Antique 1830 First Communion Certificate | Engraving by Basset, Paris | Notre-Dame de Bourg | Signed by the Curé

A beautiful early 19th-century French First Communion certificate, dated 1830 – the final months of the Bourbon Restoration – issued to a young girl and signed by her parish priest.

The certificate is a fine copperplate engraving headed in elegant script “Précieux souvenir si vous êtes fidèle” (“A precious keepsake, if you remain faithful”). It shows a priest in a richly embroidered chasuble giving Holy Communion before a high altar with a tabernacle and six tall candlesticks, assisted by a server holding the chalice and an acolyte with a candle, while veiled girls in white kneel in rows on either side.

Beneath the scene, the printed text is completed by hand in brown ink:

“Cécile Rossignol a fait sa 1re Communion dans l’Église de N.-D. de Bourg le 21 du mois de Mars de l’Année 1830”
(“Cécile Rossignol made her First Communion in the Church of Notre-Dame de Bourg on the 21st of March in the year 1830”)

It is signed by the curé with a flourished signature. The publisher’s line reads “à Paris chez Basset, rue St Jacques N° 64 – Déposé”: the Basset house was one of the best-known Parisian print publishers of devotional and popular images in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Notre-Dame de Bourg is most likely the collegiate church of Notre-Dame in Bourg-en-Bresse.

Details

• Type: engraved and hand-completed First Communion certificate
• Publisher: Basset, rue Saint-Jacques 64, Paris
• Date: 21 March 1830
• Language: French
• Size: sheet approx. 15.5 × 18.5 cm (6.1 × 7.3 in), laid on a card mount approx. 17.5 × 21 cm
• Condition: good; age toning and foxing, small corner losses and edge wear, firmly mounted

An evocative piece of French Catholic family history, nearly two centuries old. The item you receive is the exact one pictured.