University of Virginia Library

Section E. Religion.

In the field of religion there are two collections in Virginia
which are outstanding for purposes of research. These are
at the Spence Library of the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond
and at the Packard-Laird Memorial Library of the Virginia
Theological Seminary at Alexandria.

The Spence Library has a total collection of about 55,000
volumes, of which at least 20,000 may be classed as specifically
on the subject of religion. There is an excellent equipment of
general encyclopaedias and reference sets, and adequate reference
and periodical materials are available in each subdivision of the
subject. The works on primitve religion include basic sets
such as Creuzer's Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker,
Frazer's Golden Bough, and Gray and Moore's Mythology of all
Races. The non-Christian religions are represented by their
sacred writings and by treatises thereon. On the history and
culture of Israel there 292 volumes exclusive of archaeology, and
there are thirty-one volumes on contemporary Judaism. The Talmud,
Targums, Mischna, and other Rabbinical writings appear in Hebrew
and also in Latin, French, and English translations. Of the Old

Testament there are twenty-two editions in Hebrew, seventy-eight
volumes of editions in Greek and of critical works on the Greek
Old Testament, and thirty editions in English. There are 686
volumes of commentaries dealing with the Old Testament, 260 volumes
dealing specifically with Old Testament criticism, and 120
volumes concerned with such related subjects as the transmission
of the Bible, the canon and text of the Bible, and the Bible as
literature.

It is in its collection on the New Testament, however, that
the Spence Library offers one of its more important fields for
research; and of this section there is available a somewhat
elaborate catalogue.[5] The collection includes facsimile copies
of all the major uncial manuscripts except Vaticanus or Codex B,
with collations of about seventy cursive manuscripts and texts of
various ostraca; copies of all the notable printed editions of
the Greek New Testament with the exception of the Complutensian
or 1514 Ximenes, of which the Library owns the Plantin reprint of
1584; sets of commentaries to the number of sixty and single volume
commentaries on the New Testament to the number of 800; and
files of such periodicals as the Harvard Theological Review,
Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal of Theological Studies,
and Zeitschrift für die Neuetestamentliche Wissenschaft.

On the history of the early Christian Church the Spence
Library contains about 600 volumes including such massive early
sets as those by Baronius Soranus, Basnage de Flottermanville,
William Cave, Eusebius Pamphilus, and James Saurin. On the
Reformation there is a valuable group of seventeenth and
eighteenth century treatises and approximately 250 modern works;
and about fifty volumes, some early, deal with the various
Councils. The material on the Church of England is small in
amount (seventy-five volumes) but includes several seventeenth
century titles; and a similar collection deals with the Catholic
Church. Contemporary Christian Theology is represented by about
100 volumes specifically concerned with the conflict of science
and religion and about 100 volumes specifically concerned with
the current restatement of Christian thought; and there are
sizeable collections on Systematic and Dogmatic Theology and on
Practical Theology.

With reference to Christianity in America there are some
400 volumes dealing with the history of denominations, and a considerable
amount of material on the organization and activities
of missionary societies. But the most important and significant

body of research materials in this library of the Union Theological
Seminary is its large collection of manuscript and printed
records of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The
manuscript section has already been briefly described in Part One,
Section F., Manuscripts.[6] In addition there are complete files
of printed minutes and reports of various organizations, large
and small, within the jurisdiction of that Church; and there are
bound volumes of seventeen Presbyterian church papers and of
twenty-one theological reviews and journals under Presbyterian
editorship or control. This material is accessible for research
purposes, and there is steady continuation in collecting
activities.

The Packard-Laird Memorial Library of the Virginia Theological
Seminary has a total collection of approximately 32,000 volumes,
of which somewhat over half are on the specific subject of
religion. As in the case of the Spence Library, this special
collection is located in what is in effect a general collection
— a situation which of course often proves convenient for research
scholars. In both of these libraries, for example, there
may be found material dealing with Aramaic, Assyrian, and
Chaldean languages and with Semitic languages in general. There
are also the essential encyclopaedias and reference works, and
good background material in history, literature, and philosophy.
The Packard-Laird Library also has a special association collection
of books from the Lee library (Richard Henry Lee and Thomas
Ludwell Lee) at Stratford.

The quality of this library may be perhaps indicated by a
casual and unsystematic and of course very incomplete list of
works which appear on the shelves; namely, the Apostolic Fathers,
the Babylonian Talmud, the Consilia Ecclesiae, the Egypt Exploration
Fund Publications, Frazer's Golden Bough, the History of the
Popes, Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, the International
Critical Commentary, the Library of Anglo-Catholic
Theology (eighty-two volumes), Migne's Patrologie, the three sets
of the works of the Nicene Fathers, Picart's Religious Memories
of the World, the Sacred Books of the East, the works of Cocceius,
Erasmus, Hieronymous, Servanus, and files of the American Biblical
Repository, the American Journal of Theology, the Jahrbuch für
Deutsche Theologie, and the Journal of Sacred Literature.

By a more statistical analysis, there are in round numbers
400 volumes on non-Christian religions, 800 on the Old Testament,
700 on the New Testament, 600 on primitive Christianity, 150 on
Christianity in the Roman Empire, 300 on the Reformation, 500 on
the history of the Church of England, 1,000 on Christian theology,
250 on American church history, and 400 on missions. The pamphlet
collection is extensive, and the large task of arrangement
and filing is likely to yield material of value. Some notice

concerning the manuscript holdings has already appeared in Part
One, Section F., Manuscripts.[7]

Other large collections of books on religion can be found
at the University of Virginia (over 8,000 volumes), at the Virginia
State Library (approximately 5,500 volumes), and at the
College of William and Mary (between 3,000 and 3,500 volumes).
All three collections are well organized, but do not include any
considerable proportion of rare items. At the University of Virginia
there is some emphasis on contemporary Christian theology.
The State Library is well supplied with the collected works of
outstanding preachers, such as Phillips Brooks, Thomas Chalmers,
Myles Coverdale, Henry Drummond, John Foxe, Tyndale, John Wesley,
and George Whitfield. In the extensive collection of Virginiana
which the library at William and Mary possesses there are many
individual church histories of Virginia.

In most of the libraries which have been so frequently
named in this survey report for Virginia the collections on
religion are comparatively large. It is evident that credit is
due to clergymen as a class for their notable generosity as
donators of books.