PRUDENT DE FAUCOGNEY, Père

Vie de sainte Claire, première religieuse du deuxième ordre institué par S. François d'Assise et première abbesse du Couvent de Saint-Damien Paris, chez P.G. Simon, 1782. In-12, full morocco, boards with triple fillet decorated in corners with arms stamped in the center, decorated endpapers, interior roulette, spine with decorated nerves. Gilt edges. 489 pp. of which the first 54 in Roman numerals, [5] ff. Bound with the arms of the duchess of Polignac, née Polastron (Argent with three fesses gules for the Polignac side; Argent with a lion sable for the Polastron). In the 18th century, the Polignac family was very popular in Versailles, so much so that Louis XVI made them dukes in 1780. The very seductive Yolande de Polastron, first duchess of Polignac was the favorite of Queen Marie-Antoinette. She died in December 1793, in Vienna, suffering from cancer and from the grief of having learned of the execution of the queen. It is said that the Count of Artois, the future Charles X, missed her very much. The Comtois Prudent de Faucogney, a Capuchin by profession, invented one of the most famous episodes in the life of the saint: when Clare was a child, the New Testament "fell into her hands one day". This anecdote would become one of the Franciscan leitmotivs, that of the fortuitous opening of the Gospels, on a page that was supposed to indicate the path to follow.