Novveav livre d’Eglise à l’vsage de Rome, pour la commodité vniverselle des Laiques. Premiere Edition reduite en un Volume... Auec un Exercice du Chrestien pour les Ames deuotes... Enrichy de nouuelles Figures. Paris: Pierre Rocolet, Pierre Charpentier, Mathurin Denis, Claude Calleville, 1644.
12mo (147 x 81 mm). [60], 911, [1], clxviii pp. Engraved frontispiece and 12 engraved plates. Red and black printing. Woodcut tailpieces. Tear to the Table des feste mobiles (a5), slight mold in gutter of pp. 896-7. Contemporary calf, sides framed in double gilt fillets, central motif of the Cross with the Arma Christi (the emblem of the Confraternity of the Penitents of the Holy Cross), and the gold-stamped name Charles (on front cover) de Meru (on lower cover) at top within double fillet cartouches, spine panelled in compartments with gilt fleurons, edges gilt (rubbed), front pastedown covered with early childish scribbles. Provenance: Charles de Meru, supra-libros; Du Coz, signature on front flyleaf.
An abundantly illustrated and lavishly printed portable breviary in a confraternity binding. Printed in small types, the edition is ornamented with engravings, woodcut tailpieces, several printed in red, and one in both red and black.
By the seventeenth century the confraternities of Penitents numbered in the hundreds, so much so that they came to be known by the colors of their robes (the white, green, blue, black penitents, etc.). Baudrier and Galle describe a binding tool used by a branch of penitents known as the “Compagnie des pénitents de la Sainte-Croix, Mort et Passion de Notre-Seigneur-Jésus-Christ,” founded in 1681, but earlier bindings with similar tools belonging to other Penitent confraternities are known. As in the later examples cited by Baudrier and Galle, the name of the confrère to whom this breviary was given is stamped above the confraternity’s emblem. Cf. Julien Baudrier & Léon Galle, Armorial des bibliophiles de Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais et Dombes (1907), vol. I, p. 156.
Price: $1,800.00