The Penn Libraries recently made important discoveries of rare, previously uncataloged research materials within their collections. Working on a Hidden Collections project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, catalogers at Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library have found two incunables (works printed prior to 1501) in the library of Henry Charles Lea, a noted 19th-century scholar of the Inquisition. In a separate project, two pamphlets, both written and signed by Martin Luther, have also been discovered in Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript collections.

The two broadside (single-sheet) incunables found in the Lea Library were in a box containing materials the scholar used in writing his History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church. Both documents are indulgences, essentially monetized forms of penance, issued by Pope Sixtus IV to fund his crusade against the Turks in 1471. One indulgence was printed in 1482, probably by Johann Blaubirer in Augsburg. A rare woodcut broadside, it is the only example in Penn's collections of an incunable printed from a woodblock rather than from movable type. Describing the ease with which sins could be forgiven through the purchase of these indulgences, Lea writes in his history that the text of this document "grants to the recipient the right to choose a confessor who can absolve him from all sins, however enormous, as often as he wishes, though those which are reserved to the pope can be absolved only once, and to grant him full remission and indulgence once during life and again at death."

A second indulgence, printed in Nuremberg by the Printer of the Rochus Legende in 1483, contains almost the same text as the Augsburg indulgence, but was issued in two versions, one for women and the other for men, as identified by the pronouns and forms of address in the text. The copy found at Penn is the form for women.

These indulgences appear never to have been sold, and instead became scrap paper used to bind other books. They have since been removed from these bindings, but their past use remains evident in their present condition. There are holes and tattered edges, and both are covered with the now-dried glue used to attach them to the bindings.

In addition to the discovery of these two documents, catalogers found within the Rare Book and Manuscript Library collection two pamphlets written and signed by Martin Luther, whose opposition to the widespread sale of indulgences was a basis for the Reformation. Luther wrote both pamphlets and inscribed them when he presented them to Johann Weybringer, who visited Luther shortly after their publication in 1530. These titles later belonged to Ludwig Bechstein, the librarian at Meiningen, and were part of a larger library of Germanic works that Penn acquired from his son Reinhold in 1896.

While it is not unusual for libraries to have incomplete inventories of particular collections, discoveries such as these highlight the importance of Penn's efforts to fully catalog its rare materials. "We are very excited to have found these materials," says Beth Picknally Camden, the Patricia and Bernard Goldstein Director of Information Processing at the Penn Libraries. "Mellon's support and Penn Libraries' cataloging initiatives are making it possible for us to let scholars know about these rare, previously hidden resources, and to make them more readily available for research and teaching."

For more information:
Lynne Farrington, Curator of Printed Books