Jesuit Books and Libraries in Europe, 1540s-1770s
The European Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project
European Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project
This is the largest census of books owned by European Jesuit institutions prior to the suppression. It includes both texts currently held in libraries and information from pre-1773 inventories, and is an ongoing project created by Kathleen Comerford (Georgia Southern University).
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The EJLPP depends not only on libraries willing to share their collections, but on student interns. Our tenth assistant, Baoxin Lau (BA student), completed her semester with us in Spring 2021! Since then, we've had four more students, including the prize-winning Mady Bullard (see the About Us section for more). Students have created and maintained the Digital Commons site, worked on biographies for Jesuit authors, and helped me create the lists of women printers. I'm so proud of the work they all have done, and grateful to Georgia Southern for its tremendous support.
The EJLPP Project Staff, Partners, and Contributors
Professor Kathleen M. Comerford, Department of History, Georgia Southern University: supervisor, main photographer, and project designer. Contact: kcomerfo@georgiasouthern.edu or use this form.
Librarians run the world--and this project. I would not be able to do this work without the help of the staff of Georgia Southern Libraries, particularly these rock stars:
Ms. Jennifer Gerrald is the Institutional Repository Manager with Digital Commons@Georgia Southern, where she has worked at the Henderson Library (Statesboro campus) since 1992. The majority of her experience with libraries has been in providing online access to resources and collections. Jennifer trains the interns who are creating the Digital Commons archive, and does most of our troubleshooting with that site. Contact: jgerrald@georgiasouthern.edu.
Ms. Beth Burnett is the Institutional Repository Librarian & Assistant Head of Collection Services for the Georgia Southern University Libraries. Beth joined the faculty at Lane Library on the Armstrong Campus in Savannah in 2002. She has served in various roles supporting library collection management and access, including Assistant Technical Services Librarian and Head of Technical Services. Contact: nburnett@georgiasouthern.edu.
Current Student Assistants and Interns
In Fall 2023, the Women Printworkers section of the Project continues:
My name is Zaccheus Mckibbens and I am a junior here at Georgia Southern University majoring in history. This school year I will be interning with Dr. Comerford and others doing research into European Jesuit institutions. My job will be cataloging authors and women printers who contributed to the publishing of works. I hope to provide exceptional work and gain favorable skills from this opportunity.
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Zach brings expertise in German language, which will significantly expand our work on Central Europe. He will be using RootsMagic to continue mapping out networks, a project which Mady Bullard began in Fall 2022 with Spanish women.
External Contributors
I. Institutions:
Carolina Rediviva, the main library of the University of Uppsala.
Photo by Dr. Mirko Junge - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7466822
Our first institutional partner was the University of Uppsala, who joined with an agreement signed in June, 2021. Please be sure to read the July, 2021 blog post from Peter Sjökvist discussing the scope of their project to reconstruct the library from the former Jesuit College of Riga (Latvia). UU Librarians and their partners are also working on the former Jesuit Colleges of PoznaÅ„ and Braniewo (Poland). It is a real honor to work with Professor Sjökvist and his colleague, Ms. Helena Backman. You can learn more about Jesuit books in Uppsala in this article by Prof. Sjökvist, published in the Journal of Jesuit Studies in June 2019.
CRAI Biblioteca de Fons Antic, the special collections main library of the University of Barcelona.
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Photo provided by Neus Verger Arce, October 7, 2021.
We welcomed our second partner, CRAI Biblioteca de Fons Antic, in September, 2021. Director Neus Verger Arce provides this information: "The importance of the library lies in the quantity and value of the volumes it holds. Following the confiscation laws of ecclesiastical property of 1835-1836, the collections from the conventual libraries of Barcelona, rich in manuscripts, incunabula and printed books from 1501 to 1820, were brought together at the University to create a large public library. Today, these books make up the core of the Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI collection, which also contains a set of engravings and parchments, as well as other items from other origins. The CRAI Biblioteca de Fons Antic participates in different national and international collaborative projects. Our participation in the European Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project has been formalized by an agreement reached in September 2021. The Jesuit former owners in the collection have a considerable representation. The project will lead to the gradual inclusion of all these items into the database."
II. Individuals:
As of summer 2021, Michael Davies-Powell is a second-year PhD candidate at the University of Kent, undertaking a doctoral studentship attached to the United Kingdom's AHRC-funded Middling Culture project. Michael completed his BA in English Literature at the University of Sheffield and undertook his MA, which focussed on working with early printed books and manuscripts, at King’s College London in partnership with the British Library. His doctoral thesis explores narrative practices and the cultural lives of the middling sort in the maritime communities of early modern London. He provided us with images of a series of books with Jesuit provenance that are found in the British Library.
We are very grateful to Michael, as well as to his research supervisors and to the AHRC for this support, offered as a service to scholars having difficulty reaching libraries and archives due to COVID-19.
Dr. Elisa Frei is a research fellow at the University of Macerata. She also works as a project assistant for the Digital Indipetae Database (hosted by Boston College), and is a research associate at the University of York. During her short-term Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies (ReIReS) fellowship. She was able to identify which missionary books regarding the East Indies were available to the German Jesuits living in the Novitiate of Mainz, and studied how this material fostered their vocation to the overseas missions.
Elisa's contributions were supported by a grant from the RelReS, and was conducted at the Wissenschaftliche Stadtbibliothek and the Martinus Bibliothek, both in Mainz, Germany. We thank those institutions as well as Elisa for her work.
Hall of Fame: Our Past Student Assistants, Interns, and Librarians
Mr. Jeff Mortimore is Discovery Services Librarian at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA, and was an early connection for the EJLPP; he crafted the CC License on our Digital Commons site and has also consulted on several issues. Jeff's current interests include the impact of library automation on the discovery-to-delivery process and its ramifications for scholarly communications practice (see more here). Contact: jmortimore@georgiasouthern.edu
Team AY 2018-2019: "founding" assistants
Rudy Bond, MA (2019) in Public History, Georgia Southern University (GA, 2018-2019). Rudy was the first assistant on the project. She is interested in religion in Early Modern Europe and was able to use her skills in German and Greek to help with this project. Rudy created the Flickr and Instagram sites and was responsible for the initial text associated with more than half of the images. Many thanks for being our first student assistant, and best of luck in the future! We will use your handbook as we go along.
Jasmine Webb, BA (2019) in history, Georgia Southern University (Sp 2019). She was the first undergraduate intern and the second student to help with this project. She is interested in WW2 era studies, and among other contributions, used her fluency in the German language to help with this project. Jasmine is creating the archive for the project on Georgia Southern's Digital Commons site. Many thanks for the work you did, and for the instructions you left behind. Best of luck to you!