Prompt-Cards for Priests
[ALTAR CARDS.]
Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John. Paris, Vanheck, [early eighteenth century].
Two printed cards (c. 314 x 234 mm); each printed in letterpress in red and black with a large hand-coloured woodcut at head, within hand-coloured woodcut borders incorporating the monograms IHS and MA, outer border hand-painted in two shades of blue; a few minor stains, pinholes to borders, but generally bright and fresh.
Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt-cards for priests with prayers for the celebration of Mass, with woodcut illustrations and lively wheat-and-vine borders.
Carrying essential Latin texts for the celebration of Mass, such altar cards – known as canons d’autel in French and cartaglorie in Italian – were intended as a memory aid for priests officiating at the altar, and may also, given their essentially visual aspect, have served a secondary function for the purposes of private devotion.
The first card bears an image of Christ washing the feet of the Apostles below which are two offertory prayers, Deus qui humanae substantiae Dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti and Lavabo inter innocents manus meas, under the heading ‘Cibavit illum Dominus pane vitae et intellectus’. The second shows St John receiving divine inspiration for his Gospel, writing with a quill and inkpot in an open book with his eagle at his feet; the text below comprises the first fourteen verses of his Gospel under the heading ‘Initium sancti evangelii secundum Joannem’. Both cards are printed within a border of intertwined wheat and grapevines, representing the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
Despite the use of letterpress text in the two cards, the publisher – Vanheck on rue St Jacques – appears to have been a print-seller rather than a bookseller.