Book bound in skin of executed Jesuit sells at auction in England

Published: 2007-12-03

LONDON (CNS) -- A book bound in the skin of an executed Jesuit priest was sold at an auction in England to an unnamed private collector for 5,400 pounds (more than US$11,000). The macabre, 17th-century book tells the story of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and is covered in the hide of Father Henry Garnet. Jessica Wall, a spokeswoman for Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, England, said: "We didn't know what the book was going to go for. It was an unexpected result but a good one. We are very pleased." The priest, at the time the head of the Jesuits in England, was executed May 3, 1606, outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London for his alleged role in a Catholic plot to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the British Parliament, an act that would have killed the Protestant King James I and other government leaders. The book, "A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and His Confederates," contains accounts of speeches and evidence from the trials. It measures about 6 inches by 4 inches and comes in a wooden box.

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