Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
De la dévotion au Sacré Cœur de Jésus
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
Written by Jesuit Father Jean Croiset (1656–1738), who served as spiritual director to Margaret Mary Alacoque in the final years of her life and compiled her accounts of the Sacred Heart revelations together with associated prayers and practical devotional methods. Published in 1691, the year after Alacoque's death, the work reached French and Stuart court circles through the Visitation networks already animated by Claude de la Colombière's ministry. It was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1704 for failure to observe required pre-publication formalities rather than doctrinal error, a censure that hampered but did not extinguish its distribution, and it was eventually restored. Its specific route into the Bourbon or Stuart court is inferred through institutional networks rather than documented in surviving royal inventories.
Why it still matters
The nine consecutive First Fridays and the Hour of Reparation before the Blessed Sacrament described in this book are active Catholic devotions practiced worldwide today and can be begun by any individual at the next available Friday Mass.
Kept alongside
The Philokalia (Greek: Φιλοκαλία)
Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν
The Philokalia is the foundational anthology of Eastern Orthodox hesychast spirituality, compiled from patristic and monastic writings spanning the 4th to 15th centuries and first published in Venice in 1782 by two Mount Athos monks, St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite and St. Makarios of Corinth. It draws on five codices held at Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, gathering thirty-six authors on inner prayer, watchfulness (nepsis), and the theology of deification (theosis). The Slavonic translation (Dobrotolubiye, 1793) by Paisius Velichkovsky was published at the Synodal Press in Moscow under Metropolitan Gavriil Petrov and became instrumental in the Russian hesychast revival centred on Optina Monastery. Its compilers described it as intended to equip any serious Christian with the full inheritance of the Church's inner life, not merely monastics.
Dobrotolubiye (Slavonic/Russian Philokalia)
Добротолюбіе
The Dobrotolubiye is the Church Slavonic translation of selected texts from the Greek Philokalia, produced by Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky at Neamt Monastery in Moldova and published at the Moscow Synodal Press in 1793 under Metropolitan Gavriil Petrov, containing 24 of the 36 Greek texts. It became the devotional companion cited throughout 'The Way of a Pilgrim' and was one of the favourite books of Seraphim of Sarov, seeding the 19th-century hesychast revival at Optina Monastery. Theophan the Recluse subsequently produced a five-volume Russian expansion (1877–1890), published under the auspices of the Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos, adding texts absent from the Greek edition and supplying pastoral introductions aimed at lay readers. Theophan's version differs enough in selection and editorial framing to constitute a distinct spiritual programme rather than a simple retranslation.
The Practice of the Presence of God
La Pratique de la présence de Dieu
A collection of four recorded conversations, sixteen letters, and a set of spiritual maxims compiled posthumously by Abbé Joseph de Beaufort and published in Paris in 1692, one year after the death of Brother Lawrence — a lay Carmelite brother who spent his life in the kitchen of the Discalced Carmelite monastery of Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes in Paris. Despite his utterly humble station, he attracted visits from clerics and laypeople across France, including Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, who personally conducted four interviews with him and later authorized the book's publication. The work's central teaching — that God can be met with equal fullness in any ordinary moment and task — circulated in elite Parisian and court-adjacent religious circles during the final decades of Louis XIV's reign. Its endorsement by the Archbishop of Paris placed it squarely within the approved devotional culture of the French Bourbon court.