Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States — RBSC’s Fall Exhibition is open!

Rare Books and Special Collections’ fall exhibition, Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States, is open and will run through December 15th. 

This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the nineteenth century in Cuba and the United States. People — enslaved individuals and outside observers, survivors and resistors, and activists and conspirators — made and unmade emancipation, a process that remains unfinished and unrealized. 

Materials from Rare Books and Special Collections’ Latin American and U.S. collections are paired together to reflect on the history of enslavement and freedom beyond national borders. The show features books, manuscripts, maps, and prints, illustrating the array of formats held in RBSC and how they each shed light on historical experience. 

Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is curated by Rachel Bohlmann, Curator of North Americana and American History Librarian and Erika Hosselkus, Curator of Latin American Studies and Iberian Studies, and Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Services. 

Curator-led tours will be offered at noon on September 22, October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17, 2023. They are free and no reservations are required. Exhibition tours may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or rbohlman@nd.edu.

Please mark your calendars and join us on Thursday, November 30th at 4:30 pm in 102 Hesburgh Library for a panel program that delves more deeply into questions about enslavement and emancipation raised in the exhibition. The program also speaks to the challenges and opportunities in connecting broad audiences to new scholarly findings in the study of transatlantic slavery. A curators’ tour will precede the program; a reception will follow. 

This exhibition and related programming are generously supported by the Florence and Richard C. McBrien and Richard C. McBrien, Jr. Special Collections Librarian fund.

Two Doctoral Theses by a 17th Century Catholic Theologian and Philosopher

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired extremely rare editions of the two doctoral theses by Francesco Maria Sforza Pallavicino, an important seventeenth-century Catholic theologian and philosopher. These works, De Universa Philosophia (Romae, 1625) and De Universa Theologia (Romae, 1628), were issued only in these imprints.

Sforza Pallavicino (1607-1667) cuts an interesting and versatile figure in the church history of this period. He was an ardent supporter of Galileo and the “new science”, while also well known for his two-volume history of the Council of Trent, Istoria del Concilio di Trento (1656-57), a scathing rebuttal to Paolo Sarpi’s pro-Protestant Istoria del Concilio Tridentino. Over his father’s objections, Sforza Pallavicino entered the Society of Jesus in 1637 and became a staunch opponent of Jansenism and defender of the Jesuit theological tradition. He was made a Cardinal by Pope Alexander VII in 1657.

The author’s philosophy dissertation is a wide-ranging text covering readings from Aristotle, Augustine, Avicenna, and Aquinas to Scotus, Suarez, and Xenophon; De Universa Theologia is similarly broad in scope, specifically treating the following nine subjects: “De Deo Uno, et Trino”; “De Angelis”; “De Actibus Humanis”; “De Gratia”; “De Fide, Spe, et Charitate”; “De Virtutibus Moralibus”; “De Incarnatione”; “De Primis Tribus Sacramentis”, and “De Quatuor Postremis Sacramentis”.

We have found only two North American library holdings for each of these titles.

Souvenirs from the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

A pair of finely crafted, meticulously detailed, and distinctively shaped books—a baseball-glove shaped book and a baseball-shaped book—are among the Joyce Sports Research Collections newest acquisitions. The two unusually-shaped publications are both early-twentieth-century souvenir programs of the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament from 1908 and 1911, respectively. Sponsored each year by the International Typographical Union (ITU), the tournament brought together teams representing the ITU from different cities for several days of sports, camaraderie, and brotherhood. Labor Day seems a fitting time to explore the history of these unique books and to remember the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament.

The first Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament took place in New York City in September of 1908. To mark the festive occasion, the Allied Printing Trades Council of New York lovingly designed and published the First Printers’ National Baseball Tournament Souvenir Program in the shape of a realistic looking catcher’s mitt. The New York printers seemed to relish the opportunity to show off their craft for their visiting colleagues with this elaborate and creatively shaped program.

The 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program describes the origins of the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament. As early as 1883, union printers in New York City had organized the New York Morning Newspaper Baseball League with teams representing different New York and Brooklyn newspapers. In 1906 and 1907, the squad from the New York American and Journal won the championship, and, after the regular season, team manager Harry B. Wood arranged several games against ITU teams representing the Boston Globe and the Pittsburgh Dispatch. The 1908 souvenir program reported that during their road trip to Pittsburgh, “the light of geniality and the warmth of hospitality from the sun of fraternity and good fellowship was ever on the job.”

Photograph of the New York American and Boston Globe Baseball Teams, taken at American League Park, Boston, September 11, 1907.

Following the successful inter-city matches, Wood hatched his grand plan for an ITU national baseball tournament. He formed an organizing committee, helped draft a constitution, and invited union printers from Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington, DC, to come to New York for the event. Each invited city received an informational prospectus that included a framed six-color formal invitation designed by New York artist Harry Goodwin that recipients later described as “a work of art.” The 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program, which Goodwin also took the lead in designing, featured a black-and-white reproduction of the elaborate invitation.

A black-and-white reproduction of the formal invitation New York Union Printers sent to their colleagues around the country to organize the First Printers’ National Baseball Tournament.

All eight cities accepted the offer to compete in the tournament that was held in the stadium of the New York Yankees. Boston beat Pittsburgh 5-1 in the 1908 finals to win the inaugural title. For their victory, Boston received the traveling International Typographical Union Championship Trophy that had been donated to the ITU by Cincinnati Reds Owner August Hermann. The first tournament proved to be a rousing success, and it soon became a highly anticipated ITU annual event.

After Chicago (1909) and Washington, DC (1910), St. Louis was the host city for the fourth annual tournament in 1911. Like their counterparts in New York, the Allied Printing Trades Council of St. Louis and the local union printers league, known as the “St. Louis Typo Athletic Association,” spared little expense in designing and printing a lavish baseball-shaped Souvenir Program for the Union Printers National Baseball League Fourth Annual Tournament. The color cover featured pennants for all participating cities, which had expanded to include Denver and Indianapolis, and an image of the Hermann ITU Championship Trophy.

Teams in the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament were composed of all-star squads representing ITU leagues in each participating city. The New York league, for instance, explained in the 1911 program that the association’s Board of Director’s chose the tournament roster from the pool of eligible athletes: “every player has an equal chance to become a member of the team representing New York in the National Tournament even [if] his team finishes last in the league. This rule causes a good player on a poor team to be satisfied and keeps up interest in the organization.”

Pages from the 1911 Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament featuring the Indianapolis team wearing warm-up sweaters with the ITU (International Typographical Union) logo. The outsides of the round pages are decorated with baseball scenes.

The 1911 souvenir program also emphasized that the participants were both serious athletes and serious union men: “this league differs materially from the great majority [by] the fact that all players must be printers and members of the International Typographical Union, or registered apprentices who have served two and one half years at the trade. From this it will be seen that it is not such an easy matter to get together a representative baseball team to compete in these tournaments.”

International Typographical Union President James M. Lynch also gave his endorsement in the 1911 program, praising the “healthy outdoor recreation” and the “advertising value” of the baseball tournament. He also reminded readers about the ITU’s organizing efforts, which “endeavored to impart dignity to the craft by assisting in the maintenance of just and equitable rights of the individual craftsman and cementing the bonds of friendship and brotherhood that should exist between all men, and especially those of a distinctive craft.”

Most importantly, though, as the 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program had proclaimed a few years earlier, the Union Printers Baseball League National Tournament had the “purpose of promoting good fellowship and pure amateur sport.” Happy Labor Day!


RBSC is closed Monday, September 4th, for Labor Day.

Upcoming Events: September 2023

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Friday, September 1 at 2:00-4:00pm | Spotlight Exhibit Tour and Open House, Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with curator Greg Bond.

Brief remarks by the curator about the exhibit will begin at 2:15pm, but visitors will be able to see the exhibit and browse the additional historical material on display for the open house at any time between 2:00pm and 4:00pm.

Tuesday, September 19 at 4:00pm | Centering African American Writing in American Literature – American Studies Professor Korey Garibaldi will draw on his new book, Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton, 2023), and on recent library acquisitions to discuss how, during the middle of the twentieth century, modern American literature and its production were interracial. He will explore multiple aspects of American literary creation, including how African American content has been embodied in dust jacket and cover designs, illustrations, the style of type and bindings, and the overall production quality.


The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.

Curator-led tours, open to the public, will be held noon–1:00pm on the following Fridays: September 1, 15 and 22; October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17.

Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.


The September spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Centering African American Writing in American Literature (August – September 2023).

RBSC will be closed Monday, September 4th,
for Labor Day.

Welcome Back! Fall 2023 in Special Collections

Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Fall ’23! We want to let you know about a variety of things to watch for in the coming semester.

Dublin Walking Tour

This week thousands of supporters of Notre Dame’s football team will travel to Ireland for the Aer Lingus Classic. The Hesburgh Libraries has developed a multimedia walk in Dublin’s city center that connects stories of our library collection with the streets and buildings along the way.

Learn more and access the app
in last week’s blog post.

Fall 2023 Exhibition: Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States

This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the nineteenth century in Cuba and the United States. People—enslaved individuals and outside observers, survivors and resistors, and activists and conspirators—made and unmade emancipation, a process that remains unfinished and unrealized.

Curator-led tours are open to the public, noon – 1 pm on the following Fridays: September 1, 15 and 22; October 13 and 27 [tour on 100/27 cancelled], and November 17. Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.

Curated by Erika Hosselkus, Latin American Studies Curator and Associate University Librarian, and Rachel Bohlmann, Curator of North Americana.

Stop in regularly to see our Collections Spotlights

Fall Spotlight: Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This exhibit features a selection of sources from the Joyce Sports Research Collection that document and preserve the history of football at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs). During the era of Jim Crow segregation, the vast majority of African American college students and student athletes attended HBCUs.

Many of the yearly gridiron contests between rival institutions developed into highly anticipated annual events that combined football with larger celebrations of African American achievement and excellence. The programs, media guides, ephemera, guidebooks, and other printed material on display document the athletic accomplishments, the celebrations, the spectacle, and the community-building that accompany football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Curated by Greg Bond, Curator of the Joyce Sports Research Collection and the Sports Subject Specialist for Hesburgh Libraries.

August-September Spotlight: Centering African American Writing in American Literature

Author photos and bios from the back cover of Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad’s Scottsboro Boy (1950).

Decades before Alex Haley’s Roots swept to number one on the New York Times Best Seller List in 1976, writing and editing produced by African Americans was central to twentieth-century American publishing. Literary production was interracial. View examples of mid-century books by African Americans whose designs—from dust jackets to illustrations to bindings and paper quality—conveyed their centrality in publishing and American literature.   

Curated by Korey Garibaldi, Associate Professor of American Studies, and Rachel Bohlmann, Curator of North Americana at Hesburgh Libraries.

These and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.

All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.

Special Collections’ Classes & Workshops

Throughout the semester, curators will teach sessions related to our holdings to undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Curators may also be available to show special collections to visiting classes, from preschool through adults. If you would like to arrange a group visit and class with a curator, please contact Special Collections.

Events

These programs are free and open to the public.

Friday, September 1 at noon-1:00pm |First of the curator-led tours of the Fall 2023 Exhibition, Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States. Additional tours will be held September 15 and 22; October 13 and 27, and November 17.

Friday, September 1 at 2:00-4:00pm | Spotlight Exhibit Tour and Open House, Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with curator Greg Bond.

Tuesday, September 19 at 4:00pm | Centering African American Writing in American Literature – American Studies Professor Korey Garibaldi will draw on his new book, Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton, 2023), and on recent library acquisitions to discuss how, during the middle of the twentieth century, modern American literature and its production were interracial. He will explore multiple aspects of American literary creation, including how African American content has been embodied in dust jacket and cover designs, illustrations, the style of type and bindings, and the overall production quality. 

Learn more about Special Collections and other Library Events.

Thursday, October 5th at 5:00pm | The Fall 2023 Italian Research Seminar and Lectures will begin with a lecture by Daniela La Penna (University of Reading, UK), “The Archival Turn and Network approach: Examining evolving translation practices and discourses in the British publishing firm complex, 1950s-1980s.”

Learn more about this and other Events in Italian Studies.

Recent Acquisitions

Special Collections acquires new material throughout the year. Watch this blog for information about recent acquisitions.

A Hesburgh Libraries Walk in Dublin

This month, thousands of supporters of Notre Dame’s football team will travel to Ireland for the Aer Lingus Classic, to be played against the Naval Academy in Aviva Stadium in Dublin on August 26th.

The Hesburgh Libraries, home of one of the great Irish studies collections, has found a way to enhance visitors’ experience of Dublin while also telling them about connections with our library. We have developed a short and interesting walk in Dublin’s city center that connects stories of our library collection with the streets and buildings along the way. We hope the discussion of special books and manuscripts within a geographical context will make for a memorable experience.

The tour may be followed using an online app that combines a spoken narrative, mapped directions, and additional links to library books and manuscripts.

Statue of Henry Grattan and books from Henry Grattan’s personal library, as seen in the Dublin Tour app.

On Thursday, August 24th, the program will be introduced in Trinity College, Dublin, and will feature musicians from Trinity’s Traditional Music Society along with the librarians who will set the scene for the ‘Hesburgh Libraries Walk.’

Anyone may download the walk app to their phone, allowing them to follow the walk. The walking tour is guided by a map, an audio narrative, and visual details. For those taking the walk immediately following the presentation, Hesburgh Library personnel will provide wi-fi along the route.

Details:

A Hesburgh Libraries Walk in Dublin City Center
Maharry Theatre, Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin
Thursday, August 24th, 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

To follow the self-guided walking tour, use the QR code here and follow the instructions.

A 16th Century Biography of a Jesuit Missionary

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired a rare edition of a biography of Jesuit missionary Gaspar Berse (1515-1553), Nicolas Trigault’s Vita Gasparis Barzaei Belgae e Societate Iesu B. Xaverii in India socij (Coloniae, 1611). Trigault (1577-1628) was himself a Jesuit missionary to China, arriving in Nanjing in 1611; this edition was published just prior to his departure. He eventually traveled to Hangzhou where he worked until  his death in 1628.

Berse was a companion of St. Francis Xavier and went with him to Goa, India in 1548. When Xavier left Goa to travel further east, he left Berse to lead the new Jesuit mission. A prior edition of this work was published in 1610 in Antwerp.

We have found only seven other North American holdings of this edition.

Upcoming Events: August 2023

There are no public events currently scheduled for August. Please check back for events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections during September.


The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States will open mid-August and run through the fall semester.

The August spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Centering African American Writing in American Literature (August – September 2023).

RBSC will be closed Monday, September 4th,
for Labor Day.

Early Printed Versions of Medieval Liturgical Commentaries in Rare Books & Special Collections

by Julia A. Schneider, Ph.D, Medieval Studies Librarian

Treatises on the Catholic Liturgy emerged as a genre of commentary during the Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500 CE), providing explanations for some or all aspects of the church’s religious ritual, including the Mass, the Divine Office, the Sacrament of Baptism, Ordination, and other rites, as well as church buildings and furnishings, such as vesture, candles (and their placement), bells, and the like.1 Although the reason for the treatises may have stemmed from necessity, whether due to the institution of reforms of liturgical practice or to the interest of particular bishops, the authors of many of these commentaries sought to provide theological background and spiritual edification for readers and preachers alike, aiding in the broader understanding of particular aspects of the Catholic liturgy. This deeper understanding provided for more fruitful meditation on the content and spiritual effects of the ritual. As with commentary on the scriptures in the Middle Ages, composers of these treatises on the liturgy provided their interpretations in multivalent senses, including allegorical understandings alongside (and sometimes instead of) historical or literal interpretations of the various actions, prayers, furnishings, and ministers involved in the ritual.

Although modern scholars have not published as extensively about the genre as they have about other medieval commentary types, existing manuscripts and library inventories indicate that they were important texts to be studied. Medieval authors tended to “recycle” the works of other authors by weaving the work of those earlier authors into their own commentaries; the manuscript transmission rate of texts from this genre, whether directly or through borrowing suggests a rather broad readership of treatises on the liturgy. That the dissemination of some of the most popular commentaries continued well into the print period, even as European ritual practices were reviewed and codified into a revised, unified Roman Rite,2 testifies to their use and usefulness.

Hesburgh Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections holds several witnesses to this early print tradition for liturgical commentaries. For this blog post, we will examine five of our printed treatises on the liturgy. Four of the five include versions of the commentary Rationale divinorum officiorum, which dates from the end of the thirteenth century and was written by William Durand, Bishop of Mende († 1296). Containing eight books, it provides encyclopedic commentary on all aspects of the rites of the liturgy, as well as church furnishings, vesture, and other topics. In addition to the Rationale, Durand compiled a Pontificale (the liturgical book including rites particular to the bishop) and composed the Speculum iudicale (Mirror of Canon Law), along with other works.

In composing the Rationale, Durand lifted text from commentaries by Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), John Beleth (1135-1182), Amalarius of Metz (c. 755-850), and others. It was an extremely popular work, as liturgical commentaries go! One hundred and thirty-nine manuscripts currently exist that were produced during the one hundred and sixty year period between the first manuscript version of the Rationale and its first printing.3 This may not seem like a lot of evidence of interest in the text by our contemporary standards, but given that the literacy rate was less than 20% during the Middle Ages,4 given that texts were copied entirely by hand during this period, and given the ecclesiastical audience for the text, this number is indicative of the status of a late medieval best-seller. Pointing to continued interest in Durand’s text into the modern period is the fact that forty-four printed editions of the Rationale–whole or in part–are known to have been printed between 1459-1500, with a total of one hundred and eleven different editions printed by the end of the nineteenth century.5

The earliest of the printed versions of the Rationale in Hesburgh Libraries’ holdings was printed by Jacques Huguetan in Lyon, c. 1503 on two hundred and twenty-three folios, and includes Huguetan’s printer’s mark. It contains historiated initials which were added after printing (mimicking the process of manuscript illumination), and some of those initials are missing.

The second version of the Rationale examined here was acquired as part of the José Durand Collection and was printed in Venice in 1509 by Peiro Quarengi. It provides a complete version of the text in one hundred and forty-seven leaves including both large and small initials throughout the text. These two represent two of the twenty-five versions of the Rationale printed between 1500-1519.6

Also from the Durand Collection, another of the later editions of the Rationale was printed in 1568 in Venice by Grazioso Percaccino. It contains three hundred and twenty-two leaves and includes a frontispiece; there are initials for each section as well, with some of them planned but absent.

The final version of the Rationale we will reference in this post was printed in 1581, also in Venice, by Giovanni Antonio Bertano. It contains three hundred and seventy-five leaves. In this version, William Durand’s text is appended by John Beleth’s twelfth-century treatise, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis. Astrik L. Gabriel, O.Praem. (1907-2005), former director of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, gave this volume to the Hesburgh Libraries.

These are but four examples of the early print versions of William Durand’s Rationale from the sixteenth century. The demand for new versions of this text began to dwindle after 1672.7 His name was all but forgotten until, during the mid-nineteenth century, a resurgence of interest in manuscript studies and a subsequent pastoral and liturgical renewal occurred that gave rise to the composition of new treatises on the liturgy and an increase in regard for medieval liturgical forms.

Reflecting the climate of reform, a revision of the Roman Rite, and a renewal of pastoral care during the mid-sixteenth century, we have an imprint that contains a compendium of liturgical description, directions, and commentary, first addressed to Salentin IX of Isenberg-Grenzau, who was Archbishop-Elector of Cologne at the time of publication. This volume was published under the name De divinis Catholicae Ecclesiae officiis ac ministeriis, in 1568 by Gerwin Calenius and Johannes Quentel in Cologne.

Melchior Hittorp is the compendium’s compiler, editor and author of his own commentary. After introductory material, Hittorp included a reconstruction of the Order of Mass (Ordo Romanus) and other liturgical rites. This is followed by liturgical commentaries in full or excerpted form by Isidore of Seville, Amalarius of Metz, Berno of Rheichenau, Walafrid Strabo, Bernold of Constance, and Ivo of Chartres, among others. Hittorp’s versions of several of these treatises have influenced twentieth-century scholars attempting to create critical editions of commentaries, particularly that of Amalarius of Metz. Most of the authors represented here were bishops whose commentaries were well-known already while they still lived. Their work was mined, either directly or indirectly, by authors of later treatises. Several of these authors’ works were written during or after the Investiture Controversy (1076-1122), in order to illuminate reforms to church practices. That theme is notable here, as Hittorp’s work of 1568 appeared only five years after the Ecumenical Council of Trent closed in 1563. It was convened in 1545, in part, as the church sought to respond with doctrinal and practical definitions to the critiques of the reformers like Martin Luther.8

All of these imprints show the vibrant life of the liturgy and the importance placed on understanding its spiritual reality in the medieval and early modern periods. Although the intent of the author or compiler is sometimes difficult to determine, particularly for those treatises that do not necessarily describe the liturgical practices of a particular location, the modern reader is left with a broader understanding of the actions, prayers, and furnishings used in the ritual, which ultimately helps them understand the medieval world a bit better. And interest in these texts is reviving. Several medieval liturgical commentaries have been recently translated into English and other languages. A partial translation of Durand’s text into English by Timothy Thibodeau, an alumnus of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, is available by consulting the Hesburgh Library’s Catalog.

 

Footnotes

1. Roger Reynolds, “Liturgy, Treatises on,” in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages,  Joseph Strayer, ed. (NY: Scribner, 1989)  7: 624B.

2. The Roman Rite is the Latin Rite liturgy observed by Catholic churches in the West. Most European countries used the Roman Rite at the time of the Protestant Reformation (beginning 1517). In 1570, Pope Pius V promulgated the new, unified Roman Rite, later referred to as the Tridentine Rite or the Tridentine Mass, so-called after the Ecumenical Council held in Trent (1545-63) tasked with the reform and unification of the liturgy, among other things.

3. Menard, Clarence, “William Durand’s Rationale divinorum officiorum: Prelminiaries to a Critical Edition,” (Dissertation: Academia Pontificia Gregoriana, 1967), 2: 292. 

4. Ekselson, Tyrel C. “States, Institutions, and Literacy Rates in Early-Modern Western Europe,” Journal of Education and Learning (10. 2; 2021), 192. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1290524.pdf (accessed July 113, 2023).

5. Michel Albaric, “Éditions imprimées du Rationale de Guillaume Durand,” in Guillaume Durand, Évêque de Mende (v. 1230-1296) Actes de la Table Ronde du CNRS, Mende 24-27 Mai, 1990 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1992), 183-4.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid, 185.

8. Roger Reynolds, “Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy : Past Research and Future Opportunities,” The Harvard Theological Review, 71.1, 1978), 113-4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1509778 (last accessed July 11, 2023)

Welcome to the Land of Freedom

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

On July 2, 1887, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper marked the upcoming Fourth of July holiday with a cover illustration that graphically depicted the expansion of the United States. The serial was a popular weekly American publication of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight here a significant recent acquisition of the first 73 bound volumes from 1855 through 1891. 

The image, titled “Independence Day—A Case of Vigorous Growth,” features a giant Uncle Sam wearing a top hat labeled “1887” standing astride the continental United States from New York to San Francisco. He extends his hand to greet a much smaller man standing on the Atlantic seaboard wearing a tri-corner hat labeled “1776.” “1887” Uncle Sam asks, “How are you, old man?”; and “1776” responds, “Bless my soul, boy, how you have grown!”

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, For the week ending July 2, 1887.
(vol. 64, no. 1659, p. 317)

During the last half of the nineteenth century, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper catered to the reading interests of middle class Americans, and its content routinely reflected and depicted the conventional mainstream sensibilities of middle America. In 1888, Leslie’s claimed a robust weekly circulation of 45,000 and declared that its issues “reach[ed] the better class—those that have taste and the means to gratify it.”

The 1887 Fourth of July issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper followed up its striking cover image with a centerfold, titled “New York—Welcome to the Land of Freedom,” emphasizing the common contemporary belief that the growth of the United States had been fueled by the constant arrival of new Americans. The two-page spread shows immigrants huddled together on the deck of an ocean liner enthusiastically watching and pointing at the Statue of Liberty as the ship sails past.

The image references a short accompanying article, also titled “Welcome to the Land of Freedom” (p. 327). The text explains that the scene shows the arrival of the ocean steamer Germanic carrying immigrants from several European countries motivated, according to the the article, “by the belief that here they will escape the burdens and limitations which in the Old World abridge individual freedom and the exercise of rights which are felt to be inherent.” 

“The first glimpse of this Land of Promise,” Frank Leslie’s elaborates, “must indeed be inspiriting and joyful … as they sail up our beautiful bay and for the first time see the majestic statue of Liberty, standing, so to speak, at the very gateway of the Republic.” The article concludes stirringly: “May all who sail past it to these hospitable shores find every just expectation realized, and prove in all things worthy of the citizenship which the land of freedom confers upon them.”

This week Special Collections is open Monday (July 3),
CLOSED on Tuesday (July 4),
and open Wednesday through Friday (July 5-7).