It is often hard to forget your first encounter with a truly antique printed book, looking impressive with its wooden boards and brass clasps, or a medieval manuscript that breathes even more ancient history. Most of us experience this deep feeling of almost reverent awe at looking at or touching it with one’s bare hands Read More

  I first encountered Aquinas during my time as a philosophy undergraduate at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, NY, and his proofs for the existence of God had a great impact on my “reconversion,” my coming back home to the Catholic Faith, after years of falling away as an atheist. Thus when I learned Read More

Working in the Special Collections stacks, you often see messages from the past. Notes from long-past authors or readers, who have scribbled in the margins or front leaves of books. Some notes are merely the thoughts of a reader or a dedication, but at other times, there is a note directed to you – the Read More

Beginning last year, Special Collections staff began a process of reviewing Catholic University’s Rare Books collection for works facing conservation issues. With over 65,000 works in the collection, we had to focus on the most immediate concerns. Of particular interest was the manuscripts collection, which holds over 200 one-of-a-kind handwritten texts from the medieval to Read More

Think back to the last book you read. How old was it? Were the pages brittle or waxy, thick or thin? How did the cover and pages feel in your hands? Was there a smell to the book – freshly printed or a musty odor? Did the book catch the eye with its cover, type, Read More

“It’s been a strange way to do my wartime service but somebody had to do it and, since…I wondered inside who will take care of the monuments and the objects of art, I’m afraid I rather asked for it and so it was not improperly myself who was chosen.” – Staff Sargeant Bernard M. Peebles Read More

Giulio Menna & Marjolein de Vos of Sexy Codicology have developed a new product called Digitized Medieval Manuscripts app which “links to more than 300 libraries in the world.1”  All of these manuscripts are available for free online from various libraries and institutions throughout the world. It’s a great tool for furthering your historical research. Read More

On Monday, Feb. 27 at  6:oo PM, Abigail Quandt, Senior Conservator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum will present “Putting the Pieces Together: The Codicology & Conservation of the Archimedes Palimpsest.”  Ms. Quandt led the 12-year effort to stabilize the Archimedes Codex for the imaging which would reveal the earliest manuscript of Read More

The librarians in Religious Studies and Humanities Services have created a research guide on finding manuscripts using CUA library resources.  The guide is divided into several categories: by region,  English, Greek, Latin, U.S. collections, and images. We welcome suggestions and comments.  Please contact Kevin Gunn at gunn@cua.edu or 202-319-5088.