Blue Electrode

The latest resource to be fully described and available in the Digital Library is the body of materials making up the
Philadelphia Riots Collection; owned by the American Catholic Historical Society this collection documents early issues related to domestic violence, gun ownership, militia deployment, and crime.

As well this is an important collection for the history of Villanova University. Known as the Philadelphia Riots, as well as the Philadelphia Nativist Riots,these disturbances inadvertently created a climate inhospitable to Catholics in the inner city, and let to the expansion of Villanova, first as a College and then later as a University. The Main Line area beckoned to the Order of Saint Augustine after the experience of the burning of St. Augustine’s Catholic Church as a more rural and safer haven for education so the initial “Augustinian College of Villanova” which opened in 1842 was greatly expanded.

This collection includes letters to and from the Philadelphia Sheriff at the time, Morton McMichael; letters and orders to and from Major General Patterson; lists of the Posse members sent to hunt for the arsonists; and a broadside from Bishop Kendrick calling on the Catholic citizens of Philadelphia to remain calm and not to resort to violent in retribution.

Supplementing this collection are other works related to the Riots owned by Villanova University, including:

The Full Particulars of the Late Riots, with a View of the Burning of the Catholic Churches, St. Michaels & St. Augustines. (Link)

One of the earliest scholars of the Roman Republic and Empire was Onofrio Panvinio.

Two of his most important works have been digitized and are available in the Contributions from Augustinian Theologians and Scholars Collection: his work on the Roman triumph and the magistrates of the republic and empire, the Fasti et triumphi Rom. a Romulo rege usque ad Carolum V. Caes. Aug. and his work on the Roman games, De ludis circensibus.

Along with being a historian and compiler of data from the ruins of the Roman secular world, Panvinio also compiled one of the first histories of the Augustinian Order as well as other related chronicles of the church and the early papacy. Indeed his explorations to forage for inscriptions, illustrations, and documents were authorized by Pope Pius IV.

Many of his works have never been published as books and remain only available as manuscripts, so much work still remains to bring greater attention to these important materials. Living only to the age of 38, dying in Palermo in 1568 A.D., Panvinio’s contributions to later ecclesiastical and classical historians show that great scholarly effort can come from even a short life. Father Gersbach notes: “his descriptions of Roman churches remain valuable for art historians. His indefatigable labors in unearthing and organizing vast amounts of historical material have merited the admiration of later scholars.”

Indeed, the eminent historian Mary Beard in her 2007 work, The Roman Triumph, said:”so efficient and accurate were they that Onofrio Panvinio’s study of the triumph in his Fastorum Libri V first published in the 1550s - an analytical list of Roman office holders from Romulus to Charles V in the sixteenth century - remains even today one of the most comprehensive collections of evidence for the ceremony.”

Several images from his now digitized Roman histories follow including: an image of the Emperor Claudius, the procession of the Roman Triumph, the ceremonies preparatory to a Roman game, and lists of consuls and magistrates.

Mary Beard. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 54-54.

K.A. Gersbach. “Panvinio, Onofrio”. New Catholic Encyclopedia. pp. 828-829.