An incredibly rare 17th-century book has been found in a donation bin at Michigan State University’s thrift shop, with a store employee saying, “It stood out right away.”
In late August, just as students were returning for the academic year, MSU announced an exciting discovery made last fall. Staffers at the university’s Surplus Store found an ancient Latin text with a pigskin cover among the thousands of pounds of donated books they comb through every week.
“It looked and felt much different than any other book,” Chris Hewitt, the store’s operations coordinator, recently told local outlet WOOD TV. “It stood out right away that it was something unique.”
MSU concluded the book was Theologia Moralis, a text on moral theology by Paul Laymann, an Austrian man part of the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order. The book was produced in the Belgian city of Liège by the printer Guillaume Ouwerx in 1672, 37 years after the author’s death.
“I believe this was a time when they still had to hand press everything. So, seeing how thick that book is, it is quite the labor of love to have put together,” Hewitt said.
Laymann, a popular Catholic moralist, taught theology across Austria and the German state of Bavaria. Theologia Moralis, one of Laymann’s dozens of works, became “a cornerstone text for Catholic seminaries,” being reprinted for more than a century, MSU said in a news release.
“It’s easily the oldest book I’ve ever handled here,” Kari Schubauer, the store’s books manager, said. “To think that someone just dropped it in the bin. It’s incredible.”
It’s unclear how the book ended up in a campus recycling bin. MSU said there are no library markings, leading them to believe it was privately owned. With such a unique find, the university did not put the book up for sale, but rather placed it in MSU Libraries’ Special Collections to preserve it for years to come.
The Surplus Store either resells donations at an affordable price for students and locals, or recycles them, depending on their condition.
Store employees have come across other rare texts and items in recent years, including early volumes of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the first issue of the Peanuts comic series. They’ve also found a vintage eel-skin briefcase, handmade robots and a horse buggy.
“A couple years ago, we also found a first edition Charles Darwin book. It wasn’t The Origin of Species, but it’s a different one that he wrote about worms, which is appropriate since we also have a worm facility for composting campus food waste. We thought that was a pretty good kind of full circle,” Hewitt told WOOD TV.
