Browse Items (15 total)

This early edition of the catechism is translated into English from an Italian work approved by the Holy Father. Intended for children to ready them for Holy Communion, this work lacks scripture quotations because “the Church is the Divine Teacher…

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

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…

Front: Madonna and child. Mary is holding Christ in her left hand, and a devotional scapular in her right.

Back: A Scapular Prayer

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.

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.

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…

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.

The Forty Hours devotion originated with the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament in the Sepulchre from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday. These beautiful pages are from the Catholic Family Book of Novenas, printed in 1956.