Bound collection of autographs, writings, paintings and drawings collected by the owner from his friends and acquaintances. The earliest detailed study of the album amicorum (Michael Lilienthal’s Königsberg dissertation, 1712) traced its origins to peerages with genealogical information, which is believed to have played some role in tournaments. Lilienthal added, however, that no examples of such peerages were known to exist at the time of writing; he also noted that the emergence of the album amicorum seemed to be closely connected with the beginning of the Reformation. The Keil brothers (1893) adopted Lilienthal’s theory, according to which the albums originated from lost peerages, but they disregarded the rest of his observations. Many scholars followed this view uncritically, but in 1910 the theory was challenged by Rosenheim, who rightly pointed out that the earliest known albums did not, in fact, include coats of arms and that they came from academic circles in Germany, in particular Wittenberg. After Nickson (1970) had supported Rosenheim, it was Klose (1982) who provided the final arguments that show that the album actually came into being in Wittenberg in the time of Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. The oldest known album, that of Claude de Senarclens (1545–59; Geneva, Bib. Pub. & U., MS. lat. 328), as well as the oldest album known to have belonged to someone outside German-speaking territory—that of the Dutchman Stephanus van Rhemen (1556–61; Arnhem, Rijksarchf Gelderland, fam. arch. van Rhemen, Hs. 134)—both open with contributions from Wittenberg. Students who went from one university to another rapidly spread the custom throughout Germany and Switzerland, and soon albums were also circulating among students in Leuven, Douai, Paris and Orléans. The cult flourished particularly in Leiden after 1575, and thereafter the northern Netherlands became, with Germany, the most important area of circulation for the album, which elsewhere in Europe (with the exception of Scandinavia) never developed beyond its simplest form.

• album amicorum
  • Album