No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Sea and Souls: Maritime Votive Practices in Counter-Reformation Brittany, 1500–1750
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
If God had not given a natural inclination to some with regard to things of the sea, I do not believe that anyone would ever dare to go upon it. … Barely has a long voyage begun when fresh water becomes so short that one is reduced to drinking so little that thirst is provoked rather than quenched … Food shortages are so frequent that one is often forced to eat rats and ship’s leather … One has difficulty in deciding which is the more insupportable, the heat of the torrid zone or the cold of the north. Scurvy and the maladies of Guinea and the tropics are so painful and grievous that you would not believe the human body could suffer so greatly. The horror of maritime warfare and of storms cannot be explained to those who have not experienced them. I know of voyages where a third or a half of the crew have been lost.
Few human communities are as exposed to risk as those who make a living from the sea. More prone to the unpredictability of the natural world than those who Live on land, sailors, fisherman and their families have always been gready conscious of the fragility of life and of human powerlessness before the elements. Because the capriciousness of the sea is beyond the normal control of seafarers, during the historic past and no doubt long before, recourse was made to supernatural methods of management. By the later Middle Ages in Christian Europe, the most important form was invocation of divine protection through the intercession of the saints of the Church, by a process of vow and exchange.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 205 - 216
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010
References
1 Fournier, Georges, Hydrographie contenant la théorie et la pratique de toutes les parties de la navigation (Paris, 1643), 112–13.Google Scholar
2 See Johnson, Trevor, ‘The Catholic Reformation’, in Alec Ryrie, ed., The European Reformations (Basingstoke, 2006), 190–211 Google Scholar; Venard, Marc, ed., Histoire du christianisme, 8: Les temps des confessions (1530–1620) (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar; Hsia, R. P.-C., ed., Tlte Cambridge History of Christianity, 6: Reform and Expansion 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 2006), esp. chs 9, 12.Google Scholar
3 Fournier, Hydrographie, 618.
4 ‘ Verjus, Père’ [de Saint-Andr, A.é], La vie de Monsieur Le Nobletz, prestre et missionaire de Bretagne (Paris, 1666), 130–31.Google Scholar
5 Ibid. 131.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid. 184.
8 Lopez, Catherine, Piété des gens de mer (Pézenas, 1994.), 18.Google Scholar
9 Châtellier, Louis, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modem Catholicism c. 1500 – c. 1800 (Cambridge, 1997), 107.Google Scholar
10 Fournier, Hydrographie, 671–704.
11 Anon., ,Ex-voto marins de la Charente-Maritime (La Rochelle, 1979), 20.Google Scholar
12 ‘Verjus’, Monsieur Le Nobletz.
13 Boschet, R. P., Le parfait missionaire ou la vie du RP Julien Maunoir (Paris, 1697).Google Scholar
14 ‘Verjus’, Monsieur Le Nobletz, 133.
15 Ibid. 202.
16 Boschet, Le parfait missionaire, 108.
17 Maunoir, Julien, La vie du vénérable dom Michel Le Nobletz (Saint-Brieuc, 1934), 214.Google Scholar
18 , F. and Boullet, C., Ex-voto marins (Paris, 1978), 12.Google Scholar
19 Association pour la Sauvegarde du Patrimoine Religieux en Vie dans les Côtes d’Armor, Ex-voto marins en Trégor-Goëlo (Pérros-Guirec, 1991), 4; Renfrew, Colin, ‘The Archaeology of Religion’, in Renfrew, Colin and Zubrow, Ezra B., eds, The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology (Cambridge, 1994), 47—54, at 48—49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 For votive practice in archaeological contexts, see Osborne, Robin, ‘Hoards, Votives, Offerings: The Archaeology of the Dedicated Object’, World Archaeology 36 (2004), 1—10 Google Scholar; Bradley, Richard, The Passage of Arms: An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoard and Votive Deposits (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar
21 Cousin, Bernard, Ex-voto de Provence (Paris, 1981), 17.Google Scholar
22 Ibid. 12; Lopez, Piété des gens de mer, 8, 12. Christine Peters comments that the votive was ‘the greatest secular intrusion into sacred space’ in her ‘Access to the Divine: Gender and Votive Images in Moldavia and Wallachia’, in Swanson, R. N., ed., Gender and Christian Religion, SCH 34 (Woodbridge, 1998), 143–62, at 143.Google Scholar
23 Boullet, Ex-voto marins, 13.
24 Van Staten, F.T., ‘Gifts for the Gods’, in Vernel, H. S., ed., Faith, Hope and Worship (Leiden, 1981), 65–151, at 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 Ibid. 72.
26 Anon., , Ex-voto marins de Bretagne et Galicie (Rennes, 1987), 12.Google Scholar
27 Boullet, Ex-voto marins, 21.
28 Ibid. 22.
29 Anon., Ex-votos marins de la Charente-Maritime, 26.
30 Boullet, Ex-voto marins, 22.
31 Cousin, Ex-voto de Provence, 18–19.
32 Anon., Ex-voto marins de Bretagne et Galicie, 13.
33 Ex-voto marins en Trégor-Goëlo (Pérros-Guirec, 1991), 4.
34 For Finistère, see the special edition of the Bulletin de la société d’archéologie de Finistère 102 (1973); there was an exhibition of marine votives in the Musée Cohue de Vannes in 2007.
35 Trevor Johnson, ‘Blood, Tears and Xavier-Water: Jesuit Missionaries and Popular Religion in the Eighteenth-Century Upper Palatinate’, in Scribner, Bob and Johnson, Trevor, eds, Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800 (Basingstoke, 1996), 183–202, 272–75, at 185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 Boullet, Ex-voto marins, 30.
37 Lopez, Piété des gens de mer, 24. In Malta, the Virgin, followed by our Lord and then Saints Joseph and John the Baptist, predominated: Prins, A. H. J., In Peril on the Sea: Maritime Votive Paintings in the Maltese Islands (Valletta, 1989).Google Scholar
38 Berthiaume, Pierre and Lizé, Emile, Foi >et legends: La peinture votive au Québec (1666–1944), (Québec, 1991), 18.Google Scholar
39 Bireley, Robert, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700 (Basingstoke, 1999), 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 Ibid. 113.
41 Van Staten,‘Gifts for the Gods’, 72.
42 Anon., Ex-voto marins de Bretagne et Galicie, 13.
43 Johnston, Trevor, ‘“Everyone should be like the people”: Elite and Popular Religion and the Counter Reformation’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy, eds, Elite and Popular Religion, SCH 42 (Woodbridge, 2006), 218–19.Google Scholar
44 Hsia, R. P.-C., The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998), 55–56.Google Scholar
45 Johnson,‘“Everyone should be like the people”’, 222.
46 Ibid. 224.
47 Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 201.