The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesu Christ; Edited by a Monk of Parkminster
London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., 1926. First edition. Original green cloth (6 inches tall), gilt spine and front board, blind-stamped rear board, illustrated endpapers, top edge gilt, original dust jacket. Ex-Library religious bookplate and ink-stamp, slight crease to rear inner flap. About Fine. Item #1240
"WE MAY UNDERSTAND IN A GHOSTLY MANNER THE GRACIOUS GOVERNANCE OF OUR LORD JESUS OVER US LIVING IN THE WORLD EACH DAY"
Orchard Books edition of the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesu Christ—a classic of late medieval contemplation complete in the original dust jacket. A beautiful copy of a handsome book.
A popular work of affective piety, this Life of Christ was long thought to be of Franciscan origin: "Nicholas Love's translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi, ascribed to Bonaventure, was printed nine times in a few decades, twice by Caxton in 1488 and 1490, and six times thereafter by Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde" (Rosemary Woolf). Originally a Benedictine monk (perhaps of Freiston, a cell of Crowland Abbey), Nicholas Love became a Carthusian and the first prior of Mount Grace, a Carthusian house in Yorkshire. The editor of this Orchard Books edition is only identified as "a monk of Parkminster," a reference to St. Hugh's Charterhouse, the only post-Reformation Carthusian monastery in the United Kingdom. Published as volume Number 10 in the "little Orchard" series of Catholic devotional and mystical works issued by Burns and Oates in the 1920's. Edited by Dom Justin McCann, the renowned series eventually totaled 22 volumes, Approbations. Woolf, English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages. STC 3259 - 67.
Price: $75.00