Devotional Objects Research Articles

Orations and the Didactic Motifs of Elizabethan Progresses

Memorializing Queen Elizabeth’s progresses and their pageantry from the middle-to-late sixteenth through the early seventeenth centuries requires that we examine how her royalty was represented in Medievalist art and prose. Ceremonial displays of Elizabeth’s aristocratic nobility included prayers, sermons, tribute tracts and ballads, sonnets, verse poems, personal letters, and brilliant speeches just to name a few of the major literary mediums. As Roy Strong wrote about in The Cult of Elizabeth, images were meant to be read, and the inscriptions placed on miniatures and portraits emphasized the significance of details in paintings. It became clear through the diverse speeches given at the Queen’s hosted lodgings at various English cities that evoking as much symbolism one could in writing and reading would endear Elizabeth’s pleasure, but it was not the only way of getting the Queen’s attention. Gift-giving was a favorite practice. As such, creative symbolism and objects of devotion needed other means of demonstration, and this had especially shown up in literary motifs and mythology. In this paper, I argue that historians must recognize the ways orations and speeches worked as publicized letters during the pageantry of Elizabeth, making her court’s progresses a means of political, social, and religious negotiations with representations of empire. These verbal acts of negotiation supplanted private relationships that predominated pre-Reformation England and made Elizabeth’s Tudor, imperial authority over church and state more visceral in uniting ceremonial practices and promoting England.

For love and country: queering nationalism in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle and Farewell Spain

ABSTRACT Considering Irish writer Kate O’Brien in the context of sapphic modernisms might seem misguided as her fiction is traditional in form. Still, revisiting her writing has illuminated its play with modernist themes, and her radical establishment of transnational feminisms in her juxtaposition of Ireland and Spain. Referencing theories by Nira Yuval-Davis and the work by Jane Garrity that map the intersection of gender, sexuality and citizenship, this article argues that O’Brien presents alternative possibilities for women’s relationship to nationhood in her representations of Spain in her 1936 novel, Mary Lavelle, and her 1937 Farewell Spain. The travelogue, chronicling O’Brien’s sojourn in Spain accompanied by Mary O’Neill, her life partner, is an elegy to her experiences of a country ravaged by Franco’s fascist forces. Tracing the sapphic erotics that course through her love letter to the “femme fatale among countries,” from the language of ecstatic pleasure in her description of bullfights, and her adoring depictions of gendered, anthropomorphized towns, O’Brien presents a love of Spain in sapphic terms that is itself an object of queer devotion. As a result, her relationship with Spain revises perceptions of women’s connection to nationhood, even if temporarily, and opens new spaces for a queer nationalism.

제주 돌문화 고찰

Jeju stone culture is a representative culture of the Jeju people, reflecting their perception of stones symbolized through their life experiences. In religious legends or geomantic tales, stones possess sacredness or function as objects of taboo and exorcism. In natural legends, stones as megaliths symbolize the tragedies of Jeju people's lives. In human legends, stones emphasize women's chastity and virtue. In folk songs, stones are borrowed or used as metaphors to express thoughts and emotions. As inanimate objects, stones represent solidity and dullness, and the metaphorical emotions are firmly pessimistic. Stone tools take advantage of strong friction, water resistance, and fire safety. In agriculture, the batdam (farmland stone walls) signifies the recognition of ownership and a boundary. As historical relics, stone structures like jatseong for raising livestock highlight the entire island as a national ranch. In folk beliefs, stones are worshiped and prayed to, with examples like dolmireuk (stone Maitreya) or bultap (stone pagoda) being objects of devotion for the desire to bear and raise children and for healing illness.

Displays of Devotion

Although Mogao Cave 17 near Dunhuang is renowned as a vast repository of manuscripts and paintings, it also contained a greater volume of printed materials than is commonly represented; and while enigmatic, these surviving artefacts provide windows onto print reception from close to the beginning of the era of mass printing in East Asia. Among the documents recovered from the library cave are thirtyodd illustrated Buddhist prints commissioned in 947 ce by the ruler of Dunhuang, Cao Yuanzhong, which were over fifty years old at the time the cave was sealed. Now scattered across a global network of museums, libraries, and private collections, the prints were transmitted as a consequence of their creative reuse as Buddhist votive objects: the prints, which began their lives as sponsored displays of power, prestige, and merit-generation, passed into new contexts as personalized (often anonymous) devotional objects, displayed and sometimes physically reconfigured using traditional techniques, including mounting, cropping, backing, colouring, and collaging. By considering the alterations made to the Cao corpus of paper prints alongside similar surviving woodblock illustrated prints and portable paintings from Dunhuang, this essay reflects on the forms and significance of the creative uses of the prints of 947 and helps to clarify the relationship between an emerging print culture, traditional technologies, and local Buddhist devotional practices in the tenth century.

Early Netherlandish Paintings as Devotional Objects: State of Research ca. 1990-2020

The aim of this essay is to survey debates about early Netherlandish paintings as devotional objects from roughly the late 1980s to about 2020. During this period, an important shift in the study of this topic occurred: religious images were increasingly considered as devotional objects by virtue of how they were thought to have been used rather than how they appeared. In the last decades, questions about the functions of devotional imagery, about pictorial rhetoric, and about the responses that rhetoric might provoke in viewers, as well as its relationship to contemporaneous spiritual literature, have become core questions for subsequent scholarship dedicated to early Netherlandish painting. The essay concludes with a section devoted to research perspectives.

Between religion and medicine: understanding large oval breverls from Croatian burial contexts

SUMMARY This paper discusses three large, almost identical oval breverls from the eighteenth century burial contexts in present-day Republic of Croatia. Two of them were discovered during archaeological excavations in Žuberak and Prozorje, while the third one from Ližnjan had not been defined as breverl until now. Breverls are the rarest and most enigmatic devotional objects but the three analysed in this paper have a common link other than their appearance. They all contained religious medals from pilgrim sites and papers with the prayer against all evils and demonic attacks on one side and the blessings of saints, the prayer for the identification of those tortured by evil spirits, and the Prologue to John’s Gospel on the other. This article compares the papers discovered in them, studies the motifs from the mentioned breverls and analyses other finds from them to provide answers to the questions of their place of production, the identity of the people who wore them and why. Tentative correlation of different bioarchaeological factors, such as age, sex, and health condition of the deceased can give us much information on who breverl bearers were. Apparently, they were the vulnerable members of society, such as pregnant women, people suffering from poor health, or, as prayers from the breverls suggest, individuals believed to be tortured by demons or evil spirits. Taking that into account, breverls were devotional objects believed to provide universal protection, a sort of medicine case for both physical and spiritual problems.

IT’S THE SAME OLD STORY

These paintings are part of a series that are a pastiche of the Americas tradition of Retablos. The conventional Retablos featured narratives of Christian Gods and Saints in a miraculous realm. They were painted on inexpensive sheets of tin, which allowed for a higher rate of production and wider distribution of as a product. The small paintings were sacred objects whose uses ranged from converting indigenous people to Christianity to being treasured devotional objects for the faithful. In these small 8 inches square (20.32 x 20.32cm) paintings I have expanded the scope of the narrative to move beyond the confines of a deity/saint trope to embrace a wider cast of characters capable of speaking to the miraculous as well as the mundane. They reference ideas of creation myths, evolution, mortality, sex, birth, death, gender, fairy tales, and a variety of binary constructs, all existing in a phallic world. In this series, you can easily find a floating teddy bear as a stand-in for the Archangel Gabriel bringing the annunciation news to Mary who might be sitting next to the Frog Prince waiting to be redeemed by a princess. In fact, those two stories might share the same content about consent and surprise endings. I see these paintings as a collaboration between me and the viewer, where I provide narrative opportunities while the viewer can construct a story.

Criminal law protection of religious freedom amid contemporary challenges and threats

Religious freedom is of fundamental significance among human rights, because it reaches beyond the temporal. It derives from human dignity. The European Court of Human Rights infers from Article 9 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (religious freedom) an obligation for states to provide legalprotection to religious communities and their members as well as objects of religious worship. Criminal law instruments for the protection of religious freedom are accordingly permissible. The paper presents 12 European national legislations that contain relevant criminal law regulations. They provide for punishment for violating the order of religious services and rites, objects of religious worship, as well as religious dogma and doctrine. These approaches are compared to Polish provisions in this respect. A comparative legal analysis has revealed that Poland has significantly weaker protection of religious acts, as well as objects and sites of religious devotion, compared to other countries’ legal systems. This lower standard of protection at the legislative level is confirmed in the adjudicatory practice of Polish courts. Crime criteria stipulated in Articles 194 and 195 of Poland’s Criminal Code, such as the “malicious” character of the perpetrator’s behaviour required for punishment for disrupting or “offending religious feelings”, as a condition for being held culpable for insulting an object of religious worship or site designated for the public performance of religious rites, ensure in effect the impunity of the perpetrators of these deeds. Their adjudicatory interpretation tends to grant those manifesting their hostility to religious faith and doctrine the right to disturb religious services and insult objects of religious devotion. As such the citizens’ bill “in defence of Christians”, which envisages the elimination of these criteria and the introduction of a protection of religious freedom, deserves recognition.

From Goa to Global: Devotional Images and the Cult of Francis Xavier in the Seventeenth-Century World

The scholarship on the cult of the Jesuit missionary of Asia, Francis Xavier (1506–1552), has focused primarily on India, Portugal, and the Italian Peninsula. Yet the veneration of Xavier through images was global in scope. This article assesses the full extent of his cult by considering the spaces and places of likenesses of Xavier first in Goa and then its worldwide expansion during and after his canonization cause. How and where did the devout interact with these images throughout the early modern world? The result reveals the broader geography of the cult of the new «Apostle of the East» in places overlooked in the field of research by examining the quotidian use of devotional objects that prefaces and postdates Xavier’s canonization in 1622.

A Transatlantic Tale of Monsters and Virgins: Our Lady of Sorrows and the Crocodile

In 1748, an image of Our Lady of Sorrows brought from Mexico by Marcos Torres, an Indiano born in Tenerife who made his fortune in New Spain, was enthroned with a festivity and sermon. The image of the Virgin was accompanied by a stuffed crocodile that can still be seen in the shrine. Torres claimed the Virgin saved him from the crocodile in Mexico and the animal became an extreme form of exvoto, an allegory, reminding him and fellow countrymen of the dangers and perils of becoming rich in the New World. The material history of these sacred objects transformed this singular Canarian shrine filled with American objects of devotion and local pieces. I explore how the material history of sacred objects can reveal information about their devotion, but also the circumstances surrounding them. In this case, the perils of transatlantic travel and American landscape for a foreigner as the Indiano, and how this materiality was explained and recontextualized in a new setting, reconfigured as a hybrid space hosting American devotions and peculiar exvotos.

Devotional objects discovered during the archaeological excavations of the church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Gora

Tijekom zaštitnih arheoloških istraživanja crkve Uznesenja BlaženeDjevice Marije u Gori istraženo je i dokumentirano ukupno426 grobova iz više različitih horizonata ukopavanja, ali se natemelju nalaza, prije svega nabožnih predmeta pronađenih unjima, samo četiri groba mogu sa sigurnošću svrstati u najmlađi,postosmanlijski horizont ukopavanja, datiran u 18. stoljeće. Usva su četiri groba pokopani muškarci vrlo loše patološke slike,koja upućuje na kontinuirani i težak fizički rad te loše životneuvjete. Brojnošću i kvalitetom izrade nalaza posebno se ističepokojnik iz groba 253 koji je, osim vrlo rijetkih nabožnih predmeta,sa stražnje strane vrata imao i kopču za ovratnik (engl. stockbuckle), prvi takav objavljeni nalaz iz zatvorene grobne cjelinepronađen u Hrvatskoj. Osim predmeta pronađenih uz pokojnike,detaljno su, uz brojne analogije diljem Europe, obrađeni i onipronađeni izvan zatvorenih grobnih cjelina. Ukupno je tijekomarheoloških istraživanja u Gori pronađeno pet religijskih medaljica,tri križa i osam zrna krunica, dok je u grobu 297 pronađenpredmet koji svojim oblikom podsjeća na brevar

“The Strange Artistic Genius of This People”: The Ephemeral Art and Impermanent Architecture of Italian Immigrant Catholic Feste

abstract: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian working-class immigrants in the United States staged religious feste (street feasts) in honor of the Madonna and other Catholic saints to express their beliefs in a socially acceptable, aesthetically pleasing, and recognizable manner. Impermanent edifices and other ephemeral constructions were integral parts of these cultural-religious extravaganzas. Hanging decorative illuminations, elaborate sidewalk altars, freestanding multistoried chapels, and various ambulatory structures were architectural wonders that boldly transformed, sacralized, and claimed American urban landscapes. A vernacular baroque aesthetic permeated the occupation and sacralization of the streets that engendered hallowed and convivial topographies that would have lasting ramifications for how people imagined their lives and neighborhoods. This article examines how these transient objects of devotion, predominantly in East Coast cities, enacted and proclaimed a diasporic community of believers that challenged hegemonic notions of artistry, religion, the built environment, and the public sphere. Ephemeral festival architecture captivated the attention of outsiders, including photographers, journalists, and visual artists, who depicted them in words and imagery. The article also contextualizes this source material as part of the Progressive era’s xenophobic climate and, in particular, the picturesque gaze that racialized and othered Italian immigrants.

A Conestoga Rosary: Trade, Diplomacy, and Sacred Power in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT This short piece investigates the life history of a Catholic rosary from Conestoga Town, an eighteenth-century Susquehannock town and trading center in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The rosary was either acquired or modified by Susquehannock Indians, incorporating two unusual elements: blue trade beads and a medal depicting the Protestant King George II and Queen Caroline, indicating political alliance with the English. The object’s appearance shows familiarity with the form and power of Catholic devotional objects, probably learned through interaction with Jesuit missionaries. Yet its modifications and presence in an infant’s grave at Conestoga Town suggest connections to Susquehannock notions of sacred power as orenda.

Dancing Cross

Religious symbol is the generic word for all kinds of religious signs of the divine. It includes myths and religious narratives, theological ideas, particular notions such as karma or sin which are defined in one or more symbol systems, religious acts such as liturgies or private meditations that move through and overlay various symbol systems, as well as architectural and artistic symbols with religious content, books, songs, devotional objects, and the like. Generally, it can be referred to a religious object and can bear a religious meaning. This study aims to identify the meaning of a contextualized religious symbol in the Bali Church which is known as ‘the dancing cross’. The theory applied in this study is semiotic theory which in this case is structural semiotics. The source of the data are texts that discuss about the cross symbol as well as the results of interviews with the creator of the dancing cross symbol, Nyoman Darsane. This study confirms that the dancing cross, which is widely used by Christians who are members of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali is considered as the product of regionalization or contextualization of the cross which is the crux of Christian life and worship. The shape of the dancing cross is transformed from the universal shape of the cross which is consisted of two bars leading to a T-shaped cross which base stem is longer than the other three arms but crooked at the bottom like a dancer who is in left agem position. The results of the analysis through the utilization of structural semiotics in terms of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations revealed some important points namely the contrastive meaning of the cross before and after the time of Jesus Christ as the sign of shame which covers a curse, a stumbling block and foolishness and the sign to be glorified which covers salvation victory and obedience. Other important points to be revealed are the contextual shape of the cross that can be aligned as a dancer who is in left agem position and the contextual meaning of the cross which leads to the sign of obedience of God’s people or the disciples to carry or dance the cross in accordance with the example given by Jesus Christ.

Bodily-Material Culture Techniques in the Spaces of the Devotional Revolution

Abstract This essay addresses how new procedural knowledge was promoted during the devotional revolution in nineteenth-century Ireland, particularly in relation to bodily-material culture techniques. It argues that a more orthopraxic physical disposition was a significant aspect of the experience and practice of Catholicism, and suggests ways of thinking about that in relation to religious imagination and space. In this, it sees bodies as connected to artefacts through material practices. The bodily-material culture techniques under discussion include gesture, ways of interacting with objects and spaces, and in general the embedding of new forms of material knowledge and body schema. In this, this essay re-examines the relationship between religious and secular space during this period. On the one hand, at this time the intense construction and prominent siting of thousands of religious buildings including churches, denominational institutions and entire urban quarters suggest that sacred and secular spaces were highly defined and circumscribed. However, a focus on bodies and objects also suggests the idea of immanence, and a more fluid inter-relationship between sacred and profane space than might be generally considered. The contribution draws largely on regulatory and instructive literature including catechisms and popular devotional tracts, personal testimony and specific liturgical and devotional objects and spaces.

Get to Know the Marine Tourism Village of Miang Island, Your Charm is Really Charming

Miang Island is a Marine Tourism Village located in Sangkulirang District, East Kutai Regency, East Kalimantan Province. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Miang Island Marine Tourism Village both locally and abroad. To be able to get to know the Miang Island Marine Tourism Village, various qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Data collection is carried out by surveying, observation, and document study methods. The survey was conducted with interviews and questionnaires. Observation is carried out by visiting directly the object of devotion. Meanwhile, document studies are carried out to obtain more accurate data support. Miang Island Marine Tourism Village with a very beautiful natural panorama and has not been touched by many tourists. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce it to become a leading tourist attraction in East Kalimantan Province. Miang Island Marine Tourism Village is domiciled on the sea, a unique village. On Miang Island, you can enjoy sunrise and sunset. In addition, there are also snorkeling areas, gusung, tellibo, and lighthouse towers.

Meditation and Contemplation: Word and Image at the Service of Medieval Spirituality

The use of images in intimate piety in the XIV–XV centuries responded to the need to create a mental reality that would be complemented by the imitation of Jesus’, Mary’s and the saints’ lives turned into models of permanent emulation. The faithful were expected to show the same qualities as these divine characters, so spiritual practices acquired ethical and public implications. Devotional objects played a central role in meditation, affecting the senses and the soul directly. The religious effigy provoked an empathy with what was viewed and helped by jogging the memory and feelings about the holy figures in all stages of their lives, varying the emotions to the detriment of each event. If one thought, for example, of the risen Christ, one would experience joy, but if one meditated on His Passion, one would become afflicted by sorrow. The dissemination of these habits of contemplating the images and the numerous treatises concerned with directing evocation are sufficient evidence to confirm the triumph of visuality for the excitement of piety.

Caroline Walker Bynum. Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe.

In her newest book, Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe, Caroline Walker Bynum continues with some of the ideas she penned in her 2011 book, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. The two volumes form a compendium. Whereas the earlier volume takes up questions of miracles and the body, this one addresses religious, holy, charged, vibrant, and ordinary things. Constructing masterful arguments, she reveals that much of the repeated wisdom about ornate cradles, dolls, reliquaries, crowns, footprints, holy beds, and Eucharist wafers has been wrong. Chapters 1 and 2 form a diptych, each addressing a category of objects particularly found in female monasteries. The first analyses intricately sculpted miniature cradles, including the captivating example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Although she asks a linguistic question about whether these objects should be considered cribs or cradles or both, what’s especially interesting is her close looking at the example at the Met, and her larger question, which motivates many of the studies in the book: To what degree did medieval people take metaphors such as “rocking the baby Jesus in the cradle of one’s heart” literally rather than metaphorically? As Bynum shows, when believers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries embraced meanings literally, their doing so was often related to the objects’ intense tactility, which insists on the user’s handling and performance. Encouraging this kind of reception, the Met cradle playfully engages with the senses, including the touchable velvet bedding and the bells affixed to the canopy. Moreover, the intricately carved woodwork depicts a shepherd cupping his ear and the ox licking the Christ Child’s feet. As Bynum astutely observes, the carved wood rises into microarchitectural Gothic towers, suggesting that the object is both a bed and a cradle. It presents a charged contradiction: in its empty state, the bed suggests waiting for the incarnation, and when the Christ Child doll is dressed and laid onto the velvet cushion, the intricate parts structure a sensuous encounter. Such an object toggles between inviting spiritual and literal meanings.

PEMAPARAN APLIKASI KOMPUTER, MANAJEMEN KEUANGAN, DAN PERPAJAKAN DI SMK KOLESE TIARA BANGSA

This community service activity was carried out on students of SMK Kolese Tiara Bangsa Batam. The purpose of this service is to provide knowledge of mail-merge, financial management, and taxation to students. The devotion method is to use the counseling method for mail-merge material and the collaborative interactive lecture method for financial management and taxation material. Faculty and students are involved in this service. Service is carried out with 3 stages, namely the preparation stage, the implementation stage, and the evaluation stage. At the preparatory stage, observations are made to the object of devotion. At the implementation stage, the provision of bidding materials is carried out. At the evaluation stage, an assessment of the implementation of service is carried out. The results of the service show that students really need this material because they rarely get it in school except for taxation materials. The results of the evaluation show an increase in students' knowledge of the material presented. This service suggests that service activities should be carried out that are more devoted to the delivery of financial management materials.

Rare anti-epidemic 17th-century medallions from the church of Uzhhorod Castle

The article is devoted to two identical medallions which were found during archeological research in the grounds of Uzhhorod Castle in 2019. Such devotional objects were discovered for the first time in the territory of Ukraine. The main focus of the study was the iconography of the images on the items, transcription of the abbreviations, clarification of the content and meaning of the depicted scenes. The article discusses the relationship between the depicted scenes and the activities of the monastic congregations of the Benedictines and the Franciscans. The researchers explored the circumstances related to the veneration of saints and the origin of their reliquaries in Europe. Protective qualities of the saints were analysed in detail.