Mirator

Changing Senses of Sacrality: Foreword

Reima Välimäki — 2018-05-02

The editors' foreword to the special issue 'Changing Senses of Sacrality'

Disturbing Bones

Anthony John Lappin — 2018-05-02

Starting from the sparse indications of the translation of relics in the Classical period and amongst pre-Constantinian Christians, we trace how the imperial family had a distinctive impact upon the practice and early popularity of translation, and show how, in its earliest phases, the conscious impiety of removing a body from its resting place was primarily, if not wholly, an Arian concern. Subsequent translations, beginning with Ambrose, show the episcopate re-affirming its authority over and against the emperors, culminating in Paschal II’s massive translation of relics within Rome in order to offer a centre of resistance to the revitalized iconoclasm of the Byzantine rulers.

Toward a Sacralization of the Religious Vows?

Agnès Desmazières — 2018-05-02

This article examines how the notion of consecration became a key-concept for Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of religious vows. It demonstrates how his conception of religious vows progressively moved away from the human and contractual perspective, developed in his early works, like in his Commentary of the Sentences. Under the influence of the controversies with the Parisian secular masters, he developed a spiritual understanding of the vows, first outlined in his three opuscules on religious life and more precisely formulated in the Summa theologiae. He insisted, therefore, more strongly on God’s action who consecrates the monk or the nun. This new emphasis also coincides with a deepening of Thomas’s theology of grace.

Medieval Wood Sculpture of an Unknown Saint from Nousiainen

Katri Vuola — 2018-05-02

This article takes up from an interdisciplinary perspective the issue of placing relics inside wooden sculptures during the Middle Ages in Finland. In the focus of the study is a late thirteenth-century sculpture depicting a standing saint from the memorial church of Saint Henrik in Nousiainen (Nousis), South-Western Finland, now in the collection of the National Museum of Finland.

The identity and even the gender of the “Unknown Saint” has puzzled art historians, most recently in the 1960s. On the basis of a new visual and technical examination as well as iconographical and stylistic analysis of the sculpture, alternative interpretations of the identity of the depicted saint as well as of the origin and function of the sculpture are suggested. The current article also includes a detailed description of the dual-energy and ultrahigh-resolution CT-scanning of the sculpture at the HUS Medical Imaging Center at the Helsinki University Hospital. This is the first time that CT-scanning has been used to research medieval wooden sculpture in Finland. Discoveries made during the inspection were interpreted as possible relics. Consequently, the function of the sculpture is further discussed in the context of the cult of relics in Finland.

The Goat and the Cathedral

Sonja Hukantaival — 2018-05-02

Large archaeological excavations where medieval soil layers are studied have lately been conducted almost yearly in the city of Turku. This fieldwork has sometimes unearthed curios finds, such as an upside-down buried goat skull by a boundary marker between building plots. Such finds offer previously unknown evidence of the medieval worldview in south-western Finland, especially since local written sources on medieval everyday lived religion are rare.

This paper introduces three cases of material signs of folk religion that archaeologists have discovered in the medieval soil layers of Turku. Moreover, it is discussed how we can interpret these signs and what they reveal of everyday religion. The striking proximity of the centre of institutionalized religion manifested as the Cathedral of Turku offer an intriguing viewpoint to the discussion. The fourth case study reveals the complicated entanglement of different religious practices. It is argued that dealing with the “otherworld” was more than a question of theology versus superstition.

Material and Immaterial Presence

Ragnhild Martine Bø — 2018-05-02

The article explores different manifestations of saints’ presence in people’s lives before and after the Reformation. Rather than approaching their engagements with saints as a traditionally upheld dichotomy between a medieval presence and an early modern absence, the engagements are analysed through discussions of indifference, as preferring one material register over another, and of propinquity, as accentuating degrees of nearness. The first part of the article presents some examples of how such indifferences and accentuating degrees may manifest themselves in material presences of saints, such as in the preservation, relocation and/or disempowerment of late medieval sculptures and images. The second part looks at how devotional practices including tactile piety and bodily movements described in late medieval books of hours transforms into vernacular story-telling narratives and ballads featuring parts of saints’ vitae from the early modern era. This transformation evidences a vocalized (immaterial) counterpart to the re-use of medieval sculptures and paintings (material) of saints in altarpieces in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Saints were not absent after the Reformation, but their presence was felt differently

Images, ’Superstition’, and Popular Piety in Post-Reformation Sweden

Terese Zachrisson — 2018-05-02

Though the Lutheran church in Sweden never sought to ban pre-reformation images from church space, these objects remained controversial and provoked a variety of different responses from clergy and parishioners throughout the early modern era. Some images continued to be venerated as vessels of supernatural power, albeit in new contexts. Seventeenth-century vicars often tolerated or even condoned popular practices that their superiors deemed superstitious or idolatrous. Among the clerical élite images were not always considered to be adiaphora — as was stated in the Church Ordinance — but some images were believed to be harmful in themselves in provoking unwanted responses among parishioners.

Francesca Dell’Aqua, Anthony Cutler, Herbert L. Kessler, Avinoam Shalem, and Gerhard Wolf (eds): The Salerno Ivories. Objects, Histories, Contexts, Gebr. Mann Verlag: Berlin, 2016. 368 pp.

Teemu Immonen — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia

Leszek Gardeła: Scandinavian Amulets in Viking Age Poland, Collectio Archaeologica Ressoviensis 23. Fundacja Rzeszowskiego Ośrodka Archeologicznego, Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego: Rzeszów, 2014.

Gwendolyne Knight — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia

Lauri Eriksson, Markus Hiekkanen ja Visa Immonen: Hirvenvasa ja kerjäläinen. Ihminen ja eläin Suomen muinaisesineissä. Nemo: Helsinki 2017. 160 s.

Katri Vuola — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia

Mikko K. Heikkilä: Keskiajan suomen kielen dokumentoitu sanasto ensiesiintymävuosineen, Mediapinta: Tampere 2017. 82 s.

Marko Lamberg — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia

Lars Hermanson & Auður Magnúsdóttir (red.): Medeltidens genus. Kvinnors och mäns roller inom kultur, rätt och samhälle. Norden och Europa ca 300-1500. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg Universitet: Göteborg 2016.

Charlotte Cederbom — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia

Mikko Kauko ja Marko Lamberg (toim.): Naantalin luostarin kirja, Tietolipas 254. Helsinki: SKS 2017

Ville Walta — 2018-05-02

Ei abstraktia