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When Rev. Mr. Nathaniel Roberts (’13) celebrated his 10-year reunion at this summer’s West Coast Alumni Dinner, he returned to the school that gave him the gift of a Great Books education with a Great Books gift of his own: a nearly 500-year-old Italian edition of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

“I got the book from Fr. Arthur Dennison, a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami,” says Deacon Roberts, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. “I came to know him after he had retired and was living in Key West at my home parish. After he passed away a couple years ago, I was given the book and asked to find a good home for it.”

The transitional deacon had just the place in mind. 

The fragile volume is a time capsule of the devotion and artistry of two ordinary Italians in the Late Renaissance. The book was published in Venice in 1564 by Bolognino Zaltieri, about whom little is known apart from his professional reputation as a publisher, and translated by M. Vincenzo Buondi, about whom even less is known. They would certainly be surprised to discover their handiwork’s new home!

When Deacon Roberts gave the book to College Librarian Richena Curphey, he made sure to mention its previous owner. “I ask that you add Fr. Dennison to the lists of people that you all regularly pray for,” he said. “The prayers of the community will mean more to both of us than anything else.”

Please keep Fr. Dennison in your prayers, as well as Deacon Roberts — who, by God’s grace, hopes to be ordained to the priesthood next year!