Adrien Gambart’s Emblem Book (1664)
The Life of St. Francis de Sales in Symbols
With a study by Elisabeth Stopp
Edited by Terence O’Reilly
Featuring an introductory essay by
Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé
This volume includes the late Elisabeth Stopp’s previously unpublished study of the emblem book of Adrien Gambart (1660-68), an introductory essay by Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslè that updates and supplements Stopp’s work, and a facsimile of Gambart’s emblem book. This remarkable book was inspired by the life and writings of St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), and written for the Sisters of the Visitation monastery of Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Paris, where Gambart, a Vincentian priest, served as chaplain for over thirty years.
Gambart’s emblems visualize many of the literary images that Francis employs in his writings, as well as draws on other popular sources of the emblematic tradition. By means of the emblems, Gambart seeks to identify in a tangible and memorable way for the reader the truly remarkable qualities of Francis’s life and the exceptional elements of Salesian spirituality. Such a method, Gambart points out, is in keeping with Francis’s own profuse use of images and symbols to communicate his spiritual doctrine as concretely and clearly as possible.
Each emblem invites the reader to reflect on an episode from Francis’s biography or on one of his particular virtues. One emblem is provided for each of the fifty-two weeks of the year and is explained by an explanatory meditation, which is then followed by seven points for prayer and resolution, one for each day of the week. Gambart called these points Fruits et pratiques (Fruits and Practice), a summary, as it were, of what was to be learned from meditation on the emblematic picture.
Stopp’s study offers an English translation of the key observations made by Gambart about each of the fifty-two emblems, while the facsimile makes available Gambart’s original French text. Moreover, the facsimile is reproduced in color in order to convey the tonal richness of the original emblems.
La Lettre de RES [=Recherches et Etudes Salésiennes, No. 12 (July 2006): 125-33. Review article in French (“François de Sales lu dans la Visitation du XVIIe siècle”) by Hélène Bordes (Université de Limoges):
“[A] work of the greatest importance . . . that offers an exposition that goes beyond the usual parameters of a book of this kind to shed new light on key asp ects of spirituality and religious life during the second half of the seventeenth century in France. . . .Terence O’Reilly publishes in this book an important study prepared by Elisabeth Stopp, Fellow of Girton College and University Lecturer at Cambridge University . . . this is followed by an English translation of the emblems of Gambart, preceded by a very clear and complete introduction. . . . an indispensable study by Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé, of the Université Catholique de Louvain. . . . The second half of the book is comprised of a splendid facsimile of the 1664 edition of Gambart’s emblem book that is identical in format, color, and laid paper to the original.”
Society for Emblem Studies Newsletter, No. 40 (January 2007): 7-8. Review by Susan Sirc (University of Glasgow):
“This handsome volume reproduces the first part of Gambart’s La vie symbolique du bienheureux François de Sales in the original size of the first edition in French (Paris, 1664). The exceptionally high quality of the facsimile owes much to the use of colour photography. . . . For the present-day specialist reader, Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé’s stimulating and finely nuanced essay expands observations made by Elisabeth Stopp, providing a very well-researched update and much more, in considerable depth, describing and illustrating the literary, cultural, biographical, and Christological contexts of Gambart’s emblem book.”
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 7, no. 1 (Spring 2007):
104-107. Review of this, together with another SJU Press title, Emblemata Sacra (see above), by Wendy M. Wright (Creighton University): “Two beautifully produced new books from Saint Joseph’s University Press will introduce you to the visually symbolic world of emblem books and, more intriguingly, to emblematic thinking, an important expression of early modern Christian humanist culture. . . . The second half of the Gambart book contains a handsome facsimile of the original, produced with the remarkable care and quality for which the press is noted. . . . These two handsome books provide scholars and students with valuable insight into emblems and emblematic thinking and thus the spiritual consciousness and practices of early modern Catholicism, insights not possible through textual analysis alone.”
Renaissance Quarterly 60 (Spring 2007): 252-54. Review of this, together with another SJU Press title, Emblemata Sacra (see above), by Daniel S. Russell (University of Pittsburgh).
Print Quarterly 24 (2007): 206-07. Review of this, together with another SJU Press title, Emblemata Sacra (see above), by Simon McKeown.
Elisabeth Stopp was a Fellow of Girton College and University Lecturer in Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University. In the field of Salesian studies, she published many articles and books, including A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on St. Francis de Sales (Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1997), and Hidden in God: Essays and Talks on St. Jane Frances de Chantal (Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1999). She also published widely on German Romanticism. Her annotated translation of Goethe’s Maxims and Reflections was published in 1999 in the “Penguin Classics” series.
Agnès Guiderdoni–Bruslé is a post-doctoral researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). She has published articles in XVIIe Siècle, Glasgow Emblem Studies, and several festschriften. Her book Emblèmatique et spiritualité will be published by Brepols.
Terence O’Reilly is Professor and Chair in the Department of Hispanic Studies at University College Cork (Ireland). He is the author of numerous publications on early modern religious literature, including From Ignatius Loyola to John of the Cross: Spirituality and Literature in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Ashgate, 1995).
2006 / xi + 373 pp / 113 Illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-916101-49-7 (Cloth) $60.00