Rare Books

Printed Bibles and Prayer Books

LSU's Rare Book Collection contains approximately 200 printed Bibles and related works that provide material not only for studying and teaching the history of religious beliefs, but also the rise of modern scholarship and publishing.

The earliest available items in this category are leaves from the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514-1517) and the Coverdale Bible (1535), the first Bible printed in English. The oldest complete text held is the New Testament (1582) of the Douai-Rheims Bible, published by English Catholics in France; also available is the first edition of the Douai-Rheims Old Testament, published in two volumes in 1609-1610. A mixed-edition copy (1612/1613) of the King James Bible in quarto format is held.

Other Bibles or related items of interest include:

• a 1617 reprint of Tremellius’s translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Syriac into Latin, which also includes the Latin translation of the New Testament by Théodore de Bèze as a parallel text
• The Souldiers Pocket Bible (1643, facsimile), issued by Oliver Cromwell to his troops
• 1669 annotated edition of a French Geneva Bible, the library’s largest Bible
• Illustrated Latin Vulgate Bible published in Venice in 1740
• New Testament of Gustave Doré’s Bible (ca. 1866), one of the most famous illustrated Bibles
• Leaf from the Aitken Bible (1782), the first English-language Bible printed in the United States
• Translations of the New Testament into Choctaw (1857) and Ojibwa (1856)

Some Bibles have been collected partly as examples of fine printing and book design. These include:

• John Baskerville’s Holy Bible (1772) and Greek New Testament (1763)
• Doves Press Bible (1903)
• Eric Gill’s The Four Gospels (1931)
• Bruce Rogers' Oxford Lectern Bible (1935)
• Pennyroyal Caxton Bible (1999), designed by Barry Moser

Several dozen prayer books are held. Notable volumes include A Booke of Christian Prayers (1590), essentially a Protestant book of hours, featuring fine woodcut illustrations, including a Dance of Death sequence and portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. An Anglican Book of Common Prayer published by Robert Barker in 1615 is bound with an illustrated New Testament. A number of volumes feature ornamental bindings, most notably the 1693 and 1717 printings of the Book of Common Prayer and a Catholic missal, Paroissien Romain (1869), bound in ivory.

For examples of psalm books, see:

• The Whole Book of Psalmes (1616). Thomas Sternhold's translation
• A New Version of the Psalms of David (1710), by Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate
• Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (1539, facsimile). John Calvin's book of psalms
• The Bay Psalm Book (1640, facsimile), the first book printed in what is now the United States

Christian Theology and Commentary

There are several early printings in the Rare Book Collection of works by St. Augustine. John Calvin’s The Mynde of the Godly and Excellent Lerned Man M. Ihon Caluyne (1548), the second of his works to appear in English, is an attack on French Protestants who avoided persecution by outwardly conforming to the Roman Catholic Church. Also held is a 1611 edition of Calvin’s Institution of Christian Religion. The Workes of Sir Thomas More (1557) includes writings related to More’s controversy with William Tyndale over the Protestant Reformation and Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible.

Two sermons by Martin Luther, published in 1534, on texts from the Gospels of Mark and Luke, are notable for having been printed during Luther’s lifetime.

The works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English theologians are well represented. Important authors include Gilbert Burnet, Thomas Fuller, James Usher, Henry Hammond, Richard Alestree, Richard Baxter, Conyers Middleton, and Matthew Tindal. There is a large quantity of sermons, tracts, and devotional literature by minor authors of this period.

Imagines mortis (1555), a work on the universality of death, contains fifty-three Dance of Death woodcuts by Hans Holbein.

The Donald D. Eddy Collection of the works of eighteenth-century essayist John “Estimate” Brown and his contemporaries contains most of the writings of bishops William Warburton and Richard Hurd, as well as works by and about the controversial Scottish Jesuit Archibald Bower, author of The History of the Popes (1748-66).

The Rare Book and McIlhenny Natural History Collections contain works on “natural theology” or works otherwise related to religion and science. In fact, the library’s earliest printed work of theology is Compendium theologice veritatis (1489), by the natural philosopher St. Albert the Great. See also works such as:

• John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1714)
• William Derham, Physico-Theology (1737)
• Thaddeus Mason Harris, The Natural History of the Bible (1820)
• Wood’s Bible Animals (1876).

Also held are nineteenth-century works related to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Pictorial Works

Several works are of interest for their illustrations, particularly those on Christian martyrs, which include:

• John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1610), first published in 1563 and popularly known as the Book of Martyrs. An illustrated 1776 edition is also held.
• Richard Verstegan, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis (1604), depicting the persecution of Catholics by Protestants.
• The Martyrologium of Usuard (ca. 1400, facsimile).
• The Menologion of Basil II (11th century, facsimile).

Other works depict the Apocalypse, such as:

• Apocalypse of Saint Pseudo-Methodius (1504), one of the library’s earliest illustrated books.
• Bamberg Apocalypse (11th century, facsimile)
• Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse (1498, facsimile)
• Jean Duvet’s L’Apocalypse figurée (1561, facsimile).

Jeremy Taylor, Antiquitates Christianae, or, The History of the Life and Death of the Holy Jesus (1703), is an example of an illustrated life of Christ.

English Church History

The library’s collection of works on European church history relates chiefly to the English Reformation. Most of the writings of Gilbert Burnet, author of The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, are available. Among other important works are John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (or Book of Martyrs) (1610); John Jewel’s A Defense of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (1571); Daniel Featley, The Dippers Dipt (1660), an attack on the Anabaptists; and Bede’s The History of the Church of Englande (1565). (A Latin edition of Bede’s work, dated 1601, is from the library of Sir Thomas Tresham, a leading English Catholic and father of Gunpowder Plot conspirator Francis Tresham.) Several works relate to the persecution of the Quakers, such as To the King and both Houses of Parliament, the Suffering Condition of the Peaceable People, Called Quakers (1685), an appeal for religious toleration.

Works on the history of English cathedrals and other church antiquities include:

• John Dart, History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury (1726), notable for its engravings.
• Matthew Parker, De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae (1729)
• Francis Godwin, A Catalogue of the Bishops of England (1601)
• Collectanea Anglo-minoritica: or, A Collection of the Antiquities of the English Franciscans (1726)

American Church History

Important works in the Rare Book Collection related to American church history include:

• Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England (1702), containing an account of the author’s participation in the Salem Witch Trials and his thoughts on converting slaves to Christianity.
• George Bishop, New-England Judged, by the Spirit of the Lord (1703). A history of the Quakers, with a reply to Mather’s history.
• Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God (1738). The first account of the Great Awakening.
• Henry Rimius, A Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhuters, commonly call'd Moravians (1753).
• Millennial Praises (1813), a Shaker hymnal.
• Evening and Morning Star (1832-34) and Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate (1834-36). The first Mormon newspapers, published in Independence, Missouri and Kirtland, Ohio.
• Charles G. Olmsted, The Bible, Its Own Refutation (1836). A rare work on freethought, published in Louisville, Kentucky.

For works on religion and slavery, see the separate subject guide on the History of Slavery.

Missionaries

Accounts of various Jesuit missionaries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas are available. Examples include Choix des lettres édifiantes (1808) and its continuation Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1819), which contain reports of Jesuit missionaries from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Selected letters were translated into English as The Travels of Several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus (1714) and Travels of the Jesuits, into Various Parts of the World (1762).

España sagrada (1747-1879) is a chronicle of church history in Spain and Latin America, with much information on Jesuit missionaries. Another long serial run, Annales de la propagation de la foi (1827-1920) reports on French Catholic overseas missionary work. Reports of the American and Foreign Christian Union (1850-55) are available, along with biographies and memoirs of American Protestant missionaries from colonial times through the nineteenth century.

Judaism

A small collection of Jewish manuscript facsimiles is available, including:

• The Leningrad Codex (11th century, oldest complete Hebrew Bible)
• The Parma Psalter (13th century)
• The North French Hebrew Miscellany (13th century)
• The Sarajevo Haggadah (14th century)
• A Hebrew Bible produced in 15th-century Spain
• The Copenhagen Haggadah (1739)
• Hebrew Esther Scroll (central or northern Europe, 18th century)
• German-language Esther Scroll with wooden display case (18th century)

An example of early Hebrew printing may be found in Pages from the Past, a collection of leaves assembled to trace the history of printing. It contains a leaf from the Hebrew Pentateuch printed by Pierre de la Rovière in Geneva in 1617-18 (see set 1, port. 3, no. 78). Of related interest is Johann Lund’s Die alten jüdischen Heiligthümer (1711), an illustrated work on ancient Jewish customs and rituals.

Islam

Materials related to Islam are limited at present, but include high-quality facsimiles of the Qur'an of Sultan Muley Zaidan, written in Morocco in 1599, and the Book of Felicity, a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript on the signs of the zodiac, made for Ottoman Sultan Murad III.

Also available is André du Ryer’s The Alcoran of Mahomet (1649), the first translation of the Qur'an into English; and an 1836 printing of George Sale’s Koran (1734), the translation owned by Thomas Jefferson. The Pages from the Past collection mentioned above also contains an undated leaf from a Persian manuscript of the Qur'an (see set 1, port. 3, no. 92).