Translator translates ‘Art of Dying Well,’ dies. With etching of his tombstone.
Giovanni Bona / Robert-François-Joseph Lemaire de Berguettes [trans]. De la préparation à la mort, Opuscule du Cardinal Bona, Traduit du Latin en François. Douay: Jacques-Franç. Willerval. Imprimeur du Roi, rue des Écoles, 1771. 12mo [16.6 x 10.1 cm], [1] f. integral blank, xxi pp., [1] p. blank verso, [1] f. (“Préparition” & “Approbation”), 225 pp., with [1] f. etching bound facing pp. 224, with woodcut headpiece, tailpiece and initial. Bound in contemporary calf, gold-stamped lettering piece laid to spine, gold-tooled spine, boarders to bords, and board edges, formerly with clasps, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, green silk ribbon bookmark. Only minor rubbing and edge wear apart from area of missing clasps, endpapers rust stains from clasps. Ownership inscription partially obscured with paper slip at upper margin of first text leaf (“Mallet”), minor edge wear, the occasional very minor stain.
$1850
Rare (1 U.S. copy: SMU) first and only edition of this 1771 French translation of the Cardinal Giovanni Bona’s (1609-74) treatise on the ‘Art of Dying Well’ (Testamentum sive praeparatio ad mortem [1675]). This edition is notable for the fact that its translator, Robert-François-Joseph Lemaire de Berguettes (1705-71), died just before the book was published and so was commemorated in it by the addition of a full-page etching of his tombstone.
The book also reproduces Lemaire’s signed statement in preparation for his own death, which may be translated, “Should I be struck by an illness that deprives me of the use of my senses, I declare now that my intention is to receive the Sacraments of the Church, especially that of Penance. I ask the priest who will assist me to grant me absolution upon the declaration I make in this writing that I desire it, earnestly request it, and detest, with all my heart, all the sins of my life, accepting death in lieu of the other penances that I will no longer be able to perform.”
The proceeds from the sales of the book were, at Lemaire’s request, to be donated to the General Hospital of Douay. He is celebrated in a prefatory letter by his colleagues at the Cour de Parlement de Douay, and the book closes with a note about his burial place and an etching of the tombstone: “He is buried near the balustrade of the Parish Chapel [in the Collégiale Saint-Pierre de Douai], three stones from the pillar on the ‘epistle’ side, under the marble slab shown here.”
OCLC & KVK locate 1 U.S. copy of this work: SMU Bridwell.
*Collated with the KU Leuven copy; P. Maurerm, “Kardinal Giovanni Bona: Cistercienser, geistlicher Schriftsteller und Pionier der Liturgiewissenschaft,” Analecta Cisterciensia, vol. 59 (2009), pp. 3-166.