Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World 9789048535422

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I – Meanings
1. Wax versus Wood: The Material of Votive Offerings in Renaissance Italy
2. The Substance of Divine Grace: Ex-votos and the Material of Paper in Early Modern Italy
3. Powerful Objects in Powerful Places: Pilgrimage, Relics and Sacred Texts in Tibetan Buddhism
4. Myer Myers: Silversmith in the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Ledger
Part II – Practices
5. Christian Materiality between East and West: Notes of a Capuchin among the Christians of the Ottoman Empire
6. The Materiality of Death in Early Modern Venice
7. Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes: Images and Personal Devotion
8. ‘Watching myself in the mirror, I saw ʿAlī in my eyes’: On Sufi Visual and Material Practice in the Balkans
Part III – Transformations
9. Religious Materiality in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II
10. The Reformation of the Rosary Bead: Protestantism and the Perpetuation of the Amber Paternoster
11. Magical Words: Arabic Amulets in Christian Spain
12. Mesoamerican Idols, Spanish Medicine: Jade in the Collection of Philip II
Epilogue
Index

Citation preview

Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www. allisonlevy.com.

Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World Edited by Suzanna Ivanič, Mary Laven and Andrew Morrall

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Mask, Olmec (17.1 cm x 16.5 cm). Jadeite, 900-400 BCE, Mexico (The Metropolitan ­Museum of Art, 1977.187.33) © Metropolitan Museum of Art Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus isbn

978 94 6298 465 3

e-isbn

978 90 4853 542 2

doi 10.5117/9789462984653 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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Abbreviations11 Acknowledgements13 Introduction15 Suzanna Ivanič, Mary Laven and Andrew Morrall Part I – Meanings 1. Wax versus Wood: The Material of Votive Offerings in Renaissance Italy Mary Laven

35

2. The Substance of Divine Grace: Ex-votos and the Material of Paper in Early Modern Italy Maria Alessandra Chessa

51

3. Powerful Objects in Powerful Places: Pilgrimage, Relics and Sacred Texts in Tibetan Buddhism Hildegard Diemberger

67

4. Myer Myers: Silversmith in the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Ledger Vivian B. Mann

85

Part II – Practices 5. Christian Materiality between East and West: Notes of a Capuchin among the Christians of the Ottoman Empire John-Paul A. Ghobrial

103

6. The Materiality of Death in Early Modern Venice Alexandra Bamji

119

7. Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes: Images and Personal Devotion Gabriela Ramos

137

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8. ‘Watching myself in the mirror, I saw ʿAlī in my eyes’: On Sufi Visual and Material Practice in the Balkans Sara Kuehn

151

Part III – Transformations 9. Religious Materiality in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II Suzanna Ivanič

177

10. The Reformation of the Rosary Bead: Protestantism and the Perpetuation of the Amber Paternoster Rachel King

193

11. Magical Words: Arabic Amulets in Christian Spain Abigail Krasner Balbale

211

12. Mesoamerican Idols, Spanish Medicine: Jade in the Collection of Philip II Kate E. Holohan

229

Epilogue247 Caroline Walker Bynum Index257

List of Illustrations Figures Fig. I.1 Fig. 1.1 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 3.1a Fig. 3.1b Fig. 3.1c Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Spice-box. Gilt copper, fifteenth century, northern Italy, Victoria and Albert Museum (M.40&:1-1951) © Victoria and Albert Museum Wax votive offerings. St. Lazarus church in Salvador, Brazil © Photo: Alamy Votive hand showing a possible individual moulding technique © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo Naturalistic portrait mask with coarsely painted details © Soprin­ tendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo Ex-voto displaying plague ulcers © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo Ex-voto symbolizing cancer © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo Procession with books to bless fields at Shekar in 1993 © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Current reincarnation of Chokyi Dronma blessing faithful with a book © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Tibetan book being wrapped in its robe © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Monk blessing faithful with clay statue of Bodong Chogle Namgyal © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger The venerable Thubten Namgyal with shoe of Bodong Chogle Namgyal © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Trakar Taso monastery © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Payment to Myer Myers for a pair of ‘bells’ (finials). From the Holy Sedakah or Ledger of Shearith Israel, New York (5525 [=1765]) © Photo: Vivian B. Mann Detail of bases, Myer Myers, Pair of Torah Finials. Stamped silver, 1766– 76. From the Touro Synagogue, Newport, R.I. Collection of Congregation Shearith Israel, N.Y., on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston © Photo: Vivian B. Mann Detail, tomb of doge Alvise II Mocenigo. Marble, eighteenth century, church of San Stae, Venice © Photo: Alexandra Bamji Heart burial of doge Francesco Erizzo. Marble, seventeenth century, Basilica of San Marco, Venice © Photo: Alexandra Bamji

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Fig 7.1

RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Frontispiece. Fernando de Valverde, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana del Perú: poema sacro (Lima: Luis de Lyra, 1641) © Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library Fig. 8.1 Semāʿhāne at the Hajji Sinan Tekke (Hadži Sinanova Tekija), Qādirī ṭarīqa. Vrbanjusa district, Sarajevo, Bosnia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011 Fig. 8.2 Türbe at Hayati Baba Tekke (Sheh Hayati Tećija), Khalwatī ṭarīqa. Kičevo, Macedonia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011 Fig. 8.3 Deer antlers at the türbe of the tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqja e Rufaive, Baniyi Dergāh). Skopje, Macedonia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2012 Red ḥaydarīyā in the semāʿhāne at the Hadži Sinanova Tekke, Qādirī Fig. 8.4 ṭarīqa. Vrbanjusa district, Sarajevo, Bosnia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011 Special ritual paraphernalia (darḅ al-ṣilāḥ) preserved in the miḥrāb Fig. 8.5 niche in the semāʿhāne, tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqja e Rufaive). Prizren, Kosovo © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2012 Fig. 8.6a, b Darḅ al-ṣilāḥ during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a Rifāʿī tekke. Rahovec, Kosovo © Photos: Sara Kuehn, 2013 Fig. 8.7a, b, c, d Darḅ al-ṣilāḥ during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a tekke of the Rifāʿīyya. Rahovec, Kosovo © Photos: Sara Kuehn, 2013 Sheh Ahmed Shkodër, the most important Rifāʿī shaykh in Albania in Fig. 8.8 the twentieth century. Tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqeja e Rufaiye). Berat, Albania © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011 ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a tekke of the Rifāʿīyya. Rahovec, Fig. 8.9 Kosovo © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2013 Fig. 9.1 Liturgical cup. Coconut shell (14.8 cm dia.), rhinoceros horn, bezoar stone and silver gilt, c.1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna (Kunstkammer, inv. no. KK 913) © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Amber beads with heart-shaped pendant. Amber, silk, ribbon replaced Fig. 10.1 (length 34 cm), c.1600, north-east Germany (Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, III.88.ll.1) © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Jürgen Karpinski Fig. 10.2 Amber beads with pomander pendant. Amber, silk, ribbon replaced (length 39.8 cm), c.1600, north-east Germany (Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, III.88.ll.2) © bpk/Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/ Jürgen Karpinski Fig. 11.1 Libro de dichos maravillosos, fols. 361v–362r, fifteenth to sixteenth century, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, Madrid (Fondo Antiguo TN RESC/22) © Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales), Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás Fig. 11.2 Amulet case with two loops for hanging. Moulded lead, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection

List of Illustrations

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 12.1

9

Fragment of paper amulet. Block-printed on cotton-based paper, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection Standing figure, Mezcala. Stone (height 20 cm), first to eighth century, Mexico, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995.201) © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plates Plate 1.1 Plate 1.2 Plate 1.3 Plate 2.1 Plate 2.2 Plate 3.1 Plate 3.2 Plate 4.1

Plate 4.2 Plate 6.1 Plate 6.2 Plate 7.1

Anonymous, Apothecary’s Shop. Fresco, c.1500, Castello di Issogne, Val d’Aosta, Italy © Photo: Bridgeman Images Ex-voto, Man Fallen from Tree. Tempera on panel (22 × 25.3 cm), sixteenth century, Lonigo, Madonna dei Miracoli, Italy © Museo degli Ex Voto Ex-voto, Piergiovanni da Caldarola and his wife thank St. Nicholas for the healing of their son. Tempera on panel (22.6 × 26.4 cm), sixteenth century, Tolentino, Italy © Museo di San Nicola Five thousand paper artefacts hanging on the internal walls of the Romituzzo sanctuary, Poggibonsi, Siena, Italy © Photo: Maria Alessandra Chessa Three-dimensional anatomical paper ex-votos. Cartone technique, Romituzzo sanctuary, Poggibonsi, Siena, Italy © Photo: Maria Alessandra Chessa Chokyi Dronma’s biography © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Printing blocks and rescued books treated as sacred objects in Trakar Taso © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger Myer Myers, Pair of Torah Finials. Silver and brass with parcel gilding (height 36.8 cm), 1766–76. From the Touro Synagogue, Newport, R.I. Collection of Congregation Shearith Israel, N.Y. Photograph © 2019 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Detail, Myer Myers, Pair of Torah Finials. Chased and pierced silver gilt, brass, 1766–76. From the Touro Synagogue, Newport, R.I. Collection of Congregation Shearith Israel, N.Y. © Photo: Vivian B. Mann Pietro della Vecchia, San Francesco Borgia Duca di Candia at the sight of the body of the empress, wife of Charles V. Oil on canvas, c.1670, Musée des beaux-arts de Brest métropole © Musée des beaux-arts de Brest métropole Death mask of Francesco Antonio Correr. Wax, cloth and hair, 1741, Museo Correr, Venice © Photo archive, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia Anonymous, Cuzco school, Conversion of an Indian Nobleman by Inspiration of the Virgin of Copacabana, c.1700–30 © Photo: Daniel Giannoni, courtesy of Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru

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Plate 7.2 Anonymous, Virgin of Copacabana. Portable altar, gesso, maguey and silver, cast and repoussé, with burnished punch work, c.1650–1700 © Photo: Daniel Giannoni, courtesy of Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru Plate 8.1 Images from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib’s life. Coloured print, Naqshbandī tekke, Živčići/Vukeljići near Fojnica, central Bosnia © Photo: Sara Kuehn Plate 8.2 Tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqja e Rufaive). Prizren, Kosovo © Photo: Sara Kuehn Plate 9.1 Ottavio Miseroni, Penitent Mary Magdalene. Agate statue (height 16.4 cm, base 10.1 × 9.3 cm), c.1590–1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna (Kunstkammer, inv. no. KK 1723). © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Plate 10.1 Two naked fishermen retrieve amber from the sea watched by women. Illustration from Johannes Pomarius, Der köstliche Bernstein (1587) © Sächsische Landesbibliothek–Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden Plate 10.2 Three pastors. Illustration from Johannes Pomarius, Der köstliche Bernstein (1587) © Sächsische Landesbibliothek–Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden Plate 10.3 Two members of religious orders with black hearts and two Lutherans with hearts gleaming bright and true. Illustration from Johannes Pomarius, Der köstliche Bernstein (1587). © Sächsische Landesbibliothek– Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden Plate 10.4 Three strings of beads. Yellow amber, white amber, black amber. Illustration from Johannes Pomarius, Der köstliche Bernstein (1587) © Sächsische Landesbibliothek–Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden Plate 11.1 Paper amulet (7.2 × 5.5 cm) and lead case (2.7 × 1.3 cm), eleventh century (attributed to Fatimid Egypt), Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (AKM 508) © Aga Khan Museum Plate 11.2 Lead amulet, folded and inscribed (5.95 × 4.911 cm, 18.78 g), private collection; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (S78) © Private collection Plate 12.1 Head effigy with glyphs, Maya. Greenstone (8 × 5.8 × 5.2 cm), c.675–725, probably made in Piedras Negras, Guatemala, found at Sacred Cenote, Chichen Itza, Yucatán, Mexico. Gift of C.P. Bowditch, 1910. © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM# 10-70-20/C6100 Plate 12.2 Mask, Olmec. Jadeite (17.1 × 16.5 cm), 900–400 BCE, Mexico, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977.187.33) © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abbreviations AGN Archivo General de la Nación AHC Archivo Histórico del Cuzco PN Protocolos Notariales AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional ASC Archivio Storico della Santa Casa Archivio di Stato di Macerata ASM ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia PS Provveditori alla Sanità b. busta exp. expediente leg. legajo

Acknowledgements Our first debt is to Erika Gaffney for her enthusiasm in commissioning this volume. We are also hugely grateful to all the colleagues who have assisted us along the way and especially to Catherine Richardson for her incisive and encouraging comments as we drew the volume to a close. Thank you to Caroline Walker Bynum for agreeing to be a part of this project and above all for inspiring it.



Introduction Suzanna Ivanič, Mary Laven and Andrew Morrall

One of the most intriguing objects on display among the ‘sacred silver and stained glass’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is a fifteenth-century object from northern Italy, believed to be a Jewish spice-box (Fig. I.1). Originally used, as we suppose, during the Havdalah ceremony that marks the end of the Sabbath, the spices within the container were blessed and the box was passed around for all to smell.1 This olfactory ritual marked the start of the new week. The V&A holds several examples of these distinctive tower-shaped containers but this one is unique in that it is topped with a cross and includes a remnant of red wax; the two unusual adaptations suggest that the container was later repurposed as a Christian reliquary. This radically transformed object with its elusive life history is redolent of the complexity of religious materialities in the early modern world. Powerful currents of change swept across religious practices and beliefs in Europe and around the globe during the period 1400–1800. That these changes had material manifestations is a familiar idea. It is a commonplace that the Reformation prompted the destruction of religious images in northern Europe, while the Golden Temple at Amritsar was a product of the rise of Sikhism. The ‘material turn’ in historical studies has led us to question and even invert the model of causation that such narratives imply. Material objects – whether small and portable or the size of a temple or cathedral – have been accorded a more central and active role in accounts of religious change. The goal of this volume is to show how placing objects at the centre of our analysis changes our understanding of early modern religious history.

Bynum and the Study of Religious Materiality Caroline Walker Bynum’s 2011 monograph Christian Materiality – the inspiration and the starting point for this volume – suggests a three-point programme for studying religious material culture. Firstly, materiality must be understood historically. Bynum insists on the importance of returning to ‘matter as medieval people confronted it’.2 This means excavating contemporary categories. Medieval holy matter in particular was vibrant; it was 1 Keen, Jewish Ritual Art, 116. 2 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 284. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_intro

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Fig. I.1 Spice-box. Gilt copper, fifteenth century, northern Italy, Victoria and Albert Museum (M.40&:1-1951) © Victoria and Albert Museum

Introduc tion

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characterized not as animal, vegetable or mineral, but ‘as the locus of generation and corruption’.3 Matter tended to be described by theorists as ‘organic, fertile and in some sense alive’.4 Certain things held intrinsic spiritual significance for their viewers. Bleeding hosts, moving statues and speaking images were each regarded as a ‘locus of divine agency’.5 Moreover, they required physical responses beyond the simple act of viewing, such as touching, kissing or consuming. Expensive precious reliquaries and artefacts had long been a part of medieval Christianity, but the upsurge in ‘living holy matter’ was a new phenomenon in the late Middle Ages.6 While Bynum’s own focus is on explicitly holy stuff, including relics, sacramentals and devotional images, her approach can be applied to an extended material world including natural materials in the landscape and items not specifically used for religious practice. Secondly, we need to establish how different materials and aesthetics worked to connect to the divine. In the late Middle Ages, religious objects called attention to their materiality. Rock crystal on a reliquary was not only functional, as a window to see the relic beneath, but also spiritually significant, in encasing the relic in the ‘nondecayable quintessence of heaven’.7 Bynum claims that this artistic mode, which expressly drew attention to stuff, fitted a late medieval theory of matter.8 This practice was related to a deep reverence for God’s creation as taught in Genesis: ‘When statues and altarpieces, like relics and sacraments, called attention to themselves as material stuff, they asserted themselves to be creation, the expression of the divine.’9 But if medieval religion had a special relationship with the material, it is inevitable that a re-examination of religious materiality in other historical contexts will reveal alternative particularities. Thirdly, beliefs about matter in historical contexts must be afforded their full complexity and plurality. Bynum’s approach gives scope to understanding the variety, inconsistency and – often – paradoxical nature of beliefs about matter held by individuals and societies. To many in the late Middle Ages, matter was both ‘radical threat and radical opportunity’.10 There was an ‘intensifying rejection and an intensifying revering of matter as the locus of the divine’.11 At its heart was the question of how the physical material of the world, which is changeable and decayable, could disclose ‘a creator whose nature (eternal, immutable and unknowable) is the opposite of matter’.12 Such uncertainties led to intense interest in matter, but also to fervent anxieties and vituperative debates. This combination of fascination, fear and 3 Ibid., 30. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 20 and 52; Bynum et al., ‘Notes from the Field’, 12. 6 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 20–21. 7 Ibid., 28. 8 Ibid., 28–30. 9 Bynum et al., ‘Notes from the Field’, 13. 10 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 20. 11 Ibid., 285. 12 Ibid., 285.

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argument is abundantly evident in the early modern period, as religious schisms and encounters brought new challenges and uncertainties. Spurred on by Bynum’s work, the authors in this volume continue her investigation of the multiple and conflicting reactions occasioned by religious materialities beyond the medieval period. In particular, they embrace her challenge to uncover the differences between religious cultures (Christianity, Judaism, Islam and others) by comparing how different faith communities interacted with the material world.13 The volume also seeks to integrate recent theoretical work in the fields of anthropology and sociology of religion: building on work produced in neighbouring disciplines, we take the view that religion consists as much of practice and materiality as it does of beliefs, theology and writings.

Reconceiving Religion The effect of material culture studies upon the study of religion has been profound, as the latter has absorbed the numerous, highly original approaches to the material world that have developed over the last twenty years or so. What began as a minor branch of art history and anthropology in the 1980s has become an area of sweeping innovation throughout the humanities and sciences.14 In 2001, the literary historian Bill Brown introduced ‘thing theory’, which provided a sophisticated theoretical framework for the study of everyday things within the field of literary studies.15 Equally, the idea of the agency of objects, explored in different ways by the anthropologist Alfred Gell and the social scientist Bruno Latour, has since become widely known and adopted in the arts and humanities.16 No less influential has been the work of Arjun Appadurai, Igor Kopytoff and others on the social life of things and the cultural biography of objects.17 This wealth of inquiry into the nature of things has made a profound mark on the study of religion and has generated new theoretical and empirical interest in religious objects. Through the pioneering work of David Morgan, Birgit Meyer and Dick Houtman, among others, via publications, conferences and dedicated journals, this approach now stands alongside – and has significantly modified – traditional perspectives that, for instance, have concentrated on the study of a religion’s central texts or official doctrines, its institutional histories, its leading exponents and detractors, or the way doctrines or religious ethics shaped wider cultural, political and societal conditions.18 13 Ibid., 272–73. 14 See the pioneering article by Prown, ‘Mind in Matter’. 15 Brown, ‘Thing Theory’. 16 Gell, Art and Agency; Latour, Reassembling the Social. 17 Appadurai, ed., Social Life of Things, and Kopytoff, ‘Cultural Biography of Things’. 18 Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture; Houtman and Meyer, eds., Things; Meyer, Mediation and the Genesis of Presence. See also the journal Material Religion, founded in 2005, whose editors include Morgan and Meyer.

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Indeed, sustained attention to religious artefacts and practices has shifted the very ground on which an understanding of ‘religion’ is based. Early impetus for this shift came from anthropologists, who, in the absence of texts and other forms of recorded evidence, studied ‘externals’ as the most accessible way into the belief systems of ‘other’ cultures. For many scholars this raised an interpretive problem of treating such externals as evidence for something else, for ‘beliefs’, or the ‘spiritual’ or the ‘transcendent’. As Webb Keane expressed it, this ‘tended to put something imperceptible – faith, or beliefs – at the heart of their work’ when trying to define religion. An alternative, he suggested, was ‘to rethink the relationship between the materiality of religious activity and the ideas that have sometimes been taken to define “religion”’.19 The wide recognition that the privileging of ‘belief’ and ‘interiority’ was the product of a modern, largely Protestant religiosity, and therefore itself historically situated, has raised a more general analytical problem as to whether the very category of ‘religion’ is coherent across different cultures and cases. As Keane put it, ‘Religions may not always demand beliefs, but they will always involve material forms. It is in that materiality that they are part of experience and provoke responses, that they have public lives and enter into ongoing chains of causes and consequences.’ 20 The present collection of essays, by covering a culturally and chronologically diverse array of themes, offers an opportunity to bring such theoretical issues into sharper focus and to test the balance of arguments that favour, on the one hand, the idea of universally shared features of the human mind or, on the other, the unique, local confluence of contingent factors and specific historical context, in the formation of religious practice and belief. In the light of such reorientations, a renewed scholarly focus on the material things of religion themselves – liturgical implements, talismans, amulets, burial clothes, ex-votos, relics and so on – has led to explorations of their capacity to operate variously as loci of supernatural power or as conduits of salvific grace and healing or apotropaic magic; it has provided a range of new insights into the actual workings of religion – the practical mechanics of personal response as well as the collective, social nature of religious practice. As David Morgan has expressed it, ‘there is a keen awareness today in recognizing just how deeply dependent religious identity and experience are on the material stuff and ordinary practices of belief […] Religion is what people do with material things and how these structure and colour experience and one’s sense of oneself.’21 Behind many of these investigations is an implicit theoretical claim: that things have agency. Building on the work of Alfred Gell and Bruno Latour, many scholars now insist that objects should no longer be considered passive or inert, things to be 19 Keane, ‘Evidence of the Senses’, 110. 20 Ibid., 124. 21 Editorial statement, Material Religion, 4.

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acted upon by humans. The claim is that the properties things possess – the semiotic and symbolic characteristics that arise from their intrinsic materiality, their ‘thingness’ – have the power to shape human subjectivity and activity.22 In these terms, material religion is about how objects engage believers, what powers they can come to possess, and in what manner a community comes to rely on them for the vitality and stability of belief. As Bynum’s scholarship indicates, medieval and early modern historians of religion have been especially receptive to the ways material culture can enhance our understanding of the human and social relationships that such objects express and mediate.23 Eamon Duffy’s study of a Devonshire village vividly demonstrated how the church, its statues, vestments and vessels lay at the centre of the local culture of a small mid-sixteenth-century community; how the parishioners’ rights and responsibilities in furnishing the church formed the locus of a kind of collective, almost corporate awareness right up to the point of their confiscation during the mid-century Edwardian Reformation.24 An entire history of ordinary parochial ambitions is traceable through such artefacts (the installation of a new rood screen or the purchase of a set of vestments), which supply a record of religious change and resistance to it. The material evidence of religion, moreover, allows us to challenge conventional chronologies and models of causation. Religious objects persist over time and beyond the context of their original making, often in changed or repurposed forms. By studying their extended lives, we gain insights into the staying power and continuities of certain belief systems and practices in times of religious change, as well as their ability to emit a range of different symbolic and semiotic meanings, dependent upon changing cultural conditions and contexts.25 Alexandra Walsham has shown how traditional religious objects that were readapted for reformed use might be seen, as she put it, ‘not as inert emblems but as active agents and engines of cultural change […] [in] a dynamic and cyclical process that offers insight into how Protestantism reconfigured traditions of commemoration and patterns of remembrance’. Taking inspiration from Pierre Nora, she analyzes such recontextualized objects ‘as lieux de mémoire’ that ‘facilitated forms of both remembering and forgetting: they effaced a past that they simultaneously continued to make present’.26

22 Bennett, Vibrant Matter; Olsen, In Defense of Things; and Harman, Towards Speculative Realism. 23 See for instance Rublack, Reformation Europe, 211–33; Corry et al., eds., Madonnas and Miracles; Hamling and Williams, eds., Art Re-formed; Hamling, Decorating the Godly Household; Spicer, ed., Lutheran Churches; Spicer, ‘Material Culture’. For an overview of recent work, see Heal, ‘Visual and Material Culture’. 24 Duffy, Voices of Morebath. 25 Bynum, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”?’; Walsham, ‘Domesticating the Reformation’; Gosden and Marshall, ‘Cultural Biography of Objects’; Olson et al., eds., ‘Biography of the Object’. 26 Walsham, ‘Recycling the Sacred’, 1124; Nora, ed., Les Lieux de Mémoire, and Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’.

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The place of material objects in the formation of national as well as local histories has also recently been the subject of fruitful enquiry. Evelin Wetter’s study of late medieval goldsmith work, made for the church treasuries of the former Kingdom of Hungary (roughly today’s Slovakia and eastern Romania/Transylvania), charts the fate of religious objects in radically different contexts and through long periods of political turmoil in the face of Ottoman invasions, Christian reclamations, territorial divisions and the ensuing incursions of the Reformation. She also reveals the processes by which, from the nineteenth century onward, they became a symbol of a newly conceived ‘national art’ and a significant part of a Hungarian cultural patrimony.27 Attention to these objects’ fluctuating status and contexts in the great sweep of the intervening centuries demonstrates their continued cultural agency and exposes the unstable and entirely contingent nature of invented traditions. Finally, objects have been at the heart of recent studies of early modern global trade, networks of intercultural exchange, and the acquisition of knowledge of new worlds.28 Their study has shown the often far-reaching economic, cultural and artistic consequences of transcontinental trade. Moreover, attention to the processes involved in the exchange of goods and objects, whether by trade, sale or gift, has revealed how profoundly such negotiations could shape social life; how these processes of exchange, often uneven or coercive, can reveal the power dynamics involved.29 To apply such methods to religious objects – to consider them not just in their originating cultures but as transplanted into often radically different geographical and cultural terrains – is to recognize that objects are intricately entangled with their multiple contexts. Uprooted, they depend upon new sets of human circumstances and relations to confer on them renewed semiotic and symbolic life.30

Early Modern Contexts The early modern period envisaged in this volume stretches from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century and spans the globe.31 It therefore encompasses an immense variety of religious cultures, regions and communities. While the scope is diverse, a number of broad religious and material conditions that fundamentally shaped early modern religious materiality stand out in this period. 27 Wetter, Objekt, Überlieferung und Narrativ. 28 Peck, ed., Interwoven Globe; Gerritsen and Riello, eds., Global Lives of Things; Markey, Imagining the Americas. 29 Again, Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, in Appadurai, ed., Social Life of Things, are seminal in this respect. 30 For a striking example of an object’s potential polyvalency, see Strong, ‘The Devil was in that little bone’. 31 For a discussion of European chronologies of modernity in relation to non-European contexts, see Clunas, Empire, 7–10.

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In Europe, this was the Age of Reformations – a period of seismic change in which religious materialities clearly played a key role. According to Bynum, the late Middle Ages precipitated a ‘crisis of confidence in Christian materiality, out of which came a multitude of responses’.32 The distinctive styles and aesthetics that accompanied these differing theologies have received much scholarly attention. Catholicism has been distinguished as having a ‘sensuous’ style and generating numerous ‘devotional tools’, such as rosaries, Agnus Dei, holy water stoups, crosses and devotional images.33 Protestantism’s relationship with the material has been pursued through studies, for instance, of Calvinist whitewashed churches, a Lutheran baroque style, iconoclasm and domestic decorative objects and schemes.34 As Mary Laven has further noted, often ‘the religious materialities of the major confessions, Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed, were not discrete’.35 Both Protestants and Catholics decorated their houses with Old Testament imagery and with Delftware. As Rachel King shows in this volume, rosaries too could be owned by Protestants and Catholics into the seventeenth century. John-Paul Ghobrial’s chapter reveals how the Virgin Mary was revered by some Muslim women in Baghdad. Recent work examines which material and visual features were specific to or shared by those of different confessions, with some of the most informative new findings emerging from studies on multiconfessional areas. Geography was also important in shaping distinctive confessional visual and material cultures. Local religious cultures materialized into unique forms, as has been powerfully demonstrated by William Christian.36 Proximity to an ‘other’ faith could sometimes intensify difference, as in Germany where devotion to the Virgin Mary signalled religious identity on the borders of areas where faith was contested.37 Ghobrial’s chapter shows that close attention to material culture allowed those in mixed communities in the Middle East to differentiate between complex religious identities. His work underlines the value of examining multiconfessional areas to gain a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between religious identities and material cultures. Of course, as his chapter shows, religious change was not limited to Christian Europe. Numerous messianic movements arose in Islamic and Jewish communities, forming specific cults with their own material modes.38 Under Mehmed 32 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 272 33 Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship; Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque; Hall and Cooper, eds., Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church; see also Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual; Brundin et al., Sacred Home; Evangelisti, ‘Material Culture’, 395. 34 For example, Spicer, Calvinist Churches; Heal, ‘Lutheran Baroque’; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars; Hamling, Decorating the Godly Household; Walsham, ‘Domesticating the Reformation’. 35 Laven, ‘Devotional Objects’, 244; see also Spicer, ed., Lutheran Churches. 36 Christian, Local Religion; cf. Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual. 37 Heal, Cult of the Virgin Mary; Heal, ‘Better Papist than Calvinist’. 38 In the Ottoman Empire, we can note the emergence of Muslim cult leaders, including the millenarian dervish, Kalenderoghlu in the 1520s; in Judaism, messianic stirrings in Jewish communities, such as that led by Sabbatai Sevi in Izmir, led to migration and discord that found material forms (see Barkey, Empire of Difference, 189).

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IV (1648–87) the Kadizadeli movement in the Ottoman Empire promoted spiritual conversion, rationality and the interiorization of religion, while opposing ecstatic Islam including traditional Sufi rituals, dance and music.39 Mass forced Jewish and Islamic migrations from Iberia from the fifteenth century onwards led to the translation of visual and material styles and techniques across the Mediterranean region. Minarets in the newly established immigrant neighbourhoods of Testour in Tunisia reflected the style of those left behind in Aragon or Toledo.40 Alternatively, as Sara Kuehn’s work here on Sufis in the Balkans shows, religious migration could provide freedom from scrutiny, allowing unique adaptations of beliefs, rituals and visual forms to develop. Material culture thus brings to light nuances in the nature (the speed, and the local and confessional variety) of early modern religious changes. However, as we have already suggested, it did not merely reflect change; it also played an influential part in shaping its character. Examining the life cycles of objects draws our attention to the longevity of religious cultures, and how they morphed over time in a piecemeal way. Religious objects in the early modern period consisted not only of newly commissioned and newly made items, but also of great numbers of objects that survived from previous eras. Medieval artefacts were reinterpreted, recontextualized, repurposed and recycled in Protestant and reformed Catholic contexts.41 Bynum has noted the paradox that medieval religious art is well preserved in areas of Protestant Germany.42 Paying attention to material culture often reveals slow religious change and provides new perspectives on confessionalization.43 Religious history no longer necessarily hinges on the dates of publications of treatises or events involving elite individuals, but rather meanders through lengthy phases of transition as reflected in the changing everyday material worlds of believers. King’s chapter here on amber rosaries shows how focusing on one devotional item can reveal a different story of religious change. Amber paternosters could easily be transformed into beaded jewellery or medicinal matter in a Protestant context, but at the same time, they held a potential historical meaning and memory of spiritual power for their owners. Abigail Krasner Balbale’s chapter shows how Islamic texts were repurposed in Morisco Spain in this period. In Tibet, Hildegard Diemberger reveals that Buddhist texts were preserved as sacred relics, but that each recitation brought such items into the present.

39 Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam. 40 Muchnik, ‘Judeoconversos and Moriscos’, 420 41 Ivanič, ‘Religious Materiality in Seventeenth-Century Prague’, 264; see also reference to the ‘accretion of previous worship’ in Bynum, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”?’, 92. 42 Bynum, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”?’, 88 and 91; see also Spicer, ed., Lutheran Churches, 4; Heal, ‘Better Papist than Calvinist’. 43 Bynum, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”?’, 91, n. 11; see also Ivanič, ‘Religious Materiality in Seventeenth-Century Prague’, 24–25.

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Overlaying religious change, processes of globalization also affected early modern religious materiality. Vivian Mann speaks of the strong, mutually supportive relationships that bound congregations of Spanish-Portuguese Jews across the western hemisphere: this sense of community was materially bound by donations of liturgical objects that travelled between North America, London, Amsterdam and the Caribbean. For early modern Christians, mobility went hand in hand with evangelization and signalled a new opportunity for the centrifugal spread of the true faith across the world by means of the missions to Asia, Africa and the Americas.44 Religious objects were fundamental to this activity, particularly in the context of the Catholic missions: rosaries and medals converted and cured the new faithful in South-East Asia and didactic images communicated Christian teachings in China.45 Recent work has refined our understanding of how these items were understood, received and adapted in new contexts. Jesuits in China, for example, sensitive to existing beliefs, ensured that the story of Mary in China resonated with indigenous ideas of the mother god. Another strategy was to hybridize material and visual styles, as long as content and form remained largely prescribed: the obsidian mirror in an atrial cross in Taximoroa, Mexico, fused meanings of old and new religions, images from Wierix’s Gospels were sinified to appeal to Chinese audiences, and native forms and styles were included in church facades to create an ‘Andean hybrid baroque’.46 Several chapters in this volume contribute to this rebalancing act. Gabriela Ramos draws attention away from the public material forms of religion to show how the Virgin of Copacabana was domesticated through the personal ownership of her image. John-Paul Ghobrial skilfully unpicks the available evidence to explore the intricacies of religious coexistence in the Ottoman Empire, and Sara Kuehn investigates how Ottoman expansion into Europe created new visual and material ritual practices that last to this day. Innovative anthropological methodologies such as Kuehn’s can thus cast new light on the early modern world, especially in areas where religious practice and experience lack written documentation. Globalization had an impact on Europeans too: it led to easier access to religious objects from foreign lands, and greater contact with different faiths and practices. Ramos notes how images of the Virgin of Copacabana came to Spain and Italy in the seventeenth century and ‘were displayed in altars in convents and monasteries and as objects of devotion in private homes’. Existing work has focused on encounters with ‘other’ sacred items from new lands and prioritized investigations into how early modern men and women categorized sacred items in opposition to proscribed ‘savage’ objects. Studying Kunstkammer inventory texts, Carina Johnson has argued that sacred items from Mexico were treated as pagan and lost their spiritual meaning 44 Hsia, ed., Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions; Clossey, Salvation and Globalization; Laven, Mission to China; Županov, Missionary Tropics. 45 Alberts, Conflict and Conversion, 147–59; Bamji et al., eds., Ashgate Research Companion. 46 Walsham, ‘Sacred Landscape’, 219–20; Laven, Mission to China, 230–33; Bailey, Andean Hybrid Baroque.

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when they were collected.47 Indeed, the princely collections of Europe are ideal places to investigate such encounters and contacts. Focus on the textual descriptions of such items, however, only gives a partial snapshot as to how these artefacts were viewed, prioritizing categories and discourses as opposed to the practices that are harder to discern in primary material.48 In this volume, Kate E. Holohan pushes beyond this to suggest that ‘pagan’ items could still be seen as powerful and sacred by their European collectors, using as evidence Philip II’s interest in the healing properties of New Spanish jades. European collections also bear witness to the interconnected production of religious objects. The coconut-shell aspersorium featured in Suzanna Ivanič’s chapter, for example, was made in Ceylon and Goa and ended up in Europe. On the way it acquired a bezoar stone probably sourced in the Middle East. Increasing numbers of religious items featured such ‘global assemblage’ in this period, being made with materials acquired from around the world.49 As recent work has pointed out, we need to be alert not just to the roots but also to the routes of religious artefacts, attending to the new layers of meaning that were wrapped around these items as they travelled.50 The Jewish spice-box turned Christian reliquary with which this introduction started gives a taste of the rich histories implanted within objects. Certain items from this period acted as palimpsests, with different cultures and different religious traditions inscribed upon them. Such artefacts raise questions about the ‘indifference’ of objects, or whether the ‘accretion of previous worship’ is immortalized in materiality.51 The material conditions of the early modern period were further affected by a dramatic rise in the availability and consumption of goods. The impact on religious culture has been noted by Richard Goldthwaite, who traced how religious art objects proliferated in Italy as a result of the rise in wealth following the Black Death of the fourteenth century.52 It is evident that religious ‘things’ continued to proliferate, as is shown for example by Floriano Grimaldi’s studies of early modern Loreto. Pilgrims flocked there to see the Virgin Mary’s miraculously transported house and were confronted with a vast array of devotional items and memorabilia for sale.53 Roman customs registers from the fifteenth century record ‘barrels’ of glass and enamel rosaries entering the city.54 The chapters in this volume exemplify the expanded material religious world of the early modern period. Maria Alessandra Chessa and Mary Laven show how votive 47 Johnson, ‘Stone Gods’; Johnson, Cultural Hierarchy, esp. 254–57. 48 Compare, for example, Keating and Markey, ‘“Indian” Objects’. 49 Ajmar and Molà ‘Global Renaissance’; Bleichmar and Martin, eds., ‘Objects in Motion’; Gerritsen and Riello, eds., Global Lives of Things; Riello, ‘Global Objects; Clunas, ‘Connected Material Histories’. 50 Gerritsen and Riello, eds., Global Lives of Things; Flood, Objects of Translation; Bevilacqua and Pfeifer, ‘Turquerie’. 51 Bynum, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”?’, 92 and 111. 52 Goldthwaite, Wealth and Demand for Art. 53 Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, and Argentieri; see also Brundin et al., Sacred Home, 113–48. 54 Esch, ‘Roman Customs Registers’.

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objects, available in a variety of media from paper and wax to painted wooden boards, played a crucial role in rituals of supplication. Different materials, they argue, actively shaped patterns of devotion. Meanwhile, Alexandra Bamji reveals the proliferation of paraphernalia associated with burial from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The expanding world of religious goods enabled the domestication of devotion, but it also provided opportunities for the pious to make their material mark on churches and other religious institutions. Vivian Mann provides copious evidence of members of the Shearith Israel congregation in New York commissioning silver items – from candlesticks to instruments of circumcision – for use in the synagogue. While expanding markets, global imports and technological innovations conditioned religious materialities, theology and natural philosophy also played their part. Recent work has indicated the potential for considering matter and making in relation to early modern natural philosophy and artisanal work.55 Ivanič is inspired by this approach to look anew at the crafting of precious stones. She concludes that the sacred was evident not just in religious objects, but was embedded in the very matter out of which art was created.56 Knowledge of matter in this period was not only derived from book learning; to a great extent it was borne of artisanal practice and skill.57 Moreover, meanings ascribed to matter changed over time and across cultures. Thus we learn how knowledge of jade was established through encounters with different substances from New Spain (Holohan), how amber took on new meanings in different confessional contexts (King) and how paper was used to create sacred objects with deep devotional meaning in a local context (Chessa). Dramatic religious change in the early modern period, accompanied by new attitudes to the material world, had profound consequences for lived religious experience. While it is impossible to provide a comprehensive survey, or a single, coherent model of ‘early modern religious materiality’ across religions or even among the different strands of a single religion, this volume sets out to demonstrate the plurality of early modern religious materialities as they functioned in different contexts and to suggest some points of commonality and divergence among them.

Meanings, Practices, Transformations Meanings, practices and transformations are woven through this volume like the three strands of a plait. While all three themes are present in every chapter, they are also probed successively in each of the three sections of the book. 55 Smith, Body of the Artisan; Smith and Beentjes, ‘Nature and Art’. 56 Ivanič, ‘Amulets’; Ivanič, ‘Early Modern Religious Objects’. 57 Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’; Lehmann, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, 18; Anderson et al., ‘Introduction’, 12.

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Part I focuses on material meanings. The chapters interrogate the significance of particular substances (wax, wood and paper in Renaissance Italian ex-votos), the entanglement of message and medium (in sacred texts and voiced relics) and the importance of design and craft techniques (in the rendering of paper or the fashioning of silver). In this section, the authors move beyond the static notion of materials exhibiting essential properties and explore instead the dynamic nature of matter – sometimes stubbornly durable and at other times precarious and fragile – as it interacted with makers and users. If the material turn has encouraged historians to engage in object-focused research, religious materialities are often transient and can only be reconstructed with reference to documented practices. The fruitfulness of this approach is explored in Part II, through an investigation of what Ghobrial refers to as ‘submerged’ materialities. Bodily practices, such as fasting, eating, sexual abstinence or piercing exemplify materialities that can no longer be studied in their physical form but which were once fundamental to religious identities and classifications. Textual evidence is brought into dialogue with surviving objects in order to reconstruct the material culture of death (a culture that is inevitably marked by decay and disintegration) and to recover the embodied experience of living with religious images. Finally, Part III explores the many ways in which religious objects were transformed as they shifted between different faith communities (from Catholicism to Protestantism, from Islam to Christianity), crossed geographical boundaries (from the New World to the Old) and moved between sacred and secular settings (religious objects in the Kunstkammer). The chapters in this section of the book point to more general conclusions. Religious materialities cannot be boiled down to their essential properties; they do not hold fixed meaning; they do not stand still. Rather, they are enlivened by human practices, by their own organic development and by an ongoing ‘dance of agency’ between objects and people.58

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Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565–1610 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003). Bamji, Alexandra, Geert Janssen and Mary Laven (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the CounterReformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Barkey, Karen, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Bevilacqua, Alexander and Helen Pfeifer, ‘Turquerie: Culture in Motion, 1650–1750’, Past & Present 221 (2013): 75–118. Bleichmar, Daniela, and Meredith Martin (eds.), ‘Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World’, special issue of Art History 38.4 (2015). Brown, Bill, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry 281 (2001): 1–22. Brundin, Abigail, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven, The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Are Things “Indifferent”? How Objects Change Our Understanding of Religious History’, German History 34.1, (2016): 88–112. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Natasha Eaton, Michael Ann Holly, Amelia Jones, Michael Kelly, Robin Kelsey, Alisa LaGamma, Marth Rosler, Monika Wagner, Oliver Watson and Tristan Weddigen, ‘Notes from the Field: Materiality’, Art Bulletin 95.1 (2013): 11–37. Chipps Smith, Jeffrey, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). Christian Jr., William A., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Clossey, Luke, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Clunas, Craig, ‘Connected Material Histories: A Response’, Modern Asian Studies 50.1 (2016): 61–74. Clunas, Craig, Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644 (London: Reaktion, 2007). Corry, Maya, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven (eds.), Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy (London: Philip Wilson Press, 2017). Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). Duffy, Eamon, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). Editorial statement, Material Religion 1 (March 2005): 4–8. Esch, Arnold, ‘Roman Customs Registers 1470–80: Items of Interest to Historians of Art and Material Culture’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995): 72–87. Evangelisti, Silvia, ‘Material Culture’, in Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen and Mary Laven (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 395–416. Flood, Finbarr B., Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu–Muslim’ Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Gell, Alfred, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Gerritsen, Anne and Giorgio Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2016). Goldthwaite, Richard, Wealth and Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).

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Gosden, Chris and Yvonne Marshall, ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’, World Archaeology 31.2 (1999): 169–78. Grimaldi, Floriano, Argentieri, coronari, medagliari, orafi a Recanati e Loreto (Loreto: Delegazione Pontificia per il Santuario della Santa Casa di Loreto, 2005). Grimaldi, Floriano, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi a Loreto nei secoli XIV–XVIII, suppl. no. 2 of Bollettino Storico della Città di Foligno (2001). Hall, Marcia B. and Tracy E. Cooper (eds.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Hamling, Tara, Decorating the Godly Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). Hamling, Tara and Richard L. Williams (eds.), Art Re-formed: Re-assessing the Impact of the Reformation on the Visual Arts (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007). Harman, Graham, Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010). Heal, Bridget, ‘“Better Papist than Calvinist”: Art and Identity in Later Lutheran Germany’, German History 29.4 (2011): 586–609. Heal, Bridget, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Heal, Bridget, ‘Lutheran Baroque: The Afterlife of a Reformation Altarpiece’, Art History 40.2 (2017): 358–79. Heal, Bridget, ‘Visual and Material Culture’, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 601–20. Houtman, Dick and Birgit Meyer (eds.), Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Ivanič, Suzanna, ‘Amulets and the Material Interface of Beliefs in Seventeenth-Century Prague Burgher Homes’, in Maya Corry, Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Ivanič, Suzanna, ‘Early Modern Religious Objects and Materialities of Belief’, in Tara Hamling, Catherine Richardson and David Gaimster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 322–37. Ivanič, Suzanna, ‘Religious Materiality in Seventeenth-Century Prague’, PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2015. Johnson, Carina L., Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Johnson, Carina L., ‘Stone Gods and Counter-Reformation Idols’, in Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (eds.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 233–47. Keane, Webb, ‘The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s., 14 (2008): 110–27. Keating, Jessica and Lia Markey, ‘“Indian” Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories: A CaseStudy of the Sixteenth-Century Term’, Journal of the History of Collections 23.2 (2011): 283–300. Keen, Michael, Jewish Ritual Art in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1991). Kopytoff, Igor, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91. Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network–Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Laven, Mary, ‘Devotional Objects’, in Victoria Avery, Melissa Calaresu and Mary Laven (eds.), Treasured Possessions: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (London: Philip Wilson Press, 2015), 241–42. Laven, Mary, Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East (London: Faber, 2011). Lehmann, Anne-Sophie, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 62 (2012): 6–27.

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Markey, Lia, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). Meyer, Birgit, Mediation and the Genesis of Presence: Towards a Material Approach to Religion (Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2012). Morgan, David (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge, 2010). Muchnik, Natalia, ‘Judeoconversos and Moriscos in the Diaspora’, in Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (eds.), The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Nora, Pierre ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, in Natalie Zemon Davis and Randolph Starn (eds.), ‘Memory and Counter-Memory’, special issue of Representations 26 (spring 1989): 7–24. Nora, Pierre, (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire, 7 vols. (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1984–92). Olsen, Bjørnar, In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2013). Olson, Roberta, Patricia Reilly and Rupert Shepherd (eds.), ‘The Biography of the Object in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy’, special issue of Renaissance Studies 19.5 (November 2005). Peck, Amelia (ed.), Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013). Pickering, Andrew, ‘Material Culture and the Dance of Agency’, in Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191–208. Prown, Jules David, ‘Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method’, Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1–19; also published in Jules David Prown, Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 69–95. Riello, Giorgio, ‘Global Objects: Contention and Entanglement’, in Maxine Berg (ed.), Writing the History of the Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 177–93. Rublack, Ulinka, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, Past & Present (2013): 41–85. Rublack, Ulinka, Reformation Europe (2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Smith, Pamela H., The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Smith, Pamela H. and Tonny Beentjes, ‘Nature and Art, Making and Knowing: Reconstructing SixteenthCentury Life-Casting Techniques’, Renaissance Quarterly 63.1 (2010): 128–79. Spicer, Andrew ‘The Material Culture of Early Modern Churches’, in Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling and David Gaimster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2017), 82–97. Spicer, Andrew, (ed.), Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Spicer, Andrew, (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Strong, John, ‘“The Devil was in that little bone”: The Portuguese Capture and Destruction of the Buddha’s Tooth-Relic, Goa, 1561’, in Alexandra Walsham (ed.), ‘Relics and Remains’, Past & Present, suppl. no 5 (2010): 184–97. Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Domesticating the Reformation: Material Culture, Memory and Confessional Identity in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Quarterly 69.2 (2016): 566–616. Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Recycling the Sacred: Material Culture and Cultural Memory after the Reformation’, Church History 86.4 (2017): 1121–54. Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Sacred Landscape’, in Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen and Mary Laven (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 203–23. Webster, Susan Verdi, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). Wetter, Evelin, Objekt, Überlieferung und Narrativ: Spätmittelalterliche Goldschmiedekunst im historischen Königreich Ungarn, Studia Jagellonica Lipsiensia 8 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011). Županov, Ines G., Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th Centuries) (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

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About the Authors Suzanna Ivanič is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on religion and material culture in Central Europe and she has published on religious material culture and on travelogues in early modern Bohemia. She is currently working on a monograph on the religious materiality of seventeenth-century Prague. Mary Laven is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. While she has published on many different aspects of religion, her recent work has focused especially on the material culture of devotion. In 2017, she co-curated the exhibition, Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy, at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Andrew Morrall is Professor of Early Modern European Art and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. He has written on the arts and the Reformation, theories of ornament, the material culture of the early modern home, intersections of art and science and on craft and the Kunstkammer. His publications include Jörg Breu the Elder: Art, Culture and Belief in Reformation Augsburg; and (with Melinda Watt)‘Twixt Art and Nature’: English Embroidery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1580–1700.

Part I Meanings

1. Wax versus Wood: The Material of Votive Offerings in Renaissance Italy Mary Laven

Abstract Since antiquity, people have recorded moments of divine intervention in their lives by leaving votive objects at religious shrines. In particular, there is a very long (and ongoing) tradition of offering anatomical models of eyes, ears, breasts, limbs, etc., in recognition of a healing located in a specific part of the body. In Renaissance Italy, anatomical votive objects – usually moulded in wax – remained popular, but they had to compete with several other votive trends, including colourful paintings on wooden boards depicting miracles. This chapter will assess these votive choices and seek to cast light on how materiality affected religious experience during the Italian Renaissance. Keywords: candles; ex-votos; Renaissance; shrines; wax

The dichotomy suggested by my title is a false one. In Renaissance Italy, as elsewhere, many kinds of objects were left at shrines by the faithful who wished to record and give thanks for the graces that they had received. Propped up against a saint’s tomb or heaped around a venerated image one might expect to see sacks of grain, candles, rosaries, strings of coral, crucifixes and – at the more lucrative shrines – an array of reliefs or statuettes wrought in gold and silver. These heteroclite gifts are referred to as ‘votive offerings’ because they were presented, whether explicitly or not, as the fulfilment of a promise or a vow, in Latin ‘ex voto’. While the language of the vow was transactional, gifts were not always weighed in terms of their financial worth. Some offerings derived their value and significance from having been present on the devotee’s body at the moment of the cure or delivery from danger: discarded crutches; a bloodied shirt that had been worn during a near-fatal attack; the handcuffs or shackles from which a captive had escaped. Others represented those moments of miraculous intervention by means of objects or images: the wooden boats that commemorated survival at sea; anatomical models, most commonly made of wax, papier mâché or metal, that referred to the part of the body that had been healed; or painted

Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch01

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votive tablets that depicted both devotee and intercessor within the unfolding scenario of the miracle.1 In this chapter, I limit my discussion to the material choices that lay behind two kinds of ex-voto, the ‘wax’ and ‘wood’ of my title. While they are uneven and inexact categories, the comparative model adopted here serves to focus our attention on the material properties of the votive offerings under discussion. My exploration of ‘wax’ will touch upon a variety of objects: candles for burning, symbolic offerings that recorded the weight or size of the beneficiary, anatomical models and finely crafted effigies. I use ‘wood’ as a shorthand for the votive tablets, often made of poplar, that came into existence in the late fifteenth century and gained rapid popularity in the early sixteenth century. It might be argued that their meaning derives less from the board on which they were painted than from the pigments that went into the formation of each image and its accompanying inscriptions. Moreover, the wooden backing is sometimes covered with paper, glued on to form a cleaner, more responsive surface on which the painter could work. However, by placing these tablets in the category of ‘wood’, I hope to recall their textured materiality and to avoid reducing them to ‘flat things on walls’. Wax offerings and wooden votive tablets present a compelling comparison for several reasons. Firstly, they are the two types of ex-voto most commonly recorded at Italian shrines during the period 1490 to 1600. Secondly, they fit within radically different chronologies: while wax votive objects are of ancient, pagan origin, painted wooden tablets were an invention of the late fifteenth century.2 The arrival of painted wood alongside wax on the votive menu suggests an important moment for interrogating the logic of votive choices anew, all the more so since our two categories offer distinct and alternative modes of representation (the third and most obvious reason for comparison). Contrast, for example, the wax leg and hand that are shown for sale behind the counter of an apothecary’s shop with a surviving wooden tablet that depicts a young man who has fallen from a tree (Plates 1.1 and 1.2). These images clearly work in different ways. The leg and hand aspire to a kind of specificity that is lacking in the painted tablet. While the anatomical models pinpoint the afflicted area of the donor’s body, the tablet fails to identify the nature of the man’s injury. The wax objects may also be deemed to gain power from their resemblance to flesh, a point that is graphically illustrated by the mass of anatomical models assembled at a modern shrine (Fig. 1.1). Cast in a substance that has since antiquity been renowned for its tactility, malleability and fleshlike appearance, they evoke the live body in a way that the crudely painted piece of wood cannot.

1 For a recent and wide-ranging appraisal of votive practices, see Weinryb, ed., Ex Voto. 2 On the pre-Christian origins of wax votives, see Schlosser, ‘History of Portraiture in Wax’, 226; for discussion of the origins of painted votive tablets, see Jacobs, Votive Panels, 5.

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Fig. 1.1. Wax votive offerings. St. Lazarus church in Salvador, Brazil © Photo: Alamy

On the other hand, the wax objects in the apothecary’s shop are anonymous (one detached body part is often indistinguishable from another) and lack a narrative. As their position above the counter makes clear, anatomical votives were often serially produced for the market rather than fashioned to the needs of an individual customer. Each anatomical fragment exists in isolation and there is no attempt to conjure up the spiritual relationship between the donor and the saint. By comparison, the wooden tablet provides far more in the way of context and story. It portrays a whole and potentially recognizable person (with distinctive pleated breeches) experiencing a real-life crisis. And it shows him in the moment of supplication to the Virgin Mary, who is similarly individualized and located as the Madonna of Lonigo, a miraculous image situated in a church in north-east Italy. The distinctive iconography shows the Virgin pointing to her eye and clutching her torso in recollection of the wounds that the image had been dealt in 1486, when a murderous thief got out his knife and slashed at the painting in the wayside shrine.3 While it is true that votive tablets (for example, those depicting a sick man or woman in bed) could also be serially produced, the frequent inclusion of an inscription further suggests the urge to identify people, places and dates (Plate 1.3).4

3 4

Lora et al., eds., Le tavolette votive, 3–4. Laven, ‘Recording Miracles’.

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Alluring as it is, our comparison offers many methodological challenges. The first is the unequal survival of the objects under scrutiny. While candles and anatomical votive objects made of wax rarely survive from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, around 1,500 votive tablets from this period are preserved in collections across the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, documentary evidence is richer for the production of wax ex-votos than for votive tablets. We remain woefully ignorant of the artists and workshops that produced painted ex-votos and of the processes by which individuals purchased or commissioned them. By contrast, the production and sale of wax have been the subjects of a number of excellent studies, thanks to the detailed accounts left by apothecaries’ shops (major purveyors of wax) as well as the records generated by shrines.5 Finally, a well-established thread in the history of art has ensured that the aesthetic and material qualities of wax have received a great deal of scholarly attention, whereas the materials of painted ex-votos have been little considered.6 It is ironic that the less durable material should have attracted the more probing analysis. The tendency among some art historians and theorists to essentialize and universalize the properties of wax may result from the shortage of extant premodern examples. With the help of comparison, this chapter will therefore attempt to give cultural specificity to how Renaissance Italians understood and experienced wax votives and to press harder on the material qualities of votive tablets. In order to cast light on the ongoing popularity of wax as a votive material in the Renaissance, let us turn to a late sixteenth-century account of the offerings left at the shrine of the Blessed Giovannibuono of Mantua. Giovannibuono was an Augustinian hermit who lived between 1168 and 1249 and was beatified by Sixtus IV in 1483. His Life and Miracles were compiled by Costanzo Lodi, a member of the same order, and first published in Bergamo in 1590 in an attempt to whip up support for canonization.7 As is typical of the genre, the book begins with a biography of the saint before listing the miracles that he performed during his life and after his death. The accounts of Giovannibuono’s posthumous miracles frequently include a note of the ex-voto that was left at the shrine. It should be noted that the Life does not read as a historical record. The names of the local people said to have benefited from the intervention of Giovannibuono suggest at least a dash of fabrication: Signor Buonvicino (Mr. Goodneighbour), Donna Honesta (Mrs. Honest), Buonapace (Goodpeace), Donna Moltobuona (Mrs. Very Good), etc. The descriptions are mostly chronologically unspecific and although we are given to believe that some of them refer back to the first miracles that occurred immediately after the death of Giovannibuono, there is no indication that they are grounded in contemporary documentary evidence. 5 Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament, 352–86; Vincent, Fiat lux, 425–80; Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine, 159–89. 6 For a series of art historical reflections on wax, see Panzanelli, ed., Ephemeral Bodies. See also Daninos, ed., Avere una bella cera. 7 Lodi, Vita et miracoli.

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Nevertheless, Lodi’s account of votive practices is designed to appear plausible in the context of late sixteenth-century northern Italy. In twenty-nine instances, Lodi records the votive offerings of those who had experienced miracles thanks to Giovannibuono’s posthumous interventions. Twenty-two of these are material gifts of wax, left by his tomb at the shrine of Sant’Agnese on the outskirts of Mantua. The remaining seven mostly record devotional rather than material offerings: for example, the promise to go on pilgrimage or to fast if the miracle is granted. One refers vaguely to ‘important gifts, according to the quality and wealth’ of the donor, another to a quantity of grain ‘of the weight’ of the beneficiary, a third tells of how a man cured of lameness left his crutches at the shrine along with a promise to fast. The wax objects that constitute the large majority of votive gifts fall into three main groups: besides the anatomical models (of which there are eleven examples), there are gifts of the length or weight of the beneficiary (ten examples) and candles or torches intended to be lit at the tomb of the saint (eleven examples). As will be clear from the numbers, there is overlap between these three groups. For example, when Giacomino, the baker of the Bishop of Mantua, who suffered from fever, deafness and toothache, vowed to leave at the shrine ‘a wax torch, as long as he was, and as broad as his own head’, he chose a gift that at once represented his own body and illuminated the local saint’s tomb.8 An anatomical model could also be combined with a symbolic measurement, as in the case of a 1-year-old girl called Maria, who had fallen into the fire on a cold winter’s night, burned her face and lost the sight in one eye. In this instance, the vow was made by the little girl’s wet nurse, who had been looking after the child at the time of the accident. The nurse promised Giovannibuono that if Maria regained ‘the clear light of her eye’, she would personally take her to the shrine of Sant’Agnese and offer at the tomb ‘a wax head of the measure of the girl’.9 The third combination in our matrix of waxen offerings (anatomical model plus light) is evident in the gift of Signor Buonvicino, the deaf man who brought a pair of wax ears together with lighted torches and candles to the shrine.10 The emphasis on illumination that emerges from these accounts is particularly fitting in the case of a holy intermediary who appears to have been renowned for helping the blind. Of the eleven anatomical votives listed, eight represent eyes (single, double or featured on a model of a head); there is just one arm and two pairs of ears. Sometimes the desire to illuminate the shrine, however fleetingly, could trump the urge to present a more lasting material representation of the body. Thus the mother of 4-year-old Ottobello, blind in both eyes, went out ‘to buy two wax candles, with the money acquired from her industry and effort, and to offer them at the shrine of the saint’. 8 Ibid., 91. 9 Ibid., 98–99. 10 Ibid., 101–2.

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How do we account for the appeal of wax to people living in a Renaissance city like Mantua? The unique aesthetic qualities of this organic substance have long fascinated historians of art. Among the more recent exponents, Georges Didi-Huberman has been particularly influential in exposing the fundamental and timeless qualities of wax – why it compels and, on occasion, repels us: Wax is the material of all resemblances. Its figurative virtues are so remarkable that it was often considered a prodigious, magical material, almost alive – and disquieting for that very reason […] Yes, wax ‘moves’. […] it gives way almost without resistance before every technique […]: it can be cut like butter with the sculptor’s chisel, or warmed up and easily modeled with the fingers; it flows effortlessly into molds whose volume and texture it adopts with astounding precision […] But still more, wax ‘moves’ in the sense that it ‘upsets’. The unstable material par excellence – if stability is understood as the fixed character of qualities – wax presents a disconcerting multiplicity of physical properties […] Wax ‘moves’: it warms up in my hand, it assumes the temperature of my body, and at that moment becomes capable of involuting before the detail of my fingers, taking my prints, transiting softly, as though biologically, from one form to another. Thus this vegetal material that bees have ‘digested’ in their bodies and in a sense rendered organic, this material nestled against my flesh, becomes like flesh.11

Christine Göttler, on the other hand, takes a more historical approach to establishing what wax meant to early modern people.12 Both classical and biblical knowledge fed into Renaissance understandings: while Plato deployed the metaphor of a wax tablet in his account of the workings of memory, the psalmist described the heart at the point of death ‘like wax melting in the midst of my bowels’ (Psalm 22:14). The use of wax effigies in early modern funerals was thought to emulate the Roman custom of displaying wax busts of ancestors in the home. The mimetic qualities of wax are also evident in a contemporary figurative usage. Referring to the 1612 dictionary, Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, Göttler points to one definition of the word ‘cera’ (wax) as ‘sembianza di volto’, which she glosses as ‘resemblance, likeness in appearance’. This is a slight misreading: the dictionary actually says ‘sembianza, aria di volto’, meaning ‘aspect, facial expression’ or ‘countenance’, as in the expression ‘avere una bella cera’ – ‘to look well’.13 There is thus a linguistic collapse between wax and flesh: just as wax could be used to represent the dead face, so the living face was viewed and evaluated as if it were a piece of wax. Göttler continues her investigation of early modern wax with reference to contemporary art critical discourses. Here she 11 Didi-Huberman, ‘Wax Flesh, Vicious Cycles’, 64–65. 12 Göttler, Last Things, 252–57. 13 This expression is frequently used by Christine of Lorraine in her letters to her daughter, the duchess of Mantua; Lorena, Lettere alla figlia, for example 89, 231, 314.

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draws attention to the high regard in which Giorgio Vasari held wax, a medium capable of softness and ductility, which he expressly contrasted with wood.14 On to Göttler’s web of Renaissance ideas we must surely add the devotional significance of wax. Here, an obvious text presents itself: Vincenzo Bonardo’s 1586 treatise on the sacramentals known as Agnus Dei.15 These were discs of wax impressed with the image of the Lamb of God, produced in Rome, blessed by the pope and distributed to pilgrims. The origins of the custom are vague but – according to Bonardo – ancient. He claimed that an Agnus Dei, mounted in gold and dating back to the year 400, had been found in the jewel box of an early Christian whose house was excavated in Rome in 1544.16 The frequent appearance of Agnus Dei in Italian Renaissance inventories suggests that they were prized devotional objects among the laity in the period in which Bonardo was writing.17 For Bonardo, their appeal undoubtedly lay in their medium, which he considered in highly symbolic terms: For wax (says Saint Gregory) signifies the humanity of Christ, which is wholly candid and pure, as that which was always without sin. And the honey that stays within the wax (says the same) represents the Divinity of the Word in our humanity, assumed by him. Moreover, just as the bee […] makes the honey and the wax and produces its offspring without being inflamed by any libidinous heat, so the glorious Virgin […] without human help, by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, produced this precious honeycomb that is Christ.18

In some indirect way, the heavy associations of purity and devotion with which wax was invested would no doubt have played in favour of it as a votive material. But I am less convinced that the writings of Greek philosophers or Renaissance art critics or the pious reflections of Gregory the Great conditioned the votive choices of Renaissance consumers who left wax offerings at a shrine like that of Giovannibuono of Mantua. In order to get beyond Didi-Huberman’s observations on the timeless power of wax, we need to gain more contextual purchase on the act of offering this substance in its varying forms. A more social historical perspective focuses on the availability of wax. Here, JeanPierre Bénézet’s magisterial study of pharmacy in the late medieval and early modern periods is an invaluable resource. Through detailed study of shop records across the western Mediterranean, he informs us that, by the fourteenth century, apothecaries had entered the market for producing wax ex-votos. Previously, he surmises, these objects were likely to have been home-made. Given that pharmacies had long been 14 Göttler, Last Things, 255. 15 Bonardo, Discorso. 16 Ibid., 17. 17 Galandra Cooper, ‘Agnus Dei’; Galandra Cooper, ‘Investigating the “Case” of the Agnus Dei’. 18 Bonardo, Discorso, 23.

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involved in the making of candles, the shift to producing wax ex-votos was easily effected. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, apothecaries continued to make ex-votos, liturgical candles and lights for chandeliers. In the seventeenth century, according to Bénézet, they abandoned these activities in order to focus on ‘medicine’. The centrality of wax within the apothecary’s trade up to this point is easily explained. Before the arrival of Sicilian sugar, honey was one of the principal syrups used in pharmacy; moreover, large amounts of wax were used in the medicinal and cosmetic ointments sold by the apothecary. While they profited from the double production of bees, apothecaries nevertheless found themselves with more wax than could be used in pharmaceutical products, so they diversified by manufacturing candles and ex-votos.19 Records from central Italy bear out Bénézet’s observations. In their study of the Florentine apothecary’s shop, the Giglio, James Shaw and Evelyn Welch have shown that wax accounted for 28% per cent of retail sales in the late fifteenth century.20 Profits from wax peaked when bumper quantities of candles, torches and tapers were purchased on the occasion of high-status funerals.21 While the Giglio did not specialize in the production of wax votives, it did a considerable trade in selling candles to the sacristy of Sant’Ambrogio, which were in turn purchased by pilgrims to the shrine. By such economic arrangements, close connections developed between apothecaries and religious sites.22 Although Shaw and Welch emphasize that medicines accounted for the largest portion of sales at the Giglio, devotional goods may sometimes have outstripped pharmaceutical ones. A stall-keeper called Lorenzo di Marco, who traded at Loreto in the mid-fifteenth century, was described in the post-mortem inventory of his goods as aromatarius, the Latin word for apothecary.23 However, the mainstay of his trade was in objects of religious significance. Among his stock are listed numerous templates and moulds for producing representations of the Virgin Mary, on paper, wood or metal; stamps for imprinting images of the Lamb of God, angels and saints; drawers full of unstrung rosary beads, crucifixes made of glass and small tin reliefs of the Madonna; torches and candles; wax images of the Virgin, Christ and the saints; and moulds for making anatomical votive models. Crucially, Lorenzo di Marco also kept bees.

19 Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament, 353–54. 20 Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine, 159. 21 Ibid., 164. In 1596, in Tolentino in the papal states, Clement VIII was forced to intervene when noblewoman Vittoria Maruta was sued by local apothecaries Antonio Pellegrino and his colleague Giuseppe for failure to pay the hefty bill for candles supplied for the funeral of her father Giovanni Maruta; ASM, Tribunale della Rota di Macerata, col. 3192, Tolentino 1591–97, fols. 56–85. 22 Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine, 167. 23 ASM, Notarile di Recanati, 116, fols. 209–214; partially transcribed by Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 490–91, discussed by Grimaldi on 471.

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Whether at city-centre apothecary shops, like the Giglio, or at stalls situated next to shrines, like that run by Lorenzo, wax was plentiful and easy to purchase in the Renaissance.24 At some shrines, the sale of wax was presided over by the resident religious community.25 In Loreto, during the sixteenth century, the pilgrim who wished to purchase candles or votive objects could go either to the ‘bottega di cera’ (wax shop) or to the ‘spezieria’ (pharmacy), both of which were regulated by the shrine.26 Alternatively, one could commission wax votive objects from artists’ workshops. In Florence, the Benintendi family, also known as the ‘Fallimagini’ (literally, ‘image-makers’), were famous for producing wax ex-votos, including the extraordinary life-size effigies – multimedia confections, involving cloth and paper as well as wax moulded onto a wooden framework – with which the church of the Santissima Annunziata was crammed.27 But the widespread availability of wax products did not imply that they came cheap. Shaw and Welch suggest that, in the late fifteenth century, the retail price for yellow wax was around 14 soldi per pound, whereas the more refined white wax, favoured for devotional purposes, cost about 18 to 20 soldi per pound – around seven times as expensive as a pound of sausages in the same period.28 More precise figures may be found in the records of the Bassano workshop, situated close to the great bridge in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto. Among a wide range of paintings and furnishings, a number of painted and gilded wax items are listed in the accounts. These include torches and tapers, some of which may have been destined for devotional use: for example, ‘a torch with the Salamon arms’ (5 soldi); ‘a torch with St. Mark, the cross and leaves’ (16 soldi); and ‘two wax torches, made, cut, painted, gilded and silvered’, sold in 1542 for the considerable sum of 49 lire and 12 soldi. (There were 20 soldi in 1 lira). In among the list of wax goods purveyed by the Bassano, we find two votive items: ‘a Madonna with a little boy, kneeling, [depicted] on a torch, for a voto’ (4 soldi) and ‘2 feet, made of wax, gilded’ (10 lire).29 In the absence of information regarding their size, quality and function, it is hard to envisage these items. However, the second example indicates that anatomical votives made of wax could be lavish artefacts, especially if ornamented with gilding.

24 We know, for example, that wax production was well-established in Mantua at the time that Giovannibuono’s Life and Miracles were published in 1590; Grendler, University of Mantua, 5. 25 For example, at Santa Maria della Quercia in Viterbo, Lazio, the wax workshop, established in 1468, was supervised by the Dominicans following their arrival at the shrine in 1497 (Tripputi, ed., PGR Per grazia ricevuta, 25); at Madonna dei Miracoli in Lonigo, in the Veneto, the resident Olivetan monks ran two shops ‘for the sale of candles, statues and other wax’ (Lora et al., eds., Le tavolette votive, 22). 26 ASC, Loreto, Bottega della cera, cerarolo e corrispondenza, 1544–1726; Inventari dell’amministrazione, spezieria, 1549–1791. 27 Panzanelli, ‘Compelling Presence’; Holmes, ‘Ex-votos’, esp. 168–81. 28 Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine, 168. For comparative prices, see Tognetti, ‘Prezzi e salari’. 29 Muraro, Pittura e società, 149.

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The Bassano records also provide a rare documentary glimpse of a wooden ex-voto, listed in 1551 as ‘tolela de un miracolo’ (tablet of a miracle) and priced at 16 soldi, four times as expensive as a votive torch but roughly twelve times cheaper than a richly ornamented pair of wax feet.30 This fragmentary record suggests that, rather than being produced in specialist workshops, wood and wax votives could be created in the same craft space.31 Indeed, the appearance of a votive tablet among a wide range of other painted decorative items (for example, coats of arms, shop signs, frames, painted doors and shutters) further alerts us to the fluidity of production and reminds us that even a renowned artist’s workshop did not only produce ‘flat things on walls’. So why did the Italian public, in the late fifteenth century, develop a taste for painted tablets, which were – if not two-dimensional – nevertheless flatter than the sculpted and moulded images that had proved so popular up to this point and which continued to prevail at many shrines? The reasons behind the rise of painted votive tablets have recently been a matter for speculation. 32 The comparative volume Ex Voto, edited by Ittai Weinryb, includes three essays written by historians of art, each of whom advances the argument in a complementary way. The medievalist Michele Bacci addresses the back history of painted ex-votos: in common with others, he identifies the predella panel as a visual forerunner to the votive tablet but he also points to wall paintings of saints in which the donor was depicted and to the importance of the portrait (a distinguishing feature of the votive tablet) as a ‘means of devotional expression’. Bacci further proposes a distinction between wax votives as anticipatory offerings, given in hope of a grace, and wooden tablets as gifts that recorded and gave thanks for a miracle received.33 Megan Holmes, meanwhile, draws attention to the problematic associations of three-dimensional ex-votos with ‘profane’, pagan traditions and argues for the role of painted tablets in Christianizing votive practices.34 Finally, Fredrika Jacobs emphasizes the ‘predilection for a humble style’ that encouraged the emergence of painted ex-votos and their proliferation in the sixteenth century.35 The attempt to link the rise of wooden painted ex-votos to both visual and devotional developments of the period is a welcome shift from the insistence of earlier scholars on the perennial qualities of ex-votos.36 Jacobs’ essay is particularly relevant to the current discussion in that she engages expressly with ‘the matter of choice’.37 The majority of votive tablets were painted in tempera on panels cut from local wood. In keeping with trends in the wider art world 30 Ibid., 150. 31 Thomas, Painter’s Practice, 62, warns against assuming the specificity of artistic activity. 32 Jacobs, Votive Panels, 66–79; Laven, ‘Recording Miracles’, 193–94. 33 Bacci, ‘Italian ex-votos’, 79–80. 34 Holmes, ‘Renaissance Perspectives’. 35 Jacobs, ‘Humble Offerings’. 36 See, for example, the generalizing remarks of Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck, quoted by Freedberg, in Power of Images, 153, and of Didi-Huberman, Ex-voto, 7. 37 Jacobs, ‘Humble Offerings’, 145.

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in the sixteenth century, oil-based pigments were sometimes favoured; at the same time, ex-votos painted on paper and linen started to appear. Nevertheless, wood and tempera remained the dominant media. Moreover, Jacobs insists that, while the range in skill displayed by the makers of votive tablets was extremely broad, even the most finely painted examples remain ‘modest’ images. The tendency to paint on raw wood meant that the paint flaked and the panels often warped and split. Jacobs concludes that ‘a disregard for durability’ accompanied the preference for ‘a humble style’.38 But if the embrace of simplicity may be situated within contemporary devotional trends, this was not a straightforward chronological development. Indeed, one has to acknowledge that the very opposite may be charted at a shrine like Loreto, where the sixteenth-century records of votive gifts – including numerous gold and silver items often studded with precious gems – read rather like the inventories of a jeweller’s shop.39 Nor were wooden painted ex-votos the most ephemeral option. Wax was notoriously fragile and – in contradiction of Jacobs’ argument – Megan Holmes goes so far as to suggest that the rise of votive tablets was partly owing to their status as ‘a more enduring form of offering’.40 Another tack, pursued by both Bacci and Jacobs, is to emphasize the ‘narrative character’ of votive tablets as the defining feature that separates them from the figurative ex-votos of previous times.41 This distinction is strongly suggested by the language of contemporary miracle texts. In his 1593 account of sixty-three miracles brought about thanks to the intervention of the miraculous image of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, Luca Ferrini assiduously notes the votive objects left at the shrine.42 These begin in 1252 with the shrine’s foundation miracle and continue until the moment of writing when Ferrini reports his own miraculous cure from fever. Prior to the sixteenth century, the votive offerings are described as ‘images’, sometimes specifically noted as being made of wax: for example, miracle 11 tells the tale of a princess, ‘who came to visit the holy Temple [of the Annunziata] and placed there a large wax image of herself’. This no doubt referred to one of the life-size effigies for which the shrine was famous. The first painted tablet is documented in Ferrini’s text in 1523 and, from this point on, a total of fourteen votive tablets are noted, interspersed with silver and wax images. On several occasions, Ferrini uses the verb ‘to narrate’ (‘narrare’) in describing the painted tablets – a verb that never occurs in his account of wax and silver images. For example, in recounting the story of the son of Scaramuccia Zinghero, whose son was brought back to life, Ferrini remarks that ‘having received this grace’ from the Santissima Annunziata, the boy’s parents went

38 Ibid., 152–56. 39 ASC, Loreto; Registri dei doni, 1540–57 and 1576–99. 40 Holmes, ‘Renaissance Perspectives, 123. 41 Bacci, ‘Italian Ex-votos’, 78. See also Jacobs, Votive Panels, esp. 127. 42 Ferrini, Coróna di sessanta tre Miracoli.

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to the shrine and left there ‘a tablet on which was painted the narrated miracle’.43 Likewise, when in 1582 Leonardo da Massa di Carrara was miraculously cured of his disabilities, ‘he had made a Tablet, which narrated the aforesaid miracle’.44 In other examples the tablet is said to depict ‘the formerly described’ or ‘declared’ miracle or to ‘explicate’ it.45 Narration, description, declaration, explication: these words confirm our sense that the wooden tablets offer a particular kind of representation, quite different from that of the wax images and more akin to the written or spoken word. Ferrini’s emphasis on the narrative qualities of painted wooden ex-votos in a book that is itself a rich repository of stories is no coincidence. The proliferation of printed miracle books during this period stoked the demand for narrative that the new genre of painted ex-votos aimed to satisfy.46 We should, however, avoid concluding that wax ex-votos were somehow more material than their painted wood counterparts or that the power of votive tablets lay in their immaterial properties. Clearly, the process of carrying to the shrine a roughly hewn piece of wood, typically around 28 × 23 centimetres in surface size and 2 or 3 centimetres thick, was an embodied experience.47 We should not forget that wood bore a particular devotional significance as the material of the cross on which Christ had died.48 Pigments also conveyed particular symbolisms and significances.49 The palette available to artists and their clients in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was more varied than ever before. In Venice, we find the first mention of vendecolori (traders in pigments) in the 1490s, a linguistic development that reflected the emergence of a new profession specifically focused on meeting the demand for colour.50 The pigments deployed in ex-votos ranged from expensive imported or insect-based dyes to cheaper earth- and lead-based colours.51 In Plate 1.3, the use of red (perhaps a mixture of vermilion and red lead, overlaid with kermes) creates powerful connections between the cheeks and lips of the sick child and of the saint, the coat of arms of his family and the sun that was the emblem of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, as well as ensuring that the viewer’s gaze focused on the bed, the site of the miracle. Finally, the material impact of wooden ex-votos (as with their waxen counterparts) should not be considered in isolation but rather in the context of their display. The position of a wooden tablet, first placed by the devotee on a heap by the miraculous image or tomb of the dead saint, then moved by the custodians of the shrine to take its place on a wall of tablets, ensured its contribution to a visual 43 Ferrini, Coróna di sessanta tre Miracoli, fol. 63v. 44 Ibid., fol. 74v. 45 Ibid., fols. 76v, 57r and 93v. Jacobs, Votive Panels, 28. 46 Laven, ‘Recording Miracles’. 47 For typical measurements, see Gatta et al., eds., Per Grazia Ricevuta, 7–14. 48 Sarnecka, ‘Materials and their Meanings’; Sarnecka, ‘Monteripido’. 49 Bucklow, Alchemy of Paint; Bucklow, Red. 50 Matthew, ‘Vendecolori a Venezia’. 51 Kirby, ‘Price of Quality’; Bucklow, ‘Trade in Colours’.

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mosaic of stories. This narrative quality of votive tablets was part of their materiality. As the French diarist and essayist Michel de Montaigne observed upon visiting the great sanctuary at Loreto: ‘All this great church is covered with tablets, paintings, and stories.’52 The stories were material, tangible, physically present upon the walls of the church. *** The comparison that we have undertaken between wax and wood resists several dichotomies: we cannot say that one or other substance was cheaper; ephemerality was a shared characteristic; both aimed to represent the self, albeit in different ways.53 Moreover, the distinction that is sometimes assumed to exist between wax votives as anticipatory offerings and wooden tablets as retrospective gifts is undermined by the evidence of printed miracle books; these suggest that, by the end of the sixteenth century at least, both wax and wood were deposited at shrines in gratitude for miracles past. Rather than seeking the essential qualities of wax and wood, we need instead to consider them as interactive and dynamic. Ex-votos were performative objects; they derived their power from deployment and display. The materiality of wooden ex-votos has been seen to reside not only in their media but also in their ability to speak to us from the church walls – to narrate the stories of the miracles that they describe. Meanwhile, the power of wax – as Didi-Huberman recognized – derived from its mutability, its capacity to move. Yet we must understand its instability and motion not as timeless qualities but as culturally conditioned by contemporary practices of consumption and by the rituals of the Italian Renaissance shrine. The author of the Life and Miracles of Giovannibuono concludes his account of the saint’s posthumous miracles with the story of the ‘extinguished wax reignited’ (‘in cereo spento acceso’).54 The miraculous events occurred on the feast of Pentecost, shortly after the translation of the body of Giovannibuono to its resting-place at the church of Sant’Agnese. The children of the city of Mantua, determined to honour their local saint, had procured ‘a most beautiful and ornate cereo’, surrounded by lit candles, which they carried in procession to his holy tomb. The text provides little descriptive detail but we can envisage a giant decorative tower of candles, possibly gilded or painted and mounted on wood, of the kind that might have been produced in the Bassano workshop. In any case, much to the horror of both the children and the assembled crowd, when the procession drew near to the church, ‘in one moment, all the candles blew out’. Given the height of the candles, it proved impossible to re-light them. And so – mortified by their failure to honour their local saint – the 52 Montaigne, Travel Journal, 108. 53 Bynum has argued that anatomical wax ex-votos functioned ‘not merely as thanksgiving gifts or symbols of a miraculous event but as something of the healed self offered back to God’ (Christian Materiality, 112); Michele Bacci, on the other hand, places votive tablets in the tradition of ‘pro-anima’ images, in which coatsof-arms, inscriptions and portraits visualized the self (Bacci, ‘Italian Ex-votos’, esp. 98–101). 54 Lodi, Vita et miracoli, 137–38.

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children continued their procession sheepishly to the door of the church. The miracle occurred upon crossing the threshold, when at that very moment, all the candles ‘re-lit themselves’: a fitting miracle for Pentecost, the feast of the Christian church on which the Holy Spirit was imagined to enter the souls of the apostles, like ‘tongues of fire’ (Acts 2). In common with this large and combustible wax offering, the material efficacy of ex-votos lay not in their essential properties but in their active relationship with the devout.55

Bibliography Primary Sources Bonardo, Vincenzo, Discorso intorno all’ origine, antichità et virtù de gli ‘Agnus Dei’ di cera benedetti (Rome: V. Accolti, 1586). Ferrini, Luca, Coróna di sessanta tre Miracoli della nunziata di Firenze scritti à honore e reverenza di sessanta tre Anni, che visse la Beata Vergine in questo Mondo (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1593). Lodi, Costanzo, Vita et miracoli del beato Giovannibuono Mantoano, eremita agostiniano Morto già Trecento & quarantadue anni sono (Bergamo: Comino Ventura, 1590). Montaigne, Michel de, Travel Journal, trans. and ed. Donald M. Frame (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1983).

Secondary Sources Bacci, Michele, ‘Italian Ex-votos and “Pro-anima” Images in the Late Middle Ages’, in Ittai Weinryb (ed.), Ex Voto: Votive Giving across Cultures (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016), 76–105. Bénézet, Jean-Pierre, Pharmacie et médicament en Méditerranée occidentale (XIIIe–XVIe siècles) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999). Bucklow, Spike, The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages (London: Marion Boyars, 2009). Bucklow, Spike, Red: The Art and Science of a Colour (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). Bucklow, Spike, ‘The Trade in Colours’, in Stella Panayotova (ed.), Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Harvey Miller; Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 59–65. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), Daninos, Andrea (ed.), Avere una bella cera: le figure in cera a Venezia e in Italia (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012). Didi-Huberman, Georges, Ex-voto: image, organe, temps (Paris: Bayard, 2006). Didi-Huberman, Georges, ‘Wax Flesh, Vicious Cycles’, in Georges Didi-Hubermann, Monika von Düring et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia Anatomica: A Collection of Anatomical Waxes (Cologne: Taschen, 1999), 64–74.

55 This chapter draws on research conducted during two research projects: the first a Major Research Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust, ‘Objects of Devotion in Renaissance Italy’; the second funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Cambridge, ‘Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Renaissance Italian Home, 1400–1600’ (grant agreement no. 319475), directed by Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven. In researching and writing about this subject, I have profited immensely from conversations with Alexandra Bamji, Spike Bucklow, Irene Galandra Cooper, Zuzanna Sarnecka, Jason Scott-Warren and James Shaw.

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Freedberg, David, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Galandra Cooper, Irene, ‘Agnus Dei’, in Maya Corry, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven (eds.), Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Household in Renaissance Italy (London: Philip Wilson Press, 2017), 123–25. Galandra Cooper, Irene, ‘Investigating the “Case” of the Agnus Dei in Sixteenth-Century Italian Homes’, in Maya Corry, Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 220–43. Gatta, Annalisa, Maria Giannatiempo López and Stefano Papetti (eds.), Per Grazia Ricevuta: gli ex voto del Museo di San Nicola a Tolentino (Tolentino: Biblioteca Egidiana, 2005). Göttler, Christine, Last Things: Art and the Religious Imagination in the Age of Reform (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). Grendler, Paul, The University of Mantua: The Gonzaga and the Jesuits, 1584–1630 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Grimaldi, Floriano, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi a Loreto nei secoli XIV–XVIII, suppl. 2 of the Bollettino Storico della Città di Foligno (2001). Holmes, Megan, ‘Ex-votos: Materiality, Memory and Cult’, in Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach (eds.), The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 159–81. Holmes, Megan, ‘Renaissance Perspectives on Classical Antique Votive Practices’, in Itttai Weinryb (ed.), Ex Voto: Votive Giving across Cultures (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016), 106–39. Jacobs, Fredrika, ‘Humble Offerings: Votive Panel Paintings in Renaissance Italy’, in Ittai Weinryb (ed.), Ex Voto: Votive Giving across Cultures (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016), 140–65. Jacobs, Fredrika, Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Kirby, Jo, ‘The Price of Quality: Factors Influencing the Cost of Pigments during the Renaissance’, in Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd (eds.), Revaluing Renaissance Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 19–39. Laven, Mary, ‘Recording Miracles in Renaissance Italy’, Past & Present 230, suppl. 11 (2016): 191–212. Lora, Antonio, Guerrino Maccagnan et al. (eds.), Le tavolette votive della Madonna dei Miracoli di Lonigo (Lonigo: Museo degli Ex Voto Madonna dei Miracoli, 2005). Lorena, Cristina, Lettere alla figlia Caterina de’ Medici Gonzaga duchessa di Mantova (1617–1629), ed. Beatrice Biagioli and Elisabetta Stumpo (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2015). Matthew, Louisa C., ‘“Vendecolori a Venezia”: The Reconstruction of a Profession’, Burlington Magazine 144 (2002): 680–86. Muraro, Michelangelo, Pittura e società: il libro dei conti e la bottega dei Bassano (Padua: Università di Padova, 1982–83). Panzanelli, Roberta, ‘Compelling Presence: Wax effigies in Renaissance Florence’, in Roberta Panzanelli (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 13–39. Panzanelli, Roberta (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008). Sarnecka, Zuzanna, ‘Materials and their Meanings’, in Maya Corry, Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 76–79. Sarnecka, Zuzanna, ‘Monteripido and the Identity of Wooden Crucifixes in the Culture of Fifteenth-Century Umbria’, Arte Medievale 4 (2014): 209–30. Schlosser, Julius von, ‘History of Portraiture in Wax’ [‘Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs’, 1910–11], in Roberta Panzanelli (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 175–303. Shaw, James and Evelyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011). Thomas, Annabel, The Painter’s Practice in Renaissance Tuscany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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Tognetti, Sergio, ‘Prezzi e salari nella Firenze tardomedievale: un profilo’, Archivio Storico Italiano 153.2 (1995): 263–333. Tripputi, Anna Maria (ed.), PGR Per Grazia Ricevuta (Bari: Malagrinò, 2002). Vincent, Catherine, Fiat lux: lumière et luminaires dans la vie religieuse du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2004). Weinryb, Ittai (ed.), Ex Voto: Votive Giving across Cultures (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016).

About the Author Mary Laven is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. While she has published on many different aspects of religion, her recent work has focused especially on the material culture of devotion. In 2017, she co-curated the exhibition, Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy, at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

2. The Substance of Divine Grace: Ex-votos and the Material of Paper in Early Modern Italy Maria Alessandra Chessa

Abstract Devotion in Renaissance Italy consisted of certain practices and beliefs that have eluded historical investigation. As an expression of the intimate bond between devotees and the divinity, anatomical ex-votos represent the most captivating case, and continue to provoke wonder, suspicion and morbid curiosity by turns. Although occasionally documented in Tuscan sanctuaries, paper ex-votos have never aroused the interest of scholars. This contribution will explore the extraordinary surviving collection of 5,000 paper ex-votos still hung after centuries on the walls of the Romituzzo, a sixteenth-century rural sanctuary near Siena, and enhance our understanding of this distinctive expression of devotion. Keywords: ex-voto; paper; Renaissance Italy; Tuscany; wax

In his vivid account of the artist Ludovico Cigoli, the Florentine biographer Baldinucci left a curious anecdote to posterity: They say of him that, when walking up to the Annunziata church, he never passed through Via dei Servi, but rather diverted his route to the Castellaccio expressly to sidestep the accumulation of ex-votos made of cartone1 on display outside the workshops there. Because, he said, even catching a glimpse of those clumsy and repellent limbs of human bodies, hands, legs, heads and arms confused his inspiration and disturbed his thoughts.2 1 The term cartone, as will be discussed later in the chapter, refers to a thick paper obtained by pasting together several sheets in layers. For a brief definition of the technique from a contemporary source see Borghini, Il riposo, 140. 2 Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori, 42: ‘raccontano di lui che nell’andare, che e’ faceva alla Santiss[ima] Nonziata di Firenze, non passava mai per la Via de’ Servi, ma voltava al Canto detto del Castellaccio, solamente per non vedere la quantità de’ Boti di cartone, che in essa Via stanno esposti in su le Botteghe alla vendita; perché diceva, che il solo vedere quelle goffe, e sconcertate parti del corpo umano, come teste, braccia, gambe, ed altre simili, gli alteravano l’Idee, e confondevangli la fantasia’. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch02

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The account of Cigoli’s behaviour must have sounded familiar to contemporary readers who knew the centre of Florence and the busy walkway that takes pedestrians from the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata. The Annunziata was an extremely popular attraction. Worshippers, votaries and pilgrims came from near and far to visit the Marian sanctuary. While some came to leave an object reflecting their personal gratitude for having received a cure or rescue as a sign of divine grace, others came simply to admire the amazing display of devotion and gratefulness toward the Virgin: a practice that brought together rulers and poor people, each to bear witness to their own personal miracle. That is indeed what ex-votos were primarily made for. The clumsy accumulation of limbs made out of paper and displayed outside the workshops in Via dei Servi, sketched by Baldinucci, was a direct response to the devotional fervour within the Marian sanctuary. Votaries could apparently purchase there, according to their personal means, an object that epitomized the miraculous event, choosing from among those ready-made limbs of paper on display. The Florentine biographer’s account put into sharp focus the controversial opinion of Cigoli, the self-confident and inspired artist, in contrast to the dominant view of Florentine devotees, who retained their enthusiasm for those moulded anatomical votive figures. The contempt expressed in those few words reflects the conception of art as supreme authenticity – a view that, as Didi-Huberman has argued, was formulated by Vasari and echoed the traditional opposition between liberal and mechanical arts.3 That enduring intellectual framework thus also condemned the study of votive artefacts to a minor subject in the mainstream scholarship of Renaissance Italy. Nevertheless, prominent intellectuals such as Aby Warburg and Julius von Schlosser had earlier shown an interest in the theme. In the studies of Warburg, anatomical ex-votos posed questions about the origins of the Italian Renaissance’s visual culture.4 Meanwhile Schlosser paid pioneering attention to the substance of wax as a material used in portraits and ex-votos.5 This chapter aspires to continue this trajectory by extending knowledge of a specific category of anatomical ex-votos: those made of paper. It will examine the potential meanings of these artefacts from the perspective of their constituent material and, through that, consider the application of paper as a devotional medium in a broader sense. My argument will be that paper was an extremely versatile material, favoured on account of its protean nature, which endowed objects made from it with unforeseen layers of meaning. A 1630 reference to the votive artefacts inside the Basilica dell’Annunziata is well known to scholarship.6 It was penned just before ex-votos were moved from the church into the atrium where they were displayed until their complete removal in 3 Didi-Huberman, La somiglianza per contatto, 19. 4 Warburg, ‘Art of Portraiture’, 189–90. 5 Schlosser, ‘Geschichte’. 6 Andreucci, Il Fiorentino, 249.

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the eighteenth century.7 The document indicates that, of all the different types of ex-voto, paper ones were most common: an astonishing 22,000 pieces were noted, far more than the 600 life-size wax figures, 3,600 illustrated tablets and other small anatomical forms in various materials, such as wax and silver. Nevertheless, despite their abundant presence at Renaissance shrines, paper ex-votos – the humblest votive artefacts on the market –have received meagre attention from scholars, in comparison with their wax counterparts. Nor is it easy to trace an accurate map of their diffusion. Maybe because of their limited value and because they could not be melted down and reused, as often happened with silver and wax artefacts, contemporary references are scant. Unexpectedly, written sources from the eighteenth century provide some clues as to the extent of their presence in earlier periods. These often refer to paper ex-votos only because of their imminent or recent removal from sanctuaries and shrines. From those references it is possible to infer that by then the paper ex-voto tradition had started to fall into decline.8 The sources mentioning paper ex-votos attest to their presence mainly around and within Florence, though they certainly existed elsewhere in the peninsula. Within Florence, paper ex-votos were not restricted to the large collection in the sanctuary of the Santissima Annunziata; they could also be seen displayed in the church of Santa Maria de’ Pazzi and the Basilica del Carmine.9 Within a few miles of Florence, paper ex-votos were present in the sanctuaries of the Mugello10 and Casentino areas,11 in Bibbiena, Scarperia and Borgo San Lorenzo.12 The practice is traceable to the rest of Tuscany too: in the church of San Vincenzo in Prato,13 the Collegiata in Empoli,14 in the remote village of Seggiano on Mount Amiata;15 and further afield near Viterbo, in the popular sanctuary of the Madonna della Quercia.16 Finally there were remote examples in the San Lazzaro church in Capua (north of Naples)17 and the Virgin’s Sanctuary of Tirano,18 on the Lombardy border next to Switzerland. It is reasonable to believe that the practice extended beyond the areas indicated. Regrettably, in spite of such a large diffusion, their limited monetary value, along with the perishability of the material and the slow decline of the practice, has led to their extensive disappearance. 7 Ibid., 87–88. 8 On the early opposition of church hierarchies to the practice and related accusations of idolatry see Holmes, ‘Ex-votos’, 160, 167. See also Jacobs, Votive Panels, 163–70. The custom never really came to an end and is still practised today. 9 Vita e ratti di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, 854; Cristofani, Vita di Santa Andrea Corsini, 32. 10 Breve ragguaglio, 14. 11 Fornasari, Seicento in Casentino, 64. 12 Brocchi, Descrizione, 84. 13 Sandrini, Vita di Santa Caterina de’ Ricci, 274–75. 14 Compagnia di Sant’Andrea, Notizie intorno all’antica e miracolosa, 27. 15 Lorena, Relazioni sul governo della Toscana, 606. 16 Pivati, Nuovo dizionario, 414. 17 Jannotta, Notizie storiche, 67. 18 Vergerio, Delle commissioni et facultà, fol. 160r.

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Considering that substantial loss, a unique collection of ex-votos made of paper stands out as a surprising case of survival, barely noticed by scholars.19 About 5,000 paper artefacts still hang on the internal walls of a small Tuscan sanctuary, where they have remained over the centuries (Plate 2.1). ‘Romituzzo’ means small hermitage and this was the original function of the shrine. Its location was once rural, though today it lies in the suburb of the town of Poggibonsi, near Siena. The devotional cult in the area dates back to the fourteenth century, when a group of women hermits established their own abode there. Later on a devotee placed a picture of the Virgin and Child in a niche next to the retreat. The picture of the Madonna della Neve became a centre for the fervent devotion of the small local community until the middle of the sixteenth century. A church was already built when its popularity and cult started to spread beyond the surrounding rural area bringing new votaries to the sanctuary.20 Research in the local archives unfortunately has not led to the identification of the workshops that produced these articles. It seems that the artisans who made paper ex-votos were little appreciated. An early eighteenth-century source still recalled that ex-voto-makers, and in particular those making votive effigies out of paper, were generally considered mediocre and called ‘painters of wooden stools’, and this may be why inventories often neglected to mention these artefacts.21 The collection of votive artefacts in the Romituzzo is an assortment of different types gathered over the course of time. There are a small number of illustrated tablets, a few more recent silver hearts, and a substantial number of anatomical paper ex-votos. The jumble of anatomical shapes consists of legs, arms, hands, feet, chests, heads and full body figures in three-dimensional form and various sizes (Plate 2.2).22 Their date is not always easy to assess. Possibly only a small number of them survived a fire in 1631, according to a nineteenth-century source.23 However, from some fashion details such as ruffs or haircuts, it is possible to estimate a period of time mostly spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were all made with the same humble technique mentioned in Baldinucci’s account as cartone.24 It consisted of pasting several layers of glue-soaked paper and pressing them into plaster moulds until dried. The technique was simple and moderately inexpensive, given that the stock material used for making them was scrap 19 The only publication on the collection of ex-votos in the Romituzzo is a booklet printed on the occasion of a small exhibition put on by the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le provincie di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo; Guiducci, ed., Gli ex-voto del Romituzzo. 20 Costantini, Il Santuario di Romituzzo. 21 Lippi, Il malmantile, 770. 22 From old photographs it is possible to see that the sanctuary once held some full-size figures apparently also made of paper. Today unfortunately those artefacts have been lost but they appear to have been similar to the votive effigies of Santa Maria delle Grazie Sanctuary in Mantua; Vaccari, ed., Mira il tuo popolo. For old photographs of the Romituzzo collection, see Guiducci, ed., Gli ex-voto del Romituzzo, 31. 23 Neri, La Madonna del Romituzzo. 24 Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori, 42.

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prints. In some damaged pieces, where the external layers have been lost, it is still possible to see how fragments of prints were randomly pasted to form layers. The survival of the Romituzzo ex-votos may be owing to the remoteness of the shrine or the strength of local devotion. Here, the use of paper is particularly significant as the sanctuary was located just a few kilometres away from Colle Val d’Elsa, an area renowned for being one of the most important hubs for paper making in Tuscany at that time.25 Thus the paper used to make ex-votos could be easily sourced from nearby.26 But this was not just a matter of economic utility: the use of this local substance surely enhanced its significance for devotees. Paper, at that time, was produced in Italy and across western Europe by processing rags from worn textiles: primarily linen and underwear that rag dealers and pedlars actively collected and traded. It is reasonable to believe that many among the votaries of the Romituzzo dealt with paper regularly in different ways. Some would have been directly involved in the local manufacture of paper; others doubtless supplied and collected rags destined for the paper mills from their own communities. Paper, as a by-product of local consumption, was therefore intimately bound to the core and identity of the community itself. Paper ex-votos came to express this deep and close relationship. Seen from this perspective, the substance of paper ex-votos was a most significant constituent of these objects. Paper, produced from the fibre of textile material that was once worn in direct contact with the body, was turned into a receptive artefact that stood in place of the body itself, like its hollow case or an artificial, surrogate skin. The notion of a model standing for a body’s limb is common in recent literature on wax anatomical ex-votos, which has followed the research path initiated by Schlosser on wax portraiture mentioned above. Schlosser’s work, focusing on votive objects, established a pivot for subsequent research on the material of wax and its connotations. Recent studies suggest that the intrinsic features of wax made this material an effective medium for lifelikeness.27 In particular it has been noticed that its highly responsive plasticity determined its aptitude for retaining an accurate impression from a shape through simple contact. Moreover its receptiveness meant that it was responsive to temperature, and even contact with the hand’s warmth resulted in a pleasant pliability that was seen as an organic trait. Finally the colour of wax enhanced the mimetic effect by resembling the hue of living tissue. All of these qualities decreed the appropriateness of wax’s substance for the function of ex-votos not just as mere imitations, but rather as genuine simulacra of the devotee’s limbs.

25 Sabbatini, Di bianco lin candida prole, 42. 26 Guiducci, ed., Gli ex-voto del Romituzzo, 28. 27 The literature on the medium of wax is particularly rich: Didi-Huberman, ‘Wax Flesh, Viscous Circles’; Dacome, ‘Women, Wax and Anatomy’; Panzanelli, ‘Compelling Presence’; Messbarger, Lady Anatomist; Guerzoni, ‘Use and Abuse of Beeswax’.

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Although paper could also be moulded, not all of these qualities of wax are common to both substances. Nevertheless we have seen that paper enjoyed a widespread popularity as a conventional material for ex-votos. One might argue that paper represented a compromise for votaries who could not afford the cost of wax artefacts.28 However, in light of the intense significance afforded the material of wax, it is worth reflecting more deeply on the distinctiveness of paper. Here, it will be argued that the design and rendering of paper ex-votos carried particular meaning. Let us therefore focus in more detail on the processes of production for paper ex-votos. It was not unusual in early modern Italy to see paper in a moulded three-dimensional form. Thanks to its ability to retain a sort of memory of shapes by means of contact and the malleability of fibre mesh, it became the basis for the successful technique of cartapesta (papier mâché).29 Although the cartone technique for making paper ex-votos did not entail the full maceration of paper to reduce fibres into a pulp, as in the cartapesta method, contact played a significant part in the process. Conservators, after a maintenance intervention on the Romituzzo ex-votos twenty years ago, concluded that the votive pieces had been serially produced using moulds.30 That over-simplistic assessment failed to take into account the diversity of the items found in this massive collection. The cartone technique required the use of moulds and many of those artefacts were unquestionably serially produced. However, more careful scrutiny encourages one to wonder whether some objects could have been cast from life models through the direct involvement of votaries, given the small variations in the forms they show. The reliefs of some heads are highly individualized suggesting that they display the likeness of specific people. Moreover, the dimensions of these objects are inconsistent. While small pieces could not have been based on life casts, others are life size. Further research is required to determine whether life-casting was used in the production of some of the ex-votos. Among the variety of ex-votos preserved at the Romituzzo, it is possible to attempt to make some distinctions. While the serial use of a single mould for making many pieces was the easiest and most practical way for shaping paper in the form of body limbs, certain items such as that shown in Figure 2.1 suggest that specific moulds were used for reproducing the limb of a single votary. The distinction is subtle but significant as it confers a sense of personal immanence upon these more individualized objects. The practice of casting carried particular meaning in that it marked the ex-voto with the imprint of the votary’s body. The hypothesis that the life-cast technique was used here links the Romituzzo mementos to the well-known tradition 28 On the overlooked value of wax see Guerzoni, ‘Use and Abuse of Beeswax’, 48–49. 29 Casciaro, ed., La scultura in Cartapesta. 30 Conservation notes produced by the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le provincie di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo.

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Fig. 2.1. Votive hand showing a possible individual moulding technique © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo

of life casting documented in Florentine workshops both among artists and wax-image-makers, for which information remains scant.31 As argued, the correspondence with the original figure generated by the impression of the pliable material enabled ex-votos to act as simulacra.32 That correspondence accomplished by cast was the key to their representational value. The votive effigies embodied the paradox of the concurrent presence and absence of the votary as they gave material form to an impression, leaving the material memory of the votary’s real body.33 This was certainly part of the explanation for their active influence and the resulting uneasiness that these objects still arouse today. However, this was not the only way in which the Romituzzo ex-votos expressed such a striking correspondence to the votaries’ bodies.

31 Panzanelli, ‘Compelling Presence’; see also Holmes, ‘Ex-votos’, 170–74. 32 Panzanelli, ‘Introduction’. 33 Didi-Huberman, La somiglianza per contatto, 42–43

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Fig. 2.2. Naturalistic portrait mask with coarsely painted details © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo

Many of the pieces were further instilled with the identity of votaries in a second stage of their production, when ex-votos were painted on their external surface in two different ways. The first method of representation had a clear mimetic intent. It is noticeable in those ex-votos that recall portrait masks where colours and shades rendered the natural traits of a face. The result was a realistic portrayal blending polychromy with the three-dimensional form (see Fig. 2.2). That figurative effect may have also recalled the way in which wax votive portraits were made, as they would have been seen at the Santissima Annunziata. Wax ex-votos achieved verisimilitude by means of the faithful reproduction of physiognomic traits and on occasion adopting the corresponding weight of the votary.34 34 On wax as a lifelike medium in votive offerings and portraits see Daninos, ‘Wax Figures in Italy’.

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However, there is an important difference here between paper and wax ex-votos. The distinction lies in the alternative way of representation achieved on these paper artefacts. This second way of imparting the votary’s identity was attained by roughly painting stylized signs on the surface of the relief. Details such as eye contours, lineaments and skin wrinkles were simply sketched with rapid black brush strokes. Although the outcome of this type of representation appears in conflict with the more realistic one mentioned above, the two techniques sometimes appeared together in the same artefacts. However, the majority of ex-votos are finished by means of this quicker, simpler method. The addition of facial features to the cartone suggests the use of a figurative language that would have been more apt to a two-dimensional medium – more congenial to prints and drawings than to a plastic form of expression. The result creates an effect of visual disparity. The use of a stylistic trait that is accustomed to a flat surface is noteworthy and encourages one to wonder whether the medium of paper lent itself to this representational mode. The ambivalence discernible in paper ex-votos – between the plain surface of a sheet and the three-dimensional relief – was evoked even further by the twofold way of representing diseases. Beside the emulative representation of the skin wounds, visible in a leg painted with plague ulcers (Fig. 2.3), there is another illustration of cancer that is equally evocative but rather conveyed in a symbolic way by tracing the black silhouette of a crayfish over a sketched-on breast (Fig. 2.4). Finally, since the name of the votaries was occasionally left on the uneven surface of ex-votos, the inscriptions lead one to think of how these three-dimensional objects could be related to the surface medium par excellence: paper sheet. The Romituzzo ex-votos are exceptional records that speak to us on a twofold level through their materials and their articulation. Paper enriched the meaning of these votive artefacts thanks to its prime constituent, the textile fibres from rags that were locally sourced and processed. The surviving ex-votos reveal the particular attributes and expressive qualities of paper. It emerges as a versatile material endowed with both a plastic memory recorded in the three-dimensional casts and an epidermic one, which relates to the application of signs, marks and inscriptions on its surface. Thus paper ex-votos are not only the last invaluable testimony of a heartfelt tradition but also an extraordinary means to engage with the perception of paper as a material in early modern culture from a privileged point of view, that of devotional practice. In the context of paper and devotional practice, the Romituzzo artefacts prove to be an emblematic case. They exemplify the distinctive responsiveness of paper as a medium. On the one hand, the suitability of paper for votive practice may be assumed to reside in its neutrality or passivity. On the other, the imaginative ways in which the material was employed in other devotional artefacts may reveal some analogies with the way paper lent meaning to ex-votos. Thus it may be possible to draw from these other objects some general conclusions regarding paper as a material constituent with regard to its devotional use.

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Fig. 2.3. Ex-voto displaying plague ulcers © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo

The ability of paper to be converted from one state into another, as ex-votos did, is evocative not only of its primary origin from the processing of rags, but also of the fact that paper sheets can be reprocessed and reshaped in a new form. That transformative feature was crucial to paper and in some cases it constitutes an essential aspect of paper artefacts that should not be overlooked. A remarkable example of that singular attribute of paper is the large crucifix in the Santa Maria de’ Servi church in Bologna. The crucifix is a popular one that still today attracts devotion in the lateral chapel where it is held. It might appear to be an ordinary seventeenth-century artefact if it were not for the events of its making. Worshippers still refer to it as ‘the Christ of playing cards’. A long lasting tradition recalls that the crucifix was commissioned in 1643 by the Servite friars, who had collected thousands of cards given by gamblers who decided to quit their immoral addiction and wanted to make good use of them.35 Since the fifteenth century, Bologna had been an important 35 Ferronato, Santa Maria dei Servi, 54.

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Fig. 2.4. Ex-voto symbolizing cancer © Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Siena, Grosseto e Arezzo

production centre for playing cards. Card games were extremely popular and gambling was considered a social scourge by moralists such as San Bernardino, who was expressly invited to Bologna to sermonize against the vice.36 On that occasion, the preacher was addressed by a local painter of cards who expressed his concern over the fact that his family depended upon the allegedly immoral fruit of his labours. The account reports that Bernardino promptly suggested to the painter that he replace the subject of the cards with the image of Christ thus turning the vicious game into an article of worship, by which the artisan along with many players would be in turn redeemed. The account was legendary in the city and it would not be surprising if two centuries later it could have inspired the idea of making a crucifix from playing cards. However the Servite friars’ act of turning an object of sin, as playing cards were considered, into pulp and thus transforming it into a holy figure was an even stronger idea than the simple change of the subject of playing cards. This kind of 36 Ghirardacci, Della historia di Bologna, 644; Alessio, Storia di San Bernardino da Siena, 199–204.

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transformation came to convey an extraordinary allegory. The metamorphic substance of paper enabled the crucifix to embody a memento and a spiritual message of redemption in a tangible form. The regeneration of the impure substance of the playing cards into the new form constituted the essence of the crucifix along with its powerful meaning. The case drives our attention toward the subtle way in which the constituents of the paper conveyed meaning. The paper used in the ex-votos should not be considered a completely neutral material. Being made from the pulp of fibres, which in turn came from recycled rags, its previous form may have been perceived as integral to the make-up of the current object. That aspect could also be effectively called upon to inspire depths of meaning to paper artefacts. The two other features examined in the ex-votos concern the physical property of paper as a responsive material. The malleability of paper, as we have seen, was the crucial attribute for casting votive artefacts. It was indeed an intrinsic feature of paper at the core of three-dimensional transformational techniques such as cartone and cartapesta. The cartapesta technique was described for the very first time in the best-selling book of secrets by Alessio Piemontese.37 Standing outside the traditional canon of art historical sources, those early instructions for casting little items of paper from concave forms have been disregarded, perhaps due to the humble purpose of those artefacts. However the recipe is particularly interesting in the context of paper’s devotional use. The interest lies in the way the author defined a technique of use to anyone in a domestic setting for crafting those small reliefs, which simply required the use of everyday utensils. More importantly the account subtly implied a devotional nature for those small reliefs when in the conclusion the author stated that a friar, informally named Cherubino, was the source of the instructions. The humble technique of cartapesta could have been the ideal way to craft small charms from scrap paper by taking casts from other materials. In light of this popular recipe, the recent excavation of two paper devotional medals that may have been made in a comparable way should come as no surprise.38 The objects roughly dating between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were found in a shared burial site under the church of a remote village in the Apennines. Exceptional environmental conditions have preserved the bodies of villagers along with their almost intact humble possessions. Among a variety of devotional objects, paternosters and metallic medals, some still enclosed in tiny pouches to be worn under clothing, two small abraded paper medals were discovered, preserved in a fabric sachet.39 The similar method of storing these medals suggests that they had the same function, regardless of whether they were made of metal or paper. It is likewise possible to speculate on certain commonalities in the 37 Piemontese, De’ secreti, 227–28. 38 Labate, ‘Documenti cartacei’, 262. 39 Labate, ‘Le mummie di Roccapelago’, 92.

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process of production of these objects. On the one hand, metal medals could have been used to forge replicas, transmitting their own influence through the subject in relief into equivalent religious charms. On the other hand, paper was a responsive plastic substance that could be modelled through impression and cast and was therefore appropriate for delivering exact replicas. That feature thus allowed it not only to receive forms but in some cases also to absorb the connotations of what it had been in contact with, becoming more than a mere copy, but rather an equivalence. The responsiveness of paper, as has been seen with ex-votos, was not limited to its material substance but also related to the sketches on its surface. For that reason the final characteristic of paper that I shall consider is the receptiveness of its surface to the sign. This is the primary reason for paper to have developed and become established as a material for writing and drawing. Paper is indeed the paramount material support for the graphic sign, whether text or figure. This key feature of paper allows abstract signs to take a material form easily and promptly, thus being turned into a physical object when ink leaves a mark on the sheet of paper, by merging with its receptive surface. Although the sign is generally reduced to its mere representative purpose, some devotional images could apparently be considered more than simple illustrations. The example of the paper tokens of Santa Maria delle Carceri, reproducing in paper woodcuts the miraculous effigy on the wall of the shrine in Prato, is emblematic.40 According to a sixteenth-century account these prints were used to perform miraculous healings similar to the mural painting with which the veneration had first started. As Robert Maniura has argued, those tokens cannot be considered to be simply copies of that painting: rather they stood for the influential image itself as equivalent catalysts of miracles that only occurred in response to the devotional practice. The person supplying the tokens indeed referred to buying many ‘Virgin Maries of the Carceri made out of paper’ with a striking expression that verbalizes the singular way these woodcuts were perceived as a multiplicity of a single entity. To worshippers the distinguishable lineaments of the popular image stamped on paper, regardless of whether it had been in contact with the mural painting or not, enabled the sheet to convey divine influence. Paper, as the receptive substance of these traits, therefore incorporated in its matter the same properties of the miraculous mural image. The case of the Santa Maria delle Carceri tokens, however, is yet more complex. Since they were made not only of paper but also of lead, they offer an opportunity to reflect on the implications of adopting different media. Maniura observes that, in devotional practice as reported by contemporary accounts, lead tokens were more appropriately worn as neck pendants in contact with the body, appealing to the sense of touch, while paper ones were apparently better suited for visual acts of adoration, 40 Maniura, ‘Images and Miracles’.

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osculation and vow, engaging the sense of sight. 41 However, he notices that touch and sight could both be experienced within a single object, thus suggesting that the distinction in the appeal of the two media to different senses might be blurred as those actions might be combined.42 In this regard we should also note that other items of religious paraphernalia, such as ex-votos and even medals, could be made of paper as an alternative material to wax and metal. Moreover such paper artefacts were also used in a similar way to their counterparts. However, although they might have involved similar practices, they were not necessarily perceived and understood in the same way as their original counterparts. The distinct perception of these same tokens, made of either lead or paper, might have been substantial in the context of devotion and could have determined subtle differences in their practical use; therefore it should not be overlooked. It is possible to conclude that, like other materials, paper preserved its own distinctive nature as a compound of recyclable vegetal fibres, sourced from rags imbued with human associations. Moreover, as we have seen, it combined some specific physical properties as a versatile material bestowed with features of malleability and permeability. These intrinsic traits of paper conferred a wealth of cultural connotations on its substance, as a protean and transformative matter that actively responded to contact with forms and was sensitive to the graphic sign. In the context of religious practice, these qualities were invested with meanings as worshippers infused their votive offerings and devotional objects with spiritual values. It is also important to consider that such meanings, embodied in the features of the material, were not only exercised by devotees in their practices, but they reflected and could be explicated and triggered through the processes of making them. What matters is not just what things were made of or how they were experienced, nor only how those same things were made, but all of these elements combined. This complex combination of elements decreed the success of paper as a popular medium for devotional objects, along with its relative affordability that made it virtually available to anyone. Those factors may also have played a role in determining paper’s success as a medium that conveyed common values shared among the largest part of the population. From this perspective, paper in early modern Italy’s devotional practice, especially among common people, appears to have been an influential medium that, through those clumsy limbs on the walls of a small town sanctuary, was capable of articulating one of the most fervent human conversations between the immanence of the earthly world and the transcendence of divine grace.

41 Ibid., 92; cf. Rudy, ‘Kissing Images’. 42 Maniura, ‘Images and Miracles’, 92.

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Secondary Sources Alessio, Felice, Storia di San Bernardino da Siena e del suo tempo (Mondovì: Graziano, 1899). Andreucci, Ottavio, Il Fiorentino Istruito nella Chiesa della Nunziata di Firenze: memoria storica (Florence: M. Cellini, 1857). Casciaro, Raffaele (ed.), La scultura in cartapesta: Sansovino, Bernini e i maestri leccesi tra tecnica e artificio (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana, 2008). Costantini, Dino, Il Santuario di Romituzzo in Poggibonsi: cenni storici (San Gimignano: Pasqualetti, 1975). Dacome, Lucia, ‘Women, Wax and Anatomy in the “Century of Things”‘, Renaissance Studies 21.4 (2007): 522–50. Daninos, Andrea, ‘Wax Figures in Italy: Outline for a Story Yet to Be Written’, in Andrea Daninos (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012), 13–42. Didi-Huberman, Georges, La somiglianza per contatto. archeologia, anacronismo e modernità dell’impronta (Turin: Bollati Borighieri, 2009). Didi-Huberman, Georges, ‘Wax Flesh, Viscous Circles’, in Georges Didi-Hubermann, Monika von Düring et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia Anatomica: A Collection of Anatomical Waxes (Cologne: Taschen, 1999), 64–74. Ferronato, Paolo, Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna (Milan: Olivares, 1997).

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Fornasari, Liletta, Seicento in Casentino: dalla Controriforma al tardo Barocco (Florence: Polistampa, 2001). Guerzoni, Guido, ‘Use and Abuse of Beeswax in the Early Modern Age: Two Apologues and a Taste’, in Andrea Daninos (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012), 43–59. Guiducci, Anna-Maria (ed.), Gli ex-voto del Romituzzo (Siena: Ministero Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Soprintendenza Beni Artistici e Storici di Siena, 1990). Holmes, Megan, ‘Ex-votos: Materiality, Memory and Cult’, in Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach (eds.), The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 159–81. Jacobs, Frederika H., Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Labate, Donato, Mirko Traversari et al., ‘Le mummie di Roccapelago (XVI–XVIII sec.): vita e morte di una piccola comunita’ dell’Appennino modenese’, I Quaderni di E’ Scamadul 4.12 (2012): 81–96. Maniura, Robert, ‘The Images and Miracles of Santa Maria delle Carceri’, in Erik Thuno and Gerhard Wolf (eds.), The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Rome: L’Erma, 2004), 81–95. Messbarger, Rebecca, The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010). Neri, Agostino, La Madonna del Romituzzo presso Poggibonsi (Siena: San Bernardino, 1896). Panzanelli, Roberta, ‘Compelling Presence: Wax Effigies in Renaissance Florence’, in Roberta Panzanelli (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 13–39. Panzanelli, Roberta, ‘Introduction: The Body in Wax, the Body of Wax’, in Roberta Panzanelli (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 1–11. Rudy, Kathryn, ‘Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manuscripts through the Physical Rituals they Reveal’, Electronic British Library Journal (2011): 1–56. Sabbatini, Renzo, Di bianco lin candida prole: la manifattura della carta in età moderna e il caso toscano (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990). Schlosser, Julius von, ‘Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 19 (1910–11): 169–258. Vaccari, Maria Grazia (ed.), Mira il tuo popolo: statue votive del Santuario di Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan: Rizzoli, 1999). Warburg, Aby, ‘The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie’ (1902), in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, trans. David Britt, with an introduction by Kurt W. Forster (Los Angeles: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), 185–221.

About the Author Maria Alessandra Chessa (History of Design, Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum) researches the materiality of paper, along with its impact and perception in early modern Italy and England. Her current research project is entitled ‘The Silent Revolution: Material Engagement and Knowledge behind the Technology of Paper across Italy and England (1590–1800)’.

3. Powerful Objects in Powerful Places: Pilgrimage, Relics and Sacred Texts in Tibetan Buddhism Hildegard Diemberger Abstract Since the advent of Buddhism, the remains of the Buddha and of those who have embodied his message have been considered powerful. In Tibet, relics, including texts understood as embodiments of speech, have been the focus of popular devotion. Often connected to particular sites, these powerful objects appear in biographies of spiritual masters and pilgrimage guides, and are still revered today. Prized for their protective and healing powers and deemed capable of bringing disgrace to those who mishandle them, relics have also functioned to restore sacredness to Buddhist sites following their destruction and reconstruction. This chapter explores examples from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Tibetan sources as well as contemporary practices to highlight this form of religious materiality that presents remarkable parallels with Christian practices. Keywords: Buddhism; pilgrimage; relics; Tibet

Around 1440 the Tibetan princess, Chokyi Dronma, was sent as a bride to the neighbouring kingdom, the polity of Southern Lato. She would have preferred a religious life, but she had no option but to follow the wish of her father, the King of Gungthang, and the custom of her time. As in early modern Europe, in fifteenth-century Tibet marriage alliances were important to guarantee stable political relations and maintain peaceful relations in a politically fragmented world. According to her biography (Plate 3.1) Chokyi Dronma had spent her childhood in her homeland, the Kingdom of Mangyul Gungthang in south-western Tibet, where she had led a very devout and scholarly life with the support of her mother, and had learnt to respect books.1 After arriving in her 1 The biography of Chokyi Dronma is an important historical text that narrates the life of a Tibetan princess who became a nun and a spiritual leader and eventually was recognized as an emanation of the tantric deity Vajrayoginī (see English, Vajrayoginī). The original manuscript is preserved at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa (Tibet Museum no. 4281) where it was deposited after having been kept at the Palace of Nationalities in Beijing and before that at the library of Drepung monastery in Lhasa. So far it is unpublished, there are a few photocopies in circulation and it is going to be made available in a trilingual book edition (Tibetan, English, Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch03

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new home as a bride, she discovered a collection of holy scriptures that had been taken there from her homeland – a gift or, more likely, war booty. Distressed at finding them in a neglected condition, she took care to restore them. These items were more than passive objects to her; these literary artefacts affected her in the most intimate way and exercised significant moral pressure on her as sacred objects. She believed they had the power to give blessing to her and the community and that their mistreatment was profoundly inauspicious. She accordingly restored the collection, provided the customary cloth to wrap them, and ensured that there was a caretaker to look after them and perform rituals in their honour. Books were a sort of holy relic. This is still the case: Tibetan books are today handled in a similar way, and their efficacy can be witnessed in many rituals, including the procession in which they are carried around the fields to bless and protect them from extreme weather (Figs. 3.1a, b and c). Setting out from a close look at the passage describing this event in the biography of Chokyi Dronma, I show how books were more than simple objects. As sacred objects they had – and often still have – the power to affect human beings and the environment. Their materiality is therefore significant and deeply connected to the cult of relics – they are in fact a sort of ‘sound/voice’ relic. As ‘support of speech’ (sungten), they are a form of embodiment of the Buddha and Buddhist masters who carried on his legacy on the Tibetan plateau. As such, they have been the focus of popular devotion in multiple ways. They are often treated like body relics and contact relics (i.e. bodily remains and items blessed by being in contact with a holy person such as clothing), and their materiality is powerful in similar ways but with additional complexities. Entangling medium and message, the ‘thingness’ of sacred scriptures provides an extra dimension to the debate that has been recently unfolding around religious materiality.2

Scriptures as Voice/Sound Relics Like body relics and contact relics, books are worshipped as honorific persons. This idea goes back to what the Buddha is said to have told his favourite disciple Ananda before his passing: It may be, Ānanda, that some of you will think, ‘The word of the Teacher is a thing of the past; we have no Teacher.’ The Doctrine and the Discipline, Ānanda, which I have taught and enjoined upon you is to be your teacher when I am gone.3 Chinese), which I am preparing with Tibetan colleagues. I was kindly given a photocopy by Leonard van der Kuijp, Head of Sanskrit and Tibetan Studies at Harvard University, when I published an English translation of the text in a monograph: Diemberger, When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty. 2 See Houtman and Meyer, eds., Things. For a European parallel, see Rublack, ‘Grapho-relics’. 3 From the Mahāparinibbannasutta, in Warren, ed., Buddhism in Translation, 107.

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Fig. 3.1a Procession with books to bless fields at Shekar in 1993 © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

Fig. 3.1b Current reincarnation of Chokyi Dronma blessing faithful with a book © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

Fig. 3.1c Tibetan book being wrapped in its robe © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

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This idea of text as relic was particularly emphasized in the Perfection of Wisdom literature, central to the Mahāyāna traditions that were adopted in Tibet. The way in which texts acted as ‘sound/voice’ relics is illustrated for example by the way in which scriptures were and still are activated through reading and recitation so that the uttering of words is endowed with the power of promoting well-being, protecting from negative forces, and even healing. The power of the sound of words is illustrated by the common household ritual in which monks are periodically invited to read scriptures. On these occasions the folios are shared among the monks, who read them simultaneously. As each monk is reading a different portion of the text, the meaning of the words is generally not intelligible. However, the sound of the recitation is ritually efficacious and creates a very powerful atmosphere in a setting that involves all the senses: the use of images and ritual tools, the burning of incense, the ingesting of blessed foods and the touch of items that are ritually charged, e.g. the touch of a holy book or image on the head of a devout participant. The material presence of books has had the power to bless people and places for centuries. Often connected to particular sites and associated with other devotional objects such as images and reliquaries, books appear in most biographies of spiritual masters, in pilgrimage guides and in current places of worship. Historically – but most famously after the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) – they have been at the centre of the reconstruction of Buddhist sites and the focus of powerful narratives of rescue and restoration of sacredness.

The Princess Chokyi Dronma and the Power of Scriptures as Relics The translation of the fifteenth-century biography of Chokyi Dronma4 from Tibetan into English prompted some reflections on the wording used to refer to books. The following passage is a conventional rendering of the event mentioned above, of Chokyi Dronma’s arrival as a bride at Shekar in Southern Lato around 1440: At Shekar there was a set of canonical texts written in gold that had been made by her Gungthang ancestor Bumdegön Nagpo.5 This had been taken from [lower] Ngari [i.e. Gungthang = Chokyi Dronma’s homeland] by the Lord of Northern Lato and was later transferred (chendren) to Southern Lato. One day she said that she wanted to see (jal) it. When she arrived at the place where it was kept, at first she was unable to open the lock of the door. Then the magnificent lady of innate wisdom said, ‘May the owner have power over her things!’ and touched the lock, which opened immediately. She saw that the books were covered with dust. She cleaned them up and 4 This Gungthang princess became later known as the first Samding Dorje Phagmo (see Diemberger, When a Woman Becomes a Dynasty). 5 Bumdegon (1253–1280), founder of the Mangyul Gungthang kingdom, was an important ancestral figure for the Gungthang royal house (Everding, Das Koenigreich, 391ff.).

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later added the parts that were missing. She provided for cloth (namsa) and strings (kura) to wrap the books, established the custom of celebrating offerings to them and appointed a custodian. By offering all this she looked after the books well.6

The vocabulary referring to the holy books suggests a more literal translation that reveals important nuances. This stands in contrast to the view of the book as a passive object implied in the conventional modern English wording. The books made by Chokyi Dronma’s ancestor in fact: had been ‘invited’ (chendren) from Ngari, Chokyi Dronma wanted to ‘see’ (jal) them and eventually ‘offered’ (phul) ‘robe’ (namsa) and ‘belt’ (kura) to clothe them. This vocabulary seems to indicate that the books were in fact addressed as honorific persons and not as mere objects. Moreover, the holy books by their sheer presence prompted Chokyi Dronma to find, restore and look after them, fulfilling thereby a moral obligation that had been neglected by the family she had married into.7 Indeed, these books were supports of (sacred) speech (sungten), and had to be treated as such. This passage is in many ways unremarkable as it is an example of a very common way of talking about books, and precisely for this reason it was so revealing for me when I first dealt with it, and prompted me to think about the agency of books in the Tibetan context. This is an agency that is linked to both their content and their materiality and can be conceptualized with reference to theories of non-human agency.8 After Chokyi Dronma abandoned the secular world to become a nun, she learnt to deal increasingly with the content of books but she never forgot their devotional, ritual aspect. For example, after she had become a disciple of the great polymath Bodong Chogle Namgyal (1376–1451) she promoted the capturing in writing of his teaching, the editing of his words, and their multiplication through xylographic printing. This served both teaching purposes as well as devotional practices in which texts were used as sacred objects. This is also suggested by the fact that many sacred images were printed alongside the texts. Both texts and images were objects endowed with blessing powers and could be used by literate and non-literate devotees. The biography of Chokyi Dronma gives a rare glimpse into this operation of writing up, editing and printing during a session of summer religious practice: Then she suggested to her brother [the future King Thri Namgyal De] that the master Free of all Concern [Bodong Chogle Namgyal] and his monastic community 6 Biography of Chokyi Dronma, fols. 22r–22v. 7 The moral obligation entailed in Buddhist books is best illustrated by verses reported at the end of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses: ‘when, through the Tathagata’s sustaining power, it has been well written, in very distinct letters, in a great book, one should honour, revere, adore and worship it, with flowers, incense, scents, wreaths, unguents, aromatic powders, strips of cloth, parasols, banners, bells, flags and with rows of lamps all round, and with manifold kinds of worship’ (Conze, Buddhism, 299). 8 See Boutcher, ‘Literary Art’, 155–75, for an extension of Alfred Gell’s seminal work Art and Agency published posthumously in 1998 to literary artefacts.

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should be invited for the summer session of religious practice. Her brother provided one third of the necessary support, Gendun Sherpa provided one third and the Lady of Prosperity [Chokyi Dronma] provided one third. [Bodong Chogle Namgyal] was invited to reside at the temple where Sakya Pandita9 held and won a debate against the heretic […] [and] the teachings of [the collection called] Clarification of the hidden meanings (sBas gdon gsal ba) were learnt and rehearsed. The content of the teachings prepared for the attending followers was checked after it had been written up and every textbook was edited for printing; images of the lord’s tutelary deity were printed and every ritual item was looked after.10

After the death of Bodong Chogle Namgyal, Chokyi Dronma supported the reproduction of the whole collection of his teachings. According to the biography this operation took place initially in Chokyi Dronma’s hermitage in the vicinity of the capital Dzongkha. In order to help raise the necessary funding, she asked the scholar Lama Ringyal, who was particularly devoted to the god of wealth Vaiśravaṇa, to act as a messenger on her behalf to the god. She then explained to him: ‘In order to fulfill the wish of our precious [departed] lama [his collected works] the Dpal de kho na nyid [‘dus pa] (Compendium of Reality) has to be reproduced in writing. Therefore, as I am free of worldly concerns please get the materials from the Great King God of Welath Vaiśravaṇa. Until the work on the Dpal [de kho na nyid ] ‘dus pa is completed please perform rituals, offer dough-figures and recite prayers. Don’t think of anything else except for the completion of the [Dpal de kho na nyid ] ‘dus pa’. He then carried out his tasks according to her instructions and, after he prepared the dough-figures, he dreamt of a horseman who gave him a big bundle of keys and said: ‘Please offer this to Konchog Gyalmo [i.e. Chokyi Dronma as referred to with her royal name].’11

The biography highlights the prophetic nature of this dream and, once the operation was completed, Chokyi Dronma’s success, which had depended on a wide patronage network, was attributed to the protection of this god. After Lama Ringyal provided for ritual protection and support, he was sent to the monastery that kept the original copies of the collected works of Bodong Chogle Namgyal. He went to Palmo Choding monastery, located to the east of the Palkhu Lake in the Porong area, which was at some distance from the capital of the Mangyul Gungthang kingdom. Reaching it required two to three days on horseback, riding over a high pass, and crossing treacherous terrain. 9 Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182–1251), the great scholar of the Sakya tradition, is said to have defeated a heretic in a debate that took place in Kyirong. 10 Biography of Chokyi Dronma, fols. 62r–63r. 11 Ibid., fols. 90r–90v.

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The biography of Chokyi Dronma states that the team consisting of the princess and the closest disciples of Bodong Chogle Namgyal proof-read the work four times. It seems that the reproduction of his collected works were considered the ‘speech’ (sungten) component of a wider set of commemorative activities, involving the production of images and stupas, defined collectively as ‘supports’ of ‘body’, ‘speech’ and ‘mind’ (ku sung thug ten). The whole operation lasted four months and required a considerable investment. The work started on the fourth sliver of the moon. Four months later, on the fourth sliver of the moon all the symbols of body, speech and mind were completed. [Chokyi Dronma] paid wages in barley. A great deal of food, drink and soup that was necessary was brought together. At the sign of a drum there was a general gathering. She ordered the arrangements for the writers. The rows of people organized in such a way made up a big gathering that resembled that [involved in managing] a big land tenure.12

The biography is remarkably enlightening regarding the practical aspects of book production. It also seems to indicate that on this occasion they produced mainly manuscripts rather than prints. The whole operation aimed at the production of a set of scriptures that was not only an improved reproduction of the collection kept in Porong Palmo Choding but also had value as a sacred relic. In this respect the biography states that: They mixed the ink with which they wrote the [Dpal] de [kho na] nyid ‘dus pa with the blood from the nose of the Omniscient and provided wooden covers, strings and cloth for all the books. With all the volumes being perfectly complete and especially accurate it was said that that this edition of the [Dpal] de [kho na] nyid ‘dus pa was of the highest standard.13

The vocabulary referring to the books is the same discussed above and highlights the fact that the books were considered a sort of relic. In this case, this ritual signficance is heightened by the use of the blood of the master as ink or mixed with ink. This is a well-known ritual practice and narrative trope in the Tibetan Buddhist context and beyond.14 In this case it is likely to have been an actual ritual action carried out under the leadership of a princess who was extremely aware of the importance of relics and their distribution. A small clay statue containing the blood of the nose of Bodong Chogle Namgyal is still extant in the monastery of Bodong E (see Figs 3.2 and 3.3), where other relics such as one of his shoes and his robe are preserved. 12 Ibid., fol. 91v. 13 Ibid., fol. 92v. 14 See Schaik, ‘Blood Writing’, https://earlytibet.com/2012/05/03/blood-writing/ (accessed 5 February 2019); Kieschnick, ‘Blood Writing’.

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Fig. 3.2. Monk blessing faithful with clay statue of Bodong Chogle Namgyal © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

Fig. 3.3. The venerable Thubten Namgyal with shoe of Bodong Chogle Namgyal © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

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Once the operation was completed, books, images and stupas were taken to the capital and the transfer took the form of a ritual procession and provided the occasion for a great celebration described very vividly in the biography. Eventually they decided to place the symbols of body, speech and mind in the white building at the centre of the monastery of Dzonkha Chode [in the capital of the kingdom] where the Great Man [Bodong Chogle Namgyal] had resided together with his spiritual children. They decorated the walls of the room where the precious lord used to sleep with beautiful paintings and thus made it beautiful [to be a suitable shrine]. When [the symbols of body, speech and mind] had to be taken from Dongphub [to Dzongkha] at the time of the consecration ceremony, at first the precious statue (kutsab rinpoche) and the wisdom stupa arrived in a carrying device. A procession of monks brought the volumes of the precious Collected Works. Each monk carried a volume on his shoulders, after this had been placed on a suitable support. [Chokyi Dronma], the great bhikṣuṇī, bodhisattva and female siddha wearing the three pieces of the religious robe and holding incense led the procession. Pal Chime Drubpa and the other editors came carrying ritual offerings. All the scribes were playing with their hands wonderful music beyond any imagination.15

The statue is here referred to as ‘body-proxy’ (kutsab), a term that is also used for a representative or a regent, and clearly was at the front of the procession followed by the sacred books. The narrative continues with the procession arriving at the monastery located within the walls of the royal palace where they were received by Chokyi Dronma’s father, King Thri Lhawang Gyaltsen (1404–1464), and Palden Sangye (1391– 1455), who was one of the leading spiritual masters in Mangyul Gungthang, as well as a large crowd: When this procession arrived at the monastery the monks, led by the great scholar and meditator Palden Sangye, performed the vajra dance. The monks led by Lama Ringyal performed the drum dance. All the [other] monks were standing in line to welcome the procession [that had arrived carrying the sacred items]. The King of the Dharma, the Great Son of the Gods, was watching from the top of the royal palace. The place was filled with a crowd of people who had come from all over the area to watch the event. At the sight of the precious statue (kutshab rinpoche) all the scholars were stricken with faith and wonder, like barley-ears shaking in the wind; in addition, all living beings, with tears in their eyes, felt as if they were facing the lama in person and uttered the sound ‘A la la la’ in surprise. Blissful and contented, the people were saying: ‘Such a heap of virtuous deeds has been achieved 15 Biography of Chokyi Dronma, fols. 93r–93v.

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thanks to the grace of the Precious Lady Konchog Gyalmo [i.e. Chokyi Dronma as referred to with her royal name].’ Eventually [the sacred items] were placed in the chapel and were consecrated in the middle of a heap of donations resembling a cloud.16

The arrival of the sacred items provided an opportunity for the gathering of people from all over the area. It was also a powerful public presentation of the patrons according to rank and of all the people involved. The biography continues: During the great feast the King Son of the Gods was seated as the first in the line. Then came the ocean of the monastic community led by scholars and meditators; they were the group of the great editors. There was Ponmo Sangring and others, who were the masters who had made the images. There was Lopon Ringyal and others, who were the painters. There was the great secretary [Konchog Gyaltsen] leading the group of scribes. In addition there were the carvers that had been absolutely necessary in the process. Carpenters and sculptors as well as leading blacksmiths were among the innumerable representatives of the arts and crafts [that had gathered there]. The court of the king, including officials as well as common people, and even all who had spontaneously gathered to watch made up an ocean of fortunate people. Everyone was offered all kinds of food, and all kinds of special drinks. [Chokyi Dronma] presented her father with a monastic robe and offered to the others whatever they needed. Excellent presents were given to the delight and satisfaction [of everyone] and thus the consecration ceremony was celebrated in the most excellent way.17

These passages offer a rare glimpse into what was involved in fifteenth-century Tibetan religious materiality, with all its social and economic implications as well as its spiritual power. They clearly show that Chokyi Dronma was not only committed to the production of books but also to their treatment as sacred objects according to the ritual practices that concerned images and relics. The use of the master’s blood mixed with the ink ensured that these literary artefacts were considered as relics in multiple ways: they were powerful not only because they contained the speech of the deceased master but also traces of his body. They could bestow blessing on anyone or anything that would touch, see or listen to them. Chokyi Dronma was indeed deeply aware of the power of relics but also of the danger that this power harboured. After the death of her master, she looked after his funerary rituals and ensured that his bodily remains, his bones and his ashes, were distributed among the many followers, thus avoiding fights and competitions for their control. Her biography tells that: 16 Ibid., fols. 93v–94r. 17 Ibid., fols. 94r–94v.

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She performed all merit making ritual offerings for the great lama. In particular as it was considered whether to preserve the body or cremate it, people from each [administrative unit called] myriarchy and the disciples18 had different views. The Great Woman thought that if the precious body was kept permanently in Palmo Choding monastery it would benefit this religious seat; however if each headman tried to take it to their own place the merits of the believers would decline19

The practice that was implied here was that of keeping the remains enshrined in a single reliquary or as a preserved body (examples of which are extant in the area).20 In light of the challenge that the contrasting views about what should be done with the mortal remains of the master represented, she expressed remarkable wisdom and strategic leadership: She thus thought that it was better to cremate it and said: ‘Because of the activity of this King of the Dharma, in Tibet there isn’t anyone who hasn’t become a disciple or a follower of this lama. The precious body belongs to all, patrons and disciples. It is not sensible for somebody to try to keep it for themselves. It will make everyone unhappy. This precious body should become a source of merits for all believers.’ Nobody dared to oppose the Lady of Renunciation and everybody agreed with her view. Accordingly Vajrayogini [i.e. Chokyi Dronma as Vajrayogini’s emanation] took care of the fire ritual, in person, and this was perfectly celebrated following the precious four classes of the tantra. As she opened the casket inside the reliquary containing the remains of the great Vajradara [Bodong Chogle Namgyal] she thought that this was undoubtedly the wish-fulfilling gem. Wondering about whoever among the people could really keep the relics best and hoping to satisfy every headman and disciple, she announced: ‘I will satisfy everyone without exception.’ First she collected the bone fragments, then she collected the ashes. She mixed these latter with earth and with her own hands she made them into objects, wrote on them and eventually the Queen of the Siddhas consecrated them. She prepared many thousands of tsha tsha,21 which she decorated with gold. On the day of the distribution of the relics she was assisted by the great Siddha Changsungpa and [her spiritual companion and assistant] the great woman [Deleg] Chodren. Holding in her right hand a staff, she gave to the saffron robed [i.e. the monks] a 18 The crowd of followers of Bodong Chogle Namgyal apparently comprised both religious and secular personalities. 19 Biography of Chokyi Dronma, fols. 84r–85v. 20 There are several great spiritual masters whose bodies were treated so as to be preserved, in some cases with a golden mask (for example the seventeenth-century Abbot of Shekar monastery, Porong Namkha Karpo, whose body is still preserved in Ngonga monastery near Shekar). These bodies are considered particularly miraculous. 21 These are images produced by pressing clay into moulds that represent deities or spiritual masters. As in this case, the clay may contain the ashes of a deceased person.

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fragment of the precious body. She then gave a tsa tsa to each of the lay people. In this way she satisfied everybody’s wish.22

Chokyi Dronma thus ensured that the community of her master’s disciples all received a fragment of his precious body. This decision complements well her commitment to multiplying and distributing his words and his spiritual images. While this devotional approach to text and relics and texts as relics was clearly prevalent, there were some critical debates unfolding around it and sources of the time reflect traces of them.

A Fifteenth-Century Debate on the Devotional Approach to Books as ­Ritual Objects Chokyi Dronma’s master Bodong Chogle Namgyal in 1441 composed that text that encapsulated in a condensed form the essence of his teachings, the text of the dPal de kho nan yid ‘dus pa snying po (Essence of the Compendium of Reality). At a time in which Chokyi Dronma was still caught in her worldly life as wife and mother, her future master already had women among the most devout disciples. One of them was Namkha Pal Sangmo from the ruling family of Surtsho. Unfortunately we do not have a biography of her, but the colophon of the print edition of the dPal de kho nan yid ‘dus pa snying po produced at Surtsho in 1442 gives us a glimpse into the deeds and motivation of this extraordinary woman.23 Most remarkably she states that: As far as the ocean of the tantra is concerned, three or four waves of tantric teachings and practices have appeared [in Tibet]. However the precious volumes of the four classes of tantra have become largely something to prostrate and make ritual offerings to. Considering this issue, thanks to the prayers to the Inner and Outer Buddhas and the power of their blessing, the Collected essence of the ocean of sūtra and tantra [by Bodong Chogle Namgyla] explained in an excellent way the 84,000 dharmaskandha (complete Buddha teachings). In order to enact the essence of the practice, the [dPal] de [kho na] nyid [‘dus pa] snying po was extracted from the ocean of the [dPal de kho na nyid] ‘dus pa [i.e. the essence of the collection was condensed in a single treatise]. Superior to all wish-fulfilling jewels, it is excellent in fulfilling the hopes of all living beings. […] As a means to enlighten the darkness of Saṃsāra’s hardship and to expand the harvests of benefits and happiness [Namkha Pel Sangmo] conducted meditation again and again. At this point in time, having

22 Biography of Chokyi Dronma, fols. 85v–86v. 23 See Diemberger, ‘Tibetan Women’.

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realized that there is the [dPal] de [kho na] nyid [‘dus pa] snying po with which not even countless moons and suns can compete, she thought that she would promote it by using all her resources. Generally in order to help all living beings reach enlightenment as well as in order to fulfil the aspirations of deceased officials, and in particular Drungchen Sonam Gyaltshen, supporting them in reaching the stage of Buddhahood, this print edition was produced. The wood blocks were offered by the master Nyedrag Sangpo. The countless rays of light of the printed treatises spread from the hands of the wonderful scribe Namkha Rinchen, which are like the maṇḍalas of sun and moon, as well as [the hands of] the learned carver Geshe Gyale and Sampa Lodro Senge among others. [Spelling mistakes] which were like dust covering sun and moon, clouds [covering the sky] and Rahula [who obscured the sky by creating eclipses eating the moon], were eliminated by the scholarly Duldzin Ngawang, who created such an [accurate] clarifying system for the Great Vehicle. The virtues of the excellent printing greater than a wish-fulfilling jewel, may dispel all mistakes like countless suns and moons, and let comprehensive ability be obtained. In order to let all obstacles be eliminated and the two accumulations of positive conditions be enhanced, may the sun of the dharma spread in the ten directions and the moon of benefits and well-being shine in the ten directions. May all the relatives who have passed away achieve Buddhahood, and those who are still alive enjoy a long life. May all the wishes of the great female sponsor be realized without effort. May virtue be! May auspiciousness be!24

Namkha Pal Sangmo thus seems to have had not only a deep devotion to tantric teaching, which she perceived as being endangered by neglect, but also a rationalistic approach towards books and a critical view of the way these were treated as mere devotional objects. She decided that she wanted to promote a wider access to content through printing and a rigorous editing of the work. However, she saw this operation also as a way to fulfil ritual obligation making merits for deceased relatives and officials. This brief passage reflects a wider debate that surrounded books and relics as devotional objects and the commitment of some scholars to popularizing access to texts. To what extent this was related to the introduction of printing technology is an important open question that needs further exploration.25 In any case, both Chokyi Dronma and Namkha Pal Sangmo clearly promoted printing and literacy among all followers of Buddhism and especially among nuns.

24 dpal de kho na nyid ‘dus pa snying po, Surtsho 1442 edition, fols. 175v–176r, for a discussion of the entire colophon see Diemberger, ‘Tibetan Women’. 25 See Diemberger et al., eds., Tibetan Printing.

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In the Buddhist context the apparent paradox of the coexistence of a more scholarly, rationalistic approach to religion and the devotional approach focusing on sacred objects (including books) were often reconciled by invoking the fact that sentient beings would relate to the world and ‘truth’ according to their dispositions. Different beings and interpretative communities could make different sense of the same phenomena according to their position in the world and to their level of spiritual achievement; in this respect Buddhist understandings of the world seem to differ radically from a Christian God-centred ontology. It is undeniable, however, that some of the debates that surrounded Christian religious materiality, informed by the rationalistic approach to devotion promoted by the Reformation and supported by the spread of printing technology, have parallels in the Buddhist context. Even though Tibetan printing never became as dominant as European printing, and showed significant elements of continuity with manuscript production, its spread had an important albeit underestimated impact on Tibetan culture and society. This may include some elements of popularization of the scholarly approach to books and relics.

Books, Relics and Places: Pilgrimage as a Way to ‘Meet’ the Sacred Books as relics that can bless people and things were – and still are – also linked to places. In holy sites they can be ‘met’ (jal), as Chokyi Dronma did in the passage discussed above. In this form they are also linked to a wide range of ritual practices, especially pilgrimage. Pilgrims’ destinations, often associated with particular spiritual masters, are sites where one can see the cave where he/she meditated, his or her footprints and handprints, bodily and contact relics (bones, items of clothing, cups, wandering sticks, etc.), paintings, as well as texts. These can consist of original writings, which are extremely highly valued, but also later reproductions, and even rock formations in the shape of books as texts to be revealed in the future.26 Pilgrims get their blessing (jinlab) from seeing and even more from touching them. Biographies of spiritual masters often record their encounters with such sacred items, which are considered extremely powerful. In some cases, there are narratives of images, texts or particular relics acting miraculously: not only can they bless and heal (through contact but sometimes also ingestion of fragments), they can also decide to stay in a place or refuse to be transferred to another.27 Tibetan Buddhist scholars are sometimes mildly critical of these forms of popular devotion. From their perspective these 26 See Elliott et al., eds., Buddha’s Word. 27 The most famous instance is that of the Buddha statue kept in the central temple of Lhasa. It is said to have refused to be transferred to China and accepted to be taken to the Himalayan border region of Mangyul at a time of anti-Buddhist repression in the eighth century (see dBa’ bzhed, fols. 4–5). Similar narratives are extremely popular and can concern a wide range of sacred objects in different historical periods.

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are all contingent manifestations within the conventional reality in which all sentient beings are caught. However, within these limits they are prepared to recognize that these objects and the relevant places are important and can be highly inspirational. What matters is the attitude: A telling example of this is the popular story of the pilgrim who travelled to India and was requested by his mother to bring back a relic of the Buddha. As he forgot to do so, he took along a dog’s tooth. The mother worshipped the tooth as an actual relic of the Buddha and thereby obtained great merit and spiritual achievement.28 Given the religious power of this religious materiality, it is not surprising that sacred objects and places were particularly targeted during times of anti-religious movements, such as the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. There are some remarkable precedents of anti-Buddhist movements in history targeting these powerful expressions of sacredness.29 Plate 3.2 shows printing blocks in the monastery of Trakar Taso, where the grandson of Chokyi Dronma’s brother, Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal, established a famous printing house. This site, associated with the great mystic Milarepa (c.1052–c.1135), was abandoned and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and revived since the end of the 1980s (Fig. 3.4). When scholars and local officials first visited the site, the view of the scattered relics and the abandoned sacred spots made a deep impression on them. Despite the destruction they were still deemed extremely powerful. These deep emotions of both sadness and devotion prompted them to start the restoration.30

Conclusion Tibetan experiences resonate in multiple ways with recent observations concerning the religious materiality of early modern Europe, including the miraculous animation of devotional objects and the debates that this has elicited as well as the ‘agency’ of scriptures.31 According to Caroline Walker Bynum in the context of Christian materiality ‘devotional objects were not just decorative embellishments […] or devices to direct attention to the invisible. To materialize was to animate. The more 28 This parable is told in various forms in relation to both the Chinese and the Tibetan contexts (see Conze, Buddhism, 81; Patrul Rinpoche, Words, 173–74; Strong, Relics, xvi). It is briefly referred to in the biography of Yolmo Tendzin Norbu (1598–1644), a master who lived and acted in the same region as Chokyi Dronma and acted as spiritual adviser to later generations of the royal house of Mangyul Gungthang (see Bogin, ‘Life of Yol mo Bstan ‘dzin Nor bu’, 152). 29 For example, during the regency of a powerful anti-Buddhist minister in the early eighth century, the main Buddhist temple and its statues are reported to have been desecrated by making the place into a slaughterhouse (see dBa’ bzhed, fol. 5); destruction of Buddhist sites and objects are also attributed to the period of the civil war that followed the fall of the Tibetan empire in 842. 30 See Diemberger, ‘Life Histories’, for a detailed account. 31 Bynum, Christian Materiality; Boutcher, ‘Literary Art’.

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Fig. 3.4. Trakar Taso monastery © Photo: Hildegard Diemberger

physical such devotional objects became, the more they were thought sometimes to come alive.’32 Relics occupy a particular position in this, as both objects and partial embodiments of deceased exemplary persons. Striking similarities in the cult of relics between Buddhist and Christian contexts were also highlighted by the medieval historian Robert Bartlett in his extensive work on the cult of saints.33 The parallels include what in the words of Bynum could be defined as the ‘paradoxes’ that surrounded and still surround Buddhist religious materiality as books and relics were – and often still are – a source of disputes.34 In this essay I illustrated this dimension of literary artefacts by looking at specific fifteenth-century examples of engagement with the production and circulation of books. However, I have also shown that these paradoxes could be mediated within a different ontology, an understanding of the world not only as dynamic and impermanent but also predicated on an idea of ‘truth’ that could be perceived in different ways according to the level of spiritual realization of the perceiver.

32 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 125. 33 Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, 636; see also Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks, 167, 172. 34 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 34–35.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Amoghasiddhi ‘Jigs med ‘bangs, Bo dong pan chen gyi rnam thar [Biography of Bo dong Phyogs las rnam rgyal I] (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990). dBa’ bzhed = dBa’ Bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet, trans. Pasang Wangdu, Hildegard Diemberger and Per K. Soerensen (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2000). Ye shes mkha’ ‘gro bsod nams ‘dren gyi sku skyes gsum pa rje btsun ma chos kyi sgron ma’i rnam thar [Biography of Chokyi Dronma], 144 folios, incomplete manuscript, Tibet Museum, Lhasa, no. 4281.

Secondary Sources Bartlett, Robert, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Bogin, Benjamin, ‘The Life of Yol mo Bstan ‘dzin Nor bu’, PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2005. Boutcher, Warren, ‘Literary Art and Agency?: Gell and the Magic of the Early Modern Book’, in Liana Chua and Mark Elliot (eds.), Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 155–75. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Conze, Edward, Buddhism – Its Essence and Development (New York: Dover Publications, 2003 [1951]). Diemberger, Hildegard, ‘Life Histories of Forgotten Heroes? Transgression of Boundaries and the Reconstruction of Tibet in the post-Mao Era’, Inner Asia 12.1 (2010): 113–25. Diemberger, Hildegard, ‘Tibetan Women as Patrons of Printing and Innovation’, in Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter F. Kornicki (eds.), Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 267–308. Diemberger, Hildegard, When a Woman Becomes a Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Diemberger, Hildegard, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter F. Kornicki (eds.), Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Elliott, Mark, Hildegard Diemberger and Michela Clemente (eds.), Buddha’s Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond (Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2014). English, Elizabeth, Vajrayoginī: Her Visualizations, Rituals and Forms (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002). Everding, Karl-Heinz, Das Koenigreich Mang yul Gung thang, 2 vols. (Bonn: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000). Everding, Karl-Heinz and Dawa Dargyay Dzongphugpa, Das tibetische Fūrstentum La stod lHo (um 1265–1642): Die Geschichte der Herrschaftsbildung nebst einer Edition der Chronik Shel dkar chos ‘byung (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2006). Germano, David and Kevin Trainor (eds.), Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004). Houtman, Dick and Birgit Meyer (eds.), Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). Kieschnick, John, ‘Blood Writing in Chinese Buddhism’, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23.2 (2000): 177–94. Patrul Rinpoche, Words of my Perfect Teacher (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1994). Rublack, Ulinka, ‘Grapho-relics: Lutheranism and the Materialization of the Word’, Past & Present 206, suppl. 5 (2010): 144–66.

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Schaik, Sam van, ‘Blood Writing’, early Tibet [blog], 3 May 2012, https://earlytibet.com/2012/05/03/bloodwriting/ (accessed 5 February 2019). Schopen, Gregory, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997). Schopen, Gregory, ‘Relic’, in Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 256–68. Strong, John S., Relics of the Buddha (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). Tambiah, Stanley J., The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Warren, Henry Clarke (ed.), Buddhism in Translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922 [1896]).

About the Author Hildegard Diemberger is the Research Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences at Pembroke College. Trained as a social anthropologist and Tibetologist at Vienna University, she has published numerous books and articles on the anthropology and the history of Tibet and the Himalaya as well as on the Tibetan– Mongolian interface, including the monograph When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2007), the edited volume, Tibetan Printing – Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Brill, 2016), and the English translation of two important Tibetan historical texts (Austrian Academy of Science, 1996, 2000). She has designed and coordinated a number of research projects funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Austrian Science Fund. She is currently the General Secretary of the International Association for Tibetan Studies.

4. Myer Myers: Silversmith in the Spanish-­ Portuguese Synagogue Ledger

Vivian B. Mann*

Abstract Myer Myers (1723–1795) was the foremost silversmith in colonial New York. A member of the oldest synagogue in New York City, nearly all we know of his life is contained within the pages of Congregation Shearith Israel’s Holy Sedakah or Ledger whose entries date from 1733 until the end of the eighteenth century. Myers created only 7 or 8 objects of Judaica out of an oeuvre of 380 works or more. This chapter focuses on one type of Jewish ceremonial art made by Myers, silver rimmonim or finials for the Torah scroll, their use and symbolism, and on the Ledger, which is analysed both for its content and as a material object. Keywords: Touro synagogue; Myer Myers; Shearith Israel, New York; bells (finials for the Torah scroll); silversmith

In August 2014, I was engaged as an expert witness by Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in New York, indeed the only synagogue in the city until 1825.1 Its Board of Trustees sought to prevent the sale by Jeshuat Israel – the congregation of the Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island – of a set of Torah finials or bells created by Myer Myers (1723–1795) in the 1760s or 1770s (Plate 4.1). This essay is the result of my research tracing the provenance of the work, that is, the history of the finials and of their ownership.2 Although individual Jews had come to New York earlier, the arrival of a greater number in 1654–55 led to the establishment of a congregation known as Shearith Israel (the Remnant of Israel), a name that recalled the travails and wanderings * This chapter is published in memory and honour of Professor Vivian B. Mann. The editors would especially like to thank Gabriel M. Goldstein for undertaking final checks and edits. 1 In 1825, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun was founded by some members of Shearith Israel and Jews who had immigrated from Germany and eastern Europe, whose traditions and liturgy differed from the SpanishPortuguese rituals of Shearith Israel. 2 This research arose from my participation in litigation involving the rimmonim pending between Congregation Shearith Israel and Congregation Jeshuat Israel. The trial occurred in 2015, the 2016 decision of the trial court was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for First Circuit in 2017 and reaffirmed in 2018, and the United States Supreme Court denied review in 2019. As a result of the litigation, Congregation Shearith Israel was determined to be owner of the rimmonim and of the Touro synagogue. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch04

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of Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.3 The first groups of Jews to arrive in New Amsterdam in 1654 and 1655 came from the West Indies and Recife, Brazil.4 One impetus to the formation of the congregation was the arrival in New Amsterdam of a Sephardi merchant, Abraham de Lucena, in 1655 with a Torah scroll he had borrowed from an Amsterdam synagogue.5 In the early years of Congregation Shearith Israel, its members met in a private home on Mill Street in lower Manhattan.6 In 1729–30, a new synagogue building was erected on the same site, which was later renovated and enlarged in 1817–18. The last service in the Mill Street synagogue was held on 13 April 1833. Until the opening of a new synagogue on Crosby Street in 1834, the congregation met in temporary spaces and much of its property was probably in storage.7 During the construction of the new synagogue building, it was deemed necessary to repair the silver used at Mill Street; $167.26 was paid for this restoration.8 In addition, a ‘safety closet’ was constructed in the new synagogue building to store the congregation’s silver and important papers – a recognition of their value. Other Judaica from the Mill Street Synagogue were incorporated into the furnishings of the Crosby Street building – some of which are still in use at Shearith Israel – including an Omer Calendar, a brass Hanukkah lamp, a plaque with the Ten Commandments, an Eternal Light, six large brass candlesticks for the tebah or teivah (the reader’s desk), four silvered brass balls that secured the cover to the reader’s desk, and the hachal (the Torah ark).9 Following one additional move to 19th Street in 1860, the congregation built its present home on Central Park West at 70th Street in 1896–97.

Holy Sedakah or the Ledger of Shearith Israel in New York The most important source for the history of Shearith Israel in the eighteenth century is the still extant Holy Sedakah or Ledger of the congregation. Its first entry dates to the year 1733; the final entries record the history of the congregation after the Revolutionary War.10 Other eighteenth-century documents of Shearith Israel – notably, its minute book – are recorded in a later transcription of the minutes by Jacques Judah Lyons (1813–1877) and were published by the American Jewish Historical Society in 3 Year Book, 1. 4 Ibid. 5 Sarna, ‘Colonial Judaism’, 13. 6 Pool, Mill Street Synagogue, 6–7. 7 See, for example, minutes of the Board of Trustees, Congregation Shearith Israel, 7 October 1866: ‘Resolved that all silver of the Cong. (except 2 pairs of Bells and 1 pointer) be placed at Ball Black & Co. during the repairing of the synagogue – to be ensured for $1500 for 3 years.’ 8 Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Congregation Shearith Israel, 1833; Pool, Crosby Street Synagogue. 9 Pool, Crosby Street Synagogue, 42–43. 10 This manuscript belongs to Congregation Shearith Israel, New York.

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1913.11 Lyons served as hazzan or rabbi of congregations in Surinam and Richmond, Virginia, before becoming the hazzan of Shearith Israel. The Holy Sedakah is interesting both for its contents and its physical attributes. All entries are organized by the Hebrew year in which they occurred. Since the Jewish calendar begins in September and ends in the following September, a date of 5510 is the equivalent of 1749/50.12 The earliest entries are in Portuguese, which was the official language of all Spanish-Portuguese synagogues into the eighteenth century. Around 1740, the entries began to be written in English perhaps because of a decline in knowledge of the more traditional Portuguese or because of a wish to make the contents of the Ledger understandable to all. Nevertheless, the English entries often retain Portuguese words or long-used terms derived from Hebrew, such as escoba, a memorial prayer. The most common outlays are for wood, wax and oil, the fuels used for heating and lighting. In 5508 (1748), the congregation paid £36.0.15 (= thirty-six pounds, zero shillings and fifteen pence) for wood for the officers and the poor. In 5501 (1741), the outlay for wax and oil was £10.13. The provision of light to the interior of a synagogue was a necessity due to the significance of reading from the Torah scroll during services, and due to the fact that the entire congregation read prayers. Some disbursements were for goods such as lumber; often these amounts are accompanied by the name of the supplier. One example dated 5505 (1745) records that a Mr. Hays was paid for two beech boards. Related to these are amounts paid for fabricating or repairing items already in the synagogue. Asher Myers was paid frequently for repairing works in brass.13 Other expenses appear less frequently as when Myer Myers was compensated for a copy book he had acquired for the use of the synagogue in 1764. The Ledger also records the salaries paid to the officiants of the congregation: the hazzan or rabbi, the shamas or sexton, and the ritual slaughterer, the shochet or bodek, and teachers. A remarkable feature of these expenses is the pensions accorded to the widows of these officiants, which continued until they too passed away. Aside from the Shearith Israel Ledger there are few contemporaneous sources associated with Myers. The exceptions are a single extant letter written by the silversmith in 1772 regarding the delivery of a pair of finials to the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia; some receipts for silver objects; and a few newspaper notices mentioning Myers.14 A peculiarity of Myers’ career is that he left no workshop records, in 11 Lyons Collection, I, 1ff. Volume II, published in 1920, consists of documents and printed works related to the history of Jews in America. 12 For the sake of simplicity, in this paper only the Gregorian years will be used that correspond to the major portion of the Jewish year. 13 For example, in 1752, Asher Myers was paid £0.17 for repairing lamps belonging to Shearith Israel, and in 1754 he was paid £1.0.14 for mending brass. 14 On the Mikveh Israel finials, see Barquist, Myer Myers, cat. nos. 65–66. For the letter concerning delivery of the finials to Philadelphia, see ibid., app. 2: ‘Documents’, no. 6; for receipts, see nos. 2 and 4. For the newspaper notices, see Rosenbaum, Myer Myers Goldsmith, passim.

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Fig. 4.1. Payment to Myer Myers for a pair of ‘bells’ (finials). From the Holy Sedakah or Ledger of Shearith Israel, New York (5525 [=1765]) © Photo: Vivian B. Mann

contrast to the numerous documents produced by his better-known contemporary, Paul Revere of Boston. Everything else we know about Myer Myers comes from the Ledger of his synagogue, the Holy Sedakah (Fig. 4.1). Myer Myers was the foremost silversmith in colonial New York, who created 380 known works. He developed innovative business models: the earliest partnership between two silversmiths and the formation of a large atelier including additional artisans who worked at engraving, chasing and piercing the silver Myers designed.15 He became a ‘merchant-artisan’, who not only created silver but employed other silversmiths and sometimes established retail stores. Among Myers’ customers were gentry for whom he made the usual array of silver objects: tankards, bowls, teapots, candlesticks, sugar containers and flatware. Some of Myers’ silver works were given to New York churches: three dishes for the collection of alms were given to the First Presbyterian church in New York, and a baptismal bowl, originally a privately owned punch bowl, was donated to the Brick Presbyterian church.16 What was unique about Myers as a silversmith is that he was the first Jew elected to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths of the British Empire since its founding in 1327, which means that he had mastered the highest level of professional training. He subsequently became president of the New York branch of the guild. Myers was also the only 15 Barquist, Myer Myers, 25–39. 16 Ibid., cat. nos. 32 and 55.

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Jewish silversmith in the American colonies to create Judaica: five pairs of finials for the Torah scroll,17 a single circumcision shield and probe18 and six beakers for his niece, Reyna Levi (1751–1824), who married Isaac Moses (1742–1818) in 1770, that probably served as kiddush (wine) cups.19 One more object was probably a work of Judaica, a covered jar that originally had holes in its lid, which could have been used as a spice-box for havdalah, the ceremony that separates the end of Sabbath and holy days from the workday week. A few medals of Jewish interest can also be attributed to Myers.20 The Ledger also includes entries related to commissions to Myers from Shearith Israel for works in silver. The earliest is dated 1759 when Myers was paid £20 for a ‘piece of plate presented to Mr. Abraham Abrahams for his serving as Hazan of the Ka[ha]al’. In 1764, the Ledger lists a debit: ‘Balance due Myer Myers. Balla. [Balance] of his acco[un]t. payed £36.4.1’. In December 1774, Myers was paid £10.15 (on account) for a pair of ‘bells’, and he was paid for a second pair, as will be discussed later. The richest documentation of Myers’ life is in the Ledger of Shearith Israel. Myers’ association with Shearith Israel was long-standing and profound. He joined the congregation – to which his father had served as ritual slaughterer – probably at the age of 18 or 19, and served as parnas or president of the congregation five times: in 1759, 1763/64, 1770, 1783/84 and in 1786/87. The records of Myers’ donations to the congregation indicate his fluctuating financial situation over the years. His annual donations reached a peak of £12.12.9 in 1763/64 and then declined in the 1780s after the British invasion of New York when most of Shearith Israel’s members, including Myers and his family, left the city. Relocation cost Myers many of his clientele. An unsuccessful investment in a mining venture in Connecticut seems to have reduced his financial circumstances further. Of the five pairs of Torah finials that Myers created, all but one were synagogue commissions from Shearith Israel in New York and Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia (which still possesses both pairs of its Myers’ bells). The fifth pair of finials was owned by Myer Myers’ sister Rachel and her husband, Moses Michael Hays. Their daughter Judith married Samuel Myers, the son of Myer Myers; they lived in Richmond, Virginia.21 Inscriptions reading ‘Hays & Myers’ were later engraved on the staves, perhaps as a means of identifying them after the deposit of the finials in the Richmond synagogue. The pair of finials belonging to Samuel and Judith Myers eventually descended to their great-granddaughter, Caroline Myers Cohen. In 1892, she gifted them to Shearith Israel with the expressed hope that they be used, if possible, in the Touro synagogue in Newport, the home synagogue of her forbears, if Shearith Israel so wished.22 Myers 17 Ibid. cat. nos. 63–66. 18 Ibid., cat. no. 62. 19 Ibid., cat. nos. 88–90. 20 For the medals, see Jacques Judah Lyons, in Lyons Collection, II, 383–84; www.amuseum.org/jahf/about/ newdiscoveries.html (accessed 12 November 2014). 21 Barquist, Myer Myers, cat. no. 100.

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Fig. 4.2. Detail of bases, Myer Myers, Pair of Torah Finials: the mark on one is perpendicular to the base (left); the second, parallel to the base (right). Stamped silver, 1766–76. From the Touro Synagogue, Newport, R.I. Collection of Congregation Shearith Israel, N.Y., on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston © Photo: Vivian B. Mann

also created a circumcision shield and probe, now in the Jewish Museum, New York (2004–29a, b), for Moses Seixas of Newport, the cashier of the Bank of Rhode Island who served the community as its mohel or circumcisor in the 1770s.23 He also engraved a Hebrew inscription on a pair of candlesticks by another silversmith that transformed them into a work of Jewish ceremonial art, even if they had been used before for secular purposes. The candlesticks were donated to the Hebra Gemiluth Hasadim (the Burial Society of Shearith Israel) by a member, Isaac Moses.24 Silversmiths mark their creations by stamping them with a distinctive punch that acknowledges authorship and is similar to an artist’s signature on a painting, drawing or print. In the past, silver could be stamped multiple times – with the mark of the city in which the piece was made and the mark of an assay master who assured the quality of the silver – in addition to the maker’s mark. All of these marks tended to vary in form over time as one stamp became worn and was replaced by another. As a result, the shapes of the mark and of its field can indicate the date of fabrication of particular works. Myers’ silver bear only his individual mark, but this, too, varied over time, allowing the dating of a piece lacking any other form of documentation such as an inscription, a bill or a receipt. The two finials that were the subject of the lawsuit bear different marks that also contrast with one another by their orientation relative to the bottom of the shafts (Fig. 4.2). The mark on one is perpendicular to the base (left), while the second finial was stamped parallel to the base (right). This fact alone is sufficient to indicate that the two finials were not, originally, a single pair and that each came from a different pair. 22 See the Appendix for the text of Caroline Cohen’s letter. 23 Barquist, Myer Myers, cat. no. 62. 24 Ibid., cat. no. 142. Another work engraved in Hebrew by Myers is known only from a photograph.

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Other differences are apparent in the handling of the forms. The bulbous elements of the upper portions of the rimmonim were raised from flat sheets of silver, while their engraving, chasing and piercing were accomplished by various craftsmen. Every artist has a signature way of handling his tools resulting in idiosyncratic forms, just as every individual has a distinctive handwriting. For example, a comparison of the piercings on the two rimmonim offered for sale reveals jagged ‘holes’ on one finial (Plate 4.2 left), and smoother outlines on the other (right). Similarly, the floral elements on each rimmon – created by chasing (hammering the upper surface of the silver) – differ in their elevation from the surface and in their shapes. The interior armatures that strengthen the shafts of the finials were also made differently, indicating that they were not made at the same time, nor by the same craftsman. These contrasts are consistent with the fact that the personnel employed by Myers changed over time.25 How then did two single finials from two different pairs end up in Newport? Part of the answer lies in the strong, mutually supportive relationships between Spanish-Portuguese congregations in the western hemisphere during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revealed in the Ledger and in later minutes of the Shearith Israel Board of Trustees. On numerous dates, the trustees of Congregation Shearith Israel voted to underwrite the passage of Jews from other congregations who found themselves in New York without the means to finance their trips home. One could argue that these acts of munificence were in the New York congregation’s self-interest, ridding itself of poor Jews who would require continuing support, but it is admirable that the trustees deemed themselves responsible for itinerants who were members of distant communities. A similar sense of kinship to other Spanish-Portuguese Jews is evident as early as 1729 when members of Shearith Israel appealed to a congregation in Jamaica for help in building their first synagogue. Likewise, thirty years later, Newport Jewry appealed to the already established Spanish-Portuguese synagogues for help with the costs of building their synagogue: At present finding our Abilities not equal to our wishes, for finishing the Work in so short a time as we desire, we have resolved to crave the Assistance of the several Congregations in America.

In response to the appeal of 1759, Shearith Israel sent £149.0.6 to the Newport congregation, approximately one-tenth of the total budget for their building; a receipt for that amount was given to Myer Myers, then parnas or president of Shearith Israel, in July 1759. Other contributions to the Newport synagogue came from Congregation Shaar Hashamayim in Jamaica, Congregation Mikveh Israel in Curaçao, Congregation Neveh Shalom in Paramaribo (Surinam), and from Congregation Shaar 25 Ibid., 49–57.

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Hashamayim in London. A second appeal for building funds was made by the Newport congregation to Shearith Israel in 1761, and a year later Moses Lopez of Newport asked members of the New York congregation for donations of furniture and ornaments. In response, individual members of Shearith Israel gave required works of ceremonial art: Samuel Judah gave the Ner Tamid, the perpetual lamp hung above the Torah ark, which is inscribed ‘Given by Samuel Judah of New York, Anno Mundi 5525 [1764/65]’; Samuel Hart gave candlesticks for the ark and the reader’s desk; and Hyam Myers donated 100 pounds of wax for candles. Three members of the Newport congregation donated brass candelabra to their synagogue: one, given in 1759/60, is inscribed ‘The gift of Naphtaly Hart Myers Anno Mundi 5520’; two, donated in the name of Abraham Rodrigues Rivera, are inscribed ‘The gift of Abraham son of Jacob Rodrigues Rivera, Anno Mundi 5525 [1764/65]’; and a fourth was given five years later, inscribed ‘The gift of Aaron Lopez Anno Mundi 5530 [1769/70]’. In 1766, six brass candlesticks were placed on the railing surrounding the reader’s desk, each of them inscribed The gift of the bachelor Enoch, son of Joseph, to the Synagogue of the Holy Congregation Yeshuat Israel in New Port Rhode Island in the year 5527 [1775/76].

All of the earliest donations of objects to the Touro synagogue by its members and by those of Shearith Israel were for the purpose of providing light to the interior. It is significant that there are no records of any donations of silver to the new Touro synagogue at the time of its dedication in 1763, a point that bears on the ownership of the silver bells at issue. Dr. Ezra Stiles (1727–1795), later the seventh president of Yale College, was a minister in Newport at the time of the consecration of the synagogue. He described the building and the ceremony of dedication in his diary, noting that three scrolls of the Torah were deposited in the ark on that occasion, and that one of these had been donated by an Amsterdam synagogue (which may be the same scroll brought to Newport by the first fifteen families who settled there in 1658).26 Later records in the Ledger of Shearith Israel dated 1818 refer to two Torah scrolls lent by the New York congregation to the new synagogue in Newport in 5520 (1759/60), which would account for the other two Torah scrolls that Stiles saw deposited in the ark. He made no mention of silver ornaments for the scrolls he saw at the dedication, but in a diary entry dated six years later, in 1769, Stiles wrote that there were then six Torah scrolls in the Newport synagogue, including one that had been newly donated by Mr. Lopez and another that had been presented by the Portuguese Synagogue in London, ‘Both with Silver Tops & bells washed with Gold’. A prayer that has been recited in Newport 26 Stiles, Literary Diary, 6 and 11. Stiles’ description of the synagogue dedication is reproduced in Barquist, Myer Myers, 248–49.

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on the eve of Yom Kippur lists donors to the synagogue, including the ‘Gentlemen of the Mamad [Council] of the Talmud Torah’ who had presented a Torah scroll to the synagogue, and ‘Eber bar Shelomo’, probably referring to the Mr. Solomons of St. Eustasia (in the Caribbean) mentioned in the Newport Mercury of 1–8 December 1766 as having ‘made a very generous donation to the Synagogue in this place of an elegant manuscript copy of the Five Books of Moses, the same was deposited in the Ark of the Synagogue on Friday last’.27 After only a decade in their new synagogue, the Jews of Newport, together with the remainder of the city’s population, suffered during the Revolutionary War from the British bombardment of the city. Most of Newport’s Jews left the city; the majority settled in New York and became members of Shearith Israel. The doors of the Touro synagogue were closed, its Torah scrolls kept by the family of Moses Seixas, the bank cashier and mohel. In January 1818, the Trustees of Shearith Israel became concerned about the scrolls that had been lent to Newport in 1759 and about the four other Torah scrolls belonging to the Newport synagogue, all of which were still in care of the Seixas family. They passed the following resolution: Whereas in the Year 5520 [1759], this Congregation loaned to the Congregation of New Port, Rhode Island, Two Sepharim [Torah scrolls] as appears by the letter of Mr. Jacob Rodriges Rivera, the Parnas of said Congregation, dated 13th November […] Year 5520. And whereas for a great number of Years past, there has not been service in the Synagogue in New Port, RI, and that the Sepharim have been deposited in the House of the late Mr Moses Seixas of that place for more than twenty years & now under the charge of his Widow & Son Mr. Benya[mi]n Seixas. Therefore resolved that a Copy of the above be presented to Mr Benya[mi]n Seixas, now in this City by the Clerk of this Board, requesting him to forward on to this City to the care of the President of this Board, the Two Sepharim above mentioned & if hereafter a Minyan shall be in New Port RI & a Request be made for a further loan […] the Trustees of this Congregation will again loan the same for the purpose of being used in the Synagogue. And understanding that they [sic] are other Sepharim in the possession of Mrs Seixas & Son, it is Resolved that in case they will forward them to this City the Trustees will deposit them in the Hachal [ark] of the New Shool [synagogue of Shearith Israel] for Safe-keeping & return them when they shall be duly required […] & that this board will in their Corporate capacity indemnify Mrs. Seixas & Son for sending the Sepharim to this City to the care of the Parnas & will pay the expense of transportation.

27 Stiles, Literary Diary, 11. See Lewis, ‘History of Touro Synagogue’, 286.

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In a reply dated 20 February 1818, Benyamin Seixas wrote: As this is a transaction that took place many years ago […] I think it most advisable not to deliver them but on the following conditions, with the approbation of Mess’ Moses, Jacob and Samuel Lopez, the only Jews now […] [authorized] to place them, and on your agreeing to return them whenever you may be duly required to do so by any congregation that may hereafter be in Newport.

The four scrolls were not placed for safe keeping in Shearith Israel until 1833, despite having been requested in 1822.28 Ezra Stiles recorded that two of the six scrolls he saw in the Newport synagogue in 1769 had ‘silver tops and bells washed with Gold’: one had been newly given by Mr. Lopez and one, he wrote, by the London Portuguese synagogue. His identification of one scroll with finials as a gift from London would raise the total number of Torah scrolls used in the Newport synagogue to seven, rather than the six recorded in all other documents. We can only conclude that Stiles erred in asserting that the second Torah scroll adorned with gilt silver finials he saw in 1769 had come from London; the second pair of finials must have adorned another scroll, probably one of those loaned by Shearith Israel in 1759.29 If this reconstruction of the events associated with the Newport synagogue is correct, then a pair of Myer Myers’ finials was used in Newport before the closing of its synagogue in 1822. One of this pair of Myers finials must have been sent to Newport after the re-establishment of the congregation in 1883, along with a second finial forming a set, but not a pair. There is no evidence for the history of the finials during the years following the closing of the Newport synagogue. Not one of the documents written during the years of negotiations between Shearith Israel and Benyamin Seixas on the safe keeping of the Newport Torah scrolls mentions any silver ornaments. The next relevant record is an inventory of 1869 conducted by the Reverend Judah Lyons, the hazzan of Shearith Israel, at the request of its Board of Trustees. On 23 May 1869, the Board asked for a ‘complete inventory of all the property and effects belonging to the Congregation, or in its keeping [italics mine], (excepting the Real Estate)’.30 Lyons worked quickly, completing his meticulous inventory in less than three months, and submitted it on 12 August 1869. The contents of Shearith Israel are listed by floor and then by room; they include utilitarian items like stepladders and brooms, but also ceremonial objects. Lyons was punctilious in recording the history of works that reflected the 28 Minutes of the Trustees, 3, 395–96 and 4, 390, 395, Shearith Israel Archives. 29 Myers made a pair of finials for Shearith Israel in 1763/64, which provides a terminus post quem for the loan to the Touro synagogue. 30 This board request is recorded on the first page of this inventory. Lyons’ report was entitled Inventory of all Property & Effects belonging to or in keeping of […] Shearith Israel prepared by Hazan, Rev J J Lyons for Minutes of Trustees/5629 Sivan 13/ May 23, 1869, Shearith Israel Archives.

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history of Shearith Israel; for example he mentions ‘1 brass Hanukkah Lamp from the 1st Synagogue’ that he found in the south-west basement room, and the Eternal Light and other objects from the rebuilt Mill Street Synagogue dedicated in 1730.31 In a column to the left of the object list, Lyons noted details of their ownership by constituent organizations within the synagogue such as the Hebrah Hased Ve Emet (Burial Society), the Polonies School, or the Ladies Society.32 He also noted private property stored in the synagogue, for example Torah mantles belonging to L.I. Cohen and M. Barsesas.33 A separate section of the inventory is dedicated to ‘Sifrei Torah, Scrolls of the Holy Law containing the Five Books of Moses written on Parchment’.34 These listings include information on the scrolls, their silk linings, binders and mantles, all the textiles that protect the scroll. One scroll is described as ‘of small size, formerly of New Port Synagogue’.35 A section of ‘Articles of Silver’ follows, all of which were weighed for the inventory by a jeweller named Brown on 18 June 1869. The portion of the silver list most relevant to this discussion is that of Torah finials. It begins with the oldest finials belonging to Shearith Israel, a pineapple-shaped pair engraved ‘(5490) [1730] the year of consecration of First Mill St. Synagogue in keeping of Shamas [the sexton]’. The third and fourth entries read as follows: 1 Pair of Do [ditto, i.e. bells] marked “Myers” (the maker) [ditto marks, i.e. property of kahal [i.e. Shearith Israel] keeping of Shamas] 46½ [oz.] 1 Pair of Do marked “Myers New Port[”] [ditto marks, i.e. property of kahal keeping of Shamas] 45 [oz.]

The list indicates that one of the two pairs of Myer Myers rimmonim belonging to Shearith Israel had been used in Newport and bore the name of that city engraved on its shafts. An influx of vacationers led to the reopening of the Touro synagogue in 1883 and the need to furnish the building with ceremonial objects. Some time before 1913, when they were described and illustrated by E. Alfred Jones in his The Old Silver of American Churches,36 two Myer Myers finials from Shearith Israel were sent to Newport, forming the set considered here. Jones clearly stated, ‘One is engraved NEWPORT under the maker’s mark.’ He also described and illustrated a second set of finials by Myer Myers in a different style that were engraved ‘Hays & Myers’, the family names of Caroline Myers Cohen’s great-grandparents. She gave this pair, as well as a second, to Shearith Israel in 1892 with the hope they would be loaned to the Touro synagogue where her family had worshipped, if Shearith Israel so wished (see Appendix for text of 31 Lyons, Inventory, 6 and 11. 32 Ibid., 11. 33 Ibid., 17. 34 Ibid., 28–33. 35 Ibid., 39. 36 Jones, Old Silver, 320 and pl. 96.

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Cohen’s letters). The second pair Cohen donated is Moroccan, and was also engraved ‘Hays & Myers’ and published in Jones’ The Old Silver of American Churches. Two questions remain: Can one identify any records in the Shearith Israel Ledger indicating that the congregation commissioned a second pair of rimmonim from Myer Myers, in addition to the note of 1774 regarding a partial payment of £10.15. And why were single finials from two different pairs with Myer Myers’ hallmarks sent to Newport after the reopening of the synagogue in 1883? Why was the pair already lent to Newport (whose shafts were engraved with the name of the city) not sent? An interesting practice of the Shearith Israel Board of Trustees provides the answer to the first question. A Parnas or president was required to advance monies to ‘cover’ unpaid charitable pledges made during his term of office. After a year, the new parnas would return to his predecessor all prior pledges that were collected subsequent to the latter’s term of office. The previous parnas would then sign the accounting of his year in office in space left blank in the Ledger. During the eighteenth century, paper was an expensive commodity; those who wrote the records of the Shearith Israel Trustees ordinarily used the available pages economically. They did not waste space, for example, by separating debits and credits on separate pages as is the practice today. The only space intentionally left blank was on the last page of the accounts from the term of the previous parnas, who would be required to signify his approval of the accounting by signing the record a year after he left office. A page in the Ledger for 1763/64 when Myer Myers was the parnas of Shearith Israel lists receipts totalling £200.18.1. The next lines read: Ballance due to Myer Myers

36.4.1 £246.2.2

It would seem from this page, that the sum of £36.4.1 was received from Myer Myers and was included in the receipts for the year 1763/64. The same amount was listed among amounts paid by Shearith Israel in the following year 5525 [1765]. The notation of £36.4.1 is unique among all those in the Ledger related to Myer Myers. He was sometimes paid for having purchased an item on behalf of the synagogue or for having provided one – such as the plate for Abrahams – and he was also reimbursed as a parnas of the previous year, a year after each term as president of Shearith Israel. How could the same sum be income one year and become a debit the following fiscal year? The only plausible explanation for the different listings of the £36.4.1 in 1763/64 and in 1765, was that it represents the cost of something that Myers ‘gave’ to his synagogue during 1763/64, for which he was paid the following year (1765) when the amount is listed as a debit. I suggest that the amount represents the cost of the first pair of Torah finials made by Myer Myers for Shearith Israel in a year when he was the president of the congregation. He or the trustees must have decided to postpone payment because Myers was the parnas at the time the rimmonim were created. A

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dating for the first pair of finials in 1763/64 and for the second in 1774/75 agrees with the use of the same Myers hallmark on both pairs, since the mark in question was in use throughout that decade.37 That both pairs were commissions from the same synagogue would also explain the similarities in their original weight, size, forms and in the techniques used. The finials made for Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia and for Samuel Myers are quite different. Whoever chose two finials to send to Newport after the re-opening of the synagogue was, obviously, indifferent to the fact that only one of the finials he chose was engraved ‘NEWPORT’. He was similarly indifferent to the contrasting placement of Myers’ hallmarks relative to the bottom of the shafts. And given that he ignored these two differences, surely he was indifferent to the stylistic differences between the two finials he chose to send to the Touro synagogue. The re-opened Newport synagogue had two finials that were never a pair, although both were made in the same silversmith’s atelier. Their value is far less than that of a true pair. A pity – or not – depending on one’s point of view of the proposed sale of the finials. Maimonides (1136–1204) established in his Laws on the Sefer Torah (11:4) that objects associated with a Torah scroll in order to beautify it, for example silver finials, can only be sold for two purposes: feeding the poor and ransoming captives (a perennial problem in the Middle Ages and a growing one today). His dictum is cited in later rabbinic opinions on the issue.38 The importance of the Myers rimmonim and the social and legal relationships between the synagogue communities that have used these ritual objects illustrate some of the themes of this volume. In accordance with their beauty and symbolic value, the Myer Myers Torah finials will continue to be a part of the religious rituals at both the Touro synagogue in Newport and at Shearith Israel in New York.

37 Barquist, Myer Myers, 256, mark 9. 38 See, for example, responsa of David ibn abi Zimra (c.1479–1573), She'elot u-Teshuvot haRadbaz, I, 80.

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Appendix Text of Caroline Cohen’s Letters to the Board of Trustees of Congregation Shearith, Israel (Shearith Israel Archives) 1741 Lasalle St. Washington, March 2nd 1892, Rev. A.P. Mendes Dear Sir, Will you kindly in/ form me whether there/ are bells used on the/ Scrolls of the Torah in the Synagogue at Newport. And if not whether the Synagogue/ would accept and/ use a set of these/ bells now in possession/ of my family in Richmond, Va. They have been used at the Portuguese/ Synagogue in that City for many years/ but at present/ the Congregation has withheld [sic] to accept/ nothing, and they are no longer/ required. There are two sets/ of bells belonging to my family./ Please let me know whether the Synagogue in New York or Phila. would have use/ for them. I would give the one at Newport/ the preference as my family are/ descendants of Mr. Moses Michael/ Hayes, a former resident of Newport/ and a near relative (uncle I believe)/ of Missus Judah Touro. Mrs. Edward Cohen (née Caroline Myers) ***

Ocean City MD, June 20, 1893 To the Trustees of the/ Spanish and Portu/guese Synagogue,/ New York City Gentlemen,/ I desire you to/ take charge of the/ Silver bells lent/ by me to the late/ Rev. A.P. Mendes/ to be used in the/ Newport Spanish/ and Portuguese/ Synagogue. I wish them used/ in that synagogue/ by any congregation/ (following its ancient/ minhag) subject/ to your approvall./ Respectfully Caroline Cohen

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Bibliography Barquist, David L., Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). Jones, E. Alfred, The Old Silver of American Churches (Letchworth: Arden Press for the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, 1913). Lewis, Theodore, ‘History of Touro Synagogue’, Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society 159, 48.3 (1975): 281-320. The Lyons Collection, 2 vols., Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society nos. 21 and 27 (Baltimore, MD: American Jewish Historical Society, 1913 and 1920). Pool, David de Sola, The Crosby Street Synagogue (1834–1860) of the Congregation Shearith Israel (New York, 1934). Pool, David de Sola, The Mill Street Synagogue (1730–1817) of the Congregation Shearith Israel (Founded in the City of New York in 1655) (New York: Shearith Israel, 1930). Rosenbaum, Jeanette W., Myer Myers Goldsmith 1723–1795 (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1954). Sarna, Jonathan D., ‘Colonial Judaism’, in David L. Barquist, Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York, exhibition catalogue (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 8–23. Stiles, Ezra, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., L.L.D. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901). Year Book of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Shearith Israel in the City of New York, 5668=1908 (New York: Shearith Israel, 1911).

About the Author and Editor Vivian B. Mann (1943–2019) was Professor of Jewish Art and Visual Culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary. As Morris and Eva Feld Chair of Judaica at the Jewish Museum, she was responsible for numerous exhibitions. In 2010, she curated the exhibition Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain at the Museum of Biblical Art. Her publications include Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (2000) and Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life: Essays in the History of Jewish Art (2005). Gabriel M. Goldstein is Consulting Curator of Judaica at the North Carolina Museum of Art and an independent museum consultant. For more than two decades, he worked in curatorial and senior staff roles at Yeshiva University Museum. He began his career as an intern and research associate working for Vivian Mann at the Jewish Museum.

Part II Practices

5. Christian Materiality between East and West: Notes of a Capuchin among the Christians of the Ottoman Empire

John-Paul A. Ghobrial Abstract This essay presents the Théâtre de la Turquie, a work compiled by an anonymous Capuchin missionary (‘Michel Febvre’) based in the Ottoman Empire in the late seventeenth century. Published in French in 1682, the Théâtre offers an intriguing glimpse of how Catholic missionaries used religious materiality as a prism through which to make sense of the religious diversity of the Ottoman world. Moreover, writers like Febvre also drew on the evidence of Eastern Christian religious practices as a way of defending Roman Catholicism against its Protestant critics. The essay uses the Théâtre to reflect on the geography, chronology and afterlives of the ‘paradox of Christian materiality’ described in Bynum’s 2011 study. Keywords: Ottoman Empire; Eastern Christianity; Capuchins; missionaries; Catholic Reformation; Islam

The historian of Eastern Christianity encounters several challenges when exploring the world of religious materiality, some of which are rather different from those facing scholars of Latin Christendom. This is because the study of religious materiality relies in fundamental ways on the existence of what might be called an infrastructure of preservation, that is, a constellation of social practices, mechanisms and institutions that favour, or at least facilitate, the survival of the material record of religious experience into the modern day.1 Museums are a case in point. Whereas the development of a market for objects of curiosity in early modern Europe culminated in the establishment of institutions whose sole purpose was to house, study and, above all, protect a wide array of material culture, such repositories only emerged in the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century. And when they 1 Similar concerns have been raised by historians of science, for example in Brusius, ‘Towards a History of Preservation Practices’. More generally, consider the diversity of preservation practices that underpin the essays in Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch05

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finally appeared, their collections tended to showcase ancient artefacts that spoke to the tastes of Europeans or, conversely, focused mainly on the Islamic heritage of the Middle East.2 To be sure, the study of archaeology and visual culture has gone some way towards addressing this problem: gravestones, icons and even ecclesiastical vestments have been the subject of fruitful studies.3 In 2011, the annual Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposium – which plays a key role in defining the agenda of the field of Byzantine studies – focused its entire programme on one aspect of religious materiality, namely the cult of saints. The published proceedings of the conference testify to the sophistication and promise of recent approaches to the study of Eastern Christianity, particularly for the medieval period.4 These developments have coincided with a parallel interest in the study of religious materiality in Islam and Judaism.5 Even so, the study of Christian materiality is marked by a profound asymmetry: where the late medieval or early modern historian of Europe can boldly march through Western museums, churches and collections searching for wax hands, bleeding statues, or diamond-encrusted relics, scholars interested in Eastern Christian devotion and piety face the sad truth that the evidence they seek, or whatever of it has survived, remains scattered today across one of the more politically unstable and inaccessible regions of the world. To this logistical problem is joined a second daunting, methodological problem that looms over scholarship on the Middle East. The text-based approach of scholars working within the field of oriental studies means that Middle Eastern historians have tended to focus almost single-mindedly on doctrine, theology and assumptions about orthodoxy; this is as true of the study of Islam as it is for the study of Eastern Christianity.6 As a result, it is only in recent years that some scholars have started to take religious practice much more seriously as a subject of historical enquiry in its own right. This is a development that promises to transform our understanding of the religious history of the Middle East.7

2 Shaw, Possessors and Possessed; Bahrani et al., Scramble for the Past; Çelik, About Antiquities. 3 Briquel-Chattonet, ed., Recueil des inscriptions syriaques; Snelders, Identity and Christian–Muslim Interaction; and Ball, ‘Sixteenth-Century Batrashil’. 4 Hahn and Klein, eds., Saints and Sacred Matter. 5 See, for example, Meri, ‘Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam’; Wheeler, Mecca and Eden; Meri, Cult of Saints; and for an earlier specimen of this approach, see Horowitz’s important comments on a ‘social history of piety’ in ‘Coffee, Coffeehouses’. 6 Also relevant here is a similar critique made of Buddhist studies in Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. 7 For one example, see Grehan, Twilight of the Saints; much earlier, the path was set by Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans.

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But the reason for the elusiveness of Christian materiality in the Middle East boils down to something more intrinsic, rooted in Christianity’s status as a ‘ruled religion’ in the Ottoman Empire.8 Christians and Jews living in the Ottoman Empire were subject to a host of restrictions in everyday life and these restrictions were perhaps most salient when it came to the public practice of religion. The consequence for some Eastern Christians was an almost instinctive tendency to keep ‘below the radar’, especially when it came to expressions of religiosity: wooden clappers instead of bells, churches that folded themselves quietly into the urban architecture, festivals carried out only after extensive negotiation with local authorities and, most importantly perhaps, accommodation to the unpredictable hostility that risked showing its face at particular moments of worship, for example during processions, pilgrimages and other ceremonies and rituals. To search for Christian materiality in the East, therefore, requires one to search for expressions of religiosity that were necessarily submerged beneath the surface of everyday life: hushed, private, unvoiced, barely tolerated and, in some cases, absolutely forbidden. This is why the Théâtre de la Turquie, published in France in 1682, remains such an important work for the study of Christian materiality in the Ottoman Empire.9 Written by a Capuchin missionary under the pseudonym Michel Febvre, the book offered its readers a first-hand account of the diversity of religious practice among Ottoman Muslims, Christians and Jews. As I will explain below, the account was not the work of a single person but rather the book presented a compilation of over three decades’ worth of correspondence and accounts written by a generation of Capuchin missionaries. In the Théâtre, therefore, Febvre braided together the observations and anecdotes of over two dozen Capuchins and, in particular, their personal experiences of working, living and preaching to Muslims and Ottoman Christians. As such, the work offers a detailed and fascinating account of religious materiality among the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire, as seen of course through the particular perspective of late seventeenth-century Capuchin theology. Moreover, the work is relevant in as much as it allows us to take up here several of the wider questions raised at the end of Caroline Walker Bynum’s seminal study of Christian materiality in the late medieval and early modern period.10 Was the paradox of Christian materiality as salient in the East as in the West? Put another way, is Bynum’s vision of Christian Materiality really a story about Christianity or is it a story about Latin Christianity? To what extent did Eastern theologians and writers in, say, Aleppo, Cairo or Mosul exhibit the same tortured, anxious relationship with materiality as that described by Bynum for the Latin West? More 8 For the concept of ‘ruling’ and ‘ruled’ religions, I am inspired here by exchanges with Dorothea Weltecke and others in 2015–16 within the framework of the ‘Religious Minorities’ group at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Konstanz. 9 Febvre, Théâtre de la Turquie (1682), hereafter Théâtre. 10 Bynum, Christian Materiality, esp. 267–86.

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generally, what was the experience of Christian materiality in the wider world once Roman Catholicism had been unleashed from its local contexts in Europe and dispatched to such far-flung corners of the world as China, Latin America and the Ottoman Empire? These are important questions to consider, not least because Bynum’s focus on the period of 1100 to 1550 covers a period just before the start of systematic and widespread Catholic missions to the world beyond the boundaries of Europe. Of course, this short essay cannot even begin to answer all of these questions. Instead, I will take up here Bynum’s invitation at the end of Christian Materiality to explore two particular questions related to chronology and geography, especially as it relates to comparative approaches to religious materiality. The Théâtre offers an intriguing window into one afterlife of the paradox of Christian materiality described by Bynum, that is, a view of the anxieties about religious materiality expressed by a Capuchin writer and thinker in the late seventeenth century. Alongside this chronological extension, this essay explores what a geographical decentring of the study of materiality reveals about the potential for the comparative study of Christians, Muslims and Jews through the prism of religious materiality.11 This essay argues that a focus on religious materiality offered Catholic missionaries like the pseudonymous Febvre an obvious, efficient and intelligible way of making sense of the diversity of religious practices outside of Europe in the late seventeenth century, as well as the relation of these practices to Roman Catholicism. Michel Febvre and his writings have received only limited attention from scholars working on Eastern Christian and Kurdish history. Although the Théâtre was published in 1682, it had its origins in two earlier works: an Italian version (the Teatro della Turchia, first published in 1681) and a much shorter, less developed version of the text that appeared in print in 1674, the Specchio, o vero descrizione della Turchia.12 The real identity of Michel Febvre, listed on the title page of all the works, has been a subject of debate among specialists for several decades.13 Incidental clues in the work suggest the compiler was a Capuchin based, variously, in Aleppo, Baghdad or Mosul from around the 1660s, although there is no record of anyone by the name of Febvre serving among the Capuchins during this period. More relevant perhaps is the way in which many of the anecdotes in Febvre’s work recall observations and even direct passages found in other contemporary correspondence written by Capuchins in the Ottoman Empire, which lends credence to Bernard Heyberger’s suggestion that we should think of the Théâtre as a collective work reflecting the accumulated 11 See the comments on comparisons in ibid., 273–80. 12 Febvre, Teatro della Turchia (1681); the earlier version included a second author, Giustiniano da Novi, in Febvre, Specchio, o vero descrizione della Turchia (1674). 13 Two Capuchins working in the region in this period have been suggested, namely Justinien de Neuvysur-Loire and Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Aignan; cf. D’Alençon, ‘Le sieur Michele Febure’; Clemente da Terzorio, ‘Il vero autore’. As I am less interested here in the identity of the compiler than in the content of his writings, I will simply refer to him as ‘Michel Febvre’ since that is the pseudonym that appears in the book’s title.

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experiences of the Capuchin community based in the Ottoman Empire.14 Encyclopedic in its ambition and presented in over 550 pages of densely packed text, the Théâtre stands out from other contemporary accounts of the Ottoman Empire in its avowed interest in documenting the practices of all Ottoman subjects: Christians, Muslims and Jews alike. That the work was dedicated to the marquis de Louvois, Louis XIV’s war minister, is a reminder of the constant refrain lurking beneath the surface of this travelogue-cum-ethnography, that is, Febvre’s attempt to persuade the French state of the ease with which the Ottoman Empire might be conquered if only an organized army were to be dispatched by Louis XIV.15 The overriding theme of Febvre’s analysis is the concept of ‘disorder’ in the Ottoman Empire, a disorder and chaos that expressed itself perfectly in the diversity and plurality of religious practices across the empire. Faced with the variety of its languages, religions and communities – what he termed a ‘Babylon of confusion’16 – Febvre sought to organize Ottoman subjects into fourteen ‘sects’ as he called them: six Muslim (Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Turcoman, Yezidis and the Druze), six Christian (Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, Maronites and the Copts), alongside the Jews and a final sect that he designated as ‘sun-worshippers’ (‘solaires ou chamsi’, for Arabic shamsī). To the modern reader, Febvre’s categories seem to conflate a variety of distinct religious, ethnic and linguistic markers. Under the category of Muslim, for example, he joins together ethnic groups like Turks, Arabs and Kurds alongside communities organized around particular religious beliefs such as the Yezidis and the Druze. Yet this is to misunderstand the extent to which Febvre’s views evolved from a close study of everyday life and in particular religious practices, many of which actually created important connections between these groups. Indeed, it becomes possible to appreciate just how important is religious materiality in Febvre’s understanding of religion if we consider his analysis of Muslim religious practices. As he told it, Muslims suffered from a profound sense of doubt and confusion in their hearts, the result being that they ‘make vows to our own [Christian] saints as well as their pretended ones’.17 In Cyprus, for example, Febvre writes that the Capuchin church of Saint John of Persia was frequented daily by as many Turks as Christians. They came to request oil from the lamps that hung in front of the image of the martyr in hopes that they will be cured of their ailments. During his own visit to Nicosia, Febvre insists that he had ‘seen other Turks who when passing by the church, bow their heads or touch the doors with two hands and their face as if they were asking for a blessing’.18 But beyond attendance at Christian devotional 14 Heyberger, ‘FEBVRE’. 15 This was a common trope among French writers in this period. See, for example, McCluskey, ‘Les ennemis du nom Chrestien’. 16 Febvre, Théâtre, 345. 17 Ibid., 7. 18 Ibid., 8.

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sites, Febvre also acknowledges a certain commensurability between Christian and Muslim practices. Among the Turks, for example, he describes how children, at the age of 4 or 5, are taken to the tomb of a saint where they have their hair cut for the first time by their parents. This is carried out in hopes that the saint will protect the child. On this day, Febvre continues, ‘they also sacrifice a lamb, or at the least they celebrate with feasts with their friends, just as we do on the day of Baptism’.19 Of course, Febvre was not the first writer to make such comparisons between Christianity and Islam, although it is striking nonetheless just how imbued his observations are with personal sentiment and emotion. Consider, for example, his description of being moved to tears by the devotion shown to the Virgin Mary by some Muslim women. Here, they revere and honour the Virgin Mary most among all the saints, addressing their prayers to her and making vows to her in several churches dedicated to her name. In doing so, they are more pious than the heretical Calvinists, who do not honour or practise or acknowledge any cult for her even though they believe that she was the Mother of God. The Muslims punish as a blasphemer anyone who denigrates her, and I have seen several times how they throw stones at Jewish children and attack them violently on an account given to them by the Christians that the Jews have spoken badly about the Virgin Mary […] Even though they regard her as being in the Skies, and as distant from us as Heaven is from earth, nevertheless they do not insist, as do the Huguenots, that she cannot hear our prayers or that God does not hear those prayers that we address to her on earth. How many times have I watched with astonishment as Turkish women have cried, groaned and beat their chests in front of the Capuchin chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Baghdad saying these words with their hands raised in front of her image: ‘O Mary, the purest of all creatures, the mother of the great prophet Jesus, […] I invoke you by the life of that sweet child you hold in your arms, who is the crown of your head and the light of your eyes, have pity on me and the sins of which I am guilty. That the glory that you enjoy in Heaven will not make you forgot my miseries.’ They cry such things out loud with such devotion and feeling, as they beat their chests, that they awaken my compassion and bring tears to my eye.20

Febvre’s references to Calvinists and Huguenots are a recurring theme throughout the Théâtre, which highlights the extent to which he used religious materiality as a prism through which to compare not only Muslims and Christians but, perhaps more importantly, Muslims and different expressions of Christianity in his time. Observations about the religious materiality of Islam, therefore, could act as a useful 19 Ibid., 36. 20 Ibid., 9–10.

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polemical tool against critics of Catholicism, a theme to which we will return at the end of this essay. If devotional practices connected Muslims and Christians to each other, Febvre’s study of the various churches within Eastern Christianity also seeks to use religious materiality as a way of drawing distinctions and boundaries between different types of Eastern Christians. One third of the Théâtre is dedicated to the task of sketching out a relational account of the religious practices of Eastern Christianity, one that emphasizes the differences between each of the Eastern churches while linking these differences more generally to the question of their conformity with Roman practices. In separate chapters on each of the churches, Febvre adopts a consistent method that begins with a short statement of the doctrinal position of the community, usually through an explicit link to a particular Christology (or heresy) dating back to the early church. The Copts, for example, supported the Monophysite doctrines of Jacob Bardaeus, Bishop of Edessa from 541 to 578. Similarly, the Nestorians of Mesopotamia supported the belief in two natures of Christ propounded by Nestorius and condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431. This initial emphasis on doctrine and theology, however, gives way to a detailed and extensive account of the religious practices he observed among each of the communities. Among the practices that elicited most of Febvre’s interest we find a regular discussion of the Eucharist (including the method of preparing it), patterns of fasting, belief in purgatory, pilgrimage, the marital status of the clergy, styles of ecclesiastical vestments, as well as an array of other observations that functioned in a sort of ethnographic mode, for example long digressions on the seclusion of sexes, the incidence of cousin marriage, and even sexual habits among the clergy in different communities. A few examples will suffice to give a sense here of how Febvre used religious materiality to render intelligible the ‘disorder’ of Eastern Christianity that surrounded him. In his account of the Syrian Orthodox,21 he described how they followed in the tradition of Dioscorus of Alexandria (d. 454) in believing in one nature in Christ. When they made the sign of the cross, therefore, they used only an index finger extended with the other fingers folded inwards. Although they claimed not to believe in purgatory, they prayed for their dead. They practised more religious festivals than any other of the Eastern Christian churches, and, unlike the Armenians, they expressed a strong worship of the Virgin Mary. Like the Greeks, they used leavened bread for the Eucharist, which was larger, in any case, than the size of that used in Rome. Febvre wondered too whether they did not include too much salt and oil in the bread. Not surprisingly, Febvre was much more favourable when it came to his account of the Maronites, a community of some 55,000 Christians focused mainly around Mount Lebanon but also present in Tripoli, Cyprus, Sidon, Damascus and Aleppo.22 Unique 21 What follows draws from the chapter on ‘des Suriens ou Jacobites’, in ibid., 453–56. 22 On the Maronites, see ibid., 466–70.

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among the Eastern churches, the Maronites were perceived in the early modern period as having been in conformity with Rome for centuries, at least since the seventh century but certainly since they welcomed the conquering Franks of the First Crusade.23 Febvre describes the practices of the Maronites as ‘pure, holy and orthodox’.24 Their churches are decorated in the same style as the Latins and when Febvre does admit a deviation – for example they celebrate more fasts than in Rome – he dismisses such details as unimportant. Indeed, the fact that the Maronites alone among the Eastern Christians accepted the Gregorian calendar reform was enough to satisfy him of their complete conformity with Rome. Febvre expresses particular scorn for the ‘Nestorians’ whom he refers to as the ‘most odious’ of all Eastern Christians, undoubtedly because of the community’s historic association with Nestorius (d. 451).25 According to Febvre, Nestorians believed that Christ had two persons and this was clear from their insistence that Mary was only the ‘mother of Christ’ and not the ‘mother of God’.26 In addition, Febvre’s attack on the Nestorians reveals his real anxieties about certain elements of religious materiality in the Christian East. Unlike in any other chapter, Febvre’s arguments here are consumed by a focus on the body, the senses and on objects. For example, he rejects the authority of the Nestorian patriarchate, which is passed down in a hereditary line from uncle to nephew with the occasional consequence that patriarchs are appointed sometimes as young as 6 or 7 years old. Moreover, Febvre suggests that the only qualifications needed to become patriarch are to be celibate and vegetarian. As far as images are concerned, Febvre criticizes the ambivalence of Nestorian practices: on the one hand, images are not banned as they are in some other Eastern churches, yet despite this, images still remain mostly absent from churches. This is part of a larger concern Febvre has about the lack of ornamentation in Nestorian churches. Indeed, the use of curtains around the altar contributes to the general darkness of most of their churches, which Febvre believes also reflects the plainness of their celebrations. Confession is rarely practised among the Nestorians, so much so that even priests do not believe that they themselves have to take confession. Uniquely, the Eucharist is placed directly into the hands of communicants, and the wine is taken from a great vessel as if they were drinking water. Priests are allowed to remarry if their wives have died, and the marriage of cousins is also permitted, which Febvre insists is only practised by the Nestorians and not any other Eastern Christians.27 23 For a contemporary view, propagated in Latin by a Maronite in Rome, see Naaman, ed., Essai sur les Maronites. 24 Febvre, Théâtre, 467. 25 His reference to the ‘Nestorians’ refers to the Church of the East, or the community of Christians originally settled outside the borders of the Roman Empire. I will use Febvre’s classification in this essay, mindful of the problems of the term as described in Brock, ‘“Nestorian” Church’. 26 Febvre, Théâtre, 462. 27 This analysis draws from the chapter on ‘des Nestoriens ou Caldeens’, in ibid., 461–66.

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Perhaps the most interesting use of materiality as a means of comparing religious difference occurs when Febvre is faced with practices that do not easily conform to either Christianity or Islam. This is especially the case in the long account he gives of the Yezidis.28 The Yezidis were mostly unknown to Europeans in the early modern period, although the Capuchins were reported to have spent three months living with them in the mountains of Sinjar.29 In Febvre’s account, the Yezidis occupy an ambiguous space between Muslims and Christians, and this ambiguity is reflected for him in their religious practices. The consequence is that the ‘Turks hate them more than any other sect in the Ottoman Empire’, and the Yezidis ‘love the Christians as much as they hate the Turks’ out of a belief that Jesus Christ and Yezide, the head of their faith, are the same person.30 Febvre speculates that they have actually descended from within some heretical sect of Christianity, perhaps the Arians. They have a great love for wine, which they drink not only for their own amusement but also to insult the Muslims. At one of their festivals, Febvre reports that when one person offers wine to another, he says ‘take the chalice of the blood of Christ’, and the chalice is then accepted by the other with a bow and great ceremony.31 In general, his description of their practices reads like a contemporary ethnography: they drink wine and eat pork; they do not practise circumcision; they have no sacred books to regulate their faith, which Febvre thinks explains why they adopt any practices very easily. They have no fasts, no periods of abstinence, no specific hours appointed for prayer and no religious festivals. They say their prayers facing the sunrise like the Christians and unlike the Turks who face the east. In ‘imitation’ of the Christians and Turks, they make vows and pilgrimages. They have no temples in which they pray to God and they never enter into mosques except out of curiosity to see how they are constructed. They believe in several miracles of Jesus Christ, many of which are not referred to anywhere in the Gospels: Febvre cites one such story that claims that on the day of his birth Christ resurrected a man who had been dead for 1,000 years. In terms of their burial practices, Febvre is surprised that they bury their dead without any ceremony or funeral, in any place that they can find, ‘as if the cadaver was a dead dog’.32 Some of these burial sites become sites of devotion or pilgrimage in themselves, and Febvre claims to have watched as they gathered around tombs singing songs about Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, Yezide or even Moses.33 Clearly, Febvre takes material culture seriously enough to place it at the heart of his account of religion in the Ottoman Empire. Even so, this is not to say that he accepts the legitimacy of the practices he describes – and this is where we begin to 28 Ibid., 363–73; for a critical study of the Yezidis, see the excellent work by Guest, Yezidis. 29 Febvre, Théâtre, 373. 30 Ibid., 364. 31 For full details of the respect accorded to the chalice, see ibid., 366. 32 Ibid., 369. 33 Ibid., 368.

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see echoes of the paradox of Christian materiality described so brilliantly by Bynum. In the last chapters of the Théâtre, Febvre lays out two main arguments that, taken together, capture the ambivalence of Capuchin views about religious materiality in the late seventeenth century. The first argument comes in a chapter entitled ‘On the Errors and Abuses Common to all Christian Sects of the Orient’, much of which reads as an attack on some of the central elements of religious materiality in Eastern Christianity. Of particular importance to Febvre is their belief in the miraculous appearance of fire at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Setting aside the Maronites and those [Eastern Christians] who have converted to Catholicism, the [Eastern Christians] all believe that a miraculous fire appears from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday. For this reason, every year at the Feast of the Resurrection, four or five thousand pilgrims come from all around, even from the hinterlands of Turkey, Persia, and Georgia, in hopes of seeing for themselves this miracle that is talked about throughout the Orient. They are deluded into believing that globes of light emerge from the Sepulchre […] in such a way that they fill the entire church and light all the lamps. […] At the same time, or so they say, a dove as white as snow appears and the air is filled with thunderous noise and wind, similar to that which arrived on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended onto the Apostles. This lovely story is nothing but pure imposture. I never saw anything when I attended the ceremony myself, which took place with such amazing chaos and disorder. Far from seeing any miracles, all that one can see is four large torches carried by the Greek patriarch, from which he distributes one to his own people, one to the Armenians, a third to the Jacobites, and a fourth to the Copts, after he has lit them in the cell of the Holy Sepulchre – all on his own without anyone present to see his trickery.34

Febvre describes how the participants believe they receive a general forgiveness for their sins after having witnessed this miracle, signified in the ashes from the fire that they rub onto their faces. They also return to their villages with any wax remaining from the candles, which they use to rub onto the sick. Although he doubts the authenticity of the miracle, Febvre does make an attempt to understand its genealogy and function in contemporary practice. ‘The reason why the Christians believe what I have just described […] has something to do with a similar miracle that took place in Jerusalem during the reign of Theodosius on the occasion of the conversion of the infidels.’ As Febvre describes it, this miracle was originally reported in Cesare Baronius’s ecclesiastical history of the church:

34 Ibid., 504–6.

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He [Baronius] writes that on Holy Saturday two columns of fire and light were seen stretching from the grounds to the heavens, one above the Church of the Resurrection and the other on the Mount of Olives, at the spot where Jesus Christ ascended to the heavens, in memory of which they continue to secretly light a fire in commemoration of the first miracle and as a mark of their faith being the true religion.35

In other words, the Eastern Christians erred in accepting as a miracle an event that originated as the commemoration of a miracle. Crucially, the original miracle had been recognized as legitimate by Baronius, the church’s own official historian. Even so, Febvre insists that he would not dare to explain their error to Eastern Christians: not only would it scandalize them if he did, but more importantly ‘it would raise doubts in their hearts about the true miracles mentioned by the Evangelists’. Here, one feels that we are back in the realm of a similar paradox as described by Bynum in her analysis of Nicholas of Cusa’s stance on pilgrimage at the opening of Christian Materiality. Indeed, Febvre’s attack on the miraculous fire is part of a larger anxiety sparked by Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The fire was ‘only publicized to encourage people to come to Jerusalem’.36 He complains at having seen how the Christians ‘bow and scrape’ near the tomb of the crusader Godfrey de Bouillon, where a ‘miraculous image of the Virgin Mary can be still seen at the spot where she spoke to Saint Mary the Egyptian’, or how they worship the site of Calvary, which they ‘say they do to protect themselves from any evil things in the future’.37 It is difficult to know what lay behind this critique, but part of it seems to be a concern about the resources wasted on such pilgrimages: as Febvre describes it, ‘the poor and the rich, men and women alike’ sometimes fast a great part of their lives simply to save enough money to travel to the Holy Land. Much to his dismay, this money often ends up going into the pockets of the Turks who control the roads and the tolls along the way. Apart from this focus on Jerusalem, Febvre attacks other aspects of religious practice, for example the lack of attendance of women at church (‘it would be said that they were only coming to church to show off their beauty, and ultimately in hopes of getting married’) or restrictions on sexual activity among the clergy during periods of fasting (‘According to them, he that transgresses this rule has committed a mortal sin.’). In this context, Febvre tells a story about the lengths to which patriarchs would go to ensure that the clergy were not engaging in sexual activity during Lent:

35 Ibid., 505. 36 Ibid., 504. 37 Ibid., 506.

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An Armenian cleric who I know went one day to the Patriarch to ask him to come and baptize his newborn son, and he fell into a trap without thinking. Having been asked if his son was doing well, and if the baby arrived on time, this good man responded that he did, to which the Patriarch replied, ‘You miserable man, you conceived the baby during Lent! And if you do not believe me, let us do the calculations together and tell me is there not nine months between the middle of Lent and the present day? Or is your wife a mare or a cow to have carried the baby for longer? What do you say to that?’ The poor priest did not know what to say, and he was completely lost for words. At this, the Patriarch continued, ‘Who taught you to make babies and to enjoy the company of your wife at a time of mourning and penitence? Do our laws not forbid this explicitly, even for laymen? They will be looking to you for an example so that they might do the right thing themselves. Get out of here, while I reflect on what punishment you deserve.’ The Patriarch pretended that he would suspend the priest entirely of his functions, but he only did so in order to terrify him and so that he might extract a sum of money from him.38

There are several potential subjects of criticism underlying Febvre’s discussion above. On the one hand, he appears to be concerned by Eastern Christian confusion about different categories of sin. Yet the anecdote also recalls a recurring critique in the Théâtre about the greed of the higher clergy and a real discomfort about the role played by money in the religious lives of Eastern Christians. It is difficult to determine whether Febvre’s account reveals something genuine about practices in Eastern Christianity, or simply reflects the strange preoccupations of a Capuchin missionary during this period. Either way, such comments are a testament to the importance of materiality in Febvre’s wider critique of the abuses of Eastern Christianity. Alongside such critiques, however, the Théâtre ends with a second argument that uses the material practices of Eastern Christianity as part of a wider defence of Roman Catholicism against its Protestant, and especially Calvinist, critics. This is an intriguing way to conclude a book that has presented, until now, a nuanced, empirical and goal-oriented use of materiality as a tool for making comparisons within Christianity and between Christianity and Islam. Instead, Febvre here sets aside the significance of the distinctions he has made throughout the work and insists rather that Eastern Christians are, all in all, in conformity with Rome. It is best to let Febvre’s apologetic tone speak for itself: After all that I have described to you about the schismatic Eastern Christians and their religious practices, I should add that even though they are clearly heretics in certain ways, they are not heretics when it comes to the main controversies between us [Roman Catholics] and the Calvinists. On the contrary, the Eastern 38 Ibid., 507.

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Christians condemn the practices of the Calvinists, and they embrace those that are taught by the Roman church. […] For who among the Eastern Christians does not believe in transubstantiation, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ? Is there one among them who does not agree that there are seven sacraments in the church, namely baptism, confirmation, confession, the Eucharist, anointing, consecration as a priest, and marriage? In their churches, do they not carry images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, who they honour in the same way we do? Do they not use the same vestments and mitres as we do when they carry out their services? Do they not use holy water like us, and carry out their burials in the same way? Do they not say mass every day? Do they not fast, no more or less, than us? Do they not have deacons, priests, bishops and patriarchs? Do they not have clergy who make vows of poverty, obedience and chastity? Do they not accept all the same books of scripture – both Old and New Testament – as identified by the Roman church, and do they not reject those books used by the Calvinists, such as Judith, Tobias, Maccabees, Esdras, etc.? Do they not practice confession out loud, the celebration of fasts, salvation through faith and good works, the invocation of saints and prayers for the deceased? […] Who would dare say then that all of these practices were newly invented by the Roman church in recent centuries, if we simply consider the fact that these Eastern Christians (who have been separated from Rome for the past twelve to thirteen hundred years) also carry out the same practices, and that they observe them exactly as we do in Rome? This is clear proof that these practices have been in use long before the separation of our churches and, consequently, that they derive from God and the apostolic tradition.39

What immediately stands out in Febvre’s attempt to defend the Roman church from claims of innovation is his attempt to construct, out of the diversity of practices of distinct communities of Middle East Christians, a wider, ecumenical category of ‘Eastern Christianity’, which appears entirely in conformity with Roman Catholicism. In other words, Febvre’s claims here go directly against observations made elsewhere in the Théâtre about specific communities. In his earlier chapter on the Syrians, for example, Febvre had complained at length about the fact that Syrian bishops and patriarchs did not wear mitres. Likewise, he criticized the Nestorians for the absence of images in their churches. And Febvre’s claims about the ‘vows of poverty, obedience and chastity’ are seriously undermined, as we have seen above, by his anxieties about the materialistic desires of Eastern patriarchs. Yet the importance of these details about the diversity of religious practices among the Eastern Christians paled in comparison to Febvre’s larger concern for defending the immutability of Roman practices. In this way, the Théâtre concludes with Febvre’s having dismissed 39 Ibid., 512.

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the very diversity that he had painstakingly charted out in encyclopedic fashion in the preceding chapters of his work. So far as Febvre was concerned, even if some of these practices were heretical, when it came to the ones that mattered most – that is, those that constituted the subject of ongoing debate between Catholics and Protestants – the religious materiality of Eastern Christianity had to be defended if Febvre hoped to argue persuasively that Roman practices were ancient, immutable and legitimate.40 Coming at the end of over 550 pages unravelling the religious practices of Eastern Christianity, the whitewash that concludes the Théâtre is consistent with what Caroline Walker Bynum has described as the ‘paradox of Christian materiality’ in an earlier period. This does not mean that Eastern Christianity itself expressed the same preoccupations with religious materiality as the Latin West, a question that requires a great deal of further research. Rather, what I am suggesting here is that the example of Febvre reveals something of the enduring anxieties about Christian materiality that persevered into the age of the Catholic Reformation as well as how such anxieties intersected with Catholic encounters with other religious communities, Christian or otherwise. In Febvre’s case, when faced with the diversity of religious practices in the Ottoman Empire, a focus on materiality provided him with a method of comparing, distinguishing and drawing boundaries between different groups whose practices, it must be said, did not map easily on to linguistic, religious or ethnic identities. His approach – with its uncanny attention to even the smallest of details – reveals just how important religious materiality remained in the Catholic missions of the late seventeenth century. Although Febvre criticized several elements of Eastern Christian practice – for example the belief in the fire at the Holy Sepulchre – in the final reckoning, he also recognized that a total demolition of these practices did not sit well with a defence of Catholicism from the pens of Protestant polemicists. Cognizant of the diversity of religious practices in the world around him, therefore, Febvre ultimately downplayed the significance of religious materiality at the microlevel of everyday life in order to preserve a more general, and fundamentally more important, vision of the unity of religious materiality as it connected East and West and past and present. This is an important reminder that religious materiality was never simply a phenomenon in itself, that is, a set of practices used by believers to express their religiosity. Rather, religious materiality could also prove an important tool to be used purposefully in several ways: as an early method for comparing different religions, as a way of constructing a theological argument against one’s enemies and even as a justification for continued efforts at proselytization.41 40 This was part of a larger debate in the period captured for example in Arnauld, La perpetuité de la foi; more generally, see Gabriel, ‘Les témoins orientaux d’une querelle latine’. 41 This essay draws on research conducted for the project funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Oxford, ‘Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World’ (grant agreement no. 638578).

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Bibliography Primary Sources Arnauld, Antoine, La perpetuité de la foi de l’église catholique touchant l’euchariste (Paris: Charles Savreux, 1667). Febvre, Michele, Teatro della Turchia dove si rappresentano i disordini di essa, il genio, la natura, & i costumi di quattordici nazioni che l’habitano (Milan: Heredi di Antonio Malatesta, 1681). Febvre, Michele, Théâtre de la Turquie où sont representées les choses les plus remarquables qui s’y passent aujourd’huy touchant les Moeurs, le Gouvernement, les Coûtumes & la Religion des Turcs, & de treize autres sortes de Nations qui habitent dans l’Empire Ottoman (Paris: Edme Couterot, 1682). Febvre, Michele and Giustiniano da Novi, Specchio, o vero descrizione della Turchia, dove si vede lo stato presente di essa: i costumi degli Ottomanni, ed altri Popoli di quello Imperio divise in XIV Nazioni, tutte opposte alla Potenza, che le governa, e l’una all’altra; sette delle qualifono Infedeli & sette Cristiane (Florence: Francesco Liui all’Insegna della Naue, 1674). Naaman, Paul (ed.), Essai sur les Maronites: leur origine, leur nom et leur religion, par Fauste Nairon de Bane Maronite, Rome, 1697 (Kaslik: Université Saint Esprit de Kaslik, 2006).

Secondary Sources Bahrani, Zainab, Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem, Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 (Istanbul: SALT, 2011). Ball, Jennifer, ‘A Sixteenth-Century Batrashil in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’, Hugoye 9.1 (2006): 3–24. Briquel-Chattonet, François (ed.), Recueil des inscriptions syriaques (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 2008). Brock, Sebastian Paul, ‘The “Nestorian” Church: A Lamentable Misnomer’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78.3 (1996): 23–35. Brusius, Mirjam, ‘Towards a History of Preservation Practices: Archaeology, Heritage, and the History of Science’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 574–79. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Çelik, Zeynep, About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2016). D’Alençon, Édouard, ‘Le sieur Michele Febure (P. Justinien de Neuvy-sur-Loire, missionaire capucin)’, Etudes Franciscaines 21 (1909): 435–38. Gabriel, Frédéric, ‘Les témoins orientaux d’une querelle latine: orthodoxie et professions de foi dans La perpétuité de la foi’, in Marie-Hélène Blanchet and Fredéric Gabriel (eds.), L’Union à l’épreuve du formulaire: professions de foi entre églises d’Orient et d’Occident (XIIIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 373–89. Grehan, James, The Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Guest, John S., The Yezidis: A Study in Survival (London: KPI, 1987). Hahn, Cynthia and Holger A. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015). Hasluck, Frederick William, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, ed. Margaret Hasluck (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929). Heyberger, Bernard, ‘FEBVRE (ou LE FEBVRE, ou LEFEBURE) Michel, Justinien de Neuvy dit (Alep, vers 1664–1687)’, in François Pouillon (ed.), Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2008).

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Horowitz, Elliott, ‘Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry’, Association for Jewish Studies Review 14.1 (1989): 17–46. McCluskey, Phil, ‘“Les ennemis du nom Chrestien”: Echoes of the Crusade in Louis XIV’s France’, French History 29.1 (2015): 46–61. Meri, Josef W., The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Meri, Josef W., ‘Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam’, Past & Present 206, suppl. 5 (2010): 97–120. Morgan, David (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge, 2010). Schopen, Gregory, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997). Shaw, Wendy, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). Snelders, Bas, Identity and Christian–Muslim Interaction: Medieval Art of the Syrian Orthodox from the Mosul Area (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). Terzorio, Clemente da, ‘Il vero autore del “Teatro della Turchia” e “Stato Presente della Turchia”’, Collectanea Franciscana 3 (1933): 384–95. Wheeler, Brannon, Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006).

About the Author John-Paul A. Ghobrial is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Balliol College. His publications include The Whispers of Cities (Oxford, 2013) and several articles on aspects of the history of exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded project ‘Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World’, which is based at Oxford.

6.

The Materiality of Death in Early Modern Venice



Alexandra Bamji

Abstract This essay examines two interconnected dimensions of the materiality of death in early modern Venice: the complex attitudes of the living to corpses, and the significant role which material objects played in the transition between deathbed and burial place. Certain funerary and exhumation practices suggest that the physical body lost its significance at the moment of death; others demonstrate that the material body retained a religious and social importance after death. Objects – often recycled or ephemeral – sustained a connection between the deceased individual and the wider community. This study argues that the meanings attached to the body changed as its material form decayed following death, and that these meanings held a particular force in a transitional period shortly after death. Keywords: burial; catafalques; corpses; Counter-Reformation; death masks; exhumation

Human bodies were particularly important ‘things’ in the early modern material world. But bodies, of course, were something more than mere material things, and the nature of their materiality was contested and debated. The complexity of views of the material body was galvanized by the mutability of bodies, whether through ageing, behaviour, body care or death. Religious beliefs and religious change shaped understandings of bodily materiality. Dead bodies raised particular questions. How did the body and its meanings change after death? How could the physical place of the dead body be reconciled with religious, political, social and family needs? This essay examines two interconnected dimensions of the materiality of death in early modern Venice: the complex attitudes of the living to corpses, and the significant role which material objects played in the transition of the body from deathbed to burial place.1 Certain funerary and exhumation practices suggest that the physical 1 On artefacts and death rituals in early modern England, see Llewellyn, Art of Death. On the changing materiality of mortuary practices in early modern Europe, see Mytum, ‘Mortuary Culture’. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch06

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body lost its significance at the moment of death, and that attention shifted to the fate of the soul. Yet other practices indicate that the dead body retained an importance for the Catholics who comprised the vast majority of the population of early modern Venice. The significance of material remains is highlighted by the careful consideration which was given to where bodies were buried, as well as by practices such as embalming. Bodies were surrounded by material things as they moved from place of death to place of burial. Objects featured in the funerals of individuals at all levels of the social hierarchy. The nature and meanings of these objects were moulded by the urban context. Venice was a wealthy port and major centre of craft production, and consumption was shaped by social expectations, sumptuary laws, the accessibility of goods and the expertise of its many artisans. Venice was also an information hub and cultural node. Death offered opportunities for conspicuous consumption, which were sometimes influenced by the elite’s keen awareness of funerary practices elsewhere in Catholic Europe. Effigies, clothing, shrouds, baldachins, catafalques, wax candles and torches had political, social and economic significance. This essay nonetheless emphasizes the religious meanings of these objects, with specific reference to how items were often ephemeral or recycled. Materiality around the body helped to sustain connections between the deceased and the wider community while channelling the body’s transition to the afterlife. The intense significance accorded to post-mortem materiality lay in the combination of the body itself and its surrounding objects.

The Presence of Dead Bodies Dead bodies were a highly visible, and sometimes odoriferous, presence in early modern Venice. Typically, someone died each week in each of the city’s seventy parishes. When an individual died, the parish priest was obliged to report the death to the city’s Health Magistracy in writing prior to the burial of the body. Burial usually took place within twenty-four hours, and the deceased normally remained where they had died until they were transported to the burial location. The short timeline between death and burial was driven by concerns about the health risks of the stench of rotting bodies – concerns that were particularly acute during the heat of the summer. The number of burial places in the city contracted gradually between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early eighteenth century, most people were buried in one of four ‘public cemeteries’, in relatively peripheral parts of the city. Members of the elite were often buried in churches, as were members of some confraternities. The bodies of executed criminals and those who died suddenly were dealt with in specific ways.2 2

On criminals, see Traverso, La scuola di San Fantin, 59–73.

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Once buried, bodies were usually out of sight because church tombs were closed with stones and cemeteries were walled, but intermittent complaints about the smell of decomposition from residents who lived near to the latter demonstrate the continuing presence of the dead among the living.3 The body continued to change after death due to this process of decay. As the city’s cemeteries reached capacity in the mid-seventeenth century, its rulers started to take an interest in factors which affected decomposition. Decrees about the management of civic cemeteries soon included measures designed to speed decomposition, such as the use of lime and the prohibition of burials in caskets.4 Dead bodies were present in the city in other ways, too. During the medieval period the city had obtained the bodies and body parts of numerous saints. Relics – including those of saints George, Lucy, Mark, Marina, Nicholas, Roch, Theodore and Zachary – were prominent in churches throughout the city. The exploration of Rome’s catacombs following their ‘rediscovery’ in 1578, and the posthumous publication of Antonio Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea in 1632, sparked a renewed attention to relics elsewhere in Italy and Catholic Europe.5 Little changed in Venice, however, as the veneration of the city’s many relics was already at the centre of civic ritual.6 From the 1650s, nonetheless, the city’s residents began to encounter sculpture and imagery which represented death and acted as a memento mori, from the skulls on the exterior wall of the Scuola dei Morti, built in 1659 for a confraternity concerned with death, to the half-skeletons of the lower order of the monument to doge Giovanni Pesaro (d. 1659) in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.7 From the 1670s Venetians could also see in the church of the Gesuiti Pietro della Vecchia’s painting of San Francesco Borgia viewing the body of the empress Isabella, wife of Charles V (Plate 6.1). Following the death of Isabella in 1539, Borgia was charged with conveying her body to Granada for burial. The sight of her decaying corpse contributed to his later decision to renounce the secular life and to enter the Society of Jesus, and he was elected third general of the Jesuits in 1565. The Jesuits returned to Venice in 1657, following their expulsion in 1606. Soon after their return, della Vecchia was charged with painting a cycle of seven paintings for their church, and his choice of subject was probably influenced by the canonization of Borgia in 1670. The subject also resonated with the Jesuits’ recourse to the macabre to stir the emotions of the faithful, as with their use of skulls as props in missionary preaching.8

3 ASV, PS, b. 54, 12 April 1656. 4 ASV, PS, b. 55, 7 March 1691; ASV, PS, b. 158, 10 May 1776. 5 See Ditchfield, ‘Martyrs’. 6 Muir, Civic Ritual, ch. 2. 7 Earlier memento mori imagery, such as the wooden panel above the tomb of Alvise della Torre (d. 1549), which features a skull dripping blood, was rare. On this tomb, see Fortini Brown, ‘Death in Venice’. 8 T. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles, 145, 148; Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch, 74.

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Fig. 6.1. Detail, tomb of doge Alvise II Mocenigo. Marble, eighteenth century, church of San Stae, Venice © Photo: Alexandra Bamji

Death imagery featured on the frontispieces of documents associated with death, like wills and civic death registers, particularly during the first three decades of the eighteenth century. Striking examples include the watercolours on the front of the wills of two brothers, Giovanni Battista Giusti and Antonio Giusti, which both feature an allegory of death with a skull, skeletons and scythes; and the frontispieces of every civic death register for the years 1710 to 1725, which depict effigies on biers amidst catafalques and torches.9 The tomb of doge Alvise II Mocenigo (d. 1709) was a notable case of memento mori imagery. The tomb is located in the centre of the floor of the nave of the church of San Stae, which had been demolished in 1678 and was rebuilt under the patronage of the Mocenigo family, whose palace was nearby. The tombstone of sumptuous marble was surrounded by an elaborate design, which featured skeletons with scythes at either side. Above and below there was a ducal corno with cross bones (now in poor condition) and a life-size skull with cross bones, which is topped with a camauro, the cap of fine linen which the doge wore under his corno (Fig. 6.1). Four symbols of death take up the corners: a torch, a will, an owl and an hourglass.10 Yet the tombs of Pesaro and Mocenigo were conspicuous precisely because their depictions of what 9 ASV, San Rocco, prima consegna, b. 148; ASV, PS, bb. 909–19. 10 Da Mosto, I dogi, 457–58.

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the body would become were unusual; memento mori imagery was less common in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Venice than in other artistic centres.11

The Ambiguity of Material Remains Attitudes to dead bodies were ambiguous. Theological views of the corpse were informed by the perceived dualism of body and soul, and a sense that the body was a vehicle for the soul and worthless without it.12 Some evidence indicates that attention shifted immediately to the fate of the soul at the moment of death. An account of a suicide, in the autobiographical statement of Cecilia Ferrazzi in 1664 during her trial by the Inquisition, suggests some clerical indifference to dead bodies. Ferrazzi reported how a young man named Pietro, who worked for her father, ‘became delirious’ and ‘threw himself off the porch into the middle of the street. A priest from Santa Marina came running and, seeing that his bones and his head were all broken and he couldn’t administer confession, declared him dead and left him that way.’13 Once the priest had established that he could do nothing for Pietro’s soul, he had no interest in Pietro’s body. Cecilia’s family took greater care and laid the body ‘on a table in a little chapel in our house’, even though they left him unattended. Shockingly, Cecilia realized that Pietro was not dead when she heard him moaning as she was on her way to dinner. At this point the priest was hastily recalled so that he could provide the last rites. The creation of an ossuary on an island in the northern lagoon also reflected a degree of indifference to material remains. In 1664 the decision was taken to construct a wall around the perimeter of the island of Sant’Ariano, so that it could be used for ‘the pious containment of human ashes’.14 Exhumation was part and parcel of the active management of burial space in Catholic Europe, especially in urban areas. In Paris, burials were designed with future disinterment in mind, with bodies shrouded rather than coffined, and layered with lime, so that they would decay evenly.15 In the eighteenth century, the managers of Parisian cemeteries calculated that it was possible to open graves after nine to fourteen years so that the space could be cleared and reused. In Venice, the boatmen who conveyed bones and ashes to the ossuary were paid according to the number of cubic feet of human remains which they had transported.16 Legislation made it clear that ‘only bones and ashes were to

11 Aikema, Pietro della Vecchia, 95; Mason, ‘L’immaginario della morte’, 523. 12 Tarlow, Ritual, 26–28. On the misogynistic dimensions of this dualism, see Bynum, ‘Why All the Fuss’, 6. 13 Ferrazzi, Autobiography, 41. 14 ASV, PS, b. 742, 25 September 1664. 15 Harding, Dead and the Living, 171. 16 ASV, PS, b. 756, 12 April 1776.

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be deposited at the ossuary, and no whole or partial corpses’, indicating greater sensibility towards the bodies of the recently deceased.17 The speedy burial of the corpses of the elite following their death shows the limits of this sensibility. If an elaborate state funeral was held, as for the doge, grand chancellor, patriarch or important foreign ambassadors, the cadaver was often not present at the public obsequies which took place at a later date.18 This approach to the dead body was not without religious significance, however. From the late sixteenth century onwards, Venice’s elite complied with the church’s expectation that all bodies be buried in the ground. The piety of burial in the ground had biblical foundation, relating to Genesis 3:19: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’19 Previously, the bodies of prominent patricians and other important figures were sometimes buried instead in a sarcophagus which formed part of a wall tomb. When an individual was buried in the ground in earlier times, it was usually at their prior request, and accompanied by an explicit statement of their humility. For instance, doge Francesco Venier (d. 1556) requested burial in the ground at San Salvador due to ‘the humility that we should have and in recognition of our wretchedness’.20 Such statements displayed recognition that man’s fate was the consequence of original sin. The shift to consistent burial in the ground resulted from the endeavours of leading sixteenth-century church reformers. Gian Matteo Giberti, bishop of Verona, issued regulations on church burials in his Constitutiones of 1542 and sought to curb ostentatious monumental tombs. Debates culminated in Pius V’s papal bull Cum primum of 1 April 1566, which ordered that bodies which had been buried above ground should be reinterred in the earth. Carlo Borromeo pursued this directive vigorously in his diocese of Milan and provided detailed instructions on the location and form of tombs and cemeteries in his 1577 text on church building.21 The slow and partial uptake of Tridentine reforms in Venice, such as those which pertained to marriage, and the Venetian Republic’s often complicated relationship with the papacy are well documented.22 Yet Venetians appear to have complied quickly with the church’s line on burials. Although the evidence is incomplete, the known burial locations of the doges who ruled Venice from the promulgation of Cum primum onwards are overwhelmingly in the ground.23 The exceptions were Bertucci Valier (d. 1658) and Silvestro Valier (d. 1700), who were both buried in a wall on a provisional basis, the 17 ASV, PS, b. 743, 15 January 1673 more veneto. 18 On the burial of the doge in the sixteenth century, see Ostermann, ‘Körper und Effigies’. 19 Genesis 3:19, King James Bible. 20 Da Mosto, I dogi, 263. 21 Borromeo, Instructiones, ch. 27. 22 Cristellon and Seidel Menchi, ‘Religious Life’, 387–88, 392. 23 Da Mosto, I dogi, 266–542.

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former in San Giobbe and the latter in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, until the completion of a monumental family tomb in the latter church, in front of which both were later buried in the ground.24 Although some funerary monuments continued to include a sarcophagus, this element was decorative rather than functional. Sixteenth-century reformers might have recoiled at the ostentation of baroque funerary monuments, but they succeeded in relocating the physical body to the ground in Venice. The construction of underground tombs became incorporated into church design from the late seventeenth century onwards, as demonstrated by the symmetrical ranks of tomb slabs in the nave of San Stae and the octagonal crypt of San Simeon Piccolo, a church which was rebuilt between 1718 and 1738.25 The care which was taken to ensure that the bodies of the deceased had a suitable resting place is an example of numerous practices which suggest that the physical body remained meaningful after death. People cared deeply about where their family members’ bodies were buried, and individuals set out their own wishes for their body prior to their death in wills. By choosing burial at San Stae, as opposed to Santi Giovanni e Paolo where other high-ranking members of his family were buried, Alvise II Mocenigo remained physically close to his family in their palace 100 metres away. Some patricians made provision for the burial of certain parts of their body in specific places. In 1720, for instance, Alvise Foscari (q. Francesco), a descendant of doge Francesco Foscari, had his heart buried in the doge’s tomb in the Frari.26 The doge had died in difficult circumstances in 1457, and his family had sought to rehabilitate his reputation with a prominently sited monument. Alvise Foscari’s burial choice was a symbolic gesture which expressed his and his family’s solidarity with his ill-fated ancestor. The latter Foscari may also have been inspired by the bold stipulation of doge Francesco Erizzo (d. 1646), that his heart be buried in the presbytery of the Basilica of San Marco. Erizzo’s heart was buried in the ground within 2 metres of the high altar and the body of St. Mark himself, its location marked clearly with a white marble ducal corno and a black marble riccio or ‘hedgehog’ within a red marble heart, all set in a white slab (Fig. 6.2).27 Erizzo’s choice was audacious because of long-standing attempts to prevent the association of individuals with the Basilica of San Marco. The last doge to be buried there had been Andrea Dandolo in 1354, and all ducal burials hitherto had been in the baptistery or atrium. Erizzo’s request was probably influenced by the considerable popularity of heart burials at the highest social levels across seventeenth-century Europe.28 Erizzo sought to achieve spiritual advantage from his heart’s close proximity to a saint, a practice which had medieval origins.29 24 Da Mosto, I dogi, 394, 450. 25 Franzoi and Di Stefano, Le chiese di Venezia, 77–78. 26 Da Mosto, I dogi, 172. 27 Ibid., 376. 28 Tarlow, Ritual, 119. 29 E. Johnson, ‘Burial ad Sanctos’, 68–70.

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Fig. 6.2. Heart burial of doge Francesco Erizzo. Marble, seventeenth century, Basilica of San Marco, Venice © Photo: Alexandra Bamji

The importance of the body’s place of rest was underlined by the repatriation of corpses – or parts thereof – to Venice when nobles died elsewhere, especially if the death occurred in Venice’s mainland empire. The movement of cadavers was monitored carefully by the Health Magistracy, whose records show that bodies usually reached Venice within two days of the death. In 1645, the body of ser Paolo Zorzi, who held the position of camerlengo or chief treasury official of Padua, was returned to Venice following his death from tuberculosis.30 Similarly, when Gasparo Gozzi died in Pordenone in 1696 and Giulia Grimani died in Treviso in 1746, their bodies were buried in Venice.31 When patriarch Francesco Antonio Correr died in 1741 near Montagnana, near Padua, his body was immediately brought to Venice for burial in the cathedral church of San Pietro di Castello.32 Many Venetian patricians, like Zorzi, spent substantial periods of time on the terraferma as officials who governed Venice’s subject cities. Others travelled there on official business, as in the case of Correr. In addition, nobles spent considerable and increasing periods of time at their mainland villas, especially in the summer and autumn. Even though patricians often had profound connections 30 ASV, PS, b. 873, 5 September 1645. 31 ASV, PS, b. 900, 4 February 1696 more veneto; ASV, PS, b. 943, 1 October 1746. 32 Cristante, ‘Funeral Effigy’, 88.

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with locations on the terraferma, the repatriation of noble corpses for burial in Venice itself demonstrates the primacy of their civic identity, and the importance to contemporaries of the post-mortem place of the physical body. Sometimes material remains were transported from further afield. Doge Francesco Morosini died in Nauplion in the Peloponnese on 6 January 1694. Venice was part of a Holy League, which was fighting against the Ottomans for control of the Mediterranean, pitting Christianity against Islam. Morosini had commanded the Venetian fleet since the outbreak of the conflict in 1684 and had been elected doge in 1688 while absent from Venice in this role. Nauplion had been seized by the Venetians from the Ottomans in 1685, and the burial of Morosini’s heart and internal organs there, in the church of San Antonio, was an assertion of Venetian territorial claims, the efficacy of Morosini’s military leadership, and God’s part in the victory. But Morosini’s broader political importance and personal wishes led to the transport of his body to Venice – a distance of around 2,500 kilometres. Following his stipulations, Morosini was buried in a floor tomb in the church of Santo Stefano.33 The choice of this church was inspired by its proximity to the family palace. Although Morosini’s request for a floor tomb conformed to Tridentine expectations, the grandiose tomb slab – the largest in the whole city – was a statement which invited personal glorification. The tomb’s lasting power derived from its scale, the combination of grave and monument, and the physical presence of the body. Morosini asked his executors to move the remains of his ancestors, including his father, from the family tomb in the church of San Cassiano to the new tomb at Santo Stefano.34 This request emphasizes the importance of material remains to Morosini himself, as confirmed by the embalming of the cat which had accompanied him on his military expeditions. Although the embalming of a cat was unusual in early modern Venice, the body of the doge was embalmed after his death throughout the sixteenth century, demonstrating an interest in its physical preservation.35 This practice enhanced the interregnum rites in which the doge’s body was displayed for three days before the funeral took place. Embalming improved the appearance and smell of the corpse in the extended period prior to its burial. Embalming techniques were widely discussed in Renaissance Europe in publications by surgeons such as Ambroise Paré, and the sheer number of surgeons and apothecaries in Venice meant that the technical expertise and ingredients needed for the procedure were easily accessible.36 The body of dogaressa Loredana Marcello was also embalmed following her death in 1572.37 But unlike in England where embalming was common for persons ‘of quality’,

33 34 35 36 37

On Morosini’s funeral and burial, see Cecchetti, ‘Il testamento’. Da Mosto, I dogi, 438–39. On the embalming of doge Andrea Gritti (d. 1539), see Cooper, ‘On the Death of Great Men’, 108. For embalming techniques in Renaissance Florence, see Giuffra et al., ‘Children of the Medici’. Da Mosto, I dogi, 278.

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in Venice the practice was reserved for the apex of the political elite.38 Elsewhere in Italy, embalming was practised on the bodies of supposed saints.39 This intervention in the natural process of decay represents something of a paradox to modern eyes, since Catholics believed that decomposition was the consequence of original sin and that the bodies of saints were incorruptible. Early modern Venetian accounts nonetheless attest to a belief that exceptional piety slowed the process of decay. The patrician diarist Marin Sanudo, for instance, recorded the exhumation in 1526 of the first patriarch of Venice, Lorenzo Giustiniani (d. 1456). Although Giustiniani’s body had decayed, Sanudo was struck that his head ‘still had its beard and tonsured fringe’.40 Similarly, the eighteenth-century patrician scholar Flaminio Corner noted that the body of bishop Antonio Pizzomano had been exhumed eight years after his death in 1512 and found incorrupt.41 The embalming of the doge thus elevated his religious significance, a symbolic act in a significant period of transition for the Republic as well as the individual.42 There is no definitive explanation of what prompted the move away from embalming in the early seventeenth century. The requests of both doge Leonardo Donà (d. 1612) and doge Antonio Priuli (d. 1623) for immediate burial and the use of an effigy for the funerary rites may have been prompted by a wish to preserve the dignity of their body in death. Descriptions of the bodies of earlier dead doges indicate that embalming did little to delay decay and these men may have worried that the sight of their decomposing bodies might cast a shadow on their posthumous reputation. Sanudo, for instance, described the black face of doge Antonio Grimani (d. 1523) at the latter’s funeral.43 Grimani’s decision-making in military affairs had been questionable on several occasions, and Sanudo was surely mindful of the symbolic implications of inclusion of this detail. We know far more about the material remains of elite men, especially patricians and high-ranking ecclesiastics, than about the corpses of others who died in early modern Venice. The relative paucity of evidence about the bodies of women, children, the poor and non-Catholics reflects the interplay of power, social status, gender and religion in early modern Venetian society. Hierarchy and patriarchy were perpetuated after death. The persistence of hierarchy was underpinned by the spatial differentiation of dead bodies. The elite were buried in churches, whereas the poor were laid to rest in public cemeteries towards the city perimeter, even if some received a prominent funeral, like Giacomo, a shoe dealer famed for his bridge-fighting, whose funeral was attended by more than a thousand people.44 Members of religious 38 Tarlow, Ritual, 128. 39 Finucci, ‘Thinking through Death’, 3. 40 Labalme and White, eds., Cità Excelentissima, 398. 41 Corner, Notizie storiche, 25. 42 On the religious significance of embalming, see Camporesi, Incorruptible Flesh, 25. 43 Da Mosto, I dogi, 232. 44 Davis, War of the Fists, 101.

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minorities were buried in even more peripheral locations. The Jewish community had a cemetery on the Lido from 1389, and Protestants were buried on the island of San Cristoforo della Pace from 1719.45 But spatial differentiation did not preclude agency or material meanings for non-patricians. Jews favoured physical separation between residential and burial spaces, so that the purity of life and impurity of death were clearly distinguished.46 Noblewomen often requested burial in convents in their wills.47 In so doing, they expressed their piety rather than conforming to patriarchal authority by acceding to burial in a family tomb. Physical bodies retained significance once buried. While people often left legacies for anniversary masses, Doge Silvestro Valier went one step further by leaving a legacy for the construction each year of a catafalque above the floor tomb where he, his father and his wife were buried.48 Valier thereby sought to draw attention to their bodies on every anniversary of each of their deaths. The ritualized recourse to material remains occurred at all levels of the social hierarchy. It was customary to visit the burial places of family members on 2 November, the day of the dead, and this practice extended in some cases to confraternal brothers. The ceremonial of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista indicates that members of this scuola may have visited as many as ten different churches on this day.49 Following the establishment of the ossuary on Sant’Ariano, a series of new confraternities known as Compagnie di Sant’Ariano were formed in the early eighteenth century, which travelled to the ossuary once a year to celebrate mass. The physical body retained symbolic power even at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1797, the ashes of doge Pietro Gradenigo were exhumed from the church of San Cipriano on Murano.50 Gradenigo, doge from 1289 to 1311, was closely associated with a key moment in the development of the city’s unique political system. Following the fall of the Republic, his ashes were exhumed and scattered to the winds, symbolizing the disintegration of Gradenigo’s achievements in life.

Materiality around the Body Bodies were accompanied by other material things as they moved from place of death to place of burial. Some were interred with the cadaver; most were not. The limited interment of materiality around the dead body highlights the importance of these items, which were intended to play a specific role in the body’s transition from living 45 Meneghin, S. Michele in isola, II, 65. 46 Bonfil, Jewish Life, 281. 47 Laven, Virgins of Venice, 70–71. 48 Da Mosto, I dogi, 450. 49 Glixon, Honoring God, 67. 50 Plant, Venice, 30.

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being to ashes. While the use of some items was directly specified by the deceased, these objects also served a purpose for the wider Venetian community. Objects had a range of meanings and functions, and their presence and visibility were of significance. Ritual and performance were embedded in Venetian lives, and extended to death. Emulation contributed to the extravagance of this materiality. The apotheosis funeral of Emperor Charles V (d. 1558) included a monumental and lavishly decorated catafalque. Thereafter, catafalques were constructed at elite funerals throughout Italy to signal the special importance of certain members of the political, religious and cultural elite, from Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1574) and Titian (d. 1576), to Pope Paul V (d. 1621).51 The scope for elaborate display was considerable in Venice, due to the economic resources of individuals and groups, and the access to materials and ability to transform them into something memorable which the city’s position as a major port and centre of craft production provided. Accounts of Venetian funerals invariably highlighted the number of torches and candles which accompanied and surrounded the body. Venice was renowned for the quality and quantity of beeswax which was processed in the city. In the early seventeenth century, thirty registered wax shops produced almost 700 tons of refined wax each year.52 Wax was used to produce the death masks which formed the face of the simulacrum which replaced the physical body of the doge and patriarch during their funeral rites. Four of these masks survive, thought to represent doge Alvise III Mocenigo (d. 1732), doge Francesco Loredan (d. 1762), doge Alvise IV Mocenigo (d. 1779) and patriarch Francesco Antonio Correr (d. 1741).53 The masks were created by artisans known for their production of Carnival masks, and involved similar techniques, such as the use of wax-soaked fabric for the head of Correr.54 These masks offered a sense of presence; in Caroline Walker Bynum’s words, they made ‘the absent body tactile and visible’.55 The use of wax for the faces of the deceased, and the resemblance of wax to flesh – perhaps even more so to dead flesh – indicates a desire for verisimilitude.56 This wish is demonstrated by the curved nose and prominent wart of Correr’s mask, and by the use of real hair for his eyelashes, eyebrows and beard (Plate 6.2). If realism was desired, nonetheless, it was verisimilitude to the dead rather than the living body. The eyes of all four masks are closed, and the stubble of the masks of Alvise III Mocenigo and Francesco Loredan echoes the effect produced by skin retraction and dehydration on the chin of a corpse.

51 Schraven, Festive Funerals. 52 Guerzoni, ‘Use and Abuse of Beeswax’, 57. 53 Daninos, ed., Waxing Eloquent, 61–90. 54 Cristante, ‘Funeral Effigy’, 88. 55 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 153. 56 Freedberg, Power of Images.

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The visibility of objects was connected to their use as self-fashioning or conspicuous consumption. Appearance mattered in early modern Venice. Elite individuals planned the materiality which would surround their body in their wills. The physical transition of the body from place of death to place of burial also provided opportunities for families, scuole and the Venetian Republic to display their wealth and prestige. The scuole grandi provided items to accompany the doge’s body and effigy, and the cachet they sought to gain from this contribution led to competition between them. For the burial of the body of doge Alvise IV Mocenigo, the Scuola Grande di San Marco provided a golden mantle ‘bearing the emblem of San Marco’, as well as a pillow and ‘hood or cape that goes under the pillow’.57 The scuola competed with its counterpart dedicated to San Rocco to provide items for the funeral with the doge’s effigy. The deceased doge had been a member of the latter confraternity, which was accorded the honour, and spent nearly 1,700 ducats on a mantle, pall, umbrella and other items.58 These intermediary objects generated income as well as incurring expenditure. Many Venetians chose to be buried in the habit of a religious order. Habits had to be the genuine article, providing a useful source of income for the regular clergy. Nonetheless, this form of dress had a primarily religious function for Venetians. The deceased could take advantage of long-standing papal indulgences which permitted those thus shrouded – even if they had not taken holy orders – to reach heaven shortly after death.59 Franciscan habits were popular for men, as in Catholic Spain; testators believed that this choice of shroud would encourage the personal intercession of St. Francis on their behalf.60 Noblewomen often chose to be buried in the habit of a female religious order. Other Venetians who were members of the city’s confraternities opted for burial in the cappa or cloak of their scuola, which was similar to a religious habit but had an opening at the back for ease of flagellation.61 Burial in a cappa was also an expression of piety. A number of doges opted for burial in a Capuchin habit, including Marcantonio Giustinian (d. 1688), Silvestro Valier (d. 1700), Alvise II Mocenigo (d. 1709) and Alvise Pisani (d. 1741), probably as a statement of humility. The objects involved in the transition from deathbed to burial place were deliberately ephemeral rather than durable.62 The only three surviving examples of wax masks for effigies come from the eighteenth century. Wax is a fragile substance and countless sources document the restoration and repair of other early modern wax objects. But the face of the doge was not designed to survive. The limited survival and 57 Chiari Moretto Wiel, ‘Funeral Effigy’, 83. 58 Ibid., 84. 59 Poska, Regulating the People, 141. 60 Ibid.; Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, 105. 61 Glixon, Honoring God, 14, 25. 62 Durability may have been of greater concern in other contexts. See the discussion of wax effigies of the Medici in Langdon, Medici Women, 105–6.

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uncertain provenance of the masks indicate that they were not intended for perpetual display. The ephemeral properties of burning wax had religious meanings. Candles and torches were used at funerals across the social spectrum as votive offerings, symbols of God’s presence, and reminders of salvation. The shared resonance of these meanings across Venetian society is underlined by the use of beeswax at funerals of individuals of lower social status, who probably always used tallow candles during their life. Expenditure on beeswax was thought worthwhile during the important transition from life to afterlife. The recycling of objects associated with the dead body also had religious overtones, because the act of recycling echoed the body’s transition from dust to dust. Confraternities possessed a mantle which was used repeatedly to cover the bier. Those of the scuole grandi, which featured in ducal funerals, were made of expensive fabric, as visible in Gabriel Bella’s late eighteenth-century depiction of the funeral procession, with the prone effigy of the doge resplendently cloaked in gold at the centre of the intricate painting. Those of the confraternities of the Sacre Stimate were made of coarse woollen cloth.63 At the end of a funeral, scuole collected wax from candles and torches which had not been fully burned for use on a subsequent occasion.64 The reuse of components of catafalques would have been expected, given the routine recycling of other forms of temporary architecture, such as structures constructed for civic rituals or theatrical productions. Material things were used again or repurposed rather than discarded.65 The reuse of objects was particularly meaningful in the context of death, as it expressed belonging and highlighted how the deceased was part of – and would remain in a relationship with – a community.

Conclusion The materiality of death in Venice changed over the course of the early modern period, often in response to influences beyond the city. From the 1560s, Venice adopted floor burials and extravagant catafalques, inspired by Counter-Reformation edicts and the theatrical funeral rites of Charles V. Between 1660 and 1730, the presence of death in the city was reconfigured as human remains started to be transferred to a distant ossuary. Death remained visible as Venetians emulated the emotive artistic style and religious practice of the late baroque. The physical body itself had a dynamic existence after death, and its corruption was overlaid with religious meaning, expressing the sin of the deceased. The hours between death and burial were an important period of transition for family and society, which had to recalibrate in 63 ASV, PS, b. 744, 14 August 1679. 64 Glixon, Honoring God, 26. 65 On clothing reuse, see Allerston, ‘Market in Second-Hand Clothes and Furnishings’, 172.

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response to the death, and support the deceased on their new physical and spiritual path. Dead bodies retained the social status they had held in life and required a new physical place appropriate to that status. Bodies were surrounded by material objects as they moved to their posthumous setting to emphasize their continuing relationship with the living. When assessing the materiality of death, it is tempting to be drawn to material evidence which remains prominent today, whether bones or monuments. But the materiality of death encompassed a far broader range of items. The ephemerality and recycling of material objects deliberately mirrored processes of bodily decay and the circle of life. The combination and convergence of the body and this broader materiality helped Venetians to confront and manage death.66

Bibliography Primary Sources Borromeo, Carlo, Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae (1577). Corner, Flaminio, Notizie storiche delle chiese e monasteri di Venezia (Padua: Giovanni Manfrè, 1758). Labalme, Patricia H. and Laura Sanguineti White (eds.), Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

Secondary Sources Aikema, Bernard, Pietro della Vecchia and the Heritage of the Renaissance in Venice (Florence: Istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia dell’Arte, 1990). Allerston, Patricia, ‘The Market in Second-Hand Clothes and Furnishings in Venice, c. 1500–1650’, PhD diss., European University Institute, 1996. Bonfil, Robert, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’, Critical Enquiry 22 (1995): 1–33. Camporesi, Piero, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Cecchetti, Bartolomeo, ‘Il testamento, i funerali, la sepoltura e l’arma del doge Francesco Morosini’, Archivio Veneto 29 (1885): 65–80. Chiari Moretto Wiel, Maria A., ‘Funeral Effigy of Alvise IV Mocenigo’, in Andrea Daninos (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012), 83–87. Cooper, Tracy E., ‘On the Death of Great Men: A Note on Doge Andrea Gritti’, in Michael Knapton, John E. Law and Alison A. Smith (eds.), Venice and the Veneto during the Renaissance: The Legacy of Benjamin Kohl (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2014), 103–17. Cristante, Diana, ‘Funeral Effigy of the Patriarch of Venice, Francesco Antonio Correr’, in Andrea Daninos (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012), 88–90. Cristellon, Cecilia and Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘Religious Life’, in Eric R. Dursteler (ed.), A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 379–419. 66 This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/I002448/1).

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Da Mosto, Andrea, I dogi di Venezia (Milan: Giunti Editore, 2003). Daninos, Andrea (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012). Davis, Robert C., The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Martyrs on the Move: Relics as Vindicators of Local Diversity in the Tridentine Church’, Studies in Church History 30 (1993): 283–94. Eire, Carlos M.N., From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Ferrazzi, Cecilia, Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint, trans. A. Jacobson Schutte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Finucci, Valeria, ‘Thinking through Death: The Politics of the Corpse’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45.1 (2015): 1–6. Fortini Brown, Patricia, ‘A Death in Venice: The Forgotten Tomb of Alvise della Torre’, Artibus et Historiae 67 (2013): 137–59. Franzoi, Umberto and Dina di Stefano, Le chiese di Venezia (Venice: Alfieri, 1976). Freedberg, David, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Gentilcore, David, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Giuffra, Valentina, Antonio Fornaciari, Silvia Marvelli, Marco Marchesini, Gino Fornaciari and Angelica Vitiello, ‘The Children of the Medici, Grand Dukes of Florence: Embalming in Renaissance Italy (XVI–XVII century)’, Atti della Società Toscana di Scienze Naturali, Memorie 118 (2011): 81–88. Glixon, Jonathan, Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260–1807 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Guerzoni, Guido, ‘Use and Abuse of Beeswax in the Early Modern Age: Two Apologues and a Taste’, in Andrea Daninos (ed.), Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2012), 43–59. Harding, Vanessa, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Johnson, Eric, ‘Burial ad Sanctos’, in Larissa J. Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 68–70. Johnson, Trevor, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles: The Counter Reformation in the Upper Palatinate (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009). Langdon, Gabrielle, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Laven, Mary, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent (London: Viking, 2002). Llewellyn, Nigel, The Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual c.1500–c.1800 (London: Reaktion Books, 1991). Mason, Stefania, ‘L’immaginario della morte e della peste nella pittura del Seicento’, in Mauro Lucco (ed.), La pittura nel Veneto: il seicento, II (Milan: Electa, 2001), 523–42. Meneghin, Vittorino, S. Michele in isola di Venezia, 2 vols. (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, 1962). Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Mytum, Harold, ‘Mortuary Culture’, in Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling and David Gaimster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2017), 154–67. Ostermann, Judith, ‘… quia persona nostra non est nostra sed dignitatis … Körper und Effigies der venezianischen Dogen in Testament, Grabmal und Spannungsfeld von Republik und Individuum’, in Benjamin Paul (ed.), The Tombs of the Doges of Venice from the Beginning of the Serenissima to 1907 (Rome: Viella, 2016), 45–134. Plant, Margaret, Venice: Fragile City, 1797–1997 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).

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Poska, Allyson M., Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1998). Schraven, Minou, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Consumption (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Tarlow, Sarah, Ritual, Belief and the Dead Body in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Traverso, Chiara, La scuola di San Fantin o dei ‘Picai’: carità e giustizia a Venezia (Venice: Marsilio, 2000).

About the Author Alexandra Bamji is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on religious reform, death and disease in early modern society. She has published on ephemeral print and public health, medical care in early modern Venice, and the Catholic life cycle.

7. Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes: Images and Personal Devotion Gabriela Ramos

Abstract Although deeply preoccupied with idolatry, Spanish missionaries saw religious images as effective tools of conversion in the Andes. This paper studies the dissemination of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the colonial Andes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The discussion focuses on a Marian devotion, Our Lady of Copacabana, and explores its place in the shaping of Andean Catholicism. Studies of this devotion have centred on contemporary accounts of its origins and propagation, and on the artistic and technical characteristics of images meant for public worship. Through the study of personal inventories and dowries found in notary records, this paper focuses on images for personal devotion. I argue that the cult of the Virgin of Copacabana was at once profoundly Andean and cosmopolitan. Keywords: conversion; race relations; body; silver; Peru; Andes;

The story of the first encounter between Europeans and Andeans, which ended with the capture of the Inca emperor, Atahualpa, in 1532, provides us with a wealth of material with which to think about the interaction between people, objects and religion. At their first meeting, a Spanish friar presented Atahualpa with a religious book, an object that did not capture the Inca’s attention. For Atahualpa the book had no significance, since the Inca civilization had no alphabetic writing and therefore had no familiarity with this type of object. Associating sacredness with text was an operation entirely alien to the Andeans. Atahualpa, several accounts of this first meeting assert, was handed the book and, after a brief inspection, seemed to conclude that it was an inert and speechless and therefore meaningless, object, so he dismissed it and threw it on the ground. The Spanish, who knew as much about the Inca as the Inca knew about them, took offence at Atahualpa’s failure to perceive the inherent value of the book, and responded with a brutal, unexpected attack against Atahualpa and his retinue. As a result, dozens of soldiers were slain, and Inca Atahualpa was made captive. Some months later, having paid the Spanish a huge ransom and after accepting baptism, the Inca was garrotted. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch07

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Historians have been tempted to interpret Atahualpa’s attitude toward the sacred book and its disastrous consequences as a signal anticipating the great difficulties the Spanish faced in spreading Christianity throughout the Andes.1 Observing Andean religious practices and responses to Christian indoctrination, both Spanish missionaries and colonial officers offered disparaging comments about the Andeans’ inclination for all things tactile and material, and about their incapacity to understand the idea of a real and unique, though invisible and ubiquitous God. These perceptions, compounded with the understanding that indigenous Andeans were deserving of a diminished social status due to their late incorporation into the Christian fold, led to the impression that the indigenous religious experience was uniquely leaning toward a fascination with the material and with ritual, and ceremony, rather than with the spiritual and the invisible, the search for virtue, and the practice of prayer and self-examination. Doctrinal calls to emphasize understanding instead of emotion, and to see religious images only as representations of the sacred instead of actual objects of worship notwithstanding, early modern Catholicism was committed – in the context of its confrontation with Protestantism – to the promotion of the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary. This commitment implied the use of devotional images, which were profusely produced and distributed everywhere Catholic missionaries went. Spanish America in general and the colonial Andes in particular were of course no exception. In the following decades and centuries debates over how indigenous Andeans related to the materialization of the sacred proliferated. These debates took different directions and reached varying degrees of depth and impact: from accusations of idolatry and the implementation of a series of actions aiming at the suppression of indigenous religious practices, to significant spending in the building of churches, dynamic exchanges with European artists, either through their presence in the Andes or through the dissemination and acquisition of their works, the establishing of workshops and the training of indigenous artists in the production of images and objects of Christian devotion that in their turn were promptly, enthusiastically and widely accepted and adapted to Andean religious life. This essay approaches the theme of the materialization of the sacred in the colonial Andes by focusing on Our Lady of Copacabana, a Marian devotion closely associated with indigenous Andeans’ conversion to Christianity. The temporal frame covers the inception of the cult in the sixteenth century up to the late seventeenth century, when it was firmly established across the Andean region. Through the examination of references to images of this devotion found in personal inventories and related documents in notary records, I will examine the varied forms in which it was represented and discuss their possible meaning. This endeavour involves scrutinizing not only the form, but also the materials such representations were made of. By interrogating the 1

MacCormack, ‘Atahualpa and the Book’; Seed, ‘Failing to Marvel’.

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materiality of the image, I intend to understand whether a given type of image or devotional object was linked to a form of experiencing, or the expectation of experiencing, the sacred. To achieve a certain degree of understanding of the significance of these material representations of the religious devotion, the examination of images would not be enough. This is why I also explore the related phenomenon of ownership: what did it mean for an individual or, occasionally, a group, to own a religious image? What was involved in having among one’s belongings a particular type of representation or a devotional object that evoked the image? These questions account for the emphasis this study places on personal inventories. Wherever possible, I also use sources and bits of information that tell us about how owners of images and devotional objects acquired them, how they made agreements with others or held disputes with others over their use and ownership. Therefore, I intend to understand how men and women lived with the representations of Our Lady of Copacabana and, by their contact with those representations, how they might have experienced the sacred in their lives. The varied instances in which men and women lived with the material representations of the religious – and vice versa – lead us to consider the relations between various kinds of people and various kinds of representations of Our Lady of Copacabana, and allow us to challenge the widely accepted view that Copacabana was an indigenous cult. I suggest that the devotion to the Virgin of Copacabana was in fact both Andean and cosmopolitan: it appealed to a wide range of groups and individuals that were convinced of its efficacy, power and prestige, and it was also a symbol of Spanish imperial success. This twofold achievement was possible through the production and circulation of a range of material representations of the devotion. Although it is likely that the devotion to Our Lady of Copacabana was introduced in the Andes through missionary initiative, stories surrounding its origins say little about Spanish missionary agency, thus helping to support the view that the cult emerged spontaneously among recent indigenous converts. This perspective appears to run parallel to two interrelated ideas that gained acceptance among two significant sectors of colonial society, mestizos and creoles. The first was the proposition that before the arrival of the Spanish the gospel had been preached in the New World by either the apostle Saint Thomas or Saint Bartholomew.2 Apparent vestiges of this ancient presence existed in the southern Andes, in the form of a temple and what was believed were his footprints and a cross – known as the Cross of Carabuco for the place it was found – that with time became an object of veneration. The second was the assertion that there had been at least in the Inca religion some predisposition toward Christianity among Andeans. Garcilaso de la Vega, the first mestizo writer to write a history of the Inca in the late sixteenth century, was its most eloquent proponent.3 2 Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, I, bk. 5, ch. 22, 271–73; Gisbert, Iconografía. 3 Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, I, bk. 2, ch. 2, 66–70, wherein the author argues that the Inca searched for the true god. In chapter 3, Garcilaso further argues that the Inca venerated a cross in preColumbian times.

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These religious interpretations of the past must be seen within the broader context of the debates over the capacity of the indigenous peoples of the New World to convert to Christianity and the shaping and circulation of theories that posited the inferior status of all those who had been born in the Indies. Ideas that some scholars have described as creole ‘patriotism’ – aimed at contesting Spanish prejudices – were behind accounts that assured their readers that Christianity had been ‘in the air’ before the arrival of the Europeans and that those who had the Americas as their motherland were not barbaric.4 These views seem to have found fertile ground among Spanish American creoles and also carried contradictions and limitations, all of which were manifested at the religious level. As with many accounts of medieval and early modern Catholic devotions, the story of Our Lady of Copacabana started with an image. However, in this case, it was not an apparition later materialized in an image,5 nor was it a sculpture that had been waiting to be found by a devotee,6 but a representation of the Virgin of Candlemas that an Andean man of Inca descent, Francisco Titu Yupanqui, had carved with the purpose of gracing the altar of a religious confraternity dedicated to its cult. Since Yupanqui was not familiar with European art and was unaware of the canons of religious image making, the Spanish judged his work defective. Thus Yupanqui was subject to mockery, something that caused him great suffering. However, the Virgin took pity on him, and performed her first miracle on herself by making the image beautiful. This display of efficacy was interpreted as a powerful sign of the Virgin’s willingness to embrace the Indians as her children. The story, narrated by Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán, a creole, tells in detail the difficulties the indigenous Andean would-be artist went through to learn the craft of sculptor and endure the distrust of all those who thought he was not capable enough to be a good Christian or artist.7 After the miracle was performed, Yupanqui triumphantly took the image from La Paz to its temple at Copacabana. The journey itself – which counts as one of the first Christian pilgrimages in the history of the Andes – was an occasion to spread the story of the devotion and summon wide support for it among a recently or scarcely converted population.8 The site of Copacabana had held deep sacred significance since pre-Columbian times. The place where a sanctuary was erected, and where the miraculous image can be seen today, was built on top of an Inca shrine situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Since the sixteenth century, the shrine has itself become a place of pilgrimage, 4 Cañizares Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation; Brading, First America. 5 As was the case of the Mexican Guadalupe: Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe; Brading, Mexican Phoenix. 6 Christian, Apparitions. 7 Ramos Gavilán, Historia, 210–40. 8 On pilgrimage in the southern Andes and the merging of religious traditions, see Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes.

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a ritual activity influential throughout an area of great cultural and economic significance. Situated at a busy crossroads, the sanctuary was on the route that connected Lima, Cuzco, Potosí, Tucumán and Buenos Aires. The site was also linked to a prestigious Inca lineage whose members remained influential after the Spanish conquest. Promoted by friars of the order of Saint Augustine, the cult of Our Lady of Copacabana extended rapidly throughout the southern Andes and beyond. In the late sixteenth century, a miraculous manifestation in Lima – the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru – led to the establishment of an Indians-only religious confraternity dedicated to its cult, to the construction of a sanctuary sponsored by the Archbishop and, a few decades later, to the founding of a convent exclusively for Indian noble women. This reputed ethnic exclusiveness contributed to the shaping of a ‘community’ or ‘nation’ of Indians, a typical colonial phenomenon.9 Copacabana became a symbol of conversion and its significance was described in at least two ways: as the triumph of Christianity over idolatry, and as the true force behind Spanish imperial success. Images of Copacabana of various sizes, makes, and value reached Europe, especially Spain and Italy, in the seventeenth century, and were displayed in altars in convents and monasteries and as objects of devotion in private homes (Plate 7.1). Writers of fame and prestige like don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, a leading figure of the Spanish Golden Age, and other enthusiastic, less well known clergymen, wrote plays and histories of the image for European audiences, while pious poetic works dedicated to this Marian devotion were composed in South America (Fig. 7.1). As several studies of the history of Catholicism and popular religion attest, the Virgin Mary is a compelling figure with the power to engage with varied understandings of the sacred and the human condition, and to elicit a range of loyalties and emotions among diverse groups and people.10 It is thus not surprising that the figure of the Virgin Mary was introduced quite early in the Andes and found a positive reception among indigenous Andeans. Evocations of Mother Earth and more routinely and personally, a maternal figure, made the Virgin a character easy to identify with and to rely on.11 9 In the late fifteenth century, assuming he had arrived in India, Christopher Columbus dubbed the people he found in his voyages ‘Indians’. The term ‘Indian’ was used consequently by the Spaniards and actually everyone else to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, thus conflating a wide range of peoples into one ‘type’. The emergence of ‘Indians’ as a sociocultural type was an effect of European conquest and colonialism. 10 Rubin, Mother of God. 11 MacCormack, ‘From the Sun’; Salles-Reese, From Viracocha; Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition. For a different approach to the history and significance of the devotion of Copacabana, MacCormack, ‘Urban and Divine Love’. MacCormack argues against the concept of hybridity and maintains that the cult of Copacabana was essentially indigenous. Although I do not use the concept of hybridity in the present work, I highlight the role of the devotion as a ‘cultural mediator’. Our viewpoints and more importantly, our sources are different. The research presented here as well as a previous piece published a few years ago are mainly supported by archival work: Ramos, ‘Nuestra Señora de Copacabana’.

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Fig 7.1. Frontispiece. Fernando de Valverde, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana del Perú: poema sacro (Lima: Luis de Lyra, 1641) © Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library

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Seen from the Andes, the Virgin of Copacabana has often been interpreted as an indigenous devotion: an image made by an Indian, with its main sanctuary built on top of the ruins of a pre-Columbian shrine, a cult sponsored by a branch of the Inca nobility, and a confraternity set up exclusively for Indians in the capital of the Peruvian viceroyalty. Against this background dominated by an ideological atmosphere that could be described as an ‘official discourse’ tinged with racial stereotyping, I have searched for the material traces left by the Virgin of Copacabana in Andean colonial society. I aimed to learn how Peruvians lived with the Virgin under Spanish colonial rule. I have retrieved Copacabana’s presence in a range of documents found in notary records such as wills, dowries, personal inventories, receipts and contracts. I also found other evidence about this devotion in the records of a dispute between the leaders of the Indian confraternity of Our Lady of Copacabana in Lima and their chaplain. The subject of the dispute was the administration of the Virgin’s material patrimony. Confraternity leaders accused their chaplain, a clergyman named Diego Fernández Dávila, of mismanaging confraternity property and funds. Besides pocketing the alms collected for the cult, confraternity leaders said, Fernández Dávila often leased the Virgin’s mantles and jewels to different people, and used the ornaments from the Virgin’s chapel to decorate his own home. In his reply to the confraternity leaders’ accusations, Fernández Dávila put their credibility into question by calling them ‘drunkards’, ‘wretched dogs’, and describing them as ‘his enemies’. For Fernández Dávila, the members of the confraternity board were ‘useless and unsuitable to look after the adornment of the chapel’ as their faith was weak and their bad behaviour beyond repair. In other words, the miraculous devotion had failed to perform the wonder of true conversion over this group of faithful.12 These ideas, which unfortunately were quite common in colonial Peru, were far from the enthusiasm Copacabana elicited in Spain. Given the close ties between indigenous Andeans and the devotion, one wonders about the extent to which opinions like those voiced by Fernández Dávila had an effect on the ‘public image’ of the devotion. The documentary evidence dating from the seventeenth century about devotional objects in private spaces offers a view that differs from the clear-cut ethnic and social cleavages many think characterized Andean colonial society. Archival sources suggest that men and women of varied social conditions and ethnic backgrounds appear to have been unified by their trust in the Virgin. We also learn that the representations of the Virgin of Copacabana were multiple, as if to accommodate the means, expectations and lifestyle, or personal circumstances of the devout.

12 Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, Cofradías, leg. 11, exp. 11.2, 1605.

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Before moving onto the examination of personal objects of devotion, I would like to return to Fernández Dávila and his dispute with the Indian confraternity leaders, since the records inform us about how the Virgin’s belongings were used. The clergyman was accused of leasing the mantle of Our Lady for profit. Fernández Dávila denied the charge, arguing that since the Virgin was a reputed healer, in addition to being especially effective at attending difficult births, he regularly lent her mantle to different individuals and confraternities that requested it. The practice, that was not unique to the Andes for it was widely popular in Spain and possibly other parts of Europe, was used rather early in colonial Peru, and was adopted by members of the indigenous elite shortly after the Spanish conquest.13 In 1617 for example, the widower of doña Mariana Quispe Asarpay, an Inca noble lady, listed in a post-scriptum to her will the amount he had paid for leasing the mantle of the Virgin of Copacabana that belonged to the parish of Saint Christopher in Cuzco. Doña Mariana had worn the Virgin’s mantle throughout her illness but sadly, did not recover her health and died.14 The clothes of the Virgin were not originally objects of personal devotion, but they became so as the images of the Virgin were usually dressed and displayed. Writing about the images of the Virgin that lacked a complete body because they were meant to be dressed, Caroline Walker Bynum has observed about Spanish images, ‘The emphasis is on the glory and complexity of her attire.’15 This principle also applied to Andean images that boasted a complete body, as was the case of Copacabana. The image and her wardrobe belonged to the confraternity that looked after the image and its chapel. For a limited period of time and for a certain sum of money both clothing and associated adornments could be turned into objects through which the devout sufferer expected to be healed by way of a personal contact with the divine. This type of use must have elicited or strengthened the demand for a variety of devotional objects that provided the owner with emotional and even material support in trying times, as the examples I discuss below suggest. Devotional images could be very similar to jewels. As such, their presence was quite extensive in southern Peru where gold and silver and skilled indigenous craftsmen had been available since pre-Conquest times. The inventory that appears in the will of Beatriz Holgado, an indigenous woman from Cuzco, included ‘two small gold images’ of the Virgin of Copacabana.16 These images were to an extent similar to those missionaries used to give away like medals, Agnus Dei, rosaries and a number of small devotional objects among the people they intended to convert. It could also be argued that these small devotional objects also held some resemblance to the amulets Andean people used to carry for personal protection. As ‘generic’ devotional 13 Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth. 14 Testament of doña Mariana Quispi Asarpay, Cuzco, 4 April 1617, AHC, PN, Cristóbal de Luzero 159, fol. 163. 15 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 53. 16 Testament of Beatriz Holgado, Cuzco, 5 July 1628, AHC, PN, Cristóbal de Luzero 163, fol. 289.

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objects they were not that exceptional since at least in Spain amulets were widely used and are documented as late as the mid-twentieth century. However, what made these small images of Copacabana special is that they were identified with a devotion whose existence was known by most. It is also likely that although they were popular, the small images were not produced on such a large scale as rosaries. Gold, and especially silver, the most common material in which these small images were made, also provided a local referent to Andean wealth and the Virgin’s place of origin. The size and material of these devotional images of the Virgin allowed their owners to live with them in multiple ways. From a will issued in Lima in 1647, we know of a Domingo Fernández, a Spanish man from Galicia, who was taken to hospital suffering from fevers. It appears that Domingo was poor in the two senses of the term: he had no relatives, and had very few possessions. However, he owned an image of Our Lady of Copacabana, which he described as ‘of small make, a silver figurine stored in a tiny silver box, which I carry with me’.17 Domingo possibly found comfort and company in the image, which he could hold while he was in his hospital bed. In case of extreme need, he could consider pawning or trading it if necessary. A range of individuals, Spanish and Indians, poor and rich, normally traded and pawned all sorts of objects, in a context where banks did not exist and, had they existed, would not have catered to people dealing with very small sums of money. There is enough archival evidence to affirm that devotional objects were often traded. In 1648, before entering a convent in Lima as a nun of black veil, doña María de la Carrera, a Spanish widow, issued a document that contained an inventory of her possessions. The inventory listed two silver images of the Virgin of Copacabana. One had belonged to an Indian man who had pawned it for only 1 peso, while the other, which also held a relief of the Blessed Sacrament, had belonged to the sacristan of the convent of Saint Augustine.18 The exact form of these silver images is not described in this example. Other contemporary references to images made of silver speak of láminas, perhaps silver plates, and of images, possibly painted and mounted on silver.19 Images of Copacabana placed in silver boxes were especially appreciated. The representation of the Virgin found in the inside was sometimes also made of silver or another material like wood or a paste made of agave, a material that because of its malleability allowed artists to produce carefully crafted sculptures that resembled wood and were much lighter. These boxes were very small, like the example discussed above. Juana Rodríguez de Arce’s inventory, written in 1653, listed three ‘tiny images of Copacabana and a big one in a silver box’. The description further added that the ‘tiny ones did not have 17 Testament of Domingo Fernández, Lima, 15 November 1647, AGN, PN, Antonio Tamayo 1863, fol. 772v. 18 Receipt issued by Diego Sánchez de Rivas to her mother, doña María de la Carrera, Lima, 2 October 1648, AGN, PN, Nicolás García 689, fol. 289. 19 The inventory of Ana María Millán, a wealthy widow residing in Lima, listed ‘una imaxen de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana pequeña de una ochava guarnecida de plata’ (‘a small image […] of an eighth mounted on silver’). Lima, 8 July 1652, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 478, fol. 2588.

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covers’, which suggests that usually these boxes were meant to be closed.20 Larger boxes could be made entirely of silver, like the one owned by Josef de la Vega Alvarado, a resident of Lima: it had a ‘grille (verja) and doors made of silver’.21 The image enclosed in a box allows for security and portability. It also seems that in some or all cases, these pieces followed the design of, or actually served as portable altars. As such, the divine could be moved around along with its owner, providing him or her with protection and company. There was also an element of mystery, so important to reinforce the power of the divine, a mystery that was revealed only when the owner agreed to show the interior of the box, which, as in the example of the piece found today in the collection of the Museum of Art in Lima, was richly decorated and is in itself a delight to see (Plate 7.2).22 An additional and perhaps more conventional role of the images of Our Lady of Copacabana was to strengthen its owner’s devotion as well as his social standing. Indigenous chiefs and noblemen and women of Inca descent owned paintings and sculptures, which they held in high esteem and passed on to their heirs as tokens of their position as loyal Christian subjects and as symbols of their indigenous identity. Doña Isabel Chimbo Quipe, a wealthy indigenous lady of Inca descent, had among several religious images and many other valuable possessions, a sculpture of Our Lady of Copacabana which was displayed in an altar in her home in Cuzco. According to the description provided in her will, the statue was adorned with a silver crown, which added to the material value of the image and attested to the owner’s wealth.23 In 1646, don Fernando Ynga, the paramount Inca authority in the city of Cuzco, listed in his last will and testament a sculpture of Our Lady of Copacabana, which he gave to his daughter, with the request that she ‘should pray for her father’s soul and have Our Lady of Copacabana as her advocate’.24 Twenty years later, in the port of Callao, don Pedro Manchipula, an indigenous chief, bequeathed a large canvas of Copacabana to his daughter, with the request that she should look after her duties as head of the confraternity dedicated to her cult.25 Spaniards of high standing also owned and traded images of Copacabana among family members on the understanding that they were both symbols of prestige and economic assets. Some of these images seem to have been made according to a narrative that highlighted the role of the religious order of Saint Augustine in the care and expansion of the devotion. Doña María de Contreras, a Spanish lady living in Lima in the mid-seventeenth century, owned an 20 ‘Tres imágenes de Copacabana chiquitas y otra grande con la caxa de plata y las chiquitas sin tapaderas’. Inventory of the belongings of Juana Rodríguez de Arce, Lima, 31 October 1653, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 481, fols. 2212–2214. 21 Lima, 1 June 1651, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 474, fol. 1151. 22 On the significance of images placed in divine interiors, Gell, Art and Agency. 23 Testament of doña Isabel Chimbo Quipe, Cuzco, 27 March 1633, AHC, PN, Luis Diez de Morales 75, fol. 897. 24 Testament of don Fernando Ynga, Cuzco, 11 July 1646, AHC, PN, Juan Flores de Bastidas 91, fol. 908. 25 Testament of don Pedro Manchipula, Lima, 2 November 1662, AGN, PN, Gaspar de Monzón 1153, fol. 1039v.

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image that depicted Copacabana flanked by Saint Augustine and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino.26 Richly adorned sculptures of the Virgin owned by Spanish men and women appear in notary records in dowries, and as guarantee to secure loans. Finally, strips of fabric, called cintas and medidas, literally ‘tapes’ and ‘measures’, were perhaps available for the devout who could not afford costly images and to anyone who wanted to have access to a material representation of the image that was easy to carry at all times in close contact with the body. Although these objects did not always have figurative representations of the Virgin’s image, their verisimilitude and power rested on the fact that they were of the same size as the original. Thus these objects held at once an immediate relation to the original but were also to an extent abstracted from it: they were reminders of the devotion. The owner and user had to have a previous understanding of the original sacred source, its context and history to grasp its significance and be attracted and moved by its power.27 The book the Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán wrote in the early seventeenth century, which tells the story of the Virgin of Copacabana, describes the miracles the Virgin performed through these objects on Indians, Spaniards and mestizos that were saved from robberies, assaults, accidents and idolatry because they happened to have a measure of the Virgin with them. Measures were perhaps distributed in the shrine, but devotees could also buy them elsewhere if they could not themselves travel so far. I have found archival evidence of them being on sale at a pulpería – a sort of ‘convenience store’ – in Cuzco in 1651.28 I have not seen one of these measures myself in Peru, but according to a study published in a Spanish journal of ethnography, examples exist in the collections of the Museum of Anthropology in Madrid.29 The history of early modern Catholicism shows that Christianity was more successfully and easily understood and accepted across diverse populations through devotional objects, ritual and corporal practices than through abstract ideas and 26 The document states that the image was ‘in a wooden box’, so it is not clear if it was a painting or a sculpture. However, because the description says that the two saints are represented, it may have been a painting. The cult of Nicholas of Tolentino was widely spread in the Andes: there were confraternities dedicated to this saint in cities and towns across the region, and his image was often reproduced in churches and paintings listed in individual inventories. ‘Inventory of doña María de Contreras, deceased’, Lima, 7 June 1651, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 474, fol. 1160. 27 Some of these tapes and measures could have also exhibited the image of the devotion they stood for. Although I know of no example of one of these objects related to Copacabana, a Lima inventory made in 1653 lists a medida with the images of Saints Justa and Rufina, whose devotions were widespread in Spain, and another that apparently showed the images of Saints Barbara and Agnes. Inventory of doña Mariana Torrero, Lima, 18 August 1653, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 481, fol. 2314v. It seems that these tapes always represented female saints, as ultimately they appear to have acted as mediators between the faithful and the Virgin Mary, perhaps because usually they were used to protect women during and after childbirth. These observations notwithstanding, the miracles Alonso Ramos Gavilán attributed to Copacabana also involved men. On medieval measures, their provenance and use, Bynum, Christian Materiality, 98–99, 109–10, 153. 28 Testament of Francisca de las Casas, Cuzco, 25 October 1651, AHC, PN, Lorenzo de Messa Andueza 177, fol. 1778. 29 Herradón Figueroa, ‘Cintas, Medidas y Estadales de la Virgen’.

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preaching. The colonial Andes were no exception. Although the cult of Our Lady of Copacabana is often associated with indigenous conversion and therefore confined exclusively to Indians, the study of its material representations demonstrates that it was spread throughout the Andes and beyond by means of objects in various forms and materials. Devotional objects made of wood, agave, gold, silver and cloth were employed to represent and transmit the powers of the Virgin Mary to Old Christians, recently converted indigenous Andeans and many others in between. While the display of the image in church altars, confraternity chapels and, in its main sanctuary, built atop the ruins of an old pre-Columbian ceremonial centre was key for the consolidation of Copacabana as a public devotion, no less important were the multiple forms in which the image was represented, for they allowed the faithful and the recently converted to take Our Lady of Copacabana to their homes with the hope of experiencing the sacred in their daily lives.

Bibliography Primary Sources Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca, Comentarios reales de los Incas, 2 vols., ed. Ángel Rosenblat (2nd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1945). Ramos Gavilán, Alonso, Historia del Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, ed. Ignacio Prado Pastor (Lima: Ignacio Prado Pastor, 1988).

Secondary Sources Brading, David A., The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1866 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Brading, David A., Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe; Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Cañizares Esguerra, Jorge, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). Christian, William A., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Gell, Alfred, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). Gisbert, Teresa, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (2nd ed., La Paz: Fundación BHN, 1994). Herradón Figueroa, Maria Antonia, 'Cintas, Medidas y Estadales de la Virgen (Coleccion del Museo Nacional de Antropologia)', Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares 56.2 (2001): 33–66. MacCormack, Sabine, ‘Atahualpa and the Book’, Dispositio 14.36–38 (1989): 141–68. MacCormack, Sabine, ‘From the Sun of the Incas to the Virgin of Copacabana’, Representations 8.1(1984): 30–60. MacCormack, Sabine, ‘Urban and Divine Love in a Pastoral Setting: The Histories of Copacabana on Lake Titicaca’, Representations 112.1 (2010): 54–86.

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Musacchio, Jaqueline M., The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). Poole, Stafford, Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797 (Tucson, AR: University of Arizona Press, 1995). Ramos, Gabriela, ‘Nuestra Señora de Copacabana: ¿Devoción india o intermediaria cultural?’, in Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy and Carmen Salazar-Soler (eds.), Passeurs, mediadores culturales y agentes de la primera globalización en el Mundo Ibérico, siglos XVI–XIX (Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Instituto Riva Agüero, 2005), 163–79. Rubin, Miri, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London: Allen Lane, 2009). Salles-Reese, Verónica, From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana: Representation of the Sacred at Lake Titicaca (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997). Sallnow, Michael J., Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cuzco (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1987). Seed, Patricia, ‘“Failing to Marvel”: Atahualpa’s Encounter with the Word’, Latin American Research Review 26.1 (1991): 7–32. Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson, AR: University of Arizona Press, 2013).

About the Author Gabriela Ramos is University Senior Lecturer in Latin American History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. Her research focuses on aspects of the social and cultural history of Latin America, particularly the Andean region. Publications include Death and Conversion in the Andes: Lima and Cuzco 1532–1670.

8. ‘Watching myself in the mirror, I saw ʿAlī in my eyes’: On Sufi Visual and Material Practice in the Balkans Sara Kuehn Abstract After the expansion of the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth century, sizeable numbers of dervishes emigrated to the newly conquered territories in the Balkan peninsula. Reacting against the increasing institutionalization of Sufi orders, these itinerant antinomian dervishes embraced a variety of unconventional and socially liminal practices, including ascetic acts that are practised to this day. This chapter discusses such Sufi material-visual practices with particular reference to the memorial services for the Prophet Muḥammad’s grandson Ḥusayn and other members of his family during the sacred days of ʿĀshūrāʾ and Sultan Nawruz. These include special ritual practices such as piercing dervishes’ bodies with swords or iron spikes aimed at taming the base soul (nafs). Keywords: Sufi; dervish; Balkans; ʿĀshūrāʾ; Sultan Nawruz; training the soul Muḥammad is ʿAlī, ʿAlī-Muḥammad, ʿAlī is Muḥammad, ʿAlī-Muḥammad, Allah! ʿAlī is Muḥammad, ʿAlī-Muḥammad. Ilāhī (Devotional song).

In his Mashāʿir al-shuʿarāʾ (Biographies of the poets) the sixteenth-century judge and poet ʿĀshik Chelebi (d. 1571–72) from Prizren in Kosovo described a dervish of the Ḥaydarī sect, named Baba ʿAlī Mest as having worn earrings, a collar around his neck and chains on his body, as well as a ‘dragon-headed’ hook under his belt and a sack.1 Following the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, sizeable numbers of dervishes, mostly of heterodox origin like ʿAlī Mest, emigrated to the 1

ʿĀshik Chelebi, Meshāʿir al-shuʿarā, fol. 270b.

Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch08

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newly conquered territories in the Balkan peninsula. As a reaction to the increasing institutionalization of Sufi orders, these itinerant antinomian dervishes, sometimes referred to as qalandars, embraced a variety of unconventional and socially liminal practices. Travelling alone or in bands, they deliberately inverted social hierarchies and explicitly violated Islamic law as a form of religious and social protest. Some of these dervishes performed special ascetic practices that were profoundly physical and material in character. These included ritual self-laceration, and piercing their own bodies with swords or iron spikes. Such self-mortification left marks on the body that stood as material-visual reminders of the dervishes’ exertions and communicated their spectacular and theatrical actions to wider audiences. The concomitant display of animal attributes also reflected the dervishes’ own animal-like force. It acted not only as a means of liberation and a critique of social controls but, above all, served as a prime tool in the dramatic attempts to discipline, control and tame their own ‘animal’ or base souls (nafs).2 Institutionalized Sufi orders also began to arrive in the Balkans with the Ottoman conquest of these areas. They brought elements of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian culture into the region which laid the basis for a fertile and multidirectional cultural exchange. While some of the antinomian Sufis openly professed a form of Shiʿa Islam, certain Shiʿite influences or tendencies could also be observed in the practices of the orders (ṭuruq, sing. ṭarīqa). And, despite the policy of ‘Sunnitization’ pursued by the Ottoman authorities, heterodox Sufism continued to thrive in the Balkans. Sufi rituals that encompass both antinomian and orthodox expressions can still be observed in present-day Sufism in the Balkans. Even though most Sufi orders practise strictly within the framework of the sharīʿa (‘revealed law’), individual Sufis have maintained a spiritual frame of reference wider than that of their ṭarīqa. This is corroborated by the customs of initiation that were practised within various esoteric traditions. These rites are a constant feature of Sufism and are fuelled by the desire to multiply means of access to the beneficial flow of baraka or immaterial blessing, a spiritual energy often transmitted by contact. Thus the fluid lived reality of Sufism, which infiltrated rural and urban Muslim life in the religiously plural and culturally diverse environments of the Balkans, is today characterized by both Sunnism and Shiʿism, in their dual aspects of intoxication and sobriety, meaning and form, spirit and letter. This chapter examines contemporary Sufi practice to cast light on the early modern forms of this tradition. The integral role of images, objects and physical actions to Sufi spirituality is revealed through a close analysis of aspects of Sufi ritual practice relating to the material-visual presence of words and representational imagery, the symbolic appropriation of animal symbolism, and ritual self-control aimed at training the nafs. Throughout, physical responses to objects and materials, such as touching, kissing, imbibing or ingesting, are found to be central to accessing divine blessing and immaterial spiritual energy. 2

Terms in parentheses are Arabic unless otherwise specified.

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Esoteric Interpretations in Sufi Material Culture The spirit of these cross-currents is to some extent encapsulated in a printed calligraphic composition (levḥa) with images from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib’s life, preserved in the context of the oldest and most important surviving Naqshbandī tekke (‘dervish gathering place’) of Bosnia-Herzegovina.3 Miraculously, it has survived both the socialist regime and the 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, owing to its remote location in the village of Živčići/Vukeljići in the mountains of central Bosnia. This coloured print (Plate 8.1) allows for a deeper contemplation of the true qualities of the Prophet Muḥammad’s closest male relative, ʿAlī, and his intimate relationship with the divine. It asserts the material-visual presence of epigraphic and figurative elements in mirror-image halves reflected across a vertical axis. Viewed through a Sufi mode of reasoning, this epistemology sets up a contrast between a phenomenal, visible world (zāhir), which represents the body and can be perceived by the senses, and its true esoteric meanings (bāṭin), derived by special knowledge available only to the initiates. Attaining comprehension of these hidden, inner meanings (tāwīl) is deemed to be a spiritual birth that enables the dervish to accede to a higher plane of being. The central credo, written in bold letters in the so-called ‘doubled style’, states ‘ʿAlī is Allāh’. The divine presence in the human face is evidenced by the shape of the letter ʿayn for ʿAlī, which follows the contours of the human eye. In this context, the eyes represent the two sons by Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima: the right eye represents Ḥasan and the left eye Ḥusayn.4 These letters thus are symbolic images with which the devout engage emotionally and intellectually. The centre of the levḥa is punctuated by a large symbolic stone, carved with twelve flutings, which is presented to a Bektashī dervish at the end of his discipleship and which he subsequently wears around the neck suspended on a fine cord. Known as ‘the stone of surrender’ (teslīm tāsh),5 it symbolizes the union of human individuality with the eternal truth and the abandonment of human individuality in the eternal truth that is the unity of Allāh, Muḥammad and ʿAlī.6 3 For a comparable print, see De Jong, ‘Iconography of Bektāshīsm’, 24, pl. 8; Shani, ‘Calligraphic Lions’, 135, fig. 56. 4 See De Jong, ‘Iconography of Bektāshīsm’, 12; Trix, ‘Symmetry’, 205–6. On mirror-image calligraphy, see Avci, ‘Türk Sanatında Aynalı Yazılar’, 20–33. 5 The word for (spiritual) surrender or submission (teslīm) is built on the Arabic root ‘s-l-m’ that underlies the Arabic term islām, literally, submission (to God), and associates it with one of the most famous Sufi ḥadīths, ‘Die before you die’ (mūtū qabla an tamūtū), implying a metaphorical death to the concerns of the material world through the reigning in of the concupiscent desires of the self before the physical death; to achieve ‘death before dying’ was to attain spiritual union with the divine. See Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends, 21, 41, and Ritter, Meer, 583. In the same vein, the button on the Bektāshi cap symbolizes a ‘human head’, since the Bektāshis are often glossed as ‘the beheaded dead people’ (see Karamustafa, ‘Kalenders’, 124). For a discussion of the motif of the beheaded saint, see Ocak, ‘La tête coupée’, 75–80. 6 See Brown, Dervishes, 180–81.

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The material-visual discourse in the levḥa revolves around two well-known events from ʿAlī’s life. Its visual performance entails dynamic and transformational processes of interpretation, translation and adaptation of a visual vocabulary encoded with specific attributes. The first incident, in the upper section, features a veiled figure leading a camel carrying a coffin. It illustrates the famous legend according to which shortly before his death ʿAlī told his two sons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, that, upon his death, a veiled man would come to their house, he would wash his corpse and load his coffin on a camel and lead it away for burial. He cautioned his sons not to follow the veiled man or to question him. When on his death ʿAlī’s predictions came true, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn could not refrain from asking about the man’s identity, whereupon the stranger lifted his veil and revealed his face: it was their father ʿAlī, who, in a miraculous manner, carried his own body to the place of his tomb.7 The symbolic configuration of the narrative confirms ʿAlī’s divinely inspired, wondrous powers materially-visually presented on the levḥa as the ultimate ‘seer’, who foretells and enacts his own death for his sons. The second depiction, featured in the lower section, relates to his metamorphosis into a lion (ḥaydar) or, more precisely, the victorious lion of God (al-asad Allāh al-ghālib), also known as ‘the impetuous lion’ (al-ḥaydar al-karrār).8 The bilaterally symmetrical arrangement in mirror image shows the lion couchant (representing ʿAlī) wrestling with a serpent, alluding to the transformation of the mythical warrior into a spiritual warrior (fātā). The combat which takes place on an external mythical ground – symbolized by the lion’s fight with the snake – can on another level be considered as an individual and a collective moral and spiritual struggle (jihād) against one’s nafs, a process which was deemed to be more meritorious than physical struggle. ʿAlī’s legendary double-bladed or double-pointed sword, Dhuʾl-faqār, which is carried next to the coffin on the back of the camel, also became an integral element of the calligraphy. Its shape is repeated in the Arabic letters ʿAlīf and yāʾ. The lām-ʿAlīf, considered a single letter, is often compared to the sword of ʿAlī.9 In this depiction, it is vertically flanked by the bifurcating Dhuʾl-faqār while the letter yāʾ is horizontally extended to form the Dhuʾl-faqār below, which surmounts the lions couchant with serpents. According to some sources, ʿAlī’s most recognizable symbol, his ‘miraculous sword’ Dhuʾl-faqār, was obtained by the Prophet Muḥammad as booty after the critical battle of Badr (623–24). He presented this sword to the person with the strongest blood ties to him at the battle of Uḥud (625). The tips of the ʿAlīfs frame a Bektāshi tāj (literally ‘crown’), the headgear of dervishes, bābās and dedes, from which the twelve-fluted teslīm tāsh is suspended on a fine chain. 7 Ergun, Bektaşi sairleri ve nefesleri, III, 35. See Ocak, ed., Sufism and Sufis, 272. 8 See Shani, ‘Calligraphic Lions’, 122–58; Zarcone, ‘Lion of Ali’, 104–21. 9 Aksel, Türklerde dinî resimler, 49, 61, 124–25.

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Like other levḥas that adorn the walls of this Naqshbandī tekke, this levḥa is an object of visual and textual contemplation, which contains and communicates apotropaic and mystical power to the viewer. The display of images of Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law with his sons is a way of gaining protection and blessing. The complex interrelations of image, text and ritual supply the viewers with diagrammatic cosmologies. The visual exegesis thereby creates important new space for complementary and figurative contents and meanings, intrinsic to its composite structure, which take on a number of different roles. It speaks of the acknowledged status of ʿAlī as the personification of a certain bāṭin (the inner or esoteric levels of correct interpretation of the verses of the Quran), the allegorical or hidden aspect of the divine intended to be transformed into visualizations within the viewers’ minds. The symbolic language is a pathway which enables the viewer to bridge the physical world to the spiritual realm of divine truth. A famous Prophetic dictum states, ‘I am the City of Knowledge and ʿAlī is its Gate; one cannot enter a city without passing through the gate.’10 In this continuous and interdefinable process ‘Muḥammad and ʿAlī’ are considered to be two names of the same person and seen as special manifestations of the same divine reality. Owing to their inherent talismanic power as carriers of blessings, or baraka, amulets, composed from the written names of Muḥammad and ʿAlī, became (and remain) popular in the Balkans.11 According to the renowned Qādirī Šejh Fejzulah Hadžibajrić (d. 1990) of the Hajji Sinan Tekke (Hadži Sinanova Tekija) in Sarajevo, one of the foremost figures in the revival of Sufism in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the four fundamental stages for mystics, sharīʿa, ṭarīqa, ḥaqīqa and maʿrifa (‘gnosis’), are the concentric circles of the discipline of tasawwuf (the process of realizing ethical and spiritual ideals, literally ‘becoming a Sufi’).12 Following mystical exegesis, Muḥammad personifies sharīʿa and ʿAlī is regarded as the ṭarīqa that in Muslim mysticism denotes the way which ultimately guides the Sufi from the sharīʿa to ḥaqīqa, that is, to Allāh Himself (al-Ḥaqq; ‘the Absolute Truth’ or ‘the True Reality’). This trinity is symbolized by the letters of the Arabic alphabet which begin their names: ʿAlīf for Allāh, mīm for Muḥammad, and ʿayn for ʿAlī. Every detail in a tekke has its own precisely defined symbolism. This levḥa is displayed in the antechamber to the semāʿhāne (samāʿ-khāna) in which prayer and the spiritual practice of the Sufi dhikr ritual (remembrance of God’s absolute unity and transcendence) are performed. As a material deposit of meaning, the prominent position of this levḥa also reflects the fact that, like most of his predecessors, the acting shaykh of this tekke, Šejh Husejn Hadžimejlic, is initiated into several streams of Sufi tradition. 10 Birge, Bektashi, 173–74. 11 Ibid., 132–34; De Jong, ‘Iconography of Bektāshīsm’, 8; Trix, ‘Symmetry’, 205. 12 Hadžibajrić, ‘Tesavvuf’.

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Fig. 8.1. Semāʿhāne at the Hajji Sinan Tekke (Hadži Sinanova Tekija), Qādirī ṭarīqa. Vrbanjusa district, Sarajevo, Bosnia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011

At this eminent Naqshbandī tekke, as elsewhere in a Sufi context, animal skins, mainly of sheep but in some cases of other animals, are used as ceremonial seats (Persian pūst, literally pellis, or ‘skin’; Fig. 8.1). Having served as the characteristic garb of the itinerant antinomian dervishes that populated the religious landscape in a previous time, these assume a special significance in most Sufi orders and are a vital ingredient in their strategies of ritualization. Reflecting the strength of continuity of traditional practice, the hides of the animals – which had been ritually slaughtered and skinned, and had their meat consumed on the day of the shaykh’s appointment – serve as sacred spaces and as markers of mystical meditation par excellence. Before the beginning of the ritual ceremony, the disciple who carries and spreads this visual materiality of ancient practice pays homage to them. He kisses them and bows his head in salutation with the arms folded across the breast in a humble posture toward the animal skin (pūst) of the shaykh after laying it down. When the ritual ceremony is to be performed, the shaykh’s pūst is spread opposite the miḥrāb niche, the niche in the wall making up the focal point for prayer ritual in the semāʿhāne, indicating the direction of the Kaʿba in Mecca and the direction that Muslims should face when praying. In some ṭarīqas (commonly translated as Sufi ‘orders’ or ‘brotherhoods’) the pūst of the shaykh is black, in ṭarīqas that have ʿAlīd leanings the pūst is red (see, for instance, the red sheepskins in a Rifāʿī context, Plate 8.2). During the ritual practice (dhikr) the shaykh seated on the pūst, the pūst-nishīn, embodies ‘the spiritual heir of the founder [of the order], whose qualities and powers

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become inherent in him upon his succession’.13 He symbolizes the presence of the founding saint of the order. Succession to the pūst is ‘spiritual’.14 As a result, dervishes ascribe to these skins miraculous powers that were imparted through the blessing and the beneficial grace of the spiritual masters who employed them.15 The great respect accorded to the traditional seat of authority of the shaykh is, once again, due to the fact that it represents the spiritual master’s controlled animal self (nafs). Among most brotherhoods, sections of the hides also communicate specific religious meanings and are inscribed with a specific mystical symbolism. The Naqshbandī Šejh Nijaz Džindo (head of the ‘Mehmed efendija Hafizović’ Tekke in the mountains of Olovo, some 50 kilometres north-east of Sarajevo), who was initiated by Šejh Husejn Hadžimejlic, explains that the hairless parts of the hide, for instance, serve as signifiers to the disciple that he has to try harder not to be attracted to matters of this world.16 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out, just like the hairless parts of the animal skin. It is also said that if the pūst-nishīn can recognize hands on the pūst, it means that he is guiding, while if he can see legs he is standing. The right side of the skin is sharīʿa, the left side is ṭarīqa, the middle of the pūst is the Love of God and also serves as a reminder of an important station of the mystical path: perseverance in patience (ṣabr) and the endurance of every difficulty and hardship. The middle is divided again into two parts, ḥaqīqa and maʿrifa. As mentioned above, these four terms are four gates or stations the dervish should pass on his or her path. Šejh Nijaz next talks about the meaning of the right leg, which symbolizes the alternating worship and glorification between God (al-Ḥaqq) and creature (khalq), each in service and obedience to the other. The left leg alludes to the ḥadīth (Prophetic tradition), which calls for the believer ‘to die before dying to the world’ (mūtū qabla an tamūtū),17 and to protect the secret (sirr) of the ahl al-bayt (‘the [immediate] family of the Prophet’, i.e. his daughter Fāṭima, his son-in-law ʿAlī, and their two sons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn). The right hind leg mnemonically reminds the dervish never to forget the shaykh, and at times of trouble to remember to be with al-Ḥaqq and ḥaqīqa. The left hind leg, to do service to satisfy the divine precepts and decrees, and the reciprocal contentment of the nafs and God (al-Ḥaqq). These individual terms are, themselves, endowed with a symbolic quality that is understood as an emanation of the divine, or even the incarnation of the divine, such as Hū (‘He’) and al-Ḥaqq. The Naqshbandī tekke of Vukeljići, an oblong, two-storeyed structure, is located on a mountain slope above a deep valley. It was founded in 1781 by a native of the 13 See Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 173. 14 Ibid., 173. 15 Landolt, ‘Gedanken’, 244, 247. 16 Interview with Šejh Nijaz Džindo on 19 June 2011 at ‘Mehmed efendija Hafizović’ Tekke, Olovo, BosniaHercegovina. 17 See note 4 above.

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village, Šejh Husejn Zukić (d. either 1798–99 or 1799–1800), as indicated by the plaque to the right of the main entrance of the tekke. Hanging below a panel with two large Hū in mirror image, this bears the inscription: ‘This retreat was built for wayfarers on the path by the heir of the Master of the Prophets, the servant of the Naqshbandī order, the preceptor of men, Šejh Husejn Zukić, the Bosnian, in the [hijrī] year 1195.’18 Above the Naqshbandī tekke are three tombs (Turkish türbes) that are a centre of pilgrimage for visitors from all over Bosnia and beyond. They come for remembrance (dhikr) and to seek blessings. Each türbe is constructed in the form of a simple cubic structure with a conical tiled roof, distinguished by a large Hū painted on the walls. The largest of the three encloses the grave of Šejh Husejn Zukić, the founder of the tekke. The second türbe houses the remains of his successor Muhamed Mejli Baba (d. 1854); and the third, six tomb occupants which include the subsequent Šejh Ḥasan Ḥilmī Baba Hadžimejlić (d. 1899) at the top, flanked on his right side by his first wife Melek, the daughter of Muhamed aga Elezović, and to his left by his sons, Hafiz Kjazim (d. 1961) and Šejh Refik (d. 1970), followed in a second row by his son Šejh Abdullatif (d. 1952) and his grandson Šejh Behaudin (d. 1996). Rites of pilgrimage (ziyāra) and ritual acts of veneration have to be observed when visiting this or other blessed sites. It is generally considered adab (‘proper attitude’) for the worshipper to devoutly kiss the threshold at a saint’s türbe and to touch it with the forehead, then to kiss the sides of the doorway before crossing to enter the sanctified sphere and gain access to the spiritual power present in the sacred space. This special reverence paid to the threshold is reflected in an ilāhī (‘devotional song’) composed by the above-mentioned Šejh Behauddin Hadžimejlic, who was much respected in religious circles throughout Bosnia: I came to thy door, And humbly I stood on the threshold, With humility I said to thee, Mercy, O Shaykh, help, O Pīr! I bear the burden of (Satan) the foul My sins are laid to rest with thee, A command was given to me, Doing, ceaseless battle with the nafs. ‘Fulfil thy promise. Mercy, O Shaykh, help, O Pīr! But I was once a servant, so receive me! So inscribe me in thy book.19 18 Algar, ‘Some Notes on the Naqshbandī Tarīqat’, 172 and n. 3. 19 Cited after Algar, ‘Some Notes on the Naqshbandī Tarīqat’, 203 (from the original manuscript at the Vukeljići tekke).

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Fig. 8.2. Türbe at Hayati Baba Tekke (Sheh Hayati Tećija), Khalwatī ṭarīqa. Kičevo, Macedonia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011

In line with tradition, Sufis usually avoid touching the threshold with their feet, thought to be sullied by the dust of the profane world, and step over it with the right foot first. In order to partake in the blessing power of the saint, prayers are offered, a light is kindled, and the grave is circumambulated three times. On each circuit the hem of the cloth covering the sarcophagus is venerated by touching and the stone at the head and foot of it is kissed and touched with the forehead. The sarcophagi inside türbes are often covered with personal items of supplicants. Linking the piety of the dead and their presence across space and time with the aspirations of the living, it is customary for visitors, sometimes as the result of a vow, to bring towels, or other cloths, or personal belongings. These are placed on, or next to, a sarcophagus where they are kept for a while to absorb the saintly blessings (Fig. 8.2). Once the items have been retrieved, they are frequently used for beneficiary purposes such as healing.

ʿĀshūrāʾ and Sultan Nawruz Among the important religious days at the Naqshbandī tekke in Vukeljići, which are also observed by all other Sufi orders in the Balkans, are the first ten days of Muḥarram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, culminating in the special and auspicious day of ʿĀshūrāʾ. Another important holiday is the pre-Islamic Persian practice of the celebration of the coming of spring (Sultan Nawruz), New Year’s Day on 21 March,

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regarded by some as the birthday of ʿAlī. The traditions surrounding ʿĀshūrāʾ and Sultan Nawruz have ancient, sacred roots. These involve a common conceptual vocabulary, a shared ‘text’ around which different Sufi communities evolved, forming a kind of visual and material lingua franca in the Balkans and beyond. ʿĀshūrāʾ revolves around the Prophet’s grandson Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī who died as martyr on the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ at the historic battle of Karbalāʾ (680). For the same ten days an annual period of fasting and abstinence is observed. From dawn to dusk the dervishes perform matem (Arabic mātam, or memorial services; literally ‘bereavement’) in mourning for Ḥusayn and other members of the Prophet’s family who were martyred on the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ. Following the example of the Jewish Day of Atonement (Hebrew ʿāsōr, ‘the tenth’), a day of penitence for the sins of the past year was identified by Muḥammad as a holy day of fasting. The fast, which lasts ten or, in the case of the Bektashī order, twelve days, entails abstinence from meat, for during the fast no blood can be shed, nor milk drawn, or butter churned. The water the dervishes drink is not pure but has to be mixed with drops of another substance such as tea, coffee or yogurt. The ensuing opaque colour of the beverage mnemonically recalls the dust from the sacred site of Karbalāʾ, mimesis acting as re-enactment of the agony of scorching heat, thirst and hunger experienced then by the wounded martyrs. At the same time, by imbibing the liquid the believers partake in the ingestion of the sacred. During the fast the dervishes do not shave or cut their hair, they do not laugh or talk, and they abstain from sexual activity. After the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ some dervishes continue with the fast for the rest of the month. During the fast the plight of the Karbalāʾ fighters is evoked through a plethora of dramatic depictions in devotional songs (Turkish ilāhiyāt), an important vehicle for the wide dissemination of Sufi teachings. At Bektashī tekkes the worshippers chant: 18,000 people crave for water. Karbalāʾ burnt with thirst, the grief wounded the soul. Shāh Ḥusayn burnt with thirst. Karbalāʾ burnt without water. May the traitors be cursed May the believers be blessed. Those who are in trouble.20

And in many tekkes throughout the Balkans we hear: Watching myself in the mirror I saw ʿAlī in my eyes. May the line of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn continue. For the love of Khadīja, Fāṭima and ʿAlī.21 20 See The Day of Ashura, a Macedonian documentary film by Elizabeta Koneska, 2005. 21 The lines are echoed in the poetry of the celebrated Bektashi poet Ḥilmī Dede Baba (d. 1907), as cited in Mélikoff, ‘La divinisation d’Ali’, 101–2.

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During the ritual evocations and bodily manifestations of dhikr, the melodic nature of the recitation of special prayers (wird) and of the Quran is gradually amplified to increase and intensify the emotional impact and the transformative effects and implications of the performance. Immersed within structures of repetition, the rhythmic soundscape of collective recitation operates as the generator of shared partaking. The somatic representation mnemonically evokes the combat during which Ḥusayn’s heavily outnumbered and underequipped forces, comprising his family and seventy-two men, were placed under siege in the desert of Karbalāʾ, close to Kūfah in southern Iraq, and were denied access to potable water (to the Euphrates river, their only aqueous source) – an inversion of his brother Ḥasan’s murder which occurred ten years earlier by poisoned water. All but two of Ḥusayn’s men were slain mercilessly on the battlefield at noon on Friday 10 Muḥarram (ʿĀshurāʾ) 61/9 October 680. The Imām was decapitated, his body trampled by horses, and the women were taken prisoner. The physical suffering and painful death of Ḥusayn and the other heroes symbolize his heroic struggle against religious tyranny and corruption. In his long poem Qerbelaja, which remains one of the most recited and chanted poems in Albania today, the nineteenth-century Bektāshi poet Naim Frashëri (d. 1900) appeals to the ritual and mythology of Karbalāʾ, when Ḥusayn was killed by forces of the Umayyad caliph Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya (r. 680–83): O brother Albanians! Come closer while crying And mourn this death So the light from the Lord comes [up]on you. Remember Karbalāʾ!

The Qerbelaja goes on to offer material-visual knowledge of Ḥusayn’s rebellion, the divinely preordained nature of his final death and ultimate triumph being understood as an epic battle culminating in the triumph of Good over Evil. Many of the customs associated with ʿĀshūrāʾ attest to the firmly entrenched notion that ʿĀshūrāʾ has the potential to offer blessings and deliverance from suffering. There is no doubt that the socialist Yugoslav period (1943–92) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo, and the Hoxhaist regime in Albania (1944–90), have affected Sufi life in the Balkans. Sufi institutions suffered from repression, loss of lives, and substantial destruction during the war of 1992–95 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Kosovo conflict of 1998–99 and the civil wars in Albania (1996–97) and Macedonia (2000–1). Special importance is attached to the ʿĀshūrāʾ feast’s common social ideals, which emphasize the spirit of brotherhood and the construction of group identity. This also allows for the visualization of grief and atrocity, striking deep chords in the

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different Sufi communities. By thereby tapping into the ‘collective memory’ and salvation history of the orders, the idea of martyrdom and the ‘redemptive nature’ of suffering create community among the Sufis of the various orders by linking them with events across time and space. In addition to its psychological and therapeutic significance, the iconography of this mystical and religious symbolism and its related rituals contains, as will be shown, cognitive information about the Sufi world view. The first ten days of Muḥarram culminate in an elaborate ritual which is observed to this day in a Rifāʿī tekke in the small city of Rahovec in western Kosovo. On the seventh day of the ten-day morning period, the current shaykh, Sheh Mehdi Shehu, provides his disciples with some milk and honey, just as Ḥusayn had done for his seventy-two men at Karbalāʾ before they were martyred. During the matem the shaykh personifies Ḥusayn and wears a red tāj, red being the colour of Ḥusayn during his life and black after his death. On the tenth day, the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ, when Ḥusayn was raised to heaven, the shaykh himself consumes milk and honey. He then wears a black tāj in commemoration of the death of Imām Ḥusayn. The imām’s apotheosis is commemorated by a ceremonial feast which attracts many worshippers. Festive gatherings such as this involve collective propitiatory animal sacrifices (qurbān), carried out to secure the well-being of the entire community. Interestingly, preserved in the türbe of the Baniyi Dergāh of the Rifāʿī ṭarīqa in Skopje, now headed by Sheh Murtezan Murteza, are the antlers of a deer which, in about the mid-nineteenth century, is said to have offered itself as qurbān by miraculously entering the tekke grounds during ʿĀshūrāʾ (Fig. 8.3).22 With the blood of the sacrificed animal, a spot is painted on the forehead and cheeks of those that are present, especially children, for prophylactic or therapeutic purposes, blood being a powerful apotropaion denoting life and birth. The sacrificial meat is then cooked in a cauldron. The ritual food – usually a thick meat soup – is shared by all those present. The central dish at this festive occasion however is known as Ashūre (ʿĀshūrāʾ). It is a kind of sweet soup prepared with grains, and depending on the tradition, ten, twelve or forty different types of fresh and dry fruits, which is ceremonially eaten.23 The Bektashī cook these substances in twelve enormous cauldrons throughout the entire day. In popular imagination and perception, the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ is also observed in the memory of the day when the prophet Nūḥ, the Noah of the Bible, left the ark and made the first meal on dry land after the Flood during which almost all 22 This is in line with the prevalent adab, or proper attitude, according to which, what has been brought into a tekke for communal use must also remain there. See Biegman, God’s Lovers, 19. 23 For an account of the traditional ritual preparation of the ‘ʿAşūre of Muharrem’ at the Sünbül Efendi Tekke at Kocamustafapaşa and the Qādirīhane at Tophane in the Beyoğlu district in Istanbul, see Smith, ‘ʿAşūre’, 229–31. Smith (231) also notes ‘the great degree to which Shīʿī sympathies imbued the life of a ṭarīqa[t] generally considered to be quite orthodox’.

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Fig. 8.3. Deer antlers at the türbe of the tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqja e Rufaive, Baniyi Dergāh). Skopje, Macedonia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2012

of Nūḥ’s people were annihilated.24 It also alludes to a Prophetic ḥadīth which says, ‘My family is like Noah’s ark: whoever embarks upon it reaches salvation.’ According to tradition, Nūḥ’s ark was three storeys high and when everybody, men and beasts, were aboard, it started sailing. It sailed for exactly five months and seventeen days until it reached dry land. However, there was wasteland around them, everything was devastated and nothing was to be found, so for the first meal they gathered the last ten grains that remained in the ark. They prepared it in honour of the moment when they saved themselves from the flood, coming out of the ark and stepping onto dry land. Observing the fast, men and beasts waited until evening to eat this ʿĀshūrāʾ. Some tekke complexes have a room which is especially reserved for preparing the dish ʿĀshūrāʾ. The famous Hadži Sinanova Tekija of the Qādirī ṭarīqa located in the Vrbanjusa district in the heart of the old city of Sarajevo has a room where it has been cooked since 1640 when the tekke was built. The bowl in which the ʿĀshūrāʾ is served acts as a marker by materializing the ritualization of the sacred day. It is often displayed in the semāʿhāne of tekkes throughout the rest of the year, as is the case at the Potok Tekke of the Naqshbandī order in the Kovači neighbourhood in Sarajevo.

24 Quran 11:40 and 45–46; 21:76–77; 23:27; 37:76–77.

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The mourning reaches a climax during the dhikr ritual on ʿĀshūrāʾ, which often lasts for several hours. The Rifāʿī and Saʿdī orders, which are well represented in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia, are known for their distinctly ‘physical’ dhikr rituals. At the beginning of the dhikr, special prayers (wird) are said. Quranic recitation is intensified in dhikr to increase the transformative impact of its performance and audition. Accompanied by musical instruments and singing, the ritual weaves its way from the repetitive recitation of the Quran through the acoustic symbols of dhikr to its essence and back again to recitation. It makes use of configurations of sounds that include diffuse verbal forms, more concise verbal forms and non-verbal utterances, varying in volume with periods of relative quiet giving way to louder sounds that gradually intensify as they rise towards a crescendo. The spiritual goal of leaving behind the multiplicity of the world to achieve ecstatic union with God is reflected in the coming together of the participants in a shared ritual context and the creation of a single ritual performance from a diverse variety of sonic and physical elements. When these efficacious verbal formulae are recited over water or other liquids placed near the miḥrāb during the ritual, the verbal images are thought to have the ability to manifest the protective and providential powers of divine speech in the liquid (tabarruk or transmission of baraka). It operates on the materiality of the liquid and affects and modifies its symbolic status. The transmission infuses and invigorates the liquid and, by extension, sanctifies it allowing it to nourish both body and soul. As breath and saliva are fraught with an intense metonymy that encompasses both spiritual and physical efficacy, this special oral performance is believed to emanate exceptional powers.25 Imbued with divine essence, the saliva of the shaykh is believed to have curative powers and is credited with the transmission of baraka. It is also thought to bear and transmit virtues and spiritual influences from the shaykh to his dervishes. The liquid placed in the miḥrāb during the dhikr is thus sometimes further sanctified by his spittle, augmenting the blessings and imbuing the liquid with benefit and protection. The Rifāʿī dhikr in Rahovec is distinguished by a particular mournful and esoteric meaning embedded in the material-visual symbolism. Two of the dervishes embody Ḥusayn and his brother Ḥasan. They wear, respectively, a red and a green sleeveless vest called ḥaydarīyā, a term which reveals an association with Ḥasan and Ḥusayn’s father ʿAlī, who, as mentioned earlier, metamorphosed into a lion (ḥaydar). It is, moreover, fashioned with armholes shaped like the letter ʿayn for ʿAlī. The vest of Ḥusayn is red, representing the martyr’s blood, while that of Ḥasan is green in reference to Ḥasan’s skin, which turned green after he was poisoned. The ḥaydarīyā bears 25 For the example of the blessings attached to the saliva of the Prophet Muḥammad, see Chelhod, Structures, 188 and n. 1, and Goldziher, ‘Veneration of Saints’, 281; see also the examples in the hagiography of the Bektashī saint, Ḥājim Sulṭān, Vilāyetnāme, 72. The healing and spellbinding power of saliva as ‘potent soul-substance’ also plays an important role in the Christian scriptures. Jesus heals, for instance, through the medium of saliva mixed with earth (Mark 7:33, 8:23; John 9: 6). For further examples, see Kuehn, Dragon, 129, n. 142; 206.

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Fig. 8.4. Red ḥaydarīyā in the semāʿhāne at the Hadži Sinanova Tekija, Qādirī ṭarīqa. Vrbanjusa district, Sarajevo, Bosnia © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011

yet another level of meaning: it serves as a reminder for the worshippers that the arms of a dervish are cut off because of the love of God.

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During the matem, the shaykh himself, as mentioned earlier, personifies Ḥusayn and wears a red ḥaydarīyā, as do many shaykhs and their disciples throughout the Balkans and beyond, especially during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr. When the vest is not being worn during these ritual enactments, it is often displayed in Sufi tekkes. At the Hadži Sinanova Tekija of the Qādirīyya in Sarajevo, for instance, the red ḥaydarīyā is displayed opposite the miḥrāb in the semāʿhāne throughout the year (Fig. 8.4). A material-visual reminder of the martyrdom of both ʿAlī and his son Ḥusayn, it is accorded a permanent presence during communal dhikr.

Ways of Training the Nafs Like the Qādiris, the Rifāʿīs stress the association between mystical doctrine and a special bodily engagement. The activities of members of the Rifāʿī order, as noted above, are known to include charismatic feats, ecstatic performances with self-mortification, performed at moments of emotional arousal in commemoration of Ḥusayn’s martyrdom. In such moments of intoxication, they pierce their cheeks, throats and other body parts with sharp iron skewers and swords (darḅ al-ṣilāḥ; Plate 8.2 and Fig. 8.5). The order is well known for its charismatic ritual practices. The thirteenth-century Arab biographer Ibn Khallikān (d. 1282) reports Rifāʿī practices such as riding on lions, eating live snakes and walking on hot coals, and the fourteenth-century traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 1368–69 or 1377) records similar rituals of Rifāʿī dervishes in Wāsiṭ in Iraq.26 In a contemporary account of the Mawlāwī dervishes, Aflāki (d. 1360) describes, with disapproval, the extravagances of fire-walking and snake-eating, which could be witnessed at the Sufi lodge of Sayyīd Tāj al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī in Konya.27 The symbolic paraphernalia (darḅ al-ṣilāḥ) that are used in the ritual piercing develop a sacred agency. Marked out for the ritual action, they embody a ‘power’ that elicits a performative mode of behaviour in the dervishes. Before employing the implements, the dervishes devoutly kiss them. The devotion accorded to these implements is underlined by the fact that they are preserved in the miḥrāb (Plate 8.2 and Fig. 8.5). In most cases they approach the shaykh with arms humbly folded across their breasts, whereupon it is the shaykh who inserts the implements into the cheeks of the disciples of different age groups (Fig. 8.6a). Smaller skewers are used for small male children (Fig. 8.6b), most of whom are the children of the shaykh and his relatives. As material-visual reminders of the custom of multiple affiliation to initiatic streams of Sufi tradition, the same implements are prominently displayed in most tekkes throughout the Balkan peninsula, such as at the Hadži Sinanova Tekija in Sarajevo. 26 Respectively Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, I, 153, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-nuẓār, II, 274. 27 Aflāki, Manāqib al-ʿārifin, II, 202–3.

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Fig. 8.5. Special ritual paraphernalia (darḅ al-ṣilāḥ) preserved in the miḥrāb niche in the semāʿhāne, tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqja e Rufaive). Prizren, Kosovo © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2012

At some tekkes, such as the large Naqshbandī Tekija Mesudija, which is situated on the outskirts of Kaćuni at the foot of the path that leads to the village of Vukeljići, the weapons also serve as ritually deployed instruments. The tekke’s Šejh Cazim Hadžimejlic, a nephew of Šejh Husejn Hadžimejlic, is initiated into the Rifāʿī tradition and thus himself practices the darḅ al-ṣilāḥ during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr and at other occasions. These ritual activities are seen as a sign that the struggle with one’s own nafs is the supreme choice. Displayed levḥas call on the believer to take care of his or her behaviour, stating, for instance: ‘Beware, the swords displayed on the wall will know if you misbehave: fight with all your being’, implying that the weapons call upon the worshipper to devote his or her entire being to this struggle. The bow and arrow hanging on the wall likewise urge caution in life, representing the passing of time and the proximity of death because once an arrow is released, time cannot be recaptured. Not only the shaykh’s saliva but also his fingers are thought to transmit the power of baraka. The shaykh’s rubbing with fingers and hands is thus an integral part of the ritual. In the Rifāʿī tekke in Rahovec, too, after removing the darḅ al-ṣilāḥ from the cheeks of his dervishes, Sheh Mehdi rubs their mouths with his fingers, and the sides of their cheeks inside and outside as medicament after the ritual piercing. Due to the curative power of his fingers no visible marks remain. In this way he accords the worshippers healing and protection.

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Fig. 8.6 Darḅ al-ṣilāḥ during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a Rifāʿī tekke: (a) the shaykh inserts implements into the cheeks of disciples; (b) the shaykh inserts smaller skewers into the cheeks of small male children. Rahovec, Kosovo © Photos: Sara Kuehn, 2013

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Fig. 8.7 Darḅ al-ṣilāḥ during the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a Rifāʿī tekke: (a) dervishes insert sharp iron skewers into their throats and other body parts; (b) dervishes receive the blessing of the power of Šejh Mehdi’s feet; (c) a sword is placed across the dervishes’ throats; (d) other worshippers react viscerally to what the dervishes undergo. Rahovec, Kosovo © Photos: Sara Kuehn, 2013

This practice also reflects the belief that the shaykh has unconditional authority over his dervishes, who to him are ‘like a corpse in the hands of the washer of the dead’.28 The charismatic austerities intensify when some dervishes insert sharp iron skewers into their throats (Fig. 8.7a) and other body parts. Then the shaykh takes a sword which hangs in the miḥrāb and slides the blade along his lips, lacing it with his saliva. The ritual practices next involve a form of bodily engagement in which trust in the shaykh is unequivocal. First, Sheh Mehdi’s youngest son is placed with his bare feet on top of the sword blade, lifted by the dervishes who personify Ḥusayn and Ḥasan, and is carried around the semāʿhāne. Next, as an act of blessing, the shaykh places the sword blade with its sharp edge across the bare stomach of a dervish who lies on a red sheepskin in front of the miḥrāb. Just like his hands, the shaykh’s feet are filled with special powers, as is evident during this ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr. Baraka is inherent even in the lowest part of his body.29 With the flat soles of his feet he mounts onto 28 Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 29 and n. 3. 29 See also the so-called dawsa ritual which includes the trampling of prostrate adherents by a mounted shaykh of the Saʿdi or Jibāwi orders founded by the grandson of Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī, ʿIzz al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Ṣayyād (d. 1271–72). See ibid., 73, n. 2.

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the sword. The ritual is repeated on several of his dervishes who, one after the after, proceed to lie down in the same place to receive the blessing of his feet’s power (Fig. 8.7b). In some instances he places the sword across the recumbent dervishes’ throats (Fig. 8.7c). By piercing his dervishes’ cheeks or by mounting the sword blade the shaykh circulates his baraka reflecting his permanent emotional connection with his disciples. The entire corporeal field of the body of the shaykh and, by extension, the ritual implements he touches, handles and manipulates are intimately connected with the taming and domesticating of a dervish’s nafs, often referred to as ‘training (one’s) soul’ (riyāḍat al-nafs). The spiritual power of all of the performing dervishes is expressed by the fact that there is no resultant bleeding or visible wound. A sense of immediate, assimilable and effective solidarity and shared emotion, bridging sensations and meaning, develops between the performing dervishes and the other worshippers who often react with visceral bodily responses and empathy to the perceptual forms of the performing dervishes’ bodily engagements (Fig. 8.7d). The ritualization of pain and the repetition of these performative expressions of suffering thus function like ‘cathartic’ acts of devotion, signifying a physiological dimension of intense emotion. In this interrelational community process the religious performance celebrates the semiotic complexity of a rite of passage. By thus mastering the vulnerability of the perishable physical body, the dervishes demonstrate that, in order to experience pure love, physical passions must be mitigated, overcome and mastered. Some of the dervishes were also credited with power over scorpions and snakes (Fig. 8.8). This was still part of the ritual practice a few decades ago. It involved handling and devouring live snakes and scorpions without any pain or wound. The dervishes were said to become so transported in their prayers that they were oblivious to the bites of the venomous reptiles. Again, the symbolic significance of the ritual is the riyāḍat al-nafs. During the feast which is served after the ritual ceremony all of the participants, including the shaykh and his guests, eat food from the same plate during the communal meal. The community of dervishes that partook in the ritual activities thereby implicitly ‘share’ and ‘exchange’ their saliva. This devotional ‘ingestion’ allows all those present to identify with the shaykh and the community. As a closing point, when the worshippers take leave, the performance of bowing and hand-kissing inaugurates the final act of this ritual ceremony. The dervish kisses the shaykh’s hand, which, only moments ago, had held a skewer that pierced his disciple’s cheeks. By so doing, and by humbly touching it with the forehead, the dervish expresses his love, devotion and respect for the shaykh; he underscores the lifelong bond with his shaykh and seeks his blessing and protection. It symbolizes reaching the Prophet Muḥammad through the intermediate degrees of the shaykh and his shaykhs who have each performed these rituals in the past. The shaykh, in turn, extends the hand of discipleship to the dervish. Many dervishes strive to kiss the palm of the shaykh’s hand and to rub their eyes and forehead on it because it is seen as the locus of a special depository of benediction indicating union with or

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Fig. 8.8. Sheh Ahmed Shkodër, the most important Rifāʿī shaykh in Albania in the twentieth century. Tekke of the Rifāʿīyya (Teqeja e Rufaiye). Berat, Albania © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2011

Fig. 8.9. ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the semāʿhāne of a tekke of the Rifāʿīyya. Rahovec, Kosovo © Photo: Sara Kuehn, 2013

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the transferral or communication of spiritual power (Fig. 8.9). The religious experience of the dhikr, the fresh memory of the ritual acts, even the concomitant piety on display, all are inscribed in this one act of lasting potency.29

Bibliography Primary Sources ʿĀshik Chelebi, Meşāir üş-şuʿarā or Tezkere of ʿAşık Çelebi: Edited in Facsimile from the Manuscript Or. 6434 in the British Museum with Introduction and Variants from the Istanbul and Upsala Manuscripts, ed. Glyn M. Meredith-Owens, E.J.W., Gibb Memorial Series, n.s., 24 (London: Luzac, 1971). Aflāki, Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad, Manāqib al-ʿārifin; trans. Clément Huart, Les saints des derviches tourneurs, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1918–22). Ergun, Sadeddin Nüzhet, Bektaşi sairleri ve nefesleri, 3 vols. (Istanbul: İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi, 1944). Ḥājim Sulṭān, Vilāyetnāme-i Ḥājim Sulṭān; trans. Rudolf Tschudi, Das Vilâjet-nâme des Hâdschim Sultan: Eine türkische Heiligenlegende zum ersten Male herausgegeben und ins Deutsche übertragen von Dr. Rudolf Tschudi (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1914). Hadžibajrić, Feyzulah, ‘Tesavvuf, tarikati i tekije na području Starješinstva Islamske zajednice Bosne i Hercegovine danas’ [Tasawwuf, Tarīqa(t) and Tekkes of the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Herzegovina Today], Glasnik Vrhovnog Islamskog Starješinstva (Sarajevo) 3 (1979), 271–7. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-nuẓār fī ġarāʾib al-amṣār wa-ʿagaʾib al-asfār; trans. H.A.R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa: A.D. 1325–1354, 2 vols. (Nendeln: Kraus, 1962). Ibn Khallikān, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa- anbāʾ abnāʾ al-zamān [Lives of Eminent Men and the Sons of the Epoch] 4 vols. (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1970), I.

Secondary Sources Aksel, Malik, Türklerde dinî resimler: yazı-resim [Religious Pictures among the Turks] (Istanbul: Elif Kitabevi, 1967). Algar, Hamid, ‘Some Notes on the Naqshbandī Tarīqat in Bosnia’, Die Welt des Islams 13.3–4 (1971): 168–203. Avci, Cahit, ‘Türk Sanatında Aynalı Yazılar’ [Mirror Writing in Turkish Art], Kültür ve Sanat (Ankara Ministry of Culture) 5 (1977): 20–33. Biegman, Nicolaas H., God’s Lovers: A Sufi Community in Macedonia: Text and Images (London: Kegan Paul, 2007). Birge, John Kingsley, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes (London: Luzac & Co., 1937). Brown, John Porter, The Dervishes: or, Oriental Spiritualism (London: Trübner, 1868). Chelhod, Joseph, Les structures du sacré chez les Arabes (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1964). De Jong, Frederick, ‘The Iconography of Bektāshīsm: A Survey of Themes and Symbolism in Clerical Costume, Liturgical Objects and Pictorial Art’, in François Déroche, Adam Gacek and Jan Just Witkam (eds.), Manuscripts of the Middle East, IV (Leiden: Ter Lugt Press, 1989), 7–29; repr. in Ahmet Yaşar Ocak (ed.), From History to Theology: Ali in Islamic Belief (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2005), 265–90. Goldziher, Ignaz, ‘Veneration of Saints in Islam’, in S.M. Stern (ed.), Muslim Studies, trans. C.R. Barber and S.M. Stern, 2 vols. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967–71), II, 255–341.

29 Fieldwork in the Balkans in 2011 and 2012 was supported by the Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft (Austrian Research Foundation) which permitted me to research Sufi orders in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania and to attend the ʿĀshūrāʾ dhikr at the Rifāʿi tekke in Rahovec, Kosovo, in 2013.

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Karamustafa, Ahmet T., God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1994). Karamustafa, Ahmet T., ‘Kalenders, Abdals, Hayderis: The Formation of the Bektaşiye in the Sixteenth Century’, in Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar (eds.), Süleymân the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 121–29. Kuehn, Sara, The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Landolt, Hermann, ‘Gedanken zum islamischen Gebetsteppich’, in Carl August Schmitz (ed.), Festschrift Alfred Bühler (Basel: Schwabe, 1965), 243–56. Mélikoff, Irene, ‘La divinisation d’Ali chez les Bektachis-Alévis’, in Ahmet Yaşar Ocak (ed.), From History to Theology: Ali in Islamic Belief (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2005), 83–110. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, ‘La tête coupée dans le folklore turc: un point de rencontre de l’histoire et de la légende’, Etudes et Documents Balkaniques et Méditerranéens 14 (1989): 75–80. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar (ed.), Sufism and Sufis in Ottoman Society: Sources, Doctrine, Rituals, Turuq, Architecture, Literature and Fine Arts, Modernism, Publications of the Turkish Historical Society (Ankara: Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, 2005). Ritter, Helmut, Das Meer der Seele: Mensch, Welt und Gott in den Geschichten des Farīduddīn ʿAṭṭār (Leiden: Brill, 1978). Shani, Raya, ‘Calligraphic Lions Symbolising the Esoteric Dimension of ʿAlī’s Nature’, in Pedram Khosronejad (ed.), The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shīʿism: Iconography and Religious Devotion in Shīʿi Islam (New York: I.B. Tauris, in association with Iran Heritage Foundation, 2012), 122–58. Smith, Grace Martin, ‘ʿAşūre and, in Particular, the ʿAşūre of Muharrem, as Related to Nedret İşli and Grace Martin Smith by Sayın Misbah Efendi’, Journal of Turkish Studies/Türklük Bi̇lgi̇si̇ Araştirmalari (1984): 229–31. Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Trix, Frances, ‘Symmetry in the Service of Islamic Mysticism: A Central Calligraphic Lehva’, Symmetry: Culture and Science 7.2 (1996): 193–208. Zarcone, Thierry, ‘The Lion of Ali in Anatolia: History, Symbolism and Iconology’, in Pedram Khosronejad (ed.), The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shīʿism: Iconography and Religious Devotion in Shīʿi Islam (New York: I.B. Tauris, in Association with Iran Heritage Foundation, 2012), 104–21.

About the author Trained as an art historian (PhD, Freie Universität Berlin, 2008) and working on religious symbolism for more than twenty years, Sara Kuehn studies religion from a cross-cultural comparative perspective. With a dual background in Islamic and East Asian art histories, combined with a museum career, she specializes in the artistic and religio-cultural relationship between the Islamic world, East and Western Asia and Europe and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Central Asia, south-east and western Europe.

Part III Transformations

9. Religious Materiality in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II Suzanna Ivanič Abstract Looking closely at objects in Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer in Prague (1577–1612) reveals the complex interactions between religion and the natural world. The coconut shell, rhinoceros horn and bezoar stone that made up a liturgical cup in the collection were thought to protect against poisonous liquids and its inscription with a psalm drew attention to the notion of ‘thirsting’ for God. Text or images could make references to religion, but sometimes beliefs were lodged within the material. Similarly, precious stones were considered to represent divine power. This chapter examines these meanings of materiality in so-called ‘religious objects’ at the Habsburg court. Keywords: Prague; natural philosophy; Kunstkammer; collections; religion; material culture

This chapter examines objects for what they can reveal about early modern religion. It does so in an unexpected context: the early modern Kunstkammer was a setting normally considered as a space of art and science, not one designed for devotion. It provides a unique perspective on religious materiality. Looking at the collection of Rudolf II as a whole and focusing on two individual artefacts kept within it, this chapter examines how religious meaning was transformed during an object’s life, through the processes of its creation, adaptation and collection. In doing so, it reveals how religious materiality was affected and thought about in ways which were specific to the early modern period.1 It considers how natural philosophy connected matter to the divine, and it shows how global trade contributed to an ever-diversifying religious material culture. Located in Prague’s castle district, on top of the hill above the Vltava river, protected from floods by its position, and closed from public view, was the most extensive Kunstkammer collection of the early modern period. From 1577 to 1612, the Habsburg 1 Here I build on Caroline Walker Bynum’s work that shows the need to understand materiality in relation to historical contexts: Bynum, Christian Materiality, 281. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch09

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Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612) assembled a vast collection of objects, art, materials, animals and instruments. Karel van Mander, a Dutch painter and art historian, wrote in 1604 that one ‘has only to go to Prague […] to the greatest art patron in the world at the present time, the Roman Emperor Rudolf the Second; there he may see[…] a remarkable number of outstanding and precious, curious, unusual and priceless works’.2 Rudolf had acquired the collections of his father, Maximilian II (1527–1576), and his uncle, Ferdinand of Tyrol (1529–1595), who had owned the equally famous Ambras collection. These collections had themselves evolved from a long tradition of Habsburg collecting since the fourteenth century.3 While Rudolf thus inherited and collated numerous objects from his ancestors, he also added copious new items. New objects were commissioned by him, sourced through agents, such as Philipp Hainhofer, and through collectors, like Count Hans Khevenhüller, and presented as diplomatic gifts, as is evident for example in Rudolf’s exchanges with elector Christian II of Saxony or Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria.4 The miniaturist Daniel Fröschl was employed as imperial treasurer to record the contents of the collection. Over the years 1607–11 Fröschl created a detailed inventory that covered the part of the collection referred to as the ‘Kunstkammer’.5 He divided the collection into naturalia, artificialia and scientifica, and this has largely informed the way in which the contents have been analysed since: as natural objects, works of art, or scientific instruments.6 Most studies of early modern collections have focused on their role in the history of art, museum history and the history of science. Historians of collections have shown the Kunstkammer to be a site from which art galleries emerged and a site of knowledge where early attempts to categorize the world took place.7 A number of studies have focused on how ‘curiosity’ or wonder acted as a driving force for collecting and formed a specific kind of enquiry about the world that was a precursor to later ‘scientific’ modes of investigation.8 The intimate relationship between art and science has also become clear. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, for example, has shown how Joris Hoefnagel’s drawings in Rudolf’s 2 Karel van Mander, Het Schilderboeck waer in Voor eerst de leerlustighe Iueght den grondt der Edel Vry SCHILDERCONST in Verscheyden deelen Wort voorghedraghen (Haarlem, 1604), quoted in R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II, 162. 3 For a succinct survey of the Habsburg collections in this period, see Kaufmann, ‘From Treasury to Museum’, 137–38, 144. 4 R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II, 180–81; Kirchweger, ‘Treasures’, 27; Baldriga, ‘Role of Correspondence’, 191; Horacek, ‘Art of Transformation’; Kaufmann, ‘Remarks’, 22. 5 Fučíková, ‘Collection of Rudolf II’, 49–50: it omits three other rooms known to have held collections grouped under the label ‘vordere Kunstkammer’ and the gallery of paintings. 6 Bauer, ‘Die Kunstkammer Kaiser Rudolfs II’, xvi–xix; Bukovinská, ‘Section II: The Kunstkammer of Rudolf II’, 472; Bukovinská, ‘Known and Unknown’, 208; Distelberger, ‘Collection’, 49; Trunz, Wissenschaft; Kirchweger, ‘Treasures’, 27. 7 Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern; Findlen, Possessing Nature. 8 Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, esp. 64; Daston and Park, Wonders; R.J.W. Evans and Marr, eds., Curiosity and Wonder, 9.

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collection formed part of a ‘realist’ trend in the meticulous representation of nature that led to advances in scientific understanding; for Kaufmann, Hoefnagel’s manuscripts were part of a process in which ‘the world of nature [was] beginning to be desanctified’.9 Kaufmann’s project was aimed at understanding the role of the Kunstkammer in a gradual process by which ‘the magical universe lost its magic and gave way to the mechanical universe’.10 The Kunstkammer has, thus, primarily been studied as a secular space.11 A closer look at the inventory, however, reveals that the Kunstkammer contained many items depicting sacred imagery, used for religious ritual or associated with miraculous occurrences. Among the 2,814 objects itemized by Fröschl, 108 are identified in the entries as having religious subjects or functions (although a larger number must be assumed to have had such associations without being specified in the inventory). These entries comprised items such as a group of feather pictures with religious images including one of ‘Our Lady in the moonlight’, a wax image of Mary suckling the child Christ made by Antonio Abbondi the Elder, a silver-gilt bowl automaton with Judith and Holofernes’ head ‘from which red wine can flow’ and ‘a most beautiful, precious, big agate basin or vase, in which the name of the Blessed Christ is inscribed’ (known famously as the Achatschale).12 In the inventory, these items – depictions of Mary in various media, a gory, moralistic automaton and a miraculous piece of stone – fell under categories organized by type of object and material: they came under the headings ‘made from feathers from India’, ‘embossed wax’, ‘silver and silver-gilt tazza and bowls’ and ‘agate dishes’. Looking at the categories alone, it might be concluded that materials and object typologies were prioritized over religious significance by early modern audiences. However, the fact that the inventorial classifications were silent in relation to religious references may itself be a clue to understanding early modern religious materiality: it was not that religion had been eradicated from these objects, but rather that the divine pervaded all objects and all matter, whether natural or man-made without the need for special reference. This chapter shows how the Kunstkammer and its objects were intimately connected to the sacred and how their study can shed light on an early modern approach to religious materiality. It sets out the religious nature of the collection: from its overarching concept – its encyclopedic nature and as a reflection of God’s universe in 9 Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 48. 10 Frances Yates, ‘Imperial Mysteries’, New Statesman, 18 May 1973, p.735, quoted in Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 7. 11 Notable exceptions are Pilaski Kaliardos, Munich Kunstkammer, 89–98, 132–34; Johnson, ‘Stone Gods’; Johnson, Cultural Hierarchy, esp. 254–57; Laube, Von der Reliquie zum Ding. 12 Bauer and Haupt, eds., ‘Rudolf II Inventar’, respectively, 34 (fol. 58/no. 610); 108 (fol. 331/no. 2062–299); 85 (fol. 257/no. 1568), 73 (fol. 216/no. 1350-25); NB there is some repetition of items mentioned in Fröschl’s list owing to their appearance under different categories so the total of itemized artefacts is approximate, and the list only gives partial clues to the objects’ locations, which are often different to how they are grouped in the inventory (see Bauer and Haupt, eds., ‘Rudolf II Inventar’, xix–xx).

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microcosm – to the individual objects with religious functions contained within it. This argument is substantiated and extended through a detailed analysis of the material nature and significance of two artefacts from Rudolf’s collection. These case studies further provide a prism through which to understand the particular variety and historical specificity of early modern religious materiality. They point to how the divine was manifest not only at times of devotion, but omnipresent through the natural world, from the specific powerful virtues of a mineral to the entire diversity of creation. The Kunstkammer reveals how religious meanings transformed and persisted in the objects that were collected by those interested in God’s world.

The Sacred in the Kunstkammer The divine pervaded Kunstkammer collections on two levels. Firstly, it can be seen in the conceptual architecture of the whole. In 1565 Samuel Quiccheberg published a treatise on forming the ideal princely collection for Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi. It set out the ultimate comprehensive collecting scheme that would form a theatre of wisdom (theatrum sapientiae). The classes of objects that should be represented included artworks, numismatics, naturalia, scientific instruments, musical instruments, hunting equipment and dress. It also noted that the collections should be linked to laboratories and workshops for making handcrafts, a print shop, a library and a pharmacy.13 Of all the early modern collections, Rudolf’s was the closest to achieving this ideal.14 It contained artefacts and specimens corresponding to each category. The collection was even set within a matrix of workshops, observatories and laboratories that were also located in the castle area. These included, for example, the workshops of the famous Miseroni glypticians and the clockmaker Jost Bürgi.15 The extensive variety of the collection could be interpreted as a representational strategy for displaying prestige, wealth and power. In the case of other princely collections, such as those of Ferdinand of Tyrol’s Ambras Kunstkammer and Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria’s Munich Kunstkammer of the late sixteenth century, a primary function of the display of objects was to communicate the greatness of the collection. The open, aesthetically informed layout of their collections that accentuated the great scope of their possessions was designed to impress the visitor immediately on entering the space.16 The display of objects in Rudolf’s Kunstkammer indicates 13 Meadow and Robertson, The First Treatise on Museums, 3 and throughout. 14 Fučíková, ‘Collection of Rudolf II’, 53; Bauer and Haupt, eds., ‘Rudolf II Inventar’, xxxvii. 15 Bukovinská, ‘Known and Unknown’, 205–6, 215; see further, Bukovinská, ‘Das Kunsthandwerk in Prag’; Distelberger ‘Thoughts on Rudolfine Art’; Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 188–92. 16 Bukovinská, ‘Known and Unknown’, 214–15; Fučíková, ‘Die Sammlungen Rudolfs II’, 230–31, 237; see also other examples in Findlen, ‘Possessing the Past’, 99.

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that his collection was not only created for the direct representation of imperial power.17 Much of his collection was contained in boxes, cabinets and chests rather than being sumptuously displayed. Even some of the most famous objects in the collection, such as the Seychelles Nut vessel by Anton Schweinberger and the lavish gold Ceremonial Ewer with Triumphs (Trionfi Lavabo) by Christoph Jamnitzer, were hidden from view.18 The restrained access reserved for invited guests and the lack of emphasis on display in Rudolf’s Kunstkammer suggests that the collection also functioned largely for Rudolf’s personal benefit. By bringing a vast variety of items together in one collection, from natural specimens to artworks, and from ethnographic artefacts from around the world to working scientific instruments, the Kunstkammer acted as a microcosm of the universe. The influence of neo-Platonic and Hermetic thinking on natural philosophy led many to view the world and all its diversity as part of a great hierarchical design dependent on a single divine cause. In line with this, the universe could be understood to be comprised of harmonies and correspondences, which God had put in order.19 By reflecting this variety in the extensive collection, it was thought possible to systematize and understand all parts of God’s creation, and to find some unity and harmony within it. Collecting on this scale was part of what Robert J.W. Evans has called a ‘pansophic striving’ – an attempt to gain ‘universal knowledge’.20 This was not necessarily linked to a belief in a mystical and occult system, but rather a belief in the working of the world in which the power of correspondences and a cosmology linked all parts of God’s creation together. Rudolf’s ownership and intimate knowledge of this vast collection gave him a privileged position over it. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has argued that Rudolf may even have intended his ‘possession of the world in microcosm […] [as] an expression of his symbolic mastery of the greater world’.21 The Kunstkammer certainly gave Rudolf a space in which to engage with divine creation: from the raw materials of God’s earth to artistic creations.22 Rudolf’s Kunstkammer was thus more than a tool for representing his political prestige: as a whole, it can be seen as a personal instrument through which to access and engage with God’s universe. 17 Fučíková, ‘Review of Kaufmann’; Fučíková, ‘Collection of Rudolf II’, 47–53; though note that it has been cogently argued that prestige for ownership of the collection could be obtained through alternative means than display: on visitors to the collection and the decorative scheme of the Kunstkammer ceiling paintings, see Kaufmann,’Remarks’, 22, 26; note similar ‘universal’ decoration in the collection of Girolamo Gualdo the Elder (1496–1566) in Vicenza as noted in Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, 72–73; and on alternative modes of communication of grandeur, see Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 176–84; Baldriga, ‘Role of Correspondence’, 189. 18 Bukovinská, ‘Known and Unknown’, 214–15. 19 Daston and Park, Wonders, 161–63; Gouk, ‘Natural Philosophy and Natural Magic’, esp. 233; Bradburne, ‘Science and Music’; Findlen, Possessing Nature, 81–82. 20 R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II, 176–77, 252; see also, Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City, 177–78; Distelberger, ‘Collection’, 49; Grote, ed., Macrocosmos in Microcosmos; Walz, ‘Weltenharmonie’. 21 Kaufmann, ‘Remarks’, 27. 22 Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 7; Kaufmann, ‘Remarks’, 24; Kaufmann, ‘From Treasury to Museum’, 145; Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City, 178.

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Within this overarching framework, individual objects in the collection reveal a second dimension in which religion pervaded the Kunstkammer. While all individual objects were implicated in the divine cosmological composition of the collection, many of them could be understood as religious items in their own right. Referring to objects in collections, Krzysztof Pomian has argued that all items lose their ‘usefulness’ on entering a collection and become ‘semiophores’ and equivalent to pieces of art. In line with this theory of transforming meaning, a number of analyses of religious objects in Rudolf’s collection have suggested that they underwent a comprehensive desacralization during the process of collecting in which objects become artefacts for display that are not handled or subject to wear and tear.23 However, I argue that rather than losing their religious function and turning merely into collectible art objects, these objects retained their religious significance while in the Kunstkammer. Rudolf’s collections were closely connected with workshops and laboratories where items were removed from the Kunstkammer, examined or worked on, and then returned to the collection.24 The 1621 inventory in particular notes hundreds of unworked and worked precious stones arranged by type in boxes in a cabinet in the third room of the anterior Kunstkammer.25 The objects in the collection were constantly changing and thus rarely reified into static display pieces. Furthermore, individual items encouraged active engagement through their design. The analysis of Johannes Silber’s Universe Cup (1589) by Andrew Morrall has suggested that even non-utilitarian artworks might demand physical engagement, use and special knowledge in order to understand them in totality: ‘One must hold, lift, turn, and probe the object’s exterior and interior to appreciate it fully.’ The object required an ‘acute act of sustained visual examination’.26 Many objects like this existed in the Kunstkammer, such as the objects examined in this chapter, and far from being objects that were intended merely for display as in Pomian’s model, these items demanded touch as part of their design. Specialist and, moreover, physically intimate knowledge was required to gain full access to the hidden facets of Rudolf’s collection. Artefacts in the Kunstkammer thus appear to have held multiple values simultaneously – as art objects, useful tools and instruments, curiosities and sacred items. Their artistic value did not negate their sacred value.

23 Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, 7–8, 30; Mason, ‘Dragon Tree’, 171–72; see also Laube, Von der Reliquie zum Ding; Kaufmann, ‘Perspectives on Prague’, 98; Hauschild, ‘Eppendorfer Alraune’. 24 The ‘functional’ aspects of Kunstkammern used as part of a network of workshops or laboratories and the involvement of princes in working with objects in their collections have in general been noted in R.J.W. Evans and Marr, eds., Curiosity and Wonder, 9; see also Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, 191. 25 Bukovinská, ‘Kunstkammer of Rudolf II’, 201; Rudolf is also known to have sponsored prospectors to source stones for the collection across the globe – Bukovinská, ‘Die Kunst- und Schatzkammer Rudolfs II’; Bukovinská, ‘Wer war Johann Rabenhaupt?’. 26 Morrall, ‘Apprehending the Macrocosm’, 97.

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Items of religious import were afforded significant attention and expenditure. Looking closely at individual artefacts reveals the multiple layers of religious meaning that they incorporated and for which they were actively sought, purchased and commissioned by Rudolf.

Objects as Windows onto Early Modern Materialities The divine was often intimately connected with the visual and material qualities of specific objects. The following two case studies exemplify the diverse ways in which this was manifested: they exhibit a range of organic and inorganic materials, a variety of artistic styles and multiple places of provenance. While both these objects explicitly present religious themes, what they reveal about the way the sacred is expressed through materiality applies to other objects in the collection that did not make overt Christian references. Case Study 1: Coconut-Shell Aspersorium An object identified in the 1607–11 inventory as being an ‘Indian nut in the shape of a small pot, in silver-gilt and the stone therein mounted’ under the title ‘Indian drinking dishes, mounted and also unmounted nuts’ survives in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (Fig. 9.1).27 The 1619 inventory also included the object and listed it as ‘A pot, mounted in silver, a mixture’. It is only the later 1750 Schatzkammer inventory, which incorporated much of Rudolf’s surviving collection, that alluded to religion in its entry for the item: ‘a large coconut, formed into a vessel for holy water carved in the old way with flying and running animals, inside a bezoar, with a handle, the mount of silver and inscription on the lid’.28 Examining the complex assemblage of this cup reveals that it went through various stages and places of production and shows how objects acquired layers of religious meaning as their material form changed. Although no documentary evidence survives relating to how this item was made or to its journey prior to Rudolf’s Kunstkammer, the item is thought to have been fashioned largely in Asia before coming to Europe owing to the materials, styles and techniques employed.29 The tiny coconut shell measuring just 14.8 centimetres in diameter has been intricately carved with 27 ‘1 indianische nuß in formb eines kesselins, in silber vergult und der kern darin gefasst' and 'Indianische zu Trinckhgeschirr gefasste Nussen und auch noch ungefasste’ (fol. 33/no. 287), in Bauer and Haupt, eds., ‘Rudolf II Inventar’, 17; slightly different translation of ‘Indian nut in the shape of a small pot, the kernel mounted on gilt silver’ in Keating and Markey, ‘“Indian” Objects’, 295. 28 As per Keating and Markey, ‘“Indian” Objects’, 295. 29 Ibid., 293.

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fish, animals and plants with small, careful incisions, in a style reflecting that used in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The handle is made from a single piece of smooth, polished rhinoceros horn and the whole piece is brought securely together with silver-gilt fittings. In the main part the metalwork has been simply decorated with hammered circles and lines, but the silver-gilt rim of the cup has been inscribed with Latin words from Psalm 42:2: ‘My soul thirsts for God, the source of Life, when shall I come and appear before God’s sight?’ The metalwork has been identified as being chased in the style used by silversmiths in Goa. In this initial phase, the coconut cup may have been sourced and inscribed in Ceylon to supply foreign demand. Coconut-shell cups were popular in Europe with those who could afford them not only for their status value as exotica, but also for their healing power. Coconut shell was thought to have natural power capable of guarding against poisons and was thus an appropriate material for a container of ingestible fluids. In Goa, however, the cup appears to have taken on a distinctive Christian meaning. Catholic missions had brought Christianity to Goa early in the sixteenth century, and a distinctive Catholic material culture that incorporated native materials and styles quickly developed.30 The inscription on the silver-gilt rim plays on the image of ‘thirsting’ for God spiritually as one might thirst for the cup’s contents physically. It also names God as the ‘source of Life’ emphasizing his role in Genesis and the creation of the natural world. The form of the handle indicates that the item had morphed into one intended for use as a sacred item: an ‘aspersorium’ or ‘liturgical cup’ that held holy water for ritual use. The looped fitting on the top of the handle allowed the cup to be hung from a hook, which was a classic design used for liturgical cups, enabling them to be used to disperse holy water throughout a sacred space. This design diversified the possible religious functionality of the object. By manipulating the form of the object and inscribing it with sacred text the item took on new religious meanings and could be used for a variety of religious purposes. A final element in the cup reveals the intrinsic importance of materiality to its religious potential. Inside, held by four prongs (one of which is now missing), is a bezoar stone – a gall stone from an animal, such as a goat, camel or porcupine.31 The bezoar may have joined the cup in Europe although having been identified as ‘oriental’ in the inventory may mean that it originally came from the Middle East.32 Bezoars were believed to protect against or neutralize poisonous substances that they came into contact with and Rudolf was an avid collector of them owing to his suspicion of attempts to poison him.33 The use of the bezoar together with the coconut shell and rhinoceros horn, which were also thought to have the ability to protect against 30 See further Jackson and Jaffer, eds., Encounters; on global Catholicism in current scholarship, see Ditchfield, ‘De-centering the Catholic Reformation’. 31 Fučíková, ed., Rudolf II, 496, cat. II.120. 32 Barroso, ‘Bezoar Stones’, 193. 33 Findlen, ‘Cabinets’, 212; Midelfort, Mad Princes, 90.

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Fig. 9.1. Liturgical cup. Coconut shell (14.8 cm dia.), rhinoceros horn, bezoar stone and silver gilt, c.1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna (Kunstkammer, inv. no. KK 913) © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

poisons, seems to reveal specific material choices in the making of the cup. It shows the surprising coming together of the healing power of natural materials from God’s world with religious ritual. The potent efficacy of this object was layered through its materiality, scriptural inscription and sacred form. Moral and divine messages were encapsulated in this item in its design, and were to be conveyed to its viewer as it was held, used, examined and seen up close. The connected global assemblage of this object further highlights two aspects of early modern religious materialities specific to this period. The incorporation of Goan Catholic styles into an object that then ended up in the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor in Europe signifies just how deeply entangled global Catholicism was by 1600. It indicates the outward global reach of early modern Catholicism, but it also shows how Christianized territories began to shape the religious materiality of

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Christian Europe by 1600. We cannot know whether this object’s global trajectory was serendipitous or fastidiously planned by an anonymous commissioner. Nevertheless, the cup indicates the compatibility of European and non-European markets in the making of early modern religious items.34 Craftsmen and merchants in Asia were already seamlessly incorporating religious themes and satisfying the specific cultural and religious interests and demands of Europeans in the late sixteenth century. Case Study 2: Agate Statue of Mary Magdalene by Ottavio Miseroni The 1619 inventory of Rudolf’s Kunstkammer lists, ‘A depiction of Mary Magdalene, kneeling, made from oriental agate and really ingeniously made.’35 This entry refers to a surviving agate statue of Mary Magdalene made by Ottavio Miseroni in his Prague workshop between 1590 and 1600 (Plate 9.1).36 Miseroni evidently prized this work of his highly as he inscribed ‘Ott. M. F.’ on the lower front of the base. The long hair and upcast eyes conform to the familiar iconography of Mary Magdalene. Miseroni’s Magdalene looks up to the viewer with her head slightly tilted, her neck extended, with an open expression and wide eyes seeking forgiveness. Almost between kneeling and rising as if at the cusp of movement, she crosses her arms across her chest with her hands tenderly pulling at the material of her dress, covering herself from the onlooker in a gesture of modesty and humility. The statue does not refer to the more familiar image of Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross, nor of her anointing Christ’s feet, but of her penitence.37 Restrained but seeking engagement with her audience, the statue draws the viewer in as if re-enacting the moment she asks for forgiveness from Christ. The iconography conveys an immediate scriptural message to the viewer, but by paying particular attention to how the material characteristics were exploited by Miseroni reveals the deeper religious significance of this object. The statue’s visual elements are physically and symbolically bound up with its material characteristics. The stone identified in the inventory as agate was a type of quartz found in volcanic rock across the world. Although it is a common substance, the unique colouring and patterning that it sometimes took on through mineral deposits made it a sought after, and therefore ‘precious’, stone especially valued for use in stone-cutting or ‘glyptics’. The piece used here was carefully selected for its colours and its ability to produce an elegant smooth finish because of its microcrystalline structure in which 34 Gerritsen, ‘Domesticating Goods’, 10; also compare analysis of Chinoiserie and the adaptation of designs for a European market in Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, 68. 35 ‘Ain bild mit Maria Magdalena, kniehend, von orientalischen agata gahr konstreich gemacht’; ‘Nachlassinventar des Kaisers Matthias’ (188/99), p. lxxvi, no. 1476. 36 Fučíková, ed., Rudolf II, 480, cat. II.36. 37 Haskins, Mary Magdalene.

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the crystals are not visible. The parts of the statue ingeniously match the natural flow of colours in the stone. Mary’s kneeling pose allows the upper part of her body, her face and flowing gown to be rendered in intricate detail in the white section of stone tinged with pink and red. These colours match the purity of the sacred figure and are reminiscent of the blood of Christ. The ochre base provides a stark contrast and allows her to stand unsupported. The curls of her long tumbling hair and the folds of her clothes flow into the natural rock of the base, and serve visually to bring the whole piece together and to prompt the viewer to examine the statue in the round. A moral message can be read in the way Miseroni unveiled the coloured layers of agate to reveal the white vein as a material equivalent to Mary Magdalene’s inner transformation: the red and pink tinged around her body symbolized Christ’s blood purifying her sin. While analysis of the crafting of the agate Mary Magdalene reveals one set of ways in which the statue was connected to the divine, examining the early modern world view of natural matter reveals a further layer of divine meanings. In particular, the virtues of gems and precious stones were the subject of intense interest for contemporary natural philosophers. Anselmus Boetius de Boodt who was physician in ordinary to Rudolf II in Prague published Gemmarum et lapidum historia in 1609, which became the most important book on gems in Europe of the time.38 Prague proved to be a centre for knowledge and artistic innovation relating to stones: not only through De Boodt’s work and Miseroni’s workshop, but also through Rudolf’s Kunstkammer collection of worked and unworked stones, and the city’s strong link to the Bohemian Erzgebirge mining region. Thus, Prague itself can be seen as a centre for lapidary enquiry around 1600 and an environment conducive to the exploration of their visual, material and powerful properties. De Boodt’s Historia reveals how the divine was present and evident in this precious matter. In the dedicatory preface to Rudolf, De Boodt praised the emperor’s appreciation of gems. Writing about how Rudolf had acquired a semi-precious stone tabletop from the Medici grand-ducal workshop, he explained that Rudolf’s interest in the precious stones was part of pious devotion rather than an attempt at self-glorification: The Emperor’s passion for these precious stones did not stem from a mere desire to enhance his own dignity and majesty with their assistance, but rather to observe in them the greatness and unspeakable might of God, who seemed to have united the beauty of the whole world and the power of all things in these tiny little bodies, and to have a certain reflection of the gleam of divinity before his eyes at all times.39 38 J. Evans, Magical Jewels, 152; further discussion of natural power and stone amulets, see Ivanič, ‘Amulets’. 39 Translation in Bukovinská, ‘Known and Unknown’, 220; see also Kirchweger, ‘Treasures’, 35; Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, 231.

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In this description the divine was located in the stones and they acted as essential material intermediaries. They were microcosms of power and their gleam of divinity actively ‘reflected’ onto Rudolf as owner of these materials. The precious stone of the statue of Mary Magdalene could thus also be seen as divinely powerful. The agate used might even have been thought to hold natural powers of healing, like the coconut shell, rhinoceros horn and bezoar in the liturgical cup. De Boodt’s work noted that agate was good for the heart, and against contagions and fevers.40 While these were natural powers, they ultimately emanated from God as the creator and master of nature, embedded within a sacred cosmology. The divine can be seen as present in the matter out of which objects in the collection were made. From an early modern world view, even objects in the collection that did not have direct religious references – the countless precious stones, the coconut shells, feathers, ivory, or rhinoceros horns – were all connected to God’s universe through their materiality.

Conclusion These two examples from Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer point to the layered aspects of early modern religious materiality. Objects with overt religious meanings – used for ritual function, or for prompting moral and devotional contemplation – provide only part of the picture. Further ways in which the divine was embedded in these objects are revealed by examining the transformation of items in the collection. Early modern natural philosophy promoted the idea that nature itself had the gleam of divinity implanted within it. The ability of matter to heal was directly linked to natural powers and divine creation. Virtuosic craftsmanship emphasized the moral messages that could be read into natural material. The global reach of Catholic religious culture enabled materials and objects to be produced in non-European contexts with a Catholic European consumer in mind. Traversing all these elements was the overarching framework of the divine cosmic universe, united by correspondences and harmonies. From this perspective, every single item in the collection fitted into a sacred system, whether or not it explicitly referenced a biblical moment. These were not just museum pieces or works of art, but objects that tethered this world to a greater divine meaning beyond (and within) it. The Kunstkammer’s contents and the concept of the pansophic collection made this space not one of desacralization, but an environment in which the moral and divine were ever present.

40 De Boodt, Gemmarum et lapidum historia, bk. 2, ch. 97, 125.

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Evans, Joan, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Particularly in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922). Evans, Robert J.W., Rudolf II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History (1576–1612) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). Evans, Robert J.W. and Alexander Marr (eds.), Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Findlen, Paula, ‘Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy’, in Eliška Fučíková (ed.), Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames and & Hudson, 1997), 209–19. Findlen, Paula, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). Findlen, Paula, ‘Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance’, American Historical Review 103.1 (1998): 83–114. Fučíková, Eliška, ‘The Collection of Rudolf II at Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific Museum?’, in Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 47–53. Fučíková, Eliška, ‘Die Sammlungen Rudolfs II.’, in Eliška Fučíková, Beket Bukovinská and Ivan Muchka (eds.), Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II (Prague: Aventium, 1988), 209–46. Fučíková, Eliška, ‘Review of Kaufmann, School of Prague’, Burlington Magazine 132.1042 (1990): 40–41. Fučíková, Eliška (ed.), Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997). Gerritsen, Anne, ‘Domesticating Goods from Overseas: Global Material Culture in the Early Modern Netherlands’, Journal of Design History 29.3 (2016): 228–44. Gouk, Penelope, ‘Natural Philosophy and Natural Magic’, in Eliška Fučíková (ed.), Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 231–37. Grote, Andreas (ed.), Macrocosmos in Microcosmos: Die Welt in der Stube; Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994). Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor (London: Pimlico, 1993). Hauschild, Stephanie, ‘Eppendorfer Alraune’, in Uwe M. Schneede (ed.), Goldgrund und Himmelslicht: Die Kunst des Mittelalters in Hamburg; Katalog zur Ausstellung der Hamburger Kunsthalle in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, dem Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek–Carl von Ossietzky und dem Staatsarchiv Hamburg, vom 19. November 1999 bis 5. März 2000 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1999), 346. Horacek, Ivana, ‘The Art of Transformation: Kunstkammer Gifts between Emperor Rudolf II and Elector Christian II of Saxony’, Studia Rudolphina 12–13 (2013): 32–51. Ivanič, Suzanna, ‘Amulets and the Material Interface of Beliefs in Seventeenth-Century Prague Burgher Homes’, in Marco Faini and Alessia Meneghin (eds.), Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 209–25. Jackson, Anna and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800 (London: V&A Publications, 2004). Johnson, Carina L., Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Johnson, Carina L., ‘Stone Gods and Counter-Reformation Idols’, in Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (eds.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 233–47. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, ‘From Treasury to Museum: The Collections of the Austrian Habsburgs’, in John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (eds.), The Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge, MA: Reaktion, 1994), 137–54. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, ‘Perspectives on Prague: Rudolfine Stylistics Reviewed’, in Eliška Fučíková (ed.), Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 96–106. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, ‘Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II: The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio’, Art Journal 38.1 (1978): 22–28. Keating, Jessica and Lia Markey, ‘“Indian” Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories: A CaseStudy of the Sixteenth-Century Term’, Journal of the History of Collections 23.2 (2011): 283–300. Kirchweger, Franz, ‘The Treasures of the House of Habsburg and the Kunstkammer: The History and the Holdings’, in Sabine Haag and Franz Kirchweger (eds.), Treasures of the Habsburgs: The Kunstkammer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), 12–49. Laube, Stefan, Von der Reliquie zum Ding: Heiliger Ort – Wunderkammer – Museum (Berlin: Akademie, 2011). Mason, Peter, ‘A Dragon Tree in the Garden of Eden: A Case Study of the Mobility of Objects and their Images in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Collections 18.2 (2006): 169–85. Meadow, Mark A. and Bruce Robertson, The First Treatise on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565 (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013). Midelfort, Eric, Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1994). Morrall, Andrew, ‘Apprehending the Macrocosm: The Universe Cup of Jonas Silber and its Sources’, in Jeffrey Chipps Smith (ed.), Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 83–101. Pilaski Kaliardos, Katharina, The Munich Kunstkammer: Art, Nature, and the Representation of Knowledge in Courtly Contexts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). Pomian, Krzysztof, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). Schlosser, Julius von, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance: Ein Handbuch für Sammler und Liebhaber; Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sammelwesens (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1908). Trunz, Erich, Wissenschaft und Kunst im Kreise Kaiser Rudolf II., 1576–1612 (Neumünster: Wachholz, 1992). Walz, Alfred, ‘Weltenharmonie: Die Kunstkammer und die Ordnung des Wissens’, in Susanne König-Lein, Alfred Walz and Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig (eds.), Weltenharmonie: Die Kunstkammer und die Ordnung des Wissens, exhibition catalogue (Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig, 2000), 9–21.

About the Author Suzanna Ivanič is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on religion and material culture in Central Europe and she has published on religious material culture and on travelogues in early modern Bohemia. She is currently working on a monograph on the religious materiality of seventeenth-century Prague.

10. The Reformation of the Rosary Bead: Protestantism and the Perpetuation of the Amber Paternoster Rachel King

Abstract What makes meaning in materials? In the sixteenth century, lustrous, golden, gleaming amber was found, with very few exceptions, in the Duchy of Prussia, Europe’s first territory to convert to Lutheranism. This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the inhabitants of the region, and those living beyond it, were invited to engage with the material as an expression of the favour in which God held it. It looks at the ways in which amber was aligned with Lutheran policies and interests. And it explores how amber continued to be used in the form in which it had always been known – that of the rosary bead – despite this object and prayer having been questioned and ultimately jettisoned by Lutherans. Keywords: amber; Luther; rosary; exegesis; natural history

Several recipes from Leonard Mascall’s A profitable booke declaring […] remedies to take out spottes and staines in silks, velvets, linnen and woollen clothes (London, 1583) advise the use of prayers to approximate the passage of time.1 Readers are instructed to leave or do something for so many ‘paternoster long’ or for a ‘paternoster-while’.2 This suggests that the Lord’s Prayer was still being rhythmically repeated to time

1 M[ascall], A profitable booke, fols. 29, 35, 40. On Mascall, dyers’ texts and their readership, see Leed, ‘Ye shall have it cleane’. On timing processes, Pennell, ‘Pots and Pans’, 205–7. 2 Partridge, Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang, ‘paternoster-while, in a’; and Kuhn, ed., Middle English Dictionary, 710. 3 For further examples, see Gonzague, Les mémoires de Monsieur le duc de Nevers, 10, in which his majesty ‘ne voulut iamais y condescendre, non pas seulement s’arrester l’espace d’une patenostre’; and the earlier Langland, Piers Plowman, passus 5, pp. 52–55, in which the drunk Glutton pisses ‘a potel in a paternosterwhile’. 4 Just as the English word ‘bead’ is thought to derive from the Old English word ‘bede’ meaning prayer, the German word for the bead ‘paternoster’ comes from the Latin for the ‘Our Father’. See Jäger, Mit Bildern beten, 16. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch10

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profane processes in Protestant England.3 What then of the large beads also known as paternosters and arrangements of them which often bore the same name?4 The word paternoster, although strictly only accurately applied to the bead prompting the ‘Our Father’, was widely used to describe all rosaries in the late Middle Ages. Rosaries ranged from strings of 50 ‘Ave Maria’ beads comprising 5 sets separated by 10 by paternosters to strings of 150 ‘Aves’ comprising 15 decades divided by paternosters, and could even be short strings of only 10 ‘Ave’ beads terminating with a paternoster. Though many essays and exhibitions have focused on rosaries, the examples they give can only be drops in an ocean of thousands if not millions of beads.5 Scholars of Counter-Reformation Europe and its material culture have documented large numbers of rosaries in contemporary inventories, exposed the breadth of materials used for them, and shown that their role as aids to prayer and sacred offerings did not prevent their pawning or pledging.6 Much less, however, is known about rosaries in Reformed Europe, where their mention is often anecdotal, presented as evidence of subversion, and, for England, roundly summarized as ‘condemned by the state and subject to serious criminal sanction’.7 This chapter explores the afterlife of the rosary in Protestant Europe. It begins broadly by surveying the status of prayer and prayer beads in Lutheran culture. This will provide the foundation for a specific study of rosaries made from amber. Pierced and strung since time immemorial, amber had become closely connected with prayer beads in the Middle Ages. As such it was present in pockets, purses, homes and hostelries. It was also associated with objects of intense personal significance. Yet, despite this long tradition of use for petition and prayer, the advent and establishment of Protestantism saw amber released from these associations. In Germany, material and meaning became modified as amber and amber beads settled into new religious and social contexts. Introducing some of the intellectual, cultural and political processes by which amber became Lutheran, and inspired by a number of new approaches to the meanings of materials, this chapter uncovers and traces some of the mechanisms by which strings of amber beads used in prayer evolved to become necklaces and bracelets.8 5 On rosaries see, Galandra-Cooper and Laven, ‘Material Culture of Piety’; Jäger, Mit Bildern beten; Keller and Neuhardt, eds., Edelsteine, Himmelsschnüre; Frei and Bühler, eds., Der Rosenkranz; Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose; and 500 Jahre Rosenkranz, Köln 1475–1975. 6 On these various points see, Galandra-Cooper and Laven, ‘Material Culture of Piety’; Fissell, ‘Gender and Generation’, 453; Heal, Cult of the Virgin Mary, 279; Ago, Gusto for Things; Walsham, ‘Beads, Books and Bare Ruined Choirs’; Ashby, ‘My House shall be called the House of Prayer’, and Meneghin, ‘The economy of sacred objects’, 82–83. 7 The fact that the balance is tipped towards (Catholic) southern Europe, especially Italy, is noted by Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, and Hamling and Richardson, eds., Everyday Objects. Discussion and mentions of rosaries in Reformed England come in Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain, 376–77, and Walsham, ‘Skeletons in the Cupboard’. For this quote, Williams, ‘Contesting the Everyday’, 241. 8 Such approaches as Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’; Anderson et al. ‘Introduction’; Lehmann, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’.

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Rosaries and Reform At the dawning of the Reformation ‘the Virgin Mary was […] the most frequently depicted, described and invoked saint in Germany’. Accordingly, rosaries, which prompted and aided prayer to Mary, were extremely widespread.9 An oral and visual ritual, bead-led prayer was a particularly obvious manifestation of Marian devotion, not least because beads were often carried or worn even when the motions and mots were not being rehearsed. The Indulgences with which these prayers were rewarded made the practice a target for Reformers, who also criticized the extent of Mary’s importance and held that neither she nor the saints could intercede on behalf of believers. The prayer was subsequently revised to become something with which to honour rather than to call upon the Virgin.10 Beads were criticized for their encouragement of mindless mechanical prayer. They were also decried when used as charms. But beads appear not to have been dismissed as vehemently in Lutheran Germany as in England.11 Martin Luther could still be spotted with a set of rosary beads in 1531,12 and a survey of Nuremberg inventories for the year 1530 shows that around half of those documented contain rosaries.13 If neither for prayer nor for protection, then what for? Bridget Heal and others have shown that although Luther and other Reformers criticized Mary’s cult, they were also concerned not to denigrate the Mother of God. This led to ‘the preservation of Marian images and devotion in parts of Protestant Germany’.14 Luther himself retained an image of the Virgin and Child in his study and argued that Marian images could be kept, worn and looked at as ‘memorials’.15 Rosaries certainly functioned as memorials in their own way. They had dynastic and sentimental significance as a mother–daughter heirloom, meaning that even those not brought up using them may have had reason to treasure their beads.16 Heal has shown that rosaries vanish from the Nuremberg inventories as the decades wear on, with a sole example occurring in her survey of the years 1550 to 1560. Their slow but eventual disappearance seems to lend further support to the now established argument that reform was gradual rather than immediate. However, it could also be that beads are being described differently on account of no longer being threaded into chaplets, or because strings of them were no longer associated with prayer. 9 Heal, Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1, for quote and introduction to the bibliography. 10 Ibid., 62 and 87, on the rewriting and use of the prayer in Nuremberg. 11 For a summary of Luther’s objections, Heal, Cult of the Virgin Mary, 55, and on the status of the rosary as ‘a devotional aid and a polemical object that visibly situated one in opposition to Protestantism’, see Walsham, ‘Beads, Books and Bare Ruined Choirs’. 12 King, ‘Beads with Which We Pray’, 155. 13 Heal, Cult of the Virgin Mary, 110. 14 Ibid., 63 15 Ibid., 93–94 16 Ibid., 279, n. 74. See also Walsham, ‘Holy Families’, 147, on the place of rosaries in the home.

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Lutheranizing Amber Luther is said to have carried amber prayer beads with him. These were probably relatively new, and were most likely a gift from his friend, Duke Albrecht, Prussia’s ruler. If not from Albrecht, then they were certainly obtained from somebody close to him or Prussia, for amber was found almost exclusively in his lands. Prussia had become Europe’s first fully Lutheran territory in 1525 and Albrecht regularly gave amber rosaries to other arch-Protestants.17 For example, he presented Catharina of Mecklenburg with amber in 1539, the year in which she and her husband introduced the new confession to Dresden.18 Albrecht’s gifts were closely linked to Prussia’s Protestant rebirth. Religious reform brought him to look anew at his territory, its boundaries, its history and its resources.19 The sacred narrative of Prussia as a territory born out of crusade and now at the vanguard of Lutheran reformation contributed to an understanding that it played a key role in God’s great plan. Albrecht surrounded himself with scholars chosen for him by Philipp Melanchthon from among the faculty and students at Wittenberg. Melding classical and humanist scholarship, science and religion, Georg Rheticus wrote of amber as a sign and symbol of divine providence.20 In his Narratio prima of 1540, Rheticus coupled the discussion of amber’s natural historical origins with the statement that it was also ‘a special gift of God’, something ‘with which He desired to adorn this region above all others’.21 Königsberg pastor Johann Gramann (Lat. Poliander) celebrated amber in verse.22 The home-grown Prussian physician Gregor Duncker dedicated parts of his Prutenorum chronica (c.1538) to it.23 Duncker specifically drew out amber’s medicinal efficacy.24 Local origin, ancient pedigree and God’s favour made the material a divinely endorsed indigenous weapon in the fight against illness. Albrecht encouraged this.25 17 King, ‘Beads with Which We Pray’, 156. For example, Duke Georg Ernst von Henneberg-Schleusingen. 18 King, ‘Objective Thinking’. 19 On the Lutheran approach to nature and geography, see Park, Sacred Worlds, giving an extensive bibliography of Büttner’s work on this subject in German, but most importantly Büttner, ‘Significance of the Reformation’. For England, see Walsham, Reformation of the Landscape, 89, 357, 368–69, who argues that religious reform and ‘polemical assault on images’ displaced attention back onto the natural environment which became a source of revelation and consistently reminded its beholders of God. 20 Kusukawa, Transformation of Natural History. 21 Published in Copernicus, Three Copernican Treatises, 189. 22 Most extensively see, Polyakova, Johann Poliander (1487–1541), in Russian with extensive bibliography. For a briefer discussion in German, see Krollmann, ‘Die Bibliothek des M. Johannes Poliander’, 18. 23 See Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Ms. Cod. Guelf. 14.11 Aug. 4 (Heinemann no. 3049), Prutenorum chronica, fols. 100–103 and 104. But also Berlin, GStaPK, XX EM 16a 5 ‘Von der Herkunft und Namen und Kraft des Bernsteins’. See also Brozsinski, Manuscripta chemica, fols. 42r–47v: ‘Von der Herkunft und Namen und Kraft des Bernsteins’. 24 King, ‘Objective Thinking’. 25 Riddle, Ragazzi and Duffin have written extensively on amber in the history of medicine, exploring the material (and its perceived cognates) in a range of texts: Riddle, ‘Pomum Ambrae’, and Riddle, ‘Amber in Ancient Pharmacy’. See also Ragazzi, ‘L’ambra nella medicina’, and Ragazzi, L’ambra farmaco solare. For the

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Throughout the 1530s and 40s, he cultivated its use among his extended family by making gifts of it to be used in remedies and treatments. When in 1549 a devastating plague ravished the region’s principal town Königsberg, Albrecht commissioned his personal doctor Andreas Goldschmidt (Lat. Aurifaber) to produce a treatise emphasizing the material’s health-preserving virtues.26 Aurifaber was well suited to the task.27 The recently appointed professor at the young Collegium Albertinum had been a student of Melanchthon’s. He was tied into his tutor’s network of protégés. Having trained in Italy at Albrecht’s expense, he was up to date with advances at Italian universities. And his father-in-law operated the city’s first and only press. Aurifaber’s History of Amber: a short and thorough report on where amber originates […] and who it may be variously used in medicines (Königsberg, 1551) is packed with vivid word-of-mouth information.28 Building upon shorter accounts in Erasmus Stella’s De borussiae antiquitatibus(Basle: Johann Froben, 1518, rep. 1532), the already-mentioned Prutenorum chronica (1538), and Georg Agricola’s De natura fossilium (Basle, 1546), it paints a comprehensive picture of the amber economy as it then existed. The work is also suffused with Lutheran values, from the providential messages woven into the Froben-inspired printer’s device29 to the dedicatory letter addressed to Albrecht’s mother-in-law, materfamilias of one of the most important Protestant dynasties in Germany. Aurifaber also explicitly states that he has chosen to write in German in order to bring the text into line with the Duchy’s Lutheranism and the replacement of Latin with German.30 Aurifaber’s History of Amber is also noteworthy in its expansion of amber’s medical applications. These go beyond those proposed by other writers. Such is the breadth of amber’s application, that Aurifaber nears claiming the same universality of use that Alisha Rankin has identified for the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century compound medicines she has coined ‘wonder drugs’.31 Aurifaber specifically breaks new ground in advocating the use of amber in the treatment of mothers. early modern period, see C. Duffin, ‘History of the External Pharmaceutical Use of Amber’, and ‘History of the Internal Use of Unprocessed Amber’. Short general surveys are: Müller-Jahncke, ‘Bernstein in der Medizin’, and Barfod, ‘Bernstein in Volksglauben und Volksmedizin’. See also the wide-ranging proceedings reproduced in Polyakova, ed., Amber in the History of Medicine. The recent treatments of lapidary medicine which contextualize these are Harris, ‘Idea of Lapidary Medicine’, and Blaen, Medical Jewels, Magical Gems. 26 Polyakova, Andreas Aurifaber gives an extensive bibliography in Russian and English. 27 On doctors in Prussia, see Scholz, ‘Über Ärzte und Heilkundige’; Anselmino, Medizin und Pharmazie; and Friedrich and Müller-Jahncke, Preußen und die Pharmazie. 28 Aurifaber, Andreas [Goldschmidt], Succini historia: Kurzer und gründlicher Bericht, woher der Agtstein oder Börnstein ursprünglich komme, dass er kein Baumharz sey, sondern ein Geschlecht des Bergwachs, und wie man jenen manigfaltiglich in Arzneyen möge gebrauchen (Königsberg: Hans Lufft, 1551). 29 Polyakova, Andreas Aurifaber, 102–4, understands this to refer to Christ’s role as Redeemer. 30 In contrast, Anselmino, Medizin und Pharmazie and Friedrich and Müller-Jahncke, Preußen und die Pharmazie, 103, n. 2, have proposed that it was composed in German because Albrecht’s own Latin was poor. See also Slack, ‘Mirrors of Health’, on writing in the vernacular in this period. 31 Rankin, ‘Empirics, Physicians, and Wonder Drugs’, and Brevart, ‘Between Medicine, Magic and Religion’.

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Lutherans afforded conception, pregnancy and birth ‘enormous spiritual and symbolic significance’.32 Following the teachings of St. Paul that ‘women will be saved by the bearing of children in faith, love and holiness, and with discipline’, Luther had proclaimed that pregnant women, women in labour and nursing mothers were pleasing to and carrying out God’s work.33 By Aurifaber’s time, women faced carrying and birthing their babies in a home emptied of Saint Margaret, Saint Anne and the holy girdles, beads, images, relics, charms and objects which had traditionally accompanied labour.34 Childbirth had been rendered a trial from which release by death was lauded. The expansion of amber’s application in pre- and post-natal treatments can clearly be closely linked to the Lutheran promotion of this phase in the female life cycle and to its rejection of birthing aids. It is also a way of positioning amber at the heart of Lutheran domestic and medical politics.35 Rosaries – among them amber examples – survived in reformed households. They may no longer have been objects of ‘tactile piety’.36 Yet they surely still had material and emotional value. In 1550, young Protestant women turning to amber during their confinement were unlikely to have ever seen an amber rosary in use – whether in peaceful or in painful prayer – but this would certainly have been in their mothers’ living memory. In her work, Mary Fissell has shown that English women were slow to abandon the charms, relics and prayers on which previous generations had relied.37 Heirloom rosaries associated with the safe delivery of children must surely have been viewed as potent, even if no longer an active part of devotion. Advice to use bead amber may explain why ‘rosaries’ are sometimes specifically mentioned in requests for amber made to Albrecht.38 Although we do not know what form of amber was sent to Luther in response to his request for amber to help his kidney stones, rosaries were commonly sent to other leading Lutherans.39 Maybe the rosary with which he was seen in 1531 was the result of an earlier appeal. 32 See the excellent treatments in Crowther-Heyck, ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’, and Rublack, ‘Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body’. Both texts pick up on earlier authors such as Barbara Duden, Jacques Gelis, Susan Karant-Nunn, Eva Labouvie, Steven Ozment, Lyndal Roper, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks whose works have influenced my thinking. 33 Most recently discussed by Roper, Martin Luther, 263–95, esp. 272. 34 The types of objects these may have been are discussed by the authors named in note 32, as well as in Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 28, 31, 34, 73; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 22; Musacchio, ‘Weasels and Pregnancy in Renaissance Italy’, and Musacchio, ‘Lambs, Coral, Teeth; Schröder, ‘Reiseandenken aus Jerusalem’, 92–95. See also Bynum, Christian Materiality, 109–10 and 197–200; Fissell, ‘Politics of Reproduction’; Fissell, ‘Gender and Generation’; Cherry, ‘Healing through Faith’; Williams, ‘Contesting the Everyday’, 245 and Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 384–85. 35 See Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 188 on attempts at this time to create a ‘specifically Lutheran Medicine’. 36 Smith, ‘Material Christianity’, 23. 37 See the arguments presented in Fissell’s articles, ‘Politics of Reproduction’ and ‘Gender and Generation’. 38 King, ‘Objective Thinking’. 39 Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke, X, 561–62. On Luther’s illnesses, see Feldmann, ‘Martin Luthers Krankheiten’.

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Securing Amber as Fully Lutheran The recasting of amber as a divine gift to Lutheran Prussia and the renewed interest in and expanded range of medical uses are two ways in which a new material identity was being shaped. A further step towards redefinition was the employment of amber as metaphor for the lived religious experience of Prussians and Lutherans more generally. Scripture played a considerable role in the training of doctors at Lutheran universities, and this becomes especially noticeable in the second generation of works on amber, most clearly in a two-volume treatise by the Prussian Severin Göbel, physician to Philip I, Landgraf of Hesse.40 Entitled the Pious reminder of the Passion, the Resurrection of Christ, and the Good Services depicted in the history of amber, its first volume anchors the substance in the sacred.41 The material, its genesis, its collection and its working are used as starting points for meditations on original sin, morality and the relationship of body and soul. They imply an acquaintance with the sermons of pastor Johann Mathesius, which provide a model for looking at subterranean substances and their excavation through a sacred lens.42 Göbel shows concern and compassion for his fellow countrymen. His work celebrates the Prussian fishermen who harvest amber from the sea. Described as pitched in naked battle against the churning waters, their experience becomes a metaphor for the trials God has devised for ministers of the Church. Perhaps, says Göbel, the clergy should consider shedding their clothing too, if, in having as little as the amber fishermen, they will be free from temptation. Tossed by the waves, the fishermen represent the pious buffeted by sin. And just as there are no rewards for amber fishermen, the Saviour is shown no gratitude by humankind. Göbel knew how to garner attention. He dedicated the treatise to the Catholic cleric Urban Sagstetter, the recently appointed bishop of the Carinthian town of Gurk, who was known for his conciliatory attitude towards Protestants.43 And he ensured his messages would go far by gifting examples to such well-networked luminaries as Samuel Quiccheberg, Hans Jakob Fugger’s librarian.44 Several authors refer to Göbel, but with such brevity that it is impossible to divine which version of his text

40 There has yet to be a monograph on Göbel, but some information can be gleaned from Freytag, Die Preußen auf der Universität Wittenberg, and from the index entry for ‘Göbel, Severin’, in Deutsche Biographie, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd116698578.html (accessed 12 September 2016). 41 Göbel, Pia commonefactione de passione. See my earlier discussion of Göbel’s text in King, ‘Beads with Which We Pray’. 42 Norris, ‘Providence of Mineral Generation’, and Norris, ‘Auß Quecksilber und Schwefel Rein’. 43 Patrouch, Queen’s Apprentice, 48–50. 44 This survives – replete with Quiccheberg’s annotations – in Munich today: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, call mark VD16 G 2452.

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they knew.45 It was reproduced in Conrad Gessner’s De omni rerum fossilium genere (Zurich: Jacobus Gesnerus, 1566, repr. 1582) and this may be what led to Göbel becoming more frequently cited than his predecessor Aurifaber. In contrast, twenty years would pass before Aurifaber’s work would be reprinted, and then only locally by the Königsberg printer Hans Daubmann. Although resurrected in Crato von Crafftheim’s Consiliorum et epistolarum medicinalium (Frankfurt, 1593), Aurifaber’s work did not have the contemporary impact our modern reliance on it suggests. Göbel was certainly known to the author of Precious amber, with its origin, nature, colours, types, characteristics, power and effect (1587), pastor Johannes Baumgart (Lat. Pomarius) from Magdeburg.46 Precious Amber is just one of a number of spiritual works, which also deal with celestial signs,47 plague as God’s punishment,48 and the stones in Aaron’s breastplate.49 All are illustrated and Precious Amber is too. Before 1587, geographies and charts had sometimes depicted amber bobbing on the Baltic waves, or had shown figures knee-deep in water, but no treatment of amber itself had actually paid attention to the process of finding the raw material. Precious Amber is the first to show its harvesting in detail.50 The images contrast powerfully with one another. A picture of two scantily clad fishermen netting golden amber is followed by three black-robed pastors (Plates 10.1 and 10.2). One pastor wields a net with a triangular rim marked ‘Law’, ‘Gospel’, and ‘The Word of God’. He is using it to rescue drowning humans. Pomarius writes that pastors should imitate Prussia’s hard-working amber fishermen and use God’s Word to scoop up their flock. Readers are also introduced to merchants and consumers of amber who weigh it in their hands. Pages later, these sellers and buyers are compared with perfect-looking Lutheran families who clutch the ‘amber’ they have received in church. In another illustration (Plate 10.3), monks and nuns bare their breasts to expose putrid black souls. Strong-bodied tall and healthy Lutherans tower over them. They wrench open their shirts revealing gleaming amber hearts.

45 Imperato, Dell’historia naturale, 352; Aldrovandi, Musaeum metallicum in libros IV, 405 and 413; and Biblioteca Ambrosiana Manoscritti, A. 119 inf., Apollonio Menabeni, Observationes de’ Succino (1575–1605), fols. 175r–182r, at fols. 175r–176r. 46 Pomarius, Der köstliche Bernstein. The text is dedicated to Kunigunda Kößin, the widow of Balthasar von Grudingt (von Grüden). Kunigunda is also the patron of Levin Brunstoff, pastor of St. Jacob in Magdeburg. The text is a new year’s gift for her and her sister, Anna Kößin, whose husband had been a member of the important family of reformers, the von Alvensleben. 47 Pomarius, Beschreibung der schrecklichen Brunst, discussed in Kurihara, Celestial Wonders in Reformation Germany, 23–24. 48 Pomarius, Pestilentz Büchlein. 49 Pomarius, Christlicher junger Herren. 50 I wish to thank Aleksandra Lipińska for sending me images of the book in 2011, long before I was ever able to see it in person.

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Back to the Bead Pomarius’s remarkable exegetical text appears to mark the completion of the process of linking amber and Lutheranism begun some fifty years before. How did Pomarius intend the reader to understand the images of strings of amber beads that appear repeated throughout book (Plate 10.4)? The text offers no explanation. Perhaps they are simply straightforward attempts to reproduce the different colours of amber, which are spiritually interpreted in the text, or to show the creatures and insects that amber sometimes entraps, a subject commonly discussed in other works on amber of this period. They may, however, also record a new use for amber beads. But for the hoop of beads on Pomarius’s frontispiece, the knotted strings here depicted are all identical: twenty-seven beads organized into sets of nine separated by two smaller spacers. Compare this to two surviving strings of amber beads in Dresden (Figs. 10.1 and 10.2). These once belonged to Albrecht’s granddaughter Magdalena Sibylla, wife of elector Johann Georg I of Saxony.51 And sources in the early eighteenth century say these each had fifty-two beads. Fifty-two is twenty-seven times two, minus two. If you were to double Pomarius’s ropes of beads, this would necessitate the removal of two beads to preserve visual rhythm.52 Could then the strings of beads that Pomarius shows be jewellery? Surviving portraits from this period give no impression of how strings of amber beads were being worn, but it is likely that they were looped around the neck as shown in many later works. The agent, collector and connoisseur Philipp Hainhofer suggests that amber pendants, particularly portrait pendants, were worn at the neck, although not necessarily suspended from an amber necklace.53 According to Hainhofer, he profited from older ladies selling their amber chokers, as amber necklaces were usually worn by younger women.54 As an example given to the child regent Charles XI of Sweden in 1664 shows, children wore amber necklaces.55 This might have been linked to age-old beliefs that amber protected infants and counteracted throat complaints. Other late sixteenth-century sources record amber beads among girdle beads,56 and amber bracelets were popular in England and Scotland. There amber was said to have found favour because ‘gold [had] become common to

51 Kappel, Bernsteinkunst aus dem Grünen Gewölbe, 54–55, cat. 7. 52 A further well-known ‘necklace’, now incomplete, is in Malbork Amber Museum and was once owned by Sibylle Dorothea von Brieg, daughter of elector Johann Georg of Brandenburg. Mierzwińska, Kunstschätze, 54, cat. 72. 53 Discussed in King, ‘Collecting Nature within Nature’, 4. 54 Hainhofer, Der Briefwechsel, 289, doc. 477, dated 21 November 1619. 55 Reineking von Bock, Bernstein: Das Gold der Ostsee, 33. 56 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart G 48 Bü 7: ‘Dokumente in Betreff der vermögensrechtlichen Beziehungen der Herzogin Anna-Maria von Württemberg, namentlich Vermögensinventarien derselben’.

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Fig. 10.1. Amber beads with heart-shaped pendant. Amber, silk, ribbon replaced (length 34 cm), c.1600, northeast Germany (Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, III.88.ll.1) © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Jürgen Karpinski

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Fig. 10.2. Amber beads with pomander pendant. Amber, silk, ribbon replaced (length 39.8 cm), c.1600, north-east Germany (Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, III.88.ll.2) © bpk/Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Jürgen Karpinski

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everyone’,57 and documentary evidence suggests that amber bracelets were suitable for young children as well as for older women.58 David Scougall’s 1658 portrait of Lady Mary Stuart (National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, inv. H.0D 68) appears to show amber bracelets slinking around her wrists, and the companion piece of her husband (inv. H.0D 67), a well-known Covenanter, shows the trim of his jacket spotted with beads, suggesting yet another possible use.59

Conclusion In technical terms, there was absolutely no difference between making beads for a rosary or chaplet and making beads for necklaces, bracelets and trimmings. Whatever their end purpose, these beads were identical in appearance when finished. When strung onto ribbon in one constellation they became aids to prayer, but in another they were an appropriate adornment for Lutheran elites, even if a pendant with crucifix dangled from them as it did from Magdalena Sibylla’s beads in Dresden. As shown in earlier work, the Roman Catholic market for amber rosaries did not collapse in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.60 This chapter has sought to contribute to understanding the fate of these beads in Protestant Germany itself. Focusing largely on appearance, lightness and smell, my work on amber beads to date has reflected Ulinka Rublack’s statement that ‘many Renaissance artefacts gained their significance and attractiveness by drawing attention to the features of their matter’.61 More recently Anderson et al. have formulated an approach which explores the cultural logic of materials by ‘seeing them as part of historical epochs and central to the social structures with which they engage’.62 In addressing the process by which beads, single or strung, were intellectually uncoupled from the damned practices of the old religion this chapter has given a concrete example of the above. The recasting of the material as a beacon and mirror of Lutheran thought is a case in point. In identifying amber as God’s way of favouring Prussia, by sharing it with prominent Lutherans who went on to be seen with it, by tying it so closely to health, not insignificantly reproductive health, and by drawing analogies between its retrieval and the saving of souls, as well as allegorical lessons from its appearance, amber was purposefully associated with the new religion. In being 57 King, ‘Beads with Which We Pray’, 166. 58 Everett Green, Calendar of State Papers, 204, SP 15730, fol. 19, 17 February 1587, for a gift from Thomas Browne in Rouen to his cousins at Holborne; and Halliwell-Phillips, ed., Ancient Inventories, 14, on ‘a bracelett of amber’ in ‘the drawing chamber’ of the Countess of Leicester (1634). 59 See Mierzwińska, Kunstschätze, 53, cat. 71, for a surviving set of cylindrical beads. 60 King, ‘Beads with Which We Pray’. 61 Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, 43. 62 Anderson et al., ‘Introduction’, 12.

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so closely linked with the Lutheran faction and thereby so deeply ‘enmeshed in the physical as well as the societal structures’ of the age,63 amber is quite unlike any of the other examples of precious stones used in Protestant symbolism.64 Indeed, we can perhaps go as far as seeing amber as what Ann-Sophie Lehmann has called a ‘political actor’. Lehmann has proposed ‘semantic charging’ – or the application and injection of significance – as one way in which materials were historically imbued with meaning.65 And focusing on the material is, say Anderson, Dunlop and Smith ‘a path into the study of […] the cultural significance of the object itself’. This chapter has explored how texts and images loaded amber with symbolic significance for Lutherans, but also suggested how consumers cooperated in the creation of its new identity by actually using it medically and wearing it in its redeployed forms: as necklaces, bracelets and girdles.66 The material was redefined within the space of a few decades, but it is important to stress that the transmutation of the bead from a ritual item to one of adornment did not happen apace. For this to be effected changes had to happen outside Lutheran Germany. As the century progressed the prayer bead became increasingly important to Roman Catholic culture. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) was said to have been won thanks to prayer to the Virgin. The Council of Trent vigorously reaffirmed the value of venerating and invocating the saints. The Jesuits in particular advocated the use of the rosary, and Indulgences remained attached to the prayers that were said using them.67 Amber was not purified of the residue of the rosary. By merit of being utterly unchanged, the bead ultimately and unavoidably preserved traces of its historical use in its form, meaning that the material’s historical association with now outlawed practices could not be eradicated completely. In Germany, the wearing of ideologically transformed amber as jewellery appears only to have commenced in earnest in the context of the resurgence of prayer by the bead in late sixteenth-century Catholic Europe. Was this new fashion in fact a way of highlighting the eradication of this practice in Protestant society?68 Certainly, amber’s significance for Lutherans can only have been amplified by the concurrent and continued use of amber rosaries elsewhere. In this way amber illustrates Lehmann’s statement that ‘meaning […] is not a definite attribute of materials but is enclosed within them’.69 It also extends it; meaning, as the illustrations to Pomarius’s text shows, sits deep in the breast of the beholder. 63 Ibid. 64 Blaen, Medical Jewels, 93 65 Lehmann, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, 18. 66 As also discussed in Walsham, Reformation of the Landscape, 124. 67 Mitchell, Mystery of the Rosary. 68 For ways in which this was done in England, see Walsham, Reformation of the Landscape, 148. 69 Lehmann, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, 8.

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Jäger, Moritz, ‘Mit Bildern beten: Rosenkränze, Wundenringe, Stundengebetsanhänger (1413–1600); Andachtsschmuck im Kontext spätmittelalterlicher und frühneuzeitlicher Frömmigkeit’, PhD diss., Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 2011. Kappel, Jutta, Bernsteinkunst aus dem Grünen Gewölbe (Dresden: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005). Keller, Peter and Johannes Neuhardt (eds.), Edelsteine, Himmelsschnüre: Rosenkränze und Gebetsketten (Salzburg: Dommuseum zu Salzburg, 2008). King, Rachel, ‘“The Beads with Which We Pray Are Made from It”: Devotional Ambers in Early Modern Italy’, in Wietse de Boer and Christine Göttler (eds.), Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 153–76. King, Rachel, ‘Collecting Nature within Nature: Animal Inclusions in Amber in Early Modern Collections’, in Andrea Gáldy and Sylvia Heudecker (eds.), Collecting Nature (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 1–18. King, Rachel, ‘Objective Thinking: Early Modern Objects in Amber with Curative, Preservative and Medical Functions’, in Irina Polyakova (ed.), Amber in the History of Medicine (Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum, 2017), 82–97. Krollmann, Christian A., ‘Die Bibliothek des M. Johannes Poliander’, in Christian A. Krollman (ed.), Ge­ schichte der Stadtbibliothek zu Königsberg (Königsberg: Magistrats-Druckerei, 1929) 5–20. Kuhn, Sherman M. (ed.), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979). Kurihara, Ken, Celestial Wonders in Reformation Germany (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014). Kusukawa, Sachiko, The Transformation of Natural History: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Leed, Drea, ‘“Ye shall have it cleane”: Textile Cleaning Techniques in Renaissance Europe’, Medieval Clothing and Textiles 2 (2006): 101–19. Lehmann, Ann-Sophie, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, in Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Frits T. Scholten and H. Perry Chapman (eds.), ‘Meaning in Materials 1400–1800’, Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 62 (2012): 6–27. Meneghin, Alessia, ‘The economy of sacred objects’ in Maya Corry, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven (eds.), Madonnas & Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2017), 82–87. Mierzwińska, Elżbieta, Kunstschätze aus Bernstein: Die Sammlung des Schlossmuseums Marienburg bei ­Danzig (Augsburg: Kulturbrücke Schwaben e.V., 1996). Mitchell, Nathan D., The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotion and the Reinvention of Catholicism (New York: New York University Press, 2009). Müller-Jahncke, Wolf-Dieter, ‘Bernstein in der Medizin’, in Michael Ganzelewski and Rainer Slotta (eds.), Bernstein: Tränen der Götter (Essen: Glueckauf, 1997), 457–64. Musacchio, Jaqueline M., ‘Lambs, Coral, Teeth, and the Intimate Intersection of Religion and Magic in Renaissance Tuscany’, in Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (eds.), Images, Relics, and Devotional practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), 139–56. Musacchio, Jaqueline M., ‘Weasels and Pregnancy in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Studies 15 (2001): 172–87. Norris, John A., ‘Auß Quecksilber und Schwefel Rein: Johann Mathesius (1504–65) and Sulfur-Mercurius in the Silver Mines of Joachimstal’, Osiris 29 (2014): 35–48. Norris, John A., ‘The Providence of Mineral Generation in the Sermons of Johann Mathesius (1504–1565)’, in Martina Kölbl-Ebert (ed.), Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility (London: Geological Society of London, 2009), 37–40. Park, Chris C., Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion (London: Routledge, 1994). Partridge, Eric, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973). Patrouch, Joseph F., Queen’s Apprentice: Archduchess Elizabeth, Empress María, the Habsburgs, and the Holy Roman Empire, 1554–1569 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Pennell, Sarah, ‘Pots and Pans: The Material Culture of the Kitchen in Early Modern England’, Journal of Design History 11 (1998): 201–16.

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About the Author Rachel King is Curator of Renaissance Europe and of the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, London. In addition to the Waddesdon Bequest, she is responsible for Tudor collections and English silver and some of the world’s finest collections of Spanish lustred ceramics and Italian ceramics, Venetian glass, French painted enamels and Italian plaquettes.

11. Magical Words: Arabic Amulets in Christian Spain Abigail Krasner Balbale

Abstract In Islamic Spain, amulets incorporating the names of God or passages from the Quran were widely used, inserted into cases that could be worn around the neck or built into the walls of houses, and were seen as offering protection to their users. In the years after the Christian conquest, Moriscos continued using such amulets even as the Inquisition outlawed these practices. This chapter explores the apotropaic and theurgic qualities of the Arabic word in early modern Spain through Morisco writings, extant amulets and Inquisition records. This evidence reveals the magical potency of the Arabic word not only for those who produced and used these amulets, but also for those who prosecuted them. In early modern Spain, as in Islamic territories, Arabic was imbued with other-worldly power. Keywords: Moriscos; amulets; Spain; Inquisition; Arabic; magic

In 1578, Pedro Carçil was brought before the Inquisition of Valencia for possessing a forbidden text.1 Pedro’s text, preserved by the impressive bureaucracy of the Inquisition, was a saffron-coloured single sheet of paper that measured 31 × 22.5 centimetres and was written in Arabic. At the bottom, a witness noted, ‘I say that this is an amulet (nómina) in which is written the names of angels and God and Muhammad and that this is a Moorish object and the Moors have the custom of carrying them to protect themselves’.2 In the decades that followed the royal decree outlawing Arabic in 1566, many Moriscos, Muslim converts to Christianity or their descendants, were prosecuted for speaking, writing or possessing Arabic. For the inquisitors, Pedro’s Arabic amulet indicated his loyalty to the religion of his ancestors.

1 Arxiu Històric de la Universitat de València, Varios, box 26/9, fol. 3, in Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, 244–45. This document is undated but the editors date it as circa 1578. 2 Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, 245. My translation from the Spanish. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch11

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Beyond indicating Pedro’s continuing adherence to Islam, this text illuminates the rich syncretism of amuletic traditions from the ancient Near East to early modern Europe. Punctuating Islamic pious phrases are names of angels derived from ancient Hebrew practices as well as a Torah passage transliterated into Arabic. At the beginning of the amulet’s text and at eight other points in the first half, the legible script is interrupted by repetitive phrases written in Arabic without linguistic meaning; one is followed by a series of magical symbols. These elements of the text, which are mirrored in numerous other surviving amulets as well as books of magic, reflect an amuletic tradition with roots in Hermetic and Aristotelian thought that flourished within the monotheistic traditions born in the Near East, and continued in Europe among Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.3 As Don Skemer has shown, textual amulets were ‘a geographically widespread Western ritual practice at the nexus of religion, magic, science and written culture’.4 Far too often dismissed as peasant superstition, and presented as deeply at odds with official religious doctrines, the use of textual amulets connected not only to ancient pagan practices but also to the textual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths, to long-standing astrological and alchemical practices and to premodern traditions of medicine. The illegibility of many amulets, sometimes described as a reflection of Morisco illiteracy or as ‘pseudo-Kufic’, was an intentional attempt to evoke this long magical tradition. Like other Arabic amulets, those produced in Christian Spain united Quranic and pious phrases with powerful symbols and illegible scripts on paper or metal that would be folded, encased and hidden against the body or within structures. The potency of the scripts and symbols that activated these objects was only augmented by their inaccessibility. Although Inquisitorial documents present Arabic amulets as evidence of crypto-Islam, visually similar objects would later be deployed to invent a new Arabic Christian past for Spain.5

Dangerous Arabic In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Inquisition saw the production or use of amulets as heretical and potentially demonic, and prosecuted people carrying amulets, even those containing Christian phrases. Just three centuries earlier, amuletic magic, translated from the Arabic and adapted for European use in the Iberian

3 Peters, ‘Hermes and Harran’. 4 Skemer, Binding Words, 5. 5 As my notes reveal, my work here is deeply indebted to the foundational research on Morisco amulets by Ana Labarta and to the many studies of attitudes toward Arabic in the Morisco period by Mercedes GarcíaArenal. In revisiting some of the questions so ably explored by these scholars, I hope to bring new focus to the materiality of amulets and to questions of legibility.

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peninsula, had been employed and celebrated by popes and kings.6 From the thirteenth century onward, many Christians throughout Europe wore textual amulets punctuated with holy names of God, the names of angels and illegible scripts, like the one belonging to Pedro Carçil. But in Spain in the late sixteenth century, such amulets – especially those written in Arabic and with Islamic messages – were seen as threatening the unity of the Spanish church and undermining the security of its kingdoms. The period examined here, from the first forced conversions of Spain’s Muslims to Christianity in 1502 until the last phase of the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1614, was one of rapid transformation and intense political tension. With the expulsion of the Jews and the conquest of Granada in 1492, alongside the ‘discovery’ of the New World, the Spanish monarchy came to see itself as divinely favoured protector of the Catholic faith. New Protestant ideas (and kingdoms), alongside the growing menace of Barbary corsairs and Ottoman naval power, posed both real and existential threats to this favoured position. In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition, which had been established in 1478, began rooting out the heretical beliefs that seemed to threaten the orthodoxy of the church and the stability of the state. Protestants and Moriscos were of particular concern, since propagandists suggested they could serve as potential fifth columns for Protestant or Muslim powers. After 1526, when the use of Arabic was first banned, even possessing a scrap of paper with Arabic script could result in criminal prosecution. In 1566, Philip II reiterated this rule, outlawing the use of Arabic and demanding that all Granadan Moriscos learn Castilian within three years. Punishments for using Arabic, whether publicly or privately, in writing or in speech, ranged from a month in prison to whippings and years of servitude. These laws led to significant backlash among Moriscos, including the rebellion in the Alpujarras Mountains of Granada that resulted in a bloody war from 1568 to 1570. Using Arabic, like fasting during Ramadan, seemed to imply continued adherence to Islam. But Arabic amulets were seen as even more dangerous, combining the danger of Islam with that of necromancy. Why, then, would Moriscos like Pedro Carçil risk their lives to carry Arabic-language amulets? Inquisition records are rife with prosecutions for crypto-Islam and for the production or use of Arabic amulets (called nóminas or herçes, from the Arabic ḥirz), and they often note how vigorously those who carried them fought to keep them out of the hands of the authorities. One Leonis Benali, stopped by guards when leaving Valencia and asked what he was carrying on his chest, ripped his amulet off and attempted to throw it into a valley, but since the paper was light it fell close by. He ran to the paper and tried to chew it up, but was stopped by the guards, who

6 Skemer, Binding Words, 132; Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 0.8.

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confiscated it.7 Others are recorded as reacting to the seizure of their amulets with extreme emotion and tears.8 Arabic’s perceived spiritual and political danger for the Spanish state only increased its power for Moriscos. Even those Moriscos from territories long under Christian rule who no longer spoke Arabic continued to use its script to write Romance. Arabic came to have a near talismanic power for the Moriscos as a marker of identity.9 Arabic could be a means of resisting the hegemony of the state and the church, or of accessing the supernatural, even without understanding it. The focus on Arabic by the Inquisition and the monarchy may have made its use more appealing for Moriscos, since it emphasized the centrality of the language to Islam.10 And yet, as we will see, for Moriscos, Arabic was not only an Islamic language, and for powerful ‘old Christians’, Arabic was not simply dangerous.11 The inherently polarized records of the Inquisition elide the diversity of meanings and uses both old and new Christians attached to Arabic. For all the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula, particularly those who lived in cities populated with demographic, architectural and material reminders of an Arabo-Islamic past, Arabic evoked a complex web of meanings, ranging from luxury, mystery and magic to antiquity, holiness and danger. The struggle to make sense of the Islamic past and its role in the history of Spain played out in attitudes toward Arabic amulets and those who carried them.

Magical Arabic A good Muslim never should go out without amulets, because the person who goes without them is like a house that cannot be locked because it has no door. In a house that does not have a door, all those who want may enter. In a person who goes without amulets, devils may enter from all parts.12

The ubiquity of Inquisition records regarding Moriscos and magic have led to an emphasis on Morisco ‘superstition’ in modern historiography.13 Julio Caro Baroja, 7 AHN Inquisición, leg. 549/8, discussed in Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 120. 8 Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 120; García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 71. 9 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y libros’, 70–71. 10 Writing about how Inquisitorial interrogations and anti-Jewish and -Muslim polemics gained importance for communities deprived of their religious elite, García-Arenal notes: ‘They were, in fact, virtually the only sources left that could teach them how to be a Jew or a Muslim.’ ‘Religious Dissent’, 905. 11 Bernabé Pons, ‘Por la lengua se conoce la nación’; García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español. 12 Written by an Aragonese Morisco, cited in Ribera, ‘Supersticiones moriscas’, 524. 13 In recent decades, scholars including Ana Labarta and Mercedes García-Arenal have emphasized that this focus on Morisco ‘superstition’ reflects the fixation of Inquisitorial sources, and that magical practices were quite common in the contemporary Islamic world.

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the pioneering social historian and anthropologist, emphasized that although ‘old’ Christians also believed in magic, for Moriscos, ‘there is scarcely an act of life that is not guaranteed by the use of a Morisco amulet’.14 Caro Baroja and others have seen Morisco magic as a sign of their unorthodoxy, differentiating them not only from their old Christian neighbours but also from standard Islamic belief and praxis. Yet, recent scholarly interest in Islamic talismans and amulets shows a vibrant tradition that survived across centuries and a vast geography, often incorporating pre-Islamic elements alongside the more accepted Quranic magic.15 In the Islamic world, writing pious phrases in Arabic, especially passages from the Quran, materialized the power of God and was central to many aspects of religious life.16 When written on objects hung in the house or on the body, or consumed as medicine, commentators argued that the words of the Quran, thought to be direct from God, could protect and cure the believer.17 The hadīth literature, the compiled sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, included many prescriptions for how to use particular Quranic verses (often in physical form) to solve problems and diseases.18 The words’ (originally oral) power is translated through the medium of writing into a physical state, capable of protecting or curing the wearer or consumer. Although some later commentators dismissed amulets as irreligious superstition, their usage has been widespread and continues to the present day. Like the textual talismans and amulets produced in the rest of the Islamic world, those made by Muslims in Spain frequently contained specific powerful verses from the Quran, including the Throne Verse and Surah 112. They also included duas or supplications and some or all of the ninety-nine Arabic names of God, or divine names borrowed from the Hebrew tradition, as well as Arabic and Hebrew names of angels. Islamic amulets also frequently incorporated illegible Arabic text, most commonly made by marking ligatures between letters that would not normally be connected, various kinds of mirror writing, or codes made from shifting the alphabet, replacing letters with numbers, or adding small circles (known in the literature as ‘lunettes’ or 14 My translation. Baroja, Ciclos y temas, 127. 15 In addition to the foundational works on Islamic magic by Emilie Savage-Smith, as well as the excellent new overview by Venetia Porter et al., see recent exhibits at the Ashmolean, ‘Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural’ (20 October 2016–15 January 2017, and the catalogue, Leoni, ed., Power and Protection), and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the Battlefield’ (29 August 2016–13 February 2017, and the catalogue, Maryam Ekhtiar and Rachel Parikh, Power and Piety, www. metmuseum.org/exhibitions/objects?exhibitionId=7b94fb3d-e0c8-46c0-9362-993a77a83e01&pkgids=370; accessed 5 February 2019). 16 Sorcery and witchcraft are condemned in the Quran (i.e. 2:102), but ‘white magic’ based on the power of the word of God or pious phrases had a central place in early Islam. Quranic amulets served a largely protective function. See the introduction to Savage-Smith, ed., Magic and Divination, xvii. 17 This association between amuletic symbols, sacred names and medical efficacy seems also to be the case in the use of amulets among Jews and Conversos in the Iberian peninsula. Gutwirth, ‘Cuenca Amulet’, 458. 18 Hadith allowing talismanic practices include Saḥīḥ Muslim 26:5448; Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 54:490, 71:635, 71:636; Sunan Abū Dawūd 1:36.

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‘crowns’) onto letters or numbers.19 Alongside these various kinds of text, amulets could contain images, especially of stars (like the seal of Solomon) or hands (the hand of David or of Fatima), or magical symbols. This ‘magical vocabulary’, which had been adapted from ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman magical practices, coalesced in Islamic lands around the twelfth–thirteenth centuries and was widely disseminated with the rise of block printing.20 Focusing on the textual amulets of the Moriscos offers several challenges. First, Morisco writings about amulets may not accurately reflect practice. Emilie Savage-Smith has shown that although many Islamic texts about magic discuss appealing to jinn or other powers, most surviving amulets and talismans use only Quranic phrases and appeal only to God.21 Like many other books of magic, the Libro de dichos maravillosos includes amulets of the kind recommended in the hadīth, alongside other, more ancient forms that may or may not have been practised. The book, edited and translated masterfully by Ana Labarta, is a compilation of many earlier texts, which also suggests that its function may have been to preserve an Andalusi Arabic tradition of magic rather than offer instruction.22 Second, although Inquisition records frequently mention Arabic-language amulets, they offer little detail. Ana Labarta and Carmen Barceló have catalogued Morisco manuscripts in many archives through Spain, including the texts of amulets that the Inquisition preserved, and these offer rich insights into the words and symbols that held significance for Moriscos.23 Although sometimes Inquisition records note how the accused carried or used the amulet, they offer little information about the production and circulation of these objects, or their meaning to their owner. We can also assume that the attitudes of the accused might have been presented differently outside an Inquisitorial trial, where many plead innocence, arguing that they had inherited amulets from relatives or found them, and that they could not read their words. Third, the surviving talismans, paper amulets and amulet cases in museum and private collections in Spain are challenging to date, and their lack of provenance information makes determining whether they are from the Morisco period very difficult. Sebastián Gaspariño, who has catalogued amulets and talismans from collections around Spain and created a website with images and information about each object, dates most of them according to their epigraphy.24 This standard approach 19 Lunettes served to make Arabic letters into a cryptographic alphabet, probably originally derived from Jewish mystical alphabets. See Canaan, ‘Decipherment of Arabic Talismans’, 167; Porter et al., ‘Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic’, 524, 538. 20 Porter et al., ‘Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic’, 535. 21 Savage-Smith, ‘Islamic Magical Texts vs. Magical Artefacts’. 22 See the introduction to Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, for discussion of the book’s form and its predecessors. 23 Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos; Labarta, ‘Inventario’. 24 Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, www.amuletosdealandalus.com(accessed 5 February 2019).

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to dating objects with Arabic inscriptions may be less useful when approaching amulets, however, since amulets were frequently written in a deliberately archaic form.25 Thus objects with highly angular Kufic inscriptions without diacritical or vowel marks, appearing to be ninth or tenth century, could easily be sixteenth century instead. But given the continuities in amuletic practices between the eastern and western Islamic world, and across centuries, it is likely that similar objects were produced centuries or continents apart from each other. Whether or not the objects discussed below were produced in the sixteenth century, evidence from Inquisition trials and from the Libro de dichos maravillosos indicates that similar amulets were circulating during the period considered here.

Amulets in Morisco Writing: The Libro de dichos maravillosos The instructions for creating magical spells or objects included in the Libro de dichos maravillosos combine textual amulets that follow Islamic tradition with Solomonic and planetary magic, rooted in the practices of the ancient Near East. A chapter that promises to revive love between a husband and wife details how a practitioner should use illegible, Arabic-like symbols written in the blood of a raven to make an amulet that would be placed under the threshold of their house (Fig. 11.1). The instructions combine ancient rituals of animal sacrifice with forms based upon the Arabic script.26 The text reads as follows: You shall take a raven, and slay it, so that they may love one another; And you shall take its blood, and you shall write this writing. And you shall take its heart, and dry it, and crumble it, and you shall give it in a drink to the woman and her husband; because it is that whoever drinks of it, it will bring to them the deadening of however much love they have for another. And this writing, write it with the blood of the raven, and hide it under the threshold of the door where they live, and then they shall reconcile to each other, and this is the writing, as you see […]27

The writing that follows the instructions includes magic squares with single Arabic letters or combinations of letters, which may refer to the holy names of God. It also includes illegible letters with lunettes, which archaicized the Arabic script even further, creating symbols that evoked ancient alphabets. 25 On the debate over using script to date amulets, and on the use of archaic scripts, see Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms, 41–51. As he notes, the discovery of a fifteenth-century watermark on an amulet preserved at the Gutenberg Museum at Mainz has disproven dates set by the style of the script (44–45). 26 Using animal parts or blood was common in ancient and medieval magic, especially amulets written in blood: Skemer, Binding Words, 130–31. 27 My translation from Labarta’s transcription, Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 131, original: 361v–362r.

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Fig. 11.1. Libro de dichos maravillosos, fols. 361v–362r, fifteenth to sixteenth century, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, Madrid (Fondo Antiguo TN RESC/22) © Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales), Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás

Elsewhere in the Libro are other amulets with the same goal that omit the animal-sacrifice elements. On folios 221v–222r, the Libro instructs the maker to write a specific series of disconnected Arabic letters and illegible Arabic phrases, followed by legible inscriptions invoking angels and quoting from the Quran on a clean textile and bring it to the wife.28 The legible inscription is addressed to God, and asks him to bring peace between the husband and wife equal to the love that reconciled the angels Gabriel and Michael under his throne, and quotes from Quran 8:63, which describes God as the power that brings hearts together. In both chapters, the key to bringing love between a man and his wife is the ritualized creation of an amuletic object covered with writing and its placement within their home or on their bodies, underlining the centrality of the script in invoking supernatural powers.

Extant Amulets A small rectangular lead case, imprinted with the Arabic word al-taqwa or piety on one side and al-mulk, or power, on the other, and the scrap of paper it once contained 28 Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 81.

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Fig. 11.2. Amulet case with two loops for hanging. Moulded lead, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection

are preserved in Madrid’s Tonegawa collection (Figs. 11.2 and 11.3).29 These two inscriptions balance God-consciousness (taqwa) with power (mulk), the term that a Morisco book of magic used to describe the supernatural power of Solomon’s signet ring.30 At the top of the case are two rings, presumably used to hang the object from a string so it could be worn around the neck or sewn onto clothing. The scrap of paper contained within it, now fragmentary, includes nine lines of Kufic text in black without diacritical marks or vowels. Although the script seems archaic, suggesting that the amulet might be quite old, its materials and means of production indicate it dates from sometime after the mid-thirteenth century. It is made of cotton-based paper, which began being made in Játiva, in the province of Valencia, sometime before the mid-twelfth century.31 And though, at first glance, the object looks handwritten, a closer examination suggests it was produced via block printing, a technology that likely came to al-Andalus in the thirteenth century and flourished for several subsequent centuries.32 All of the lines are extremely regular in length, beginning and

29 This object (TP1-1) is described by Sebastián Gaspariño on his website, Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de alAndalus’,www.amuletosdealandalus.com/TP1-1.html (accessed 5 February 2019). I follow his reading of the inscriptions on the front and back of the case, but disagree with his assessment of this object’s epigraphy as indicating a tenth-century date. 30 Albarracín Navarro, ‘Índice del manuscrito “Misceláneo de Salomón”‘, 369. 31 Al-Idrisi, Description, 37. 32 See Hammer-Pugstall, ‘Sur un passage curieux de l’Ithatet’, 252–55; Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms, 26–27.

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Fig. 11.3. Fragment of paper amulet. Block-printed on cotton-based paper, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection

ending at precisely the same point, and the vertical strokes that mark the beginning and the end of the lines indicate the edges of the block used to print the inscription. Similar regularity in line length can be seen on block-printed amulets from other parts of the Islamic world, including one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, produced in Egypt and attributed to the eleventh century (1978.546.32). Like the Metropolitan talismanic scroll, the right edge of the Tonegawa amulet’s inscription is darker and slightly smudged, suggesting the uneven application of ink to a block. The other three amulets incorporating paper that are catalogued by Sebastián Gaspariño share the same characteristics and also seem to have been block printed.33 Like other printed amulets from the Mediterranean world, these examples are small in scale and were folded many times to fit into small lead cases. The text of the paper amulet is difficult to decipher, with indistinct letters and in the absence of diacritical marks. Gaspariño has translated a few lines as statements of worship (‘I worship Him, from within and without […]’), but it is unclear whether this amulet included Quranic passages or just pious phrases. Its scale and production by printing make its decipherment more challenging, and its placement within the lead case, via a small opening on the left-hand side, would have made it even harder 33 Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’; the amulets with paper that has been removed are TP1-2, TP1-3, and P34.

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for its owner to read. Christiane Gruber has described how similar amulets’ inaccessibility within tiny cases impedes their legibility, even as they objectify an ‘otherwise amorphous divine energy’.34 Perhaps these tiny amulets were not meant to be read by their owners – once placed into its lead container, an amulet could have remained there undisturbed across decades of use, generating spiritual power without needing to be read. Other amulets catalogued by Gaspariño contain paper that has not been removed, like the tiny book with lead covers (Tonegawa TV1-3–10), which would have been impossible to open without bending the metal. The impressive state of preservation of some similar paper amulets contained within lead boxes, like the one in the collection of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (AKM 508; Plate 11.1), implies they were rarely removed from the case. Gruber suggests that these mass-produced amulets would have been used by those who were too poor to afford a custom-made handwritten amulet or not literate enough to care.35 The question of literacy appears frequently in Inquisition cases regarding amulets. Pedro Alamin, a Morisco sentenced by the Inquisition of Valencia in 1586 for carrying an amulet in Arabic, claimed he had found it on the road and could not read it, because he was illiterate.36 The amulet itself, preserved by the Inquisition, is made up of Quranic fragments as well as a line of six pointed stars and illegible letters with lunettes and without spaces. Pedro Crespi, another Morisco tried by the Inquisition of Valencia for carrying an Arabic amulet, claimed to be nearly blind and illiterate.37 Like that of Alamin, Crespi’s amulet combined the legible and illegible, with Quranic fragments, a magic square filled with Arabic letters and the use of lunettes and ‘joined letters’, or long series of Arabic letters linked continuously and without diacritical marks.38 Even if their owners had been literate, these two amulets would have been difficult to decipher. For Alamin and Crespi, claiming to be illiterate proved a feeble defence in front of the Inquisition. Possession of papers or books in Arabic was an offence against the state and the church, and usually led to torture, lashing and imprisonment. Many of those charged by the Inquisition with owning such papers were illiterate. Labarta has examined 170 Inquisition cases against Moriscos in Valencia and calculated that 72 per cent of those charged were illiterate, and she suggests the actual rate of illiteracy in the broader population would have been even higher.39 But she notes that it was

34 Gruber, ‘From Prayer to Protection’, 42–43. 35 Ibid., 43. 36 AHN Inquisición, 15 October 1584, 23 March 1586, leg. 548#1, exp. 8, cited in Haliczer, Inquisition and Society, 251; the amulet is discussed in Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 133. 37 AHN Inquisición, 10 January 1583, leg. 550#2, exp. 18, discussed in Haliczer, Inquisition and Society, 400, n. 40. 38 Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 134. On ‘joined letters’, see 134, n. 129. 39 Ibid., 115, n. 1.

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precisely these illiterate Moriscos who fought to preserve Arabic-language texts with the most eagerness, even though they faced severe punishments for doing so.40 Amulets were valued not for the words they communicated but the power ascribed to their form.41 Illegibility suggested connections to ancient and esoteric practices, and objects designed to keep the script inaccessible highlighted the secret potency enclosed within. An amulet in a private collection highlights this combination of illegibility and inaccessibility.42 It is a thin lead sheet, measuring 5.95 × 4.911 centimetres, that was folded into a square (Plate 11.2). As Tawfiq Ibrahim observed regarding other folded lead amulets, this may once have contained a slip of paper with inscriptions, but in this case, the interior of the lead itself has been inscribed with illegible Arabic letters with lunettes and other symbols.43 As an amulet, this object was likely conserved in its folded state, given the challenge of unfolding and refolding lead, and might only have been opened in the modern period. The symbols, as Gaspariño has noted, bear a striking resemblance to the instructions contained in the Libro de dichos maravillosos, as well as extant Morisco amulets preserved in Inquisition records. Here, though, the letters with lunettes and magical symbols are arranged around the interior of a folded lead object, and are not accompanied by any legible script. Even open, it would have been impossible to decipher by all except the adept. Like many other mystical languages, this one served to augment the power of the maker by casting his or her knowledge in mystery. And yet, when folded, the forms of this strange language would have been invisible to all, including the wearer, whose faith in the object did not require its decipherment. Today, unfolded and illegible, this object is nothing but ‘the “technology” of spent magic’, in Michael Dols’ memorable phrasing, stripped of any encoded signification.44

Holy Arabic: Magic, Monotheism and the Struggle over Christianity in Spain Objects are remarkably consistent and resilient in signification as well as remarkably labile, multivalent and adaptive. In their apotropaic and theurgic qualities, they pass easily between cultures, often retaining similar power and meaning even when situated in very different theologies or ideologies.45

40 Ibid., 115. 41 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 71. 42 http://www.amuletosdealandalus.com/S78.html (accessed 5 February 2019). 43 Ibrahim, ‘Evidencia de precintos y amuletos en al-Andalus’, 709. 44 Dols, ‘Theory of Magic in Healing’, 88. 45 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 274

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The amulets, texts and Inquisition records discussed above reflect a vision of Morisco life in which all ‘New Christians’ were in fact crypto-Muslims, who used Arabic to reinforce and maintain their Muslim identity. But, as many scholars have emphasized in recent years, Moriscos’ identities were as complex and diverse as those of any other community. Inquisition records provide a skewed vision, since they present a unified Catholic orthodoxy that was in fact rather illusory, and since the Moriscos portrayed in them are specifically the ‘Muslim’ ones (or at least the ones the Inquisition sought to prove were crypto-Muslims).46 Other kinds of records show what appear to be sincere conversions and Moriscos who successfully assimilated to their host societies, including those who managed to remain (or return) after the expulsion.47 Objects, too, offer possible approaches to understanding the diversity of the Morisco population, and the different roles Arabic could play in early modern Spain. In 1588, in the aftermath of the War of the Alpujarras in Granada, workers demolishing the old minaret of the former mosque of Granada discovered a box with a bone, a handkerchief and a mysterious parchment inside. The parchment measured 63.5 × 49 centimetres and was covered with a complex mix of Arabic, Latin and Greek letters.48 Many of these characters, written in brown or red ink, were arranged in grids that mirrored the form of amuletic magic squares. When scholars deciphered the text, they found it to be the narrative of Saint Caecilius, who according to Spanish legend was one of the seven ‘Apostolic men’ who brought the message of Christianity to the Iberian peninsula. He was said to have been the first bishop of Granada, martyred by the Roman emperor Nero. In the parchment, Caecilius said he came from Jerusalem to Spain, via Athens, where he had translated a prophecy from John the Evangelist from Hebrew via Greek into Arabic and Spanish. The Spanish version of this prophecy was what was contained in one square grid, when each letter was read according to its colour in the correct order. Like magic squares in the amuletic tradition, the grid of letters contained in this parchment was an encoded message with divine power – in this case, foretelling the rise of Islam and of Protestantism, their defeat, and then the end of times.49 The Arabic text contained in the parchment is, according to the only modern scholars who have been able to access and closely study it, defined by its ‘fancy and hybrid’ elements, including the lack of diacritical marks or vowels, the use of unnecessary ligatures between letters (i.e. joined letters, as seen in amulets above) and 46 Márquez Villanueva has noted this in his work El problema morisco; on the problem of Inquisitorial sources for studying Marranos or Moriscos, García-Arenal, ‘Religious Dissent’, 903–9. 47 See, for example, the community studied by Trevor J. Dadson, in Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos. 48 García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español, 13–17. 49 Modern scholars have disagreed about whether the translations of this prophecy reflect the church’s influence upon the translators or the reality of the text, but the recent examination of the parchment by Van Koningsveld and Wiegers seems to definitively confirm the text’s Catholic message; see Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”’; also García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español, 17–19, 139–48.

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letter forms reminiscent of Greek or Syriac script.50 As Van Koningsveld and Wiegers write, this reflects a conscious process of ‘mystification’, emulating ‘ancient’ texts, and results, in the case of the Arabic text, ‘in a totally incomprehensible and meaningless text, notwithstanding the fact that a few words might be “deciphered”, with the help of great ingenuity’.51 Although the Arabic is at best very difficult to decipher, the early scholars of the text produced translations that parallel the Spanish text of John the Evangelist’s prophecy.52 These Morisco translators, Miguel de Luna and Alonso de Castillo, seem to have collaborated with each other even though they were instructed to work in isolation. Recently, scholars have suggested that these two figures may have been both the translators and fabricators of this parchment and the lead ‘books’ that would be excavated from the caves outside of Granada in the years that followed.53 If this is the case, these two men used a purposefully archaic and mystifying text to invent an Arabic Christian past for their city, Granada, and imagine a new central role for the Arabic language in Christian Spain. Much has been written about this ‘Turpiana’ parchment, the Lead Books of Sacromonte and the process of Christianizing the history of Granada, and the details of these fascinating events and their aftermath lie beyond the scope of this chapter.54 For our purposes, what is most intriguing is the form, iconography and epigraphy of these objects, and their relation to the amuletic tradition. The parchment simultaneously sent a message to the church and monarchy that Arabic belonged in Spain, and to the Moriscos that early and illustrious Christians spoke the same languages that they did. Alongside the Lead Books, which purported to be a lost Gospel dictated by the Virgin Mary in Arabic, written in a script that was described by contemporaries as ‘Solomonic’, the parchment’s ‘mystifying’ language offered newly Christian Granada an ancient and powerful history. The Arabic of the parchment linked Spain to the Near East, and the message of the prophecy promised the dawn of the kingdom of heaven. The concept of ‘Solomonic’ Arabic, a language that was ancient and Near Eastern and as yet unpolluted by Islam, attempted to neutralize the freighted cultural weight of the language that was simultaneously being criminalized by the Inquisition and the monarchy. Like the magical tradition whose form the parchment emulated, its message claimed to have traversed the Mediterranean via Jerusalem and Athens. It posited Arabic and Spanish as ancient Christian languages on a par with Hebrew 50 Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”’, 329. 51 Ibid., 329–30. 52 See discussion of the early translations in Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, and of the individuals involved in García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español. 53 See discussion throughout García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano. 54 See the fascinating body of scholarship by García-Arenal, Rodríguez Mediano, Bernabé Pons, and Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, among others, only a fraction of which is cited here.

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and Greek, and Granada as the centre of Spain’s Christianization. As Mercedes García-Arenal has noted, the number of stakeholders who appreciated this message led these improbable objects to be accepted as authentic for nearly a century.55 As we have seen, the figure of Solomon played an important role in bringing ancient magic into a monotheistic framework. Now, as Spain’s monarchs and prelates sought to craft a new Christian identity for their nation, they accepted as authentic relics and texts in ‘Solomonic’ Arabic, hidden in the walls and caves of Granada, like ancient amulets or jars of jinn. The visual and material language of these objects echoed the forms of Arabic language amulets in the peculiarity of their script and their use of magic squares and symbols. These holy Christian objects therefore connected to the magical, religious, astrological and scientific traditions that informed the language and design of amulets in Spain and beyond. Critics, like Benito Arias Montana, who examined the manuscript in 1593 and deemed it to be a falsification, recognized this relationship and wrote that the text’s enigmatic style resembled ‘alchemist’s recipes and those of some Paracelsist empiricists, who, with little science, bewilder those who try to understand their mysteries’.56 To Arias Montana, the Turpiana parchment belonged among the medical recipes, spells and talismans of charlatans, rather than among the relics of the church. Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, after their close examination of the manuscript, concur that the original context of its production was one of ‘magic, esoteric learning and popular prophecy’.57 Another contemporary critic of the Lead Books, Marcos Dobelio, noted that a cache of Morisco books discovered at Pastrana in 1631 included books of ‘necromancy, spells and superstitions’ with seals and signs that mirrored those of the Lead Books.58 And yet, this magical and mystical form differs in important ways from the amulets described above. While amulets were designed to hold illegible, often inaccessible texts against the skin or within clothes, the Turpiana parchment and the Lead Books – although initially hidden – were intended to be discovered and deciphered. The differences in the physical form of these objects from amulets suit their distinct function: destined for veneration by the masses in a church context, they were much larger in scale, and in the case of the Lead Books, included multiple ‘chapters’ containing religious narratives. Their language and form nevertheless echoed the mysterious power of the texts encased in lead and worn against the flesh that brought Moriscos before the Inquisition. If Miguel de Luna and Alonso de Castillo were the creators of these objects as well as their translators, they positioned themselves as the adepts, uniquely able to read the magical languages that vindicated Arabic-speaking Christians as central to the history of Spain. 55 García-Arenal, ‘Religious Identity of the Arabic Language’, 497. 56 My translation from the Spanish, cited in Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”’, 347–48. 57 Ibid., 350. 58 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 61–62.

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For close to a century, until 1682, when the Vatican rejected these objects as forgeries, the Spanish church and monarchy accepted the role of Arabic speakers in Christianizing the peninsula and venerated objects inscribed with archaic Arabic and magic symbols. This had long-lasting implications for the study of Arabic, the ‘Orient’ and the history of al-Andalus in Spain, as García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano have shown.59 Arabic was seen as a Christian, Spanish language, even as the descendants of Muslim converts to Christianity were expelled from the peninsula between 1609 and 1614. What the Turpiana parchment and the Lead Books represent is an attempt to domesticate the mystical Arabic forms of Islamic amulets, and to use their power to fabricate a Christian past for the most Islamic of Spanish cities. They exploit the web of associations Arabic carried in early modern Spain, weaving between heresy and holiness, foreign and familiar, to create a new history with room for old and new Christians alike.

Bibliography Primary Sources al-Idrisi, Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, ed. Reinhart P.A. Dozy and Michael Jan de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1866). Barceló, Carmen and Ana Labarta, Archivos moriscos: textos Árabes de la minoría Islámica Valenciana, 1401–1608 (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009). Labarta, Ana (ed. and trans.), Libro de dichos maravillosos: misceláneo morisco de magia y adivinación (Madrid: CSIC, 1993).

Secondary Sources Albarracín Navarro, Joaquina, ‘Índice del manuscrito “Misceláneo de Salomón”’, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos 48 (1999): 369–77. Albarracín Navarro, Joaquina and Juan Martínez Ruiz, Medicina, farmacopea y magia en el ‘Misceláneo de Salomón’: texto árabe, traducción, glosas aljamiadas, estudio y glosario (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1987). Bernabé Pons, Luis F., ‘“Por la lengua se conoce la nación”: los moriscos y sus idiomas’, Alborayque: Revista de la Biblioteca de Extremadura 3 (2009): 107–25. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Canaan, Tewfik, ‘The Decipherment of Arabic Talismans’, in Emilie Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and Divination in Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), 125–77; orig. publ. in Berytus Archaeological Studies 4 (1937): 69–110; and 5 (1938): 141–51. Caro Baroja, Julio, Ciclos y temas de la historia de España: los moriscos del reino de Granada, ensayo de historia social (5th ed., Madrid: Istmo, 2000). Dadson, Trevor J., Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV–XVIII): historia de una minoría asimilada, expulsada y reintegrada (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2007). 59 García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español, esp. chs. 15–18.

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Dols, Michael W., ‘The Theory of Magic in Healing’, in E. Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and Divination in Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), 87–101. Dora, Cornel, ‘Magic and Medicine’, in Cornel Dora, Kay Jankrift, Frank Petersen, Franziska Schnoor and Philipp Lenz (eds.), Abracadabra: Medizin im Mittelalter; Sommerausstellung 8. März bis 6. November 2011 (St. Gallen: Verlag am Klosterhof, 2016). Ekhtiar, Maryam and Rachel Parikh, Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the Battlefield (29 August 2016–13 February 2017), exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, www.metmuseum.org/ exhibitions/objects?exhibitionId=7b94fb3d-e0c8-46c0-9362-993a77a83e01&pkgids=370 (accessed 5 February 2019). García-Arenal, Mercedes, ‘La Inquisición y los libros de los moriscos’, in Memoria de los Moriscos: escritos y relatos de una diaspora cultural, exhibition catalogue (Madrid: SECC–Biblioteca Nacional, 2010), 57–73. García-Arenal, Mercedes, ‘Religious Dissent and Minorities: The Morisco Age’, Journal of Modern History 81.4 (2009): 888–920. García-Arenal, Mercedes, ‘The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of the Sacromonte of Granada’, Arabica 56 (2009): 495–528. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español: los moriscos y el Sacromonte en tiempos de Contrarreforma (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2010); trans. Consuleo López-Morillas, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Gaspariño, Sebastián, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’ [author’s website], last updated 28 June 2014, www.amuletosdealandalus.com (accessed 5 February 2019). Gruber, Christiane, ‘From Prayer to Protection: Amulets and Talismans in the Islamic World’, in Francesca Leoni (ed.), Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2016), 33–51. Gutwirth, Eleazar, ‘The Cuenca Amulet: History, Magic and Manuscripts’, Sefarad 72.2 (2014): 453–63. Haliczer, Stephen, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990). Hammer-Pugstall, Joseph, ‘Sur un passage curieux de l’Ithatet, sur l’art d’imprimir chez les Arabes en Espagne’, Journal Asiatique, ser. 4, 20 (August–September 1852): 252–55. Ibrahim, Tawfiq, ‘Evidencia de precintos y amuletos en al-Andalus’, in Arqueología medieval española: iI congreso (Madrid 19–24 enero 1987) (Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid, 1987), 706–10. Labarta, Ana, ‘Inventario de los documentos moriscos contenidos en procesos inquisitoriales contra moriscos Valencianos conservados en el Archivo Histórico Nacional (Legajos 548–556)’, Al-Qanṭara 1 (January 1980): 115–64. Leoni, Francesca (ed.), Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2016). Márquez Villanueva, Francisco, El problema morisco (desde otras laderas) (2nd ed., Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1998). Peters, Francis E., ‘Hermes and Harran: The Roots of Arabic-Islamic Occultism’, in Emilie Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and Divination in Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), 55–85; orig. publ. in Michel Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen (eds.), Intellectual Studies on Islam (Salt Lake City, 1990), 185–215. Porter, Venetia, Liana Saif and Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic’, in Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoglu (eds.), A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 521–57. Ribera, Julián, ‘Supersticiones moriscas’, in Disertaciones y Opúsculos, I (Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1928), 493–527. Savage-Smith, Emilie, ‘Islamic Magical Texts vs. Magical Artefacts’, Societas Magica Newsletter 11 (fall 2003): 1–6. Savage-Smith, Emilie (ed.), Magic and Divination in Early Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

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Schaefer, Karl, Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block-Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Collections (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Skemer, Don, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2006). Van Koningsveld, Pieter S. and Gerard A. Wiegers, ‘The Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”:The Original Document and its Early Interpreters’, Al-Qanṭara 24.2 (2003): 327–58.

About the Author Abigail Krasner Balbale is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on the intersection of political power, religious ideology and visual and material culture in the Islamic world. She is currently working on a monograph about political legitimation and cultural production in late medieval al-Andalus.

12. Mesoamerican Idols, Spanish Medicine: Jade in the Collection of Philip II Kate E. Holohan Abstract This essay examines a singular object in the post-mortem inventory of Philip II of Spain: a greenstone ‘idol’ from New Spain (present-day Mexico and wider Mesoamerica) that was said to cure abdominal pain. While the stone can be considered within the European tradition of lapidary medicine, its distant American and, moreover, pagan origins, complicates our understanding of it. Through examination of the stone’s materiality, the purpose(s) it may have served in its culture of origin and sixteenth-century New Spanish and Spanish natural histories and medical treatises, this chapter considers how, and by whom, it was transformed from an American idol into Spanish medicine. Keywords: Spain; New Spain; Mesoamerica; medicine; jade; Philip II

Upon the death of Philip II of Spain, in 1598, the monarch’s worldly goods were inventoried and appraised so that they could be auctioned. As befitted a man of his stature, Philip’s collection included thousands of valuable and prestigious objects: jewel-encrusted reliquaries, books, precious stones, silver, armour, tapestries, clocks, ceramics, paintings and furniture. This essay examines a single item – now lost – in the king’s inventory, an object that occupies the intersection of the king’s interests in science and Americana, and that urges us to consider its ambiguous material and ontological status: A large green stone, that they say is plasma de esmeralda (emerald plasma), that came from New Spain and served as an idol, with a face on the end, that they say is good for the side [of the body], wrapped in green taffeta; that weighs 2 marcos, 1 onza, and 1 ochava: valued at 12 ducados.1

1 Inventarios reales, 274. All translations are mine. The equivalent modern weight of the stone is approximately 1 pound. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch12

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This greenstone is inventoried with a variety of other coloured stones. Some are identified as ‘idols’, some have a New World provenance and some are imbued with medicinal virtues. One, like the ‘idol’ above, is a New Spanish greenstone ‘that they say is for the side and urine’.2 Of these stones, however, only the one described above is a triple threat: a New Spanish idol turned medicinal stone. While this singular stone can be considered within the European tradition of lapidary medicine, its distant American and, moreover, pagan origins, complicates our understanding of it. It is unclear of which material the stone is made, which particular purpose – presumably, and broadly, religious or ritual – it served in its culture of origin and exactly how, and by whom, it was transformed from an American ‘idol’ into Spanish medicine. Most intriguing is the possibility that Philip, the pre-eminent Catholic monarch of his era, during whose reign New World viceroys prioritized the extirpation of what they understood as pagan indigenous religious practices and objects, used just such an ‘idol’ as a cure for abdominal pain. The first problem, of the stone’s materiality, requires etymological work. The term plasma de esmeralda can be traced to the classical Latin prasius and appears in European literary sources from the late fourteenth century.3 Prasius (also prase or plasma) is a green variety of chalcedony that is found throughout the world, including in Europe and the Americas. The earliest Spanish writer to refer to New World plasmas de esmeralda was Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. As an administrator and, later, royal chronicler of the Indies, he travelled several times between Spain and the Spanish Americas in the first half of the sixteenth century, and published his Sumario de la natural y general historia de las Indias in Toledo in 1526. His first trip was with the conquistador Pedrarias Dávila in 1514; when Dávila’s ships stopped in Santa Marta (now part of Colombia), Oviedo saw there plasmas de esmeralda and other precious stones.4 He also saw, in Valladolid, Spain, in 1524, ‘an emerald brought from the Yucatán or New Spain, a round face carved in it in relief’, that was sold for more than 400 gold ducats.5 This greenstone shares material, morphological and geographical characteristics with Philip’s greenstone: both are described as a type of emerald, both are carved with the image of a face, and both are from New Spain. Oviedo’s stone, if it was, indeed, from the Yucatán, may have been Maya, perhaps an object akin to a carved stone head found at the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza (Plate 12.1).

2 Ibid., 275. 3 See the entries for ‘plasma’, ‘prase’ and ‘prasine’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. In English, plasma de esmeralda is known as emerald plasma, prase, chrysoprase or prasine; in Spanish, it is also known as prassina and plasma. The word emerald – esmeralda in Spanish – can be traced to the Latin smaragdus, the Greek smaragdos, or ‘green gem’, and, even earlier, the Sanskrit marakata (emerald). 4 See Myers, Oviedo’s Chronicle, 15, and Oviedo, Sumario, 246. 5 Oviedo, Sumario, 246.

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European understanding of New World mineralogy was, in the sixteenth century, rudimentary. Thus, while Philip’s stone may have been made of prase, the medicinal virtue ascribed to it suggests an alternative etymological and material path. Piedra de la ijada, or stone of the side, is the name that sixteenth-century Spaniards gave to Mesoamerican jade.6 Today, geologists and anthropologists have identified the middle Motagua river valley of Guatemala, the Sierra de las Minas north of the river and the highlands south of the river as the only definitive sources of Central American jade.7 Both the stone that Oviedo saw in Valladolid and Philip’s stone, while resembling prase and perhaps true emeralds, were most likely made of jade. Sixteenth-century Spanish sources identify at least three different varieties of American jade: chalchiuitl (which the Spanish called chalchihuite), the most common type of green jade; quetzalchalchiuitl, an intense green jade, similar in colour to the quetzal feather, that sometimes has spots or striations; and quetzalitztli, the densest form of jade that was a highly desirable emerald-green colour. Both Alonso de Molina, who published versions of his Nahuatl–Castilian dictionary in 1555 and 1571, and Bernardino de Sahagún, the Spanish Franciscan who collaborated with indigenous scholars and artists in New Spain to compose his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (General history of the things of New Spain, better known as the Florentine Codex, completed around 1575–77), identify and describe these three varieties of jade.8 Sahagún also includes illustrations that were made by his indigenous collaborators. There, chalchiuitl appears as a bead adorning a bracelet, reflecting its frequent use in jewellery; quetzalchalchiuitl appears as a stone with striations and blotches, with a quetzal feather resting on top of it; and quetzalitztli is shown, according to Sahagún’s description, as glistening, shining and giving off light in the form of rays. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his troops encountered jade early in their invasion of Mexico. Bernal Díaz, one of the soldiers in Cortés’ retinue, reported that in the spring of 1519, indigenous leaders presented Cortés with feathered cloth, gold and four pieces of chalchihuite on behalf of the Tenochca ruler (that is, the Mexica ruler of Tenochtitlan), Motecuhzoma II (r. 1502–20).9 The leaders explained to the conquistador that the chalchihuites should be given to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ‘because they are so rich that each one is worth a great load of gold’.10 6 See the etymology of ‘jade’ in the OED: sixteenth-century Spanish piedra de la ijada became seventeenthcentury French le jade, which became modern English jade (and modern Spanish el jade). Though similar in appearance, hardness and density, Asian and Mesoamerican jade are actually two different minerals: nephrite and jadeite, respectively. See FitzHugh, ‘Jade’. 7 See Griffin, ‘Formative Guerrero’, 203–8; Seitz et al., ‘Olmec Blue’, 687–88; Taube et al., ‘Sourcing of Mesoamerican Jade’, 203–17; and Taube and Ishihara-Brito, ‘From Stone to Jewel’, 136–40. 8 See Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, and Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 11, ch. 8, 222–23. 9 Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 132. 10 Ibid., 132.

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The Florentine Codex relates a slightly different version of events: the messengers of Motecuhzoma did not merely present the conquistador with gifts, but ‘adorned the Captain [Cortés] himself’ with the vestments of the gods Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Tlaloc, including, among other ornaments, a turquoise mosaic mask, a quetzal-feather headdress to which greenstone (probably jade) serpent-shaped earplugs were attached, and a gold- and greenstone neckband.11 The illustration corresponding to this passage shows the Mexican emissaries aboard Cortés’ ship, handing him a textile and a beaded necklace. Though the image is executed in grisaille, the necklace resembles the ‘very rich necklace […] of many pieces of gold and very precious stones’ presented to Cortés in a colour illustration from the Dominican friar Diego Durán’s Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de la Tierra Firme (History of the Indies of New Spain and the Islands of Tierra Firme), first published in 1581.12 Many jade ornaments as well as figurines adorned with these highly valued chalchihuites appear in the surviving inventories of objects that Cortés sent to Charles V in the 1520s, making it clear that the conquistador completed the gift exchange that Motecuhzoma initiated.13 As these texts attest, jade was one of the most highly valued materials in Pre-Columbian and contact-period Mesoamerica. Prized by the Olmecs, the Maya and the Aztecs, the stone was associated with maize and agricultural fertility, wealth, rulership, water, wind and the Maya concept of the ‘breath soul’.14 James Maffie suggests that for the Aztecs and, more broadly, the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Central Mexico, jade was ‘well-rooted in teotl’, a complex concept that encompasses the ‘dynamic, vivifying, self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy’ of the cosmos.15 To be ‘well-rooted in teotl’ – to be rooted in this sacred energy – was to be ordered, stable, centred and ‘beneficial to humans’.16 The notion of centrality is especially relevant to teotl-rich jade. The Aztecs ‘imagined the surface of the earth to be a four-petalled flat disk [or ‘flower-shaped disk’]’, with each petal indicating one of the four cardinal directions.17 At the centre of the disk, and thus at the centre, or ‘navel’, of the cosmos, was a ‘pierced, precious green stone’, that is, jade.18

11 Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 12, ch. 5, 11–15. The Nahuatl root word that Sahagún uses for the greenstone earplugs and necklace is chalchiuh, referring to precious greenstone (generally understood as jade). 12 For a reproduction of the Sahagún illustration, see Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 12, illus. 12. See also Durán, Historia de las Indias, 540, for the text and pl. 58 for the painting. It is unclear if the figure presenting the necklace to Cortés is Motecuhzoma himself or one of his lords. 13 See Saville, Goldsmith’s Art, 66–72 and 96–101 and Martínez, Documentos cortesianos, 236 and 297–98. 14 See Taube, ‘Symbolism of Jade’, 23–50. 15 Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 22. 16 Ibid., 107. 17 Ibid. 18 Maffie suggests that the blue-green colour of turquoise was also associated with the ‘navel’ of the cosmos. See ibid.

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The centrality of jade is underscored by its presence at and around the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor (great temple), which scholars have described as both the geographic and symbolic centre of Aztec sacred power as well as a representation of ‘the entire [Aztec] conception of the cosmos’.19 The temple complex underwent several major building phases and was later razed by the Spanish. Durán states that during one of these phases, which was overseen by Motecuhzoma I (r. 1440–69), precious stones, including jade (‘piedras de hijada’), were collected from ‘all the cities’ of the Aztec empire; with ‘every braza [approximately 1.7 metres or 5.5 feet] that the building rose’, these stones ‘were thrown into the mortar’.20 Durán’s report is supported by other textual and archaeological evidence. Bernal Díaz writes that when the new church of Santiago was being built atop the ruins of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, which was part of the Templo Mayor complex in Tlatelolco (then a city just north of Tenochtitlan, but now part of Mexico City), the Spanish found in the temple’s foundations ‘much gold and silver and jade and gems and pearls and other stones’.21 And, over the past century, caches of jade, greenstone and other stone beads, heads, figures and plaques have been discovered in excavations at the Tenochtitlan temple complex. While some of these objects are of Aztec facture, others have been identified as Olmec, Teotihuacan and Maya.22 Jade and other greenstone objects are among a variety of offerings, including animal and human remains, ceramics and ritual implements, that have been found in caches at the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor. In ancient Mesoamerica, such objects ‘were buried in sacred places […] for the purpose of commemorating or consecrating monuments, buildings and calendric events and to render homage to the deities’; deposits in sacred or religious buildings may have also been ‘intended to endow the structure with permanent powers’.23 Moreover, the very foundation of sacred structures like the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor, filled with many objects that originated outside of the valley of Mexico (such as Olmec, Toltec and Maya works, shells from coastal regions and jade beads from distant provinces), was representative of the geographical reach of the Tenochcas’ trade and tribute networks, and was thus a reification of imperial power.24 Finally, antiquity-rich foundations can also be understood as symbolically ‘shoring up’ the Mexicas’ legitimacy as rulers: their most sacred structures are, quite literally, built upon the precious remains of earlier – and much

19 Matos Motecuhzoma, ‘Symbolism of the Templo Mayor’, 191. 20 Durán, Historia de las Indias, 228. 21 Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 283. 22 See Umberger, ‘Antiques, Revivals, and References to the Past in Aztec Art’, 67, and López Luján, ‘Echoes of a Glorious Past’, 274–76. 23 López Luján, Offerings, 35. 24 See Berdan, ‘Economics’, 164–65. While tribute jade primarily took the form of beads, other raw and worked jades were acquired through trade. See Codex Mendoza, fols. 37r, 43r, 46r, 47r, 49r and 52r, and Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 9, ch. 4, 18–19 and pl. 17.

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admired and emulated – cultures.25 The reinterment of ancient jades (and the re-enactment of ancient votive rituals) allowed the Mexica leaders of Tenochtitlan to establish both metaphoric and material connections between themselves and the ancient altepetls, or city-states, that they understood as their forebears. A greenstone listed in the 1545 inventory of Charles V’s possessions at Coudenberg palace, in Brussels, evokes the Olmec greenstone mask excavated in Mexico City in 1988 from the Templo Mayor itself (i.e. the principal double-pyramid temple of Huitzilopochtli, the solar war god, and Tlaloc, the rain god). Charles’ stone is described thusly: A green stone the size of a closed fist on which is carved a face, the entirety polished. Reserved within the eyes, where it appears it has lost anything which was once there. This stone [is] pierced in two places to hang by a ribbon. This stone was sent from the Indies by those of the council of the aforementioned country.26

A closed male fist is similar in size to the Templo Mayor Olmec mask (10.2 × 8.6 × 3.1 cm) as well as several other surviving Mesoamerican masks, including one in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (Plate 12.2).27 Since Charles’ Coudenberg collection was transferred to Philip at the former’s abdication in 1556, it is possible that the greenstone inventoried in 1545 is the same stone that later appears in Philip’s inventory. However, Philip’s greenstone, which is described not as a face but rather as an object ‘with a face on the end’, more strongly suggests either Maya jades like the Chichen Itza head or oblong Mezcala-style anthropomorphic greenstone figures. Figures like the one in Figure 12.1, as well as others carved with the large eyes and fangs of Tlaloc, have been found near the main (west) facade of the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor.28 Some of these figures were buried on the Tlaloc (north) side of the temple while others were interred along the same east–west axis as the Olmec mask.29 Both the Aztecs’ association of jade with agricultural fertility, and their interest in harnessing the power of ancestral cultures through the reuse of antiquities, may have made the Olmec- and Mezcala-style jades and greenstones especially potent emblems of renewal and prosperity. The additional association of jade with rain (an essential element in the agricultural cycle) and Tlaloc further underscores the suitability of these offerings. The connections between Tlaloc, greenstones and certain illnesses may also help to illuminate later Spanish uses and beliefs about Mesoamerican jade. 25 The Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya and Mezcala-style jades deposited in the Templo Mayor were most likely a product of Aztec archaeology; see Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 11, ch. 8, 221. 26 Los inventarios de Carlos V, 217. 27 See, for example, the masks at the Detroit Institute of Arts (1985.42), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977.187.33), the Denver Art Museum (1976.5) and the British Museum (Am.9599). 28 Moreover, the weight of Philip’s greenstone (approximately 1 pound) corresponds to the approximate weight of the Maya and Mezcala-style jades. 29 See Broda, ‘Provenience of the Offerings’, figs. 17–22, and López Luján, Offerings, 243–48 and 266–68.

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Fig. 12.1. Standing figure, Mezcala. Stone (height 20 cm), first to eighth century, Mexico, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995.201) © Metropolitan Museum of Art

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This brief examination of the attitudes and practices surrounding jade in pre-contact central Mexico leads to the related issue of post-contact Spanish and creole beliefs about, and means of obtaining the material. Contemporary sources report that Spaniards in New Spain acquired jade objects in a variety of ways. Some, such as the beads given to Cortés, were part of gift exchanges that were intended to forge bonds between settlers and local rulers. Others were looted: after Cortés captured Motecuhzoma and forced the Aztec ruler to bring him to Tenochtitlan’s ‘treasure house’, the Spanish invaders tore the gold embellishments from shields and other objects they found there, and also took ‘as much [greenstone – chalchiutl] as was good to their eyes’.30 Later, as the Spanish fled Tenochtitlan on the so-called ‘Noche Triste’ (Night of Sorrows) in 1520, soldiers like Bernal Díaz looted gold and pieces of jade.31 It is likely that the jade head in Charles V’s collection as well as the idol in Philip’s collection were looted from sacred structures either during the invasion or when the Spanish later razed the jade-rich temples of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan in order to erect churches.32 After the fall of Tenochtitlan and the establishment of Spanish hegemony in the city, Spaniards increasingly acquired jade in the marketplace, probably from special lapidary dealers.33 Francisco Hernández, whom Philip II appointed his protomédico (first physician) of the Indies in 1570 and who travelled abroad to ‘prepar[e] a description of all the medicinal plants to be found in [Spain’s] American [territories]’, warned that indigenous sellers of stones such as piedras de la ijada and the related piedras de los riñones (stones for the kidneys) could be unscrupulous, offering the same stone under different names to unsuspecting Spaniards and creoles.34 The regular appearance of piedras de la ijada in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inventories of aristocratic peninsulares (Spaniards living on the Iberian peninsula) further suggests that there was, indeed, a thriving market for jade in both New Spain and Spain.35 The driver of this market appears to have been jade’s perceived medicinal value, which was first noted by the Spanish physician and botanist Nicolas Monardes in his 1565 treatise on New World medicine. Monardes writes that the finest piedras de la ijada ‘seem like plasmas de esmeralda’, which supports my assertion that the plasmas de esmeralda Oviedo saw in Santa Marta were not actually prase but were instead 30 Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 12, ch. 17, 46. 31 Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 394–95. 32 Díaz del Castillo mentions that when the Spanish discovered jade and other objects in the foundations of the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor, ‘the officials of His Majesty’s Hacienda demanded them for His Majesty, as they came to him rightfully, and there was a lawsuit about it’. The outcome of this dispute is unclear: Díaz del Castillo first writes, ‘I do not know what happened’, but then states that the ‘riches stayed for the work of the holy church of Santiago’. See ibid., 283–84. 33 Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 8, ch. 19, 67, and bk. 10, ch. 16, 60–61. 34 See Rey Bueno, ‘La Mayson pour Distiller’, 35, and Hernández, Quatro libros, fol. 198v. 35 Holohan, ‘Collecting the New World’, 166.

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jade.36 Monardes’ appellation, piedra de la ijada, is the first to distinguish jade from both prase and emerald, thus recognizing it as a ‘new’ material. It is also the first to reject the various Nahuatl names for the mineral in favour of a single Spanish name. Still unclear, however, is the source of the notion that Mesoamerican jade was effective against abdominal ailments. Monardes claims that this belief was an indigenous one, and that ‘the Indians used to carry [the stones], hanging, to affect pain in the side or the stomach’.37 He goes on to explain that the ‘principal virtue that [the stone] has is in pain of the side, and in expelling grit and stones’; here Monardes is clearly referring to kidney stones.38 An entry in Molina’s 1571 dictionary for xuchitonal chalchiuitl, or ‘stone for the side or urine’, further suggests that the Spanish believed that jade (chalchiuitl) could be used to treat kidney ailments. It is unclear, however, if Molina’s Nahuatl term referring to the medicinal properties of jade dates to before the conquest or was a neologism created in response to viceregal beliefs (perhaps the very beliefs promoted by Monardes) about the mineral.39 Although Sahagún does not write about the medicinal benefits of jade (and instead recommends dietary purgatives, enemas and suppositories for abdominal pain), he does report that high-quality jade ‘attracts moisture; it attracts things when rubbed. And when some little piece of rubbish is at hand, it fastens on to it, it sucks it, it draws it’.40 This power of attraction might have been the quality that, for Spaniards like Monardes, enabled jade to pull stones out of the kidneys. Monardes attests that the jade cure works. He writes that he has seen a gentleman in Seville who passed a great many kidney stones after applying jade to his arm, and explains that his patron, the duquesa de Bejar, wore a jade bracelet that cured her abdominal pain.41 The protomédico Hernández echoes Monardes’ claims. In the selection of his work that was published in Mexico in 1615, he describes a type of esmeralda, the piedra de los riñones (stone of the kidneys), which is called iztliayotli quetzaliztli or esmeralda 36 Monardes, Dos libros, no pag. Monardes published revised editions of this work, with slightly different titles, in 1569 and 1574. 37 Monardes, Dos libros. In a pleasing coincidence, the greenstone in Charles’ 1545 inventory is described as pierced with holes and meant to be hung from a strap or ribbon. Many Mesoamerican stone masks feature holes in the ears that were meant to accommodate ornaments, and that Europeans could have mistaken for strap piercings. The Metropolitan’s mask also has holes along the edges that may have been used to attach it to a costume, funerary bundle, or deity image. Likewise, the holes on the sides and back of the Chichen Itza head at the Peabody Museum at Harvard suggest that it was meant to be attached to a pectoral or belt. 38 Monardes, Dos libros. 39 Both Marc Thouvenot and Taube suggest the former; see Thouvenot, Chalchihuitl, 131–32 and Taube et al., ‘Sourcing of Mesoamerican Jade’, 204. However, neither xuchitonal (‘ijada’?) nor xuchitonal chalchiuitl appear in Molina’s 1555 dictionary, which, instead, offers the Nahuatl terms tomiyauayuca, tocoyõya and tocuel pachiuhcã for ‘yjada parte del cuerpo’ (side part of the body). See Molina, Aquí comiença un vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana and Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana. 40 Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 10, ch. 28, 155 for stomach pain and colic and bk. 11, ch. 8, 222, for jade’s power of attraction. 41 Monardes, Dos libros.

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oscura (dark emerald) by the Mexica.42 Like Monardes, Hernández claims that if one ties the stone to one’s arm, or places the stone on the kidney, pain will cease and kidney stones will be broken down and expelled through the urine. He also notes that the Indians usually carry the stones hanging from their necks, and that they most highly esteem the varieties of piedra de los riñones that are green and clear, and that have spots that are white like milk (perhaps Sahagún’s quetzalchalchiuitl).43 Indigenous piedras de los riñones, Hernández goes on to explain, come in a variety of forms, like ‘birds’ feet, and like heads, and parrots’ beaks, and many round ones, and in the shape of a heart, and others like small gilded (?) spheres’.44 Philip’s greenstone head fits into this paradigm, in which any jade – a bead, a beak – might be transformed into a medicinal piedra de la ijada. This transformation, moreover, seems to have been achieved with little expressed anxiety over the jades’ pagan origins; simply being used by Spaniards in a medicinal context seems to have erased the taint of idolatry. Hernández also describes a stone of green jasper, or esmeralda baja (rough emerald; perhaps, according to Molina, this was chalchiuitl), that he calls piedra de la ijada. This stone is heavier and darker than the piedra de los riñones, and is without pintas, or spots. It, too, is found in a variety of shapes, including that ‘of a man or of an idol, and also long and round, in the manner of a column, and also flat and round, like a ball’.45 However, this stone does not help to expel kidney stones like his piedra de los riñones or like Monardes’ piedra de la ijada; instead, it cures colic and pain in the side. According to Hernández, to access the stone’s medicinal character, one must first spray and wash it with saliva, then rub it between one’s hands and then place it on the navel or the area in pain. A stone thus activated will rid the body of ‘depressive humours’, or gas, thus curing ‘colic pain and [pain] of the side’.46 We should, then, consider Monardes’ piedra de la ijada and Hernández’s piedra de los riñones to be the same thing, a variety of jade that cures kidney stones. The latter’s piedra de la ijada, on the other hand, is different, a type of green jasper (probably, in truth, jade) that relieves colic. Since Hernández, unlike Monardes, actually travelled to New Spain and consulted with indigenous doctors and healers, his testimony holds weight. And, although the terminology is muddled, these texts suggest that the Spanish were aware of two different types of Mesoamerican jade that cured two different, if related ailments: kidney stones and colic.

42 Hernández, Quatro libros, fol. 198r. This redaction was made by one of Philip II’s royal physicians, Nardo Antonio Recchi, in 1580. 43 Ibid., fol. 198r–198v. 44 Ibid., fol. 198r. The stones shaped like parrots’ beaks suggests jade pendants from Costa Rica, such as two in the Metropolitan (1979.206.1138; 1993.302). 45 Hernández, Quatro libros, fol. 198v. 46 Ibid., fol. 198v.

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It is important to consider Spanish beliefs about Mesoamerican jade in the context of the long European history of lapidary medicine, which stretches back to Greek and Roman antiquity (see also chapters by Ivanič and King in this volume).47 In the medieval period, information about the healing and therapeutic properties of stones and instructions on how to use them (usually by either placing them directly on a problematic part of the body, or by consuming a tincture infused with the stone) were collected in volumes known as lapidaries.48 Prase, chrysoprase or plasma de esmeralda is part of this long history, appearing in four of ‘the most influential works of the Western European lapidary tradition’, beginning with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and continuing through the seventeenth-century Pharmacopoeia Londinensis.49 The stone was believed to have magical and medicinal properties, including the ability to detect and counteract poison.50 Thus when the Spanish encountered Mesoamerican jade, they were likely receptive to the idea of a therapeutic greenstone. Moreover, it is Monardes’ comparison of prase and jade and the distinction he draws between them – piedras de ijada seem to be prase, but are, in fact, a different substance – that leads us, finally, to consider why Philip may have been interested in the medicinal applications of jade. The king suffered from intestinal problems and gout throughout his adult life. His gout was sometimes so painful that he could not attend public ceremonies; one attack, in 1583, incapacitated his right hand.51 As his general health worsened in the later years of his life, so did his chronic illnesses. Yet sixteenth-century treatments for these diseases were largely ineffective and patients were told to eat certain foods, including crab, figs, almonds, turnips and barley, that would help to clean out the kidneys, intestines and joints.52 For patients, like Philip, with hereditary gout, diet alone usually did not cure the disease. They were often bled, and those suffering from colic and kidney stones were given purgatives, including enemas. Both procedures, which Philip underwent throughout his life, stemmed from the teachings of the second-century physician Galen and were intended to rebalance the four bodily humours.53 By the time Philip was on his deathbed at El Escorial in 1598, these treatments had failed him. In his piety and pain, he turned to some of the thousands of relics that he collected there. 47 See Harris, ‘Idea of Lapidary Medicine’. 48 Ibid., 6–8. 49 Ibid., 151–52. 50 This understanding persisted until at least the eighteenth century in Spain, where, in volume five of the Diccionario de autoridades (1737) plasma is defined as a ‘precious stone, a type of emerald, highly effective against poison […] The stone prassina, commonly called plasma, loses its brilliance if it is put near something poisonous’. 51 Puerto, Leyenda verde, 146 and 152. 52 See Aviñon, Sevilla medicina, fols. 30v–57r, and Díaz, Tratado, 181. 53 See Aviñon, Sevilla medicina, fols. 87v and 96r, for purgatives, and Díaz, Tratado, 184, for purgatives, and 196 for bleeding. For Philip’s treatments, see Puerto, Leyenda verde, 281.

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Kissing them and touching them to his inflamed joints and his aching belly, Philip embraced their church-approved metaphysical power to soothe both his spiritual and physical malaise.54 The relics’ special status as holy things that were simultaneously sacred and earthly and animated with the spirit of God, allowed them to effect change in the spiritually receptive material body. This raises the possibility that Philip, the most pious and Counter-Reformatory of kings, transposed this Catholic metaphysics to the realm of pagan idols, and touched his New Spanish idol turned piedra de la ijada to his body in the hope of transformation. Philip and his physicians, drawing on the lapidary tradition of medicinal prase colic stones, may have believed that the application of piedra de la ijada would relieve his abdominal pain.55 Moreover, jade was not the only idolatrous American stone to be transformed into Spanish medicine. As Marcia Stephenson has shown, Andean bezoar stones were subject to a similar process of appropriation, secularization and, indeed, Hispanization.56 However, if we are to believe that Philip may have also understood piedras de la ijada to be effective against gout, we must make the jump from medicinal kidney and colic stones to medicinal gout stones. Kidney stones and gout have the same root cause: an accumulation, either in the kidneys or the joints, of urate crystals, which form when the body fails to expel enough uric acid through the urine. It is unclear if sixteenth-century doctors like Monardes and Hernández understood the two diseases to be related. It is, however, possible that Hernández, who performed dissections while teaching at the hospital of the monastery of Guadalupe, or Francisco Díaz, a surgeon to Philip who published a treatise on urology, made the connection between stones or crystals found in or expelled from kidneys and the bulbous accumulation of urate crystals, called tophi, seen in some gout patients.57 If so, they or their colleagues may have considered the piedra de la ijada effective not just against kidney stones, but also against gout. It is also possible that Hernández was aware of the Mesoamerican association of jade with the rain god Tlaloc, whose namesake afterworld, Tlalocan, was the resting place of non-royal and lay transgressors who ‘handled green stones (gems of the god)’, people who experienced water-related deaths such as drowning or a lightning strike, and those who expired from diseases associated with water and cold, such as paralysis and gout.58 The dead in Tlalocan attended Tlaloc as ahuaque (masters of water) and ehecatotontin (the little winds), and their anger was ‘discharged in the form of 54 Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, 268, 323 and 333. See also Lazure, ‘Possessing the Sacred’. 55 Harris cites references to colic stones in a 1481 book of parables called This is the table of the historye of Reynart the foxe and in the 1586 inventory of Mary, Queen of Scots. See Harris, ‘Idea of Lapidary Medicine’, 4 and 141. 56 Stephenson, ‘From Marvelous Antidote to the Poison of Idolatry’. 57 For Hernández at Guadalupe, see Varey et al., Searching for the Secrets of Nature, xv. For Díaz, see his Tratado. 58 López Austin, Human Body and Ideology, 337 and 340. See also Ragot, Les au-delàs aztèques, 127–40.

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illnesses […] [like] gout and paralysis, diseases they were also able to cure’.59 Although the Tlaloc-jade–gout-piedra de ijada connection is tenuous, it is possible that in the chaotic, contentious early decades of the viceroyalty of New Spain, precious jade, including the Tlaloc figures found in the Templo Mayor, emerged as a bearer of an amalgamated indigenous and European belief about efficacious lapidary medicine.60 Two pieces of evidence support my jade-as-gout-stone hypothesis. The first comes from the Codex de la Cruz Badiano, a 1552 herbal composed by two indigenous converts to Christianity who worked and studied at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco (Mexico): the physician Martín de la Cruz, who likely dictated the text in Nahuatl, and Juan Badiano, who translated it into Latin.61 The manuscript was dedicated to Francisco de Mendoza, the son of the first viceroy of New Spain, and, according to an inscription, was later in the possession of Diego de Cortavila, the apothecary of El Escorial at the end of Philip II’s life.62 In the codex, Cruz describes a topical treatment for podagra, or gout of the foot.63 The lotion features various herbs, plants and barks, along with ground-up pearl and emerald (smaradgus in the original Latin). Given the mid-sixteenth-century confusion of the terms plasma, emerald plasma and emerald, this last substance may have actually been quetzalitzli, the emerald-green jade that Sahagún says ‘attracts things when rubbed’ and that Hernández calls piedra de los riñones.64 If the codex was in the possession of Cortavila by 1597, when he was appointed apothecary of El Escorial, he may have consulted it, and with Monardes’ and Hernández’s works in mind, suggested that Philip use his New Spanish greenstone idol to ease not just his colic, but also his gout pain. This notion of jade as gout stone is further supported by a 1597 document in which the royal scribe Gaspar Ramírez testified that he had a greenstone with white spots, sent from Seville ‘for the service of your Majesty’, to be used ‘for the remedy of gout’.65 Since Seville was the port through which all Spanish trade with the Americas was conducted, it is likely that this stone arrived there from New Spain. Moreover, its white spots suggest that it was an example of Hernández’s jade piedra de los riñones, the best of which, he said, had flecks or spots that were white like milk. Ramírez, like Monardes, provided evidence for the stone’s efficacy. ‘The said stone’, he writes, ‘has 59 López Austin, Human Body and Ideology, 335 and 340. 60 Sahagún identifies another type of ‘mottled green and white’ stone, xiuhtomoltetl, that could be placed in a liquid and drunk or worn as a bracelet to heal people struck by lightning or who suffer from psychosis or heart congestion. See Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 11, ch. 7, 188–89. 61 Cruz and Badianus, Badianus Manuscript, 12. The body of the text is interspersed with Nahuatl terms, and both Latin and Nahuatl glosses accompany the illustrations. 62 Rey Bueno, ‘Juntas de herbolarios’, 246–48 and 256. For more on the codex, see Gimmel, ‘Reading Medicine’. 63 Cruz and Badianus, Badianus Manuscript, 266–67. 64 Ibid., 60. 65 Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Madrid, protocolo 1194, fol. 1452.

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medicinal virtue, which many gouty people to whom the said stone has been applied have experienced.’66 However, the stone in the Ramírez document appears to be neither an ‘idol’, nor the idol in Philip’s inventory. Nevertheless, the document suggests that by the end of the sixteenth century in Spain, Mesoamerican jade was believed to be a remedy for gout, and that Philip may have been one of the ‘gouty people’ willing to submit to the stone’s healing power. In summary, at the time of his death, Philip possessed at least two New Spanish greenstones, as indicated by his inventory, that were good for la ijada. One was an ‘idol’ carved with a head, while the other was apparently unworked. A third stone, good for la gota, was sent to Philip in 1597 (though it does not appear in his post-mortem inventory). It is tempting to identify Diego de Cortavila as the figure who suggested that Philip use his greenstones medicinally, especially because he arrived at El Escorial the year before the king’s death, at a time when his chronic conditions had become acute. However, this evidence is circumstantial. Moreover, it is unlikely that Cortavila was involved in the acquisition of the gout stone. It arrived in Madrid by 11 January 1597, too early in the year for Cortavila to have sourced it. Acknowledging these caveats, we do know that Cortavila (and others) would have had access to both Hernández’s volumes and also the codex, the former at the library of El Escorial and the latter either there or in Madrid. Thus Cortavila was just one of the medical professionals in the service of the king who may have encouraged him to use Mesoamerican jade medicinally. Hernández himself could have done so as early as the late 1570s. This being said, none of the documents or texts I have discussed explicitly state that Philip used his New Spanish idol to ease his colic, stones or gout. What we can say is that in his desperation and agony, and with the advice of his physicians, he – at the very least – may have thought about it. Moreover, the ever-pious Philip, the great collector of healing relics who was praised as Solomonic in his wisdom, may have been particularly adept at transforming a pagan American ‘idol’ into metaphysically powerful Spanish medicine.67 The Spanish looting and disinterment of ancient jades uprooted Mesoamerican ‘idolatry’, and the mid-sixteenth-century transformation of these ‘idols’ into medicine furthered their desacralization. Indeed, the suppression of jade’s ritual character, coupled with its medicalization, severed the continuity of cultural, political and cosmic power that the Aztecs associated with the mineral (though, as I’ve suggested, echoes of Aztec use and belief resound in the Spanish sources). That this feat was achieved without materially destroying the jade ‘idols’, but instead through ontological means – that is, a shift in thought – would have been the ultimate repudiation of American idolatry, and a testament to Catholic Spain’s successful spiritual conquest of the New World. 66 Ibid. 67 See Porreño, Dichos y hechos.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Aviñon, Juan de, Sevilla medicina (Seville: Andrés de Burgos, 1545). Codex Mendoza, 1542, Bodleian Library, MS.Arch.Selden A.1. Cruz, Martinus de la and Juannes Badianus, The Badianus Manuscript: Codex Barberini, Latin 241, Vatican Library, trans. Emily Walcott Emmart (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940). Díaz, Francisco, Tratado de todas las enfermedades de los riñones, vejiga y carnosidades de la verga (Madrid, 1588), ed. Rafael Mollá y Rodrigo (Madrid: Julio Cosano, 1922). Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, I (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1942). Durán, Diego, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de la Tierra Firme, II (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1967). Hernández, Francisco, Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan recebidos en el uso de Medicina en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Casa de la Viuda de Diego Lopez Davalos, 1615). Los inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial [The inventories of Charles V and the imperial family], 3 vols., ed. Fernando Checa Cremades (Madrid: Fernando Villaverde, 2010). Inventarios reales: bienes muebles que pertenecieron a Felipe II, ed. F.J. Sánchez Cantón, Archivo Documental Español 10.1 (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1956–59). Martínez, José Luis (ed.) Documentos cortesianos, I (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990). Molina, Alonso de, Aquí comiença un vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Mexico City: Casa de Juan Pabloa, 1555). Molina, Alonso de, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Mexico City: Casa de Antonio de Espinosa, 1571). Monardes, Nicolas, Dos libros: el vno trata de todas las cosas q[ue] trae[n] de n[uest]ras Indias Occide[n]tales, que siruen al vso de medicina (Seville, 1565). Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de, Sumario de la natural y general historia de las Indias (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950). Porreño, Baltasar, Dichos y hechos del señor Rey Don Felipe Segundo, el prudente, potentísimo y glorioso monarca de las Españas y de las Indias, ed. Paloma Cuenca (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2001). Sahagún, Bernardino de, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 1963).

Secondary Sources Berdan, Frances F. ‘The Economics of Aztec Luxury Trade and Tribute’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone (ed.), The Aztec Templo Mayor (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1987), 161–83. Broda, Johanna, ‘The Provenience of the Offerings: Tribute and Cosmovision’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone (ed.), The Aztec Templo Mayor (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1987), 211–56. Eire, Carlos M.N, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). FitzHugh, Elizabeth West, ‘Jade’, in Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, 2019, www.oxfordartonline. com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T043200 (accessed 5 February 2019). Gimmel, Millie, ‘Reading Medicine in the Codex de la Cruz Badiano’, Journal of the History of Ideas 69.2 (2008): 169–92. Griffin, Gillett G., ‘Formative Guerrero and Its Jade’, in Frederick W. Lange (ed.), Precolumbian Jade: New Geological and Cultural Interpretations (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1993), 203–10. Harris, Nichola E., ‘The Idea of Lapidary Medicine: Its Circulation and Practical Applications in Medieval

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and Early Modern England: 1000–1750’, PhD diss., Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 2009. Holohan, Kate E., ‘Collecting the New World at the Spanish Habsburg Court, 1519–1700’, PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2015. Lazure, Guy, ‘Possessing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II’s Relic Collection at the Escorial’, Renaissance Quarterly 60.1 (2007): 58–93. López Luján, Leonardo, ‘Echoes of a Glorious Past: Mexica Antiquarianism’, in Alain Schnapp (ed), World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013). López Luján, Leonardo, The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, I, trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1988). López Luján, Leonardo, The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Maffie, James, Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2014). Matos Motecuhzoma, Eduardo, ‘Symbolism of the Templo Mayor’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone (ed.), The Aztec Templo Mayor (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1987), 185–209. Myers, Kathleen Ann, Fernández de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007). Puerto, Javier, La leyenda verde: naturaleza, sanidad y ciencia en la corte de Felipe II, 1527–1598 (Valladolid: Consejeria de Educacion y Cultura, Junta de Castilla y Leon, 2003). Ragot, Nathalie, Les au-delàs aztèques (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000). Rey Bueno, Mar, ‘Juntas de herbolarios y tertulias espagíricas: el círculo cortesano de Diego de Cortavila (1597–1657)’, Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam 24 (2004): 243–67. Rey Bueno, Mar, ‘La Mayson pour Distiller des Eaües at El Escorial: Alchemy and Medicine at the Court of Philip II, 1556–1598’, Medical History Supplement 29 (2009): 26–39. Saville, Marshall H., The Goldsmith’s Art in Ancient Mexico, Indian Notes and Monographs, no. 7 (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1920). Seitz, Russell, George E. Harlow, Virginia B. Sisson and Karl Taube, ‘“Olmec Blue” and Formative Jade Sources: New Discoveries in Guatemala’, Antiquity 75.290 (2001): 687–88. Stephenson, Marcia, ‘From Marvelous Antidote to the Poison of Idolatry: The Transatlantic Role of Andean Bezoar Stones during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, Hispanic American Historical Review 90.1 (2010): 3–39. Taube, Karl A., ‘The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion’, Ancient Mesoamerica 16 (2005): 23–50. Taube, Karl A. and Reiko Ishihara-Brito, ‘From Stone to Jewel: Jade in Ancient Maya Religion and Rulership’, in Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito and Alexandre Tokovinine (eds.), Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2012), 134–53. Taube, Karl A., Virginia Sisson, Russell Seitz and George Harlow, ‘The Sourcing of Mesoamerican Jade: Expanded Geological Reconnaissance in the Motagua Region, Guatemala’, in Karl A. Taube (ed.), Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2004), 203–20,. Thouvenot, Marc, Chalchihuitl: le jade chez les Aztèques (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1982). Umberger, Emily, ‘Antiques, Revivals, and References to the Past in Aztec Art’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 13 (spring 1987): 62–105. Varey, Simon, Rafael Chabrán and Dora B. Weiner (eds.), Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).

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About the Author Kate E. Holohan is the Assistant Curator for Academic Engagement at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University. In 2015–16, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She completed her dissertation, ‘Collecting the New World at the Spanish Habsburg Court, 1519–1700’, at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, in 2015.

Epilogue Caroline Walker Bynum Ever since John Toews’ essay ‘Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn’ in the American Historical Review in 1987, cultural historians have seen themselves as turning, re-turning and turning beyond.1 Recently the turning has speeded up, sometimes propelling us from one turn to another so quickly that we hardly have time to consolidate the advantages of a new emphasis. Nonetheless, turn we must, and surely this volume, ably compiled by Suzanna Ivanič, Mary Laven and Andrew Morrall, represents in two elements of its very title (‘materiality’ and ‘world’) what might be considered the most important new directions of the past twenty years: the material turn and the global turn.2 In a productive re-evaluation of what we should focus on in studying culture, anthropologists, art historians, historians, sociologists and students of religion have turned not to reject textual evidence but to add to it what they variously call ‘thing theory’, ‘the material turn’ and ‘object-oriented ontology’. Building on the ideas of the anthropologist Alfred Gell, whose most influential work on the agency of objects appeared just after his untimely death in 1997, and the approach of sociologist Bruno Latour, who seemed to reject many current ideas of a division between subject and object, this turn propelled scholars to new definitions of what they studied. For art historians, the new theories broadened what was once understood as art (painting, sculpture and sometimes decorative or decorated objects such as cabinets and altarpieces) to include all crafted things and indeed some (such as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades) that are not reworked by an artist or craftsman but simply relocated and relabelled.3 For students of religion, the focus involved a move away from the study of doctrines (which not all so-called ‘religions’ seem to have) to consideration of practices, performances and rituals (which seem to be found in some form in all 1 Toews, ‘Intellectual History’. The linguistic turn was, of course, far older than the turn beyond it. See Rorty, ed., Linguistic Turn. 2 At the time I wrote this epilogue I had not seen the essay by Vivian B. Mann, who graciously stepped in at the last minute, and so could not incorporate it in my discussion. 3 Proponents of new approaches, such as object-oriented ontology, thing theory and various sorts of ‘new materialism’, do not agree on what this material turn should be. I discuss this and give a bibliography in the introduction titled ‘What’s New about the Medieval?’ in the new edition of my Resurrection of the Body, see esp. n. 15. Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_epil

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societies, perhaps even primate ones). The approach thus avoided a reduction of ‘religion’ to a set of beliefs, an approach that had been rejected somewhat confusedly as ‘Protestant-izing’, by scholars going back at least to Wilfred Cantwell Smith.4 It also gave new importance and agency to objects, for it is difficult to imagine a ritual without objects (whether the skewers with which dervishes pierce their cheeks or the amber beads with which some early sixteenth-century Lutherans still prayed –cases discussed in Sara Kuehn’s and Rachel King’s essays above). In an impressive recent study by historians of Europe and the Mediterranean, even natural objects such as dust or stone (for example, the bits of rock from the Holy Land now revered at the Vatican as relics) are included in the theorizing of religion.5 Broadening the understanding of culture to place increased emphasis on material things has quite naturally fed into the global turn. The study of trading networks, like the new interest in how bodies of water connect regions, inevitably involves questions about the transport and movement of objects.6 How, for example, do silkworms and silk and the textiles woven from it join together far-flung points not only through the physical contacts of producers, merchants and traders but also through the information and the skills that travel with objects? 7 How is culture transferred and absorbed – as well as destroyed and buried – through war and conquest, a process clearly seen in figures such as the Virgin of Copacabana (discussed in Gabriela Ramos’s essay above) that fuse the desires and values of very different cultures in complex ways. The global turn has political roots as well. Painfully aware of how distorting such concepts as, for example, ‘the Orient’ or ‘Japanese feudalism’ can be when they impose European models as normative or universal, historians of Europe have over the past twenty years struggled to pay greater attention to the rest of the globe while avoiding a Eurocentrism that uses European categories and concepts to analyze it. Such self-awareness of necessity brings with it new sophistication about the nature of comparison.8 When Ulinka Rublack writes a book on clothes in the renaissance, she considers parallels to Chinese dress, with due attention to differences in chronology between East and West.9 The 500th anniversary celebration of the Lutherjahr of 1517 required attention to a global reformation that carefully differentiates influence, borrowing, resistance and parallel developments.10 It can be argued that both the new turns are especially appropriate not only for analyzing but also for characterizing the early modern period. I have argued that the late Middle Ages, especially the fifteenth century, saw increased anxiety over 4 See Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture, and Smith, Faith and Belief. 5 Bartal et al., eds., Natural Materials. 6 On the recent interest in studying bodies of water as connecting cultures, see Bynum, ‘Perspectives, Connections’. 7 See, for example, Weigert, ‘Interwoven Globe’, and Nagel, Some Discoveries of 1492. 8 On the stimulus to rethink comparison, see Bynum, ‘Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology’. 9 Rublack, Dressing Up. 10 See, for example, Marshall, Reformation, and Hawley, ‘Four Churches’.

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religious materiality as popular, lay groups such as the Lollards in England attacked images in the fear that they not only diverted attention from the inner response to God’s word but also might well be inhabited by demons. Catholic preachers castigated both disrespect for and excessive reliance on images and relics of the saints. Surely such reactions raged with increased force in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries all over Europe and abroad in the mission fields. By the seventeenth century, religious objects such as stained glass in Christian churches and the statues of Mezo-American tribes were smashed and their adherents sometimes executed, yet the ‘idols’ of the heathen (such as Philip II’s jade from the new world discussed by Kate E. Holohan above) were often appropriated with confidence in their power. In Protestant churches, where doctrinal considerations sternly forbade images and objects, placing confidence above all in the preached word, the material crept back again in the form of Commandment tables, shaped into elaborate figural compositions that look like nothing so much as the forbidden chalices or crosses.11 Whether as Islamic calligraphy, Christian amulets or the palm-leaf books of Buddhism, the textual itself became material. People died – and killed – for it not only as an idea but also as a thing. In these essays, the global turn can also be understood as responding to a distinctive characteristic of the early modern world. Although scholars now realize that there was more travel, exploration and colonization of the ‘Other’ in the European Middle Ages than a conventional picture suggests, there is no question that what used to be called ‘the age of exploration’ in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries was characterized by the greater connection of the regions of the globe. Objects transported and challenged cultures in new ways.12 So interconnected did societies become that, as Abigail Krasner Balbale argues above, Arabic could be interpreted to provide a Christian pre-identity for early modern Spain and, as John-Paul A. Ghobrial’s essay shows, the seventeenth-century compilation by a Capuchin missionary, pseudonymously known as Febvre, could use the practices of Eastern Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire as ammunition against European Protestants. In the early modern world, practices of far-flung geographical areas could seem less ‘other’ than some practices at home. Nonetheless, there is an underlying question that this volume also raises, a question that recent scholarship has addressed only obliquely or implicitly. What makes ‘materiality’ ‘religious’? In other words, put very simply, how do we choose what objects to include in a study of ‘religious materiality’? Clearly not every object qualifies for inclusion, but why, therefore, have these things been chosen? Several of the essays in this collection self-consciously test the limits of the category. Suzanna 11 See the Commandment table from Roggenstede, reproduced in Hamburger, Script as Image, 58. For other examples, see Barber and Boldrick, eds., Art under Attack, 50–51. 12 See Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things. The collection reflects the global turn in early modern studies.

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Ivanič’s discussion of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II impels us to ask whether a quartz statue of Mary Magdalene is ‘religious’ because the woman it represents is known through Christian stories. Wisely, Ivanič’s answer is not that the figure is religious because of references in a Christian text but rather that the Mary figure is religious because thinkers in the period, using neo-Platonic and astrological conceptions of the universe, understood all things as imbued with the power of the heavens. This is an acute perception of a certain strand of early modern thought, but it then poses the question of whether we must say that any object collected in Rudolf’s ‘wonder cabinet’ – or indeed any material object at all – is religious, because, according to such a philosophy, all objects are imbued with a more than mundane significance? If this were so, we would perhaps need to search for ‘religious objects’ in whitewashed Calvinist churches that explicitly rejected such things, for Calvin too had a lyrical and profound sense of God as revealed in the entire natural world.13 Similarly, we can ask, as Rachel King’s study does, at least implicitly, whether we understand the amber beads that become necklaces and bracelets in later sixteenth-century Prussia as ‘religious’ because they carry some trace of their former use as prayer beads or because (a very different argument) all objects valued as conspicuous consumption have a heightened aura. These are not easy questions to resolve, nor can they be answered by studying any single case. What these essays suggest, however, is that we seem to assume that ‘religious materiality’ describes significant objects, objects somehow charged, active, powerful, saturated with meaning, such objects as the wax or wooden or paper ex-votos that represent the site of a cure or carry its story, the ashes or bodies of the dead whether in Venice or Tibet, the book or box in which some instantiation of the holy is understood to reside. 14 We must then ask why we study these things rather than ashes from the fireplace, the wax of birthday candles, or the boxes in which matches or soap powder or cigarettes come? What makes these particular ashes or boxes, this wax, powerful? Does the repurposed spice-box the editors speak of in the opening pages of this volume become religious – that is, change in some way ontologically – when it is repurposed as a reliquary, or is the repurposing merely an example of common or ordinary reuse? How would we know? To ask such questions is not, of course, to ask: is there a god operating through this stuff? Rather it is to ask: how can we characterize the charge or significance or power these things have that soap powder or fireplace ashes or ordinary boxes don’t have? And can we enumerate, even partially, the characteristics in them or attributed to them that might induce in the culture that employs or reveres them a recognition of their special power or significance? 13 Calvin, Institutes, I, bk. 1, chs. 1–6, pp. 35–66. 14 As I discuss further below, other collections of essays such as Morgan’s (see note 4) and Daston’s (see note 17) raise the same question.

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Perhaps we can begin to answer the question by considering the variety of ways in which the authors of these essays understand the objects they study to be, or to become, or to be made powerful. For it is one of the achievements of this volume that each author takes the materiality he or she studies with full attention to its specific characteristics. We understand the significance of the stuff itself with and in which individuals or groups or societies enact significant moments. Wax can mimic the tint and malleability of flesh (healthy, healed or dying). Colour (the gold of amber, the greenish yellow of New World jade, the grey-to-blue gradations in quartz) can signal specific kinds of political authority or medicinal effects. The sensuous shapes of Arabic letters (even when illegible or in fact gibberish) can be understood to transmit theurgic power. Ulinka Rublack and I have claimed for the later Middle Ages and Renaissance that ‘many […] artefacts [in this period] gained their significance and attractiveness by drawing attention to the features of their matter’.15 To give only a single supporting example from this volume: Rachel King describes the rosaries she studies as activating a response by their very tactility. As a number of art historians have recently shown, the nature of the physical itself – gold, light, smoke – can impel or empower. Cognitive scientists have even argued that certain materials can be demonstrated to have specific effects in the brain. Yet not only does such research leave many questions unanswered; it is clear that the stuff of things does not act without mediation, enhancement or activation.16 As Mary Laven, Maria Alessandra Chessa and Alexandra Bamji understand, the physical characteristics of wax, wood and paper display charged life events only when they are used or performed within complex social and ritual ways. Although writings and symbols may enhance the sacrality of the paper ex-votos Chessa describes or the amulets Balbale studies, writing and the texts which embody it bestow power only to those in some way familiar with them. The book Spaniards revere as holy, indeed as proof of their religious power, is, in Ramos’s account, simply tossed aside by the Andean chieftain Atahualpa who is unfamiliar with such things. It is not only what things are but what they do, and what is done with them, that makes them religiously powerful. The dog’s tooth in the popular tale described by Hildegard Diemberger in this volume is effective not because of the DNA of the enamel but because of the devotion of the mother who worships it as the Buddha’s tooth. Indeed, as John-Paul Ghobrial points out, it is often fear of or ambivalence about power as well as power itself that matter signals. The wax of the death masques Bamji studies bodies forth the paradoxical existence of the recently dead body as both self and no longer self.

15 Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, 43, quoted in Rachel King’s article, n. 61. And see Bynum, Christian Materiality. 16 See note 3 above.

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These essays thus tell us much about how religious materiality both acts and is itself empowered. Traditionally a number of religions have included rituals of consecration by clergy, elders or ritual specialists – the setting aside of materials either to be offered to the gods (for example, some of the meat of sacrifice described in the Hebrew Bible) or to be especially empowered to convey their aura (for example, the bread and wine blessed by Christ at the last supper). Diemberger refers to ritual consecration of Buddhist relics by princess Chokyi Dronma and their distribution as ashes (tsa tsa) – an act parallel to Catholic Christian consecration of the eucharist (much fought over in the sixteenth century by Protestant reformers) and, by the late Middle Ages, of the relics of Christian saints as well. Rituals of consecration are mentioned in these essays infrequently, but they are often crucial in the activation of religious materiality (not to mention in the maintenance of social and religious hierarchy). The power not only to possess but also to activate holy matter could spill over to rulers, missionaries and elites but it could also, in social and religious reversal, make it possible for the relatively humble – such as Yupanqui, who carved the Virgin of Copacabana in Ramos’s essay – to gain status in the world. These essays mention many other performances that give agency to matter. Indeed, the Virgin of Copacabana herself needed a miracle to activate her power by turning her from what the Spaniards (and perhaps the Andeans as well) saw as crude to what they understood as beautiful. Direct intervention by the holy can activate stuff, with or without ritual preparation. The authors of our essays, however, detail many ritual acts, especially those associated with burial and worship, that enliven objects through prayer, preaching or song. In her essay, which contains the richest trove of types of religious materiality in this volume, Diemberger refers to diverse ways in which holy matter is activated. The distribution of body parts (ashes or bits of bone of saintly followers of the Buddha) is understood as conveying the power of the whole – a religious move sometimes referred to in the Western relic cult as ‘the devotional logic of presence’. In parallel to Christian Catholic understandings of the eucharist as eating god, power is spread by actual incorporation of a body into other matter (blood added into ink). Bodily contact, as when people are touched by books or relics, also spreads sacrality. In Diemberger’s account, even sound activates matter; recital and reading aloud bring a text to agency. In Kuehn’s account of dervishes, we also find the activation of matter by sound (not only song but also weeping) and discover as well another example of the extreme performance of ingesting the holy. The amulets Balbale studies and the Turpiana parchment and Lead Books of Sacromonte that imitate them are activated by the scripts and symbols on them – that is, they have their own aura – but they also create the identities of those who receive and employ them. Thus, religiously significant objects can only be understood if historicized and located in space, yet there is something special, charged, active, about them all.

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How then should we characterize religious materiality? Can we say anything in general about how it is used or how it acts in the world? Recent theorizing of objects and things offers less aid in answering the question than we might expect. All too often cross-cultural studies of religion seem to rest content once they assert that religion is performance or practice more than (or other than) belief, text, theology. But what is it about these particular things that makes them revered, contested, performed with, fearfully consumed or rejected? In the introduction to a collection titled Things that Talk, which is similar to this volume although focused on significant cultural objects generally, Lorraine Daston has written: ‘Their thingness lends vivacity and reality to new constellations of experience that break old molds […] [T]he new thing becomes a magnet for intense interest, a paradox incarnate. It is richly evocative; it is eloquent. Only when the paradox becomes prosaic do things that talk subside into speechlessness.’17 While this description may, as others have pointed out, make the metaphor for a significant object too verbal and textual, removing the thingy-ness of things by the analogy to speech, the passage at least provides a clue about what we need conceptually in order to characterize the religiously charged object: the idea of paradox. For religious materiality is intrinsically paradoxical. As David Morgan has perceptively pointed out, things are instruments we use but they are also recalcitrant.18 We employ them to affect and effect our goals in the world, but they push back against us in their thingy-ness, challenging our expectations of society and culture. They present the world to us and enable us to manipulate it exactly because they are what they are. Amber is tactile and gold; blood is life when it circulates in the body and danger when it is spilled. Yet they are not only, or primarily, their whatness. Amber is wealth and glory, a mineral special to one region, not many; blood is lineage and power, yet it is also pollution and death. The layers of meaning that are laid upon things by human invocation and ritual, by nature in all its diversity and power, or by the gods themselves through miracle or creation, are contradictory and simultaneous. That is what paradox is – self and other, presence and absence – inhering together, not seriatim. What the verbal or textual can never fully be because it must be in some sense linear and narrative (although ritual often struggles to overcome this), the thing is. For example, preaching and praying may necessitate reference to the dead person as present or not; but the wax of the death masque can be the person still, both palpably gone and yet here. Even for Puritans in Europe, who struggled to erase the stuff-ness of religion, replacing it by ‘the word and The Word’, text tended to become thing, as if thingy-ness is necessary to the encounter with the other that the holy must always be.19 Whether the tsa tsa of 17 Daston, ‘Introduction: Speechless’, in Daston, ed., Things that Talk, 24. I have written about the importance of paradox in analysing religion in Bynum, ‘Why Paradox?’. See also Christian Materiality, 37–44, 284–86 and 293–94, n. 32. 18 Morgan, ‘Materiality, Social Analysis, and the Study of Religion’, 73. 19 See note 11 above for examples of how the non-material word becomes material in early modern Protestantism.

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a follower of Buddha, a tiny paper amulet eaten to take in its power, jade that may heal both because of its colour and because of the face of the idol carved on its end, or the footprints left in a cave by a Buddhist spirit master or on the Mount of Olives by the ascending Christ – these things are all encountered in themselves as stuff. But they all not only signal but also embody a something beyond – something departed yet present, destroyable yet permanent. I think Lorraine Daston is right; significant things lose their charge, their power, when they become prosaic rather than paradoxical, when we no longer see them as anything other than what they ordinarily are. Perhaps the spice-box our editors describe becomes religious, sacred, holy, when something holy is placed inside. But we must remember that the holy so placed is itself material. It is a bit of a saint or of some cloth or earth or liquid that has touched that saint. Religious materiality is stuff that is simultaneously stuff and not stuff. The range of papers in this volume tells us something about the challenges an early modern world experienced because of new access to material things. It also helps us to make some progress toward theorizing religious materiality itself.

Bibliography Primary Sources Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics 21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).

Secondary Sources Barber, Tabitha and Stacy Boldrick (eds.), Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm (London: Tate Publishing, 2013). Bartal, Renana, Neta Bodner and Bianca Kühnel (eds.), Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500–1500 (London: Routledge, 2017). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology; or, Why Compare?’, History of Religions 53.4 (2014): 341–68. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Perspectives, Connections and Objects: What’s Happening in History Now?’, Daedalus 138.1 (2009): 71–86. Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336, American Lectures on the History of Religions 15 (2nd ed., New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Why Paradox? The Contradictions of my Life as a Scholar’, Catholic Historical Review 98.3 (2012): 433–55. Daston, Lorraine (ed.), Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New York: Zone Books, 2004). Findlen, Paula (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800 (London: Routledge, 2013). Hamburger, Jeffrey, Script as Image, Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014). Hawley, John Stratton, ‘The Four Churches of the Reformation’, Modern Asian Studies 52.5 (2018): 1457–85. Marshall, Peter, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Morgan, David, ‘Materiality, Social Analysis, and the Study of Religion’, in David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge, 2009).

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Morgan, David (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge, 2009). Nagel, Alexander, Some Discoveries of 1492: Eastern Antiquities and Renaissance Europe (Groningen: Gerson Lectures Foundation, 2013). Rorty, Richard (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Rublack, Ulinka, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Rublack, Ulinka, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, Past & Present 219.1 (May 2013): 41–85. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Faith and Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). Toews, John E., ‘Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience’, American Historical Review 92.4 (1987): 879–907. Weigert, Laura, ‘Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800’, Art Bulletin 97.3 (2015): 342–45.

About the Author Caroline Walker Bynum is Professor Emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study and Columbia University. Her most recent book is Christian Materiality (2011). Recent articles include ‘Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology; or, Why Compare?’, History of Religions 53 (2014); ‘“Crowned with Many Crowns”: Nuns and their Statues in Late-Medieval Wienhausen’, Catholic Historical Review 101 (2015); ‘Are Things Indifferent? How Objects Change our Understanding of Religious History’, German ­History 34 (2016); and ‘Holy Beds’, Gesta 55 (2016).

Index Achatschale 179 agate 179, 186–88, Plate 9.1; see also quartz agave 145, 148 Agnes, saint 147 n. 27 shrine of 39, 47; see also Giovannibuono of Mantua Agnus Dei 22, 41, 144 Agricola, Georg, De natura fosilium 197 Albrecht, duke of Prussia 196–98 Albrecht V, duke of Bavaria 180 alchemy 212 Ali 151, 153–55, 157, 160–61, 164–65 altars 17, 24, 110, 125, 140–41, 146, 148, Plate 7.2 amber 23, 26, 193–94, 196–201, 202–205, 202, 203, 248, 250–51, 253, Plates 10.1 and 10.4 Ambras collection 178, 180 amulets 19, 144–45, 155, 249 metal 212, 219–22, 219, 225 textual 211–26, 220, 251–52, 254 Andes 137–48, 240; see also Inca angels 213, 215, 218 animal sacrifice 108, 162, 217–18, 252 animal skins 156–57, Plate 8.2 Anne, saint 198 anointing 115 apothecaries 36–38, 41–43, 127, 241, Plate 1.1 Appadurai, Arjun 18 Aristotelianism 212 Armenians 107, 109, 112, 114 ascetic practices 27, 151–52; see also food and flagellation ashes 112 see also cremation ʿĀshik Chelebi 151 Ashura 151, 159–65, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171 aspersorium (liturgical cup) 25, 183–84, 185 astrology 212, 225, 250 Atahualpa, Inca emperor 137–38, 251 Augustine, saint 147 Augustinians 38, 140–41, 145–7; see also Gavilán, Alonso Ramos and Giovannibuono of Mantua Aurifaber, Andreas [Goldschmidt] 198, 200 History of Amber 197 automata 179 Aztec 231–36, 241–42 Bacci, Michele 44–45 Badiano, Juan 241–42 Balkan Peninsula 23, 151–71, 200 baptism 88, 108, 115 baraka (immaterial blessing) 152, 155, 164, 167, 169–70 Barbara, saint 147 n. 27 Baronius, Cesare 112–13 Baroque 22, 24, 125, 132 Bartholomew, saint 139 Basilica della Santissima Annunziata 43, 45–46, 51–53, 58 Baumgart, Johannes see Pomarius, Johannes beads 23, 193–98, 201–205, 202, 203, 233, 248, 250, Plate 10.4; see also chaplets, paternosters and rosaries

bells 71 n. 7, 105 rimmonim (Torah scroll finials) 85, 87–92, 90, 94–98, Plate 4.2 bezoar stones 25, 177, 183–85, 188, 240 Bible Gospels 111, 139, 200, 224 New Testament 48, 115, 164 n. 25 Old Testament 17, 22, 40, 115, 124, 177, 184, 199 blessings see baraka and jinlab blood 111, 121 n. 7, 160, 162, 164, 187, 217, 252–53 Bodong Chogle Namgyal 71–78, 74 bones 77, 80, 122–23, 122, 133, 223, 252; see also ossuaries and relics books 46–47, 54 n. 19, 137–38, 212, 216, 221, 225, 229, 249–52 see also printing and relics Borgia, San Francesco 121, Plate 6.1 Borromeo, Carlo 124 Bosio, Antonio, Roma Sotterranea 121 Bouillion, Godfrey de 113 brass 86–87, 92, 95, Plates 4.1 and 4.2 bread 109, 115, 124, 252 Brown, Bill 18, 247 Buddha 67–68, 78–81, 252 Buddhism 67–69, 72–74, 77, 81–82, 254 meditation 75–76, 78–80 monasticism 70–71, 79, 82 see also Chokyi Dronma, hermits and relics Bürgi, Jost 180 burial 26, 120–32, 154, 158–59, 252 caskets 77, 121 catafalques 119–20, 122, 129–30, 132 cemeteries 120–21, 123–24, 128–29 sarcophagi 124–25, 159 tombs 111, 113, 121, 122, 124–25, 127, 129 of saints 35, 39, 46–47, 108 Sufi see türbes Bynum, Caroline Walker 15, 17–18, 20–23, 47 n. 53, 81–82, 103, 105–106, 112–113, 116, 130, 144, 178 n. 1 Byzantium 104 Caecilius, saint 223 calligraphy 154, 249; see also levha Calvary 113 Calvinism 108, 114–15, 250 camels 154, 184 candelabra/Hanukkah lamps 86, 95 candles 35–36, 38–39, 42–43, 47, 92, 120, 130, 132; see also torches candlesticks 26, 86, 88, 90, 92 Capuchins 103, 105–8, 111–12, 114, 131, 249; see also Febvre, Michel Carabuco, Cross of 139 cartapesta (papier mâché) 35–36, 56, 62 cartone 51, 54, 56, 59, 62, Plate 2.2 catafalques see burial Catharina of Mecklenburg 196 Catholicism 23, 27, 205, 213, 223, 230, 240

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attitudes to death 120–21, 123, 128, 131 global 106, 137, 140, 184–85, 188 Roman (compared to Eastern) 114–16 cats 127 chaplets 195, 204 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 121, 130, 132, 231–34, 236, 237 n. 37 Charles XI, king of Sweden 201 Chichen Itza (Sacred Cenote) 230, 234 childbirth 144, 147 n. 27, 162, 198 Chokyi Dronma, Tibetan princess 67–73, 69, 75–81, 252, Plate 3.1 Christ 41–2, 46, 60–61, 108–113, 115, 164 n. 25, 179, 186–87, 199, 252, 254; see also Holy Sepulchre Christian II, elector of Saxony 178 Christian, William 22 Cigoli, Ludovico 51–52 circumcision 89, 90, 93, 111 coconut shell 25, 177, 183–85, 185, 188 Codex de la Cruz Badiano 241–42 collections 25, 38, 68, 72–73, 78 104, 199, 216, 222 of Ferdinand of Tyrol (Ambras) 178, 180 of Philip II 229, 234, 236 of Rudolf II (Kunstkammer) 24–25, 177–88, 250 see also museums colour symbolism 46, 55, 58, 160, 162, 186–87, 201, 223, 230–32, 251, 254 confession 110, 115, 123 confirmation 115 confraternities 121, 129, 131–32, 140–41, 143–44, 146, 148 consecration 252 Buddhist 75–77 Eastern Christian 115 Jewish 92, 95 Pre-Columbian 233 convents 24, 129, 141, 145 conversion Christian 24, 112–13, 193, 211, 213, 223, 226; see also Moriscos Islamic 23 Pre-Columbian 137–41, 143–44, 148, 241, Plate 7.1 Copacabana, Our Lady of 24, 137–47, 142, 248, 252, Plates 7.1 and 7.2 Coptic Christianity 107, 109, 112 coral 35 Correr, Francesco Antonio, doge 126, 130, Plate 6.2 Cortavila, Diego de 241–42 Cortés, Hernán 231–32, 236 Cosimo I de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany 130 cosmologies 155, 181–82, 188; see also teotl Counter-Reformation 22–23, 103, 116, 132, 194 Crafftheim, Crato von 200 cremation 77, 123, 129–30, 250 crucifixes 35, 42, 60–62 crusades 110, 113, 196 crystal see quartz darḅ al-ṣilāḥ (symbolic paraphernalia for ritual piercing) 166–69, 167–69 Daston, Lorraine 250 n. 14, 253–54

Dávila, Diego Fernández 143–44 De Boodt, Anselmus Boetius 187–88 decay 17, 27, 119, 121, 123, 128, 133 dervishes 22 n. 38, 152, 156–57, 164–67, 169–70, 169, 248, 252 Dharma, king of the 75, 77, 79 dhikr (remembrance of God’s unity and transcendence) 155–56, 158, 161, 164, 166–72, 168–69, 171 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 231, 233, 236 Didi-Huberman, Georges 40–41, 47, 52 disease 126, 239–42 plague 25, 59, 60, 197, 200 doges, Venetian 121–122, 122, 124–31, 126, Plate 6.2 dogs 81, 111, 143, 251 Dominicans 43 n. 25, 232; see also Durán, Diego dress 35, 62, 68, 80, 120, 143–44, 180, 199, 219, 232, 248 ecclesiastical vestments 20, 104, 109, 115, 131 ḥaydarīyā (Rifāʿī dhikr vest) 164–66, 165 see also jewellery Duffy, Eamon 20 Duncker, Gregor 196 Durán, Diego 232–33 Eastern Christianity 103–16, 249 effigies 36, 40, 43, 45, 54, 55 n. 22, 57, 63, 120, 122, 128, 131–32, Plate 12.1; see also masks and wax El Escorial 239, 241–42 embalming 120, 127–28 emerald 229–31, 237–38, 239 n. 50, 241; see also jade England 127, 194–95, 201, 249 Ephesus, Council of (431) 109 epigraphy 153, 216, 219 n. 29, 224 Erizzo, Francesco, doge 125, 126 Eucharist 109–11, 115, 145, 252; see also bread and wine exhumation 119, 123, 128–29 ex-votos 19, 27, 35, 37–48, 37, 51–55, 58–64, 58, 60, 61, 250–51, Plates 1.2, 1.3, 2.2 anatomical 35, 37, 39–40, 47 n. 53, 58 see also paper and wax exotica 184 Fatima 153, 157, 161, 216 feathers 179, 231, 232 Febvre, Michel 103–16, 249 Theatre de la Turquie 103, 105–106, 109, 112, 114–16 Ferdinand of Tyrol 178, 180 fire 39, 48, 77, 112–13, 116, 166, 250 fishing 183–84, 199–200, Plate 10.1 flagellation 131 Florence 42–43, 45, 51–53, 57 Florentine Codex see Sahagún, Bernardino de food as medicine 239 as offerings 39 as ritual 16, 70, 76, 108, 156, 160, 162, 170 fasts 27, 39, 109–11, 113, 115, 160, 163, 213 feasts 47, 48, 76, 108, 112, 162, 170 see also bread, honey and wine footprints 80, 139, 254 Franciscans 131, 231; see also Sahagún, Bernardino de

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INDEX

Frashëri, Naim 161 Froben, Johann 197 Fröschl, Daniel 178–79 Galen 239 Garcilaso de la Vega 139 Gavilán, Alonso Ramos 140, 147 Gell, Alfred 18–20, 247 George, saint 121 Gessner, Conrad 200 Giovannibuono of Mantua 38–39, 41, 43 n. 24, 47 Giustinian, Marcantonio, doge 131 glass 15, 25, 42, 249 Goa 25, 184–85 Göbel, Severin 199–200 Godfrey de Boullion 113 gold 21, 35, 41, 45, 70, 77, 92, 94, 132, 144–45, 148, 181, 201, 230–33, 236 see also silver gilt Goldschmidt, Andreas see Aurifaber Goldthwaite, Richard 25 Göttler, Christine 40–41 gout 239–42 Gramann, Johann see Poliander, Johann Greek Orthodoxy 107, 112 Gregory the Great, saint 41 hadith (prophetic tradition) 153 n. 4, 157, 163, 215 Hainhoffer, Philipp 178, 201 hair 108, 130, 160, 186, 187, Plate 6.2 hands 36, 37, 51, 54, 57, 104, 216, Plates 1.1 and 1.2 Hasan 153, 154, 157, 161, 164, 169 Havdalah boxes (spice-boxes) 15, 16, 25, 89, 250, 254 ḥaydarīyā (Rifāʿī dhikr vest) see dress Hays, Moses Michael 87, 89 hazzan (rabbi) 87, 94 Heal, Bridget 195 health 120, 126, 144, 197, 200, 204, 239, 251; see also disease, medicine, miraculous healing and poisons hearts 40, 54, 107, 113, 188, 200, 202, 217–18, 238, 241 n. 60, Plate 10.3 burial 125–27, 126 heirlooms 195, 198 heresy 72, 108–109, 111, 114–16, 212–13, 226; see also Inquisition hermits 38, 54, 72, 181, 212 see also Chokyi Dronma Hernández, Francisco 236–38, 240–42 Hoefnagel, Joris 178–79 Holy Land 113, 248; see also Jerusalem Holy Roman Empire 178, 185 Holy Sepulchre 112, 116 Holy water 22, 115, 183, 184; see also aspersorium and baptism honey 41–42, 162 Houtman, Dick 18 Huguenots 108 Husayn 151, 153–54, 157, 160–61, 164–65, 169 Iberian Peninsula, see Spain Ibn Battuta 166 Ibn Khallikan 166 iconography 37, 162, 186, 224

idolatry 137–38, 141, 147, 238, 240, 242 idols 229–30, 236, 238, 240–42, 249, 254 imitation (material) 40, 55, 58, 130, 147, 160, 252 Inca 137–41, 143–44, 146, 251 incense 70, 72 n. 7, 75 indulgences 131, 195, 205 ink 63, 220, 223, 252 Inquisition 123, 211–14, 216–17, 221–25 invocation 38, 155, 211–13, 215, 217 Islam 22–23, 27, 103–11, 114, 151–72, 211, 213–17, 219–20, 223–24, 226, 249 crypto-Islam 212, 223 Jacobs, Fredrika 44–45 jade 25–26, 229–42, 235, 249, 251, 254 Jamnitzer, Christoph 181 jasper 238 Jerusalem 112–13, 223–24; see also Holy Land, Holy Sepulchre Jesuits 24, 121, 205 Jesus see Christ jewels see precious stones jewellers 45, 95 jewellery 23, 143–44, 194, 201–205, 202, 203, 219, 231–32, 250; see also amulets, beads, chaplets, paternosters, rosaries jinlab (blessing) 80 jinn (spirits) 216, 225 Johann Georg I, elector of Saxony 201 John the Evangelist 223–24 Judaism 22–23, 87, 104, 129, 212 Justa, saint 147 n. 27 Karbala (680) 160–62 Keane, Webb 19 Khadija 160 Khevenhüller, Hans, Count 178 kiddush (wine blessing cups) 89 kiss 17, 152, 156, 158–59, 166, 170, 240 Konchog Gyalmo see Chokyi Dronma Kopytoff, Igor 18 Kufic, text 212, 217, 219 Kunstkammer of Rudolf II see collections Kurds 106–107 languages, mystical 216 n. 19, 222, 224–25 lapidaries 187, 239; see also medicine Latour, Bruno 18–19, 247 lead 46, 63–64, 218–26, 252, Plates 11.1 and 11.2 Lead Books of Sacromonte 224–26, 252 Lent 113–14 Lepanto, Battle of (1571) 205 levha (printed calligraphic composition) 155, 167 Libro de dichos maravillosos 217–18, 218, 222 lime 121–23 lions 154, 164, 166 Lodi, Costanzo 38–39 Louis XIV, King of France 107 Lucy, saint 121 lunettes 215–17, 221–22 Luther, Martin 195–96, 198

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RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Lutheranism 22, 193–205, 248 Lyons, Jacques Judah 86–87, 94–95 Magdalena Sibylla, of Prussia, electress of Saxony  201, 204 magic 19, 40, 179, 211–12, 214–19, 221–26, 239 Maimonides 97 Mander, Karel van 178 Margaret, saint 198 Marina, saint 121 Mark, saint 43, 121, 125 Maronites 107, 109–12 marriage 109–110, 113, 115 martyrdom 107, 160, 162, 164, 166, 223 Mary, the Virgin 22, 25, 108, 110–11, 113, 115, 195, 204 adornments of 143–44 depictions of 37, 54, 63, 140–41, 144–47, 179, 195 Mary of Egypt, saint 113 Mary Magdalene 186–88, 250, Plate 9.1 masks 34, 34, 77 n. 20, 232, 234, 237 n. 37, Plate 12.2 death masks 119, 130–32, 251, Plate 6. 2 ‘material turn’, the 15, 27, 247 Mathesius, Johann 199 Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria 178, 180 Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor 178 Maya 230, 232–34 measuring 147 medals 24, 62–64, 89, 144 Medici, family 130, 188 medicine 42, 212, 215, 238–9 lapidary 23, 197, 229–31, 235–42, 251, 253 see also apothecaries meditation 75–76, 78–80, 156, 251; see also prayer Melanchthon, Philipp 196–97 memento mori 121–23 Mendoza, Francisco de 241 Mesoamerica 229–41, 249 metals see brass, gold, lead and silver Mexica 233–34 Meyer, Birgit 18 Mezcala 234, 235 migration 22 n. 38, 23, 85 n. 1, 151–52 mihrab 156, 164–65, 167, 169 Mikveh Israel, synagogue in Philadelphia, PA 87, 89, 91, 97 Milarepa 81 mimesis see imitation miracles 35–39, 44–48, 52, 63, 77 n. 20, 81, 111–13, 140–41, 143, 147, 154, 157, 179, 252–53 healing 19, 35, 47 n. 53, 63, 67, 70, 80, 144, 159, 164 n. 25, 167, 184–85, 188, 242, 251, 254, Plate 1.3; see also saliva mirrors 24, 160–61 mirror-images/writing 153–54, 158, 215 Miseroni, Ottavio 180, 186–87, Plate 9.1 missions, Catholic 24, 103, 106, 109, 112, 138–39, 144, 249, 252 Mocenigo, Alvise II, doge 122, 122, 131 Mocenigo, Alvise III, doge 130 Mocenigo, Alvise IV, doge 130–31 Molina, Alonso de 231, 237–38 Monardes, Nicolas 236–41

Montaigne, Michel de 47 morality 61, 68, 71, 154, 185, 187–88, 199 Morgan, David 18–19, 253 Moriscos 23, 211–26 Moses 111 mosques 111, 223 Motecuhzoma I, Tenocha ruler 233 Motecuhzoma II, Tenocha ruler 231–32, 235 Muhammad, Prophet 151, 153–55, 157, 160, 164 n. 25, 170, 211, 215 museums 103–104, 147, 178, 219, 221, 234 Myers, Myer 85, 87–92, 88, 90, 94–97, Plates 4.1 and 4.2 mysticism 155–57, 162, 166; see also Milarepa and Sufi orders nafs (base soul) 151–52, 154, 157–58, 166–67, 170; see also riyāḍat al-nafs natural philosophy 26, 177–88, 196, 250 Neo-Platonism 181, 250 Ner Tamid (eternal light) 92, 95 Nestorians 109–10, 115 Nicholas of Cusa 113 Nicholas of Tolentino, saint 46, 147, Plate 1.3 Nicholas, saint 121 Noah 162–63 ‘Noche Triste’ (Night of Sorrows) (1520) 236 Nora, Pierre 20 Olmec 232–34 orthodox practices in Christianity 110, 213, 215, 223 in Islam 104, 152 ossuaries 123–24, 129, 132 Ottoman Empire 21–22, 24, 103–108, 111, 116, 127, 151–52, 213, 249 Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de 230–31, 236 paper 26–27, 36, 42–43, 45, 51–54, 56–59, 57, 58, 61, 63, 96, 211, 250–51, Plates 2.1, 2.2, 11.1 production of 55, 59, 62, 64 see also amulets, cartapesta, cartone papier mâché see cartapesta paintings 35, 37, 43–44, 47, 59, 63, 75, 80, 121, 132, 146, 147 n. 26, 229, 247, Plates 1.2, 1.3 and 6.1 paints 26, 36, 38, 44–47, 58–59, 58, 60, 145, 162 parchment 95, 223–26 paternosters 23, 62, 193–94; see also beads, chaplets, rosaries Paul, saint 198 Paul V, pope 130 pearl 233, 241 Pentecost 48, 112 Pesaro, Giovanni, doge 121–22 Philip I, Landgraf of Hesse 199 Philip II, king of Spain 25, 213, 229–31, 234, 236, 238–42, 249 Piemontese, Alessio 62 pilgrimage/pilgrims 25, 39, 41–43, 52, 67, 70, 80–81, 105, 111–13, 140–41, 158 Pizzomano, Antonio, bishop 128 plague 25, 59, 60, 197, 200 Plato 40

INDEX

playing cards 60–62 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 239 poetry 141, 151, 160 n. 21, 161 poisons 161, 164, 177, 184–85, 239 Poliander, Johann [Gramann] 196 Pomian, Krzysztof 182 Pomarius, Johannes [Baumgart] 200–201, 205, Plates 10.1–10.4 Prague 177–78, 186–87 prayer 72, 78, 87, 92–93, 108–109, 111, 115, 138, 146, 155–56, 159, 161, 164, 170, 193–96, 198, 204–205, 248, 250, 252–53; see also chaplets, paternosters and rosaries prayer beads see chaplets, paternosters and rosaries precious stones 17, 25–26, 41, 78–79, 143–44, 177, 182, 186, 229–42, 249–51, 254; see also medicine (lapidary) printing 46–47, 54–55, 59, 63, 71–73, 78–81, 153, 180, 197, 200, Plate 8.1 blocks 81, 216, 219–20, 220, Plate 3.2 prophecies 72, 155, 223–25 Protestantism 19, 23, 27, 103, 114, 116, 129, 138, 213, 223, 248, 249, 252; see also Calvinism, Huguenots and Lutheranism Protestant Reformations 15, 20–21, 193–205, 240, 248 Prussia, Duchy of 193–205, 250 Psalms, Book of 40, 184 purgatory 109 quartz 17, 186, 250–51; see also agate Quiccheberg, Samuel 180, 199 Quran 155, 161, 163 n. 24, 164, 211–12, 215–16, 218, 220–21; see also hadith raven 217 relics, Buddhist 19, 67–68, 73–82, 104, 252 books 23, 27, 67–71, 69, 73, 74, 76, 79–80, 82, 252, Plate 3.2 Christian 104, 121, 198, 225, 239–40, 242, 248–49, 252 reliefs 35, 42, 56, 59, 62–63, 145, 230 reliquaries, Buddhist 70, 77 Christian 15–17, 25, 229, 250 rhinoceros horn 177, 184, 185 Rheticus, Georg 196 rimmonim (bells/Torah scroll finials) 85, 87–92, 90, 94–98, Plate 4.2 rituals 130, 156, 251, 253; see also ascetic practices; darḅ al-ṣilāḥ; food, kiss and touch riyāḍat al-nafs (training the soul) 169–70; see also darḅ al-ṣilāḥ Roch, saint 121 Romituzzo, church in Poggibonsi, Siena 51, 54–57, 59, Plates 2.1 and 2.2 rosaries 22–25, 35, 42, 144–45, 193–205, 251; see also beads, chaplets and paternosters Rublack, Ulinka 204, 248, 251 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 177–88, 250; see also collections Rufina, saint 147 n. 27

261 Sabbath (Jewish) 15, 89 sacraments 88, 108–13, 115, 123, 145, 252 Sahagún, Bernardino de 231, 241 Florentine Codex 232, 240 n. 60 saints 254 Buddhist 252 Christian 35, 39, 41–44, 46–47, 82, 104, 107–108, 113, 115, 121, 125, 128, 138–39, 147, 195, 198, 205, 223, 249 Sufi 158–59 saliva (curative) 164, 167, 169–70, 238 San Bernardino 61 Sant’Agnese, shrine of see Agnes, saint and Giovannibuono of Mantua, Bl. Santa Maria de’ Servi, church in Bologna 60–62 Sanudo, Marin 128 Schlosser, Julius von 52, 55 scorpions 169 Schweinberger, Anton 181 Sedakah, Holy (ledger) 85–87, 88, 96 semahane (ritual space of the tekke) 155–56, 156, 163, 165, 166–69, 167, 168, 169, 171 sex 109, 113 Sexias, family 93–94 Sharia 152, 155, 157 shaykhs 155–58, 159, 162, 164, 166–67, 169–70, 169, 171 Shearith Israel, Congregation of (New York) 26, 85–87, 89–97 Mill Street Synagogue 86, 95 Central Park West, 70th Street Synagogue 86 Crosby Street Synagogue 86 Sikhism 15 Silber, Johannes 182 silver 15, 26, 35, 53–54, 85–89, 144–46, 148, 183, Plates 4.1, 4.2 and 7.2 gilt 179, 183 n. 27, 184, 185 silversmiths 27, 90–91, 90, 95, 184; see also Myers, Myer simulacra 55, 57, 130 Sixtus IV, pope 38 smell 15, 204; see also incense and Havdalah boxes snakes 154, 169 Solomon 216–17, 219, 225 Solomonic script 224–25 song 111, 151, 158, 160, 164, 252 sound 68, 70, 75, 161, 164, 252; see also bells, song, speech and voice Spain 23–24, 211–16, 223–26 speech 68, 71, 73, 75–76, 137, 164, 213, 253; see also invocation and voice spice-boxes see Havdalah boxes Sri Lanka 25, 184 stars 216; see also astrology statues 17, 20, 35, 43 n. 25, 73–75, 74, 81 n. 27 and 29, 104, 146, 186–88, 249–50, Plate 9.1 Stella, Erasmus 197 Stiles, Ezra 92, 94 Stuart, Mary, Lady 204 Sufi orders 23, 155, 158–59, 161 Bektashī 153–54, 160, 162, 164 n. 25 Ḥaydarī 151–52 Naqshbandī 153, 155–59, 163, Plate 8.1 Qādiri 163, 165, 166

262 

RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Rifāʿī 164–65, 167, 167, 168, 170, 171 see also dervishes, shaykhs, tariqa and tasawwuf Sultan Nawruz 151, 159–60 superstition 212, 214–15, 225 supplications 26, 37, 115, 159, 215 swords 151–52, 154, 166–67, 169–70, 169; see also darḅ al-ṣilāḥ synagogues 23, 26, 85–87, 89–98 Syrian Orthodoxy 107, 109, 115 talismans see amulets taqwa (God-consciousness) 218–19 tariqa (schools of Sufi thought) 152, 155–57, 162, 166 tasawwuf (‘becoming a Sufi’) 155, 157 teeth 251 Tehotihuacan 233, 234 n. 25 tekke (dervish gathering place) 153, 155–60, 156, 159, 162–63, 163, 166–67, 167, 169, 171, Plates 8.1 and 8.2; see also semahane Templo Mayor (Great Temple) 233–34, 236 n. 32, 241 Tenocha/Tenochtitlan, Aztec city 231, 233–36 teotl (sacred energy) 232 Terraferma, Venetian 126–27 teslim tash (the stone of surrender) 153 text (as powerful and/or material) 63, 70, 78, 137, 155, 160, 184, 211–12, 215–24, 250, 252–53 textiles 62, 147 linen 45, 55, 123, 193 rags 55, 59–60, 62, 64 silk 95, 193, 202, 203, 248 wax-soaked fabric 130, Plate 6.2 wool 132, 193 see also dress Theodore, saint 121 Thomas, apostle 139 thresholds 158–59 Tibet 23, 67–68, 78 Titian 130 Titicaca, Lake 140 Tlatelolco, Aztec city 233, 236, 241 Toews, John 247 Toltec 233 tombs see burial Torah ark 86, 92–93

mantles 95 scroll 85, 87, 89, 92–95, 97 text 212 see also bells torches 39, 42–44, 112, 120, 122, 130, 132 touch 17, 63, 64, 70, 76, 80, 107, 153, 158–59, 170, 182, 198, 240, 252, 254; see also kiss Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI 85, 89, 92–94, 97 trade of devotional items 145–46 transcontinental 21, 26–27 Trakar Taso Monastery 81, 82 Trent, Council of (1545–63) 124, 127, 205 tsha tsha (clay images) 77–78, 252 türbes (Sufi tombs) 158–59, 159, 162, 163 Turpiana parchment 224–26, 252 Tuscany 51–55, 130 universities 197, 199 Valier, Bertucci, doge 124, 129 Valier, Silvestro, doge 124, 129, 131 Vasari, Giorgio 41, 52 Venice 119–20, 123, 132–33; see also doges and Terraferma (Venetian) verisimilitude see imitation voice 27, 68, 70, 105 Walsham, Alexandra 20 Warburg, Aby 53 wax 15, 26–27, 37, 40–41, 44–48, 51–53, 55–58, 87, 92, 112, 130–32, 179, 250–51, Plate 6.2; see also candles, masks and ex-votos wine 110–11 wood 26–27, 35–38, 41–47, 54, 63, 87, 105, 121 n. 7, 145, 147 n. 26, 148, 250–51 words (as powerful and/or material) 41, 46, 68, 200, 211, 215 n. 16, 218, 249, 253 see also Bible, calligraphy, levha and text Yezide 111 Yezidis 107, 111 Ynga, don Fernando 146 Yupanqui, Francisco Titu 140 Zachary, saint 121