COPY OF A PROTESTANT WOMAN EXPELLED FROM FRANCE
Drelincourt, Charles [de Beringhen, Françoise, owner]: Les visites charitables, ou les consolations chrétiennes, pour toutes sortes de personnes afligées. Se vendent à Charenton, par Olivier de Varennes, demeurant à Paris, en la Gallerie des Prisonniers, au Vase d’or 1665.
Volume one of a five-part work of comforting Protestant dialogues for people in a state of affliction, our book is the subject of a short article (1971), that identifies its owner as Françoise de Beringhen, French Protestant (Huguenot) and daughter of Jean de Beringhen, sometime secretary to Louis XIV. She was born c.1656. Her father was also an elite banker. In 1688 she was removed from a convent, where she had been placed, and expelled from France, moving to England. Beringhen had been living since 20 January 1686 in the Ursuline convent of Montargis. On 16 March 1688, the superior of the convent was told to hand her over for expulsion.
The twentieth-century owner, in his article, notes the aptness of the volume to de Beringhen’s situation in 1688. The book is composed of twelve “visits” made by the pastor to afflicted people. The first is to someone who has experienced a collapse in status and fortune and the eighth is for someone who has been banished from their country. Charles Drelincourt (1595-1669) was a Protestant minister in Charenton and celebrated writer.
A final point of interest in the volume concerns printed binder’s waste, just visible under the pastedowns. At front pastedown is what appears to be a book list, with “Palingenii Zodiacus Vitae” (i.e. the prohibited work Zodiacus vitae (1536, with subsequent editions) of Marcellus Palingenius (c.1500-1551)), and, relating to another title, the words “3 vol.” clearly readable. Further investigation may reveal more.
Victor le Renard, ‘Françoise de BERINGHEN expulsée de France en 1688’. Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français [1903-2015], 117 (January-March 1971), 88-91 (describing this copy). See also (for facts on Beringhen’s life and family and much more) Elizabeth Ann Churchich, ‘Children of the Revocation: the reeducation of French Protestants after 1685’. PhD, Rutgers University, 2013 (accessed via https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40515/ 19 December 2022).
Details
One volume (of five), first edition. 19.6 cms. x 12.6 cms., octavo, pp. [44] 481 [3]. Woodcut headpieces and initials. Light or medium browning. bound in vellum over boards, ties removed. Title inked to spine. Inscriptions, to front pastedown, “eH”, free endpaper recto, “Premier partie”, and to third endpaper verso, “Françoise de Beringhen” (on which see below). Later provenance: Victor Le Renard (see above).