religion

An original woodblock for printing a rather naive devotional print of the type issued by the provincial presses of northern France. The lower portion contains the Crucifixion scene, with the Virgin and John the Evangelist (and serpent coiled at the foot of the cross). The borders have portraits, mainly in profile of saints and Catholic church fathers Andrew, Thomas, James, ‘Oesine’ (perhaps Saint Ouen, pointing to Rouen as an origin for the print), Matthias, Phillip, Barnabus, Peter, Paul, James son Zebedee [the Great], Bartholomew and Matthew. Above is a panel depicting Christ in Majesty with the Eye of Heaven (captioned ‘Dieu entend tout’) and the Ear of Heaven (Dieu enten[d] tout) and a cherub holding a placard lettered ‘Pencée [sic], Paroles, Actions’. Most of the block is extensively hatched the lines forming the rays of the sun, billowing clouds and a dark sky. Woodcut remained the dominant medium for such popular prints well into the nineteenth century before the widespread adoption of lithography after about 1825.

A tiny but irresistible devotional papercut, with a bouquet including a daffodil, tulip and rose, an image of the infant Christ (holding cross and nails) and with a text in French: ‘This little bouquet would be poor indeed if Jesus were not at its centre.’ A variation on the traditional French canivet, this type of diminutive papercut was probably destined for tucking into a prayerbook.

A dramatic lifetime portrait of Charles Simeon, figurehead of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, preaching on 1 Corinthians 10:15, ‘I speak as to wise men; judge ye [what I say]’. Simeon had written extensive homiletical commentaries on 1 and 2 Corinthians as part of his massive 21-volume work, Horae Homileticae. He was born in 1759 in Reading and was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. Shortly after he was ordained deacon in 1782, he was assigned as the perpetual curate to the Church of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge. He remained the pastor of this parish for 54 years until his death at age 77 in 1836. Initially controversial, with many at the university opposing his evangelical style and convictions, he became one of the most celebrated preachers of his age, and his influence stretched far beyond Cambridge. He was among the founders of the Church Missionary Society in 1797 and actively supported the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, and the Church Mission to the Jews. His sermons and weekly discussion groups were eagerly attended, so that he was often obliged to charge admission, as witnessed by the two manuscript admission tickets pasted to the back of the original frame of this watercolour.

The three dressed painting comprise:
‘S. APPOLONIA’ [sic]. [Saint Appolonia] show with palm and pincers. Third-century Christian virgin and deaconess martyred in Alexandria around 249 AD during an anti-Christian uprising. According to St. Dionysius of Alexandria, her teeth were violently broken, and she was threatened with burning unless she renounced Christ. Instead, she leapt into the flames, choosing death over apostasy. Venerated in Catholic, Orthodox, and Coptic traditions, she is patron saint of dentists and those with toothache, and is depicted with pincers holding a tooth.
‘S. CAECILLA’. [Saint Cecilia] shown with her harp. Cecilia of Rome was a Christian virgin martyr, d. 230 AD, and is patron saint of music and musicians.
‘S. CORNELIA’. Shown holding a cross. St. Cornelia was an early Christian martyr who was executed in North Africa during the persecutions of Christians.
Each is an accomplished though highly stylised image with the central figure mainly applied in painted collage, their robes made up from tiny fabric scraps, often of high quality with gold and silver threads. In each case the figure is set in a background comprising architectual features. The first two include varieties of enclosed gardens with fountains, while all three include large vases of flowers and the image of the holy spirit descending as a dove from the clouds above.

A Hebrew New Testament in the translation by missionary Johann Christian Reichardt. The volume was a presentation gift from John Blumenreich, a missionary active among Jewish communities in Edinburgh to a young Isaac Bayley Balfour. The inserted letter explains that the donor had wanted to give the boy ‘something of a Hebrew character’ on hearing that he was to be named Isaac. The boy’s father, John Bayley Balfour was a prominent botanist in Edinburgh, and Isaac himself was to succeed him and become professor of botany at Glasgow, Oxford and Edinburgh successively.

Four exceptional knife-cut parchment devotional images with exquisite borders incorporating birds, butterflies, insects, snails, flowers and cherubs. They are by a known (though still anonymous) master Antwerp parchment cutter whose work is represented in only a handful of surviving examples. Magnification reveals the extraordinary cutting skills of this artist, which is far more sophisticated than the more familiar cutting by most makers of so-called ‘canivets’. Here the parchment is cut and modelled with almost sculptural techniques to provide bevelled edges to each cut, giving the parchment image almost the characteristics of an ivory cutting or an engraved plaque.
The scholar of paper and parchment cutting, Jan Peter Verhave, identifies these previously unrecorded examples as the work of an Antwerp master responsible for a virtuoso cutting of 1728 in honour the marriage of the mayor-president of Amsterdam, Jan Six II, to Anna Elisabeth van den Bempden and a handful of pieces depicting scenes from the life of Christ (Verhave, ‘Trouw en devotie’ in Knip-Pers, Nederlandse Vereniging voor Papierknipkunst, August, 2022). The work of this cutter has something in common with the recognised master of baroque paper cutting working in the same era, Frederik Hendrik van Voorst (1660-1736).
Nativitas Dommini; Le Scapulaire de la Vierge; Erecto Crucis; [The Circumcision, with painted miniature].
Nativitas Dommini (195 × 158 mm), incorporating the meeting of Mary and her niece Elisabeth
Le Scapulaire de la Vierge (200 × 150 mm) The virgin presents the protective scapular: the visible sign of devotion to the Virgin Mary, symbolizing the desire to live under her protection and to follow her example of humility, obedience, and service to God. The scapular was first granted in 1251 to the British Carmelite monk St. Simon Stock. The female saint is probably St. Theresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun (+ 1582).
Erectio Crucis (188 × 155 mm) after a print by Jacques Callot (1624/5), with corner medallions of the four evangelists.
[The Circumcision] (92 × 65 mm, with central medallion painting 34 × 25 mm).

A rare miniature gospel book. Not found in the usual bibliographies or databases.

Two near-miniature volumes of psalms in shorthand by Joseph Forfitt, a London apothecary and a religious dissenter who was to become the first secretary of the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor. An industrious copyist, he apparently produced a number of evangelical manuscripts, often digesting or transcribing theological or liturgical texts, which were referred to on his death as ‘The Curious Manuscripts of Joseph Forfitt’ and ‘a library in themselves’ (The London Chronicle, March 10-12, 1763, advert for sale). These two tiny volumes are early examples and present the psalms in the abbreviated versions by Bishop Patrick Simon and Isaac Watts. Transcribing the psalms manually into shorthand in this period (and other similar manuscripts are known) served a dual purpose of mastering shorthand with known and easily verifiable texts and as an act of devotion, internalising the text through transcription in an alternative language. The miniature format of shorthand psalms has a precedent in Jeremiah Rich’s Whole Book of Psalms in Meter According to the Art of Short-Writing printed in 1660, but Forfitt’s manuscript uses a more up-to-date shorthand system, currently unidentified among the many systems in the years around 1700 (when shorthand experienced something of an explosion in use and interest).
It was potentially also conceived by Forfitt as having an evangelical end, reducing texts in volume for transmission in portable form, though his evangelism was primarily conducted through the distribution of printed bibles among the poor. The Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor was founded by a group of London based dissenters, led by Benjamin Forfitt, with Joseph as treasurer and later secretary. Early members included the Countess of Huntington, John Newton, the Thorntons of Clapham, Henry Venn, George Whitefield and William Wilberforce. It sent bibles to poor communities in both Britain and America, the latter including enslaved and indigenous people. A letter published in 1761, Extract of a letter from the Reverend Mr Wright, in Cumberland County, Virginia. To Mr Joseph Forfitt, July 1761, returned thanks for Forfitt’s ‘endeavours to promote the glory of God in Virginia by spreading good books amongst the most ignorant and poor’.
Surviving examples of Forfitt’s manuscripts include A Select Collection of Psalm-Tunes and Anthems set in three Parts for the Voice and Musical Instrument called the Psalterer, quarto, 1737 (Maggs, English Literature prior to 1800. Part 6, 1950, £5, now Beinecke Osborn Music MS 17); a three volume Bible and Book of Common Prayer (1729-40) also in shorthand (Sotheby’s, 5 May 1981, £75 to Maggs);
A new version of the Psalms of David; Book of Common Prayer; The Book of Psalms in Metre, 1740, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University).

Velcurio’s popular textbook of Aristotelian physics, printed at Lyon by Louis Cloquemin and Étienne Michel, here with an early English binding and provenance.
Johannes Velcurio or Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch (1490-1534) was professor of rhetoric and physics at the university of Wittenberg, where he was a humanist colleague of Melanchthon. This posthumously published Commentarium on Aristotle’s physics first appeared in Tubingen in 1542 and ran to at least twenty five editions before 1595, including those from in Basel, Erfurt, Cologne, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Lyon, and London. The fourth book is devoted to Aristotle’s De anima. In England, as elsewhere it was used as a university textbook and appears, for example, among the small textbooks purchased by students at Cambridge (see P. Gaskell, Books bought by Whitgift’s Pupils in the 1570s, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7, 3 (1979), pp. 284-293). It is unclear who the ‘John Freeman’ who inscribed the title-page in Greek at an early date was, but several John Freemans appear in the Cambridge University registers in the last years of the sixteenth century.
The binding bears identical blindstamped centrepiece tools to a contemporary London binding illustrated by David Pearson in English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 as Fig 3.35 (BL 1492.f.43, Selneccer, Evangeliorum et epistolarum dominicalium, Frankfurt, 1575) with similar spine bands and blind-ruled borders. At the front and rear are two endleaves (each) using waste apparently from an unidentified edition of Justinian’s Institutes, each with further early notes (mainly pen tests).

An attractive and elaborate example of German devotional Klosterarbeit, typical of enclosed communities, usually (but not always) convents of nuns. The decorative border here is an exuberant baroque combination of flowers, leaves and stems enclosing the parchment painting, within a border of gold cut-paper stars on a feathery cut blue paper. Dating these pieces is not easy, since traditional styles were both conservative and enduring. The support here is laid paper with a partially visible watermark with monogram (SME or SVE?)which we have so far been unable to identify (the applied silk work partially obscuring it). A small manuscript note on an old paper reinforcement at the back bears script in what appears to be an eighteenth-century hand.

Saint Paul appears with his customary attributes of a sword, recalling his martyrdom (he was beheaded in Rome in AD 67) and book, representing his letters in the New Testament.

A life of the Northern French Saint Ortaire, abbot of Landelles (d. 580 AD). Ortaire was the object of pilgrimages to Bas-Bézier, and was invoked in the cure of various illnesses and credited with miraculous cures. The approbation is dated 1706, referring to the source work Abregé de la Vie du Bienheureux Saint Ortaire, not the present chapbook (though it appears incorrectly with this early date in various online catalogues). Frère, Manuel du bibliographe normand, II, p. 507; Hélot, 265.

Huysmans died on 12 May, 1907 after a long illness. He had dictated the text of his funeral invitation in his last days, having reportedly seen the handsome black-edged funeral notice of an acquaintance. Calling himself homme de lettres, adding his presidency of the Académie des Goncourt and membership of Légion d’Honneur, he simply states that he died ‘muni des Sacrements de l’Eglise’ (fortified by the sacraments of the church). The invitation begins with the address ‘M[onsieur]’ for the addition of a recipient’s name, but it is blank here. The souvenir card is similarly black-edged and contains short excerpts from five of Huysmans’ works: En Route, La Cathèdrale, Sainte Lydwine, L’Oblat and Les Foules de Lourdes. The funeral took place at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and Huysmans was buried in the cemetery of Montparnasse — clothed in the garb of a Benedictine monk, according to his last wishes. Banks, The Image of Huysmans, p. 205,

First edition, rare, of these collected sermons by a French Huguenot emigré pastor in Dublin. Two significant sermons are on the subject of religious toleration, and the moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson is named among the subscribers.
The first to sermons are entitled ‘Contre l’Intolerance’ and ‘Les justes bornes de la Tolerance’. The Toleration Act had been enacted in Ireland in 1719, granting Dissenters (but not Catholics) freedom of worship and the subject of religious toleration was widely debated. Caillard argues that not only was intolerance immoral, but also irrational and imprudent. ‘It is imprudent since enforcing a set of beliefs undermines society: it leads groups to take a defensive stance against other groups, destroying public order. It is irrational since, while coercion can lead people to accept a belief outwardly, it cannot alter their inner convictions. It is immoral because coercion’s inability to change inner beliefs means it can only breed lies and hypocrisy, and because individuals have the right to self-determination. However this toleration was not to be extended to Catholics. This sermon was preached on 5th November, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. In a later sermon, Caillard established the limits of toleration. While still endorsing the individual right to self-determination, Caillard argues there is a limitation on religious freedom: that such freedom not be harmful to religion in general or society as a whole.’ (see Toleration in 18th century Ireland, Irish Philosophy.com)
The book includes a subscriber’s list of men and women, of both Irish, French and other extraction, including Francis Hutcheson, then resident in Dublin. It is not difficult to trace a connection between Caillard’s arguments for tolerance based on circumstances and Hutcheson’s later theories of moral rights, including the right to free conscience — which were later to have a profound influence on both the French and American constitutions. Outside Europe we find copies at Illinois, Charleston and Penn only.

A superb illuminated manuscript Ten Commandments, made at Bingen. The German text in calligraphic gothic hand, beneath a title ‘Die Zehn Gebote Gottes’ arranged on a rainbow forming a partially arched top to the sheet; the background contains a rich array of iconography in the style of a medieval manuscript, including Adam and Eve in paradise at the head on a decorated gold background, God in the heavens (with sun, moon and star), personifications of each of the sins, all arranged around a central tree of life linking heaven and earth. The central scene, on a silver mandala is a betrothal or wedding scene. Perhaps most striking of all is the richly painted azure ground, stippled with silver and overlaid with scrolling branches and leaves, inhabited by birds and animals. It is a splendid example of late nineteenth-century medievalism and the revival of the art of manuscript illumination, experienced in Germany as much as in other European countries, especially in the context of resurgent Roman Catholicism. The revival in Germany has been studied in detail by Michela Braesel (see ‘Medieval Elements in Nineteenth-Century German Illumination. Context and Models’ in The Revival of Medieval Illumination, ed. Thomas Coomans & Jan de Maeyer, Leuven, 2007). Little more has been discovered of the artist or the recipient, except that they were both members of a large Bingen family, of which several members appear to have emigrated to the United States.

First edition, number 10 of 11 copies on Japon (which was followed by 500 copies on Hollande, total edition 511), with the etched frontispiece by Lydis, depicting Christ as the Man of Sorrows. Cuban-born Armand Godoy was an important collaborator for Lydis. ‘Le Drame de la Passion, the most grandiose subject yet attempted by Godoy, is a musical tragedy in three acts; the characters are taken literally from the Bible with the addition of allegorical figures and types representing various aspects of humanity and nature, and of a chorus’ (French Review, 8, 2, Dec. 1934, pp. 145).

First edition with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons, are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.
These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis). Worldcat lists copies at Princeton and Bridwell only outside continental Europe (to which we add the Edinburgh copy.

First edition with illustrations by Mariette Lydis. Le Livre de Goha le simple, by two Egyptian Jewish authors, first appeared in 1919 (Calmann-Lévy) but this 1926 deluxe illustrated edition formed part of the Collection de chefs-d’oeuvre series. It was an important commission for Lydis. Goha the Fool was immensely popular, having narrowly missed the 1919 Goncourt prize (which went to Proust that year). ‘It is possible to see the beginning of Levantine literature ― rooted in the realities of the Middle East and influenced by European culture ― in Goha le Simple … This sad and cynical love story, which employs the prototype of Goha, the hero of many Middle Eastern tales describes the lives of the common folk of Cairo before the spread of Western cultural influence’ (Mongrels or Marvels: the Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, ed. Starr & Somekh, 2011). Lydis’s illustrations, evidently reduced from larger drawings are striking ― mostly depicting women of all ages and classes. This is one of 1000 copies on Rives (after 100 on Hollande and 100 on Annam).

Number 9 of 100 copies of a separately-issued lithograph, coloured by the artist and exhibited at London’s Leicester Gallery in 1935. A reviewer in The Connoisseur wrote of that exhibition:
‘February’s triple bill at the Leicester Galleries began with a display of paintings, drawings and prints by Mariette Lydis, a Viennese, domiciled in Paris. She has been a prolific illustrator. No fewer than thirty volumes with drawings by her have been published, copies of which have been acquired by many of the principal national libraries. Her work may be seen in the public galleries of Paris — the Jeu du Paume and the Luxembourg — of Milan, Amsterdam, Vienna, Leipzig, and elsewhere. She has also been accorded the honour of having a self-portrait received in the Uffizi Gallery. Her travels have taken her all over Europe, to America and to Morocco, and she is said to be entirely self-taught.
In the drawings, which seem to be mainly studies or projects, her attitude, and quite rightly, appears to be objective. Often her subjects are viewed as so much still-life, but they show considerable delicacy, if not variety, in handling. Her paintings evince, especially in such subjects as the dream-like Nuages, more of imagination and more of sensibility. Sainte Vierge Enfant has a pleasant cameo-like quality, and Javanaise, considerable attractiveness. For ourselves, we find her most interesting in her etchings and lithographs. A series of the latter, entitled L’Art d’Aimer and the map like Oracle, are both imaginative and original’.

A most attractive Catholic primer for the communion, evidently bound as a gift with an unusual Berlin work embroidered panel. ‘Berlin wool work is embroidery with Berlin wools or any type of thread or beads on canvas by means of copying a coloured chart known as a Berlin pattern. Almost exclusively confined to the 19th century, Berlin wool derived its name from the wool that came from Merino sheep in Saxony. It was taken to Gotha to be spun and on to Berlin to be dyed... Prior to the introduction of Berlin patterns it was very rare to find any indication about the choice of colour or threads. Berlin patterns were always coloured by hand at first, until the emergence of industrial printing techniques’ (V&A). Though the style originated in Germany, Berlin work was enthusiastically practised by women all over Europe and in North America

The holy grail — the crucified Christ standing within a chalice, his wound from the soldier’s spear bleeding freely into it, his arms supported by angels. A host of kneeling figures with candles, one swinging a censer kneel on either side. The lower panel depicts the Last Supper (complete with a small dog) with the text: ‘Sia laudato il santissimo sacramento’ (’Let the most holy sacrament be praised’). Early Christian tradition held that Christ’s blood was collected by Mary Magdalen at the time of the crucifixion in a vessel, though in images like this the symbolism is developed to depict blood flowing directly into the chalice in which Christ stands, emphasising the traditional connection between this vessel and the cup used at the Last Supper, and expressing the essence of transubstantiation at the Eucharist.
The image may be comprised of two woodblocks, though the borders are continuous around the whole print. Though probably dating from the seventeenth century, the block was clearly old when this impression was made, it shows some degradation, cracking and several circular wormholes. The area around Christ’s face is notably rubbed and soiled, possibly from kissing or touching as a mark of pious veneration.