Saint Donat Martir Foudre Orages

[Touch relic] / [Weather] / [Amulet]. Saint Donat Martir, priez pour nous, afin que nous soïons garantis de la Foudre, & des Orages. Ce Billet a touché aux Reliques de S. Donat Martir, reposantes dans l’Eglise des RR. PP. Carmes de Wavre, où se trouve une Confrerie canoniquement érigée en son honneur. S.l. [likely Wavre]: s.n., s.a. [c. 1750s]. [21.8 x 11.6 cm], [1] sheet of [4] woodcut and letterpress slips. Minor toning, horizontal fold, minor edge wear, pencil marks and remnants of mounting on verso.
 
 
Uncut sheet of 4 very rare 18th-century printed ‘tickets’ that protect the bearer (or the bearer’s property) from harm/damage caused by lightning and storms. The power of these slips (as the text states) comes from them having been touched to the relics of St. Donatus housed the Carmelite church of Wavre (Belgium). 
 
The slips are thus examples of ‘contact’ relics (also called a ‘touch’ or ‘secondary’ relics), i.e., items that contacted or were in the vicinity of a saint’s primary relic (e.g., a body part or personal item) or another holy item. 
 
Touch-relic engraving, woodcuts, and small prayer booklets of Donatus originally were printed in great numbers, but very few survive today, given that they were meant to be carried on one’s person or “attached to houses, placed in steeples, towers, vineyards, fields, etc.” (J.-B. Sibenaler, p. 41) where lightning, wind, rain, and hail were considered to be a threat (and where works on paper easily perish).
 
Remarkably, an 18th-century manuscript on the Confraternity of Saint Donatus at the town of Arlon (published in 1899) provides copious, precise information about the origins of such slips, including details about their printing (see J.-B. Sibenaler).
 
According to the Arlon Confraternity manuscript, in 1649 the remains of the 2nd-century Roman martyr Donatus were discovered in the Catacombs of St. Agnes in Rome. In 1652 they were translated to the Jesuit church at Münstereifel where they soon gained a reputation for protecting against lightning and inclement weather. In 1707, 1708, and 1719, Arlon suffered from particularly bad storms and so applied to take a portion of Münstereifel’s Donatus relics for themselves. This request was granted in 1738. 
 
Donatus touch relics had already been used at Münstereifel, and it had been confirmed that they conferred broad protection against storms (“… on ressent tous les effets de sa protection dans les differens rencontres de tonnere et d’orage; et que lorsque les images et billets de S. Donat, qui ont touché a ses saintes Reliques, sont attachés aux maisons, ou mises dans les clochers, Toures, Vignes, champs, etc:, ces endroits sont ordinairement preservés des mauvais effets de L’orage, de la foudre, et de la tempete, quoique tres souvent elles fassent du degat dans le voisinage” [Sibenaler, p. 41]). 
 
In the summer of 1738, the Capuchin church at Arlon ordered to be printed 1000 touch-relic booklets and 12,600 “tickets” labeled in Latin, German or French, like the Wavre examples offered here (“il fit aussi imprimer un mille de livres allemands, et 300 feuilles de billets de S. Donat en allemande, Francois, latin, chaques feuille contenant 42 billets quon toucha a la relique pour etre distribués a ceux er celle que demanderoient” [Sibenaler, p. 45]). These items soon proved their worth in a summer storm of 1739. The Arlon St. Donatus Confraternity manuscript records several further occasions in which booklets, engravings, or ‘tickets’ were hurriedly handed out to citizens at the sight of bad weather. Reprintings in 1740, 1741 and 1742 are detailed. Items were printed until the copperplates wore out and required replacement.  
 
The Wavre ‘billets’ offered here no doubt were printed and distributed in a manner similar to the Donatus items described in the Arlon Confraternity manuscript. The Wavre Confraternity of St. Donatus was founded in 1753, and so it is likely that these slips were printed at that time or shortly thereafter.
Several versions of such Donatus touch-relic tickets are known not only from Wavre, Münstereifel and Arlon, but also from Brussels, Tournai, Mons, and Antwerp. Most are recorded in just one or two copies. (The University of Antwerp, for example, preserves examples in Dutch, French, German, and Latin from various locations).
 
The woodcuts on our Wavre “billets” depict St. Donatus as a classical bust, holding a martyr’s palm, or interceding with a triangle (the Trinity) in the sky. In the backgrounds are cityscapes menaced by lightning descending from clouds in the form of jagged arrows. 
 
The text on the slips reads, “St. Donatus Martyr, pray for us, so that we are protected from lightning & thunderstorms. This ticket touched the relics of the martyr St. Donat resting in the Church of the Carmelite Fathers of Wavre, where there is a confraternity canonically erected in his honor.”
 
These Wavre slips are not recorded in OCLC, KVK, or the other repositories of such items that I have consulted (e.g., the Thijs Collection at the University of Antwerp Library).
 
*J.-B. Sibenaler, “La Confrérie de Saint-Donat à Arlon,” Annales de l’Institut archéologique du Luxembourg, vol. 53, no. 34 (1899), pp. 32-76.