Holy card - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In the Catholic tradition, holy cards or prayer cards are small, devotional

Catholic devotions

A Roman Catholic devotion is a gift of oneself, or one's activities to God. It is a willingness and desire to dedicate oneself to serve God; either in terms of prayers or in terms of a set of pious acts such as the adoration of God or the veneration of the saints or the Virgin Mary.Roman Catholic...

pictures mass-produced

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

for the use of the faithful. They typically depict a religious scene or a saint

Saint

A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

in an image about the size of a playing card

Playing card

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games...

. The reverse typically contains a prayer

Prayer

Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...

, some of which promise an indulgence

Indulgence

In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The indulgence is granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution...

for its recitation. The circulation of these cards is an important part of the visual folk culture

Folk culture

Folk culture refers to the lifestyle of a culture. Historically, handed down through oral tradition, it demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty and relates to a sense of community. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place...

of Roman Catholics.

Old master prints

Old master print

An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...

s, nearly all on religious subjects, served many of the same functions as holy cards, especially the cheaper woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s; the earliest dated surviving example is from 1423, probably from southern Germany, and depicts Saint Christopher

Saint Christopher

.Saint Christopher is a saint venerated by Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, listed as a martyr killed in the reign of the 3rd century Roman Emperor Decius or alternatively under the Roman Emperor Maximinus II Dacian...

, with handcolouring, it is found as part of the binding of a manuscript of the Laus Virginis (1417) which belongs to the John Rylands Library

John Rylands Library

The John Rylands Library is a Victorian Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Mrs Enriqueta Augustina Rylands in memory of her late husband, John Rylands...

, Manchester. Later engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

or etching

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

were more commonly used. Some had elaborate borders of paper lace

Lace

Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. Lace-making is an ancient craft. True lace was...

surrounding the images; these were called dévotes dentelles in France.

Lithography

The invention of colour lithography

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

made it possible to reproduce coloured images cheaply, leading to a much broader circulation of the cards. An early centre of their manufacture was in the environs of the Church of St Sulpice in Paris; the lithographed images made there were done in delicate pastel

Pastel

Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....

colours, and proved extremely influential on later designs. Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

and Germany also became centres of the manufacture of holy cards, as did Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

in the twentieth century. Catholic printing houses (such as Maison de la Bonne Presse

Bayard Presse

Bayard Presse was founded in Paris in 1870 and has since expanded into a global publishing network. Considered the e-map of France, their core publications market comes from the children's sector, and they have many magazine titles, books and the like are a core part of children's growing up...

in France and Ars Sacra in Germany) produced large numbers of cards, and often a single design was printed by different companies in different countries.

Special types of cards

Special holy cards are printed for Roman Catholics to be distributed at funerals; these are "In memoriam card

In memoriam card

An In memoriam card is greeting card that is printed as a commemoration for certain events such as the sacrament of first holy communion, marriage, and the reception of holy orders. However, these cards are most associated with a death and funeral...

s", with details and often a photograph of the person whom they commemorate as well as prayers printed on the back. Other specialized holy cards record baptism

Baptism

In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

s, confirmations, and other religious anniversaries. Others are not customized, and are circulated to promote the veneration

Veneration

Veneration , or veneration of saints, is a special act of honoring a saint: an angel, or a dead person who has been identified by a church committee as singular in the traditions of the religion. It is practiced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic, and Eastern Catholic Churches...

of the saints and images they bear.

At the end of the nineteenth century, some Protestants attempted to answer these Roman Catholic images with similar images of their own. They produced Bible cards or Sunday school
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...

cards, with lithographed illustrations depicting Bible stories and parable

Parable

A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...

s, more modern scenes of religious life or prayer, or sometimes just a Biblical text illuminated by calligraphy

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...

; these were linked to Biblical passages that related to the image. The reverse typically held a sermonette

Sermonette

Sermonette is a generic term for short, locally-produced inspirational messages that were aired by many U.S. television stations during their sign-on and sign-off periods....

instead of a prayer. Imagery here was always the servant of text, and as such these Protestant cards tended to be replaced by tract

Tract (literature)

A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They are...

s that emphasized message instead of imagery, and were illustrated with cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

-like images if they were illustrated at all.

Irish law of 2009

In Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

cards are sold certifying that a Mass

Mass (liturgy)

"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

has been said for the benefit of sick or dead people, and are typically given to the family of the sick or dead person. Disputes arose over the validity of cards issued by priests living outside Ireland. Section 99 of the 2009 Charities Act regulates sales of Mass Cards, which can only be sold "pursuant to an arrangement" with a "recognised person", such as a Bishop

Bishop (Catholic Church)

In the Catholic Church, a bishop is an ordained minister who holds the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders and is responsible for teaching the Catholic faith and ruling the Church....

, without stipulating whether that person had to be resident in Ireland or not. A court challenge to the new law by a business that sold 120,000 cards a year failed in late 2009. A breach of the law can result in a 10-year prison sentence or a €300,000 fine.

Old master prints

Lithography

Special types of cards

Irish law of 2009

See also

Further reading