This blog has featured many religious works, and like those texts, this particular example suggests that ownership inscription can reveal one’s affiliation and religio-political position. This copy of Simon Patrick’s 1680 translation of De veritate religionis Christianae (1627) by Hugo Grotius gives us little information about its female owner. The inscription reads, “J. Patrick’s gift to AP. f[ro]m her to SP.” We do not know who AP is and can rely only on the pronoun “her” for the gender of the owner. It is possible that P stands for Patrick and that these three persons were all related to each other. It is tempting to imagine that these are all related to Simon Patrick, the translator himself, but I cannot find evidence of this, and the name Patrick is a common one.
Simon Patrick, then Dean of Peterborough and later Bishop of Ely, was a defender of the Anglican church. He was an Armenianist, making the choice for Hugo Grotius, also an Armenianist, an obvious one. A gift of this book suggests the reader has an investment in Arminianism, and the passing on of the gift has the potential to strengthen a small network of like-minded believers.
What makes this unusual as a work owned (at least temporarily), received as a gift, and then passed on, by a woman is the ambitious theological nature of this book by the famous humanist, theologian, and jurist Grotius. Many religious books owned by women concentrate on practical devotion or advice such as the one other book by Simon Patrick we have featured before, which, as Mark Empey explains, was a book with advice for those who have lost a friend, consisting largely of sermons and prayers. This translation shows evidence of a different, more intellectual type of reading practice.
Source: Book offered for sale by Louis Caron, 12/1/2020. Images reproduced with permission.
Early Modern Female Book Ownership 