BENEDICTINE BIOGRAPHY
[DUQUESNE, Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard.]
Vie de la vénérable mère Catherine de Bar, dite en religion Mecthilde du S. Sacrement, institutrice des religieuses de l’Adoration perpétuelle.
Nancy, Claude-Sigisbert Lamort; Paris, Le Berton and Herissant, 1775.
12mo, pp. 474, [4]; with engraved frontispiece portrait; some light creasing to corners, a few small marks; a very good copy in contemporary mottled calf, spine in compartments lettered and decorated in gilt, red edges, marbled endpapers; some rubbing to boards and extremities and wear to corners; loose printed and manuscript slip inserted at p. 223 (see below).
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Vie de la vénérable mère Catherine de Bar, dite en religion Mecthilde du S. Sacrement, institutrice des religieuses de l’Adoration perpétuelle.
Uncommon biography of the French nun Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament (née Catherine de Bar, 1614-1698), founder of the order of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by the French theologian Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard Duquesne (1732-1791). Most copies lack the frontispiece portrait.
Born in Saint-Dié, in northeastern France, Catherine de Bar joined the Sisters of the Annunciation in nearby Bruyères at the age of seventeen, becoming mother superior just two years later. Forced to flee from the advancing Swedish army in 1635, Catherine and a few companions eventually found shelter with the Benedictines of Rambervillers, where she took the name of Mechtilde. It was in 1653, with the help of Anne of Austria, that she founded in Paris the enclosed female order of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, serving as the convent’s first mother superior. The attractive frontispiece here shows her in Benedictine habit kneeling in Eucharistic adoration before a monstrance displaying the host. Duquesne was a doctor in the Sorbonne, vicar-general of Soissons, and treasurer of the Bastille.
A loosely inserted contemporary printed and manuscript slip records that ‘Mlle Jeane Marie Claudine de la Bletoniere’ performed an hour of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on St Claude’s day.
Only one copy traced in the UK (Bodleian) and three in the US (Fordham, Georgetown, Michigan State). None of these appear to have the frontispiece.
