books – Page 22 – RBSC at ND

Recent Acquisition: Rare Biography of Pope Paul IV

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

We’ve recently acquired Antonio Caraccioli’s De vita Pauli Quarti Pont. Max.: collectanea historica (Coloniae Ubiorum, 1612), a rare biography of Pope Paul IV, whose pontificate spanned May 1555-August 1559.

Although his reign took place during the period of the Council of Trent (1545-63) and thus the “first wave” of the Catholic Reformation, he did not call or preside over any of the council’s sessions; however, he did address the problem of clerical corruption in Rome. Born Gian Pietro Carafa, he is reputed to have had a rather harsh and unyielding disposition and is probably best known for strengthening the Roman Inquisition and introducing the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books). This work is held by only two other North American libraries.

Also recently acquired is an interesting and rare incunable, Johannes Marchesinus’ Mamotrectus Super Bibliam, published in Venice by Johannes Rubeus in 1498. The work was originally written near the end of the 13th century and, as a guide to the Latin Vulgate consisting of nearly 1300 separate articles, was an extremely influential Franciscan school text in the education of clergy throughout the late Middle Ages.

The first printed edition was issued in Mainz (Germany) by Peter Schoffer in 1470; only three other North American institutions hold the version we have just acquired.

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Spotlight Exhibit: Building the Yeats Collection

October 2015

This month’s spotlight exhibit is curated by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian, and features 6 volumes from 32 recently acquired books written by W. B. Yeats or associated with the Yeats family.

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was a leading figure in the Irish Literary Revival. One of the greatest poets of his time, he was also a major force behind Ireland’s national Theatre, the Abbey, and had a great and lasting impact on Irish culture and literature. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Visiting professor John Kelly alerted the Library to the availability of the Yeats collection of American scholar and bibliographer Milton McClintock Gatch. In all, 32 volumes from the Gatch Collection have been added to the Hesburgh Library.

This adds significantly to the already rich Yeats Collection at the Hesburgh Library. Besides editions of books by W. B. Yeats, the Library holds a collection of Abbey Theatre Programmes, a Cuala Press collection (the printing press of the Yeats sisters) and a considerable collection of books illustrated by Jack B. Yeats.

The exhibit is open to the public 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday, through October 30, 2015.

Recent Acquisition in the Architecture Library’s Ryan Rare Book Room

by Viveca Pattison Robichaud, Special Collections Librarian, Architecture Library & Institute for Latino Studies

Falda's Nuovo Teatro delle Fabriche, et Edificii, in Prospettiva di Roma Moderna — Falda, Giovanni Battista, Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, et al. *Nuovo Teatro delle Fabriche, et Edificii, in Prospettiva di Roma Moderna*, Rome (Date in Luce da Gio. Iacomo Rossi dale sue Stampe in Roma), 1665.

The Architecture Library, with the support of Italian Studies, Art, Art History & Design, and Humanities funding, is pleased to announce our newest addition to the collection, Giovanni Battista Falda’s Nuovo Teatro della Fabriche from 1665. This volume consists of the first three books in the series, bound together, which are a collection of engravings detailing the contemporary architecture of Rome. The volume, in its present form, is incredibly rare with only twelve copies housed in American collections.

The illustrations contained in the volume are of the Renaissance and Baroque architecture of Rome, and include general views, facades, interiors, and details of churches, monasteries, palazzi, public buildings, monuments, piazzas, as well as other sites of interest in the city. This volume, important in itself because of its study of Rome, also complements the current holdings of the Ryan Rare Book Room, which houses Falda’s Palazzi di Roma, a counterpart to Il Nuovo Teatro delle Fabriche, and together these books present a more complete picture of Renaissance and Baroque Rome.

This volume is also an important acquisition for the expansion of our SPQR-ND mobile application (available for iPad and iPhone) and other digitization projects we have underway in the Architecture Library. This work provides the reader with a snapshot of Rome in the seventeenth century and, in the words of Professor Carroll William Westfall, this book “sharpens one’s understanding of Rome as a place where change is constant and each era has important things to teach.” Cities are not static places and each new project leaves its mark. This work documents Rome in one of its most noteworthy periods.

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Recent Acquisition: A curious hieroglyphic Bible

by George Rugg, Curator, Americana

Title page and frontispiece of A curious hieroglyphick Bible (Worcester : Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas and sold ... at his bookstore, 1788). — Title page and frontispiece.

A curious hieroglyphick Bible, or, Select passages in the Old and New Testaments, represented with emblematical figures, for the amusement of youth: designed chiefly to familiarize tender age, in a pleasing and diverting manner, with early ideas of the Holy Scriptures: to which are subjoined, a short account of the lives of the Evangelists, and other pieces: illustrated with nearly five hundred cuts. Worcester, Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, 1788.

Isaiah Thomas’s hieroglyphic Bible of 1788 is both a landmark piece of American children’s literature and a newly ambitious use of woodcut illustration in an American printed book. The idea of a hieroglyphic Bible, in which select scriptural passages were presented in a combination of words and images, was consistent with Thomas’s interest in works for children that simultaneously instructed and amused. He based his book on an English edition first published in 1783. In his preface—dedicated to the “parents, guardians, and governesses of the [newly constituted] United States of America”—Thomas notes the “considerable expense” involved in commissioning the hundreds of woodcuts that fill the book. Some of these, to the modern eye at least, seem a bit opaque; fortunately, Thomas printed the full text of each passage at the foot of the page. The present copy is a first edition, with all of its pages intact. It was acquired by the Libraries in January 2015.

The nativity story as told by Luke from A curious hieroglyphick Bible (Worcester : Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas and sold ... at his bookstore, 1788). — The nativity story as told by Luke.

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Recent Acquisition: Malton’s Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of Dublin (1791)

by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian.

Over two hundred years before Google Maps photographed the buildings of Dublin, architectural draughtsman James Malton (c.1765-1803) depicted the grand public buildings of Dublin in his book, A Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of Dublin Described. In a series of the most Interesting Scenes taken in the year 1791.

While the etchings from this book are well-known, both as framed reproductions and from the 1978 Dolmen Press edition, original editions, with their large and detailed prints, are very uncommon.

James Malton accompanied his father, an English architectural draughtsman, to Ireland and was employed for a time by the famous architect James Gandon, who was then working on Dublin’s Custom House. He was dismissed and later worked on a series of drawings of Dublin buildings, first published in six parts between 1792 and 1799 and later, in 1799, published in one volume.

The detail shown above is of the south end of Capel Street, looking across Grattan Bridge (then Essex Bridge) towards Parliament Street and City Hall.

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