Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"The First Fruits Of A Woman's Wit": Reclaiming The Childbirth Metaphor In Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Carolyn Mae Shakespear

Theses and Dissertations

The childbirth metaphor adopts imagery from female bodies carrying and delivering children to describe the effort and relationship of a poet to his/her poem. This was a commonly used trope in the renaissance, particularly by male authors. This thesis examines the way early modern woman poet, Aemilia Lanyer uses the childbirth metaphor in her poem, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Lanyer ultimately considers not only the physical realities of childbirth in her use of the metaphor, but also the emotional, social, and theological consequences. By doing so, I argue that Lanyer reclaims the metaphor from her male contemporaries in order to …

From Donatello To Michelangelo: A Franciscan Angel, Kayla M. Bruce

Institute for the Humanities Theses

During the Italian Renaissance, images of angels and of the Virgin Mary were incredibly commonplace and were often used to denote the Virgin in her role as prophetess. The Virgin was often shown surrounded by angels in the background or flanking her on either side. However, in the fifteenth century, a motif appeared where an angel head was depicted on either the Virgin’s diadem or on her chest as a decorative brooch. This specific motif only appeared in images of the Virgin and the Christ Child. It was also only employed by Florentine artists and began with the Florentine sculptor, …

Our Lady Of La Vang Journeys With The Nation: Marian Devotion And Pilgrimage In Vietnam, Dung Trang Ph.D., Lhc Khiet Tam

Journal of Global Catholicism

The sanctuary of Our Lady of La Vang (OLLV) reveals the role of popular devotion in Vietnamese Catholicism. It manifests the recent strategy from Vietnamese Church leaders to maintain a public presence with an emphasis on reinforcing a sense of Catholic identity through popular devotion and liturgy. Devotion to OLLV then reflects the interaction of several factors: the promotion of the clergy, political influence, and the collaboration of the Vietnamese Catholic laity. Building on existing scholarship that focuses on the cultural inheritance and collective identity of Vietnamese Catholics around the world, this paper explores the case study of the basilica …

The True "New Eve": Ben Wildflower's Magnificat And The Second Creation Story, Mary L. Parks

Obsculta

Images of the Virgin Mary have provided comfort to Christians for almost two thousand years. Many of these images have depicted the Mother of God as gentle, demure, pure, and obedient. Ben Wildflower’s woodcut, Magnificat, imagines another side of Mary’s story. This paper considers the second creation story, “New Eve” typology, and church teaching about current social and environmental issues to demonstrate why Magnificat is an ideal portrait for the true “New Eve”.

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

Who Is At The Manger?, Kayla Harris, Neomi Deanda

Marian Library Faculty Publications

For many Christians around the world, celebrating the Nativity, or the birth of Jesus Christ, is the most important part of the Christmas season.

Among the most common Christmas traditions are small sets of figures depicting Joseph, Mary and Jesus that are displayed in individual homes, and live reenactments of the manger scene in communities and churches. While Nativity sets focus on the holy family, they can also include an angel, the three wise men bringing gifts, shepherds or some barnyard animals.

Around the world, it is common to see particular cultural and religious traditions incorporated through the materials used, …

What Is The Rosary? Why A Set Of Beads And Prayers Are Central To Catholic Faith, Kayla Harris

Marian Library Faculty Publications

It’s one of the most famous moments in modern Catholicism: the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. The Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to three Portuguese children in 1917, when much of the world was engulfed in World War I. Over a series of six appearances, Mary emphasized to these young shepherds that to bring peace, they should pray the rosary every day.

Devotion to the rosary already had a centuries-old history, and the Marian apparition at Fatima only deepened it. So what is a rosary, and why is it so important to many Catholics?

As War Rages, Some Ukrainians Look To Mary For Protection – Continuing A Long Christian Tradition, Kayla Harris

Marian Library Faculty Publications

Ukrainian clergy demonstrating against the war in their country have appeared in media coverage carefully holding an image of the Virgin Mary, her outstretched hands lifting up the edges of a cloak. These pictures depict a particular religious icon known as the “Pokrova” in which Mary’s veil – a “pokrova,” or “cover,” in Ukrainian – is a sign of protection.

Goddess Couture, Natalia O. Trevino

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

These poems explore the nature of the divine patriarch and matriarch in the mestiza-American consciousness.

Deisis In The Paintings Of Christian Egypt A Depiction Of The Intercessory Supplication, Manal Abdelhamid

Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists

(En) The concept of intercession is deeply embedded in Eastern Orthodoxy through the reciting of the Intercession Prayer, addressing the Christ, as the main intercessor, and other holy figures, including the Virgin, the saints, the martyrs and even angels, to intercede on behalf of the faithful and deliver their prayers to God. Deisis is one of the intercession themes that is widely illustrated in murals and icons of Christian Egypt. It is represented in different compositions, but mainly consists of three main figures: the Christ Pantocrator flanked by the two main intercessors, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Many …

Archiving Catholic Faith On The Web During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kayla Harris, Stephanie Shreffler

Marian Library Faculty Publications

In the middle of March 2020, an undergraduate English class from the University of Dayton visited the Marian Library for hands-on learning with primary source materials related to miraculous cures at the Lourdes shrine in France. Students in the upper-level seminar course that focused on narrative, rhetoric, and medicine prepared for the visit by reading an article about the baths at Lourdes, where thousands of pilgrims have traveled annually since the 1870s for a chance to be cured by the holy water from a spring.1 As students examined photographs, copies of case files, and historical narrative accounts, several of them …

Reading The Old Norse-Icelandic Maríu Saga In Its Manuscript Contexts, Daniel Najork

Northern Medieval World

Maríu saga, the Old Norse-Icelandic life of the Virgin Mary, survives in nineteen manuscripts. In the extant manuscripts Maríu saga rarely exists in the codex by itself. This study restores the saga to its manuscript contexts in order to better understand the meaning of the text within its manuscript matrix, why it was copied in the specific manuscripts it was, and how it was read and used by the different communities that preserved the manuscripts.

The Two Marys In Bruges: Images Of The Virgin And Child Over The Cityscape And The Reign Of Mary Of Burgundy, Meagan Daughtry Bailey Oates

All ETDs from UAB

From c.1475 to the early 1480s, a new image type appears in Bruges featuring the Virgin and Child under a cloth of honor with various garden motifs against the backdrop of a contemporaneous cityscape of Bruges. In this thesis, I establish for the first time the images in the Bruges Virgin type as a group in relation to the reign of Mary of Burgundy, Duchess of Burgundy (1477-1482). Analyzing the motifs of the cityscape of Bruges, the enclosed garden theme, and the Virgin and Child, I argue that the Bruges Virgin type alludes to and evokes Mary and her young …

La Virgen María Y El Niño Fidencio: Un Análisis Literario Y Cultural De Figuras Veneradas, Emily Schahrer, Polly J. Hodge

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Famous historical and literary figures who display characteristics of empathy, wisdom and compassion inspire a great sense of faith in humanity and hope for the future. There are two exemplary figures explored in this study that embody these characteristics. The first is the Virgin Mary, a saint widely known and recognized by the Catholic Church since the 4^th century. The other is Niño Fidencio: a famous healer, man of God, nicknamed a “saint of the people” from Espinazo, Mexico who lived in the 20^th century. Although Niño Fidencio is not officially recognized by the Catholic Church, he names …

La Virgen María Y El Niño Fidencio: Un Análisis Literario Y Cultural De Figuras Veneradas, Emily Schahrer

World Languages and Cultures Student Papers and Posters

Famous historical and literary figures who display characteristics of empathy, wisdom and compassion inspire a great sense of faith in humanity and hope for the future. There are two exemplary figures explored in this study that embody these characteristics. The first is the Virgin Mary, a saint widely known and recognized by the Catholic Church since the 4th century. The other is Niño Fidencio: a famous healer, man of God, nicknamed a “saint of the people” from Espinazo, Mexico who lived in the 20th century. Although Niño Fidencio is not officially recognized by the Catholic Church, he names the source …

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …

Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction …

Pilgrimage To The Virgin Of Juquila: The Negotiation Of Catholic Institutional Power In Colonial Oaxaca, Paloma Barraza

Art & Art History ETDs

Despite the contemporary popularity of the pilgrimage site of the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila, the statuette of Oaxaca’s Virgin of Juquila is often eclipsed by the more well-known tilma image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The limited art historical scholarship has failed to address the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila as an icon that signifies both Indigenous and Catholic power dating back to the seventeenth century. Dominican missionaries used the statuette as a mediator for religious conversion practices in the local Chatino community. Furthermore, the moment the Virgin of Juquila gained significant Indigenous popularity …

'Seek The Eyes Of Mary': A Widow And A Virgin's Illuminating Invitation, Kristina Gayle Heiss Kryscynski

Theses and Dissertations

A deep visual analysis of Ludovico Carracci’s 1588 Madonna and Child, Angels, and Saints Francis, Dominic, Mary Magdalene and the Donor Cecilia Bargellini Boncompagni with an emphasis on the role of the patron, the significance of the locality, and the visual semiotics of the Virgin Mary’s gaze in prompting conversion in the repentant prostitutes of the Carmelite convertite convent associated with Ss. Filippo and Giacomo in Bologna, Italy. Including a commentary on contemporary social expectations of modest behavior and the painting’s deliberate incorporation of inappropriate female behavior towards a religious purpose. A discussion of uniquely Carmelite iconography, the use of …

Envisioning Catholicism: Popular Practice Of A Traditional Faith In The Post-Wwii Us, Christy A. Bohl

Theses and Dissertations--History

Marian apparitions in the United States have occurred in ever-increasing numbers since World War Two, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. These apparitions occupy a unique space in religious life, as they provide opportunities for Catholics to practice their faith outside of the Church hierarchy while still maintaining their status as faithful Catholics, often placing women in prominent positions. Although apparitions are an important part of faith for thousands of American Catholics, most Americans and Catholics are unaware of how widespread this movement is. This dissertation takes a comparative approach to examine a selection of apparition events, illuminating the pilgrimage …

What Can Buddhist Artistic Traditions Learn From Christian Iconography, Jotipālo Bhikkhu

Obsculta

The three images included come from the author’s year-long residency at the Collegeville Institute.

The World Of Miracles: Science, And Healing In Caesarius Of Heisterbach’S Dialogus Miraculorum (Ca.1240) In Competition With Magic, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

This paper offers a close reading of some of the miracle tales dedicated to the Virgin Mary as contained in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum (ca. 1240) in order to shed light on the fundamental narrative structures of this genre, the association between the narratives and their material background, and to build a case to argue that medieval miracle narratives actually shared much in common with the discourse on magic. After a critical examination of magic itself and its properties as imagined or realized in the Middle Ages, the analysis highlights the ‘miraculous’ or maybe even ‘magical’ features of Caesarius’s …

Charismatic Renewal And Miracular Sensitivity At A Catholic Marian Apparition Site In Poland, Konrad Siekierski

Journal of Global Catholicism

Almost 70 years after the Mother of God appeared in a series of visions at the pastures near the village of Mazury in south-eastern Poland, this ‘abundant event’, in Robert Orsi’s terms, still attracts the attention of Polish Catholics. Drawing on my research on the recent revival of the apparition site in Mazury, I examine the current penetration of Polish Catholicism by the charismatic movement. As I discuss it, this trend reinvigorates, but also reshapes, what Andrzej Hemka and Jacek Olędzki call the ‘miracular sensitivity’ of Polish believers, traditionally dominated by Marian devotion.

Religious Imageries Of Pilgrims From Przeworsk: Making Pilgrimage To The Shrine Of Our Lady Of Consolation At Jodłówka, Magdalena Lubanska

Journal of Global Catholicism

My paper will provide an account of the religious imageries (T. Csordas) and practices of Catholic devotees from the Basilica of the Holy Spirit with whom I made pilgrimage on foot to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation at Jodłówka in August 2017. My account positions those imaginaries and practices within a broader contextual spectrum in order to move beyond events or conversations which were directly connected with the pilgrimage. To gain a better understanding of the religious needs of the pilgrims I spent time with some of them afterwards. Among other things, I attended masses involving healing services …

The Apostle’S Creed, Kerry Irish

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

Excerpt: "Today, when the problem with the written word is not too little, but too much-- too much that is either a waste of time, vulgar, or blasphemous-- the power of a memorized creed lies in its reminder of the majesty of God, who He is, and our relationship to Him. Some Christians object to creeds, claiming the Bible is all they need. The mistake in this thinking is the idea that a Biblical creed is something outside the Bible, when in fact it is a memorable and valuable expression of Biblical truths that help us explain what we believe. …

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

The Prince And The Priestess: Artistically Elevating Charles De Valois' Authority In Fifteenth-Century France, Sarah James Dyer

Theses and Dissertations

Charles de Valois (1446-1472) was a prince in fifteenth-century France. During his short lifetime, Charles endeavored to gain more authority while in conflict with his brother Louis XI, who was king. Although a minor political character in French history, Charles did demonstrate his power in several artistic ways. One commission by the young royal was a manuscript now known as the Hours of Charles of France. Two pages of this text, the Annunciation to the Virgin, are decorated with rich imagery and iconography used to exhibit Charles' desire for greater authority. The manuscript has only been discussed stylistically, and therefore …

Pilgrimage, Spatial Interaction, And Memory At Three Marian Sites, Katherine Rousseau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global mediation, communication, and technology facilitate pilgrimage places with porous boundaries, and the dynamics of porousness are complex and varied. Three Marian, Catholic pilgrimage places demonstrate the potential for variation in porous boundaries: Chartres cathedral; the Marian apparition location of Medjugorje; and the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus. These three places are porous in that they emplace the interactions of different groups, fostering the permeability of boundaries between categories of pilgrimage and tourism, commercial place and devotional place, and cultural and spiritual value. They also show varied degrees of spatial porousness, either topographically or in their connection to …

Expression Surpassing Words: Gorecki’S Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 “Sorrowful Songs”, Alyssa K. Griffith

Musical Offerings

The experience of listening to Gorecki’s Symphony no. 3, op. 36 “Sorrowful Songs” is one that is not easily forgotten. It is not only musically captivating, but also historically fascinating. After its premiere in 1977, Gorecki’s piece captivated listeners across the globe as it became a cultural phenomenon in both Europe and America. The music was a stunning success in both the Classical and popular cultures. What is it about the music that is so captivating? How did the trending, popular thoughts compare to Gorecki’s original ideas and compositional motives? What actually inspired this piece? By looking at the composition …

Review Of The Comedia Of Virginity: Mary And The Politics Of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater, Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Mirzam Perez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.