Ars moriendi

Dr. Hazel Tubman

Early European Books & Illuminations

Hazel joined Maggs in the summer of 2017 after completing her DPhil. at Oxford, examining early modern self-writing practices and the material text. She has been a specialist in the Early European books department since 2018, where she works with early printed books - from the handpress era onwards - and manuscripts, alongside Jonathan Reilly.

Having studied Italian to degree level, Hazel is particularly drawn to early Italian print culture, though one of the best things about her role at Maggs is the great variety of manuscripts, incunables and early printed books from all over Europe that cross her desk. Women's work and/in the early book is a real interest, and she issued the first of several planned short lists on that subject in the summer of 2024, 'Early Modern Women'. Until recently she co-convened the ABA/IES Book Collecting Seminar, and joined the York Antiquarian Book Seminar (YABS) faculty in 2024.

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The art of dying well

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Maggs’ Early European department is pleased to present a selection of sixteen early books and manuscripts with the unifying theme of 'ars moriendi', the art of dying well. While perhaps not the cheeriest subject for January, death was a feature of life in the early modern period; books and ephemera printed on the subject, and manuscripts written and illuminated to mark its occurrence were often highly visual and not always entirely sombre.

Included in this group is an early – 1547 - edition of Holbein’s iconic Dance of Death suite (item 4); an Italian physician’s study of the psychology of death, with copies of Holbein’s woodcuts given a distinctly Venetian flavour (item 8); a compendious sammelband of German funeral orations, with wonderful memento mori illustrations (item 10); ephemeral pilgrims’ pennants, depicting the saint who gave kings the power to cure scrofula (item 11); and two manuscript fragments, both from the Office of the Dead, beautifully, and very differently, illuminated (items 1 & 3).

Please click on the link above to download the pdf, and email [email protected] with any questions or queries.