Reframing a Medieval Miracle in Early Modern Spain: The Origins of Our Lady del Sagrario of Toledo

Cavero de Carondelet, Cloe (December 2020): Reframing a Medieval Miracle in Early Modern Spain: The Origins of Our Lady del Sagrario of Toledo. In: Stoenescu, Livia (ed.) : The Interaction of Art and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art. Turnhout: Brepols. pp. 29-49

Abstract

This chapter studies the transformation of the image of Our Lady del Sagrario into the contact relic of the Virgin’s Descent in Toledo Cathedral. The archbishops and cathedral canons of Toledo, who requested that such transformation to the relic status be effected, accomplished a twofold goal: to supply the Spanish Cathedral with relics after centuries of relic scantiness due to the Muslim occupation; and to fulfill the increasingly compelling need for miraculous cult images in late sixteenth-century Spain. At least from the thirteenth-century to approximately the turn of the seventeenth-century, Toledo Cathedral lacked a preeminent relic by means of which to venerate the Virgin’s Descent in the local space. A series of cultic reconsiderations, relic inventions, artistic retoolings, and spatial relocations within Toledo Cathedral reconfigured the Sagrario as a contact relic of the Virgin’s touch. Ultimately, Our Lady del Sagrario became the most preeminent sacred image within the liturgical space, and in historical narratives related to the architecture of the new Sagrario chapel of Toledo Cathedral.

• Item Type: Book Section
• EU Funded Grant Agreement Number: 680192
• EU Projects: Horizon 2020 > ERC Grants > ERC Starting Grant > ERC Grant 680192: SACRIMA - The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe
• Form of publication: Submitted Version
• Faculties: History and Art History > Department of Art History > Art History
• Subjects: 700 Arts and recreation > 700 Arts; 900 History and geography > 940 History of Europe
• ISBN: 978-2-503-58398-3
• Place of Publication: Turnhout
• Language: English