‘Ceremonial’ & ‘Ritual' with blank musical staves for nuns to fill out by hand.

[Nuns] / [Music]. Ceremonial des religieuses Hospitalieres de la Misericorde de Jesus de l’ordre de Saint Augustin. [Bound as issued with:] Rituel des religieuses Hospitalieres de la Misericorde de Jesus de l’ordre de Saint Augustin. Contenant les ceremonies des processions annuelles, des vêtures, professions, visites des superieurs, & inhumation des religieuses. Rouen: Chez Jacques Le Boullenger, 1685-1686. 8vo [18.5 x 11.8 cm], 148 pp, [2] ff., 136 pp., with woodcut title-page vignettes and tail-pieces, and here with [10] ff. of manuscript music bound in at end. Bound in contemporary vellum. Loss to vellum at fore-edge of lower board, rubbing and edge wear. Occasion staining, marginal losses to some leaves, manuscript musical notations added, manuscript cancel slips to music at pp. 38-9, items tipped in at pp. 23 & 28, early annotations to lower flyleaf.  
 
 
Rare (2 U.S. copies: Notre Dame & Newberry) 17th-century Cérémonial & Rituel printed in Rouen for the use of the Augustinian Chanoinesses régulières hospitalières de la Miséricorde de Jésus. The work is notable for including blank musical staves to which the sisters were meant to add notations by hand. In this copy, of the 56 pages with blank staves, 30 include added manuscript notations. The prefatory avertissement to the nuns states that individual houses may decide how to perform plainchant according to the style of the time (“le plein-chant selon l’usage des temps” [p. 5]).
 
This copy was evidently much used, as it includes manuscript slips pasted or tipped in to update musical passages and a ten-leaf section of manuscript music bound in at the rear of the book.
 
The ‘Ceremonial’ discusses comportment during Divine Office, the various roles of sisters (choir director, cantors, acolytes, lesson readers, etc.), the sprinkling of holy water, high mass, styles of chant, confession, sermons, private prayer, processions (prayers for rain, against storms, famine, plague, war, etc.), lighting and illumination, clocks & bells, types of books used in the choir, the washing of feet, the practice of selecting engravings of saints to emulate throughout the month (“tirer les billets des saints”), election procedures, the translation of relics,  the conversion of heretics, prayers for women with difficult pregnancies, etc.
 
The ‘Ritual’ includes scripts and chants for the blessing of candles, the Day of the Dead, investiture & profession of new sisters, visits by the bishop or archbishop, receiving other visitors in the convent, receiving the poor, confession and communion for the ill, last rites, funerals & burials, etc.
 
The Hospitalières de la Miséricorde de Jésus was of 13th-century foundation but gained prominence in the 17th century, especially in its expansion to Québec and other areas of New France. It specialized in the care of the sick and the poor.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate U.S. copies of this work at Notre Dame and the Newberry Library.
 
*Collated with the British Library copy.