WHO IS THE REMNANT TRUST?
The Remnant Trust is a Public Educational Foundation.
We were founded to preserve and share our growing collection focusing on individual liberty and human dignity.
The Trust is a public educational Foundation that shares an actively growing collection of manuscripts, 1st edition, and early works dealing with the topics of individual liberty and human dignity, with some pieces dating as early as 2500 BCE. We make our collection available to colleges, universities, professional, civic, and other organizations for use by students, faculty, scholars, and the general public.
Our growing collection of manuscripts, 1st edition, and early works dates back as early as 2500 BCE.
Following along a timeline of liberty and dignity, our collection is comprised of some of the greatest works of man that focus on the proper function of government, responsibility of citizenship, and how we live together in society.
“The mission of The Remnant Trust is to elevate educational standards & the public’s understanding of individual liberty & human dignity through the precedent setting, hands on availability of the world’s great ideas in original form… more ”
WHAT DOES THE REMNANT TRUST DO?
We are passionate about growing, preserving and sharing these rare documents.
Protecting and Sharing Great Works and Ideas of Liberty and Human Dignity
The Remnant Trust collection began more than three decades ago by Founder Brian Bex. Deeply passionate about individual liberty and human dignity, he identified the 100 most important works speaking to these topics, gaining input from scholars.
The Trust has since been dedicated to our mission to elevate educational standards and the public’s understanding of individual liberty and human dignity through the precedent-setting, hands-on availability of the world’s great ideas in original form—and raising the consciousness of the most significant documents that have shaped America: The Great Experiment.
Today, The Remnant Trust’s Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum is a preeminent privately funded collection of over 1,600 original and early version texts about individual liberty and human dignity putting forth a body of ideas, moral habits and beliefs, conventions and customs of the past to bridge time itself.
The Remnant Trust’s vision has always been to provide the opportunity for people to hold, examine, read and discuss the pieces of the collection.
Our Holdings / Volumes
Manuscripts
Exhibitions
Years / Time Line
Preserving Ideas of Individual Liberty & Human Dignity
The Trust is distinctive because audiences directly interact with the collection and engage in programs and discussions to expand their knowledge and build community. Participants are transformed as they experience the magnitude of the Trust’s historic, centuries-old texts and learn directly about liberty and human dignity from sages spanning four-and-a-half millennia.
WHY DO WE DO THIS?
Unleashing Passion and Curiosity for Individual Liberty and Human Dignity
The Challenge today is to . . .
Prepare this generation to draw on the accumulated wisdom and experience of the past in order to deal with the enduring questions in the new circumstances of the 21st century. In meeting this challenge our strategy is to provide exposure to original sources of the most significant documents that have shaped society; inspire an interest and competency in issues of individual liberty and dignity; engage in civil discussion and debate regarding the great ideas of historical minds.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
The Remnant Trust’s officers and staff come from all walks of life and different backgrounds but we share a common interest and understanding for the need to have all sides to be represented in The Collection so individuals can form their own opinions and ideas.
No one person owns The Collection, The Remnant Trust, Inc. organization owns and preserves it.
THE REMNANT TRUST BLOG
Featured Works
Two Treatises of Government by John Locke
Featured Work Second Edition. John Locke first published "Two Treatises of Government" anonymously in 1689 as a defense of the Glorious Revolution. The first treatise discusses patriarchalism - the idea that the power of the monarchy is absolute - through an attack on...
Fables by Aesop
Featured Work First Edition. Sir Roger L’Estrange’s version of the “Fables of Aesop” was printed in 1692. It is a collection of fables attributed to Aesop, who is believed to be a Greek slave and storyteller that lived between 620 and 564 BC. Originally passed down...
Scivias Libri Tres by Hildegard of Bingen
Featured Work First Edition, except were cited. This volume is entitled "Liber trium virorum & trium spiritualium virginum" and includes six texts in one volume with a woodcut title page of full length figures portraying the six authors with their renowned...
The Common-wealth of Oceana by James Harrington
Featured Work First Edition. James Harrington’s great Utopian political treatise, “The Common-Wealth of Oceana,” was published in 1656. “Oceana” was published in two first editions for Daniel Pakeman and Livewell Chapman (presented here) by John Streater with their...
The Trial of John Peter Zenger
Featured Work Published in Dublin in 1738 under the title, “The Trial of John Peter Zenger,” this volume was originally published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1738 as “A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger.” It contains the pleadings and...
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Featured Work First English Edition. “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli first appeared in 1513 in a correspondence version under the title, “De Principatibus.” It was first published five years after Machiavelli’s death in 1532 in Italian by Antonio Blado d'Asola....