Special Collections
Emmanuel College Library has a number of special collections, all of which are located in the E.J. Pratt Library. Items in these collections include books, manuscripts, and papers. Selected sources will be of interest to students and researchers of theology and religious studies:
See also:
Victoria University Archives for additional finding aids.
Besly Family
Reverend John Besly was born in 1800 and attended Balliol College in Oxford, earning a B.A. He was ordained into the Church of England in 1823, and appointed Vicar of St. Bartholomew in Long Benton, Northumberland in 1830, where he remained until his death in 1868.
Items in the collection consists of a John Besly sermon and his correspondence in Latin.
Reuben Butchart
Reuben Butchart was a Toronto writer and church periodical editor who researched and wrote about the history of the Churches of Christ (Disciples) in Canada. He served as manager and later as editor of Christian Messenger, and later its successor, The Canadian Disciple. During that time he was active in his local congregation, since 1923 known as Hillcrest Church of Christ, and served many years as Corresponding Secretary of the Cooperation of Disciples of Christ in Ontario. His historical research broadened in the 1940s, culminating in the publication of his pioneering work The Disciples of Christ in Canada Since 1830, published in 1949.
The collection consists of published and unpublished material about the history of the Disciples in Canada, gathered and authored by Reuben Butchart in the course of his research and writing.
Ernest G. Clarke
Ernest George Clarke (1927–1997) was a theologian and an academic. Clarke received a B.A. in 1949 from Victoria College, University of
Toronto, a B.D. in 1952 from Emmanuel College and a Ph.D. in 1962 from the University of Leiden, Netherlands. He was professor of Old Testament Studies at Queen’s Theological College in Kingston, Ontario for
several years.
Clarke achieved great distinction in Targumim scholarship (Aramaic version of “Old Testament” books). He was President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (1967–68), Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, Acting Principal of Victoria College (1988–89), Acting Director of the Graduate Centre for Religious Studies at the University of Toronto (1989–90), and Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Victoria College. He was a member of the International Organization for the Study of Targums and the International Society for the Study of the Old Testament.
The files in the collection consist of personal files, including correspondence. Clarke’s professional files containing lectures, course materials, research notes and material, corrected and annotated drafts, publications, publishing contracts, and annotated manuscripts. In addition, the collection comprises microfilm copies of manuscripts held in other repositories, including the British Museum.
Erasmus
Housed in the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, the collection is one of the most
complete collections in North America for the study of works written or edited by the great Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. The collection holds a substantial number of pre-1700 editions of his
works, including Novum Instrumentum, which dates back to 1516. A substantial portion of the collection was donated to Victoria University by Professor Andrew James Bell, who died in 1932.
James Evans
James Evans (1801–1846) was a Methodist minister and missionary, author, teacher, linguist, translator and developer of the Cree syllabic
alphabet.
The fonds contains records pertaining to James Evans’s activities as a minister and author, and to his personal life. It includes correspondence, literary manuscripts (such as printed syllabics and copies of Evans’s Cree syllabic hymnbook), professional records, a diary of Evans’s missionary expedition in the Lake Huron and Lake Superior region in 1838, a sketchbook containing pencil sketches and poems, photographs and other material. Correspondence of his parents, copies of records and microfilm copies of records from the papers of Rev. James Evans are also part of this collection.
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye (1912–1991) was an internationally recognized literary scholar and academic. Following his graduation from Victoria
College in 1933, he studied theology at Emmanuel College and was ordained to Ministry of the United Church of Canada in 1936.
Frye authored a number of books, many relating to the study of Bible and religion, especially with their relation to the study of literature. The publications include The Return of Eden (1965), Creation and Recreation (1980), The Great Code (The Bible and Literature) (1982), No Uncertain Sounds (1988), Reading the World: Selected Writings (1990), Words with Power: Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature (1992), The Double Vision: Language and Meaning in Religion (1991), The Eternal Act of Creation: Essays, 1979-1990 (1993), and Northrop Frye on Religion (2000).
Arranged in eleven series, the collection contains Frye’s records pertaining to his academic career and personal life.
John Webster Grant
John Webster Grant (1919–2006) was a United Church clergyman, an editor, and an academic. Grant was educated in Pine Hill Divinity
Hall, Nova Scotia, where he received a Certificate in Theology (1939–40, 1942–43), and Oxford University in England where he received a D. Phil. (1946–48).
Grant was a minister in West Bay, Nova Scotia in 1943, in Chelsea, Quebec from 1943 to 1945, and in Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1949. He served as Director of Information to non-Roman Catholic Churches, Wartime Information Board between 1943 and 1945 and was a Chaplain in the Royal Canadian Navy in 1945 and from 1952 to 1959. Grant was appointed Sessional Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Pine Hill Divinity Hall (1945–46), Professor of Church History at Union College, University of British Columbia (1949–59), visiting Professor at United College of South India and Ceylon during a sabbatical (1957–58), and Professor of Church History at Emmanuel College, Victoria University, Toronto (1963–84).
He was a prolific writer and editor and his publications include World Church: Achievement or Hope? (1956), Free Churchmanship in England, 1870–1940 (1958), God’s People in India (1959), The Ship Under the Cross (1960), George Pidgeon: a Biography (1962), The Churches and the Canadian Experience (1963), God Speaks... We Answer: A Handbook for Lay Leaders of Adult Worship (1965), The Canadian Experience of Church Union (1967), Salvation! O the Joyful Sound: the Selected Writings of John Carroll (1967), The Church in the Canadian Era: the First Century of Confederation (1972), Die unierten Kirchen (1973), and Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter Since 1534 (1984).
The fonds consists of Grant’s correspondence and subject files, writing, research and teaching, and personal files.
Peter Jones
Peter Jones (1802–1856) was an Ojibway chief, Methodist minister, missionary, educator, member of the eagle totem, farmer, author, and
translator. He taught Sunday School and preached occasionally. In 1825 he was invited by William Case to work as a Methodist, and was asked to keep a journal of his travels. He became the first Canadian Native to
keep a journal, the first Native missionary to be appointed to serve the Ojibwa and, with his brother John, the first translator of Biblical literature into such native tongues as Ojibwa and Chippewa.
Jones was responsible for the establishment of a Native mission on the Credit River in 1825. He was received on trial for ministry in 1827, became a deacon in 1830, and an elder in 1833. He was elected chief of two Ojibwa bands. In 1831, Jones traveled to England on behalf of the Methodist Conference to raise funds for Indian missions, and also to represent Native causes to British authorities. He preached in Methodist churches throughout Britain, arranged to have translations of the New Testament published, and was presented to King William IV.
He was received by Queen Victoria in 1837 and delivered a petition from the Ojibwa requesting the title to Indian lands. In 1844 Jones was compelled to accept supernumerary status due to poor health. He continued to travel in Britain and France gathering funds for Indian missions. He also worked among the Native people at Muncey and New Credit.
Jones also wrote and translated extensively over the course of his life. His publications include: Removal of the River Credit Indians, an article in the Christian Guardian, concerning the relocation of his tribe (1848), The sermon and Speeches of the Rev. Peter Jones, alias, Kah-ke-wa-quon-a-by, the Converted Indian Chief, delivered on the occasion of the eighteenth anniversary of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, for the Leeds District (1831). His translations include: The First Book of Moses, called Genesis (1835) and A Collection of Chippeway and English hymns, for the use of the native Indians (1840). His Life and Journals of Kah-ke-wa-quo-na-by (Rev. Peter Jones), Wesleyan Missionary (1860), and History of the Ojibway Indians: with especial reference to their conversion to Christianity (1861, editor: Eliza Jones) were published posthumously.
The fonds consists of Peter Jones’s records pertaining to his activities as a minister, author translator, and his personal life.
S.A. Nigosian
Solomon Alexander Nigosian (Nigoghossian) was born in 1932, in Alexandria, Egypt, to Abraham and Alice (nee Kutchukian). In 1949, Solomon
Nigosian received a certificate from the Oxford and Cambridge school in Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt. He received a B.A. from University of Toronto (1968), a M.A. from McMaster University (1970) after
completing his thesis entitled “Indo-Aryan Religions in Achaemenid Persia.” He also received his Ph.D. degree in 1975 from McMaster University, submitting a thesis entitled “The Song of Moses (Deut. 32:1–43).”
Nigosian was the founder and the first minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Toronto (1960–1968). He was ordained to Christian Ministry by the Armenian Evangelical Union Inc. in 1963, and attended Toronto Bible College (1963–64). He was a founder of the Canada-Armenian Press Journal, for which he served as an editor from 1963 to 1968. Later, he was actively involved in the Armenian Evangelical union (1964–1971).
He has written over a hundred articles and books, and given lectures on the history of religions and Armenian culture and history. His most recent publications include Islam: Its History, Teaching, and Practices (2004), World Religions: A Historical Approach (2000), and “Images of Moses: A Comparative Inquiry” (Theological Review, 2002).
The documents in the collection pertain to Nigosian’s scholarly and teaching career, as well as his role as a minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church and a member of the Armenian community in Toronto.
A.H. Reynar
Alfred Henry Reynar (1840–1921) was a minister and an academic. He received a B.A. in 1862 and an M.A. in 1869 at Victoria University,
Toronto. He later studied in Paris, France and in Berlin and Leipzig in Germany for two years (after 1866). He was ordained as Methodist minister in 1866. In 1896, Reynar published Over-Legislation in Church
and State.
The items in the collection consist of A.H. Reynar’s records pertaining to his activities as an academic and his personal life. The fonds includes correspondence, essay on Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” two articles by Reynar and a student register.
Wesleyana
Victoria University Library owns one of the finest, most complete early edition collections in North America of the works by John and Charles Wesley. The majority of the collection came from the library of the Reverand Richard Green (1829-1907). It has been supplemented by critical and biographical works on the Wesley family.
All works in the Wesleyana Collection are listed in the University of Toronto Library Catalogue. They are identified by library location, Victoria (Emmanuel) Wesleyana collection.
In addition, the United Church Archives owns a complimentary collection of Wesleyana artifacts and manuscripts. Images of a sample of Wesleyana items are available online.
John Wesley
John Wesley was born on June 28, 1703 at Epworth, England, the fifteenth of nineteen children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. John received his
early education at Charterhouse school and entered Christ Church College Oxford University in 1720. He was ordained deacon in 1725, and priest in the Church of England in 1728. In 1726, he was elected a Fellow of
Lincoln College and lectured in Greek and New Testament Studies. Between 1727 and 1729, he assisted his ailing father at Epworth. However, he returned to Oxford at the insistence of the authorities, where he
joined his brother Charles and several other young scholars in the Holy Club—a discussion group interested in holy living, charity and theological inquiry.
Over his long career, Wesley published hundreds of volumes of sermons, correspondence, journals, hymns and church services. He also edited and published a fifty-volume “Christian Library” of important theological works. He edited the Arminian Magazine from 1778 until his death and continued to write on historical, literary, scientific and theological topics.Wesley founded Kingswood School, helped organize the Sunday school movement, and worked to abolish slavery in the British Empire and the United States. He fought to improve social conditions of eighteenth-century England and to overcome the social immorality of his period. The bulk of his time, however, continued to devoted to constant traveling and preaching. His life represents an amazing account of service and tireless activity.
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley studied at St. Peter’s College, Westminster, London. In 1726 began study at Christ Church, Oxford. While there helped form
the Holy Club, of which George Whitefield and his brother John later became members.
In 1735, he was ordained and the Wesley brothers accepted the urgent invitation of General Oglethorpe to go with him as chaplain and teacher to his colony in Georgia. Dissatisfied and ill in health, Charles returned to England the next year. His greatest contribution to the Christian church was over six thousand hymns, four thousand of which were published.