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Why are so many of these books so rare? There are various reasons. Times were turbulent - the rise of the Reformation and later the Dutch revolt against the Spanish rule. This entailed literally the persecution by fire and sword of protestant, heretic books by the Inquisition: books were burnt, printers and publishers banned, imprisoned, and in some cases even executed. But also many harmless books were lost. A large, expensive volume, written in Latin, that was added to a library collection on publication, had a much better chance of survival than cheap printed matter, small in size and written in the vernacular. A look at the exhibition makes this clear at once: the large majority exists of small booklets, printed in Dutch, such as almanacs, songbooks, schoolbooks, medical recipe books, arithmetic books, popular stories, etc. There are also a number of protestant and heretic publications.
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