Women of the Book Collection

The titles are also generally quite rare: nearly one-third of the items are completely unrepresented in North American libraries; one-quarter survive in just a handful of recorded copies; and one-fifth are entirely unrecorded elsewhere and presumably unique.

[1] Cloistered convents, and female religious houses more generally, provided early modern women with access to a contemplative life of the mind—including educational opportunities, conventual libraries, and the resources needed to compose original works of theological, devotional, mystical, and liturgical significance—thanks to their protected status within the Roman Catholic Church.

Perhaps the single best-represented woman in the collection was also the premier model of early modern piety, sanctity, and intellectual achievement, and one of the first beneficiaries of major reforms in the Congregation of Rites that governed the processes and increased speed of sanctification: Saint Teresa of Avila (died 1582, beatified 1614, canonized 1622).

Due to the Catholic tradition of treating books and material objects as holy and invested with spiritual power in early modern Europe, there is also a wide range of custom-made items in the collection, including apotropaic book amulets, embroidered and painted bindings, contact relics, and various klosterarbeiten (objets d'art made by nuns for sale to pilgrims),[4] including elaborately framed devotional portraits and various para-liturgical devices.

These include original engraved copperplates, indulgence sheets, investiture poems, ex voto and holy cards, confraternity charters, and bespoke illustrated and illuminated documents of profession.

Engraving of Teresa of Ávila by Elias Christoph Heiss, frontispiece of Quirinus a Sanctissima Trinitate, Teutsch vorgestellte Spanische Heldin, Munich, 1714 (from the Women of the Book Collection , nr. 6743775)
Plate from a convent costume book (from the Women of the Book Collection , nr. 9377030)
Medal commemorating the canonization of Pedro de Alcántara and Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Rome, 1669 (from the Women of the Book Collection , nr. 7595989)
Emblems and texts in honor of the demi-jubilee of Ursuline sister Jeanne-Isabelle du Bois de Sainte Rosalie, on June 16, 1698 (from the Women of the Book Collection , nr. 7532559)
Reliquary folded book amulet or 'breverl' produced by nuns in Austria or southern Germany to be sold to visitors and pilgrims, c. 1760 (from the Women of the Book Collection , nr. 8042471)