Devotional

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Devotional or votive image with the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary , around 1900
Sales of devotional objects in Lourdes

Devotional objects are objects that serve the purpose of devotion ( Latin devotio , devotion ',' reverence ') and the promotion of piety , such as crosses , crucifixes , rosaries , figures and images of saints , icons , devotional images or medals such as the Miraculous Medal .

In Catholicism , devotional objects are a kind of continuation of the sacramentals , but do not belong to the liturgy of the Church. Often the faithful ask for the church's blessing for devotional items .

The centers of the devotional goods trade are primarily places of pilgrimage . Devotional objects from the past are an important part of many collections and museums and there are also private collectors of devotional objects. Devotional objects also meet the need to take a memento home from a pilgrimage ; insofar they are sometimes the religious counterpart to souvenirs .

Wherever devotional objects are consecrated or blessed by the church specifically for worship or private use , they are counted among the sacramentals , the salvific signs. The Protestantism is devotional hostile to, but the Devotionalienwesens can be observed in relation to Martin Luther trains.

There were devotional objects already in antiquity. Even back then, visitors to Greek or Roman places of worship were offered small figures of gods or images of temples made of silver, ceramic or lead. In Gen 31,34  EU, 1 Sam 19,13-16 EU and 2 Kings 23-24  EU, the Old Testament mentions small images of household gods, some for use when  traveling. The Acts of the New Testament mentions a blacksmith in 19.23-27 EU who made silver Artemis temples and thus “gave the artists a lot to earn”.

Giovanni Battista de Rossi describes in the Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana of 1861 early Christian metal molds from Africa for the production of small crosses with a hanging device as well as objects from the catacombs in Rome that were carried like a medal and sees at least the latter as evidence of one Practice of devotional use by early Christians. In the biography of St. Genova (around 422–502) we can read that St. Germanus von Auxerre put a pierced bronze coin with the sign of the cross on her after the virgin consecration.

Occasionally the term devotional items is generalized and in a figurative sense - especially in the area of ​​the right-wing political scene ("Nazi devotional items") and pop culture - related to secularly venerated objects.

literature

submissive , in: German Foreign Dictionary Vol. 4, Da capo - Dynasty. 2nd edition completely reworked. at the Institute for German Language. Arrangement by Gerhard Strauss (lead / editor), De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, ISBN 978-3-11-016235-6 , pp. 453–455; limited preview in Google Book search

Web links

Wiktionary: Devotional  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Duden - the German orthography , 26th edition, Dudenredaktion (ed.), Dudenverlag, Berlin, Mannheim, Zurich 2013
  2. Devotionalien , in: Ulrike Peters : Large Dictionary Religion: Basic Knowledge from A - Z. Compact-Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8174-7751-7 , p. 56; limited preview in Google Book search
  3. Michael P. Caroll: Catholic cults and devotions, A psychological inquiry , McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston, Montreal, London 1989, ISBN 0-7735-0693-4 , p. 7
  4. Martin Scharfe, On Religion - Faith and Doubt in Folk Culture , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Berlin, 2004, p. 150
  5. Jobst Schöne , What will the Reformation bring us? Catalog for the exhibition in the year of the Reformation commemoration 2017 , p. 2
  6. ^ Thurston, Herbert, Devotional Medals . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , accessed June 26, 2017
  7. German Foreign Dictionary Vol. 4 , 1999, p. 454