‘Preserving the Steadfastness of Your Faith’: Catholics in the Early American Republic

This digitial exhibit displays examples of American Catholicism expressed through (mostly) printed texts from 1783 through the early 1840s. They include the earliest Catholic bibles published by Mathew Carey, and editions of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ used and produced in the United States; polemical pamphlets with sexual and political subtexts that flew back and forth across the Atlantic; no-holds-barred dueling sectarian newspapers; books and pamphlets created in reaction to mob violence against the Ursuline convent school near Boston; and official reports that mapped the Church’s growth and growing pains.

View the exhibit here.

June 5, 2017

Religion and PhilosophyThe Hesburgh LibrariesCatholicDigest201Digital GalleryHesburgh LibraryRare Books