MARIAN LIBRARY
NEWSLETTER No.13
(New Series)
MAGNIFICAT! October 20, 1943, a historical date! The President of the University of Dayton, Father John A. Elbert, S.M., offers his book Devotion to MaKJ in the Twentieth Century to Father Lawrence onheim, S.M., then head of the Department of Religion, thus officially founding the MARIAN LIBRARY at the University of Dayton. It is a _very modest beginning, but plans are ambitious and hopes run high. The two Marianists have decided to create a university center for the scientific study of the Mother of God and of our devotion to her. This center would remain a
Rev. Lawrence Manheim, S.M.
lasting memorial of three centennials to be marked in 1949-1950: the arrival of the Marianists in the United States,the founding of the University of Dayton, and the death of Father William Joseph Chaminade, the true inspirer of their project. Chaminade in 1816 founded the Daughters of Mary Immaculate and in 1817 the Society of Mary to consecrate to Our Lady apostles who would make her better known so that Jesus, Son of God, born of her for our salvation, would become better known. In 1943, with World War II still raging, the bold venture of gathering copies of all known books on Mary ran into enormous difficulties. The European sources of supply were not available, and it was not easy to find money, collaborators, catalogs, or books. But Father Monheim was the man to make possible the impossible. He wrote to American Catholic publishers and to Catholic institutions of higher studies asking for books, lists of Marian imprints, and for further路 suggestions. His efforts and those of his successor, Father Edmund Baumeister, S.M., resulted in the publication by 1949 of the first Book List of the Marian Library, a bibliography OfMamn titles
Oct.-Nov., 1984
discovered in libraries throughout the United States. A specially bound copy was presented to Pope Pius XII for the golden jubilee of his ordination. He responded by sending his apostolic blessing, the letter signed by his secretary, Msgr. John Baptist Montini, who in 1963 became Paul
VI. October 20, 1983--After forty years of existence, the Marian Library, now housed on the seventh floor of the University's impressive Roesch Library building, has become the most important collection of its kind anywhere. Father Elbert's first book has been followed by over 65,000 others, written in more than fifty languages and spanning all five centuries of printing history. Readers have access to at least one hundred Marian periodicals. They can consult a unique collection of nearly 50,000 clippings from newspapers, magazines and other printed media. Other accumulations include some IO,ooo holy cards and similar images, about 9,000 postage stamps, 8,ooo postcards of shrines and Marian art works, over 2,000 slides, and smaller numbers of medals, engravings, photographs, and statues. There are also recordings of Marian music as well as over 175 cassettes with talks on various aspects of Marian doctrine and devotion.路 These works, specifically Marian, are complemented by materials of a more general character: biblical studies, collections of patristic texts, books on Church history, the liturgy, religious art, general bibliography.
Our Lady of the Marian Library