Divine Senses: Exploring Sensorial Experiences in Religious Contexts throughout the Premodern Iberian World

Ocularcentrism has played a major role in the understanding and study of premodern religious art and architecture. Modern museums, screens, and art history classrooms still often privilege the visual over other sensory experiences. However, on the contrary, religious spirituality in the premodern world was intimately tied to multi-sensorial experiences. Could medieval monks understand the space of a cloister without the smell of blooming flowers? Devotional spaces incorporated sounds and smells as much as visual stimulation, and many records exist of embodied religious ecstasy. Through the lens of art history, this Society for Iberian Global Art (SIGA)-sponsored panel seeks to explore how senses other than sight contributed to religious devotion in the premodern Iberian world.

The “sensory turn” in art history, as it has sometimes been referred to, acknowledges the importance of senses other than vision in experiencing art. Along this line of thinking, we invite paper proposals that look beyond vision as the primary conduit for experiencing the holy from scholars of the premodern Iberian world including the Peninsula, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. Possible topics might include how ritual music was used (or suppressed) as a part of religious expression in Colonial Mexico, how frankincense and myrrh contributed to Catholic devotion, how pilgrims interacted with saints’ relics through touch or taste in medieval Europe, or the affects of water in Jewish and Islamic holy spaces. We are especially interested in proposals that consider hybrid spaces/objects or that deal with realms of mixed cultural practices.