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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture At 04:58 PM 6/25/2004 +0000, Marjorie Greene wrote: >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? :-)) Marjorie, Are such bathtub shrines seriously meant or parodistic? In either case, they are of course a form of the statuary niche, a devotional form going back to Roman times (at least). Between Roman times and the recent past such niches may have been chiefly a form of ecclesiastical or other public decor; I don't suppose that the private practice of erecting, say, a front-yard Virgin in her arched concrete niche is very old. But what do we know about smaller votive niches in the inside of, or in the exterior fabric of, private homes in the Middle Ages? Are these known to have existed? Bathtubs are usually shiny porcelain: white ones (which is most of them) substitute for the painted white exterior of the sort of free-standing votive niche noted above. In some aesthetics, shininess or glitter is a positive feature. South Italian or South-Italian-influenced niches or edicules sometimes have panes of reflective glass inside them today. That particular feature harkens back to the glittery edicule-fountains found in villas of Roman Campania and may represent a continuity in taste, as does also (I suspect) the modern and ancient coastal south Italian practice of decorating such niches with seashells. (A striking example of the latter, from Roman-period Baiae, is in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, accession no. GR.159.1910.) Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html