Virginity: advice on getting married (or becoming a nun). No U.S. copies.
[Nuns] / [Anselmo Costadoni]. La fanciulla instruita pel suo stato di verginità, ovvero per quello del matrimonio. Operetta utile anche alle religiose ed alle maritate, divisa in quattro lettere scritte da un monaco camaldolese, e dedicata ai padri ed alle madri. In Venezia: Presso Modesto Fenzo, 1776. 12mo [15.7 x 8.7 cm], viii pp., 108 pp., 64 pp., with [1] f. engraving bound after p. 58 of second part. Bound in contemporary calf, gold-tooled spine, gold-stamped lettering piece laid to spine, gold-tooled borders to boards, block-printed pastedowns, red edges, green silk bookmark. Some rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Occasional minor toning internally, quire C spotted, the occasional minor stain.
Very rare (no. U.S. copies) first and only edition of this 18th-century Venetian work on virginity. The title may be translated as “The Girl Instructed as to Her State of Virginity, or as to that of Marriage: A small work also useful for nuns and married women, divided into four letters written by a Camaldolese monk and dedicated to fathers and mothers.” The book was intended to be sold to mothers and fathers, who would then hand it over to their daughters.
The author of the work does not provide his name (he is Anselmo Costadoni [1714-85]), but he signed his four letters between 20 March and 12 May 1776 from “Venezia dal Monastero di S. Michele in Isola presso Murano.” The first letter addresses the topic of virginity as it applies to all, while the second letter addresses girls who are living secular lives but are still virgins. The third addresses girls who are considering becoming nuns, and the fourth is directed toward women who are to be married.
Costadoni cites the latest works on the topic of virginity (he sometimes lapses into annotated bibliography) and alludes to relevant stories from famous women past and present, including Princess Margarita Farnese (a congenital condition meant that her marriage could not be consummated; it was thus annulled, and she enter a convent); the Venerable Marianna di Gesù di Paredes y Flores “del Quito nell’ America,” known as the ‘Lily of Quito’; a certain Suor Maria Francesca Diamai of Sta. Chiara di Sassoferrato, Catherine Siena, Rose of Lima, Rose of Viterbo, Elizabeth of Hungary, Angela di Fuligno, Gherardesca di Pisa, Caterina del Volontà di Dio, Suor Fialetta Fialetti, Rosa Giannini, Suor Marianna Russo of Naples, Suor Rosa Agostini of Loreto, etc.
Throughout Costadoni recommends various prayers and other devotional practices, and at the end of the volume he provides an engraving of a favored Virgin & Child painting in Todi (“Refugium nostrum. L’originale miracoloso si custodisce in S. Francesco di Todi”) and a “Novena alla santissima Vergine Maria” celebrated at S. Carlo ai Catenari in Rome.
OCLC and KVK locate no U.S. copies of this work, which is also rare in European census.
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