# Filippo Sega, Ordo quando mulier, Piacenza, Giovanni Bazachi, 1589 **Titolo bibliografico:** Ordo quando mulier post partum expletis diebus purificationis primo Ecclesiam ingreditur **Autore:** Sega Filippo **Dati editoriali:** Piacenza, Giovanni Bazachi, 1589 **Codice archivio:** 183 **Prezzo:** Price on Request **Stato commerciale:** Non disponibile **Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/sega-ordo-quando-mulier-1589 --- ## Descrizione accademica e analisi 4to (190x142 mm). A single bifolium, [4] pages. Roman and italic types; woodcut initial; large woodcut depicting the Lamentation over the Dead Christ on the final page. Without a separate title-page, pagination or signatures. The text begins directly with the heading Ordo quando mulier post partum expletis diebus purificationis primo Ecclesiam ingreditur and concludes on the third page with the episcopal subscription Philippus Episc. Pla. et Co., followed by the imprint Placentiae, apud Io. Bazachium. 1589. Some marginal staining and fraying, with small losses along the edges. An apparently unrecorded, separately printed episcopal ordinance regulating the ceremonial purification and return to church of women after childbirth, issued under the authority of Filippo Sega, Bishop and Count of Piacenza, in 1589. A particularly interesting and exceptionally ephemeral survival of late sixteenth-century diocesan liturgical printing, produced during the period of post-Tridentine ecclesiastical reform and in the very year of Sega’s first diocesan synod. The booklet provides the complete order of service for the reception of a woman into the church following childbirth, a ceremony commonly known as the churching of women. Its opening rubric instructs the priest, vested in surplice and stole, to receive the woman before the church door and sprinkle her with holy water while reciting the appointed antiphon. The rite continues with Psalm 47 (Magnus Dominus et laudabilis nimis), additional prayers and versicles, and a collect recalling the Mosaic prescriptions concerning purification after childbirth. The priest subsequently leads the woman into the church with the formula Ingredere in domum Domini: & adora filium sanctae Mariae Virginis: qui tibi foecunditatem tribuit & prolem. Depending on the liturgical circumstances, Mass may then be celebrated, or an appropriate Gospel passage read, before the concluding blessing. The ceremony preserves the traditional sequence of reception outside the church, ritual purification, formal admission into the sacred building and thanksgiving. Its language and structure derive from the medieval liturgical tradition, ultimately grounded in Leviticus 12 and the purification of the Virgin Mary. Although the terminology of purification reflects the inherited prescriptions of the Old Testament, the Christian ceremony also performed a thanksgiving function, marking the mother's safe delivery and her solemn return to communal worship. The booklet thus illustrates the persistence of medieval ritual forms within the disciplinary and pastoral framework of the Catholic Reformation. The publication is especially significant in relation to Sega’s Synodus dioecesana, printed by the same Giovanni Bazachi at Piacenza in 1589. The text of the present rite is also included in the synodal volume on pp. 356–357. Direct comparison of the two publications, however, establishes that the present bifolium is not an extracted gathering or detached portion of the Synodus. Its typographical composition is entirely different, while the substantial woodcut illustration occupying the final page is absent from the synodal printing. The bifolium must therefore be regarded as a distinct typographical production, rather than a fragment of the larger work. The relationship between the two editions is nevertheless of considerable historical interest. Their common text, episcopal authority, printer and year of publication strongly suggest that the separate printing formed part of the same programme of diocesan liturgical regulation represented by Sega’s synodal constitutions. The production of a self-contained four-page booklet would have provided parish clergy with a convenient and inexpensive copy of the prescribed ceremony, avoiding the need to consult the much larger synodal volume during its performance. Whether the separate printing preceded or followed the publication of the Synodus, or was formally ordered in connection with the synod itself, remains to be established. Filippo Sega (1537-1596), Bishop of Piacenza from 1578, belonged to the generation of prelates charged with implementing the disciplinary and pastoral reforms of the Council of Trent. An experienced papal diplomat who subsequently became a cardinal in 1591, Sega sought to strengthen ecclesiastical discipline and diocesan administration. His synod of 1589 belongs to this wider programme of religious reform, in which the regulation of ceremonies, sacramental practice and parish observance occupied an important place. The present booklet provides a particularly tangible example of the means by which such regulations could be transmitted from episcopal authority to individual priests. Giovanni Bazachi, active as a printer in Piacenza during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, was closely associated with local ecclesiastical publishing. His production of both the Synodus dioecesana and the present ordinance in 1589 demonstrates the role played by provincial printing establishments in disseminating the practical instruments of post-Tridentine reform. Unlike substantial theological or legislative works intended for libraries and institutional preservation, small liturgical booklets of this kind were designed for immediate use and were correspondingly vulnerable to wear, dispersal and destruction. The large woodcut on the final page, representing the dead Christ supported by the Virgin and other mourners beneath the Cross, adds a distinctive visual dimension to this modest publication. It does not appear in the corresponding passage of the Synodus and reinforces the bibliographical independence of the booklet. Its inclusion also suggests that the separate edition was conceived as a finished devotional and liturgical object, rather than merely as a mechanically reproduced extract from the synodal text. --- ## Bibliografia di riferimento Apparently unrecorded. --- *Documento generato automaticamente dall'Archivio Govi Rare Books per finalità di ricerca e catalogazione.*