ST. JOSEPH'S SEMINARY AT 125

FALL 2021

IT'S A ROOM YOU MIGHT NOT FIND without a guide. Tucked away atop a staircase beside the Corrigan Library at St. Joseph’s Seminary, the Major Edward Bowes Rare Book Room is secured by a thick, insulated door. Inside, carefully arrayed on shelves and tabletops, is a small universe of leather, wood, paper and ink: centuries of Church history and thinking recorded by monks, writers, printers, artists and binders, mostly from Europe.

No one knows more about the books collected here than James Monti – library clerk, scholar, St. Thomas More biographer and co-author of two books on Eucharistic adoration. This room is his special province.

“Our rare books collection provides quite a grand tour of Catholic subject matter,” Monti says. “Theology, biblical studies, spirituality, the lives of the saints, liturgy, the sacraments, sacred music, apologetics, Church history and canon law [are] all well represented.” There are also books by Protestant authors and a Jewish synagogue scroll of the Book of Esther. Most range in age from the 1400s to the 1800s, in a variety of sizes and bindings.

“Our oldest book is a manuscript volume dating from 1407,” Monti says. “We also possess one leaf from a Gutenberg Bible. … We have what is the second earliest portable printed Bible, published in 1492, small enough to hold in one hand … [and] a truly gigantic choir book from early 19th century Spain, measuring 30 by 23 inches, with hand-drawn music huge enough for an entire choir to see and sing from.” Some of the books contain remarkable woodcuts, including a late 16th century collection of meditations by the Jesuit Fr. Geronimo Nadal with illustrations whose innovative use of perspective had a major influence on art and science.

Carefully preserved with strict protocols governing how they should be handled, these volumes “are an eloquent expression of our communion with all the generations who have gone before us, professing the same faith that we do,” Monti says.  “The volumes are important both in and of themselves and in what they can tell us about those who have owned them and read them across the centuries.”

Click here to return to "ST. JOSEPH’S SEMINARY AT 125: Where Priests Are Formed" main feature.