medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Jim Bugslav wrote:
"... hundreds of stories throughout France, dating largely from the Middle
Ages, explaining the origins of local statues of the Virgin, which all take
the same shape: the statue was found in a tree, or by a spring, or in a
grotto, by a shepherd, a shepherdess, an ox, a cow, etc. The shepherd
piously takes the statue home, only to find the next day that it has
returned to where he found it."
This type of story is not limited to to France, or the Middle Ages. It
belongs to a large group of tales in which an apparently inanimate (but
holy) object shows a will of its own; best known are probably the tales of
the dead body which wishes to go to a certain burial place; usually, it
gets too heavy to carry or draw, or returns to its starting point. Quite
often, the object in question (which is always in some way "holy") is then
loaded on a wagon and two cows made pull it whereever they please (almost
always two cows). There are examples of a kind of counter-version where the
dead body of an evil person refuses to be buried, but pops up from the
grave, but in these cases, the tale will explain it as the earth refusing
to hols the culprit. The most recent case I can think of belongs to the
aftermath of the Spanish civil war; some "reds" who had been shot by the
fascists were buried in so shallow graves that therain washed away the
earth; the local priest explained the congregation that the earth would not
have these sinners.
Examples of self-propelling statues of divinities may be found in
Greek mythology (and probably in others as well). Hera of Samos was
depicted as bound, the legend told that once, som pirates had tried to
abduct her, but their ship would not move as long as she was on board (like
the body that gets too heavy to be moved), so they put her on the beach.
The inhabitants found her there and thought she had run away, so they bound
her -- which is why she is depicted bound. The legend is what folklorists
call a secondary etiological legend, i.e., an explanation made up after the
original idea of some feature has been forgotten. When Constantine the Grat
founded Constantinople, he had a statue of Tyche, goddess of the city,
chained to a cross. Ares is often chained, not to keep him, but to keep him
from acting (in the Iliad, Otos and Efialtes keep him imprisoned for a
year; Hermes kept Ares in chains at the oracle at Klaros, etc.). Artemis is
often depicted as bound; this form of the goddess even has a name, Artemis
Lygodesma; statues are known from many places; also Artemis of Efesos is
usually chained or bound. Plato tells of the statues Daidalos made that
they were so vivid that they had to be kept in chains. A whole complex of
beliefs!
A little later, Francine wrote:
"As I see it, examining the evidence from a culture that was largely oral (as
opposed to literate) requires examining the way people told stories, what
the words and images they used meant to *them* as opposed to us, what models
of storytelling they were using. When you are aware of the models and
conventions and expectations, then you acquire a different sense of what
people were trying to say."
A study most worthwhile, I dare say, and you are quite right about its
results. I spent more than half of my life with it. Right here I will only
add -- because it seems relevant to the topic -- that folktales are never
allegorical or symbolic. they are, in principle, always believed to be
true, although their details may be made subjct of discussion ("no, this
was not exactly how it happened; I'll tell you how it was!") -- the
phenomenon is called legend polyphony among folklorists.
Best
Lars
--------------------------
Lars Hemmingsen, Ph.D. of Folklore
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