Protecting Mother and Child at Birth – Amulets and Prayers in Franconian Genizot (original) (raw)
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The amulets referred to in this paper were found mainly in the eastern part of the Frankish tribal lands. There, in the Rhineland, Christianity did not hold as much ground in the 6 th and 7 th centuries as during later periods. Therefore, members of the Frankish aristocracy (a clear indication of the social strata the owners of the jewelry belonged to are the materials, i.e., precious metals, that the pieces were made of) preferred to rely on tried and tested amulets based on the native religious conventions rather than on Christian imagery (e.g., baptismal crosses).
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Early modern Italian women sought out divine intercession to increase their chances of having children, to facilitate labour and offer protection during this perilous time, or to protect their fragile newborns. This essay explores the role of devotional and religious text in the lives of women and their children. It considers both traditional and unconventional modes of engagement with holy words using extant objects, archival sources, and literary accounts. In particular, it emphasizes the reliance upon wearable apotropaic textual objects and their relation to other important devotional aids, such as the intercession of Saint Margaret and the Sacra Cintola of Prato. While the employment of amulets, including those of a textual nature, had long been employed by both men and women across Europe, this paper explores the religious aspects of such charms by focusing upon their role within women’s devotional culture.
Let us imagine the birth of a Jewish baby in a remote shtetl in Poland or Russia before the onslaught of modernity: a woman is in labor in her bedroom, sur rounded by a midwife and a few other women. No man is allowed in the room, not even the husband or a doctor. Fearful of the grave dangers of childbirth, shared by all people in the pre-modern world, the room is provided with protec tive amulets and other magical objects. The midwife or perhaps a member of the family slips a mysterious book under the pillow of the woman in labor. This book contains magical formulas against the murderous spirits and evil demons, such as Lilith, who threaten the newborn and his mother. Let us now shift our gaze to a similarly traditional Jewish household in an Is lamic town-be it Teheran, Baghdad, or Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan. The scene is the night before circumcision-believed to be the most dangerous night for the newborn and his mother, because this is the last opportunity for the demons to attack the male child before the protective ceremony of circumcision would take place. As a measure of protection, the chair of Elijah-a chair with magical func tions among the Jews of Islam-stands in the center of the room. The chair is ornamented with Torah finials, hamsas, healing plants, and holy books-includ ing at times the book of magic formulas. Inscribed metal and paper amulets in the room are based on the formulas in this book, Sefer Raziel ha-MaVakh (Book of Raziel the Angel). It is thus clear that, side by side with the normative and written system of the halakhah, Judaism developed what we may call "folk religion." Although com prehensive codes such as Joseph Karo's Shulhan Arukh (The Prepared Table; Venice, 1565) set out to cover every aspect of the life of the Jew, there was suffi cient room for unofficial, often unwritten, beliefs and practices. The reality of daily life, the deep religious beliefs of the common people, and close contacts with the host societies and their varied cultures gave rise to popular beliefs, pat terns of behavior, customs and practices, and the production of religious arti facts that could not be always accounted for in the "official" halakhic sources.
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This article examines illustrations of the zodiac signs on birth amulets from German-Jewish printing houses from the 18th century. These woodcuts are part of a long tradition of astrological references in Jewish art and literature. However, the amulet texts themselves do not contain any astrological topics. What, then, is the relationship of the woodcuts to the text and to the function of the amulets? By contextualizing the images with other contemporary traditions of illustration, this article provides three interpretation models which can explain the choice of the zodiac signs on the amulets.
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Examining the Jewish textual amulets from Late Antiquity, we can see great variation in their textual density, i.e., the average amount of text written on each square centimeter of the thin sheet of metal. This variation is due in part to the nature of the metals on which the amulets were inscribed, but also reflects the technical competence of individual amulet producers, and their belief in the powers of the texts they were inscribing. Moreover, in order to fill the entire writing surface with text without spilling over to the other side, some amulet producers wrote the text on more than one sheet of metal, thus filling up one sheet, and then continuing the text on the next sheet, whereas other amulet producers tended to add ever-smaller textual units towards the end of their amulet, so as to have their text end at the very end of the writing surface. And the desire to write as much text as possible on each amulet seems to have been stronger among the Jewish amulet producers than among their non-Jewish colleagues, probably because of the strong Jewish belief in the power of words to change the world around us.
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Recent years witnessed an increasing interest in Christian amulets with Biblical texts. Several catalogues and monographic contributions have been published, facilitating the research on historical and religious aspects of these artefacts. The paper offers a methodological framework, founded mainly on the concept of semiophore formulated by Krzysztof Pomian, as well as six case studies, which show how the analysis of material and textual aspects of a scriptural amulet might reveal theological ideas, more or less consciously shared by its producers and users.
Textual Amulets from Antiquity to Early Modern Times - The Shape of Words
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Comparing amulets over time and space, this volume focuses on the function of written words on these fascinating artefacts. Ranging from Roman Egypt to the Middle Ages and the Modern period, this book provides an overview on these artefacts in the Mediterranean world and beyond, including Europe, Iran and Turkey. A deep analysis of the textuality of amulets provides comparative information on themes and structures of the religious traditions examined. A strong emphasis is placed on the material features of the amulets and their connections to their ritual purposes. The textual content, as well as other characteristics, is examined systematically, in order to establish patterns of influence and diffusion. The question of the production, which includes the relationship that linked professional magicians, artists and craftsmen to their clientele, is also discussed, as well as the sacred and cultural economies involved.