Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired the second “issue” of the first edition (1621) of Antonio Daza’s Libro de la Purissima Concepcion de la Madre de Dios (Madrid, 1628), an important early printed defense of the doctrine of the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Daza, a Spanish Regular Observant Franciscan, published this vernacular work during the height of the controversy between Franciscans and Dominicans over the orthodoxy of these views.
“The Friars Minor confirmed in 1621 the election of the Immaculate Mother as patron of the order, and bound themselves by oath to teach the mystery in public and in private. The Dominicans, however, were under special obligation to follow the doctrines of St. Thomas, and the common conclusion was that St. Thomas was opposed to the Immaculate Conception. Therefore, the Dominicans asserted that the doctrine was an error against faith (John of Montesono, 1373); although they adopted the feast, they termed it persistently “Sanctificatio B. M. V.” not “Conceptio”…, until in 1622 Gregory XV abolished the term “sanctificatio”. Paul V (1617) decreed that no one should teach publicly that Mary was conceived in original sin, and Gregory XV (1622) imposed absolute silence (in scriptis et sermonibus etiam privatis) upon the adversaries of the doctrine until the Holy See should define the question.”
Daza draws on a fascinating array of evidence, including a 14-month old infant who sang the verses of the Immaculate Conception (f. 90) and the Virgin Mary’s intercession in “regular” conception and ensuring healthy births among devotees (f. 93). Chapter XIII, “De la obediencia y respeto que tienen los demonios a la inmaculada Concepcion de la Virgen; y como conjurados por la virtud deste misterio han salido de los cuerpos humanos, confessando su limpieza” (ff. 107-114) contains accounts of demoniacal possession (generally of women) cured by the intercession of the Virgin Mary; a telling feature of these exorcisms was that the demons “confessed” to Mary’s freedom from sin as they exited their hosts. The following Chapter XIV points out divine punishments imposed on those who have historically spoken against the Immaculate Conception.
We have found only 1 other North American library holding of this second issue (at the Biblioteca Nacional Mexico) and only 4 holdings worldwide.
Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Spring ’25! Here are a variety of things to watch for in Special Collections during the coming semester.
Special Collections Welcomed Two New Curators in the Fall 2024 Semester
In addition to stewarding the Hesburgh Libraries’ Irish Studies collections in both general and specialized collections, Knight works with other University faculty members to foster the use of these materials broadly across campus within the larger field of Irish Studies teaching and instruction.
The new Irish Studies Librarian and Curator brings deep expertise in the field of Irish Studies, teaching, and librarianship, including in special collections. He previously served as an Associate Librarian at the University of South Florida and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in addition to an M.A. in Library Science from the University of South Florida.
Phillips Quintanilla is responsible for stewarding the Libraries’ Latin American and Iberian Studies collections in both general and specialized collections. She works within the Libraries and across campus to foster the use of the collections broadly within the fields of Latin American Studies and Iberian Studies teaching and instruction. She also supports Latino Studies students and faculty in collaboration with Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator of North Americana.
Phillips Quintanilla brings deep expertise in the field of Latin American and Iberian Studies and teaching, as well as experience in the cultural heritage sector — particularly in areas of provenance and the stewardship of special collections. Before joining the Hesburgh Libraries faculty, she worked as a Research Specialist in the Pre-Hispanic Art Provenance Initiative at the Getty Research Institute. The new librarian and curator holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures with a specialization in transatlantic early modern literatures and cultures, as well as an M.A. in Spanish from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a Master of Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College.
Fall 2024 Exhibition — Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924
Continuing through the end of January.
“Notre Dame football is a new crusade: it kills prejudice and stimulates faith.”
— Rev. John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., Prefect of Religion, Religious Bulletin, November 17, 1924
In the fall of 1924, the University of Notre Dame found great success on the football field and confronted a dangerous and divisive political moment. The undefeated Fighting Irish football team, cemented forever in national memory by Grantland Rice’s legendary “Four Horsemen” column, beat the best opponents from all regions of the country and won the Rose Bowl to claim a consensus national championship. Off the field, Notre Dame battled a reactionary nativist political environment that, in its most extreme manifestation, birthed the second version of the Ku Klux Klan. Sympathizers of this “100% Americanism” movement celebrated white, male, Protestant citizenship and attacked other groups—including Catholics and immigrants—who challenged this restrictive understanding of American identity.
In the national spotlight, Notre Dame leaders unabashedly embraced their Catholic identity. They consciously leveraged the unprecedented visibility and acclaim of the football team to promote—within the very real political constraints of the era—a more inclusive and welcoming standard of citizenship. Attracting a broad and diverse fan base, the 1924 national champion Fighting Irish discredited nativist politics and helped stake the claim of Notre Dame—and Catholics and immigrants—to full citizenship and undisputed Americanness.
Curated by Gregory Bond (Curator of the Joyce Sports Research Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections) and Elizabeth Hogan (Senior Archivist for Photographs and Graphic Materials, University Archives).
Spring 2025 Exhibition — Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture
Opening mid-February.
Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books and Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) and explores a diverse assortment of themes including Nazi racial ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War. By examining these topics through images created for personal use by ordinary people and for state-sponsored propaganda purposes, the exhibit presents a visual narrative of the war’s profound impact on individuals and societies, offering deeper insight into how war was experienced and remembered.
Curated by Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian, University Archives) and Julia Schneider (German Language and Literature and Italian Studies Librarian Hesburgh Libraries).
Spring Spotlight: Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers
Opening end of January.
In 1980, the University of Notre Dame became the first major university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of Midwestern farmworkers represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Toledo, OH). In a few short months, a small and dedicated cohort of students tapped into a growing movement and convinced the campus to act in solidarity.
Curated by Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies).
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 regular 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.
Upcoming Events
Thursday, January 16 at 5:00pm | The Spring 2025 Italian Research Seminar and Lectures will begin with a lecture by 4th-year Ph.D. student in Italian Rookshar Myram (University of Notre Dame) titled: “Forging Effigies in the Commedia: Deification as Artistry.”
Rare Books and Special Collections is open Monday through Thursday this week (December 16-19, 2024)—appointments are recommended. We will then be closed from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.
Special Collections will reopen on Thursday, January 2, 2025.
This is the last blog post for 2024. Happy Holidays to you and yours from Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
This post features the December 1909, “Christmas Number-American Sports,” catalog published by Boston-based sporting goods company Iver Johnson. The colorful catalog over depicts Santa Claus driving an automobile—a relatively new popular consumer item in the first decade of the twentieth century—stuffed with presents from the Iver Johnson catalog. Santa’s goodies include sleds, toboggans, skis, snowshoes, winter caps, suitcases, cameras, flags and wrapped presents.
Founded in the 1870s, Iver Johnson was best known for selling bicycles and firearms, but, as shown throughout this 30-page catalog, the company sold a wide range of sporting goods, household wares, and other items. This Iver Johnson catalog (EPH 5036-7) is part of the Joyce Sports Research Collection’s Sporting Goods Catalog Collection (EPH 5036), which is open and available to researchers.
The “Christmas Number” catalog particularly featured Iver Johnson’s winter sports toys and products, as seen in this picture of children pulling their sheds through a snowy field.
The catalog also advertised an oversized toboggan that looked to seat five to six children with a bit of doggerel:
Just a glimpse in passing But, O you—
No wonder every child wants a Flexible Flyer and most young people a Double Runner
Iver Johnson is the Place to Buy Either. When you buy the sleds, look at the Skates—Skees—Snow Shoes.
For undecided shoppers, the catalog also helpfully printed a guide called “Christmas Gifts You Can Get at Iver Johnson’s” broken down into the categories of “Father,” “Mother,” “Sister,” and “Brother.”
So, if any readers are doing some last-minute holiday shopping for their loved ones, perhaps they can find inspiration from the 1909 Iver Johnson Christmas Number catalog!
“Christmas Presents You Can Get at Iver Johnson’s”
As the 2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow, I learn something new about the Hesburgh Library’s diverse collections every day. This is especially true of my primary research project: the description and arrangement of the library’s hitherto uncatalogued collection of medieval and early modern charters. The collection includes both public and private documents – primarily concerned with land and land-based transactions – spanning eight centuries and three countries (England, France, and Italy), though the majority are of English origin.
Many of the medieval English charters were part of the vast documentary collection of famous antiquarian and bibliophile, Sir Thomas Philipps (d. 1872). In fact, the iconic “Philipps Numbers” which he used to identify the over 40,000 documents in his collection are still visible on the exterior of many of the charters in the Hesburgh Library’s collection.
Image taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.
This Lincolnshire charter was evidently the 30,607th document to join the extensive Philipps collection. After his death, the collection was eventually disbanded and sold. Now, libraries across the world hold small portions of the once massive collection. Of the Hesburgh Library’s collection of charters, at least thirty-five were once owned by Sir Thomas Philipps.
Philipps was not the first person to annotate these charters before they arrived at the Hesburgh Library. In the Middle Ages, after the transaction was complete, the parties involved would add their personal seals and tightly fold the charter recording the event using a method known as “docketing.” This collection of charters was received in their original docketed form and are currently being flattened for ease of access by Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections Conservator Jen Hunt Jonson. The photos in this post were taken during that ongoing process.
Once docketed, a scribe would label the document, naming the location of the land in question, names of the parties, or the date. If no medieval label existed, early modern archivists might inscribe a label according to their own filing systems.
Images taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.
This next charter from the collection, for example, still retains a medieval wax pendent seal bearing an “S” and the word “Ughill,” a small town in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in an early modern hand. This corresponds with the text on the interior, which tells us in Latin that a Richard Schagh granted a tenement in “Ugilwode” to a Thomas Curton in 1377.
Image taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.
A third charter in the collection also bears an early modern inscription which reads, among other notes, “Without Date.” This is true. The text inside does not include the date of signing, though this is not particularly unusual for medieval English charters. Using modern resources and research, however, it is possible to ascertain a general date of origin.
Image taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.
This particular charter is a “feoffment” – an exchange of land for a pledge of service – between Thomas Furnival, son of Thomas Furnival, and John Witely, son of John Witely concerning lands in “Wiggethuysel” (Wigtwizzle, near Sheffield, Yorkshire). All in all, this charter is extremely typical of medieval English charters; the names “Thomas” and “John” are common medieval names and the contract between them is nothing special. The handwriting – a popular medieval English script known as “Cursiva Anglicana” – only tells us that the charter is medieval and English. There are few clues in the physical material of the charter – like many medieval charters, this document is small, made of soft parchment, and stained with wax.
There is, however, a clue in the surname “Furnival” (highlighted in yellow below). In the mid-fourteenth century, the Furnivall family was granted the Barony of Sheffield, Yorkshire and raised to minor nobility. As nobility, the Furnivall family kept detailed genealogical records dating back to the twelfth century.1 Based on these records, we find that there were two “Thomas, son of Thomas” Furnivalls, the first of whom died in 1279, and the second in 1348. This suggests that this document is either from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.
We can specify further. Among the witnesses listed in the charter, there is a “Lord Elias Middehop” (in red) and “Robert Rus of Anesacre [Onesacre]” (in blue). According to a catalogue of Sheffield charters, the same Elias Middehop witnessed a separate charter for a Thomas, son of Thomas Furnivall, sometime between 1267-1279.2 Additionally, according to a genealogy of important Yorkshire families, in the late thirteenth century, the daughter of a “Sir Elias Middehop” married the grandson of a “Sir Robert Rus of Onesacre.”3 Altogether, this evidence suggests that the Hesburgh Library charter is probably dated to the late thirteenth century, likely between 1250-1279.
Each charter in the Hesburgh Library collection has similarly rich historical puzzles to unwind. Once catalogued, the collection will be made available for use by students and researchers alike.
Footnotes
1. John Burke, A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland, extinct, dormant, and in abeyance, (London, H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1831), 215-217. Special Coll. Reference • CS 422 .B84 1831
2. Walter Hall, Sheffield and Rotherham from the 12th to the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalogue of Miscellaneous Charters and Other Documents Relating to the Districts of Sheffield and Rotherham with Abstracts of Sheffield Wills, proved at York from 1554 to 1560 And 315 Genealogies Deduced Therefrom, (Sheffield: J. W. Northend, 1916), 210.
3. Joseph Foster, Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire, v. 2 (London: W. Wilfred Head, P L O U O H Court, Fetter Lane, E.G., 1875), 281-282.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–December 2024).
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations, December 21, 2024 – January 1, 2025.
As with many other aspects of our modern Halloween celebrations, we owe the ubiquitous jack-o’-lantern to the Irish immigrants who brought their traditions with them to the United States.
In the January 16, 1836, issue of The Dublin Penny Journal we find the tale of “Jack o’ the Lantern.” Here the author relates how he learned from his uncle (a “kind, generous soul … deeply imbued with superstition”) the legend explaining the lights they see from the edge of an Irish shaking bog. Our more scientifically minded narrator insists the lights are merely ignis fatuus, a “gaseous vapour arising from putrid vegetable bodies,” but his uncle attributes them to “that misguided traveler, Jack o’ the Lantern.”
Read on to learn just who Jack is and how he came to haunt the bogs of Ireland.
Other versions of the story end with the Devil giving Stingy Jack a coal to light his way, after he is refused entry to both Heaven and Hell. Jack carries that coal not in a pumpkin but rather in a turnip. The Irish carved faces into a variety of fruits and vegetables with the intent of scaring off the restless souls thought to return to the living world on the eve of the Celtic festival of Samhain—traditionally November 1, though celebrations often began the evening before. When Irish immigrants arrived in the Americas, they discovered that pumpkins (a plant native to the Americas and thus more readily available) are rather easier to carve than turnips.
The post’s header image comes from the front page of the November 23, 1867, issue of Harper’s Weekly, which features both an illustrated story of “The Pumpkin Effigy” and a poem titled simply “The Pumpkin.” The illustration is one of the earliest in a major American serial to depict a carved pumpkin. The article relates a tale not of Halloween, however, but rather of a “quaint old custom” of “mischievous urchins” using a jack-o’-lantern to spook the unwary. The article credits the English with the origin of this pastime and laments its abandonment by the “rising generation”.
Happy Halloween to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on November 8 and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:15pm.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September – December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September – November 2024).
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break, November 28 – 29.
We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.
“Todas las competencias deportivas, no solamente las internacionales o las interestatales, sino también las interpoblaciones, deben servir para estrechar los lazos de amistad y nunca para distanciar a los pobladores o fanáticos.”
“All sporting competitions, not only international or interstate ones, but also local ones, should serve to strengthen the bonds of friendship and never to distance the residents or fans.”
The September 3, 1953, issue (page 1) of the Mexico City-based magazine Beisbol: Semanario Especializado (Baseball: Weekly Special) published this article lamenting the increasingly bitter and antagonistic rivalries between baseball teams and spectators in Mexico. The editors encouraged their readers to find common ground through sports and urged fans to temper their intensity.
The magazine did acknowledge the centrality of fan participation during baseball games, but it urged moderation in cheering:
“Un encuentro de beisbol sin gritos ni alaridos, es como una cerveza sin espuma; ésta es indispensable para que la cerveza se apetezca… pero tampoco gustará usted de tomarse una cerveza que sea pura espuma.”
“A baseball game without shouts and screams is like a beer without foam; the foam is essential for the beer to be appetizing… but you would not like to drink a beer that is pure foam.”
The editors concluded dramatically: “… después de un encuentro beisbolero, cuando se haya disipado el olor de la pólvora, los contrincantes deben darse la mano y seguir siendo amigos.” (“…after a baseball game, when the smell of gunpowder has dissipated, the opponents must shake hands and continue being friends.”)
Baseball fans, including a man wearing a mask and holding a flag, watch the “Coastal Classic” between teams from Mazatlán and Culiacán, two cities in the state of Sinaloa, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Source: Beisbol January 14, 1954, page 17.
Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired nine issues of Beisbol: Semanario Especializado dating from 1953 and 1954. Beisbol, edited by Salvador Mondragón, a prominent Mexican baseball administrator and booster, was published from about 1946-1957. Mondragón was involved for many years with running the country’s professional leagues, as well as organizing Mexico’s amateur teams for international competitions.
Beisbol covered all aspects of the sport. Many issues focused on the professional Mexican Leagues in both the summer and winter seasons. But the magazine also covered other subjects of interest to Mexican baseball fans, including semi-pro and amateur baseball, Mexican and Latin American players who competed in other leagues, news from the American major leagues, foreign teams that visited Mexico, historical baseball stories, and many other topics.
A small sampling of articles from the profusely illustrated magazine gives a good sense of the range of subjects covered in Beisbol.
The November 12, 1953, issue (pages 8-9 and 18-19), for instance, provided in-depth coverage of the recent visit of Jackie Robinson’s Stars, a barnstorming club of American major leaguers, minor leaguers, and Negro Leaguers led by the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson and Cleveland Indians outfielder Luke Easter. The magazine featured a two-page spread of photos of the American players.
The magazine printed a two-page article “El Parque ‘Carta Clara’ Recibe Maquillaje” (“The Park ‘Carta Clara’ Receives a Makeover”) in its September 3, 1953 (pages 28-29), issue about renovations at Carta Clara Park in Mérida. The author of the article extensively interviewed the field manager/groundskeeper, Carlos “Licho” Ponce, about the changes and improvements being made to the stadium.
Beisbol also routinely featured a small “Sección de Softbol” (“Softball Section”). The coverage usually focused on men’s softball, but the April 8, 1954, issue included a lengthy story about a new amateur women’s softball league (that was sponsored, in part, by the Hipódromo de las Américas, a prominent Mexico City horse racing track). According to Beisbol, the organizers of the Asociación Femenil de Softbol (Women’s Softball Association):
“… han realizado una magnífica labor, llena de penalidades, para organizar este campeonato en la cual se han abierto los brazos a las jovencitas que tuviesen deseos de jugar a la pelota y no contasen con elemento para hacerlo…” (page 30).
“…have done a magnificent job, full of hardships, to organize this championship in which they have opened their arms to the young girls who had wanted to play ball and did not have the resources to do it…” (page 30).
The issue featured numerous photographs (pages 32-34) of opening day and action from the first games.
Each issue of Beisbol: Semanario Especializado featured remarkable full-color cover illustrations drawn by artist Guillermo Ley. Ley’s eye-catching images humorously commented on important current events in Mexican baseball.
The August 20, 1953, cover illustration, for example, depicted the in-season travels of Cuban pitcher Aristónico Correoso. Correoso had been released by two teams in La Liga Mexicana (Mexican League) during the 1953 season before signing with Tuneros de San Luis in La Liga Central (Central League) and leading his new team to the top of the standings.
The cover of September 24, 1953, editorialized about outfielder Humberto Barbón’s recent decision to leave the Campeche Pirates of la Liga Peninsular de Yucatan (the Yucatan Peninsular League) to play for a team in Havana, Cuba. The illustration shows “el tesoro de los piratas” (“the treasure of the pirates”) waving goodbye and departing Mexico in a boat rowed by the manager of the Havana team.
Ley’s intricate and attractive illustrations and caricatures commented on many different topics of the day and likely helped to draw readers’ attention to the magazine. On November 12, 1953, his cover illustrated the race between the six teams of the Veracruz Winter league vying for the championship, and on April 6, 1954, Ley’s cover showed underdog Venezuela bursting the Mexican team’s balloon by winning the baseball gold medal at the 1954 Central American and Caribbean Games.
Beisbol: Semanario Especializado is an important source documenting the post-World War Two history of baseball in Mexico and throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America. These scarce issues—Worldcat finds only one other institution with any holdings of Beisbol—are open and available to researchers in Rare Books and Special Collections.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on October 11, November 8, and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:30pm in October and 3:15pm in November.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The October spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–November 2024).
RBSC will be open regular hours (9:30am–4:30pm) during the University of Notre Dame’s Fall Break, October 19 – 27.
Hesburgh Libraries has been able to recently acquire a rare 18th-century monograph about Divine Revelation authored by an Irish Franciscan residing in Prague, now in the Czech Republic. Anthony O’Brien lived and taught at the College of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary of the Irish Franciscans of the Stricter Observance when he wrote De Divina Revelatione: seu Naturali ac Revelata Religione Tractatus Primus (Vetero-Pragae, 1762).
Following Elizabeth I’s expulsion of the Franciscans from Ireland at the end of the 16th century, a number of friars established themselves first in Louvain and then, from 1629, in Prague where the College flourished for 150 years until its dissolution under the Habsburg monarch (and Holy Roman Emperor) Joseph II in 1786.
As Brendan Jennings has noted, “While doing its important work for the education of the Bohemian clergy, the college did not neglect its primary purpose of educating priests for Ireland. It is not possible to give precise statistics for the early years of its existence, but in all probability Prague supplied the Irish Franciscan Province with a much greater number of missionaries than either of their colleges at Louvain and Rome. It was a much larger institution and often housed, from the middle of the seventeenth century, between sixty and eighty members.” (Jennings, “The Irish Franciscans in Prague,” Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, v. 28 (1939), p. 221)
Supplementing the texts which had already appeared in the “dissertation” versions of O’Brien’s work, printed between 1759-1762, we find here Quaestio IV (on miracles) extended by a further 40 pages. An entirely new Quaestio V addresses the problem of whether divine revelation is truly limited only to the Christian religion, including an extensive discussion on Islam (p. 473-499) and an even longer treatment of Judaism (p. 500-597). Although the title-page mentions “Tomus Primus” (“first book”), no further volumes were published.
We have found only two other North American library holdings of this edition.
