Excellente et facile methode, pour se preparer à une Confession generale de toute sa vie, by Christoph Leutbrewer. Brussels: Chez Eugène Henri Fricx, 1699. x-Collection [VAULT BX2264 .L48 1699], Special Collections and Archives, University of Iowa Libraries. Photo: Sara Pinkham.
From co-curator Elizabeth Yale: Flap anatomies speak to the early modern European drive to understand the interior of the body in new ways. This book, whose title translated into English, reads Excellent and simple method for preparing a General Confession all throughout one’s life, illuminates the parallel intensification of spiritual self-scrutiny. This little book offers a paper technology of the soul, appropriate for polite, well-appointed drawing rooms and dressing rooms. I imagine it in the hands of an elegant 18th-century French lady, introspecting on the previous day’s sins in between steps in her morning skin and hair care routine.
The book is designed so that the user can remember and record their sins in between visits to the priest for confession. Each page has been cut into strips listing sins, with a thin border of paper glued down on the right edge. To maintain one’s accounts with God, the book recommends, take a quarter of an hour now and then to reflect on your actions. As you identify sins, lift the appropriate strip above its border with the point of a needle or a pen knife. When you return home after your confession, tuck each strip back in. Voilà, according to our Leutbrewer: “What could be easier or more expedient?”