‘The Emotional Dimension of Shrine Formation in Early Modern Catholicism’, by Dr Joshua Rushton has been published in the latest issue of Cultural and Social History.

Shrines were always important for early modern Catholics as sites of healing, salvation, miracles, and community. In the early modern period, the role of the shrine in devotional life was both reasserted and treated with unprecedented caution in the climate of Catholic Renewal and Reform. In his latest article, Josh asks: what made a shrine legitimate in the period following the Council of Trent?

Charting the lifecycle of the shrine of the Madonna of Lendinara (Veneto region, Italy), Josh argues that emotional practices played a vital role in securing the reforming Catholic Church’s approval of the developing shrine. The shrine in question began with a humble statue of the Virgin Mary made of olive wood. Josh closely examines the miracle narratives of 1576-77 connected to this statue drawing attention to their emotional dimensions. Miraculous movements left onlookers dumbstruck, news of the emerging shrine filled the community with excitement, and the whole town engaged in practices of communal gratitude and adoration as suffering neighbours were healed by the wooden Madonna.

A wide range of emotional responses were considered during episcopal evaluation and eventual legitimisation of the shrine. This article therefore emphasises the co-constitutive relationship between emotional practices and religious spaces and brings into focus the power of emotion to provide cultural and spiritual certainty to contexts of ambiguity and contested truths.

Josh is continuing to think about the role of devotional shrines in early modern Catholic culture and is currently preparing an article which examines the entanglement of human and environmental agencies in the renewal of Italian shrine culture.

Josh is currently Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester. Please feel free to contact him at joshua.rushton@manchester.ac.uk or via X (formerly Twitter) @joshuarushton8 and Bluesky (same handle)

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