The full title of this late eighteenth century erotic anticlerical diatribe is Amours, galanteries, intrigues, ruses et crimes des Capucins et des religieuses, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Love affairs, Gallantries, Intrigues, Ruses and Crimes of Capuchin Friars and Nuns, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day). Attributed ‘par un R. Père’ (by a Reverend Father), it presents tales of members of the order of the Capuchin friars and nuns engaging in a wide variety of sexual activities.

This four-volume work sits within a broader genre of ‘écrits érotiques antimonachisme’ (erotic writings that attack religious orders) in the eighteenth century, part of an anticlerical and libertine literary campaign of the period using scandalous tales about clergy and nuns to critique and satirise religious institutions. The fact that it uses an anonymous religious voice is itself part of the façade. It reveals how religious life, especially the cloistered life of nuns and friars, was a regular target of satirical and erotic representation in pre-revolutionary France.

Very few copies of this 1788 printing exist, the only known complete edition being in the British Library, a copy originally owned by the great collector of erotica Henry Ashbee. It states that it was published in Amsterdam and Paris, but it was in fact probably printed in Brussels, which had a much freer press in the period.

The plates are just as salacious and explicit as the text, and by an equally anonymous hand.