Opening Day Collection
In 1815, the Congregation of the Mission was given a contract to establish its first mission and seminary in the United States. Considering a library essential to the success of their seminary, the Vincentian priests, missioned from Italy and France, gathered donated books that would be of use: missals, bibles, breviaries, rituals, catechisms, multilingual dictionaries, and histories.
The approximately 3,000 volumes known as the Opening Day Collection were published prior to 1818. The books represent the library at St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary, in Perryville, Missouri when it opened to education and train the first seminarians. In 1995, when the seminary and college closed, this collection, along with other notable historic and rare titles from their library, were transferred to DePaul University Library.
Fold-out illustration of ananas, or pinapple. Pluche, Noël Antoine. Le Spectacle de la nature: ou, Entretiens sur les particularités de l’histoire naturelle, qui ont paru les plus propres à rendre les jeunes-gens curieux, & à leur former l’esprit. Paris: Chez la veuve Estienne, 1735. SPcCM. 508 P7331735
Title page: Menghi, Girolamo. Flagellum daemonum: exorcismos terribles, potentissimos et efficaces ... complectens. Accessit postremo Pars secunda, quae Fustis daemonum inscribitur ... / auctore Hieronymo Mengo ... Lugduni: Sumptibus Petri Landry, 1604. SPcCM. 265.44 M5441604