Guardian Angels
[ALVISET, Jean Antoine.]
L’Ange gardien. Pour les devotes confreries des Saincts Anges Gardiens. Par un prestre de l’eglise de Sainct Pierre, de la cité imperiale de Besançon. Lyon, Jacques du Creux, 1647.
[bound with:]
[Drophead title:] Regles et statuts pour la confrerie du S. Ange Gardien … [Lyon, Jacques du Creux], [(chronogram:) 1646].Two parts in one vol., 12mo, pp. [36], 1–16, 21–143, [1]; 8, [2, blank]; bound without leaves B3–4; woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; occasional light foxing, some small damp-stains to outer margins towards the end; in contemporary vellum over boards; spine worn with minor loss; early ownership inscriptions to front pastedown ‘Ce livre est du monastere de la visitation Ste Marie de Nancy’ and ‘pour rester a l’oratoire des Sts Anges’, the first repeated in a later hand facing title.
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L’Ange gardien. Pour les devotes confreries des Saincts Anges Gardiens. Par un prestre de l’eglise de Sainct Pierre, de la cité imperiale de Besançon.
Very rare devotional manual for female and male members of the Confraternity of the Guardian Angels established in the church of St Peter in Besançon, in eastern France, in 1643, with a separately published and seemingly unrecorded appendix detailing its rules.
According to the regulations at the end, members were expected to ‘charitably’ reprimand ‘blasphemies, swearing, curses, and insolent and scandalous words and actions’, provide edifying conversation, and give alms to poor children and orphans. The Confraternity’s funds were to be kept under lock and key in a ‘boëtte’ and its goods inventoried. Various indulgences (plenary, of seven years, and of sixty days) are listed at the end.
The prefatory matter includes an address by the author to St Michael, and Latin verses to the book itself (‘I liber, liber: i libelle belle’).
No copies in OCLC; CCfr records two copies at BM Besançon (one, presented by the author, has an engraved frontispiece and an engraved title vignette), and only a 1645 edition of the Regles et statuts (likewise BM Besançon only).