Mons Miracle
[BOIS-SEIGNEUR-ISAAC.]
Histoire memorable et digne de foy, du sainct sang de miracle, advenue au Bois Seigneur Isaac diocese de Cambray, lez Nivelles, an de grace mil quatre cent et cincq le cincquieme iour de Iuin, qui estoit lors le vendredy devant la Pentecouste. Autheurs aucuns religieux du mesme lieu. Mons, Charles Michel, 1593.
8vo, pp. [28], 63, [1], 41, [7]; some leaves of prelims bound out of sequence; woodcut of reliquary to title, woodcut bust of Christ to p. [3], woodcut arms of abbot Warnier de Daure to p. [4], woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; title dusty, some toning and light marginal staining; a good copy in contemporary vellum over boards; ties wanting, some staining to covers, one corner worn, wanting front free endpaper, front hinge split; seventeenth-century note in Dutch to rear endpaper signed ‘Anneken Goossens'.
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Histoire memorable et digne de foy, du sainct sang de miracle, advenue au Bois Seigneur Isaac diocese de Cambray, lez Nivelles, an de grace mil quatre cent et cincq le cincquieme iour de Iuin, qui estoit lors le vendredy devant la Pentecouste. Autheurs aucuns religieux du mesme lieu.
First and only edition, very rare, of an account of a medieval miracle at the Augustinian abbey of Bois-Seigneur-Isaac, to the northeast of Mons in Belgium, published not long after the abbey had been all but destroyed during the French Wars of Religion.
The text is divided into two books. The first narrates the legendary origins of the abbey, before describing the Eucharistic miracle which occurred there in 1405, when the local priest found a fragment of the consecrated host in the altar cloth, while celebrating Mass, which subsequently began to bleed. Digressions on God’s omnipotence and on miracles in general follow. The second book is an entertaining mix of tales of the blasphemous punished for their lack of faith and of believers rewarded: a brewer who mocked the miraculous powers of the holy blood and promptly fell into a boiling vat; a sceptical chaplain chastised by a celestial flame; a young lady of faith cured of a bad leg; a believing bourgeois’ breasts healed; and a house left standing while all those around it burned to the ground.
The preliminaries include a brief but interesting address by the printer, Charles Michel, to the reader, in which he encourages teachers to ‘exterminate and banish from their schools, all useless reading matter’, and to place books such as this in children’s hands ‘to increase Christian piety and shape juvenile morals’. Also included are a dedication by the then prior of Bois-Seigneur-Isaac, Jean d’Artois, to the abbot of Anchin, and a letter from François Buisseret, later archbishop of Cambrai.
No copies traced in the US, and only one located in the UK (Middle Temple). Rousselle, Bibliographie montoise 58; USTC 66151.