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.
EJLPP in Print
See the chapter "Pre-suppression Jesuit Libraries: Patterns of Collection and Use in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe," in The Baltic Battle of Books: Formation and Relocation of European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c. 1500–c. 1650) and Their Afterlife, edited by Jonas Nordin, Gustavs Strenga, and Peter Sjökvist (Leiden: Brill, 2023), and a review of the book, where EJLPP gets a shoutout!
Conferences and Societies of Interest
Other Digital Humanities Projects at Georgia Southern University
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Boston College Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies
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Sixteenth Century Society and Conference
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History of the Book and of Libraries Resources, Especially Those Related to Jesuits
My 2022 Jesuit Libraries (Brill, in OpenAccess) is a broad study of pre- and post-suppression collections held by the Society of Jesus; I also edited (2015) Jesuits and Their Books, an issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies
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Jesuit Archival Sources: at Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, the archive of the Superior General (Rome)
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The Jesuit Portal at Boston College
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Jesuitica.be, the portal to the Jesuitica Project at the University of Leuven
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The Jesuit Science Network has information about books and authors in the collection
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"The Swedish Booty of Books from Bohemia and Moravia 1646-1648": books associated with the College of Olomouc
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Harvard University has extensive resources associated with the history of the book
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Database of the Riga Jesuit College Collection (English-language version)
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Inventories of the library of the College of Poznań (Poland) from 1609 and 1610 and information on the books from Braniewo (Poland) are available via the University of Uppsala's libraries
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University of Barcelona database of former owners: https://marques.crai.ub.edu/ca/posseidors (some of these are available in our spreadsheet; see The Data).
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Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon: provenance des livres anciens
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Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project, a similar project at Loyola University Chicago
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Sion College Library Provenance Project (books now at Lambeth Palace Library)
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Canterbury Cathedral Chapter Library Provenance wiki (see under "J" for individual Jesuit colleges)
Other Provenance Projects
Digital Humanities Minor in the College of Arts and Humanities
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Faculty and student-led DH projects, current and past
MY OTHER RESEARCH: Highlights
Currently, in addition to this project on Jesuit books, I am working on the Medici (grand) duchesses, up through the 1630s, and I have an ongoing student-driven project on women printers (housed at this website too).
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My most recent monograph is Jesuit Libraries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022).
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My earlier monographs were: Jesuit Foundations and Medici Power, 1532-1621 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), Reforming Priests and Parishes: Tuscan Dioceses in the First Century of Seminary Education (Boston: Brill, 2006) and Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: Priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole, 1575-1675 (Florence: Olschki, 2001).
I have also published articles in several journals and books, including Libraries and Culture, Sixteenth Century Journal, and Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, and have been a co-editor of three collected-studies volumes.
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I am the Associate Editor of the Journal of Jesuit Studies. Brill Publishers is a strong supporter of Jesuit Studies, and hosts both the JJS and the reference work Jesuit Historiography Online. You can find my article on Italian Jesuits prior to the suppression here.
I am a member of the following professional organizations:
Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.
Renaissance Society of America
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American Historical Association
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Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing
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Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender
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