Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

The power of relics 

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[LUCCA]. APPLAUSI POETICI nella esposizione della preziosa reliquia di S. Francesco di Paola nel giorno della sua festa. Solennizata dalla Piissima Confraternita Eretta sotto il suo Titola nella Chiesa di S. Cristoforo. In Lucca: Per Leonardo Venturini, MDCCX [1710]. £550

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SOLE EDITION. 4to, pp. 10, [2] blank; woodcut device on title-page, woodcut initials and tailpiece to page 10; aside from light offsetting to recto of final blank, clean and fresh throughout; in recent patterned boards.

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Very rare collection of sonnets celebrating the gift of a relic of St Francis of Paola, founder of the Order of Minims, to the church of San Cristoforo in Lucca, and its exhibition on his feast day, composed by members of the Confraternity dedicated to the Saint.

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The seven sonnets celebrate the power of the relic (a part of an unspecified bone in this case) against heretics, the glory of St Francis, his miracles, and his retreat to his hermitage at the age of only fifteen. The authors of the first five are either anonymous or identified only by initials, but the remaining two sonnets are by Lelio Altogradi (nephew of the prominent Lucca jurist of the same name), and Ranier Giambelli, while Girolamo Bambacari offers a closing Latin epigram, closing with the question “Why should God not be able to walk on water? He does not carry the weight of sin: therefore He can.”

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What became of the relic is unclear; the church was deconsecrated and largely stripped in 1939, and is now a cultural space. 

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SBN (IT\ICCU\LUAE\011031) cites two copies at the Biblioteca statale in Lucca; not in OCLC. 

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