Item #55095 [THE BLACK MADONNA OF CZESTOCHOWA, FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING OF THIS IMAGE – NO COPIES IN NORTH AMERICA] Breve relatione della prodigiosa imagine della Madre di Dio di Chiaromonte Cestecoviense in Polonia, over di Constantinopoli. Tratta dall'istoria latina del R. P. Guilielmo Gumppenger (sic!) della Compagnia di Giesù. E le notitie della vita di S. Paolo, primo romito, institutore de’monaci solitarii; l’una e l’altre date in luce dal M. R. P. Giovanni Vannoviczi dottor di s. teologia e procurator generale dell’ordine del sodetto S. Paulo primo romito. Con l’occasione dell’apertura della chiesa & ospitio del medemo ordine, ultimamente venuto dall’Ungheria in Italia, e fermato nel mezzo della Via Felice, che guida a S. Maria Maggiore. All’eminentiss. e reverendiss. principe il sig. card. Flavio Ghigi prefetto della signatura di giustitia &c. &c. Wilhelm Gumppenberg, Giovanni Wannowiczy.

Gumppenberg, Wilhelm and Giovanni Wannowiczy, translator.

[THE BLACK MADONNA OF CZESTOCHOWA, FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING OF THIS IMAGE – NO COPIES IN NORTH AMERICA] Breve relatione della prodigiosa imagine della Madre di Dio di Chiaromonte Cestecoviense in Polonia, over di Constantinopoli. Tratta dall'istoria latina del R. P. Guilielmo Gumppenger (sic!) della Compagnia di Giesù. E le notitie della vita di S. Paolo, primo romito, institutore de’monaci solitarii; l’una e l’altre date in luce dal M. R. P. Giovanni Vannoviczi dottor di s. teologia e procurator generale dell’ordine del sodetto S. Paulo primo romito. Con l’occasione dell’apertura della chiesa & ospitio del medemo ordine, ultimamente venuto dall’Ungheria in Italia, e fermato nel mezzo della Via Felice, che guida a S. Maria Maggiore. All’eminentiss. e reverendiss. principe il sig. card. Flavio Ghigi prefetto della signatura di giustitia &c. &c.

Rome: Per Michele Ercole, 1671. Small quarto (19.8 × 14.6 cm). Somwhat later decoratively patterned paper wrapper printed in red and green; [8], 40 pp. Two copper engravings, one showing the Mother of Częstochowa, the other Paul of Thebes. Woodcut arms of Cardinal Flavio Chigi to title; decorative initials and tailpieces. Toned throughout; occasional foxing; two leaves with dampstain; one leaf with small stain; else about very good. Item #55095

First Italian translation of the description of the Black Madonna (Our Lady of Częstochowa) published in Wilhelm Gumppenberg's Latin "Atlas Marianus" (1657–1659). It is also one of the earliest translations into a vernacular language of any part of the Jesuit theologian’s work, an illustrated compendium of miracle-working Marian images throughout Europe. It was published on the occasion of the establishment of the Order of the Pauline Fathers in Rome, along with a new church and hospital, in the year of publication. The second part contains a short vita of Paul of Thebes and a detailed historical account of the Order’s arrival in Rome.

According to legend, the Black Madonna of Częstochowa is among the icons originating with Luke the Evangelist, who painted the image on a wooden tabletop in the house of the Holy Family; it was later given to Emperor Constantine the Great in Constantinople by his mother Helena. In the fourteenth century, while in the possession of Vladislaus II of Opole, the icon was being transported when horses refused to continue on past Częstochowa. The nearby Jasna Góra Monastery has since housed the icon, after Vladislaus was instructed in a dream to leave it there; it remains one of the major Polish pilgrimage sites today. The icon is said to have averted an invasion by Swedes in 1655, miraculously aiding a small number of monks in resisting a siege by 4000 soldiers and ultimately turning the course of the Second Northern War.

The Pauline Fathers were in charge of Jasna Góra, and thus the icon, and therefore chose to mark the establishment of a new church and hospital in Rome in 1671 with this text about the Częstochowa Madonna. Known as the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, the order was founded in 1250 in Hungary and soon spread not only there, but maintained houses in Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia. From the fifteenth century onward, a Pauline monastery was established at Santo Stefano Rotundo in Rome, which eventually declined and was taken over by Hungarian Jesuits. The new Roman house, church, and hospital were located on the site of a former Cistercian monastery (St. Pudentiana) located on today’s Via Agostino Depretis, close to Santa Maria Maggiore.

The volume is illustrated with an original engraving, which we can trace only in this publication. It differs from that used in Gumppenberg's Atlas: according to the caption, it shows a copy of the icon venerated at the Roman home of the Pauline Fathers. A final paragraph, added after the translation of the Gumppenberg excerpt, also mentions the "effigy" of the icon held at the local Pauline Fathers' home. The translator here even makes the claim that the current Pope, Clement X, celebrated his first Holy Mass before the altar of the Black Madonna in Jasna Góra, while serving as auditor of the nunciature in Poland (p. 7).

The second part of the pamphlet (“Notes from the life of St. Paul, the first hermit”) describes the life of St. Paul of Thebes, the Egyptian who is commonly considered the first hermit and in whose honor the Pauline Order was founded. Its larger part describes in detail the arrival in Rome in 1658 of Vannoviczi, Alessio Ripinski, and Nicola Lubnich to found a Pauline monastery; the various delays; the difficult search for a premises and the ultimate choice of the former site of the St. Pudentiana monastery. Few sources appear to exist on this renewal of the presence of the Pauline Fathers in the Eternal City, making this second part a valuable resource in its own right.

This edition mentioned in Sommervogel vol. III, col. 1953.

As of December 2025, KVK, OCLC locate five copies outside Italy, but none in North America.