SUNDAY SCHOOL FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
[MONS.]
Histoire de l’institution de l’ecole dominicale dans la ville de Mons en l’an 1585, dediée a messieurs M. les magistrats.
Mons, J. B. Varret, 1748.
8vo, pp. 53, [2], [1 (blank)], with etched frontispiece with the arms of Mons (‘P. Bureau fecit’); woodcut factotum initial, woodcut and typographic headpieces; frontispiece slightly trimmed at outer margin, a few old glue stains to title, but a very good copy; bound in early twentieth-century paste-paper boards, gilt red morocco lettering-piece to spine, evidence of earlier stab-stitching to inner margins; rubbed with a few chips.
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Histoire de l’institution de l’ecole dominicale dans la ville de Mons en l’an 1585, dediée a messieurs M. les magistrats.
First and only edition, very rare, of this history of the Sunday school in Mons, established for the Christian education of the boys and girls of the city and supported by the Canonesses of St Waltrude among other benefactors.
The school was founded by Louis de Berlaymont (1542–1596), Archbishop of Cambrai, who spent the majority of his archiepiscopacy exiled in Mons after Cambrai’s capture by Francis of Anjou. The school was established in the disused drapers’ hall and divided into two parts, with separate doors for men and boys and for women and girls, and a chapel was built soon after. The pupils, from the ages of seven to fifteen, were divided into fourteen classes for boys (taught by seventeen masters) and thirteen classes for girls (with thirteen mistresses); the elder classes were provided with paper, pens, and ink.
The text praises those who have worked at the school and supported its teaching of Catholic faith and its role in preventing heresy, especially Archbishop de Berlaymont, the school’s first master François Buisseret, later also Archbishop of Cambrai, and their successor at Cambrai, François Fénelon, who took an interest in the school and questioned the pupils, finding them ‘very well instructed’ (p. 36, trans.).
In addition to the school’s educational role, it distributed alms to old women (who were also admitted for Christian instruction) and to poor children, with the help of donations from the Canonesses of St Waltrude and a list of thirty-three named female benefactors.
No copies traced in the UK or US. OCLC finds two copies in the Netherlands, at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the University of Groningen, and one in Belgium, at the Bibliothèque royale.
