Herman Hugo was a Belgian scholar who taught at Antwerp after entering the Jesuit order in 1605; later he was Spinola’s chaplain and often distinguished himself in battle. His writings are numerous-they range from sophisticated theology to a description of the siege of Breda. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Louvain. He died of plague on 11 September 1629 at Rheinsberg.
His first work Pia desideria, was a spiritual emblem book published in Antwerp in 1624 and quickly became the most popular religious emblem book of the 17th century, it had 42 Latin editions and was translated in many languages.
What we are going to look at today Is his work published in 1617, the first book entirely devoted to the history and nature of writing . It was published in Antwerp at the press of Plantin-Moretus , and entitled De prima scribendi origine et universae rei literariae antiquitate
This book looks at the practical function of recording and preserving speech. At the time there were elements around looking at writing as having magical powers and he tried to look at this in a historical and scientific approach. The text is a history of writing and everything connected with it; in 35 chapters, the author discusses the origin of our alphabets, history of writing tools, types of writing materials (a special chapter, xi, is on de primo usu chartae, various kinds of official writs, paleography (including nomenclature of early scripts), the invention of printing (p. 210-with priority definitely assigned to china) and what we might call descriptive bibliography (origin of pagination, for instance). The author’s knowledge of his sources is obviously enormous.
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