Rare books 28: Half a Lifetime

 

The life of Blessed John Soreth (1394-1471) and translation into French of his Exposition of the Carmelite Rule. (Paris, 1901) Notes: In 1976 the Warden of Trinity College, Evan Burge, invited Bryan Deschamps to be a guest resident where he could continue his studies. As a student at Trinity myself, I remember this large, jolly figure as he strode about the place in his Carmelite robes of brown and cream. Not that I had any idea at the time about the subtle variations of religious attire. Bryan was just one more unlikely eccentric who winds up at Trinity, or so it seemed. In 2018 one of Bryan’s projects found its way into print (Aschendorff of Münster), a commentary on Soreth’s highly influential ‘Expositio paraenetica in Regulam Carmelitarum’. John Soreth was one of those critical reformers within a religious order who changed the nature of that way of life before the big-R Reformation came along and changed everything. This included Soreth’s encouragement of orders of religious women in the time before Teresa of Avila. The astounding donation from the Carmelite sisters includes this rare book, complete with Dulwich Hill stamps, of the French translation of the document Bryan studied over the years, as well as the life of the author by Ubaltero de Terranova. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has not heard of this book and the Library of Congress Name Authorities have never heard of Ubaltero. It is a good day for students of John Soreth.