Silver Covers, Iron Grids and Sensory Experience Simultaneousness of Iconoclastic and Iconophilic Nature of Veneration in the Early Modern Bay of Kotor

Abstract

During the 17th and 18th centuries in the Bay of Kotor a vast number of artefacts was altered in order to correspond more conveniently to the orthodox norms of the post-Tridentine Catholic church. In this paper, we want to suggest the subtlety of this transformation by using the examples of various 'additions' to the most precious holy objects. During these two centuries, the two most important icons and reliquaries in the Bay were altered by using silver covers, iron grids or silver plates as instruments of their representation. These adjustments can rather eloquently suggest the problematic nature of labeling each of these practices as either iconoclastic or iconophilic in nature. It is more fruitful, instead, to examine whether this blockage of the believers' gaze could act as a trigger for a kind of perception that exceeds only repressive impulses imposed by institutional authorities. Regulation of images and discipline of believers' bodies, hence, could be used as heuristic tools, open to the analysis that implies a different vocabulary used for communication between subject and object in the post-Reformation era.