PICQUET, Gilles Jaques. Ecole Chrestienne, où le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; & plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres-utiles; & necessaires à la jeunesse: poëtiquement…

PICQUET, Gilles Jaques. Ecole Chrestienne, où le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; & plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres-utiles; & necessaires à la jeunesse: poëtiquement…Mirror for Young Catholics PICQUET, Gilles Jaques. Ecole Chrestienne, o le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; & plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres utiles; & necessaires la jeunesse: potiquement compos. Brussels: Chez Martin de Bossuyt, Imprimeur jur de la ville. 1668. 4to. Recent half calf with marbled sides, spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt; pp. [viii], 63, [1

Mirror for Young Catholics

PICQUET, Gilles Jaques. Ecole Chrestienne, où le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; & plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres-utiles; & necessaires à la jeunesse: poëtiquement composé. Brussels: Chez Martin de Bossuyt, Imprimeur juré de la ville. 1668.

4to. Recent half calf with marbled sides, spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt; pp. [viii], 63, [1 (printer’s device)]; woodcut initials, head-, and tailpiece, woodcut vignette to title, large woodcut printer’s device to final verso; trimmed close at head touching title and running-titles, uniform light toning; else a very good copy; contemporary inscriptions ‘XII.’ and ‘Oratorij Bruxellensis’ to title-page (see below); contemporary markings in ink to a few pages.

First and only edition, exceedingly rare, of this educational work in French verse on proper conduct for Catholic children.

Written in French alexandrine verse, L’Ecole Chrétienne, or Miroir de la jeunesse offers a comprehensive guide to cultivating civility and moral integrity in young people. The work is organised into thirty-five chapters, each providing practical advice with titles such as ‘Avoid incivility’, ‘Learn Latin’, ‘Respect the priests’, ‘How to behave in churches’, and ‘How to serve the table’. Nearly every facet of youthful propriety is addressed. Chapter twenty-five, ‘Avoid the Huguenots’, warns that ‘all their false loyalties are held together like the strings of a gated instrument, whose discordant sounds serve only to offend the ear’ – a sentiment that foreshadows the revocation of the Edict of Nantes more than fifteen years later.

Virtually nothing is known about the author, Gilles Jacques Picquet, who here styles himself as ‘Maistre de la plume d’or’ (‘master of the golden quill’). The volume is dedicated to Antoine de Dyn, who became écolâtre (headmaster) of the cathedral school of Brussels in 1664 (see d’Hoop, Inventaire général des archives ecclésiastiques du Brabant).

There is also a dedicatory poem in French by the printer, Martin de Bossuyt the Younger with the chronogrammatic title ‘Etreines De L’an MILLe soIXante-hVIt’, on the act of printing the present work and the importance of its contents for young readers, describing the pages of the text as the glass of the titular mirror for youth. De Bossuyt would later be investigated by the Council of Brabant, along with Jan Mommaert and Philippe Vleugaert, for ‘the printing of books without a privilege or books suspected of heresy, and for the sale of defamatory booklets’ (Adam, p. 117).

Provenance: From the library of the Oratory of Brussels. The Congregation of the Oratorians was invited from France by Jacobus Boonen (1573–1655), Archbishop of Mechelen, to counter the expanding influence of the Jesuits. The Oratory was demolished in 1795, and its library dispersed.

SKU: 2119408