Kiss the engraving, die with the book on your breast, get buried with it.

La Sainte Confrérie, ou Confédération d’Amour de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice, Erigée à Munich par autorité de feu Son Altesse Sérenissime Electorale de Baviere, & confirmée par notre St. Pere le Pape Innocent XI, le 18 Août 1684, avec plusieurs prieres conformes à l’esprit de cette Association. Chartres: Chez Deshayes, Imprimeur, rue de la Visitation, 1791. 12mo [13.2 x 8.0 cm], [1] f. (“enrollment” frontispiece etching with aquatint of Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice), [2] ff. (title and avertissement), [1] f. (etching with aquatint of St. Teresa), 75 pp, [1] p. blank verso, [1] f. (etching with aquatint of Sacred Heat of Jesus), 4 ff. (“Consecration de la France au Sacré Coeur de Jésus”), 4 pp. (“Prière a devotion, pour demander à Dieu le salut des pécheurs…”). Bound in contemporary tree calf, spine gold tooled and with gold-stamped green morocco lettering piece, covers with gold tooled borders and with gold-tooled fleurs-de-lis in corners, marbled endpapers, red sprinkled edges. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Occasional minor spotting and staining internally, manuscript annotations dated 1816 and 1861 (see below).
 
 
An 18th-century French enrollment booklet for the confraternity of Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice, a sodality that traces its origins to the Peterskirche in Munich in the 1680s and spread across France in the 1730s. The confraternity was committed to the adoration of the icon known as Mariahilf, or Maria Auxiliatrix, copies of which soon became venerated in churches across Europe. The booklet offered here—printed in Chartres—includes a frontispiece of the icon, which was meant to be signed by new enrollees, as well as places in the text where new members would sign their names to pledge their devotion to Notre-Dame Auxilatrice.
 
This enrollment booklet summarizes the history of the confraternity of the St. Amour de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice in France and outlines its rules and privileges, e.g., special masses and prayers (which differ for clerical and lay members), how parents are to enroll their children, how priests should send their enrollment lists to the home chapter in Munich, special indulgences triggered by visiting the icon at various times of the year, and, extraordinarily, the expectation that the engraved image at the front of the booklet should be venerated and kissed, that the image/booklet should be placed on ones breast during last rites and buried with the confraternity member at death, and that that the engraving, if it falls out of the booklet, should be replaced at once and re-inscribed with the member’s name: “Il et bon que l’on scache que l’image qui est à l’entrée de ce petit livre, aussi bien que celles qui se distribuent séparément, sont bénites, & que par conséquent on doit les avoir en singuliere vénération. Il convient même de les baiser souvent par dévotion. On peut aussi mettre une de ces images sur sa poitrine à l’heure de la mort, & ordonner qu’elle soit mise avec soi dans le tombeau. Si quelqu’un vient a perdre son image, il doit au plutôt s’en procurer une autre, & y écrire ou faire écrire son nom” (pp. 8-9). 
 
The booklet also contains numerous prayers to be said at various times of the year, including prayers to be said directly to the Marian image, e.g., “Qui doit se dire devant l’Image de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice” (pp. 27-9).
 
This booklet was signed by a certain Therèse Montigny in 1816 and later by a certain Emilienne Levassor in 1861, both well after the booklet’s printing in 1791. Did old stock of the booklet linger for decades awaiting a buyer, or did the volume’s original frontispiece engraving get kissed to pieces or find its way into a sepulcher? How did the book pass from Therèse Montigny to Emilienne Levassor? Note that the 3 prints in the book (chez Basset, rue St. Jacques aux coin de celle des Mathurins no. 64, Paris) would seem, based on the address and on their appearance, to date from c. 1810-15. Note also that the print of St. Theresa was almost certainly chosen to reflect the name of Therèse Montigny.
 
Bound at the end are two separately issued texts: a prayer for the Sacred Heart of Jesus (fronted by an engraving of the Sacre Coeur from Basset) and a prayer asking God to help sinners.
 
The original Mariahilf painting that inspired the Confédération d’Amour de Notre-Dame Auxiliatrice was created by Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472-1553) around 1517. It is an interesting example of a “sixteenth-century image which enjoyed a period of appreciation as a work of fine art prior to being reclaimed as a miraculous Catholic cult image” (Garnett & Rosser, p. 271). Cranach’s Mariahilf, today in Innsbruck Cathedral, inspired numerous copies (the Peterskirche Munich copy dates to 1653) and wide devotion in German-speaking lands. Its popularity as a protective image increased around the 1683 Siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire; The Munich Mariahilf Liebsversammlung was certified in 1684 by Pope Innocent XI (1611-89). (For a comprehensive history of the Mariahilf cult, see the new volume edited by Werz & Kreiml, Mariahilf: Geschichte, Theologie, Frömmigkeit [2021]).
 
 
Versions of this type of enrollment booklet were printed from the 1740s to the 1820s. OCLC locates several versions of this booklet printed in various French cities during the 18th century, most of which are recorded in just 1 or 2 copies. The BnF is a leading repository. United States examples are located at Dayton (Douai, 1743 and 1757; Lille, 1755; Paris, 1752; and Amiens, 1760), Texas Austin (Lille, 1744) and the Newberry Library (Avignon 1771; Paris 1790; and Dijon 1800).
 
*Joachim Werz and Josef Kreiml, eds., Mariahilf: Geschichte, Theologie, Frömmigkeit; Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy from the Renaissance to the Present.