Devotional pictures for swallowing

Frequently found in the "spiritual medicine chests" of devout believers at that time, by swallowing them they wished to gain these curative powers.

In Protestant regions like Württemberg, East Frisia, Oldenburg or Hamburg, people symbolically consumed their own illness by eating a paper note that had their name, date of birth or some kind of phrase written on it.

Schluckbildchen often show the Virgin Mary as a picture of mercy in a specific pilgrimage location, sometimes other saints or portrayals from Christian iconography, like the Nomen sacrum or Titulus INRI.

The symmetry of the rectangular, triangular, diamond-shaped, round or elliptical-shaped frame elements concentrated the effect of the picture on the central theme.

It is passed on that a charlatan was travelling through Saxony in 1898, who gave Sympathiezettelchen (literal translation: sympathy notes) that were written in unreadable words, for an optional prize from 0.30 up to one Deutsche Mark to ill people to eat.

[5] At the beginning of the seventies in the 19th century, “Schluckbildchen” were still sold in Mariazell, Naples, and Sata Maria del Carmine in Florence.

[6] Ethnologist Dominik Wunderlin, department manager at the Museum der Kulturen Basel, reported in 2005 that a woman`s monastery in Bavaria, which was not named in that connection, was still giving away Schluckbildchen at the entrance gate.

[7] As the terms Schluckbildchen and Esszettel suggest, their main medical purpose was of spiritual nature, also called “gratia medicinalis” during the Baroque period.

[8] The paper pills were either soaked in water, dissolved or added to dishes, in order to then be swallowed by the sick person.

The ingestion of little pictures can be seen as a primitive and unmediated form of taking possession of the embodiment of the saint's curative power (or whoever was depicted).

Both the ritual effort that was made to grasp the true meaning of the cult image, but also the memory of the pilgrimage adventure the sick person associated with the Schluckbildchen, increased the miraculous effect.

[9] On August 3, 1903, the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that as long as there were no superstitious practices involved, the use of Esszettel was officially granted.

[10] According to Eduard Stemplinger on the other hand, on July 29 the same congregation had already decided that swallowing water-soaked paper notes with Madonna images printed on them in order to heal illnesses certainly did not count as superstition.

Wafe was also used as healing medicine in the turn of the 15th century as it was described in the poem Bluemen der tugent by the Tyrolean Hans Vintler: „Vil di wellen auf oblat schreiben / und das Fieber damit vertreiben“.

and magic healer soaked his photographs in water and drank from it in order to swallow up parts of his healing power.