Catholic Holy Cards: Visual, Verbal, and
Tactile Codes for the (In)visibleJames F. Petruzzelli
From: The Other Print Tradition
Essays on Chapbooks,The week before my first Holy Communion, about twenty-five years ago, I received my first holy card. About twenty second-graders and I were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Monsignor Bergen to our catechism class at the Holy Spirit parish in San Diego, California. He had promised to bring a stack of unconsecrated Eucharist hosts for us to "play" with. That is, he wanted us to prepare for the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist by tasting and touching these unholy hosts. When he walked into the classroom, he placed the hosts on the teacher's desk as if they were a stack of poker chips. They were stacked about four inches high, and next to them he placed a deck of holy cards. Although we were allowed to play with the hosts, many children seemed compelled to handle them with care and reverence because they certainly looked like the real thing. After my classmates and I finished our tactile experience with the hosts, the Monsignor gave each of us a holy card. He said that the card was his gift for completing preparation for first Holy Communion. I don't remember whose picture was on my card, probably Jesus, Mary, or some saint, but I do remember that I had seen numerous cards just like it in my home while growing up. For me, personally, my first holy card is still associated with that stack of unconsecrated hosts, an image of the Body of Christ that we children were encouraged to touch and play with. Next to those spiritual "poker" chips, Monsignor Bergen's holy cards reminded me of a deck of playing cards. They, too, became images of religious figures that we were allowed to touch and handle.
Broadsides, and Related EphemeraEdited by Cathy Lynn Preston & Michael J. Preston
Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London, 1995
Reprinted with permission from the author & editors.
I begin with this story from my childhood because it is a representative example of the type of experience that is shared by Catholic children. The experience of receiving an award or gift in the form of a holy card is a common practice in many parochial schools and catechism classes. The book, More Growing Up Catholic, includes a selection entitled "Holy Cards: Collect 'Em All." I quote the full text of this selection here because it is a good example of the range of potential discourse that attempts to define holy cards:
By means of the use of metaphor, this passage highlights the cultural values that are associated with holy cards. I use the word "metaphor" not in its poetic sense or its sense of rhetorical flourish, but in its pervasive, everyday-life sense. As George Lakoff and Maik Johnson write in Metaphors We Live By, "metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature" (1980:3). Thus, metaphors articulate the values and assumptions shared by a specific group. The metaphors of holy cards as "awards," "spiritual insurance," and "baseball trading cards" is not only an inversion of the religious turned secular, but it represents their ordinary, common nature amongst Catholics. Every Catholic schoolchild remembers fondly the beautiful illustrated pictures of his or her favorite saints, which were bestowed as rewards for answering questions correctly or receiving one of the sacraments. You might get a Mary Assumption card for winning the spelling bee, for example, or a St. Francis of Assisi for perfect attendance. One could assume that if you had many of these exquisitely produced cards, frequently gilt-edged, you were a Good Catholic and getting a little closer to him with each acquisition Yet children, being children, would sometimes trade their cards as if they were trading baseball cards. "Hey Bobby, give you a St. Jude for a Francis the Sissy and a St. Peter." Some cards became far too common in circulation and children would frequently have doubles or even triples of them. If the school was named St. John the Baptist, each child might have six or seven of St. John with his head on a plate and be eager to trade them with the kids of Ascension, who had some great ones with Our Lord up in the air on colorful clouds. (Meara 1986:12l)
Holy Cards: Form and Function, Function and Form
Although the cultural assumptions shared by a group of American school children are vastly different than those of a 60-year-old, immigrant, Italian woman, their holy cards are basically the same. My Italian grandmother would display her holy cards above the doorway between her living room and kitchen, and they could also be found tucked in the corners of her bedroom mirror. The "Mary Assumption" card found in the church classroom or playground could pass for any one of the cards my grandmother reverently collected and displayed in her home. In the following section of this essay, I describe the physical features and form of Catholic holy cards. These physical features are some of the primary characteristics of the genre. They not only determine the general appearance of the cards, but also their content and function.
Holy cards tend to look alike. Although the religious representations printed on the cards are diverse, all holy cards are about the same size, 2½" by 4½". Most Catholic holy cards have a religious picture on the front and a prayer or some other verbal text on the back.1 The religious pictures range from images that are universally recognizable, such as the Sacred Heart of Jesus (see Figure ~), to those that are only locally recognizable, such as San Trifone, a patron saint of a small town in Italy (see Figure 2). The tradition of Catholic holy cards crosses what might be seen as cultural boundaries, but in reality they signify a shared, larger culture. The "Holy Cards: Collect 'Em All" passage, cited above, only represents holy cards that favor an American flavor of sainthood. The children represented in More Growing Up Catholic probably never saw holy cards of Our Lady of Guadeloupe-Mother of the Americas (see Figure 3), Kateri Tekakwitha-Lily of the Mohawks (see Figure 4), or San Trifone-Patron of Montrone (Adelifia), Italy, but they would have identified them as Catholic holy cards.
The elements of physical form, shape, and size have an influence on the content and the function of holy cards. Holy cards are not square in shape, but rectangular. For practical purposes the rectangular shape of the cards dictates the orientation of the picture and the text. Whether the picture includes a head-to-toe subject or just a facial portrait, the graphical orientation is vertical, rather than horizontal. A horizontal or "landscape" orientation of the San Rocco holy card (pictured in Figure 5) would require the subject to be half the size.2 The same practical purposes apply to the text on the back of the card. Again, the orientation is vertical rather than horizontal. The vertical orientation provides a shorter line that is easier to read.
One traditional function of holy cards is as bookmarks. Their rectangular shape not only gives them the appearance of traditional bookmarks, but again it influences their function. Rectangles make better bookmarks than squares. The writers of Growing Up Catholic also discuss this function of holy cards. In the chapter, "Meeting Your Mate: Catholic Style," there is a reference to holy cards as bookmarks:
In a recent conversation that I had with a 33-year-old woman, named Maria, about her memories of holy cards, she said, "Holy cards are those things you would put in your Bible or catechism book." Thus, the rectangular shape influences what people do with the cards. But, just as form can influence function, function can also influence form. That is, some holy cards, like the one shown in Figure 6, are elongated into the shape of a real bookmark. The John Brandi Company that manufactures a series of holy cards also produces bookmarks. Their bookmark series includes the identical pictures and verbal text from their holy cards. Here the function of marking one's place in a book has determined the shape of these cards. [T]here are a host of methods for finding that special Catholic someone. A few suggestions: when riding the bus to work, strike up a conversation with the sweet looking girl you see every day-the one who occasionally tucks a holy card inside the historical romance she's reading. (Meara, 1985:54) All cards, whether holy or not, have two sides. This two-sided physical element, like size and shape, influences the content and function of the cards. A card only provides a printable surface on two sides, a front and back. For the traditional holy card, with a picture on the front and verbal text on the back, the two-sided nature of a card provides the natural medium for this genre. However, the medium of the card is not adequate for the purposes of related genres. For example, some holy cards can function as miniature manuals, and require more than just a front and back panel for the information they convey. Thus, not all holy cards are simply cards. Some, like the one entitled, "How to Pray the Rosary," have the same dimensions of a standard-size holy card but open like a book. The front cover of this card provides detailed, numbered instructions for praying the rosary and a drawing that provides a diagram of a rosary showing which beads apply to each numbered instruction; the inside cover includes the text of the Apostles Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Fatima Prayer, and Hail Holy Queen; and the back cover includes information on the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. Thus, this document is a pocket-sized, quick reference guide. Pictures of rosary beads appear somewhat routinely on holy cards. They provide religious imagery that conveys the idea of devotion to Mary and reverent, meditative prayer. But for the user of this pocket-sized instruction manual, the rosary on the front panel is simply useful. Rather than devotion to Mary, the rosary on this holy card conveys user-friendliness. Although the function of this guide is to provide detailed visual and verbal instruction spanning four panels, when it is closed, it has the same rectangular shape of a standard holy card. This rectangular shape makes this manual recognizable as a holy card.
Making Meaning of Catholic Holy Cards
Like many holy cards, the one I received at my first Holy Communion was either lost or discarded. Even if it is still in my parents' house, it would be impossible for me to identify that particular card. So what I describe as holy cards is a genre whose primary characteristics is not only its visual and verbal representations of religious subjects, but its ephemeral nature. That is, a majority of holy cards will typically find their way into a waste can, an inappropriate place for anything "holy." Most practicing Catholics would never throw away a set of rosary beads, but holy cards are disposable. Thus, there is a contradiction in terms if we "read" holy card literally. The disposable quality of the cards suggests that their value is not necessarily one of special respect or awe. Holy cards, like any symbol or code, do not carry inherent or uniform meanings. As Sharon T. Strocchia writes in Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence,
Since there is no one single meaning for any holy card, they must be read as part of the overlapping and pluralistic folk groups that are contained within Catholic culture. So far this essay has described the physical characteristics on holy cards and has pointed to the types of cards that can be found in Catholic households, but holy cards also metaphorically reveal attitudes towards interrelationships on both spiritual and secular level s.3 The remainder of this essay will deal with how the meaning of holy cards is constructed. objects become symbols only by virtue of the full set of relationships they maintain with their environment. Symbols derive their multiple and often shifting meanings from the every day situations in which they are used and from the everyday people who use them. (1992:30) Since I am arguing that the meaning of the holy cards is not inherent within the cards themselves, we need to consider the manner in which they are given value. In Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500-1800, Krzysztof Pomian argues that:
The relationship between usefulness and meaning is applicable to holy cards. They can function, in Pomian's terms, as "useful-things" and "meaningful-semiophores." And as Pomian argues, things are subordinated to semiophores because "they represent the invisible and therefore have share in the superiority and fertility it is unconsciously endowed with" (1990:31). Pomian draws the conclusion that usefulness and meaning are mutually exclusive. Thus, the more a holy card is charged with meaning, the less useful it is. An object is given value when it is protected, cared for or reproduced, and our next task is therefore to attempt to identify the conditions it needs to satisfy in order to obtain value.... In effect, if an object is to be attributed value by an individual or group, it needs to be useful or have meaning, nothing more, nothing less. U990:31) Although the Catholic Encyclopedia doesn't provide an entry for holy cards, I would argue that the hegemonic notion of holy cards would categorize them as semiophores. For example, in a chapbook titled "Among Mary's Gifts: The Green Scapular," sacramental objects not only represent the invisible, but put a person in touch with the invisible:
The Church reaches into the material world and draws many objects, indeed potentially all creation, into the service and worship of God The Green Scapular, the crucifix, the rosary, the Miraculous Medal, and religious pictures and statues are examples of how the Church uses material things to bring us to God. (Keeler 1991)
But "the Church" isn't the only entity that "uses material things," people do. The hegemonic view of holy cards as semiophores is not absolute. This seems perfectly clear because so many holy cards are thrown out as rubbish (objects without use or meaning), but there are other reasons not simply to subsume holy cards into the category of semiophores, and these reasons have to do with the metaphors that people use when talking about them. The remainder of this essay will focus on the metaphors for holy cards. The first group of metaphors deal with holy cards as "useful-things." The second group deals with holy cards as representations of the invisible, leading back to the category of the semiophore, but with a difference. That is, these metaphors do not simply equate the realm of the invisible with a spiritual space. The invisible is also a realm of human remembrance.
Holy Cards are Useful Things. In some churches a holy card can be used as a type of business card. My wife recently gave me a holy card of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which she found in the vestibule of a church with the same name. On the front panel of this card is a traditional picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the back panel includes the text of the "Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus." Although the card does not include the address or phone number of the church, it functions as a business card because it provides an identity for the parish.4 As quoted earlier from More Growing Up Catholic, "If the [parishes'1 school was named St. John the Baptist, each child might have six or seven of St. John" (Meara 1986:121).
Some holy cards literalize the business card metaphor. Holy cards that are distributed at Catholic funerals literally are business cards. The cards are handed out to the friends and relatives of the deceased, and the mortuary that arranges the funeral service ordinarily provides the holy cards for the service. These cards typically include a variety of religious pictures for the front cover, and various prayers accompany the biographic information on the back panel, but on most of these cards there is one constant: the address and phone number of the mortuary. Thus, for the mortuary these cards provide a traditional form of advertisement.5 Although this mortuary advertisement makes the funeral card function as business card, it does so without the traditional physical characteristics of a standard business card. Business cards, unlike holy cards, typically have a horizontal or "landscape" orientation. Once again the vertical orientation of holy cards stands out as a distinguishing factor.
In separate conversations that I had with two non-Catholic friends, I asked if they had ever seen a Catholic holy card. Dave, a graduate student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Lynda, a technical writer living in Boulder, not only mentioned that they had seen Catholic holy cards before, but they both said that the cards reminded them of trading cards. Dave said: "I know what you're talking about. They're like baseball cards. Picture of the star on the front, and the stats on the back." Lynda's remarks also used the trading-card metaphor: "They're just like baseball trading cards, right? I collected ballerina cards when I was a kid. I don't have them anymore, but I loved them." This trading-card metaphor is not restricted to non-Catholic circles. More Growing Up Catholic plays with this metaphor as well: "Yet, children, being children, would sometimes trade their cards as if they were trading baseball cards" (Meara 1986:121). For my non-Catholic friends, the trading card is a perfectly acceptable way to describe their notion of holy cards, but for the writers of More Growing Up Catholic this metaphor is mildly transgressive. Their statement, "children, being children," carries inherent assumptions that convey the related cultural value judgments: "children do not know better," "children should not treat holy cards as if they were baseball cards," "holy cards should not be denigrated to the level of mere baseball cards." This sense of denigration expresses the Catholic hegemonic view that holy cards are really semiophores.
The physical characteristics of holy cards that one can find today, however, suggest that the trading card metaphor has become somewhat literalized. That is, the trading card has influenced the stuff of holy cards. Twenty years ago holy cards were strictly paper based, as were baseball cards, but today baseball cards have glossy UV coating on both sides, and their tough plastic stock protects them from tearing or fraying. The stuff of baseball cards today makes them more useful to the collector who sees the card as an investment, and holy cards have appropriated this feature. Many holy cards today are laminated in a plastic coating. They, too, are laminated to protect them from tearing or fraying. The plastic coating signifies preservation. These plastic-coated cards are made to last. The underlying assumption beneath the plastic conveys another cultural value: "Holy cards are not meant to be thrown in the trash." Thus, the hegemonic view that disapproves of the trading card metaphor would find value in the plastic coating.
If we take the trading card metaphor to its extreme, there would need to be a market for holy cards. That is, the collection of trading cards is often viewed as a financial investment. As Pomian writes: "Only when a collection is made for investment purposes, is locked up in a bank vault and is worth more than its weight in gold does it impress, anything else is perceived merely as a narcissistic and slightly frivolous pastime nothing more than a trifle" (1990:1). But there is not a visible market for holy cards. In Collector's Guide to Trading Cards: Identification and Values, Robert Reed attempts to provide a canonical list of trading cards. Each card in Reed's canon has an associated market place price: "The values in this book come from the marketplace. Often they come from many marketplaces, both public and private" (1993:25). Whether or not Reed provides the "definitive" list of trading cards is not the point. His list includes trading cards of famous cartoon characters, Hollywood actors, Desert Storm arsenal, rock stars like the Beatles, athletes, presidents, criminals, and Barbie Dolls, but holy cards of Catholic saints are not present. Catholic saints are not a part of the iconography of dominant culture in the United States. Thus, within the trading card industry, holy cards are seen as trivial because they do not command a price.
Holy Cards are Meaningful Things, though, when they function metaphorically as "meaningful-semiophores." These metaphors describe holy cards as representations of the invisible. The invisible is not simply a spiritual realm, although I do agree with Pomian that it is unconsciously endowed with "superiority and fertility." That is, the invisible is also the realm of human remembrance. A person's memories are just as invisible as the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Thus, the holy cards that a person collects and finds valuable can "write" a history of that person.
Ironically, even though the holy cards distributed at funerals function as a mortuary's business card, they seem to be the least ephemeral of the genre. Rebecca, a 35-year-old writer living in Fort Collins, Colorado, tells a story of cleaning the house of her grandmother who had just died. She remembered sifting through her grandmother's bedroom drawers in which she found a batch of holy cards. Rebecca said that she found no reason not to throw these cards away, but, when I asked her if she ever saved any holy cards, she responded by saying that she only kept the ones that she received at funerals. My wife also makes it a practice to keep the holy cards from funerals. "They are a remembrance of the person," said Rebecca, "that's why I keep those." My Italian grandmother kept a number of holy cards from funerals above the doorway between her living room and kitchen. She kept a small votive candle lit next to these cards. The cards that my grandmother kept in this quasi-shrine not only included a picture of a religious figure, but they also included pictures of family members who had died-her husband, siblings, and daughter. She kept one card above the doorway from February of 1968 until two years ago when she had to leave her home to live in a center for the elderly. Even though the front panel of this card includes a picture of Michelangelo's "Pieta," the card was always left open so that only the picture of her daughter Francesca was visible. Anyone who entered my grandmother's kitchen would see and remember Francesca.
Gill, an owner of a Catholic book store, said that "holy cards distributed at funerals are not only memories of the deceased, but are remembrances of the saint who helped protect that person." "Holy cards," according to Gill, "are related to novena booklets. They are novenas that you can put in your pocket." (Figure 7 shows one of the novena booklets that Gill handed to me during our conversation.) When I asked why holy cards were related to novenas, Gill explained that the novena of the deceased's patron was typically said at the wake. "This is why," according to Gill, "the holy card is distributed at funerals, today." Whether or not holy cards descended from novena booklets, Gill's explanation does recognize the importance of Catholic saints within the tradition of holy cards. My family kept the cards from the funeral of my grandfather Emmanuel Petruzzelli. Pictured on one card is Saint Patrick, and Saint Catherine Laboure is on the other. These saints were not particularly important to my grandfather. An Italian immigrant, he probably had not heard of St. Catherine Labour6, and he never had the luck of the Irish. Even though the memory of my grandfather doesn't come to mind every St. Patrick's Day, my family has kept the cards. They provide a touchstone to his life and accomplishments.
Recently I received a collection of holy cards from Maria, a 58-year-old, Italian immigrant, who lives in San Diego. She told me that she would send me a "hand few" of her cards. What I received was a box filled with 83 cards. In addition to the holy cards, she also included a number of religious pamphlets and chapbooks related to several of her cards. Maria covered these materials in a plastic wrap so that she could tuck the associated cards with the related pamphlet. For example, in the book on St. Anthony, there were four St. Anthony holy cards sealed inside. A majority of the cards include text in Italian, so she probably had many of these cards prior to her move to the United States in 1956. When I asked her why she had so many holy cards, Maria said: "I don't like to throw them out. I keep them in every drawer in my house." She also mentioned that the cards she had sent were only a few of the ones she had. Maria continued, "I don't know how to explain it. I just like them." I replied by saying that I liked them too but never knew anyone who had collected so many. "I'm not the only one who collects them," she replied. "In my family my sister and my mother collect them, too. They are remembrances of a saint, or a church, or some place we have been to. They remind us of our religion. We believe in God, Mary, and the saints. I believe in the way my mom brought us up, with saying novenas and the rosary; it is our tradition."
What I came to realize from my discussion with Maria was that her holy cards were a part of the personal liturgy of her daily life. They not only "help her get to heaven," but they also provide her with an expression of Catholic identity and with personal history. For example, her Saint Anthony cards not only express the devotion that she shares with other Catholics for this saint, but they also encode the memory she has of her trip back home to Italy and to the church from which she received them. Thus, her whole collection writes specific moments in her life.
Open-Ended Conclusion
In this essay I have only touched the surface of the tradition of Catholic holy cards, so I will not attempt to bring it to closure. I hope for and encourage further study in this area of vernacular religion.6 I am certain that Catholic holy cards are "multi-vocal," and it is important to find the other voices for which they speak. As a result I will end this essay in the way in which I began, with a personal story. A few weeks ago I was attending mass with my family. I was standing in the vestibule and holding my six-month-old baby girl. The vestibule is a place where holy cards can be found in many Catholic churches; it's the main entrance to a church, a type of foyer. This church doesn't have a separated "cry" room, so the vestibule becomes a sanctuary for parents of small children. My daughter was experiencing teething pain, and I didn't have a teething ring to give her. As she was filling the church with her crying, I walked her to a book rack. This rack contained various literature, from the parish's weekly bulletin, the newspaper from the diocese, to pamphlets on how to have a healthy marriage, various doctrinal-related materials, as well as holy cards. I handed my daughter a plastic covered holy card, and my prayers were answered. She began to chew on it. The card helped to soothe her teething pain. My daughter not only found another creative use for holy cards, but she also reminded me of my first holy card; it, too, was something that I was encouraged to touch and feel.
In addition to their potential "teething-ring" function, the cards in a church vestibule can provide a salutation to the people as they make their way into the church. Whether or not they take the time to look at them, the holy cards are visible and become a part of the religious imagery that people see as they enter the church. Thus, the cards in the vestibule are related to a physical area of passage, an area that is separated and outside the official area of worship. Holy cards become mediators between the secular and spiritual worlds. Metaphorically, they lie on the cusp of the worlds of the visible and the invisible.
Notes
Although some holy cards exclude the visual imagery, there are very few that do so. In a future project it would be interesting to research whether any Catholic holy cards produced before Vatican II ever exclude visual imagery. The domination of verbal imagery over visual imagery is traditional within Protestant culture. This verbal domination is also evident in the Protestant version of holy cards. My wife showed me a card she received at her nursing school graduation. A Protestant friend gave her this card which included the text of the nurse's prayer on the front and nothing on the back. Recently, I found the Catholic version of this card. It has the identical prayer printed on the back of the card, and a picture of Mary on the front Thus, the differences in the versions of these two texts articulate the values of their respective cultures.
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