The Emilie St. Cyr songbook, entitled "Cantiques Spirituels," is a single manuscript volume that records the text of several French hymns, taken from Cantiques des Missions... and originally composed by Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. The songbook, copied in a neat hand, seldom diverges from the original, and was created at Saint Ferdinand in Florissant, Missouri, later home to a convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Most discrepancies between this copy and the original are spelling differences; one notable exception is the songbook's version of "Pour L'ouverture de la Mission," which is significantly abbreviated. An inscription shows that the book belonged to St. Louis native Emilie St. Cyr, who added four short poems of her own "pour la fete de st Louis gonsague" in the book's first pages. The songbook also contains an index.
Emilie St. Cyr was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in August 1806. St. Cyr joined the convent of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1821, and eventually became Lady Superior at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles, Missouri. St. Cyr died on September 26, 1883.
St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716), an ordained priest, worked as a religious missionary throughout France in the early years of the 18th century. His Cantiques des Missions…, a collection of his hymns, was published in 1779.
