WOMEN, BLOOD, AND HEALING – APPARENTLY A NUN'S COPY

[Laurent, Le P. (de l’Oratoire)]: Vie de Madame La Fosse, guérie miraculeusement le 31 Mai 1725 à la Procession du Saint Sacrement de la Paroisse Sainte Marguerite. [Mandement de son éminence monseigneur le cardinal de Noailles, archevêque de Paris. A l’occasion du Miracle opéré dans la Paroisse de Ste Marguerite, le 31 Mai, jour du Saint Sacrement] [Réflexions de l'Auteur sur l'aveuglement de ceux qui écoutent les Philosophes de nos jours]. En France. 1769. [Bound with] Office propre du miracle opéré à la Procession du Saint Sacrement dans la Paroisse de Sainte Marguerite le 31 Mai 1725; avec octave. [n.pl., n. pr.] 1761.  

Apparently a nun’s copy of the only edition of this life of Madame La Fosse (d. 1760), who was miraculously cured of partial paralysis and haemorrhaging in 1725 during the procession of the Holy Sacrament in the parish of Saint Marguerite, Paris. The miracle and its aftermath ‘might be regarded as a small-scale dress rehearsal for the later debates over Saint-Médard [Paris]’, a cult of miracles associated with the Jansenist Deacon François de Pâris (Kresier 2015 p. 75). In the preface, the author explains that he wanted to present this life shortly after Madame La Fosse’s death, but circumstances prevented it until now (p. iii). In addition to a biographical account, the text includes Cardinal Louis-Antoine de Noailles’s certification of the miracle, which was first printed in 1725. Laurent’s Vie is bound here with a related liturgical work, which is apparently in its only edition.

Details

Printed. Two publications in one volume, 17 x 9.5 cms in binding, octavo, pp. xvi 212; lviii 93 [3] 95-98.  Intaglio frontispiece to first publication depicting Madame La Fosse, plus decorative head- and tailpiece.  

Bound in marbled calf over boards. Brown goatskin label to spine (VIE DE M LA FOSS), gold-tooled decoration to spine and sides. Marbled pastedowns and endpapers.

Condition (textblock): light browning, spotting, and staining. Puncture marks(?) to inner margin of approx. pp. 25-37 of first publication. Damage to outer margin of title page and subsequent folio of second publication (but no loss of text). Condition (binding): leather rubbed, minor defect to headcap, front joint cracking slightly at top, very minor worming to spine. 

Provenance: ‘Sr [i.e. Soeur?] Antoine’ (inscription to recto of second free endpaper). Miscellaneous pencil notes to endpapers.

Bibliography

Publication 1: FRBNF30750975. OCLC shows copies outside mainland Europe at the British Library, Wellcome Library, Yale, University of Notre Dame, University of Wisconsin, and State Library of Victoria. 

Publication 2: FRBNF36827045. See also Conlon 61:305 (pagination lviii, 93 [2]). The record at OCLC 467615934 has a different but probably incorrectly recorded pagination as it contains a link to FRBNF36827045. OCLC 401569877 gives a pagination of pp. 212, but this is probably a reference to the pagination of our first work as the record is for BM Lyon SJ CS 361/69, a volume containing both our works. 

Kreiser, B. Robert. Miracles, Convulsions, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 74-78.