Italian Votive Offerings

Abstract

A very pretty custom of ancient Greece and Rome was the laying of votive offerings before the shrines of their gods. This is found amongst all ancient nations and most modern ones; but it is amongst the Greeks and Romans that it was commonest. Every crisis of life-birth, marriage, and death, sickness and safety-served as the occasion for some offering. It is not now my idea to deal with the ancient practice-that I hope to do on another opportunity-but to point out a few places where the old tradition has been kept up to the present day. Nothing is more noteworthy than the persistency of popular custom in religion; all through the classic lands can be seen the same things done as were done two thousand years ago, with just so much change as the social changes of these years have made inevitable. In many churches on the Continent may be seen votive limbs and figures hung up in token of thanks for recovery from some sickness or danger. Images of this sort, in metal, stone, or terra-cotta, have been excavated on the sites of many ancient sanctuaries; and again, as the ancients consecrated images of their gods in the temples, so the modern peasant consecrates plaster images of the Virgin. Sometimes these votive limbs are hung up in street shrines, as I have seen in Naples. A fine collection of glass and china eyes, some very large, hang in the little chapel of St. Ottilien (Black Forest), where there is a spring, still held sacred, which is believed to have healing power for the eyes. The Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, contains a shrine of S. Vicenzo, who is credited with the power of healing cripples by miracle. Beside it hang a number of modelled limbs, and the crutches of the patients. But my present purpose is to describe two collections of II