Sacred Objects and Magic Encyclopaedias: Books in Book Towns

2017 ◽  
pp. 163-193
Author(s):  
Jane Frank
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Objects

scholarly journals On the Personhood of Sacred Objects: Agency, Materiality and Popular Devotion in the Roman Catholic Philippines

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 454
Author(s):  
Julius Bautista
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Initial Section ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Central Hypothesis ◽  
Popular Devotion ◽  
Institutional Church

This paper is an analysis of the Santo Niño de Cebu, a statue of the child Jesus that is the object of widespread popular devotion among Roman Catholics in the Philippines. The central hypothesis is that a continuing challenge of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines, at least from the perspective of the institutional Church, lies not in the extra liturgical performance of its rituals, but rather in the popular belief that sacred objects possess agency and personhood. The discussion of this theme unfolds over three analytical movements. The focus of the initial section is on the historical context in which the Santo Niño became established as the preeminent religious and cultural icon of the Philippines, going as far back as the sixteenth century. The discussion shifts to the topic of the agency of material objects, as cultivated in the performance of three embodied rituals conducted by thousands of Santo Niño devotees. A third analytical movement is the examination of how popular belief in the Santo Niño’s agency intersects with the institutional reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly as locally contextualized and enacted in the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) in 1991.

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-288
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.

Was there an imperial distribution of Buddha relics in ninth-century China?

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-454
Author(s):  
T. H. BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Buddha

To judge from one recorded case, the Huichang persecution of Buddhism in China of 840–44 could have brought a number of relics of the Buddha into the hands of the government, and this might further have allowed the succeeding, more pro-Buddhist, emperor to carry out a redistribution of these sacred objects to enhance his own prestige, as had already been done twice by earlier rulers. But while it is clear that he was prepared to send a relic to Korea as part of a diplomatic mission, there would appear to be no surviving records confirming that any systematic large-scale distribution was carried out at this time. We must provisionally conclude therefore that a later systematic distribution in the tenth century was influenced—perhaps indirectly—by the earlier examples, not by any event of the mid ninth century.

The ethics of collecting

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
EA Sackler
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
Historical Methods

The author questions the concepts underlying ethnological collections of art and artifacts in the context of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Alternatives to traditional Western anthropological and art historical methods of collection and display of sacred Native American material are found in traditional Native American philosophy and practice. The contemporary fashion among curators for contextualization of displayed objects from Indigenous cultures is critiqued in the light of broader ethical concerns regarding the appropriateness of collecting sacred objects from living Indigenous Peoples.

Sacred objects in museum spaces

1992 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald L. Grimes
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Objects

KALINOVSKY CROSS. A RESONANT MIRACLE OF 1923 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FOLKLORE NARRATIVES

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-140
Author(s):  
Olga V. Belova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
General Level ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Folk Stories ◽  
Ritual Practices

The publication considers the main motifs of evidences about the so-called Kalinovka miracle that took place in the summer of 1923 in Ukraine (Podolia province). Analyzing folk stories about the “Kalinovka miracle” that are contemporary to the event, one can show how the evidences of miracles that occurred around the Kalinovsky cross correlate with the traditional plot schemes of folk legends about sacred objects and with ritual practices that arise and develop around venerated holy places. As it is shown in the legends, memorates, and folklore texts of other genres that were popular in 1923, the fact of the “Kalinovka miracle” became significant for society in the context of other phenomena, including rumors generated by the renewal of sacred objects or the general level of religious sentiment in that period of time. The influence of subjects related to the “Kalinovka miracle” not only on the folklore tradition of Podolia and Volyn’, but also on the traditions of other regions of Ukraine and Russia, is confirmed by the fixation of numerous versions of folklore texts that reflect this fact of religious life.

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