Bodily-Material Culture Techniques in the Spaces of the Devotional Revolution

Abstract

This essay addresses how new procedural knowledge was promoted during the devotional revolution in nineteenth-century Ireland, particularly in relation to bodily-material culture techniques. It argues that a more orthopraxic physical disposition was a significant aspect of the experience and practice of Catholicism, and suggests ways of thinking about that in relation to religious imagination and space. In this, it sees bodies as connected to artefacts through material practices. The bodily-material culture techniques under discussion include gesture, ways of interacting with objects and spaces, and in general the embedding of new forms of material knowledge and body schema. In this, this essay re-examines the relationship between religious and secular space during this period. On the one hand, at this time the intense construction and prominent siting of thousands of religious buildings including churches, denominational institutions and entire urban quarters suggest that sacred and secular spaces were highly defined and circumscribed. However, a focus on bodies and objects also suggests the idea of immanence, and a more fluid inter-relationship between sacred and profane space than might be generally considered. The contribution draws largely on regulatory and instructive literature including catechisms and popular devotional tracts, personal testimony and specific liturgical and devotional objects and spaces.