Pilgrimage manual to Port-Royal: With an added plan by Magdeleine Horthemels.

Magdeleine Horthemels / [Port-Royal] / [Jansenism] / [Jean-Antoine Abbé Gazaigne]. Manuel des pèlerins de Port-Royal des Champs. S.l. “Au Désert” (likely Paris): s.n., 1767. 12mo [16.4 x 9.5 cm], 64 pp., 152 pp., 104 pp., (1) f., this copy extra illustrated with (1) f. etched double portrait bound at front and (1) f. folding engraved plan of Port-Royal des Champs by Magdeleine Horthemels (see below). Bound in contemporary calf, spine gold-tooled, gold-stamped lettering piece and shelf-mark label laid to spine, gold-tooled board borders and board edges, marbled edges, marbled endpapers, green silk ribbon bookmark. Small loss at upper extremity of spine, short separation of joints at upper extremity of both boards, rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Internally quite clean, with only occasions minor staining and toning.  
 
 
Rare first and only edition of this 1767 pilgrimage manual for those devoted to visiting the razed monastery of Port-Royal des Champs and other sites associated with the recently suppressed Jansenist theology which had largely been developed there and at Port-Royal de Paris. 
 
This copy is of note in that it was extra illustrated with a rare folding bird’s-eye plan of Port-Royal des Champs engraved in 1710 by the renowned female printmaker Magdeleine Horthemels (1686-1767). She recorded the way of life at Port-Royal des Champs between the time of its dissolution in 1709 and its razing in 1713.
 
Also added to this volume is a reduced-size copy of Georg Friedrich Schmidt’s (1712-1775) notable 1737 engraving Le pèlerinage de pieté, which depicts the Jansenists François de Pâris and Firmin-Louis Tournus on a pilgrimage to the ruins of Port-Royal des Champs.
 
After a short introduction, the Manuel des pèlerins de Port-Royal des Champs provides a necrology of Port-Royal, i.e., a calendar of Jansenist luminaries arranged by their death date. Next are a short history of Port-Royal and a catalogue of works published by Port-Royal writers. There follows the ‘Office of Holy Relics’ (a Port-Royal-specific liturgical guide) and an account of the 1710 forced exhumation of the bodies buried at Port-Royal (with locations where the bodies were reburied). The final section leads the reader through 13 Jansenist “Stations of Pilgrimage,” i.e., churches, monasteries and other sites located in Paris, around Port-Royal des Champs, and relevant towns in between (with prayers to be said at each site). An unnumbered final leaf provides lists of towns on the recommended routes of travel between Paris and Port-Royal des Champs. 
 
The last line of the book advertises the continuing availability of Magdeleine Horthemels’ 1710 Port-Royal plan in book/print shops on the Rue St. Jacques in Paris: “(On trouve encore dans la rue S. Jacques le Plan de Port-Royal gravé).” The owner of our book took this advice and sought out a copy to be bound into his/her copy of the Manuel des pèlerins. 
 
Magdeleine Horthemels died in the year that this book was published, 57 years after she had first engraved the plan. In 1713 Horthemels married the engraver Charles Nicolas Cochin the Elder (1688-1754). Their son, Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-90), an engraver to King Louis XV, apparently came into possession of the copperplate and added his name to it: “Cochin Graveur du Roy.”
 
Magdeleine Horthemels (1686-1767) remains best known for depicting the (in)famous Jansenist abbey of Port-Royal des Champs, located some 20 miles southwest of Paris. She provided a valuable visual record of Port-Royal des Champs just before its dissolution in 1709 and its razing between 1711 and 1713, after papal and royal toleration for Jansenist doctrine (with its emphasis on predestination, original sin, and divine grace) had finally come to an end. Horthemels’ handsome depictions of the abbey’s grounds, buildings and “inner-life” would serve as a sort of guide to future pilgrims to the site. 
 
“In 1709, when Louis XIV ordered the demolition of the monastery of Port-Royal des Champs, where the life of the community had long since been doomed to death by the suppression of its right to receive new members, he added the final touch to the transformation of a dying religious reform movement into a living myth replete with martyrs and sacred ruins over which to weep” (Weaver, p. 33). Jansenist apologists were appalled at the erasure of the monastery from the landscape (including the disinterment of hundreds of bodies), but the Port-Royal des Champs “kept its material existence thanks to the engravings produced by Madeleine Horthemels,” and her suite of views of monastic life “contributed to the forging of a ‘black legend’ surrounding the destruction of the house of Champs and gave to the ‘holy monastery’ the aura of a new Temple of Solomon” (Port-Royal ou L’abbaye de papier, p. 9).
 
Horthemels, a devoted follower of the Jansenists, began depicting the movement at the age of 24, while still unmarried, publishing her work in Paris in 1710 and 1713 in two separate campaigns. Early accounts relate that the first copperplates Horthemels produced, along with early impressions pulled from them, were seized by a royal officer in May of 1710, but were soon returned. 
 
The Jansenist movement, named after the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen (d. 1585-1638), identified itself as strict adherents to the teachings of St. Augustine, while Jesuit detractors considered them to have dangerous Calvinist affinities. The theological center of the movement was the Port-Royal Abbey in Paris and the rural abbey of Port-Royal des Champs. Led by Antoine Arnauld and his extended family, the Jansenist movement is perhaps best remembered today through its followers Jean Racine, Blaise Pascal, and the painter Phillipe de Champaigne. Racine received his (considerable) classical education at the Petites Écoles de Port-Royal and his overarching preoccupation with tragic fatalism in drama was almost certainly related to his Jansenist beliefs. Pascal was led to convert to Jansenism by his sister Jacqueline. His Lettres provinciales (1656-7) discuss the Formulary Controversy between the Jansenists and Jesuits, and his major mathematical work, De l’esprit géométrique, was first written as a preface to a textbook used at the Petites Écoles.
 
Magdeleine Horthemels, daughter of a Parisian bookseller, was active as an engraver by 1707. In 1713 she married the successful engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder (1688-1754). Her son Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1715-90) became an engraver and art critic to Louis XV. Horthemels worked as an artist for nearly fifty years and is best known for her Port-Royal des Champs prints and for her reproductive engravings after the works of Poussin, Le Brun, Coypel, Lancret, Watteau, and Pannini.