MU Libraries presents an online exhibit that documents the journey of the library of Geofroi Jacques Flach, a renowned bibliophile and professor of law, from France to Ellis Library in Columbia, Missouri. For forty years, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Professor Flach collected books on the political history of Europe, Mesopotamia, Russia, Japan and Ireland on the subjects of religion, feminism and other social causes. Especially notable are the St. Raymond de Peñafort manuscript Summa de poenitentiate et matrimonio, dating ca. 1200 AD, and Disputatio Inter Clericum et Militem, a rare incunabulum published in Paris in 1498.
Henry Ormal Severance, director of Ellis Library from 1907 until 1937, acquired the library of Professor Flach in Paris in March of 1920. This collection of approximately 6,000 volumes, many of which have Professor Flach’s original bookplates, is housed in Ellis Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections.
The online exhibit is available at http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/flach/index.htm.