Claude Tristan prestre docteur en theologie de la Faculté de Paris... [Notice of forthcoming church inspection]

[Beauvais?] 1686

1 handbill | Quarter-sheet | 201 x 161 mm

A printed notice (completed in manuscript) that Claude Tristan, Archdeacon of the church in Beauvais, will be visiting the church in Bailleul-sur-Thérain(?) on Thursday, May 30, 1686, to conduct its regular inspection. Assuming our identification is correct, that village is just eight miles southeast of Beauvais. The notice was sent on May 25, providing not even a week's notice of the forthcoming checkup. ¶ Father Tristan asks that his upcoming visit be shared during the sermon (prosne) of the parish mass so none can claim ignorance of the news. Those in positions of authority especially should be notified, as Father Tristan will be looking over the accounts of the church's fabrique, the arm responsible for administering its property and revenue. THE PARISH MIDWIFE, TOO, IS ASKED TO ATTEND. A note at the bottom asks the recipient of this notice (vous en particulier) be present to take notes during the visit. ¶ The parish inspection had long been a fixture of church life, "during which the physical properties of the church, its personnel, and its parishioners passed under the scrutiny of the bishop or another official for a sometimes brief, sometimes extended, examination. The visitor might concentrate on the state of the parish church and churchyard; he might examine the condition of sacred vessels, images, or instruments; or he might show a particular interest in church finances. These examinations became so routinized that they appear regularly in the records across the centuries and seem almost like a landlord's inspection" (Hayden and Greenshields). Our favorite part of this notice? Beneath the printed signatures is a brief Latin note, Ibi prandium, literally "lunch there"—or perhaps more colloquially, LUNCH IS ON YOU. ¶ A fleeting, fantastically banal artifact of early modern administrative culture. We locate no other copies.

CONDITION: Printed on the recto only of a quarter-sheet of laid paper. With a single decorative four-line initial. ¶ Creased once horizontally and thrice vertically; lightly soiled, with a small stain at the bottom.

REFERENCES: J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields, Six Hundred Years of Reform: Bishops and the French Church, 1190-1789 (2005), p. 14 ("Visitors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries asked the widest variety of questions. In the seventeenth century the desire to achieve a thorough reform of the church inspired curiosity among visitors...While pastoral visits may have been important events in parish life, they often did not last long because the need to visit several villages a day often allowed only a cursory inspection that a clever priest or other sinner could survive relatively unscathed.")

Item #756