887J: Agnes de Langeac (1602–1634) . ? Hyacinth Cunibert (ƒl1670’s)
Das geistreiches Leben der Wohl-Ehrwürdigen Mutter Agnetis a Iesu, deß H. Prediger-Ordens. Welche Anfangs die Dritte Regel deß H. Vatters Dominici angenommen;… in unsere Teutsche Sprach ubersetzet worden durch Hyacinthum Cunibert.
Cöllen, Peter. Steinbüchel 1671.
Price $2,900
12 Bl., 336 Bound in contemporary full calf First German edition, The first French Vie was indeed published 1635 in Le Puy-en-Velay (where she was born) and then reissued in Lyon and Paris during the 1630s–40s.
Endpaper stamped, title with manuscript ownership, browned and partly brown-spotted partly heavily rubbed and bumped, back cover with worm trails..
The spiritual life of the Most Reverend Mother Agnetis a Iesu, of the Holy Order of Preachers. Agnes of Jesus (Agnès Galand, also called Agnès de Langeac) was a French Dominican nun and mystic born in Le Puy-en-Velay. She entered the Dominican convent at Langeac in 1623 and became prioress. Agnes is remembered for her mystical visions, intense asceticism, and especially her role as a spiritual adviser to influential churchmen of the Counter-Reformation era. One of her most important connections was to Jean-Jacques Olier, founder of the Sulpicians, who regarded her as a prophetic guide and drew from her counsel in shaping his vision for clerical reform in France. Agnes’s cult was less about local miracles and more about inserting a universal Dominican female mystic into the spiritual arsenal of Catholic renewal in Central Europe.
In 1994 She was beatified by Pope John Paul II, which reflects the enduring impact of her reputation as a model of Dominican piety and mystical spirituality. Her life belongs to a central Catholic project of the seventeenth century: restoring discipline, devotion, and clerical holiness in response to both Protestant reform and internal Catholic laxity.
Translated into German by Hyacinthus Cunibert (Hyazinth Cunibert, O.P.), a Dominican active in the German provinces. His task was to adapt French mystical lives into accessible German, reinforcing Dominican female models for a German-speaking Catholic readership.
Agnes de Langeac, born Agnes Galand in Le Puy-en-Velay on 17 November 1602, entered the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine at Langeac in 1623. Upon professing her vows, she took the name Agnes of Jesus and quickly became known for her humility, strict asceticism, and extraordinary mystical gifts. Her life within the cloister was marked by visions, prophecies, and ecstatic experiences that were carefully recorded by confessors and fellow nuns, and which emphasized obedience, purity of heart, and a deep devotion to Christ crucified. Within a short span of time she was elected prioress, a position she held until her early death.
Although she remained enclosed, her influence reached well beyond the convent walls. She became the spiritual adviser of Jean-Jacques Olier, who later founded the Sulpician order, and through him she left a mark on the wider program of Catholic clerical reform in seventeenth-century France. In this sense, Agnes embodied a paradox common to many female mystics of her age: a life of silence and enclosure that nevertheless exercised a far-reaching spiritual authority.
Agnes died at Langeac on 19 October 1634 at the age of only thirty-two. Her reputation for sanctity led almost immediately to the circulation of devotional biographies. The first French Vie appeared in 1635, only a year after her death, and it quickly established her as a model of Dominican piety. Translations followed, with a German edition printed at Cologne in 1671 by Peter Steinbüchel, translated by the Dominican Hyazinth Cunibert, and later versions in Dutch and Italian. These printed lives carried her reputation across Central Europe and into new Catholic devotional contexts.
Agnes of Jesus was remembered above all as a woman who combined mystical vision with practical counsel, shaping the course of Catholic renewal through the lives of those she guided. Her sanctity was formally recognized much later, when Pope John Paul II declared her blessed on 20 November 1994. Today she remains a figure of Dominican identity and of Catholic reform, remembered not for a body of writings of her own—she left only dictated visions and prayers—but for a spiritual presence that inspired both contemporaries and later generations.
VD17 ID: 12:117406L. ; OCLC: 718237200 https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10787514?page=,1 First German edition (Cologne: Steinbüchel, 1671). Verified institutional copies at BnF (4-LN27-8140 (A)) and Toulouse, Couvent Saint-Thomas d’Aquin (012 B AGN. LAN Lan.). Registered in VD17 (12:117406L). OCLC (718237200 Switzerland BIBLIOTHEQUE CANTONALE ET UNIVERSITAIRE. OCLC: 1075175021 zerØ copies
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