Full Description
This collection of essays offers a comparative perspective on religious materiality across the early modern world. Setting out from the premise that artefacts can provide material evidence of the nature of early modern religious practices and beliefs, the volume tests and challenges conventional narratives of change based on textual sources. Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World brings together scholars of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist practices from a range of fields, including history, art history, museum curatorship and social anthropology. The result is an unprecedented account of the wealth and diversity of devotional objects and environments, with a strong emphasis on cultural encounters, connections and exchanges.
Contents
Introduction - Editors Part I - Meanings 1. Wax versus wood: the material of votive offerings in Renaissance Italy - Mary Laven 2. The substance of divine grace: Ex-votos and the material of paper in early modern Italy - Maria Alessandra Chessa 3. Powerful objects in powerful places: pilgrimage, relics and sacred texts in Tibetan Buddhism - Hildegard Diemberger 4. Myer Myers: Silversmith in the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Ledger - Vivian B. Mann Part II - Practices 5. Christian materiality between East and West: Notes of a Capuchin among the Christians of the Ottoman Empire - John-Paul Ghobrial 6. The materiality of death in early modern Venice - Alexandra Bamji 7. Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes: Images and personal devotion - Gabriela Ramos 8. 'Watching myself in the mirror, I saw 'Ali in my eyes': On Sufi visual and material practice in the Balkans - Sara Kuehn Part III - Transformations 9. Religious materiality in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II - Suzanna Ivanic 10. The Reformation of the rosary bead: Protestantism and the perpetuation of the Amber Pater Noster - Rachel King 11. Magical words: Arabic amulets in Christian Spain - Abigail Krasner Balbale 12. Mesoamerican idols, Spanish medicine: Jade in the collection of Philip II - Kate E. Holohan Epilogue - Caroline Walker Bynum Index
