Virgin of Montserrat: Soliciting confraternity enrollment. Unrecorded broadside.

[Our Lady of Montserrat] / Jacques Begache (woodcut). Pardons et Indulgences Accordés aux Confreres & Soeurs de Notre-Dame de Montserrat. Notre Dame de Mont Serrat Chambre Angelique. S.l.: “Begache f.,” s.a. [c. 1750]. [35.0 x 21.5 cm], [1] f. letterpress broadside with large woodcut. Folds, wrinkles stains, losses to corners, edge wear, minor toning, a few annotations on verso.
 
 
Unrecorded circa-1750 French broadside—with a large, rather vernacular woodcut by Jacques Begache (1691-1762)—soliciting enrollment to and explaining the indulgences of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Montserrat, a sodality dedicated to the Black Madonna cult statue at the Abbey of Montserrat in Catalonia. 
 
The text of the broadside is worth quoting in full (in translation): 
“Pardons and Indulgences Granted to the Confraternities and Sisters of Our Lady of Montserrat. Every faithful person of either sex who enrolls in the celebrated Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Montserrat by paying two and a half sols will participate in the Holy Sacrifice of 72 Masses said daily in the churches consecrated to her honor. His Holiness, to encourage all Christians to place themselves under the protection of the glorious Mother of God, has granted Plenary Indulgences in the form of a Jubilee to every new Confraternity member who, after their reception into the said Confraternity, having worthily received the Sacraments, recites five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys once, in honor of the five Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Brothers who devoutly recite three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys once before three altars will gain the same indulgences as those who make the Stations of the Cross in the churches of Rome.
 
“In addition to the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, where God daily works the healing of all kinds of illnesses and a prodigious number of miracles, there are 13 hermitages on the Mount of Montserrat, in which 13 pious hermits offer prayers and vows day and night to the Almighty for the benefactors of the monastery. Every Monday, a solemn service and low Masses are celebrated in the Chapel for the repose of the souls of the deceased Brothers and Sisters.”
 
Begache depicts the Virgin & Child being venerated by kneeling clerics and pilgrims. This Virgin & Child is not a depiction of the Black Madonna cult statue (which is frontal and has Christ and the Virgin holding orbs). Instead, Christ holds a saw, which he uses to cut a mountain peak, alluding to to the name “Montserrat,” which means “saw mountain.” The Abbey and 13 labeled hermitages are shown in the mountains in the background. Above, angels display the coat of arms of the monastery, which again shows a saw sawing Saw Mountain.
 
The design is known in other prints, e.g., that discussed by Harold de Fontenay (pp. 433-6), who connects it to a proliferation of Montserrat indulgences in France during the 1740s.
 
 
OCLC and KVK do not locate this broadside, although similar versions are known (e.g, that discussed by H. de Fontenay, and the broadside in the Musée Départemental Breton [inv. no. 2020.14.7]).
 
*Harold de Fontenay, “Description de quelques bois grave provenant des anciennes imprimeries d’Autun,” Mémoires de la Société Éduenne, vol. 12 (1873), pp. 407-44; Albert Jacquot, “Essai de répertoire des artistes lorrains: Les graverus,” Réunion des sociétés savantes des départements, vol. 33 (1909), pp. 238-87, esp. 245 (on Begache).