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- Convenors:
-
Peter Jan Margry
(University of Amsterdam Meertens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)
Monique Scheer (University of Tuebingen)
- Stream:
- Religion
- Location:
- A229
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses initiatives related to Marian politics and prophecies during the Cold War period. It seeks to analyze the ways apparitional narratives and Marian movements have functioned in religious discourses aimed against the "forces of evil" within the global religious-political arena.
Long Abstract:
In recent years, scholars like William Christian, Jr., Thomas Kselman, and Elisabeth Claverie have opened up important areas of research at the intersection of visionary culture, religion, and politics. In their studies, they have shown how Marian apparition sites have become focal points for a convergence of lived religion and secular political agendas. A particularly interesting convergence of visionary Marianism and international politics is apparent during the years of the Cold War.
After the Second World War, there was a remarkable rise in the West of religiously inflected rhetoric against what was characterized as "godless communism" in the Soviet-bloc nations, led by the centralized and hierarchically organized Roman Catholic Church. Not only did its leaders urge their followers to resist atheistic socialism, but along with many prominent Catholic laity and conservative movements they marshaled the support of various Catholic groups and religious orders into a virtual holy war, taking advantage of the energies of the tens of thousands of Catholics who were drawn by and devoted to Marian apparitions. Thus, this panel addresses grassroots and Church initiatives related to Marian politics and prophecies during the Cold War (1945-1989) period. We are particularly interested in bringing together papers on case studies from both sides of the "Iron Curtain" as well as non-aligned areas of the globe in order to analyze the ways apparitional messages, narratives and Marian movements functioned and how the Virgin Mary was recast during this period: from a representation of popular devotionalism into a political instrument of modernity.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Monique Scheer (University of Tuebingen)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the apparitions of Heroldsbach, Germany (1949-52), arguing that the visions reactivated an old tradition of Mary as "Victorious in all of God’s Battles" with virgin-warrior iconography and fused it with protective messages for worshipers who feared war with the Soviet Union.
Paper long abstract:
The period 1945-1955 saw an explosion of Marian apparitions in Europe, when fears of imminent invasion by the Soviet Union were running high. These events discursively straddle a need for protection and a desire to fight back, thereby drawing on older patterns of Mary as patroness and at the same time absorbing the new ideological rhetoric. The apparitions in Heroldsbach, Germany, some 100 kilometers from the ‚Iron Curtain‘ between 1949 and 1952 are an example of this process. At its high point, the cult drew crowds of up to 50,000. This paper will examine these events in the context of a broader contemporary discourse reflecting fears of a nuclear attack and a desire to re-Christianize Europe. It will argue that the visions invoked a long tradition of Mary as "Victorious in all of God’s Battles" and thus reactivated a virgin-warrior iconography the Church had preferred to submerge under the dominant imagery of the suffering mother. The communities needed an active Mary now. Her primarily protective function for local worshipers was easily fused with more global objectives of the Church Militant, imbuing the familiar vision of the Immaculata of Lourdes with the attributes of the Woman of the Apocalypse, supported by armies of rosary-praying believers. It is this Virgin who leads a variety of organizations (Legio Mariae, the Blue Army, Rosary Crusades etc.) into spiritual battle, which had begun against secularism in the early 20th century and by mid-century was more strongly (though not exclusively) directed at the threat of Communism.
Agnieszka Halemba (Polish Academy of Science)
Paper short abstract:
The focus is on Marian apparitions under socialism that have been less analyzed than those on the western side of the Iron Curtain. On the basis of recent ethnographic fieldwork, it is also shown how presently the socialist period is a tool for legitimization of apparitions in Ukraine.
Paper long abstract:
At the presently active Marian apparition sites in Dzhublyk (Transcarpathia) and Lishnia (Galicia) in Ukraine, the socialist period is evoked as a source of legitimization for the apparitions. In different ways and to a different extent, the underground activities of the Greek Catholic priests and believers during socialism are evoked both to criticize the present church authorities as well as to give an aura of moral legitimacy to the newly established pilgrimage centers and their supporters. The visionaries active during the socialist times also play a role at contemporary apparition sites, which poses interesting questions concerning continuity of apparitional phenomena from socialism to post-socialism. While there is a considerable amount of interesting anthropological and historical works on apparitions of the Virgin Mary on the western side of the Iron Curtain, the apparitional phenomena in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe under socialism received much less scholarly attention, despite availability of some devotional and journalistic literature. A brief analysis of apparitional events from socialist countries will result in proposing several hypotheses concerning divergences and continuities between apparitional culture on the two sides of the Iron Curtain, as well as between socialist and post-socialist period.
Marijana Belaj (University of Zagreb)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I will analyse Mary as a symbol of resistance in the context of the Medjugorje apparitions in 1980-ies. In that period Medjugorje apparitions have disturbed the spirits, not only within the communist authorities of Yugoslavia, but also within the Church.
Paper long abstract:
The apparitions in Medjugorje are an extremely complex phenomenon that produces different interpretations and evaluations. In this paper I will focus solely on the perspective of those who recognize the apparitions of Mary as a symbol of resistance. This Mary's role I will analyse in the context of the Medjugorje apparitions in a time of socio-political crisis in communist Yugoslavia, primarily generated by the death of its president Josip Broz Tito and demonstrations in Kosovo.
In that period Medjugorje apparitions have disturbed the spirits, not only within the communist authorities of Yugoslavia, but also within the Church. National authorities characterize the apparitions of Medjugorje as fiction of local Franciscans - "clerical nationalists", in the words of one of communist officials - with the aim of bringing down the constitutional order of the communist Yugoslavia. At the same time, the alleged apparitions in Medjugorje have deeply shaken the Church of this area and intensified the centuries-old conflict between diocesan and Franciscan priests of the Mostar-Duvno Diocese, where Medjugorje belongs.