Baby-snatching demon thwarted by an image of the Shroud of Besançon. Unrecorded.

[Shroud of Besançon] / [Ephemera]. Cantique Spirituel, A l’honneur du Saint-Suaire de Notre Seigneur, Sur l’Air: Venez offrir vos voeux. [Recto:] Complainte D’un Enfant désobéissant à ses pere & mere, qui fut englouti pour avoir frappé un Crucifix á coups de couteau, dans le Pays de Liege, Paroisse de Sainte Lambert, le 22 Juin 1775, jour de la Fête-Dieu Sur l’Air, ayez pitié de nous. S.l. [Angers]: s.n. (“Permis d’imprimer à Angers, ce premier Juillet 1775. Signé Claveau.”), s.a. [1775 or shortly thereafter]. 4to [22.5 x 16.7 cm], [1] f. letterpress broadside. Minor staining and edge wear, a few contemporary annotations.
 
 
Unrecorded 18th-century broadside preserving two (quite unusual) popular French songs: The first tells of a miscreant youth who attacked a crucifix and promptly was swallowed by an abyss, and the second describes a miracle by which a newborn baby was saved from the devil by an image of the Holy Shroud of Besançon.
 
The Besançon Cantique Spirituel asks that “Christians, with devotion / come to Besançon / to adore in that place / the precious Holy Shroud, / It is stained with the blood / of an all-powerful God, / it is where Jesus was wrapped.” The song notes that “A thousand people diverse / come from across the universe” so that the Shroud can cure the ill, deaf, mute, and possessed.
 
The Cantique Spirituel then tells a tale of a poor man who for money sold his unborn child to the Devil, signing a contract in his own blood. The man’s pregnant wife asks him where he acquired the money, and he says that he found it buried in a field. When she gives birth, the devil appears and shows her the contract. The woman at once grabs an image of the Holy Shroud of Besançon and places it on the baby, thus thwarting the devil’s attempts to steal it. The song closes by noting that carrying an image of the Shroud will protect you from fire and water, and that one should often recite the prayer to the Shroud (a suitable prayer is provided).
 
The other song (Complainte D’un Enfant désobéissant à ses pere & mere) tells of a 15-year-old runaway who attempted to rob his mother at knifepoint, but, having been thwarted by neighbors, fled and took out his anger on a roadside Crucifix by stabbing it four times. At the final blow of the knife, his hand stuck to Jesus, and the whole village, summoned by the boy’s screams, arrived just in time to see the earth open up and swallow him whole. Moral: Parents should be less lenient with their children. 
 
The Shroud of Besançon was destroyed during the French Revolution, and so today it is much less famous than the Shroud of Turin. Remi Mathis gives a concise history (worth quoting here) of the Shroud of Besançon: It “was a sheet that carries the mark of a naked body, seen face on. Believers took it to be the Holy Shroud—that is, the winding sheet that wrapped the body of Christ after his death on the cross. Relics of this kind appeared in several regions in France and Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern epoch at Cadouin, Lierre, Compiège, and elsewhere. The most famous is the so-called Turin Shroud, to which the Besançon Shroud is surely related, since the former appeared in the Charny family, on the orders of Burgundy and Champagne, and was exhibited by the widow of Geoffroy de Charny, Jeanne de Vergy, a member of one of the main families of the Franch-Comté. The husband of their granddaughter, Humbert de Villersxel, kept the relic at Saint-Hyppolyte in the Doubs département from 1418 to 1452.
 
“The first known trace of the holy shroud of Besançon dates from 1523. It seems probable that it was a copy of the Turin Shroud, or at least that the idea of creating this artifact was related to the presence of the famous relic in this region. It was first kept in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Besançon; in 1669, it was transferred to the cathedral of Saint-Jean during the construction of the citadel of Vauban, which involved the destruction of the earlier place of worship. It was not much esteemed at first: in 1582, the canon Jean Garnier refused to move statues in the chapel of Saint Maimbeuf to make room for the reliquary that contained the shroud. But it gradually became an object of great veneration and, when presented to the faithful at Easter and Ascension Sunday, attracted crowds of more than thirty thousand. The altar of the holy shroud was privileged by Pope Gregory XIII in 1579.
 
“Like the Turin Shroud, the Besançon relic enjoyed popular veneration. It was particularly associated with cures for the eyes. Official appeals were made to it, including one for the protection against the plague in 1634 and when God was asked to ensure the victory of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire not only at Besançon but at Dole and Dijon. It was credited with many miraculous cures over the course of the seventeenth century … The Besançon Shroud no longer exists; it was torn up on 24 May 1794, and the cloth was used to bandage the wounded of the French revolutionary army” (p. 227).
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate no copies of the broadside offered here.
 
* F. Pottier, “Le Saint-Suaire au Musée Diocésain,” Bulletin archéologique, historique et artistique de la Société archéologique de Tarn-&-Garonne, vol. 30, no. 1 (1902), pp. 308-09; Jean de Viguerie, Le catholicisme des Français dans l’ancienne France; Remi Mathis, A Kingdom of Images: French Prints in the Age of Louis XIV, 1660-1715 (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2015).