Manuscript from the Carmelite Convent of the Congrégation-Notre-Dame de Reims.

[Manuscript] / [Nuns]. Congregation de Notre-Dame de Reims [Mort et Anniver.]. S.l. [likely Reims]: s.n., s.a. [18th century]. 8vo [16.9 x 11.0 cm],[5] ff. title and contents, [1] f., 608 pp. Bound in contemporary sprinkled calf, gold-tooled spine, gold-stamped lettering piece (“Mort et Anniver”) laid to spine, marbled end papers, red edges, green silk ribbon bookmark. Loss of headband, joints tender at upper extremity, minor rubbing and edge wear. First page of preliminary leaves is written on verso of marbled free endpaper, the prelims tipped in and so with some edge wear, otherwise internally very clean and clearly written.
 
 
An unusual 18th-century devotional manuscript apparently written out by a nun at the Carmelite Couvent de la Congrégation-Notre-Dame de Reims. 
 
The manuscript contains scores of short meditations & prayers about death (preparing for death, accepting death, contrition and detestation of life, viaticum, etc.) and the commemoration of anniversaries of births, be that one’s actual birth, the spiritual birth achieved at baptism, or being born into the convent though the ceremony of profession. There are no title page or prefatory remarks about the subject matter, but the gold-tooled lettering piece laid to the spine neatly encapsulates the manuscript’s contents: “Mort et Anniver” (“Death & Anniversaries”).
 
The manuscript is written in one hand in a script typical of French female monastic writers of the period, with large letters, sometimes as few as a dozen lines per page, and five or six words per line. Here the script is unusually irregular and unsteady.
 
The Couvent de la Congrégation-Notre-Dame de Reims was founded 1638 and banned during the Revolution. Its sisters were especially devoted to the education of young girls (see Péchenard for this history).
 
 
*Abbé Pierre Louis Péchenard, Histoire de la Congrégation Notre Dame de Reims, Librairie ancienne et modern (1886).