Fragmentations of Medieval Religion: Thomas More, Chaucer, and the Volcano Lover

Roosevelt street, new york, 1929–30. Outside a store that is advertising the sale of soda, candy, and ice cream hang various objects made of wax. Some of them are, quite obviously, candles. Others defy easy categorization. Basically, they are effigies of, respectively, an adult arm, a child’s arm, and a heart. Here I am describing a photograph taken by Walker Evans (1903–75), as included in an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, during the period February 1-May 14, 2000, and published in the accompanying catalogue.¹ The caption simply reads “Votive Candles.” But the wax depictions of human body parts, evidently not designed to function as lightsources, can hardly be called “candles.” “Votives” these fragmented images certainly are, however. Taken collectively, they constitute a cultural fragment, challenging to the twenty-first-century cataloguer, that once was given meaning by religious practices that go back to the Middle Ages. And even earlier.

Votive offerings were a common feature of medieval shrines—effigies of complete bodies or of body parts, such as a foot, leg, arm, eye, teeth, heart, or breast, together with the crutches or bandages left by the faithful. The afflicted part of the human body was modeled in plastic form, to identify the location of the corporeal disorder that was to be cured or that had been cured. Images of animals (particularly cows and horses) were also made, indicating the anxieties of men and women who depended on such creatures for their livelihood. Such objects bedecked medieval pilgrimage destinations, which had as their main focus of worship the relics of saints—whether the complete corpse of some holy man (as at Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury) or some part thereof (such as the head of Saint James at Compostela), here being another type of fragmentation characteristic of medieval Christianity. Usually ex-votos were made of wax, but sometimes wood was used, or even silver or gold, depending on the wealth of the supplicant.

Their use, however, was exclusively neither Christian nor medieval. Anatomical ex-votos made of terracotta were a regular feature of pagan religious practices in the era of the Roman Republic (i.e., from 509 bce until Augustus assumed power in 27 bce), though it should be noted that the rites performed at sacred places were quite different, not least because the veneration of relics was abhorrent to Roman sensibilities. Many fine examples have been unearthed in archeological excavations. To quote from Catherine Johns’s useful summary of the evidence:

Parts of the body frequently figured are the eyes, head, hands, breasts, male genitals, legs and feet. Some internal organs are also found, particularly wombs, while complete statuettes of animals presumably indicate an appeal for help with the illnesses of domestic beasts. The precise interpretation of the parts of the body in terms of what diseases were common is very difficult. … The prevalence of a particular part of the body at any given sanctuary could indicate that the shrine had a good reputation in the healing of diseases afflicting that part, so that sufferers attended it from a wide radius. On the other hand, it could also indicate that disorders of that part of the body were especially common in that area, or were an especially serious disability in that particular community.²

For instance, votives in the form of feet were in common use at the healing shrine at Ponte di Nona, in Rome, and it has been speculated that, in a rural community such as the one that once existed around that bridge, “injuries or afflictions of the feet and legs would be particularly serious.”³

Many instances of shrines that sought to heal serious disabilities not just of a “particular community” but “from a wide radius” may be cited from medieval evidence—which brings us to one of the most challenging documents to be discussed in this paper. And the challenge consists in the fact that the account is humorous, and clearly intended to be so. Laughter at body parts and their representation in painting...