Manuscript ‘Office of the Dead’ in French.

[Manuscript]. Office des morts. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [early 18th century]. 8vo [15.4 x 9.8 cm], [1] f. supplied frontispiece engraving, 295 pp., [3] pp. blanks, red ruled borders. Bound in contemporary brown morocco, title gold stamped on spine, spine gold-tooled, covers with blind-tooled borders, board edges gold tooled, golden rinceaux papier dominoté endpapers, green silk ribbon bookmark, all edges gilt. Minor rubbing, indentations, and rubbing to binding. Internally very clean. Neatly written and perfectly legible throughout.
 
 
Fine early 18th-century French manuscript of the ‘Office of the Dead.’ The book’s format, its large script, generous layout (13 lines per pages and only a few words per line), and above all its use of the vernacular suggest that the volume was the personal prayerbook of a layperson.
 
The Latin Officium Defunctorum was long intended only for the use of the clergy, and it was not until the turn of the 18th century that the French-language Office des morts was developed as a text for popular piety.
 
Included are the vespers, matins, laudes, and “La messe pour la commémoration des morts.”
 
The engraved frontispiece—signed “Chez Landry avec privilege”—is supplied from another source, which I cannot trace. It depicts a soul in purgatory above four alexandrins (stanza XXXV) from the popular devotional poem Les véritables sentimens du monde et de l’éternité (first published in Paris: Gilles André, 1664). It is not clear to me which member of the Landry family of engraver-publishers should be associated with this work (see F. Jimeo on this matter).
 
 
*F. Jimeo, “Les tailles-douces en tableau de Pierre Landry et de ses héritiers (1679-1720),” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français, (2008), pp. 81-107.