Educating the Poor
COLIN, Hyacinthe.
Vie de la venerable servante de dieu Marie Lumague veuve de M. Pollalion, gentil-homme ordinaire du roy, institutrice des Filles de la Providence, sous la conduite de S. Vincent de Paul, morte en odeur de sainteté en 1657. Avec les pieces justificatives ... Paris, Claude-Jean-Baptiste Hérissant, 1744.
8vo, pp. xxii, 227, [3], [2 (blank)]; with engraved frontispiece portrait by Roy, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; occasional tiny wormholes to blank margins, a few spots; a very good copy in contemporary calf, triple gilt fillet border to covers, spine gilt in compartments with black morocco lettering-piece, red edges, marbled endpapers; slight wear to corners, a few small marks to covers; ownership inscription to front endpaper ‘Ce livre est du mon[as]tere de la visitation Ste Marie de Nancy’, juvenile drawing of a face to rear blank.
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Vie de la venerable servante de dieu Marie Lumague veuve de M. Pollalion, gentil-homme ordinaire du roy, institutrice des Filles de la Providence, sous la conduite de S. Vincent de Paul, morte en odeur de sainteté en 1657. Avec les pieces justificatives ...
Uncommon first edition of this biography of the educational philanthropist Marie de Lumague (1599–1657) by the cleric and orator Hyacinthe Colin (d. 1754).
Born into a noble family, Marie joined a Capuchin monastery in her youth but was obliged to leave on account of her weak health. After her brief marriage to François de Polallion, she began her educational career as tutor to one of the daughters of the duchess of Orléans. In 1630, prompted by Vincent de Paul, she established the sisterhood known as the Filles de la Providence, whose members undertook to educate the children of the poor in the country. Marie ‘directed that they should be thirty-three in number, and distributed them in the villages of the environs of Paris. Her own means were soon exhausted by the enterprise, but private charity came to the rescue, and Anne of Austria, taking the institution under her protection, presented it in 1651 with a mansion in the suburb of Saint-Marceau’ (McClintock and Strong).
Colin’s biography was perhaps written in support of Marie’s potential beatification; the final chapter describes miracles attributed to her.
Provenance: formerly in the library of the Visitandine nuns of Nancy.
Only one copy recorded in the UK (Bodleian) and four in the US (Christendom College, DePaul University, St Mary’s Seminary, University of San Francisco).