The “Living Image”: Embodying Christian Identity, Devotion, and Sacred Place

Abstract

Abstract

Early modern engravings of the tattooed arms of pilgrims such as Ratger Stubbe and Otto Friedrich von der Gröben preserve rare visual evidence of a devotional tradition whose origins lie in medieval pilgrimage to Jerusalem. While these tattoos have often been interpreted as souvenirs, marks of travel, or signs of religious identity, this paper argues that they functioned as living devotional images whose efficacy depended upon their permanent inscription within the living body. Rather than merely representing Jerusalem, pilgrimage tattoos transformed the Christian body into a devotional medium through which sacred place remained materially and visually present long after the journey had ended. Drawing upon seventeenth-century pilgrimage imagery, travel accounts, and the tattoo traditions of the Razzouk family, this paper examines how pilgrimage tattoos materialized memory, sacred geography, and Christian identity. It examines the engraved arms of Ratger Stubbe and Otto Friedrich von der Gröben, whose tattoo programs reveal sophisticated visual narratives that merge sacred history with sacred geography. These images demonstrate that pilgrimage tattoos operated simultaneously as indexical traces of bodily inscription, iconographic representations of holy places, and symbolic affirmations of Christian devotion. Building upon theories of embodiment, materiality, and image studies, I propose the concept of the living devotional image to describe images inseparable from the bodies that bear them. By foregrounding early modern visual evidence, this paper demonstrates how pilgrimage tattoos collapse conventional distinctions between body and image, relic and representation, and memory and place. In doing so, it offers a new framework for understanding devotional imagery, embodiment, and sacred geography in both medieval and early modern visual culture.