Overview

Mexican statues and paintings like the Virgen de Guadalupe and the Señor de Chalma are endowed with sacred presence and the power to perform miracles. Millions of devotees visit their shrines to request miracles for health, employment, children, and countless everyday matters. When miracles are granted, devotees reciprocate with votive offerings. Collages, photographs, documents, texts, milagritos, hair and braids, clothing, retablos, and various representative objects cover walls at many shrines.Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico explores such petitionary devotion in depth through extensive fieldwork supported by research in a vast body of interdisciplinary scholarship. The study's principal themes include sacred power and human agency, reification, projective animation, faith as a cognitive filter, sacred power transfer, social and narrative construction, positive framing, collaborative and deferred control, vows (juramentos), and miracle attribution.The book is written in two alternating voices, one interpretive to provide an understanding of miracles, miraculous images, and votive offerings, and the other narrative to illustrate the interpretive chapters and to bring the reader closer to experiences at the shrines. Among the many miraculous images treated in the book are the Cristo Negro de Otatitlán, Niño del Cacahuatito, Señor de Chalma, Señor de la Misericordia (Tepatitlán), Señor del Rayo, Señor de las Tres Caídas (Teotilalpam), Virgen de los Dolores de Soriano, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgen del Pueblito, Virgen de Juquila, Virgen de los Remedios, Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos, Virgen de Talpa, Virgen de Tonatico, and Virgen de Zapopan.

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9780199790852

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Reviews

This is a compelling and lovely book on many levels. --Journal of the American Academy of Religion Building on a series of accomplished studies of Latin American Catholicism, Frank Graziano offers readers of Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico a beautifully written, clearly argued account of a key aspect of Catholic visual piety. He masterfully maps and explains the sprawling cultural system of votive exchange, which accounts for miracles in everyday life in the pictorial language of petition and pledge. This book will quickly become a vital resource for students of religious images. --David Morgan, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Duke University Building on a series of accomplished studies of Latin American Catholicism, Frank Graziano offers readers of Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico a beautifully written, clearly argued account of a key aspect of Catholic visual piety. He masterfully maps and explains the sprawling cultural system of votive exchange, which accounts for miracles in everyday life in the pictorial language of petition and pledge. This book will quickly become a vital resource for students of religious images. --David Morgan, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Duke University

Building on a series of accomplished studies of Latin American Catholicism, Frank Graziano offers readers of Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico a beautifully written, clearly argued account of a key aspect of Catholic visual piety. He masterfully maps and explains the sprawling cultural system of votive exchange, which accounts for miracles in everyday life in the pictorial language of petition and pledge. This book will quickly become a vital resource for students of religious images. --David Morgan, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Duke University

This is a compelling and lovely book on many levels. --<em>Journal of the American Academy of Religion</em> Building on a series of accomplished studies of Latin American Catholicism, Frank Graziano offers readers of <em>Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico</em> a beautifully written, clearly argued account of a key aspect of Catholic visual piety. He masterfully maps and explains the sprawling cultural system of votive exchange, which accounts for miracles in everyday life in the pictorial language of petition and pledge. This book will quickly become a vital resource for students of religious images. --David Morgan, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Duke University

Author Information

Frank Graziano is John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. His previous books include The Millennial New World, Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of St. Rose of Lima, and Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America.

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