Nuns’ ‘Rule’ from the press of la Veuve Mazières. 2 examples worldwide.

[Visitandines] / [Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal] / François de Sales. Vive Jesus. Regles de S. Augustin, Constitutions et Directoire pour les Soeurs Religieuses de la Visitation. Paris: Chez la Veuve Mazieres, ruë Saint Jacques, à la Providence, 1740. 16mo in 8s [11.6 x 6.2 cm], [1] f. engraved title, 366 pp., xvii pp., [1] p. blank verso, 134 pp., [5] ff., woodcut initial and tail-pieces. Bound in contemporary calf, spine and boards blind tooled, marbled edges, marbled endpapers, red silk ribbon bookmark. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards, letterpress shelf-mark label inside upper cover (“Maison des Dames du Sacré Coeur de Jésus, a Poitiers.”). Minor toning internally, minor edge wear, the occasional minor stain. 
 
 
Rare (2 examples worldwide: KU Leuven & Johns Hopkins) 1740 edition, from the press of la Veuve Mazières, of the ‘Rule,’ the ‘Constitutions,’ and the ‘Spiritual Directory’ of the Order of the Visitation (i.e., the Visitandines or Salesian Sisters). The volume—preserved in its contemporary tooled binding and ruled in red throughout—carries an early ownership label of the Maison des Dames du Sacré Coeur de Jésus à Poitiers, a female charitable society founded in 1793 by Suzette Geoffroy.
 
The work’s engraved title depicts François de Sales (1567-1622)—the order’s founder and author of the ‘Constitutions’—and St. Augustine, whose ‘Rule’ De Sales and Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal (1572-1641) adapted for the use of the Visitandines. These figures are depicted as statues on the engaged pedestals of an altar at the center of which is an image of the ‘Visitation.’
 
On the final page of the ‘Constitutions’ (p. 366), before the ‘Directoire Spirituel,’ is the (cancelled) signature of a nun, and it is worth noting that in the Johns Hopkins copy a signature of a nun appears at the same place in the book, which suggests a prescriptive practice of nuns signing their name there, perhaps to certify that they had indeed read the text through.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate examples of this title at Johns Hopkins & the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
 
*Collated against the Johns Hopkins copy (Garrett BX4546.5 C53 1740); R. Devos, L’origine sociale des Visitandines d’Annecy aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Vie religieuse féminine et société.