Monday, October 31, 2005

Goth

Modern "Goth" culture echoes, in some ways, the fascination in past centuries with the imagery of death, although the meaning is now rather different.

In the Middle Ages, skulls and skeletons were gruesome and frightening, but they were also seen as symbols of the intent to live a good and holy life and attain heaven in the limited time available (or perhaps through Purgatory later).

But in modern times, skulls and skeletons lack these positive associations, and are seen solely as symbols of fear, despair, suffering and evil.

Some modern "Goths" do embrace not only the black clothing and pale makeup, but a "Goth" attitude. For them, the skull-and-blood imagery, and the mockery of religious symbols such as crucifixes and rosaries, expresses their genuine feeling of alienation, sadness and hopelessness.

More often, though -- and this is why I'm writing this on Hallowe'en -- the "Goths" and "pirates" I encounter are tongue-in-cheek. They enjoy wearing the clothes as an outrageous fashion statement, and get a kick out of pretending to be evil and out of making fun of those who take life too seriously. They are not out to actually hurt anyone, and in fact, many of the ones I've met are extraordinarily kind and helpful people behind the silly or outré masks.

Unfortunately this playful sort of "Goth" is sometimes mistaken for someone genuinely interested in evil. As Joe Sinasac comments at Catholic Online, it's easy to focus on "Gothic beasties and so-called black magic", when real evil is much more mundane. "As Hannah Arendt observed," he adds, "evil is often banal, not exciting... Such fears are echoes of past alarms over the Halloween custom of dressing up the kids as goblins and witches. They make just as little sense. Real evil can be much more difficult to detect – and is far more widespread. Also much more difficult to eradicate; a simple exorcism just won’t do."

So the imagery doesn't scare me. I'm more amused than horrified by the "goth" rosaries I've encountered. (Though I can understand how others might see hostility where I see humor, and if so, they're certainly entitled to that opinion.)



Just as with real rosaries, there are tacky and flimsy goth rosaries and there are nicely-constructed ones. Also, just as with real rosaries, there are examples that stick fairly closely to the "canonical" construction of modern rosaries, and there are also variations that don't. I expect most of those (like the one below) are due to an artistic impulse to interpret the design loosely, though I suspect there are a few out there whose makers are simply unclear on the concept. :)



The site that keeps coming up in a Google search for "goth" and "rosary" (and source of the above images) is, unsurprisingly, Goth Rosary, which does have some interesting merchandise, including not only rosaries named after blood types (Type A, Type O, Type AB negative) but "coffin" purses and fragrances with names like "Graveyard" ("The smell of rich loamy soil, fresh green grass with a note of floral..") and "Mayhem" ("The smell of smoke mixed with woods & spice...."). I think my favorite is the bone-colored skull comb.

(By the way, my research also turned up an interesting online article on the history and anthropology of modern "goth" culture (originally someone's term paper) that I found well worth reading.)

Posts in this series:


Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Labels:

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Alanus de Rupe and the Beads of Death :)

When I was asked to provide a rosary display for the Artisans' Gallery at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo last spring, I decided I wanted to make at least one new rosary for it.

Looking through my notes, I saw that I'd written on the list of future projects "Ulm, p.112." Well, first I had to figure out which book I'd meant... but eventually I found what I'd been thinking of on p.112 of Stories of the Rose (IMHO, the best book on rosary history in English).

It turned out to be a reference to Alanus de Rupe's Unser lieben frauen psalter, one of the first printed rosary books (1483). In the tenth "Exemplum" (anecdote) in that book, de Rupe mentions a particular rosary prescribed by St. Dominic for a penitent knight. Stories of the Rose describes this as telling how "a knight was instructed to make a set out of five stones" whose colors and symbolism are detailed. Five beads, I thought: oh, that will be easy.

After a bit of investigating, I discovered that one of the manuscripts of de Rupe's handbook is available to me on microfilm at the local university library, so I went to take a look.

Knight beads 10th exemplum 1

Much to my surprise, this seemed to offer a rather different description. The 15th-century German isn't easy (I'd swear they had letters in their alphabet I'd never seen before!), but thanks to a couple of very helpful correspondents, here's a translation.

"In the next-following figure is a paternoster that has five large stones, and after every one large stone should be ten small. The first large stone of the five is many-colored and signifies the multiplicity of your sins. The second stone is light colored, and signifies the uncertain death that is in your certain future. The third stone is red, and signifies the Last Judgement at which you must give an account of your life. The fourth stone of the five is black, and signifies hell. The fifth stone of the paternoster is gilt, and signifies the glory and joy of the saints: which glory and joy is promised to those who keep the commandment of God."

Clearly the description in Stories of the Rose should have said "a knight was instructed to make a set with five stones." After each of these follow ten ordinary Ave beads, just as in a normal rosary; the only thing different is the five specially colored gauds or marker beads with their symbolism. I wasn't 100% sure of my translation, but I mustered up enough courage to write to the author of Stories of the Rose, Anne Winston-Allen, who wrote back very cordially and agreed I was correct -- always a thrill to the amateur researcher's heart!

I had a string of rock crystal (clear quartz) Aves that was just waiting for the right project, so after considerable "creative shopping" for just the right gauds, I was able to create this reproduction:

Alanus

The "multicolored" bead is a millefiori glass bead from a Venetian importer. The light-colored bead is a natural agate, the red is coral, the black is glass, and the gold bead is another imported bead from Venice, made with real gold foil.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Coffins

We seem to be getting a bit far afield from rosaries, but considering the interesting phenomenon of rosaries that use skulls (as they occasionally do) leads naturally to consideration of the other skull and skeleton "keepsakes" that are relatively common in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Especially since it's October :)

Another such "memento mori" object is the miniature coffin, which often opens to show a skeleton. Probably one of the better-known examples is the so-called Torre Abbey jewel from England (1540-1550, museum no. 3581-1856), now in the Victoria and Albert museum.

Torre Abbey

The point of having such a memento was that by remembering that death was inevitable and unpredictable, you would be motivated to live a virtuous life. This continued to be fashionable right through the 16th century.

Another example from the Victoria & Albert, which is rather more decorative with a fancy chain decorated with pairs of crossed bones, and colored black and white with enamel, is this one:

Skull-coffin

The museum's commentary notes that by the middle of the 17th century, the focus of skull, coffin and skeleton symbolism had changed -- from an abstract contemplation of death as motivation for virtue to commemorating the deaths of specific people, generally family members or loved ones.

The fashion began to turn then from memento-mori's toward mourning jewelry, with dates, initials or names, and eventually to such things as Victorian "hair jewelry" made from hair from the deceased. The impulse to create "relics," in the same way the Middle Ages treasured bits of hair, bone or clothing from saints, seems to be a recurring theme. Popular symbolism also turned from skulls and coffins toward weeping women, willow trees, gravestones and broken columns as symbols of loss.

But we are still in the Middle Ages in this discussion, and I found another very interesting coffin while roaming around in the Marburg Index, which I thought I'd share. Here is an overview:

Coffin

According to the museum notes, this is ivory, from Western Switzerland around 1520. Like most of the memento-mori's I've been discussing, it's now in the Schnütgen Museum in Köln (Cologne), Germany. The skeleton is enclosed in a "box" composed of a solid base and lid in a rather eye-blinding black-and-white pattern, and open sides with narrow columns and wide spaces.

What's particularly notable about this one is that the skeleton isn't completely reduced to bones, but retains some "muscle tissue"(?) depicted in ivory on the top side, and through a hole in the stomach some "internal organs" can be seen.

Coffin-skel

I suppose ivory is such a wonderful material that it manages to make even such revolting details look eerily beautiful, but my modern sense of appropriateness still says "Eeeeeuuuuwwwwwww!"

Posts in this series:


Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Labels: ,

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Our Lady's Psalter

One of my correspondents recently asked what the connection is between the rosary and the "psalter" or Book of Psalms in the Bible. She was puzzled to read that prayer beads were used when reciting "the psalter" and wondered whether this meant reciting the same psalm 50 times, or whether the beads were a way to keep track of which psalm you were on. "I know people do memorize psalms," she says, "but 50 sounds like a lot to remember."

This is a good question, and it's a piece of rosary history that I don't think I've mentioned here. Here's a short review.

Priests, monks, nuns and other full-time religious people in the Catholic Church have "official" prayers to recite every day. These prayers used to be referred to as the "Divine Office" and today are called the "Liturgy of the Hours." These are seen as prayers offered on behalf of the whole church, for the entire world. The Divine Office is based on the Psalms, together with other prayers, hymns and readings, and those who pray it actually do recite the 150 psalms at least every week. (If I recall correctly, in the Middle Ages the Office was heavier on the Psalms and lighter on the other stuff.)

Lay people wanted to participate in this "official" prayer of the Church, too, including those who couldn't afford an expensive psalm or Office book and those who couldn't read. While I'm sure there were people who did memorize all 150 psalms, it was much more common for such people to simply recite the Our Father (Pater Noster) 150 times, once for each of the 150 psalms. This is what the paternoster beads were used for -- to keep count. We have records of practices like this several centuries earlier than the "rosary" as we know it today.

Later elaborations included adding a "Hail Mary" after each "Our Father," or just saying 150 "Hail Marys", and this was referred to as reciting "Our Lady's Psalter." To this day, you are likely to hear a 5-decade rosary or a loop of 50 beads (or 50 plus markers) referred to as a "psalter" in German, to differentiate it from other forms of beads (such as strings of 10, or 6- or 7-decade forms).

Other devotions also used the same beads. Various people wrote devotions for the beads, including sets of 150 rhymed verses, one to add to each "Hail Mary" of the 150 (which again required a book). One of the early rosary manuals has been republished in recent years and has been surprisingly popular because it provides 150 Scripture verses -- again, one for each bead. The modern, newly re-invented devotion is called a "Scriptural Rosary," and has many enthusiasts.

Friday, October 07, 2005

The dancing skeleton

I will get off this "skulls" thing I've been on: really, I will. But there will be just a few more posts -- October, with Hallowe'en and the Day of the Dead at the end of it, is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

One of my correspondents pointed me to an intriguing little "dancing" or "climbing" bone skeleton bead that's available from Fire Mountain Gems. It's a bit better carved than some of the bone skulls they sell, and I think it's rather cute.



I actually found a somewhat similar (but smaller) metal version, which I've used on the "plain and simple" version of a rosary in red glass in my collection.



Finally, there's another delightful little "Memento Mori" carving in the form of this "dancing skeleton." It's listed as possibly from Berlin, attributed to Joachim Hennen in the middle of the 17th century, and is now with the other "Voldemort" memento-mori's in the Schnütgen Museum in Köln (Cologne).

Dancing-skeleton

It's quite graceful (for a skeleton) even if the whole idea of "skeleton as dress accessory" is a bit morbid!

I should add, by the way, since this is as good a place to mention it as any, that there's also a delightful little ivory carving of a child in the same collection:

Lorettokindl

It's labeled as a "Lorettokindl," that is (I think), a depiction of the Christ Child from a group representing Our Lady of Loretto. I think it's darling. The similarity in poses is intriguing.

Posts in this series:


Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Labels: ,

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Rosary Month

October in the Roman Catholic Church is traditionally "Rosary Month," and hopefully I'll be able to celebrate it by catching up on some blog entries here. (It's been a busy couple of months.)

One of my recent musings is this: despite the fact that I'm doing this research and writing this blog, and despite being Catholic (a convert), I personally don't pray the rosary very often. Mostly this is just personal spirituality -- I don't tend to pray to saints very often, simply because of my own history. I also don't feel the rosary is necessary for everyone.

I have to admit that the one time I do reach for the rosary is when all else has failed and I simply cannot fall asleep. I seldom get through more than two decades, though :)

But I still find rosaries fascinating. I seem to have discovered a "hole" in medieval scholarship; there are lots of people in academia who research the prayers and devotions, but no one seems to be paying much attention to the actual beads.

Partly I think this is because "material culture" studies (i.e. research on actual THINGS) have only become a respectable part of medieval scholarship in the last twenty years or so -- before that, they were pretty much ignored or left to archaeologists, and many historians didn't bother to read about them.

I also think historical reenactment has had an influence: it's when trying to reproduce and document period artifacts that it becomes apparent that a lot of basic research and description simply hasn't been done, or done to a standard that makes reproductions possible. How many beads in a group? What are they threaded on? Where and how is the rosary worn or carried? Are beads of this material appropriate for this social class? Those are the sorts of questions that in many cases haven't been answered.