Healing instruction

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Instructions for the healing of the imperial regalia at Schopper's house, Nuremberg. Woodcut from 1487 from a small healing book.
Direction of the dress of Mary during the Shrine Tour in Aachen in 1909

A healing instruction is the solemn display of the reliquary of a church as part of a specially developed penance service that varies from place to place.

Because of the large number of visitors, they were usually carried out outside the church, the relics were shown from a temporarily erected stage, the so-called Heiltumstuhl , or from balconies or galleries permanently attached to the outside of the church. In the course of time, the habit developed of carrying out the instructions in a certain, regular cycle, either annually - often in combination with the respective church fair - or, for example, every seven years.

A major incentive for participating in healing orders was the opportunity to acquire indulgences . Because of the generally practiced, if not always completely legal, accumulation of indulgences, the greatest indulgences were to be acquired in the context of public penances in the healing orders. In the time of their highest esteem, people from almost all of Europe flocked to specific healing instructions, leaving their house, farm, wife and child alone for a long period of time. The healing directives were among the greatest events of the high and late Middle Ages, until the Reformation put an end to them almost everywhere. Until today they are u. a. in Aachen ( Aachener Heiligtumsfahrt ) and Kornelimünster (every seven years; most recently in June 2014).

See also

literature

  • Hartmut Kühne: Ostensio reliquiarum. Investigations into the origin, expansion, form and function of the healing orders in the Roman-German Regnum . de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-11-016569-4 , ( Work on Church History 75), (At the same time: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Diss., 1998).
  • Christof L. Diedrichs: "They showed us the head of the saint". Building blocks for an event culture in the Middle Ages and early modern times . Weißensee-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-89998-128-5 .
  • Livia Cárdenas: The texture of the picture. The book of healing in the context of the religious mediality of the late Middle Ages . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-006093-4 .

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