Album amicorum of Hans van Wyckel
Originally this very small album had two pairs of closing ribbons, allowing it to be safely carried in a knapsack when travelling.
A striking feature of this album is its extremely small size, which seems to have been inspired mainly with a view to easy transportability during travels. This small size occurs with some regularity from 1620 onwards, especially in Germany. Only seven are known from the Netherlands.
Wyckel, however, can be called neither a traveller nor a fanatic album keeper. He registered on 20 February 1633 in Franeker, then switched to Leiden (15 June 1635) and from there soon moved to Groningen (9 September 1635), to finally graduate cum laude in Franeker on 6 September 1638 as a doctor of law. The album provides interesting information about his career as a lawyer and delegate to the Council of State, his marriage to Jaycke Saeckma (1616-1671) and the well-being of his direct descendants, because his son Anne Hans later used the booklet to place all kinds of genealogical notes.
The number of inscriptions in the album may be modest at no more than 13, but among the contributors we find the most famous Franeker professors of that time: the jurists Henricus Rhala (1591-1640) and Bernardus Schotanus (1598-1652), the theologian Johannes Maccovius (1588-1644), the mathematician Adrianus Metius (1571-1635), and the philologist Georgius Pasor (1570-1637).
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In Franeker, the famous law professor Bernardus Schotanus accompanied his contribution with a quotation from Plato translated into Latin.
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Van Wyckel's son later used the album as a kind of family bible by recording the births, marriages and deaths of his loved ones in it.
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Every now and then an album reveals where a student lived because the landlady also made a contribution. In Franeker, Van Wyckel lived with J. Klinkebijl.
Description of the album
Album amicorum of Hans van Wyckel. 13 contributions. Dating of the binding: 1635-1636. Request number: 79 J 52
