Folklore and Popular Devotion

Abstract. The article focuses upon the popular devotion for la Santa Muerte that emerged in Mexico and is gaining a rapid increase in notoriety in the country and abroad. The first sections reconstruct in detail its protean manifestations, as well as the interpretations contained in extant scholarly investigations but also in popular Mexican press and other texts. The final section, adopting a fine-grained, theological-epistemological viewpoint argues that la Santa’s interventions in human affairs, essential to explain her popularity, although usually described as “miracles” can be better understood as paros - a term employed by devotees in order to define the end of a situation, usually unpleasant or unfavourable.  It is also argued that a careful examination of such paros provides us with deeper insights into the devotions’ success and resiliency.

Aspects of Mary’s presence in Islam. From Koranic references to popular devotion and from mysticism to iconography. The figure of Mary is certainly the scriptural and theological point where Christianity and Islam converge. It has raised the scholars’ interest only since the mid XIX century which has seen a flourishing of translations and researches which has increased in the last years. There is still much to say in the field of spiritual and mystic theology – even on comparative terms – when we observe the key role Mary has assumed in Islamic Sufism.

Algunos santos como el legendario Amaro, San Miguel Arcángel, San Gregorio, San Gil Abad, San Jerónimo, San Antonio Abad, San Cristóbal, Santos Julián y Basilisa, San Bartolomé, San Huberto o San Amador (además de San Francisco, Santo Domingo, Santa Clara, Santa Catalina, Santa Bárbara, Santa Margarita o Santa Quiteria) resultaron invocados asiduamente a la hora de afrontar el último viaje. Entre los siglos XIV y XVI aparecerán abundantemente en los testamentos y en la iconografía funeraria. A la derecha de la Adoración del Cordero Místico del políptico de Gante de los hermanos van Eyck aparecen varios santos ermitaños acompañando a San Antonio Abad y otros peregrinos que hacen lo propio con San Cristóbal.

Some saints as the legendary Mauro, St. Michael, St. Gregory, St. Giles, St. Jerome, St. Anthony, St. Christopher, St. Julian and Basilissa, St. Bartholomew, St. Hubert or St. Eustatius (besides St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. Clare, St. Catherine, St. Barbara, and St. Margaret) wereregularly invoked to tackling the last trip. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries
appear abundantly in wills and funerary iconography. To the right of the Mystic Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece of the van Eyck brothers appear several hermits accompanying St. Anthony and other pilgrims do the same with St. Christopher.

Frauhammer Krisztina volt az első hazai néprajzkutató, aki könyvet írt az imádságnak egy fé-lig-meddig rejtett, ám annál elterjedtebb fajtájáról, a kegyhelyeken, templomi vendégköny-vekben hagyott írásokról, melyekben az emberek rövid fohászaikat, kéréseiket fogalmazzák meg az égiek felé (Levelek Máriához. A máriakálnoki kegyhely vendégkönyve. Szeged, 1999). Évek munkájával a szerző összehasonlító elemzéssel bővítette ki kutatásait: újabb könyvében öt kegyhely szövegeit mutatja be és elemzi. A bevezetés tágas elméleti keretben segít elhe-lyezni a sok ezernyi kikutatott szöveget a műfaji keretekben és a szakrális kommunikáció rend-szerében. A második fejezet a tartalmi és műfaji elemzés után a számokba sűríthető jellemző-ket veszi sorra, a harmadik pedig minderre alapozva körültekintő értelmezéssel hozza közelebb az olvasókhoz a mai vallásosság szerteágazó gyakorlatának olyan fontos kérdéseit, mint az írá-sok profán és a rituális funkciói, terápiás és a közösségteremtő lehetőségei. Milyen hit, milyen vallásosság van e jelenségkör mögött, hogyan keresik az emberek a kapcsolatot a szenttel, s eközben milyen kép rajzolódik ki vágyaikról, érzéseikről a szigetközi Máriakálnokon, a szlová-kiai Egyházasbást-Vecseklőn, a palócföldi Mátraverebély-Szentkúton, a baranyai Máriagyű-dön és a nyírségi Máriapócson? A könyvet nemcsak azoknak ajánljuk, akik kíváncsiak a nép-rajz legjobb hagyományainak mai fejleményeire, hanem mindazon szakembereknek és érdek-lődőknek, akiket foglalkoztat a vallás gyakorlásának új meg új formákat kialakító folyamata.
Mohay Tamás

This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BYNC-ND License at the time of publication, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited.

As is well known, the Western worldview brings into play an extended colour-coded cultural model known as the Great Chain of Being, grounded in a mutually exclusive, asymmetric opposition between ‘black’ and ‘white’. In contrast, the Basque model introduces complementary colour-coded oppositions consisting of ‘black’ and ‘red’. The Basque dataset model should not be understood as merely some kind of inversion of the Western one, but rather as being composed of a radically different set of cognitive alignments. Nonetheless, there are junctures where the reader may be able to identify a certain overlap between the component parts of the two systems. Moreover, in the case of the Basque model it is clear that these alignments harken back to earlier indigenous pan-European beliefs in the efficacy of the colour black, its intrinsic epistemological grounding in notions of fecundity and wholeness as well as the positive role of black animals in general.

So far our provisional research results argue for the following scenario: that in the case of Europe the powerful life-giving and protecting characteristics associated previously with the colour black have been distorted, although not totally eradicated from the consciousness of Europeans, in part because of the influence of the Catholic Church and the Inquisitional authorities. The task of countering black’s positive polarity was central to the Church’s efforts to win converts. Given that the colour black was a key component in the competing eco-centric cosmology, attempts to assign a different value to it constituted an assault on one of the principle tenets of the indigenous interpretative grid. The fact that the colour black continues to have a highly charged aura about it – the sudden appearance of a black cat still generates a certain level of uneasiness in modern urban dwellers – testifies to the resilient nature of the older eco-centric cosmology: it has not been forgotten.

In contrast to the hierarchical anthropocentric cultural model encountered in and propagated by the ontological metaphors encountered in the Western dataset, we allege that those found in the Basque dataset derive their vitality from this earlier pan-European eco-centric cosmology, grounded in a different myth of origins, namely, in the belief that humans descend from bears. Reflexes of the belief in the sacredness of bears are still encountered in the rich folkloric traditions and practices of Euskal Herria.

Las vidas de los santos y los increíbles prodigios con los que son adornadas ocupan un lugar importante en el metaverso católico. Se trata de unos relatos edificantes en los que todo vale si sirve para impresionar al fiel con el comportamiento ejemplar del santo y sobre todo con su obediencia ciega a los designios de Dios.
Y aunque hoy en día pocas personas creen en la veracidad de esos textos, en el arte ha quedado la huella de que no siempre fue así, y que hasta hace pocos siglos las escenas más impactantes de sus vidas eran recordadas reiteradamente en cualquier espacio sagrado.

In 1587 the Flemish composer Carolus Luython, employed by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, published an unusual motet collection in Prague. Titled Popularis anni jubilus, the collection describes the sounds and rituals beloved by Central European peasants, recasting them as the ecstatic songs of rustic laborers (jubilus) famously celebrated by Saint Augustine in his Psalm commentaries. Highlighting the composer’s collaboration with the Czech cleric who wrote the motet texts, this study serves as a corrective to the interpretative frameworks that have broadly shaped discourses on Central European musical and religious practices in the early modern period.

To make sense of the print’s raucous parade of drunken revelers, mythological figures, honking geese, and the Christ child, this analysis sets aside the hermetic lens typically used to account for the cultural products of the Rudolfine court and turns instead to contemporary theological tracts and writings by Augustine and Ovid that were foundational to the literary worlds of Renaissance humanists. Doing so brings into focus an ordered sequence of motets that offers some of the earliest and most vivid documentation in Central Europe of lay practices associated with the major feasts of the church year, from the bonfires on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist to the drowning of winter on Laetare Sunday. At the same time, this study shows the extent to which such “folk” traditions, parsed along national lines since the nineteenth century, had in fact long occupied common ground in the diverse territories of Habsburg Central Europe.

Tras constatar, mediante un recuento, la importancia numérica de las advocaciones de la Virgen que guardan relación con la vegetación, especialmente con los árboles y arbustos (en España y Nueva España), el trabajo propone algunas hipótesis de interpretación del fenómeno que tiene que ver tanto con las prácticas de la religiosidad popular como con la geografía y las actividades económicas silvo-pastoriles.

Au début des années 1980 apparurent divers signes, diffus mais nombreux d’un réel intérêt pour les images pieuses. C’est ainsi qu’on les nommait alors, avant qu’elles n’accèdent à un statut supérieur, celui d’images de dévotion, dans le sillage des sciences humaines (et de l’histoire de l’art en particulier) qui ont pris tardivement conscience de l’existence de cette réalité sociétale. Il y a quarante ans, la piété était synonyme de forme obsolète de religiosité vouée à disparaitre avec tout son bric-à-brac d’objets, bénitiers, statues de plâtre, chromolithographies, missels, chapelets et images (mais nous nous trompions).

The manuscripts Parisinus Gr. 2244 and Lugdunensis Vossianus Gr. Q 50, two collections of vetinary texts copied in the 14th century, contain practical advice featuring saints who enjoyed great veneration on the island of Cyprus: they are invoked on behalf of the prosperity of the live-stock (sheep and cattle) and in the fight against parasites in vineyards and crops. The six prescriptions, some of which lay down the number of animals to be sacrificed on the saint’s feast, provide
an insight into the everyday reality of the mediaeval countryside, where the peasants
very naturally relied on the benevolence of God by the intercession of his saints.

A tanulmányban bemutatott zselici öntőasszony-dinasztia szövegeit több kutató gyűjtötte és közölte az 1950-es évektől. Ez a kutatás amellett érvel, hogy az asszonyok által a viaszöntés során elmondott imádság és a dinasztia sorsa szorosan összefonódott. Az egyes nemzedékekhez tartozó öntőasszonyok bemutatása után a jósláshoz szükséges tudomány megszerzéséről szóló elbeszélések motívumainak és az öntőimádságnak a viszonya kerül az elemzés középpontjába. Bár a hosszú időn át megőrzött imádság szövege fennmaradt, a hozzá kapcsolt hiedelmekből és a vele összefüggésben létrejött narratív hagyományból vizsgálata alapján kiderül, hogy az eredeti kontextusban fokozatosan irrelevánssá vált. A továbbéléshez nélkülözhetetlen intimitás ugyanis megszűnt, valamint az átörökítés közegében is számos kedvezőtlen változás zajlott le.

Taking its cue from the story of a Cretan peasant who was reluctant to let go of a handful of his native soil in order to enter heaven, this article begins by exploring ideas concerning the afterlife in which this world is contrasted with the world to come. It then proceeds to discuss how Christians historically have frequently understood themselves to be in the world, but not of it; how dualistic tendencies have often pitted the soul against the body, and how such views have had an influence on how we understand the person of Christ, often preventing Christians from fully accepting the implications of the Incarnation. The article examines instances of a lingering docetic streak within Christianity, which lies uncomfortably with its central claim that God became fully human. Notwithstanding the difficulties some Christians may have with the idea of a fully human Jesus, there is also a very rich tradition within Christianity of bodily engagement with the material world, not only sacramentally, but also within many popular religious practices, including pilgrimage and relic veneration. Finally, the revival of interest in sacred natural sites, even in areas where church attendances continue to fall, is investigated.

Connections between religious practices and sacred images were among the most powerful ones in the construction and reinvention of Western world. Images may have attributes such as witness, devotion, visual learning and adoration. Such possibilities created ideological divisions in Christendom, and was later used to convert the faithful. In the New World, another possibility became evident through syncretic practices in images. We cannot forget that popular devotion had few changes since nowadays: we may still find small private altars improvised in residences, bars or stores, in which a candle or electric lamp lights up low-cost images of catholic saints or orixas, making evident the syncretism of our contemporaneous religiosity.

This article examines the conversation between the allegorical figures of America and España in Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz's loa to "El Divino Narciso." In this discourse, it is especially interesting that Sor Juana uses a "tocotin" a Nahua song form that appears to be specifically a woman's song.

In September 1772 the Venetian Senate opened an important inquiry concerning the popular holidays widespread both in Venice and State of the Terraferma. Not unlike what was occurring all over Catholic Europe in the last decades of the 18th century the vast and vague phenomenon of popular religiosity and the festive rituals associated with it took on great importance. Both ecclesiastical and secular authorities described this phenomenon as having decidedly negative features that called for urgent institutional measures to change its character.  A large number of documents were drawn up in those years by the institutions of the Republic with the aim of arriving at a reform in agreement with the ecclesiastical authorities, which would limit as precisely as possible the holidays that studded the variegated popular rural calendar. These were external interventions, whose modes of description and aims reveal a “cultivated” and “superior” viewpoint which for today’s historian suggests at the very least a significant gap between what can be defined as the dominant culture and the subordinate popular culture, especially widespread in the countryside. Certainly it is this viewpoint, whose features are univocal though perhaps somewhat tendentious, to suggest how the lively world of popular culture could be examined from an external perspective intended mainly to describe an uncertain and indistinct phenomenon with origins dating back to remote centuries. Though this detachment was clearly aimed at intervention and containment, it also became one of the first looks into a world which from this rather prejudiced viewpoint, was felt to be different and in a certain sense operating according to other cultural codes.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar (i) a hagiografia e (ii) as tradicionais orações direcionadas aos santos católicos, ambos sob uma perspectiva de gênero. Os papéis mitológicos de gênero dos santos retirados de suas biografias serão analisados primeiramente. Depois disto, focaremos nas orações e pedidos que os fiéis direcionam aos seus santos de devoção. Pretendo mostrar que estas orações podem revelar a prática de uma “agência de projetos nas margens do poder” (Ortner 2007).

Fazendo um contraponto à análise de Pierre Bourdieu em A dominação masculina com o trabalho de Sherry Ortner, e outros que trazem contribuições contundentes ao debate em torno da oposição estrutura-agência, caro às Ciências Sociais desde sua gênese, o objetivo é revelar uma “agência de projetos” em meio à cosmologia e às práticas religiosas da instituição considerada como uma das principais responsáveis pela instauração da ideologia desigual de gênero vigente na sociedade brasileira. Será possível, assim, apontar o equívoco em se contrapor os conceitos de estrutura e agência. Eles seriam, pelo contrário, complementares, no sentido de a agência fazer parte, ser inerente à estrutura. Fica claro então, desde já, minha opção de apontar elementos que contrariem o “paradoxo da doxa” bourdiano, trazendo à tona negociações por autonomia (mesmo) em meio a estruturas patriarcais seculares.

The Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen Viaje or Our Lady of Antipolo is one
of the most prolific Marian sites or devotions in the Philippines. The
image of Our Lady of Antipolo also served as the patroness of some
galleon ships during the 17th and 18th century. The return of the image
to its shrine in Antipolo would be occasions for a fluvial procession along
the Pasig River. This paper analyzes the 1653 and 1748 fluvial
processions of the Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen Viaje along the Pasig
River as documented by Pedro Murillo Velarde S.J., which were
reprinted in 1887 as the Historia de la Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen
Viaje. The detailed descriptions from this account captures the
waterscape of the Pasig River during the procession, which Velarde
compares to a theater because of the great number of people in
attendance. The account also details the performance of folk devotion
particularly from the Tagalog towns participating in the procession. By
focusing on the Pasig River, this study brings to the fore the value of the
river as a cultural-religious space unifying the Tagalog towns that
complete its waterscape. Lastly, the conclusions of this study highlight
the communal experience of the procession and the role of popular
devotions in the articulation of folk culture and identity especially during
early modern colonial Philippines.

Breve trabajo sobre la participación de las cofradías eucarísticas de la ciudad de Toledo en las fiestas del Corpus Christi y la celebración de las fiestas del Sacramento en las distintas parroquias en los días posteriores, en especial las de la parroquia de San Pedro, sita en el interior del templo catedralicio.