Meant to be “the first book placed in the hands” of a new nun.
Orazio Chiaramonti. Ordine di ammettere le vergini all’ingresso nel monastero, e vestir l’abito regolare, e far professione ad uso della provincia di Milano stampato già per la diocesi di Brescia, trasportato ora dal latino in italiano ... Ordo admittendi virgines ad monasterii ingressum habitumque suscipiendi, & professionem emittendi ad Provinciae Mediolanensis usum in diocesi Brixiensi. Brescia: dalle stampe di Pietro Vescovi, 1792. 8vo [19.4 x 12.9 cm], 226 pp. [1] p. errata. Bound in contemporary yellow wrapper over printed waste paper, manuscript title label laid to spine, title in manuscript on front cover. Minor edge wear and toning, inscription of “J. Bertrand on front cover.” Bertrand’s name again on title, very pale damp staining to bottom margin of the last quires, otherwise quite clean.
Very rare (no U.S. copies) first and only edition of this bilingual guide to admitting nuns into the convents of Brescia. It is the work of the Spiritual Advisor Brescia Convents, Orazio Chiaramonti (1724-93), who dedicates the book to Maria Fortunata Girilli, Abbess of S. Spirito di Brescia.
The book was meant to be “the first book placed in the hands of a virgin” who had decided to become a nun. The first part is a sort of ‘Rituale’ consisting of facing-page Italian and Latin procedures and scripts for the investiture ceremony, blessing of the habit, blessing of the veil, the cutting of hair, and the ceremony of public profession.
The book is typographically matter of fact, even arid, in contradistinction to a long tradition of ‘Rituale’ books being decorated with fine initials, using large letters and generous spacing, printed and in red and black, with musical annotations, and generally intended to be beautiful books appropriate to the solemn ceremonies they facilitated.
The second part of the work provides advice to new nuns (and those who need a refresher), students (educande) at the convent schools, nun choristers, and converse, i.e. workers at the convents who do not follow the cloistered live of nuns proper. Here there are discussions about what books to read, the dangers of frequenting the public-facing parlor, warnings about letter writing, suggestions on how to avoid contact with laypeople, etc. Everywhere Chiaramonti offers examples draw from (rather obscure) named nuns in Brescia and from convents in the Province of Milan.
OCLC, KVK, and ICCU/OPAC/SBN locate just three copies of this work: Universitaria di Padova; Biblioteca della Pia Società Istituto Don Nicola Mazza don Antonio Spagnolo (Verona); and Biblioteca dell’Archivio storico diocesano di Mantova.
*IT\ICCU\PBEE\002163 & IT\ICCU\PBEE\002775.