Album amicorum (I) of Ernst Brinck

Ernst Brinck (1582-1649) kept no fewer than three albums. This later mayor of Harderwijk started his first album in 1602, during a study stay in Paris. He waited until he was back in the Netherlands to start collecting. The booklet contains contributions from mainly eastern noblemen and prominent scholars such as Vulcanius, Arminius, Gomarus and Clusius.

The inscription of the latter has something touching about it. Not because of the motto ‘Virtute et genio’, which the reader will have added in his mind with ‘sed Dei auxilio’ (not by virtue and ingenuity, but by God’s help). Nor because of the declaration of friendship written underneath or the nice portrait that Brinck pasted next to it. No, it is the addition at the bottom in which the scholar proudly announces that he wrote the text without glasses, even though he is already 81.