medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Diana Wright wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> My daughter sent me these quotes from an on-line discussion:
>
>> What you need to do is bury a statue of St Joseph head down in your
>> yard. There's apparently a long tradition of this working for house
>> sales.
>>
>> My favorite story about that was a few years ago. A woman buried a
>> statue of St Joseph in her yard, but the house still wasn't selling.
>> So she dug up the statue and threw it away. Three weeks later, on the
>> news, she saw a story that reported that the County Landfill had been
>> sold.
>>
>> ******
>>
>> My mom did this years ago when she was trying to sell the house in FL
>> the first time my parents separated. Except rather than buy the
>> special Joseph figurine, she just dug out the nativity set and buried
>> that Joseph (I think she knew it wasn't the same one but figured a
>> Saint is a Saint.) She THOUGHT she marked the spot but when they
>> decided not to sell she wasn't able to find it again. So we have a
>> cardboard illustration of Joseph that my sister drew and taped to
>> half a paper cup in our nativity set.
>
> Is this tradition known in medieval sources? Is there a (good)
> explanation for it? Are other saints treated similarly? How far back
> can this be traced?
>
> Etc.?
>
>
> DW
>
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there is a long tradition of abusing saint images when the saint doesn't
perform well. There is such an example in the Golden Legend's story of
St. Nicholas, and another originally from Jacques de Vitry (I think) but
re-told by Mirk about a woman who takes the baby Jesus from her church's
St. Mary statue when Mary won't free her son from prison. But sprinkled
throughout various history books on late medieval and Early Modern
peasant life are examples of this treatment--although nothing that I
remember about Joseph particularly. I remember a graduate school
colleague writing a paper on this behavior, she called it "pious
vandalism." I remember in the 90s there was also an account of Sicilians
beating up on their local saint for not providing enough rain.
Kit
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