Saving the ‘soles’ of the Gray Sisters of Nancy. Rare (1 copy worldwide).

[Nuns] / [Satire]. Pierre Lutille, Savetier, à Nancy, remonte adroitment les Souliers des Garçons, des Dames et Demoiselles, à très-juste prix. Memoire des ouvrages faits pat Pierre Lutille, Savetier, à Nancy, pour les Soeurs grises de ladite ville, pendant l’année 1775. S.l. [Nancy?]: s.n., s.a. [dated 31 December 1775]. 4to [26.3 x 18.8 cm], [1] f. broadside on laid paper, headed with woodcut of Pierre Lutille. Unobtrusive folds, minor edge wear and spotting. 
 
 
Very rare (1 copy worldwide: Bryn Mawr) first and only edition of this 18th-century satirical broadside taking the form of an invoice presented by a certain cobbler Pierre Lutille of Nancy to the Mother Superior of the Gray Sisters (Hospitalières) of that city. The shoemaker provides a tally of various ‘work’ he did in 1775 for (to) individual sisters of the community, the Mother Superior herself, and even the Father Director. 
 
Pierre Lutille’s ‘services’ are bawdy double entendres having to do with the specialized vocabulary of shoe repair, e.g., he charges “For having added a nail to Sister Rose,” “For widening Sister Pélagie,” “For greasing and rubbing Sister Félicité,” “For putting a tongue on Sister Hyacinthe,” etc., etc.
 
I am not sure if the satire was indeed born from some local details concerning the Couvent des Hospitalières de Nancy or if the location was arbitrary, given that the sexualization of nuns and a conflict between the First and Third Estates having were both endemic to 18th-century France.
 
The document is headed by a rather vernacular woodcut of a brawny Pierre Lutille with his tools of the trade.

 
OCLC and KVK locate only 1 copy of this broadside (Bryn Mawr), but the gag was thought funny enough to have been reprised in Le Farceur comme il y en a peu, a joke book that first appeared in the last years of the 18th century and was reprinted on several occasions.