Rare books 12: Funeral orations and panegyrics

The funeral orations of the great homilist Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), with critical essays (Paris, 1858) Notes: A solid, gilt-edged, marbled copy presented to a student of Young Ladies’ College, Hardwicke House, Adelaide in 1877, this book would have been added to the Library less for its outstanding neoclassical French than its value as a model for preaching. If your job is regularly to give sermons at funerals, then you will learn from those who prioritise ethical and personal tributes over a florid and self-centred style. Bossuet, Fléchier, and Mascaron are for you. Even Voltaire, no friend of clergy, extolled Bossuet as one of France’s greatest orators. I had expected it easy to locate a digital record for this work, but in the end described the book in full myself. Funeral oration on Abbot Emiliano Travaglini given by Angiolgiovanni da S. Antonio (Ferrara, 1733) Notes: Newspaper obituaries today attempt to compress essential parts of a person’s story into one page. In another time, documents like this provided families and historians with plenty to go on with, in this case 32 pages (four signatures) packed with facts and insights into the personality of the deceased. Emiliano was of the Ferrarese noble family Travaglini, a man who dedicated himself to the religious life. A panegyric on Saint Andrea Corsini given in the Carmine in Florence (Firenze, 1874) Notes: Another noble who joined orders was a member of the Corsini family. His wiki reports, “[Corsini] was wild in his youth; extravagance and vice were normal to him and it pained his devout mother. His parents severely rebuked him for his behaviour, and he resolved to amend his ways and try to live up to their expectations. He went to the Carmelite monastery at the Santa Maria del Carmine to consider what course to take and despite the entreaties of his dissolute friends, decided to become a friar.” Presumably some of this has found its way into the panegyric delivered in the same church over five hundred years later. The item itself is exceedingly rare, the Library holding one of the few copies still in existence.