medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John Dillon wrote:
>... Are such bathtub shrines seriously meant or parodistic?
It's meant seriously. It's an economical, ready-made, and water-proof
arched niche. Most of those I've seen are iron shell, porcelain coated
interior -- painted white or black outside (with and without seashells),
bathtubs.
>In either case, they are of course a form of the statuary niche, a
>devotional form going back to Roman times (at least).
The shape of the "statuary niche" is specifically from the Eastern side of
the ANE. It's the shape of "The" Law -- which, in turn, is the architectural
shape of the Mesopotamian "House of God" structures back at Sumer and Akkad.
The shape itself means that a person's/people's "God" stands behind/protects/
guards the content... whether it's the text of a victory stele in the 24th
BCE; law codes and temple architecture on the Eastern side of the ANE;
enclosing royal personages at Ninveh; the stylized "cloud" arch of Russian
Orthodox church architecture; drawn on Syriac codices in narrow triple
cloisters topped by "cloud" arches; early Christian tombstones; drawn as
a "double-tombstone" on the 8th-century Codex Amiatinus; or a modern half-
buried bathtub with a statue of a saint enshrined.
There's a discussion on-line at bibleinterp.com in my article "First,
recognize that it's a penny": Report on the "Newark" Ritual Artifacts...
(medieval artifacts). A fuller illustrated discussion is in Chapter 2 of
Absent Voices (June 2004).
Cheers,
Rochelle
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