Picturing the Written, Read, and Spoken Prayers to Zell: Devotional Therapeutics for (In)Fertility and Motherhood at Mariazell

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the mountains of the Austrian province of Styria, the Catholic pilgrimage shrine of Mariazell claimed many healing miracles during the later Middle Ages (ca. 1200–1550). Notably, many of these miracles address ailments of fertility and parenthood, including infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. Early sixteenth century visual culture of the Mariazell site not only visualizes the shrine’s diverse range of intercessory capabilities, but also the desired method of intercession: verbal pleas to Our Lady of Zell. These formulas appear in brief inscriptions written below the painted and printed images of the shrine’s miracles. The texts provide specific details of the ailment that prompted intercession followed by the solution of seeking aid from Our Lady of Zell and devotion to her shrine. By analyzing the iconography and language of Mariazell’s devotional visual culture alongside contemporaneous treatises on medicine and health, this paper argues that the combination of devotional text and image function as an instructive form of healthcare for circumstances of reproductive affliction. I further argue that the Mariazell miracle images and their accompanying inscriptions reveal an expansive attitude toward the types of ailments affecting the reproductive body and appropriate methods of treatment in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Archaeologies of Motherhood

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38676.0