AA. VV. - Core Sacrato - 1632

THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED ALMODÓVAR: THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS PIERCED BY OUR SINS
Intense devotional book from early seventeenth-century Rome, entirely built around the emerging iconography of the Sacred Heart, here understood as the theological, genealogical, and symbolic fulcrum of the history of salvation. Printed by the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, the work unites meditative text and emblematic images in a format intended for refined private devotion, with a strong visual and affective emphasis. The presence of engravings depicting the Heart of Jesus in allegorical, christological, and genealogical contexts makes it an early and highly significant testimony of cordial spirituality in a Roman milieu, long before its full codification in the eighteenth century. The book presents itself as an object of intensive meditation, in which word and image cooperate to produce a deeply Baroque emotional and contemplative experience.
Market value
Seventeenth-century Roman editions dedicated to the Sacred Heart, particularly those in portable format and with an iconographic apparatus, are today relatively rare on the antique market and sought after by collectors of Baroque devotion, religious emblemography, and the history of Catholic spirituality. Complete copies, in contemporary bindings and with symbolism impressed on the covers, reach 700–900 euros, especially when the engravings are preserved in full and they present a provenance or a binding symbolically coherent with the content.

Physical description and condition
Contemporary binding in full leather, with gilded frames on both boards. Spine with gilt decorations and gilded edges. Leaves with some browning and foxing, compatible with devotional use and with the nature of the support. In old books, with a centuries-old history, some imperfections may be present not always noted in the description. Pp. (4); 40 nn; 8; (4).

Full title and author
Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Rome, Apostolic Camera, 1632.
S.A.

Context and Significance
The work sits squarely within the post-Tridentine Roman milieu, marked by a strong emphasis on affective devotion, visual meditation, and the central role of images as instruments for interiorizing dogma. The Heart of Christ, portrayed as the seat of divine love, the redemptive Passion, and spiritual kingship, becomes here the object of a complex symbolic construction that interweaves sacred genealogy, sacrifice, and the theology of the Incarnation. The engravings, with strong emotional impact and clearly designed to accompany meditative reading, translate into images a theology of the heart that anticipates later developments in Jesuit and Oratorian devotion. The portable format and the density of imagery indicate a private audience, probably as a tool for guided meditation, in which the book itself becomes an affectionate and symbolic object.

Biography of the Author
The work is anonymous, as is frequently the case in devotional texts officially printed by the Reverend Apostolic Camera, which tended to privilege the authority of the institution over individual authorship. However, the quality of the text and the complexity of the iconographic program point to a cultivated milieu, close to Roman theology, to Baroque figurative culture, and to the channels of controlled production of official devotion.

Printing history and circulation
Printed in Rome in 1632 by the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, the official workshop of the Curia, the work falls within the supervised production of devotional texts intended for selective circulation. The copies catalogued today are relatively uncommon, especially when preserved in contemporary bindings with stamped symbols on the boards, a feature that suggests the volume was conceived as a symbolic and identity-bearing object, as well as a bibliographic one.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Émile Mâle, Religious Art after the Council of Trent, Paris, Armand Colin, 1932, pp. 365–378.
Réau, L., Iconography of Christian Art, vol. II/2, Paris, PUF, 1957, pp. 712–726 (entry Heart of Jesus).
Bremond, H., A Literary History of the Religious Sentiment in France, Paris, Bloud & Gay, 1920–1921, vol. II, pp. 198–214.
Stichel, R., Herz Jesu, in Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Stuttgart, 2000, cols. 123–145.
Jungmann, J. A., The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer, New York, 1951, pp. 88–95.
ICCU – OPAC SBN: reports of 17th-century Roman editions on cordial themes
Vatican Apostolic Library, Baroque Spirituality Collections: Iconographic Comparisons