Browse Items (15 total)

This manual of prayers and meditations was printed in 1888 for the Arch-Confraternity of the Servants of the Holy Ghost- an association founded in London in 1877 and approved by Pope Leo XIII the following year.

The decretal letter signed by Pope Paul VI which announced the canonization of Bishop John Neumann as a saint in 1977.

La Strenna (The Gift) is a catechism used for the natively speaking Italian population in Philadelphia. Printed in 1884, during the largest influx of European immigration into the United States, this book is also a part of Ryan Library’s Catechism…

The original Key of Heaven prayerbook has been attributed to St. Alphonsus Liguori. There have been numerous versions since and it is still published in many languages. This Italian edition dates from 1944.

Here is a portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner painted by Thomas Eakins. Eakins enjoyed a long and happy relationship with Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. He is said to have bicycled out to the Seminary’s campus at Overbrook on Sunday afternoons to…

Hand missals for the laity were a common feature of Catholic liturgical life before vernacular languages replaced Latin. This Spanish Missal from 1959 is opened to the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity–the first Sunday after Pentecost.

The title page from an Epistolary–the book containing those Scripture readings (other than the Gospel) which were chanted by the Subdeacon at a Solemn Mass. This edition was printed in Belgium in 1888.

Bishops and prelates, such as abbots, still use a distinctive form of celebrating Mass. Formerly, however, there were many variations in the types of Episcopal Masses, which often included complex preparatory rites. This lavishly decorated missal for…

Published in 1910, this German-English Reader was used in Catholic schools to teach the German Script to students. The front piece is of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, patron saint of teenagers, who received his First Holy Communion from Saint Charles…

This Spanish language instruction to priests was published in 1746, and is part of the Ryan Rare Book Collection.