Votive offerings to saints and patrons: the power of sacred images

Abstract

By way of introduction in El Salvador of the century, many sacred cults, Christian or not images are a reflection of the spiritual, physical and material of different believers on any day of the year can solicit help. These requests, according to church records, emerged from the sixteenth or seventeenth century from the resolutions of the Council of Trento in the mentioned include: the intercession and invocation of the saints and their images; Marianism diffusion; devotion to the saints, angels and souls in Purgatory; festivals, pilgrimages and processions. This involves the creation of sanctuaries, preserving images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and other saints in the temples; using art to instruct and confirm the faith, where examples of the saints and the miracles performed through her intercession (Pastor, 1996. Rosello, 1998, p. 8) would be used. Thus they established, from the institutional Church, these new forms of Christianity spread into every place conquered by Europeans.