1876.] The Origin and Development of Museums. 87 
church, which hurled an anathema against all further investiga- 
tions. The noble and brave inhabitants of Spain, the valiant and 
intelligent people of Italy, the nervous and quick-minded French, 
the accurate and slow Germans, all were in the same way subdued, 
and prepared to recognize nothing but the ideas approved by the 
church. Curiously enough, there never existed a stricter censor- 
ship of published books, the censors being at first Catholic priests 
and afterwards principally Jesuits, and their opinions are printed 
on the first page of many old works on natural history. It 
should never be forgotten that while those countries which ac- 
cepted the Reformation grew stronger and stronger, fostered in- 
telligence, and furthered science, all others, even the noblest, de- 
generated, and never again reached their former prominence, 
though they struggled bravely and nobly. Everybody will re- 
member poor Galilei, a giant sacrificed to the glory of the church. 
Every kind of free thought seemed then, as at the present time, 
most pernicious to this infallible institution. 
It now becaine the fashion for princes to possess collections. 
They contained celebrated medicines paid for by their weight in 
gold. Bezoar, the horn of the unicorn, the Maledivian nut, the 
Alraun, were perhaps placed side by side with such rarities as the 
pistol with which Berthold Schwarz tested gunpowder when he 
had discovered it, with Chinese or Egyptian relics, and what would 
now be considered bric-à-brac of every kind. The German Em- 
peror Rudolf II., otherwise known for his avaricious and indecent 
behavior, spent large sums of money for his collections, and paid 
a thousand gold florins, a very large sum for those times, to his 
artist Hoefnagel, for drawing the specimens contained in them. 
The magnificent miniatures on parchment, in four volumes, are 
still extant. The Princes of Gottorf brought together an admi- 
rable collection, called, after the fashion of those times, Kunst- 
kammer (cabinet of art), the remnants of which are still promi- 
nent treasures of the collections of Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. 
A competition now arose between travelers in search of inter- 
esting objects. I will mention only those of the Baron von Her- 
berstein to Moscow, of the Ambassador Busbeq to Constantinople, 
who imported the first tulip, of Olearius to the East Indies, and of 
Kaempfer to Japan. Eventually nearly every prince felt obliged 
to have a well-arranged cabinet. 
A prominent physician in Nurnberg, Besler, published a de- 
scription of his collection, or rather figures of some objects, in 
1642; the first edition of which is very rare, printed on blue-tinted 
