medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Burying St. Joseph in order to sell a house is still quite common in my hometown of South Bend, Indiana–located, significantly or not, on the St. Joseph River in St. Joseph County. I actually have a plastic St. Joseph (about two-inches high, for easy and discreet interring) that someone left in my house when I bought it years ago.
I've always assumed this custom was a corollary of the medieval "humiliation of the saints" that Patrick Geary, among others, has explored–a way of "bullying [saints] into doing their job," as he puts it in his article in Stephen Wilson's "Saint and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History" (1983).
Best,
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Marjorie Greene <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, June 25, 2004 11:58 am
Subject: Burying Saint Joseph
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> In New Orleans, I believe the common practice is to bury the
> statue in a vertical position but upside down. Some gift shops
> sell "burying" statues for that specific purpose. And a nun I knew
> tossed a statue of S.J. in a glass or vase upside down when her
> supplications fell on deaf ears. Another howler is the use of an
> up-ended, half-buried bathtub to serve as a "shrine" for statues
> of Mary. What was that discussion recently centering on our
> distance from medieval superstitions? :-))
> MG
> -- Dennis Martin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> The Miraculous Medal, of course, goes back to St. Catherine
> Laboure in Paris in 1830.
>
> The more common version I've heard of is burying a statue of St.
> Joseph. My students asked about this last night in my film course
> on saints. In the United States at least, this has become
> something of a yuppie sacramental, known well beyond pious
> Catholic circles. Sociologically, as I told my students last
> night, it may reflect the assimilation of nominal Catholics into
> the mainstream of the culture, with certain customs of this sort
> being retained as much for their quaintness as out of any genuine
> belief (or out of desperation in a tight housing market?) even
> after actual religious practice has all but lapsed. That, at
> least is my anecdotal reading. It might make a good research
> topic along the lines of the studies carried out by Robert Orsi
> and others in sociological religoius studies. Medieval or early
> modern parallels might be instructive.
>
> Obviously it's easier to bury a Miraculous Medal surreptitiously
> than to bury a statue of St. Joseph.
>
> A parallel story comes from the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He
> had his eye on a plot of land for the first Marytown
> (Niepokolanow) in the 1920s or early 1930s in Poland. Unable to
> afford to buy it, he placed (did not bury,at least according to
> the account I have heard) a statue of the Blessed Virgin
> (reflecting his particular devotion--he founded the Militia
> Immaculatae etc.) The owner of the land, a Prince Drucki-
> Lebetsky (spelling uncertain) was so takenn by his devotion and
> belief that he would receive funds to purchase miraculously, that
> he donated the land.
>
>
>
>
> Dennis Martin
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 06/25/04 9:24 AM >>>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> Although, as you say, Catholic priests (and
> > perhaps
> > Anglican ones, too) still -- in relatively small ways -- support the
> > largely harmless
> > remnants of such practices, the practices themselves remain largely
> > in oblivion,
> > both in the present, and even more so in the past.
> > Cheers,
> > Jim
>
> It may be of interest that I am sitting in a house purchased for the
> Catholic Church by means of a miraculous medal. Fr Bryan, who founded
> the parish and built the church, had no house to begin with and lived
> in the church tower, with his housekeeper, Nellie Tobin (neither, so
> far as I know, was a hunchback). One day Fr Bryan called at the large
> Georgian house next door to the church and asked its owner, a doctor,
> if he would consider selling it to the church for use as a presbytery.
> The good physician received him civilly, but declined to part with his
> property, saying that he had lived in Pickering for many years and
> would see his time out there. Fr Bryan thanked him for listening
> to his
> request and went his way but, as he went, buried a miraculous
> medal in
> the garden. A few days later the aforesaid G.P. contacted him.
> Much to
> his surprise, he had been offered the chance to move to another
> practice and was disposed to accept the offer. Accordingly he sold the
> house to Fr Bryan for the then princely sum of £200.
>
> Other people have told me of tossing miraculous medals over the
> wall of
> a methodist chapel, with a view to buying it from them. Possibly, most
> learned Jim, you have come across the history of burying amulets or
> medallions in order to acquire property. The present miraculous medal
> goes back only to the apparitions at Lourdes, but no doubt there were
> previous medals with similar properties. What can you tell us?
>
> Bill.
>
> =====
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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