Francis of Assisi is without a doubt one of the best known saints of the church and certainly one of the most revered. As the founder of one of the largest religious orders in the Catholic Church he taught his followers by example rather than just with talk. It is no wonder then that in printed books we have a rich tradition of woodcuts and engravings depicting his life. This pictorial tradition falls to a lesser extent on the Franciscan Order that he founded. This site is designed to present that tradition to as wide an audience as possible.
The images presented here are taken from the Rare Book Collection of the Franciscan Institute and of St. Bonaventure University. Because of the breadth of this collection, the presentation of these images should be fairly comprehensive in nature.
The primary means of access to these images is arranged either by the book in which they can be found, or by the specific subject matter of the image. We will also develop a series of indexes by artist, date of manufacture, and country of origin.
This is an ongoing project, so images will be added to the site on a fairly constant basis and other information will be added as further research is done. If you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Paul J. Spaeth
Rare Books Librarian &
Director of the Library
St. Bonaventure University
Franciscan Coat of Arms
Funding for the scanning equipment used
was made possible through an
RBDB (Regional Bibliographic Data Bases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing)
Grant
administered through the Western New York
Library Resources Council.
©2001-2004 Friedsam Memorial Library & The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University
Page maintained by Chad Taylor, Friedsam Rare Books Department
Scanning technicians: Hollie Markwood
'02, Sarah Macchiano '05 and Sarah Horowitz
Formatting: Sarah Macchiano '05 and Mary Lou Lettina '03
Please direct comments to the library webmaster