Christa Beranek

There is an extensive literature on the founding of the colony of Maryland that debates the intertwined economic, political, and religious intentions of its founders, the English Catholic Calverts, and traces the tumultuous seventeenth-century history of the attempt to allow both Catholic and Protestant settlers to practice their religion.  Scholarship on the actual personal religious beliefs and devotions of the Catholic colonists, who were always a minority, is scarce, however, and relies on very fragmentary evidence.  This paper is a historical archaeological examination of excavated religious artifacts from seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century St. Mary’s City, the colony’s first capital, founded in 1634.  These small artifacts have the potential to illuminate aspects of the religious beliefs of the colonists and constitute an integral part of the transferal of religious practices to the New World.  These objects have particular relevance because the attempt to change the symbols of personal piety has been the subject of much of recent Counter-Reformation scholarship, and these items shed light on the nature and extent of that change.  Medals recovered from St. Mary’s City bear images of new saints and devotions and present a picture of a population adopting contemporary practices rather than re-producing older, traditional ones.  In addition to their religious connotations, medallions and statuary also existed within a wider visual culture, and individuals may have used these stylistic aspects to signal their literacy in contemporary, elite forms.

[WP #0616]