medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
A cautionary note on the "theology of the icon". Although a subject of considerable
interest, anyone who limits themself to the official pronouncements of the church
regarding images, will not get very far in understanding the place of images in
medieval religion. I am coming to believe, in fact, that the tepid efforts of the
Catholic church to determine and enforce "correct" attitudes towards images -- even
at such crucial points as the Council of Trent -- was tantamount to a realization that
local folk beliefs concerning images, which in themselves were far from orthodox,
were too entrenched to do much about. I was just reading, for example, of a
petition written by the people of the village of Aspe in the province of Valencia to
their bishop in 1769 (sorry: a bit post-medieval) when proprietorship of their local
statue of Our Lady of the Snows was being contested by a neighbouring village. In
the petition, they claimed that "For the people of Aspe, there is no other God nor
any other St Mary than the Virgin of the Snows." So much for "proper veneration"!
Social and religious practices and local folk beliefs regarding images, although
difficult to reconstruct for the Middle Ages, should probably be considered of more
importance, overall, than the official doctrines of the church in charting the place of
images in medieval religious culture.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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