Jean-Baptiste RENOULT - Les Avantures de la Madona et de François d'Assise - 1745

Jean-Baptiste RENOULT: The Adventures of the Madonna and Francis of Assisi.
Collected from several works by Roman doctors;
written in a recreative style, while also capable of exposing the ridiculousness of Popery without any controversy.

illustrated with a title-page engraving and 8 copperplate engravings, including the famous breast engraving.

Amsterdam – At the shop of the heirs of Daniel la Feuille, near the Stock Exchange, 1745.
12mo (16 × 10 cm), 168 pages

BINDING: 19th-century half calf, smooth spine decorated with gilt and blind-tooled designs.
CONDITION: Front joint split, boards rubbed. Interior impeccable.

Famous anti-Catholic pamphlet. This rare pamphlet, dedicated to Charles XII, King of Sweden, is the work of the Franciscan controversialist Jean-Baptiste Renoult (1664?–17..), who converted to Protestantism.
By recounting the Madonna’s adventures and mockingly relating the biography of Francis of Assisi, he sought to inspire his Protestant readers with an aversion to Popery and thus “confound falsehood and make it shameful by exposing its turpitude to the eyes of the whole world” (Preface).
The work comprises ten chapters, which give a parodic account of the “adventures” of the Virgin Mary and Saint Francis of Assisi, with a table of chapters at the end of the volume.
It was condemned, but this did not prevent it from going through several editions up to 1750. BINDING: 19th-century half calf, smooth spine decorated with gilt and blind-tooled designs. CONDITION: Front joint split, boards rubbed. Interior impeccable.

A fine copy of this rare and remarkable work.

These engravings are entirely in the style of Romeyn de Hooghe (1645–1708). The 10 plates appear as a frontispiece and at the head of the first nine chapters. Chapter 10 has no engraving and contains only a few reflections by the author. Lenglet du Fresnoy wrote of it: “The author, formerly a Cordelier, later became a minister in London. This book, full of indecent material, is condemned even by learned Protestants” (Bibliothèque des Romans, 1734, II, 266).