Partheneia Sacra (Sacred Virginity) is a devotional book in honour of the Virgin Mary by the English Jesuit Henry Hawkins (1577-1646). He was a cultivated Kentish gentleman who entered the English College in Rome and worked secretly in England as a missionary priest. His books had to be smuggled into the country from Rouen and St Omer, and few copies have survived.Partheneia Sacra is an important and ingenious example of the fusion of emblem and meditation. It makes use of the long tradition of garden symbolism in Marian devotion. Hawkins alone transforms these traditional symbols into full emblematic meditations. Each of the twenty-two emblematic units has a complex structure of nine parts and achieves subtle changes of visual, emotional and intellectual emphasis. Strikingly new is the duplication of the emblematic pictura into 'Devise' (natural symbol) and 'Embleme' (the symbol applied to redemptive history); their difference is fundamental for the typographical method of Hawkins's 'Symbolical Theologie'.While Hawkins gives to 'Embleme' and 'Devise' a new theological application, he also observes the traditional rules of the theory of emblem and impresa. He must be counted among the earliest practitioners of multiple emblems. In spite of the originality of design and meditative structure, recent research has shown that much of the sensuous and imaginative prose has been skilfully translated from other devotional and encyclopedic authors, such as Jacobus de Voragine, Maximilianus Sandaeus and Etienne Binet.The book contains 49 finely executed emblem engravings by Jacob van Langeren and an engraved title-page by Pieter van Langeren. This original and sophisticated pictorial programme must have been carried out in accordance with the author's detailed instructions. Partheneia Sacra has been widely acclaimed for its literary, artistic and emblematic qualities. As a rich amalgam of native English, traditional Latin, and contemporary French and Dutch cultural influences, it is a truly European book.