A new method

From the exhibit “Sensational Books” at the Bodleian Library today:

Another understanding, though, from this post – that the items were not to be torn out, but folded in some way (which makes more sense):

Nouvelle methode pour se disposer aisément à une bonne & entiere confession de plusieurs années (1658)

The ‘Nouvelle’ in Leutbrewer’s Nouvelle methode was not the various kinds of human fallibility, but the page itself. Each of the sins was printed on a horizontal slice, separated from its neighbours above and below (but joined to the gutter). With a stylus or needle, the reader could unpick the particular sin from the margin and fold it back to serve as a reminder. Here, below, are some sins from the devotional life of an owner of the copy now in the Bodleian Library (Vet E3 f.506) – frozen in time at the last reading, like a kind of spiritual version of those Vesuvius victims found at Pompeii.

The brilliance of the design meant that after confession, the user could return each strip to its original, unfolded, unfallen, position, ready for the next cycle of sin / book-marking / confession. The page tracked the spiritual condition of the reader. Leutbrewer’s Nouuelle methode was a bestseller, and similar books were soon published in the Low Countries and in Mexico – versions like El pecador arrepentido. O methodo facil para disponerse a una buena Confession General, o particular (Mexico, 1716).