Browse Exhibits (7 total)
Books in the Jewish Tradition
Originally exhibited September 4–December 7, 2012
Entry Hall
Introduction
This exhibition highlights the printed book as an expression of Jewish religious traditions. Selected from Bridwell Library’s Special Collections, these ten books shed light on the experiences of people in past centuries who wished to make books central to their faith, but had to overcome opposition from many quarters. Facing intolerance and persecution across most of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Jewish publishers and their readers persevered wherever they could, eventually finding relatively safe havens in seventeenth-century Amsterdam and nineteenth-century America.
Devotional Printing in France
Originally exhibited May 26–August 25, 2017
Entry Hall
Introduction
The history of religious printing often emphasizes large and elaborately produced books held by wealthy individuals and institutions. Yet publishers also responded to the desire among the general population to possess and utilize religious books. Accessible, small format works provided an intimate experience in prayer, meditation, and religious instruction. The works featured in this exhibition document French interests in personal devotion in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The publishing histories of these works also demonstrate the international and cultural importance of themes inherited over several centuries and shared across languages and borders.
Early Methodists and Their Books
Originally exhibited August 20–December 14, 2012
The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries
Introduction
Among John Wesley’s most enduring gifts to the early Methodist movement was his constant encouragement to make use of a great variety of beneficial reading materials. Through his published advertisements for newly available Methodist titles and specific reading recommendations made in his personal letters, Wesley created a community that shared a common bond in affordable, easily-read, and useful books intended for education and worship.
The fifty items in this exhibition reveal how readers in the first century of the Methodist tradition (c. 1739–1839) acquired, read, inscribed, annotated, and treasured their books. Selected from Bridwell Library’s Special Collections, these volumes include several owned by John Wesley or his brother Charles Wesley, original manuscripts used by early Methodist ministers, and numerous books and hymnals inscribed with the names of everyday Methodist pioneers, male and female, in England and America.
Eight Centuries of the Bible in Translation
Originally exhibited February 1–May 14, 2011
The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries
Introduction
The Bible was born from two parent languages, Hebrew and Greek. Although St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible shaped Christian theology and worship throughout medieval Europe, the development of regional languages and the rise of reform movements encouraged numerous vernacular translations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the late eighteenth century, biblical translations had been produced throughout Europe and in selected regions beyond. During the nineteenth century, a period of widespread missionary efforts, the Bible was disseminated in hundreds of languages indigenous to Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas. Today, the Bible is available in more than 2,000 languages.
The gallery exhibition of 60 Bibles from Bridwell Library’s Special Collections traces the enduring effort, despite resistance on many fronts, to translate the Bible into the world’s native languages. Dating from the thirteenth century to the early twentieth century, the exhibited Bibles represent 55 different languages from five continents.
Engraved Throughout
Originally exhibited August 15, 2016–December 9, 2016
Entry Hall
Introduction
This exhibition explores religious works printed entirely with copperplates: the volumes were engraved throughout. These pages could be presented side-by-side, as in prayer books and guides to the mass. Alternatively each plate would be viewed individually, often as one print in a series. Such suites of plates proved conducive for illustrating narrative accounts including biblical episodes and the biographies of religious figures. Created with various intentions, the exhibited volumes published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided an appealing and engaging format for instruction, documentation, worship, and devotion.
Missionary Presses
Originally exhibited August 29 – December 5, 2014
Entry Hall
Introduction
This exhibition highlights Bibles and other religious texts in indigenous languages published by missionary presses in the nineteenth century. Printed throughout the world in a variety of languages and letterforms, these translations were disseminated for local use as an integral element of conversion efforts by various denominations. Reminders of the numerous difficulties of communicating across cultural, theological, and linguistic boundaries, these works testify to the series of collaborations between translators, native speakers, and printers whose combined efforts created the sacred and instructional works here on display.
Welcome Additions
Origially exhibited September 9 – December 12, 2014
The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries
Introduction
This exhibition highlights fifty rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, prints, and letters that were acquired by Bridwell Library Special Collections between 2008 and 2014. Produced in Europe and the Americas from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, these works include late-medieval manuscripts, early printing, devotional manuals, books for worship, biblical translations, illustrated religious texts, Methodist writings, and printed ephemera. Each selected item is an authentic witness both to the history of written or printed communication and to important aspects of religious life in the past. Exhibited here for the first time, these recent acquisitions enhance the research potential of Bridwell Library’s holdings in a variety of important collecting areas.