St. Donatus arrives in Brussels to protect against storms & lightning.

Het Leven van den H. Donatus Martelaer; Patroon tegen alle schaedelyk Onweder, van Storm-winden, Regens, Droogte, van Hagel, Donder en Blixem. Getrokken uyt een Fransch Boekxken, gemaekt door eenen Doctor van Sorbonne, en gedruckt tot Luyck in ’t Jaer 1758. Brussels: François t’Serstevens, s.a. [1764, from approbatie (17 February)]. 12mo [12.7 x 8.2 cm], 48 pp, with woodcut title-page device, head-piece, tail-piece and factotum initial. Bound in contemporary blue wrappers, stab-stitched. Edge wear, fading and toning to wrappers, early annotation on upper cover. Minor internal toning and edge wear, ownership stamp at bottom margin of title page and inside lower cover. 
 
 
Rare 1764 first edition (2 copies worldwide: KU Leuven & Universiteit Antwerpen) of this Dutch “Life” of Saint Donatus, which includes prayers invoking his power against destructive storms, rains, wind, hail, thunder, and lightning. The booklet was published in conjunction with the establishment in January of 1764 of a confraternity devoted to Donatus at the Capuchin church in Brussels. This expansion of the Donatus confraternity into Brussels was prompted by a storm that damaged the city on 12 August 1763 (pp. 43-4).
 
Small prayer booklets and engravings of St. Donatus were printed in great numbers in the late 17th and 18th centuries, but very few survive today, given that they were explicitly 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 feared to be a threat (and where works on paper easily perish). Het Leven van den H. Donatus Martelaer functions not only as a biography of the martyr-saint and a history of his cult and confraternity, but also as an item used to ward off approaching storms (pp. 44-8).
 
Remarkably, an 18th-century manuscript concerning the Confraternity of Saint Donatus at Arlon (published in 1899) provides copious, precise information about the origin of such booklets and engravings and how they were used, 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, the town of Arlon suffered from particularly bad storms and so applied to take a portion of Münstereifel’s Donatus relics for themselves. This request that was granted in 1738. 
 
Touch relics—i.e., booklets & engravings that contacted the relics of Donatus—were used at Münstereifel, where were said to have 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 clochers, Toures, Vignes, champs, etc:, ces endroits sont ordinairement preserves 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]). Such success encouraged the establishment of Donatus confraternities in other cities, such as Brussels in 1764.
 
The Arlon confraternity manuscript provides some perspective about how such printed touch relics were produced and distributed. 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 (“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. 44]). 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, and reprintings in 1740, 1741 and 1742 are detailed. Items were printed until the copperplates wore out and required replacement.  
 
Several versions of such Donatus touch relics and booklets are known not only from Münstereifel and Arlon, but also from Tournai, Mons, Brussels, and Antwerp, but most are recorded today in just one or two copies. (The University of Antwerp, for example, preserves examples in Dutch, French, German, and Latin from various locations.)
 
This booklet, as its title page admits, is based on La Vie de saint Donat, martyr, patron contre les orages, tempêtes, foudres, tonnerres et autres intempéries de l’air, par M. l’abbé ***, docteur de Sorbonne. Abbé ***, docteur de Sorbonne (Liége: S. Bourguignon, 1758)—also a very rare work—but is not a direct translation. 
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate 2 copies worldwide of Het Leven van den H. Donatus Martelaer: KU Leuven; Universiteit Antwerpen.
 
* J.-B. Douret, “Documents pour L’Histoire D’Arlon,” Annales de l’Institut archéologique du Luxembourg, vol. 12, fasc. 26 (1880), pp. 209-216, p. 216; 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.