When did Catholics begin having Mary Statues in their homes

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SeanF1989

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Also when did Catholics begin using holy water/home stoups?

I tried wikipedia and I found this -"Most of theses stoups were destroyed or disappeared during the French Revolution in 1789 and in following years.

In the nineteenth century, most of the these stoups were made in ceramics. Some were unique in bearing the name of their owner. They were given as gifts on special occasions, such as births, first Communions and weddings.

These stoups were often handed down the generations, but their use decreased in France after 1900. Today, they are collected by art-lovers"

Does this mean French Catholics don’t use holy water in their homes anymore? 😦
 
I really don’t know what the answer is to your question but I would like to say that I’d love to have a Mary statue in my home but I can’t afford one of the large ones. Would a smaller one like maybe 4 inches tall be okay?
 
Holly3278 said:
I really don’t know what the answer is to your question but I would like to say that I’d love to have a Mary statue in my home but I can’t afford one of the large ones. Would a smaller one like maybe 4 inches tall be okay?
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I have a small plastic one (around 14-17 inches tall) statue of the holy family on my bedside table that a relative gave to me when I was a child. I would like a Mary Statue but yet I don’t think I would have the money.
 
really don’t know what the answer is to your question but I would like to say that I’d love to have a Mary statue in my home but I can’t afford one of the large ones. Would a smaller one like maybe 4 inches tall be okay?
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That’s very pagan of you! I thought the all mighty Lord got angry at people worshiping statues. Would a garden gnome be ok? You could pray to it, to zap all the weeds off your lawn! 😉
 
I have a gorgeous statue of Mary standing in the grato at Fatima. A child is kneeling before her and there is the original candle on the other side in a glass jar. This belonged to my Mom and whenever anyone died she always lit the candle and when she died I took her home with me. This was my Mom’s favorite.

She also had a very small statue of Mary with a planter on the other side. I didn’t know that my Mom had been praying for something special and I planted a seed in the planter. A flower bloomed and she called everyone about the miracle. I can’t remember if I ever fessed up or not but she was very excited about that. 😉
 
Had a small one, like a half statue, growing up in the 50s, and have an almost identical one now. 🙂
 
Idols have been produced for thousands of years. The technology to produce a statue of Mary is hidden in antiquity.

There is certainly no requirement to have a statue of Mary in the home or in a church.

I particularly loathe the traveling statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It depicts Mary as a crying teen. " Mary" has what would otherwise be considered plucked eyebrows. She is depicted as a white person, instead of the Palestinian that she was. She is depicted wearing clothes she probably never wore.

Some depictions of Mary are with a rosary. I’m certain Mary never said the rosary – a prayer to herself.
 
Crumpy said:
Idols have been produced for thousands of years. The technology to produce a statue of Mary is hidden in antiquity.

There is certainly no requirement to have a statue of Mary in the home or in a church.

I particularly loathe the traveling statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It depicts Mary as a crying teen. " Mary" has what would otherwise be considered plucked eyebrows. She is depicted as a white person, instead of the Palestinian that she was. She is depicted wearing clothes she probably never wore.

Some depictions of Mary are with a rosary. I’m certain Mary never said the rosary – a prayer to herself.
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The images are sacramentals, designed to help us visualize, meditate upon, and contemplate invisible spiritual realities.

Mary probably never actually wore a crown while she was alive, yet artists sometimes depict Our Lady with a crown because the artist wants us to think about the reality of her role as Queen of Heaven and Earth. The artist is not trying to make a statement about how Mary really looked.

Artists have always depected famous people in terms that their audience could easily undersand, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with such artwork, if it helps those who view it to better understand and appreciate realities which we cannot now see with our eyes, and if it helps us draw closer to God and his Holy Church.

-Tim-
 
For those looking for an affordable statue of Mary, if you’re talking about the larger outdoor ones, try your local big chain hardware store (around here it’s Lowe’s or Home Depot). In the garden department they have yard statuary made from resin instead of cement or plaster. It’s lightweight and much cheaper.

I’ve been wanting a St. Francis statue for my garden for a long time, but could never have spent the money on one until I stumbled across him at Lowe’s. And as I was wrestling him from the basket into my trunk in the parking lot, a woman approached me and struck up a conversation about St. Francis. It turned out she was a lapsed Catholic. We talked for about an hour and she said she was considering coming back to the Church. 👍

If you’re talking about smaller statues, like for a table, check out eBay. I’ve bought about a dozen there , usually for no more than $5 - $10.
 
Hesychios said:
A good question, does anyone know?
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It probably started with the nobility who can actually afford to have statues made. Then as people gained more wealth and the cost of having a statue went down, more and more “private citizens” had them at home. When exactly, I wouldn’t know. There are Spanish-era homes in the Philippines that are essentially museums today, and they have prayer rooms with a ton of statues (like over 20 of varying sizes). And this would have been in the 1800s, perhaps even 1700s. Since this practice same from the Spanish, it would have been done there much earlier. Again started with the nobility.
 
Crumpy said:
Idols have been produced for thousands of years. The technology to produce a statue of Mary is hidden in antiquity.

There is certainly no requirement to have a statue of Mary in the home or in a church.

I particularly loathe the traveling statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It depicts Mary as a crying teen. " Mary" has what would otherwise be considered plucked eyebrows. She is depicted as a white person, instead of the Palestinian that she was. She is depicted wearing clothes she probably never wore.

Some depictions of Mary are with a rosary. I’m certain Mary never said the rosary – a prayer to herself.
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I don’t really understand why you would loathe a statue of the Blessed Virgin. :confused: St. Bernadette was consulted extensively about what the apparitions that she had seen looked like by many different people. Her descriptions were constant and extremely clear. Yet when the initial statue was finished Bernadette made no concessions at all. She clearly said that it did not look at all like the Virgin. In her own words “No it is not her” Not in any way except for the color of the clothing. It is interesting though that the apparition that Bernadette saw seemed to her to be that of a very young and very small girl, probably still in her teens.

As far as the Rosary that was held, Bernadette said the Virgin was holding one, but did not move her lips as Bernadette prayed hers, but merely moved the beads through her fingers. She did however, apparently bow her head at the names of Jesus, the Holy Ghost and the Father. Her failure to mouth the prayers was one of the reasons she, Bernadette was initially suspicious and afraid of the apparition as she could not understand why the prayers were omitted

Of course Bernadette did not even know who the apparition was until the 16th vision when the Virgin identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, a term that Bernadette had apparently never heard and which had only recently been declared by the Pope. Prior to that Bernadette had merely referred to the apparition as “Aquero” which in her dialect meant roughly" That Thing".

I don’t think religious statues of this type, are made to be literal representations of what a person looked like. In fact in the case of Our Lady of Lourdes, the artist failed miserably to capture in any way how she looked even though he tried his best to accurately represent what Bernadette told him. No, I think they are meant to be aids in helping us to focus on a certain devotion, or thought or prayer.
 
Crumpy said:
Idols have been produced for thousands of years. The technology to produce a statue of Mary is hidden in antiquity.

There is certainly no requirement to have a statue of Mary in the home or in a church.

I particularly loathe the traveling statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It depicts Mary as a crying teen. " Mary" has what would otherwise be considered plucked eyebrows. She is depicted as a white person, instead of the Palestinian that she was. She is depicted wearing clothes she probably never wore.

Some depictions of Mary are with a rosary. I’m certain Mary never said the rosary – a prayer to herself.
Click to expand...
I never thought of my little statue as an idol, it just always reminded me of Mary. But I’ve seen people parade statues around and treat them as if they were idols. p.s. I particularly dislike a picture of Jesus I’ve seen that looks like he has eye makeup.
 
I don’t think Crumpy was suggesting that such statues are idols… merely that the ancient techniques employed to make idols came to be used to create inspirational and devotional statues. Therefore there probably isn’t a time we can p(name removed by moderator)oint when they suddenly began to be produced.

Personally, I find some of these statues to be very beautiful, and some to be absolutely hideous. It’s just a matter of taste… though I do respect that they are all - hopefully! - intended to inspire devotion and appreciate them on that level.
 
Hesychios said:
A good question, does anyone know?
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The best I can offer is that the earliest carved Christian images are on sarcophagi, at least in the west. There is a beatiful sarcophagus called the “Dogmatic Sarcophagus” or the “Sarcophagus of the Two Testaments” from 320 to 350 AD, which has very clear images of Mary carved into it.

I belive that there are sarcophagi with carved images of Jesus, Mary and Joseph from as early as 250 AD but that is from memory and I could be mistaken.

One of the most spectacular is the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus from around 360 AD.

These sarcophagi limit the age of carved Christian art of any kind, at least in the west. Clearly, any carved images of Mary for devotional purposes would be newer.

I do not know about carved Christian artwork in the East. I recall reading about some fresco’s in Syria which picture Mary, dated around the middle of the third century, but again that is from memory and I could be mistaken.

Maybe Patrick will stick his head in the door and give us some information. He is a bit of an art historian and anyone interested might want to send him a PM.

-Tim-
 
Way off topic… but I thought I might be welcome to share this here. I’ve long wanted to create some manner of Mary garden but needed to start small. Today, I planted in a container a French Lavender (represents the Flight to Egypt) with a small waterproof statue of our Blessed Virgin. As time goes on I hope to expand…
 
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