Votive offerings and healing rites (Spain)
Labour and infancy are the moments of the life cycle with the greatest risk of death, and the causes of such death have spawned the widest variety of protective objects since olden times in all cultures and at all times. The use of religious and lay amulets to protect childhood and women during delivery still persists in many sectors of the developed world, most typically, but not exclusively, in the rural world.
Although many of these votive offerings are kept in museums, some rural churches in Spain maintain and renew these naïve images of miraculously cured people painted on their walls. They are votive offerings of thanks at the saving of loved ones, and tend to have an explanatory text together with a picture of the beneficiary, usually in bed or at the moment of an accident. Children are very frequent.
Photo David Serrano Pascual
The sanctuary at Andújar is dedicated to the Virgen de la Cabeza, and here you can obtain blessed ribbons whose length is that of the corresponding carved image. In the 21st century, women still wear them round their neck during delivery.
Photo, Ana I. Díaz-Plaza.
1981. Ribbon or estadal of the Virgen de la Cabeza, Andújar, Jaén (Spain) © Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares-UAM