Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: Year: 1675

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-119890 Annotation: This engraving depicts the execution of David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselins, described variously as Dutch Anabaptists or Mennonites, by Catholic authorities in Ghent in 1554. Strangled and burned, van der Leyen was finally dispatched with an iron fork. Bracht’s Martyr’s Mirror is considered by modern Mennonites…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: rc 01002800 Annotation: This illustrated image, taken from Captain John Smith’s “The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles” (published in England in 1624), depicts a American native ritual as described by Smith, imagined through the eyes of a European artist. Smith, whose voyages to the New…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: Annotation: John Rogers (1500-1555)was a Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism in the 1530s under the influence of William Tyndale and assisted in the publication of Tyndale’s English translations of the Bible. John was burned alive at Smithfield on February 4, 1555, and he became the “first Protestant martyr”…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: 11015941 Annotation: Fearing that a decline in the belief of malevolent spirits and witches which were believed to plague humanity would lead to the ultimate demise of Christianity, English clergyman and philosopher Joseph Glanville wrote the Saducismus Triumphatus as an attempt to prove the existence of the supernatural by scientific…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: 11015941 Annotation: Fearing that a decline in the belief of malevolent spirits and witches which were believed to plague humanity would lead to the ultimate demise of Christianity, English clergyman and philosopher Joseph Glanville wrote the Saducismus Triumphatus as an attempt to prove the existence of the supernatural by scientific…

Credit: Architect of the Capitol Media type: doors Museum Number: Annotation: The Columbus Doors that stand at the east entrance of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda are an imposing sight. They stand nearly 17 feet tall and weigh 20,000 pounds. The artist was Randolph Roger, and his alto-relief bronze doors make a powerful statement about not only their subject,…

Credit: Architect of the Capitol Media type: doors Museum Number: Annotation: The Columbus Doors that stand at the east entrance of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda are an imposing sight. They stand nearly 17 feet tall and weigh 20,000 pounds. The artist was Randolph Roger, and his alto-relief bronze doors make a powerful statement about not only their subject,…

Credit: Architect of the Capitol Media type: doors Museum Number: Annotation: The Columbus Doors that stand at the east entrance of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda are an imposing sight. They stand nearly 17 feet tall, and weigh 20,000 pounds. The artist was Randolph Roger, and his alto-relief bronze doors make a powerful statement about not only their subject,…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: book cover Museum Number: Annotation: This is the cover of a book published in Boston, Printed and Sold by Green & Russell, in Queen-Street, 1760. The Story of Britton Hammon’s captivity and subsequent return to his master in Boston is often considered the first published work written in the prose of African…