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Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The...
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Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 February 2024) | Viewed by 10552

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Cody Barteet

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts, Western University, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada
Interests: Hispanic American art and architecture; early modern visual culture; race, gender, religious art and architecture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Iraboty Kazi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Assistant
Department of Visual Arts, Western University, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada
Interests: Early Modern Visual Culture; Dante; Queer Cinema; Pastoral; South Asian diasporic art and cinema
Dr. Alena Robin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts, Western University, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada
Interests: Spanish American colonial art; New Spain; religious art; heritage protection; Latin American art in Canada
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, academic interest in the movement of people, objects, and ideas has risen significantly, driven by the desire to develop a fuller understanding of history and our current globalized world (Beaudry and Paron 2013, Corcoran-Tadd, Hung et. al. 2021). These interests have forced us to reconsider knowledge, art, spatial, religious, and historical formations, prior to, during, and after the colonial era, as we have recognized for several decades now that colonialism was formalized and transgressed by virtually all peoples involved (Hofman and Keehnen 2018). Further, objects, styles, concepts, and other material artifacts traversed oceans and continents (Callligaro, Chiappero et. al. 2019, Hamann 2010, Hyman 2017). We look to consider the intersections of Hispanic cultural traditions with European (whether Jewish, Islamic, Catholic, or Protestant), Indigenous/First Nations, Afro-Latin American/Afro-Caribbean, and Asian-Latin American in a developing global world. By considering the mobility of peoples, objects, themes, and other social constructs throughout the global Spanish territories, we explore the intersection of disparate religious traditions to consider the formation of new cultural knowledges and practices through the appropriation, assimilation, commodification, fetishization, marginalization, and hybridization of objects and practices.

We invite contributors to submit their research in English for consideration. Please note that there is a two-stage submission procedure. We will first collect a title and short abstract (maximum 250 words), 5 keywords, and a short bio (150 words), by 1 May 2022, via email to Dr. Cody Barteet ([email protected]), Iraboty Kazi ([email protected]), and Dr. Alena Robin ([email protected]). Before 30 May 2022, we will invite selected abstracts to be submitted as 7000- to 9000-word papers for peer review by 1 February 2023. Journal publication is expected in mid- to late 2023, depending on the revision time needed after peer review. Each article will be published open access on a rolling basis after successfully passing peer review.

Dr. C. Cody Barteet
Guest Editor
Iraboty Kazi
Guest Editor Assistant
Dr. Alena Robin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • mobility
  • religious art
  • cultural artifacts
  • Hispanic world
  • transatlantic
  • transpacific
  • transcontinental
  • race
  • gender

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 33182 KiB  
Article
Sacred Pathway, Devotional Praxis: Actors, Aché, and Landscape at the Sanctuary of Regla, Cuba
by Paul Barrett Niell
Religions 2023, 14(12), 1545; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121545 - 15 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1414
Abstract
The ferry from Havana to Regla, Cuba, transports visitors from today’s cruise ship docks across a brief stretch of water in about 20 min. Despite its brevity, this watery passage symbolically foregrounds the Marian devotion on the southern rim of the grand harbor. [...] Read more.
The ferry from Havana to Regla, Cuba, transports visitors from today’s cruise ship docks across a brief stretch of water in about 20 min. Despite its brevity, this watery passage symbolically foregrounds the Marian devotion on the southern rim of the grand harbor. In this way, water conjoins African diasporic histories of enslavement, labor, survival, resistance, daily life, and religiosity within Havana Bay, into which two urban geographies project. Regla historically served as a municipality for dockworkers and shipwrights and became an enclave for identity creation, civil association, and religious worship for people of African descent. The church and sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Regla (“Our Lady of Regla”) has nurtured this connection as it houses effigies of the venerated Virgin, adorned in blue. The Virgin of Regla represents one of two, along with El Cobre, of the most important Marian devotions on the island of Cuba and is the focus of insular and diasporic pilgrimage. In Regla, the Virgin’s nautical iconography decorates the sanctuary and historically connects her to the working populations who sustained this devotion as they serviced Havana Harbor with their labor. Adjacent to the church is a waterfront park that looks out on the water and the city of Havana beyond. Bordered on one side by a low wall, the park incorporates a large ceiba tree, ceiba pentandra, also known as the silk cotton or kapok tree, a tropical species with a large trunk and spreading tree canopy native to Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean, northern South America, and West Africa (with a similar variety found in South and Southeast Asia). This article considers landscape as a methodology for examining the interplay of this tree and the adjacent church as interwoven and mutually reinforcing sites of devotion for the worship of the Virgin Mary and the oricha Yemayá in Regla, Cuba, with a view toward a broader set of local and global spaces. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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22 pages, 5212 KiB  
Article
“Holy to the Lord”: The Material Conversion of the Cammarata Finials
by Hila Manor
Religions 2023, 14(12), 1502; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121502 - 4 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1098
Abstract
This article sets out to trace the trans-religious journey of two objects in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fifteenth century. The expulsion of Jews from all Spanish territories in 1492–1493 instigated the movement of objects from Jewish to Christian hands. [...] Read more.
This article sets out to trace the trans-religious journey of two objects in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fifteenth century. The expulsion of Jews from all Spanish territories in 1492–1493 instigated the movement of objects from Jewish to Christian hands. Among these were a pair of Torah finials that belonged to the Jewish community of Cammarata, Sicily, where they were set on top of the rods around which the Torah scroll was rolled. These two finials were sold in Sicily and, through a chain of merchants and ecclesiastics, arrived at the Cathedral of Palma and were incorporated into the local Christian liturgy, a process that continued well into the twentieth century. This article analyzes the use and performance of the finials in their different liturgical settings and examines their conversion from Jewish ceremonial objects to ecclesiastical implements. It concludes with a discussion of temporality in studying converted objects, a factor that played a key role in the finials’ migration between socio-religious contexts and resulted in the creation of multifaceted objects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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18 pages, 1868 KiB  
Article
A Transatlantic Tale of Monsters and Virgins: Our Lady of Sorrows and the Crocodile
by Mariana Zinni
Religions 2023, 14(11), 1385; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111385 - 6 Nov 2023
Viewed by 990
Abstract
In 1748, an image of Our Lady of Sorrows brought from Mexico by Marcos Torres, an Indiano born in Tenerife who made his fortune in New Spain, was enthroned with a festivity and sermon. The image of the Virgin was accompanied by a [...] Read more.
In 1748, an image of Our Lady of Sorrows brought from Mexico by Marcos Torres, an Indiano born in Tenerife who made his fortune in New Spain, was enthroned with a festivity and sermon. The image of the Virgin was accompanied by a stuffed crocodile that can still be seen in the shrine. Torres claimed the Virgin saved him from the crocodile in Mexico and the animal became an extreme form of exvoto, an allegory, reminding him and fellow countrymen of the dangers and perils of becoming rich in the New World. The material history of these sacred objects transformed this singular Canarian shrine filled with American objects of devotion and local pieces. I explore how the material history of sacred objects can reveal information about their devotion, but also the circumstances surrounding them. In this case, the perils of transatlantic travel and American landscape for a foreigner as the Indiano, and how this materiality was explained and recontextualized in a new setting, reconfigured as a hybrid space hosting American devotions and peculiar exvotos. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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19 pages, 3727 KiB  
Article
Beads and Ceremony: The Collision of Pan-American, European, African, and Asian Bead Networks in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Empire
by Lauren Beck
Religions 2023, 14(10), 1335; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101335 - 23 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1485
Abstract
A powerful bead network that wove together a transcontinental tapestry of cultures predated the Spanish invasion of the Americas. Beads created in the northeastern Atlantic world found themselves in Aztec and Incan territories, as did beads made from rocks found in the Pacific [...] Read more.
A powerful bead network that wove together a transcontinental tapestry of cultures predated the Spanish invasion of the Americas. Beads created in the northeastern Atlantic world found themselves in Aztec and Incan territories, as did beads made from rocks found in the Pacific Northwest, all of which had been borne along trade networks that have existed for ages. Sixteenth-century illustrations found in the Mexican codices demonstrate the traditional manufacture of beads, which were used for a range of quotidian and ceremonial purposes. Since medieval times, Spaniards employed beads, called rescate, as currency for inequitable trade, whether for slaves or precious metals. The Spanish invasion introduced beads manufactured in other parts of the world to the Americas to form part of the ceremonial and spiritually endowed objects and ceremonies, and vice versa, American beads made their way into Spanish clothing and religious objects such as the rosary. A significant infusion of new beads from Spain rushed into the American bead network in the sixteenth century, some of which had international origins from places such as Venice, India, and West Africa. As material objects, beads negotiated intercultural relationships in powerful ways throughout the Spanish empire: beads were involved in treaties, territorial agreements, prayer, spiritual relations, wayfinding, and most importantly, ceremony. This article maps out the collision of bead networks within the sixteenth-century Spanish empire so as to flesh out the similar and innovative uses of beads, whether among Native American, Afro-descendant, or European communities, and their connection to spiritual and ceremonial practices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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16 pages, 1353 KiB  
Article
“If He Is Converted”: A New Spanish Featherwork Ecce Homo in Southeastern Africa
by Kate E. Holohan
Religions 2023, 14(10), 1247; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101247 - 29 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1251
Abstract
In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to the material, spiritual, and collecting histories of both pre-invasion and colonial New Spanish (Mexican) featherworks. Rapidly and globally disseminated through religious and family networks, these objects traveled from Mexico to Spain, and other locations, [...] Read more.
In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to the material, spiritual, and collecting histories of both pre-invasion and colonial New Spanish (Mexican) featherworks. Rapidly and globally disseminated through religious and family networks, these objects traveled from Mexico to Spain, and other locations, before the end of the sixteenth century. This article explores the little-known history of a devotional featherwork Ecce Homo sent from Portugal to southeastern Africa in 1569. Originally a gift to Sebastian I of Portugal sent from the Spanish-colonized Americas, the Ecce Homo later entered the collection of Catherine of Austria, Sebastian’s grandmother. Catherine presented it to the Jesuits accompanying the Portuguese evangelizing and gold-seeking mission to Mutapa, a vast kingdom that encompassed parts of present-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Its intended recipient was the Mutapa emperor. However, this was not a gift meant to grease the wheels of diplomacy, nor was it designated as a tool for conversion: it was, instead, meant for the Mutapa emperor “se se convertese”—if he is converted. That is, it was conceived as a gift from one Catholic monarch to another, for use in personal devotion. The perceived spiritual efficacy of these feather images —themselves recently assimilated to Catholic Iberia from polytheistic Mesomerica—thus extended well beyond the transatlantic Iberian realms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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19 pages, 5924 KiB  
Article
Intersections, Assimilations, and Conflicts in Eighteenth-Century Palermo: The Church of the Forty Martyrs and Saint Ranieri of the Pisan Nation
by Valeria Viola
Religions 2023, 14(3), 386; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030386 - 14 Mar 2023
Viewed by 2112
Abstract
Due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily was a place of multiple cultural contaminations and commercial exchanges throughout the early modern era. Trade, piracy, and even slavery implemented continuous contacts between populations from opposing shores, regardless of their different religious [...] Read more.
Due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily was a place of multiple cultural contaminations and commercial exchanges throughout the early modern era. Trade, piracy, and even slavery implemented continuous contacts between populations from opposing shores, regardless of their different religious beliefs. Yet, the island was also intended as a Christian bulwark against the Islamic world and its institutions fostered anti-Muslim prejudices. To date, this discrepancy has been little investigated, but the responsibilities of art in fueling discriminatory attitudes have been explored even less. Drawing on Francisco Bethencourt’s idea that racism is motivated by political projects, this paper illustrates the complicity of art in reinforcing prejudices for political interests. To do so, it explores the 1725 frescoes by the Flemish painter Guglielmo Borremans (1670–1744) in the church of the Forty Martyrs and Saint Ranieri of the Pisan Nation, in Palermo. In the face of persistent multiculturalism in the daily life of the population, these frescoes affirmed the supremacy of Pisa as a victorious guardian of Christianity in the Mediterranean. In this way, they celebrated the urban nobility of Pisan descent, while disguising the problematic identity of its enemy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mobilization of Art and Religion in the Hispanic World: The Intersections of Race, Religion, Gender, and Objects c. 1500–1800)
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