PROVINCIALLY PRINTED MARIAN MIRACLES
AUBERY, Jean-Henri.
D. Virgo Guarazonia. Scriptore reverendo patre, P. Ioanne Henrico Auberio Borbonio, religioso presbytero Societatis Iesu.
Auch, Arnaud de Sainct Bonnet, 1650.
4to, pp. 4, [6], 72; woodcut initials, head-, and tailpieces; light dampstaining to title, small perforation to blank upper margins, tears (without loss) to final leaf (old repair); otherwise a good copy in modern cream wrappers; notes in red ink and pencil to upper cover.
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D. Virgo Guarazonia. Scriptore reverendo patre, P. Ioanne Henrico Auberio Borbonio, religioso presbytero Societatis Iesu.
A seemingly unrecorded (first?) edition of a remarkable neo-Latin poem on Our Lady of Garaison composed by the Jesuit priest Jean-Henri Aubery (1601–1652).
Following several apparitions of the Virgin Mary to a young shepherdess named Anglèze de Sagazan at Garaison, in the Hautes-Pyrénées to the east of Lourdes, a chapel was built there in 1540. It became an important place of pilgrimage from the early seventeenth century, long before the popularity of Lourdes.
Aubery arranges his poem in six books. In the first, he describes the Virgin’s appearance to Anglèze and her first miracle there, turning the shepherdess’s black bread into a delicious white loaf; we then read of the building of a chapel, of the finding of a miraculous statue of the Virgin, and of a destructive attack by a band of Huguenots, who subsequently die in a variety of unpleasant ways. In book two a certain Pierre Geoffroy is chosen by Mary to repair her chapel, and the narrator describes a miraculous healing fountain. In the third book, when locals have too much fun during the feast of the Nativity of Mary, with disrespectful drinking and dancing, she sends a storm to put them right; and Geoffroy builds a wonderful complex to welcome pilgrims, where they compare the miraculous cures affected upon them. Book four recounts further miracles: a mother and baby brought to safety from a shipwreck; a Jesuit saved from being crushed by his horse; Alphonse d’Ornano, Marshal of France, preserved from the plague; and a Catholic boy saved from a Huguenot’s noose. The fifth book provides a detailed description of Garaison’s chapel, its paintings, statues, and furnishings, and Aubery’s narrative ends with the death of Geoffroy and the election of his successor.
A native of Bourbon-l’Archambault, Aubery taught for many years at Auch and was a prolific writer of Latin verse: his output includes other poems on Marian sites of pilgrimage.
Sommervogel I, 620 records only a Toulouse edition of 1650 and an Auch edition of 1658. No copies traced on OCLC or CCfr.
