Cloistered Jubilee: This book turns the convent into a virtual Rome.

[Nuns] / [Rome]. Litanie, e Preci Da Recitarsi Nelle Processioni, che si faranno dalle Monache, Oblate &c. Per l’acquisto del Giubileo in questo Anno Santo MDCCLXXV. In Roma, Nella Stamperia delle Rev. Cam. Apostolica l’Anno del Giubileo, MDCCLXXV [1775]. 4to in 6s [19.7 x 15.0 cm], 12 pp., with woodcut arms of Pius VI (r. 1775-99) and woodcut initial. Bound in later plain wrappers. Wrappers toned, with some rubbing and edge wear. Minor internal toning, minor occasional edge spotting. 
 
 
Very rare (1 copy worldwide) booklet carried in procession in Rome by nuns and female oblates (“Monache, & Oblate”) during the Papal Jubilee of 1775. The booklet contains “litanies and prayers for reciting in procession” “for joining in the Jubilee” (“per l’acquisto del Giubileo”) as well as directions (printed in italics) about how the nuns should move from their chapter house (“or other convenient place”) to their particular church, how they should kneel here and there, move from one altar to another, etc.
 
The precise meaning of this set of liturgical actions is not specifically addressed in the booklet itself, but it can be discovered by reference to contemporary sources on Papal Jubilees of the 17th and 18th centuries. For example, Simone Ruggeri, in his Diario dell’anno del Santiss. Giubileo MDCL (1651), records a document released on 16 February 1650 that regulates “how nuns are to follow along with the present Jubilee of the Holy Year” (pp. 46-53), allowing “nuns in this City of Rome to be able to follow the Jubilee within their convents … to earn the plenary indulgences and remission of sins as if they had personally visited the 4 Churches [S. Pietro, S. Giovanni in Laterano, S. Paolo fuori le Mura & Sta. Maria Maggiore] designated by Our Holiness for this purpose” (p. 47). 
 
So, in brief, the public-facing, participatory event that is a Papal Jubilee could be virtually, symbolically acted out by cloistered nuns within their own convents and adjoining churches. The document in Ruggieri’s Diario provides conditions for doing this, which include designating and decorating 4 altars (1 in the church, 3 in the cloister) to take the place of the 4 major Roman basilicas, moving in procession with zeal and devotion from one altar to another, performing certain sets of prayers (litanies, antiphons, psalms, orations, Pater Nosters, Ave Marias, rosaries, etc.), and completing these visits to the 4 altars on 30 consecutive days during the Jubilee year. Nuns and other female members of the convent were eligible to do this (“Novitie, Converse, Zitelle secolari, & altre, che vivono nel Monasterio” (p. 47), and bedridden nuns or those currently confined to the infirmary needed only to make arrangements with their confessors to receive the Jubilee indulgences.  
 
The booklet offered here, then, is the handbook though which nuns and female oblates recreated in private and as a separate community the more public experience of pilgrimage and devotion characteristic of the wider Jubilee.
 
The rarity today of this and similar booklets from other Jubilees can be explained by their ephemeral nature—they were of use for less than 1 year—and by their limited distribution, very specific audience, and by the fragility of brochures of this sort.
 
 
OCLC, KVK and OPAC locate 1 copy of this 1775 booklet (Johns Hopkins). 
 
Equivalent Litanie e Preci booklets for other Jubilee years around this time are equally rare or are unrecorded: 1650 (Bibliothèque nationale de France only), 1675 (British Library only), 1700 (none located), 1725 (Biblioteca Casanatense [Rome] only), 1750 (none located), 1800 (none located), 1825 (Biblioteca del Monastero Clarisse Eremite Santa Maria della Provvidenza [Fara in Sabina] only).
 
*Simone Ruggeri, Diario dell’anno del Santiss Giubileo MDCL Celebrato in Roma dalla santita di N. S. papa Innocentio X., Raccolto da Gio. Simone Ruggeri romano (1651).