The Iconographic Couple of St Michael as Weigher of Souls and the Protecting Virgin: A Visual Formula as a Marker and Maker of Medieval Sacred Space

Abstract

This research addresses the formula linking between Michael the Archangel and the Holy Virgin in the wall paintings from fourteenth-century parish churches in the Hungarian Kingdom. This starts from the murals that join together between the figure of St. Michael in the act of psychostasis, as the weigher of souls, and Mary, with the mantle, represented with her all-embracing cloak, and it investigates the spatial implications between St. Michael and Mary.

1. Introduction

This article focuses on an iconographic formula linking Michael the Archangel and the Holy Virgin in the wall paintings from fourteenth-century parish churches in the Hungarian Kingdom. My research starts from the murals that join together the figure of St Michael in the act of psychostasis, as weigher of souls, and Mary with the mantle, represented with her all-embracing cloak (Figure 1), and will investigate the spatial implications of their placing on the arch that separates the nave from the sanctuary (Figure 2).

The Archangel Michael is a complex figure in the medieval West and widely disseminated in the iconography of all mediums, from monumental sculpture to ivories and pilgrim badges (Bouet et al. 2003; Casiraghi and Sergi 2009; Grant 2011; Avellis 2016; Di Muro and Hodges 2019). Aside from the narrative cycle of the archangel, which is mainly related to his apparitions on Mount Gargano and his miracles, there are also other actions related to the iconography of Michael, which made him a popular figure and a widely represented saint during the Middle Ages (Belli d’Elia 2003). Firstly, as the opponent of the Beast in the context of the Apocalypse, Michael appears as the leader of the celestial army against the forces of evil (in a wider sense than the one assumed by eschatological events). Secondly, Michael acts as a guide for the souls of the deceased in the Afterlife. This function of guiding the souls after death is strongly related to a third category, the psychostasia, the weighing of souls, linked with the archangel and with the individual judgment through which the soul passes immediately after the moment of death (Baschet 1995, 2008b; Angheben 2013). Although the representations of the archangel seemingly constitute a homogenous series, the diversity of details mark the differences between these images, as well as their context and positioning within the sacred space.

For the present research, I will concentrate on the strategies through which St Michael’s image was related to the sacred space and its connection with a particular iconographic motif, namely, the Protecting Virgin1. My focus is on the frescoes in which the archangel was painted on the triumphal arch, at the threshold between the nave and the apse, which, as I will argue, functions as a spatial, as well as spiritual, border that was visually reinforced through the use of specific iconographic motifs. Usually when discussing about the relationship between images and space, one tends to focus on problems related to liturgy and the ways in which it implied the use of images in rituals (Kauffmann 2012). My arguments will focus more on the modes through which the sacred space is divided to various degrees of sanctity by the use of images. Research dedicated to the cult of St Michael tackled similar issues in relation with more famous pilgrimage sites like the shrines in Monte Gargano and Mont-Saint-Michel, emphasizing the interplay between landscape, relics, and the pilgrim’s veneration and sensorial approach, in creating a gradual access to the sacred space that presents the locus of angelic dwelling as protected by a threshold to be crossed and sensed (Rosenbergová 2020)2. In this sense, it should be remarked that the monuments that I analyze are, in their majority, simple structures formed by a single nave and a choir. However, my argument is that in these cases, murals act as performative images that mark the boundary between the nave and the sanctuary and emphasize through visual devices the holiness of liturgical services. In my attempt to explain the use of this iconographic formula in the Kingdom of Hungary, I will concentrate more upon the figure of St Michael and the reasons behind its coupling with the Virgin and, especially, the image of Mary with the mantle.

2. The Cult of St Michael in Medieval Hungary: Image and Devotion

As proven by the extensive literature dedicated to the archangel’s cult in medieval Europe, devotion towards St Michael was a rather common phenomenon during the Middle Ages. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the Hungarian Kingdom honored the leader of the heavenly army through church dedications, prayers, and images. Nonetheless, the iconographic duo that I refer to in this paper was not ubiquitous during the timespan considered here, so a closer look at the development of the cult in medieval Hungary could offer a more stable ground for further inquiries.

The cult of St Michael was introduced into Hungary when the land became a Christian kingdom at the beginning of the eleventh century, and its spread seems to be indebted to both Latin, mainly German, and Byzantine impulses (Klaniczay 2022, pp. 174–77). The dedication of the cathedrals of Veszprém, Alba Iulia (Hung. Gyulafehérvár; Germ. Weissenburg), and Vác to St Michael has been explained on the basis of the popularity that the saint enjoyed in the Byzantine Empire (Klaniczay 2022, p. 177; Florea 2022, p. 38)3. Codes of Law issued by kings Ladislas I (1177–1095) and Kálmán (1095–1116) include references to the feast of St Michael and attest its incorporation into the Divine Office (Eszenyi 2007, pp. 20–21; Klaniczay 2022, p. 177). According to researchers, Saxon colonists, as well as the arrival of monastic and mendicant orders, highly contributed to the spread of St Michael’s cult, given the ascension of the archangel’s figure in the Holy Roman Empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially in the aftermath of the year 1000 (Florea 2022, pp. 40–41; Klaniczay 2022, pp. 178–79)4. The bishopric in Alba Iulia seems to have been particularly concerned with consolidating the archangel’s cult and establishing itself as the most important guardian of St Michael’s divine will and powerful intervention. The renewal of an indulgence granted by Peter Monoszló (1270–1307) to the Dominicans in Sighișoara (Hung. Segesvár; Germ. Schässburg) mentions that penitential undertakings should be undertaken on the occasion of the feast of St Michael and only in the cathedral in Alba Iulia (Florea 2022, p. 42; Klaniczay 2022, p. 178). The same bishop was also responsible for a liturgical novelty in the Kingdom of Hungary by introducing the feast of Michael’s apparition on Mount Gargano, to be celebrated on the 8th of May, in addition to his already established feast day, on the 29th of September (Florea 2022, pp. 42–43; Klaniczay 2022, p. 178). The environmental aspects of the archangel’s cult and his links with mountainous landscapes were not lost to the Transylvanian bishop, who mentions in a document from 1276 of a fortress that should be constructed and financed by the bishop and would bear the name Lapis sancti Michaelis5. It is not the space here to dwell on the multiple facets of St Michael’s cult in the Kingdom of Hungary, but suffice it to say that by the fourteenth century, the archangel became one of the preferred toponyms and church patronyms, laity, and especially noblemen prayed for his aid and protection, and chapter seals were endowed with his image in order to harness Michael’s military capabilities in defending the Church6.

In the Kingdom of Hungary, there are about thirty-five representations of Michael the Archangel, numbering his use as a self-standing image, separated from a narrative context, as well as his inclusion in the theme of the Last Judgment (Lionnet 2004, pp. 304–23). Nonetheless, one must be aware of the fact that not every angel bearing a sword in the context of the final judgment can immediately be identified with Michael, and the iconography used in murals is sometimes explicit in differentiating between more generic divine agents and the archangel. In all Last Judgment representations of the Hungarian Kingdom, Central or Western Europe, angels as agents that accomplish different actions are frequently used. Besides the ones that use their trumpets to announce the resurrection of the dead and the angels bearing the instruments of the Passion, the Arma Christi, others appear as guides towards the Heavenly Jerusalem for the blessed, or as punishers of the damned by forcing them into Leviathans mouth. Researches dedicated to St Michael’s image tend to use the sword that an angel might use as a token for the fact that it is a representation of the archangel7. Obviously, in Michael’s cult the sword with which he is identified in the Old Testament scene of the conquest of Jericho plays a central role, being among the few preserved relics of the archangel and it was frequently reproduced on pilgrimage badges. This cult of Michael’s sword is not to be found throughout all of medieval Europe, and the special emphasis on this relic found in the ambiance of Mont-Saint-Michel is not reproduced everywhere, but researchers often tend to assume that the figure of an angel bearing a sword is most naturally linked with the figure of the archangel.

In order to address the relevance of the joining together of the archangel and the Virgin inside the sacred space, a few lines should be dedicated to the presence of Michael and his scales on the surface of the triumphal arch. The sacred space bears in itself a spiritual tension between the nave and the apse, the former being considered a place of struggle for the redemption of the soul, thus being reserved mainly to the laity, while the latter represents the goal of beatific plenitude. The link between the two is determined by the longitudinal axis of the church, which corresponded to the pilgrimage of the human being through life. This itinerary throughout the sacred space is known in the literature as iterus and refers to the physical and spiritual progress of the believer as he walks into the church interior, from the shadow and into the light, from the western part of the nave to the holy light of the apse (Baschet et al. 2012). Without talking specifically about the notion of iterus, Ivan Gerát remarked that in the spatial dynamics of churches from the Gemer area, the triumphal arch played an important part in separating the nave from the apse through the constant use of the Last Judgment or eschatological themes (Gerát 2013).

Among the thirty representations of Michael the Archangel preserved in the Hungarian Kingdom, seven were painted on the arch separating the nave from the choir. The paintings from Ófehértó, Haláčovce (Hung. Halács), Nová Dedinka (Hung. Dunaújfalu), and Palatca (Hung. Magyarpalatka) depict the archangel in the act of psychostasia, of weighing souls. In the first two cases, he occupies the northern half of the triumphal arch, while the latter two examples contain depictions of the archangel weighing souls on the southern half of the arch that separates the interior of the ecclesiastical space. This context is by no way unique, since there are other examples from central Europe and the German lands where the archangel occupies by himself one half of the triumphal arch. I think that this repeated use of the image of the archangel in the act of weighing souls is by no means arbitrary when placed on the threshold between the nave and the apse. His importance for the faith of the soul in the Afterlife corresponds to the symbolic spiritual passage that is signified by entering the choir space from the nave (Rigaux 2009).

There are also cases when the archangel is spatially linked to the representation of other saints. One such example is the fresco that covers the southern half of the triumphal arch in the church of Turčianske Jaseno (Hung. Turócjeszen) (Figure 3), probably from the fourteenth century. This painting represents Michael the Archangel in the act of weighing souls alongside Saint Christopher, whose gigantesque stature occupies the whole southern half of the arch. The two iconographic motifs are placed in the same compositional frame and must be, therefore, considered together. In the Western Alps region, the coupling of Michael with other saints, Anthony and Peter alongside Christopher, is a common compositional pattern, endowed with symbolic significance (Rigaux 2009, p. 579)8. Taking into consideration the significance of Saint Michael as a bearer of souls in the Afterlife, Saint Christopher appears as a most natural companion, since his function as a saint that protects pilgrims and prevents sudden death is doubled by his capacity to act as a saint that helps the dead through their passage in the Otherworld. Therefore, when being confronted with an image of the two saints on the triumphal arch, saints that are visually linked by being placed in the same compositional frame, one has to think that the distribution of iconographic motifs inside the sacred space might bear symbolic connotations. In this particular case, the triumphal arch represents a threshold and the two saints depicted are present as guides that help the souls in their passage to the other life.

The last iconographic couple that I want to analyze is the one formed by the archangel and the image of Mary as the Protecting Virgin. Their bringing together in the frescoes found in the Kingdom of Hungary is not common only for the triumphal arch, but for the nave walls as well. The murals in the churches from Rimavská Baňa and Švábovce are instances in which the two are paired on one of the nave walls. Before talking about the three cases that are of foremost interest to me, namely the frescoes in Čerín (Hung. Cserény), Kraskovo (Hung. Karaszkó), and Poruba (Hung. Mohos), I will mention some theological and liturgical aspects regarding their joint cult.

3. Michael and Mary, the Scales and the Mantle

From the Romanesque time, one can talk about a preference for the spiritual, as well as physical, juxtaposition of the archangel and the Mother of God. André Bonnery analyzed the pattern of placing a chapel or church dedicated to Michael on a high ground, while adjoining a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin at one inferior level (Bonnery 1997, pp. 12–18). This pattern of construction that can be found in Western Europe might have at its origins the example of Mont-Saint-Michel in France, where one can find what is probably the first surviving example of a superposing and adjoining of two sanctuaries dedicated to the Archangel Michael and the Virgin.

This architectural solution reflects the scriptural and dogmatic principles of their joint cult. The foremost scriptural source might be identified in the Apocalypse (12, 1–8) (Bonnery 1997, p. 18). Based on this biblical source, early on in the Middle Ages, theologians and preachers recognized in the Apocalyptic Woman the Mother of Christ, thus transforming the archangel in her guardian (Bonnery 1997, p. 18). Therefore, the most common and simple justification for their existence side by side in iconography is provided by the passages in John’s Revelation. Nevertheless, one must not forget that the text describes the archangel as leader of the celestial army in his battle against the Devil, and Mary as the Apocalyptic Woman, while the frescoes that are my concern are depictions of Michael in the act of weighing souls and Mary as the protective mother of Christianity. As a consequence, the Revelation of John might be an argument for their conception as an iconographic pair, but these particular painted instances are clues for a more specific use of the visual formula under scrutiny here.

The powerful link between the Virgin and the archangel was also acted out at the end of Mary’s life. In a book concerning the figure of St Michael in medieval English legend, Richard Johnson states that ‘[…] the archangel’s most important charge as psychopomp was the body and soul of the Virgin Mary. There exists a large store of early English legendary material with regard to the Virgin’s assumption and St Michael’s role in it’ (Johnson 2005, pp. 72–76). Therefore, at times, the leader of God’s angelic cohorts is also the most suitable guide for the soul of Mary, even though angels were commonly discussed as subjects to the Virgin’s authority9.

This unsurprising hierarchy can also be found in the Hungarian Kingdom, in one of the earliest written passages dedicated to the funerary mission of St Michael’s cult. A late twelfth-century funeral sermon, the Halotti beszéd és könyörgés (Funeral Sermon and Prayer) invokes divine intervention for the guidance of the deceased’s soul, but signals out the Virgin and Michael from among the celestial agents: ‘And let us pray for the Holy Lady Mary and the blessed Archangel Michael and all the angels, to pray for him’10. According to Edit Madas, a parallel to the joining of the two can be found in the Agenda pontificalis of Hartvik, bishop of Győr, who served under king Kalman the Wise, and which includes excerpts from the sermon collection of St Gellért, the eleventh-century bishop of Cenad (Hung. Csanád) (Madas 2002, pp. 49–80). One should not forget the fact that the cathedral in Vác was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin and to the Archangel Michael. This intertwining between Marian cult and devotion to St Michael can also be witnessed in the case of the cathedral in Oradea (Hung. Nagyvárad, Germ. Grosswardein). According to the statutes of the cathedral, the most important responsibilities of the clergy were the masses dedicated to the Virgin and for the redemption of the souls (Florea 2022, p. 47). According to Carmen Florea, this also implied a connection between funeral masses and the intervention of the Virgin in the soul’s journey in the Afterlife (Florea 2022, p. 47)—and the Middle Ages knew no shortage of cases when the Virgin Mary interfered with St Michael’s judging scales.

Literary and visual sources throughout Western Europe might be pertinent when motivating that the Protecting Virgin and Michael the Archangel can be considered a hagiographic, as well as an iconographic, doublet11. There are many occasions when the Mother of God interacts and interferes with the scales used for the individual judgment, whether associated with the archangel, or not. Such is the case in the Golden Legend of Jacobus of Voragine, where amongst the miracles narrated in relation with the Feast of the Assumption, there is also the case of a man who, in his dreams, is brought before the divine court and the Virgin Mary, called Mater Misericordiae, interferes with the scales on behalf of the judged man (C. M. Oakes 1997, p. 199). Another widely circulated vision-like text of the fourteenth century, Guillaume de Déguileville’s Le Pèlerinage de l’âme, includes a chapter dedicated to the efficacious intervention of the Virgin in the moment of the weighing of the soul. However, one must not forget that at the beginning of this chapter, Guillaume writes about the prominent position of the archangel as a judge and weigher of souls (C. M. Oakes 1997, p. 200). At the same time, in texts that relate the miracles achieved by the archangel, his function is not primarily a military one, but also an intercessional one, Michael being deemed an angel of peace. Similar to the image of the Protecting Virgin, the depiction of Michael in the act of weighing souls, aside the reference to the individual and universal judgments, might have been used as a spur in favor of devotional acts in order to facilitate the soul’s journey through the Otherworld. It is important to notice that from the Romanesque times and until the fourteenth century, the litany of the Saints, which was read at the beginning of the liturgy, invoked first and foremost the Mother of God and the Archangel Michael, especially since the introduction of the Confiteor, which places this hagiographic couple at its incipit as well (Bonnery 1997, p. 19).

One of the earliest examples of a large-scale mural in which the Protecting Mary and the archangel as weigher of souls are conjoined is the fourteenth-century fresco ensemble from the church St. Ceneri-le-Gerei (C. M. Oakes 1997, p. 139). Here, the two iconographic motifs are painted on exactly opposite parts of the nave, on the southern and northern nave walls. Judging from their frames, it appears that their spatial correlation was indeed intended. As Catherine Oakes has shown, in the fourteenth century there is an iconographic hybrid that is called by Oakes ‘Marian Psychostasis’ and that becomes widely spread in the fifteenth century (C. M. Oakes 1997, p. 201). These images, which have been interpreted as references to the individual judgment and as signs of the belief in the efficacy of prayers addressed to this intercessional couple, usually depict a direct intervention of the Virgin in the weighing of the souls that is controlled by Michael. Other examples that can also be quoted are the ones from Rhazüns, in Switzerland, or, in the case of the Hungarian Kingdom, the fresco from Kvačany. In both of these examples, one can clearly notice the unmediated intervention of the Virgin in the act that is commonly attributed solely to the archangel. Nonetheless, it is important to note that the two paintings mentioned before do not depict the Virgin as a Protecting Mother, with her cloak wide opened in order the shelter the faithful. Few paintings survive that represent Michael in the act of psychostasis and Mary with her cloak in the same pictural frame. The ones that survived can be found in England (as in the case of the fourteenth-century fresco from Corby Glen), or in Denmark (fourteenth-century fresco from Birkerød12). While a connection between the English and Danish murals and the frescoes that can be found in the Hungarian Kingdom is untenable, I believe that the literary and visual arguments presented above can justify the analysis of the Protecting Virgin and of Michael as weigher of souls as an iconographic doublet and they can explain their joint appearance.

4. Michael, Mary, and Thresholds

When it comes to the paintings that can be found in the Kingdom of Hungary, the pendant disposition on the surface of the triumphal arch of the archangel and the Virgin with her cloak survives in two churches, namely Kraskovo (about 1380) and Pourba (about 1400), and the late fourteenth-century frescoes from Čerín should also be added to the list.

The wall paintings of St Martin’s church in Čerín (Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6) are a less obvious, but equally relevant, example of the spatial placing of images that I am analyzing (Jékely 2021). The northern half of the triumphal arch preserves two murals. In the lower register Saints Dorothy, Helen, and Catherine were depicted, whereas the upper register is dedicated to an image of Mary with the mantle. Next to the Virgin, on the surface of the northern nave wall, St Michael was represented holding the scales of Judgment (Jékely 2021, pp. 231–32; Gombosi 2008, pp. 104, 157). Despite being placed on different walls, the two figures were intended as a mural diptych, to be viewed as a whole, as indicated by identical ornamental band that frames both images and which differs from the one used for the images of St George, on the lower register of the northern wall, or the three female saints previously named.

The spatial correlation of the Protecting Virgin and St. Michael can be most clearly seen in the frescoes from Kraskovo and Poruba. The frescoes in Kraskovo (painted around 1380) (Figure 2, Figure 7 and Figure 8) place Mary with her mantle on the northern side of the arch, with Michael in the act of psychostasis as its southern pendant (Gombosi 2008, pp. 104, 166–67). The two images are surmounted by a representation of the Annunciation. In the case of Poruba, the height of the triumphal arch still separates the Protecting Virgin and Michael with the scales, although they are both placed in the upper register on the eastern nave wall (Ilkó 2019, pp. 286–362). However, the iconographic formula used at Poruba is further complicated by the inclusion of St. Helen with the cross alongside Mary and St. Elisabeth of Thuringia inside the frame depicting the archangel. Moreover, in this last instance, St. Elisabeth takes over Mary’s role and interferes with Michael’s scales, an aspect that can be explained through the powerful cult of the royal female saint in Central Europe in the fourteenth century13. As previously noted, the presence of St. Michael on the triumphal arch is not exceptional, but the placement of the archangel as a pendant to the Virgin Mary on the threshold between the nave and the sanctuary invites further considerations regarding their active roles in shaping the sacred space and in creating a sacred threshold inside the churches.

Mary’s cloak, aside from the protection granted to the faithful, acts as a devotional, non-narrative image that reminds the viewer of the Virgin’s role for the fate of the deceased in the Afterlife. Medieval writings remind of her utmost efficacious interventions when it comes to shortening the time of purgatorial penance and, sometimes, of its miraculous redemption of souls that are convicted to the eternal flames of hell14. That this iconographic couple had eschatological implications can be observed in the rather uncommon placing of the two inside the Last Judgment scene in the late fourteenth-century frescoes from the church in Chilieni (Figure 9 and Figure 10) (Hung. Sepsikilyén) (Jékely and Kiss 2008, pp. 278–334). The hell zone is lost, but one can notice near the figure of the Protecting Virgin, the remnants of what appears to have been the scales of the archangel. Therefore, it seems to appear that Mary and Michael were revered as a most powerful couple when it came to one’s fate in the Afterlife and in the moment of the Judgment.

If the joining together of these two efficacious iconographic motifs was related to the Otherworld, to the soul’s journey after death, then it might be argued that their spatial placement corresponds to marking a spiritual passage, with the triumphal arch as a symbolic and architectural threshold, inside the church. Their presence, as pendants on the triumphal arch, enforce the iterus mentioned above and demonstrates, if there still is any need for further proofs, that murals were not simply ‘the Bible of the illiterate’15, or aids for preaching, but they were active agents in the creation and dynamics of the sacred space. Their spatial placement corresponds to marking a spiritual passage, with the triumphal arch as a symbolic and architectural threshold, inside the church. It should be noted that especially St. Michael acts as a powerful provisor loci and threshold guardian, whose role inside ecclesiastic architecture can very often be framed in spatial terms.

It is interesting to note, in line with the observations of Jérôme Baschet, that both the figure of the archangel and the image of the Vierge au manteau were closely related to Abraham’s bosom (Baschet 2000, pp. 291–303). The shroud in which Abraham collects the souls of the deceased is carried by St. Michael in the twelfth-century Shaftesbury Psalter. Resembling even more the frontal posture of the patriarch, the murals from Langast depict the self-standing archangel holding a cloth in which the souls are protected. Of course, no such iconographic hybrid seems to have existed in the Hungarian Kingdom, but the Bosom of Abraham was known, either through Last Judgment scenes, or in the form of an isolated motif, depicted on the vault of the choir, as can be witnessed in the fourteenth-century paintings in Rákoš (Slovakia).

5. Conclusions

This chapter addressed an iconographic formula linking Michael the Archangel and the Holy Virgin in the wall paintings of fourteenth-century parish churches in the Hungarian Kingdom. The murals on which my research concentrates depict Michael in the act of psychostasis, as weigher of souls, whereas Mary is represented with her all-embracing cloak. While the juxtaposition of St. Michael and the Virgin has existed since the tenth century, the presence of a visual pattern joining the particular motifs of the soul-weighing Archangel and the Protecting Virgin is rarely recorded, beginning only with the fourteenth century in France, Denmark, or England. The scarce use of this iconographic pattern points to the fact that its inclusion was purposeful, and not the result of workshop patterns based solely on widely disseminated formulas. It is altogether more striking to witness the pairing of Michael and the Protecting Virgin in regions that are usually linked with the influence of art produced in the Italian peninsula. However, consulting the research conducted by Clémentine Denèle, one can observe that while Mary and Michael are frequently adjoined, this particular coupling is absent in art from the peninsula. Therefore, in this case, considerations regarding style, which pervade local historiography, prove to be constraining when analyzing iconographic patterns. Of course, more work still needs to be conducted in order to explain the profusion of the images of St. Michael in the Hungarian Kingdom. Writing about the cult of the archangel in the medieval Kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia, Hana Pátková concluded that the lack of research dedicated to St. Michael is due to his less important cult in Central Europe (Pátková 2007, p. 62). Nonetheless, the corpus of images in the Kingdom of Hungary prove the opposite. Questions still remain regarding the circulation of this motif and its arrival in the Hungarian Kingdom or the agency underlying the choice of this iconographic formula. As a conclusion, I would remark that through developing visual formulas like the one presented here, iconographic programs in fourteenth-century medieval rural churches from the Hungarian Kingdom included certain patterns relating particular spaces to certain motifs, in order to create a sequentiality that could not have been physically possible due to the size of these monuments. Commonly discussed in terms of their didactic function, wall paintings should be considered in light of their participation in the creation of sacred space, of trajectories of devotion, and as markers of thresholds that transform church interiors into dynamic structures that can act upon the believer.