Religion and emotion

Abstract

In early 17th-century Finland, then part of Sweden and pronouncedly orthodox Lutheran, several people in the south-west regions were found to possess and use rosaries. This article discusses rosaries and rosary practices as material objects in the context of performing emotion and gender, on the basis of the ensuing court cases. The court record cases of rosary practice show that a Marian devotion channelled religious feelings in 17th-century Finland and that the experience or performance of these feelings had not changed as much as church teaching on the subject had. In reading of these emotions, however, one has to take into account the nature of the source material: court records were not meant to create a religious affect, but rather the opposite. Therefore they create emotions that support the authority of the legal system. The materiality of the rosaries themselves is abstracted in the court record text. Something of the materiality, and the emotions carried by it, can, however, be read from the narratives as recurring topics and repeated remarks; these methods of creating religious emotions used by the people were bodily and physically active techniques. The emotions thus created spread on a wider range than would be suggested by the interpretations of (medieval) Marian devotion, from displays of indifference and detachment to compassion, building the feeling of communality and belonging.