Vive Jesus. Les Vies de plusieurs Supérieures de l’ordre de la Visitation Sainte Marie. Revuës, & corrigées par un Père de la Compagnie de Jesus. Annecy: Humbert Fonteine, 1693.
4to (245 x 175 mm). [1] blank leaf, [10], 598 pages, [1] leaf (errata). Woodcut IHS (and VV or W) monogram on title, head- and tail-pieces and initials. Occasional light marginal foxing, small marginal dampstain to last dozen leaves, else fine. Contemporary acid-stained (granité) calf, triple gilt fillet border on sides, spine gold-tooled, morocco gilt lettering-piece, edges gilt over marbling, striking multi-colored veined pastepaper endleaves from a single fold sheet (a corner bumped, minor edge wear). Provenance: Paris,Jesuits, Professed house (Maison professe des Jésuites), inscription on title, Domus Professae Parisiensis Societ. Jesu, letterpress shelfmark on front pastedown (LXVI.K); sold 1765: Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de la maison professe des ci-devant soi-disans Jesuites (Paris, 1763, sale date probably 1765), lot 5727.***
Only edition of the fifth and last collection of lives of the early superiors of the order of the Visitation in France. All were written by Francoise-Madelaine de Chaugy (born Jacqueline de Chaugy), secretary of Jeanne de Chantal, founder of the order with Francis de Sales in 1610. As early as 1629, Jeanne de Chantal herself had started recording the lives of the order’s first nuns (or professes), intending them to serve as models of behavior and spirituality for future sisters. Mother Francoise-Madelaine, an excellent writer and accurate memorialist, was charged with continuing the project. The first collection was completed in 1636, and circulated in manuscript. Following Jeanne de Chantal’s death in 1641, de Chaugy’s many pressing obligations forced her to set the project aside, and she did not resume writing until 1653. Chantal had never intended these Lives to be published; they were meant to circulate privately, in manuscript, among the various convents, which by the time of her death numbered over 85 in France alone. The order to publish appears to have come from the papal prelates in Rome, who had received copies from de Chaugy’s brother (a principal proponent of beatification of Francis de Sales).
The first four collections of the Vies, containing biographies of 4, 7, 8, and 9 sisters respectively, were published in Annecy in 1659. The collections were appreciated by a devout public for the writer’s intelligent, precise and enthusiastic narrations. After de Chaugy died in 1680, the mother superior of the Annecy convent, Aimée Bénigne de Lucinge (as explained in the preliminary epistle), requested of an unnamed “réverend père Jésuite” [Menestrier] that he edit the remaining papers, and another nun, Marie-Terese de Passier, took charge of the publication. The resulting present volume contains the lives of 12 nuns, starting with Mother Anne-Marie Rosset, “12th nun of the Visitation Sainte Marie, Professe of the first house in Annecy.” The eleven other subjects, all of whom had died between 1656 and 1683, began their religious lives in the first convent of Annecy (Paule-Jéronime de Monthouz-d’Annemasse, Anne-Catérine de Beaumont, Marie-Marguerite Michel, Marie-Aimée de Rabutin, Françoise-Agnès Flocard, Françoise-Innocente de la Flêchere, Philiberte-Emanuelle de Montouz, and Marie-Angelique d’Attignat), as well as in the first houses of Moulins (Marie-Heleine de Chateluz), Pont-à-Mousson (Claude-Marie d’Auvaine), and Albi (Anne-Francoise de Hohenzollern). One woman did not quite become a nun: Marie-Angelique d’Attignat, a widow, died 5 months after her profession de foi, but she was included because of her well-known virtues.
Other biographies of Visitandines were published in separate pamphlets and other works, outside of these collections: even more so than for other religious orders of the time, the life stories of its earliest members played an important role in the identity and conceptual unity of the order (Dompnier, p. 19). Some of the earlier published lives were reprinted in the 19th century, but the Vitae of this collection do not seem to have appeared elsewhere.
This fine copy, adorned with exceptional endpapers, was owned by the Maison professe of the Jesuits of Paris, which welcomed resident theologians as well as scientists and musicians. These residents notably included the editor of this volume, Claude-François Menestrier.
I locate no copies in American libraries. Laroche, Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimés en France au XVIIe siècle, Rhône-Alpes II (1996), p. 40, no. 91; Conlon, Prélude au siècle des lumières 6064; Sommervogel, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes publiés par des religieux de la compagnie de Jésus I: 1055; cf. Dompnier and Julia, eds., Visitation et visitandines aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (2001), pp. 16-22 and passim; N. Pellegrin, online Dictionnaire des Femmes de l'ancienne France, article (2008) on Jacqueline de Chaugy. Item #4291
Price: $4,800.00