheless provide a lasting testament to the donors’ cause. As the contributors to the books’ material remain alive beyond the creation of the artefact, they can also take part in the communal ownership of the document. In this legacy, these documents demonstrate the ability for flayed skin to contribute to, rather than deny, the identity of those whose skin has been removed, and, therefore, provide a fitting mirror image to the anthropodermic texts of the previous centuries. Through the various ways it has repurposed flayed flesh throughout its documented uses, anthropodermic bibliopegy demonstrates both the consistency and the mutability of flesh as a sign. Specifically, the anthropodermic instance of the 1608 L’Idolatrie Huguenote demonstrates the potential for stripped skin to both dehumanize ideological opponents and repurpose the ‘anonymous’ flayed skin of their adversaries as a weapon

56 Tagny Duff, ‘Cryobook Archives’, Canadian Journal of Communication 37 (2012): 147–54 at p. 147.

57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., p. 149.

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against the identity they claimed in life. Examples of the practice during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were less overtly violent in their purpose, but still sought to strengthen the creators’ own identity at the expense of dehumanizing and removing the identity of an ideological opposite. Fittingly, the ‘Cryobooks’ of the twenty-first century fully invert the intent of their ancestors. These Cryobooks foster communication and reinforce and preserve the values of the ‘contributor’. The sheer number of roles this practice has fulfilled over the course of six centuries speaks to both the potential for skin to speak about identity and the, oftentimes unsettling, possibility for this sign to undergo drastic change. As this collection demonstrates, flayed skin is a mutable and versatile, but still powerful, signifier. As a legal punishment, flaying can serve as a harsh dehumanization of the victim and a stark assertion of authority (Small). Yet, not all societies assigned skin an equal level of significance, instead placing emphasis on the head and the arms, thus rendering flaying impractical as a punitive measure (Sayers). As an artefact flayed skin can function as a uniquely adaptable piece of propaganda, as well as an enduring piece of folklore and public curiosity (Harrison, Rambaran-Olm, DeVries). However, far from the purpose of intimidation and dehumanization, medieval surgeons saw skin removal as a means of healing (Hartnell). For others, the removed flesh was a means of metamorphosis and transformation (Tracy, Bain). Medieval literature provides a medium for exploring the concept of flaying, broadening the idea beyond the skin to explore the stripping of identity inherent in both the transfer of clothing and the tearing off of facial hair (Ward, Livingston, Tracy). Finally, Christ’s flayed skin, both on the medieval stage and in the visual arts, granted the devout a vivid window through which to experience his suffering (Dent, Gramling), while artistic depictions of the flaying of St Bartholomew provide scholars with a template for regarding the ways values and beliefs were transferred to, and understood by, their audiences (Mittman and Sciacca, Lindquist). Like the views put forth in this book, flaying in the premodern world, despite its rarity, was too multivalent to be assigned a single, monolithic meaning. Instead, skin, even when – especially when – separated from the body, represents the fragility of the human frame. But perhaps even more, the range of meanings attributed to flayed skin demonstrates the capability of the human form to both adapt and endure.

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\"Anthropodermic Bibliopegy in the Early Modern Period\"

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