BETWEEN TWO CITIES

Roland Bainton – portrait by Deane Keller which hangs at the Yale Divinity School

One of my favorite books is “Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther” by Roland Bainton (1894-1984). Bainton was Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale for 42 years. The book was first published in 1950. It remains in print, and still sells well enough to be found today on the shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble. In Here I Stand, Bainton gives a lively account of Martin Luther’s life, warts and all, of how Martin Luther bravely stood up to the Papacy, and then single-handedly orchestrated the Reformation from Wartburg Castle tower under the political and military protection of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony and one-time nominee for Holy Roman Emperor. In that castle, Luther translated the Bible into German and brought Scripture to the people. Getting rid of celibacy in the new Church, he was a matchmaker, matching the priests with the nuns for marriage in his reformed Church. He wrote hymns for the people to sing in his new Church, for example, the classic “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

A couple of years ago I was browsing at Bookmans, a chain of busy used book stores here in Arizona, when I came across a copy of the original paperback published in 1950 by Abington Press. At $3 it was a bargain, and I bought it. Later, looking at the book, I noticed that there was a signature on the inside cover page:

I could not imagine Roland Bainton sitting at table in a New Haven or Manhattan bookstore in 1950 with a line of people getting him to sign his book. It was a religious history biography written by a scholarly professor, not a New York Times bestseller after all. So, I thought it was unlikely to be an autographed copy, though if it was, I was likely one of the very few who would value it. I noticed that the middle initial was a unique star-like character. I looked up Bainton on the internet. His middle name was Herbert, so the star was an “h”. The uniqueness of the “h” led me to believe that it might be easy to compare this signature with a known signature of his.

After a little googling, I found out that his papers were archived at the Yale Divinity School. I emailed an inquiry to the Divinity School and the archivist emailed a reply offering to mail me a copy of one of Bainton’s signatures from his correspondence. I received the following page from one of his letters:

You can see from this enlarged signature from the letter that it matches the signature on the copy of Here I Stand I bought.

This memento was a blessing to me, small on the scale of blessings I suppose, but a thrill to have found a rare autographed copy of a 1950 book by a Yale history professor that had special meaning to me. The providence of God was evident. How else would this improbable autographed book find me?

Post Script:  Five years after I posted this, I received a comment to the post from Phil Morris, who must have found the post through googling Roland Bainton.  He also has an autographed copy of “Here I Stand.”  Here is his comment:

I have a copy of Roland Bainton’s ‘Here I Stand’ which he gave to my wife and me as a wedding present in 1968 (along with several of his Christmas Cards). The signature above matches the inscription he put on the title page “To Phil, affectionately Roland H. Bainton. (and an arrow pointing to the ‘wood cut’ of Martin Luther) This is not RHB. (and a quick pen caricature of Bainton in profile) This is.”

Phil Morris — January 26, 2013.