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.
Our Photos
The photos on this page and available via our Instagram feed and Flickr photostream were all taken by the owner of this website, Kathleen Comerford, Professor of History, Georgia Southern University, on her iPad mini. Some are clearer than others, mostly because she is not a very good photographer. A full collection of photos is available at https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/jesuit-lib/.
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Photos from the books in the following collections are not under copyright to the institutions:
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Yale University's Beinecke Library; see https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/research/permissions-copyright for further information.
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Folger Shakespeare Library; see https://folger.edu/images-and-permissions for further information.
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Emory University's Rose Library; see https://rose.library.emory.edu/research-learning/research-services/permissions-citations.html for further information.
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Many other books with European Jesuit provenance can be found on Google Books, Hathitrust, and the Internet Archive, as well as in libraries in Europe and North America. Among the most useful online sources for such information are the digital collections at KU Leuven, the Biblioteca Digital Hispanica, and the Staatsbibiothek zu Berlin.
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We have made every effort to provide both the full frontispiece and close-ups of the provenance information, along with other images which help identify the books in question. However, we suggest that interested readers also consult the catalogues of the institutions which currently hold the volumes for the most complete information.