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Saturday, November 19, 2011

HOLY CARDS - A CATHOLIC TRADITION

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Good music for looking the post over. 
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In the Catholic tradition, holy cards or prayer cards
 are small, devotional pictures mass-produced for the use of the
 faithful. They typically depict a religious scene or a saint in an
 image about the size of a playing card. The reverse typically
 contains a prayer, some of which promise an indulgence for its
 recitation. The circulation of these cards is an important part
 of the visual folk culture of Roman Catholics.
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Old master prints, nearly all on religious subjects, served
 many of the same functions as holy cards, especially the
 cheaper woodcuts; the earliest dated surviving example is from
 1423, probably from southern Germany, and depicts Saint
 Christopher, with handcolouring, it is found as part of the
binding of a manuscript of the Laus Virginis (1417) which
 belongs to the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Later
 engraving or etching were more commonly used. Some had
 elaborate borders of paper lace surrounding the images; these
 were called dévotes dentelles in France.
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The invention of colour lithography made it
 possible to reproduce coloured images cheaply, leading to a
 much broader circulation of the cards. An early centre of their
 manufacture was in the environs of the Church of St Sulpice in
 Paris; the lithographed images made there were done in
 delicate pastel colours, and proved extremely influential on
 later designs. Belgium and Germany also became centres of the
 manufacture of holy cards, as did Italy in the twentieth
 century. Catholic printing houses (such as Maison de la Bonne
 Presse in France and Ars Sacra in Germany) produced large
 numbers of cards, and often a single design was printed by
 different companies in different countries.
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Special holy cards are printed for Roman Catholics to be
 distributed at funerals; these are "In memoriam cards", with
 details and often a photograph of the person whom they
 commemorate as well as prayers printed on the back. Other
 specialized holy cards record baptisms, confirmations, and
 other religious anniversaries. Others are not customized, and
 are circulated to promote the veneration of the saints and
 images they bear.
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At the end of the nineteenth century, some
 Protestants attempted to answer these Roman Catholic images
 with similar images of their own. They produced Bible cards or
 Sunday school cards, with lithographed illustrations depicting
 Bible stories and parables, more modern scenes of religious life
 or prayer, or sometimes just a Biblical text illuminated by
 calligraphy; these were linked to Biblical passages that related
 to the image.
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 The reverse typically held a sermonette instead of a
 prayer. Imagery here was always the servant of text, and as
 such these Protestant cards tended to be replaced by tracts
 that emphasized message instead of imagery, and were
 illustrated with cartoon-like images if they were 
illustrated at all.
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From Wikipedia
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The Order of Catholic nuns called the Poor Clares,
the sisterhood counterpart to the all-male Franciscan Order,
has a free e-card service with religious imagery and messages
 for holy days, birthdays, events, get-well, and more.
See them here:
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