MONASTIC REFORMER

Boucher, Jean Baptiste Antoine: Vie de la bienheureuse soeur Marie de l’Incarnation, dite dans le monde Mademoiselle Acarie, converse professe et fondatrice des Carmelites réformées de France: faite d’après des piéces authentiques; accompagnée de notes historiques, critiques & morales; & suivie io. d’une Appendice contenant des écrits & des maximes de la Bienheureuse, 2o. de Piéces justificatives. A Paris, chez H. Barbou, imprimeurlibraire, rue des Mathurins 1800.

First edition of this life of Blessed Marie de l’Incarnation, OCD (1566-1618), who is credited with bringing Teresa of Ávila’s reform of the Carmelite order to France and who was beatified in 1791. The book includes writings of hers (499-540), and a documentary appendix, with records of her baptism and profession as a religious, letters witnessing the stigmata that she experienced, a letter of the French clergy to Innocent X, 1651, requesting her beatification, and the brief of Pius VI, 1791 beatifying her. The book has more of a scholarly apparatus than is sometimes found in lives of religious. It is heavily footnoted, and indexed, and there are also descriptions of contents at the beginning. Prefatory material includes a four-page explanation of the elaborate frontispiece.

Details

First edition. One volume, 21 cms. X 13.5 cms. In binding, octavo, pp. xxviii, 570 + intaglio frontispiece, signed Massard, 1797. Light or medium browning. Bound in light brown marbled calf, spine decorated in gilt, gilt to sides, marbled pastedown and endpapers (binding rubbed, damage to bottom outer corner of rear pastedown (possible caused by a label peeled away), and to bottom outer corner of final endleaf.

FRBNF30137671