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Waldo Library, #3016
Phone: 269-387-5221
Fax: 269-387-5077
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The Department of Special Collections contains over 140 manuscripts that were produced from the Middle Ages through the Nineteenth Century. The first 100 manuscripts are on permanent loan from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky.
These manuscripts are from the Obrecht Collection; collected by Dom Edmund Obrecht, who served as the abbot of Gethsemani for 37 years. He traveled across Europe gathering medieval and rare Cistercian manuscripts to add to the abbey's library, so that his monks could understand their heritage better.
The remainder of the collection has been acquired through WMU purchases and donations. The oldest bound manuscript, Manuscript 1, dates from before 1140. The subject material of the manuscripts covers everything from antiphonaries, hymnals, sermons of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Rule of Saint Benedict, breviaries, graduals, Cistercian statutes, cartularies, indentures, binding fragments, and papal bulls.
The manuscripts originated in such places as France, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Flanders, Alsace, Germany, Poland, Austria, England, etc.
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