On Wayside Shrines
Imagine you are a medieval Christian traveling along a dusty road on your way to a distant village. Suddenly, you see a small wooden structure ahead on the right side of the road, which, upon coming closer, is found to contain within it a small statue of Our Lady of Good Success. This beautiful little wayside shrine inspires you to persevere on your expedition, while bringing to mind the stories of countless saints who embarked on long and arduous earthly journeys in order to instill in souls a love for Christ and a desire to attain eternal life.
The practice of placing religious monuments alongside well-traveled roads goes back to ancient times. In the book of Genesis, after the Lord appeared to him in a dream on his way to visit his Uncle Laban, Jacob set up a stone “for a title” which he called “the house of God.” This stone was a symbol of Jacob’s vow to offer tithes to the Lord if He would protect and provide for him during his journey to and back from the home of his relative.1
The Symbolism of the Cross
In the New Testament, the Cross of Our Lord became the preferred reminder for travelers of heavenly realities. Our Lord Himself wanted to encourage the use of the Cross as a symbol by having the emperor Constantine place it on his standards. Constantine had a vision in which he:
[S]aw the sign of the Cross, outlined in rays of light, and, with it, the words: “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” He did not at first understand this vision—so he maintained under oath to Eusebius—until Christ appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to copy the sign that he had seen in the sky and use it in battle as a talisman of defense.2
The Cross is a type of symbol to the world of the power of redemption, and it was for this reason that, as Sheen explains,
[T]he Cross was erected at the crossroads of civilization, at a central point between the three great cultures of Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens, in whose names He was crucified. The Cross was thus placarded before the eyes of men, to arrest the careless, to appeal to the thoughtless, to arouse the worldly. It was the one unescapable fact that the cultures and civilizations of His day could not resist. It is also the one inescapable fact of our day which we cannot resist.3
As Christians, we are told to embrace our crosses. The early Church witnessed firsthand the deaths of many of the faithful on the very image of with the means of our redemption. Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, discovered the True Cross, which made it fitting that she and her son would popularize the public use of the symbol of the Cross as a sign of Christianity.4
Wayside and Household Shrines
One famous example of this type of wayside shrine can be found in the Eleanor Crosses. These twelve monuments were built by King Edward I of England after the death of his beloved wife, Eleanor of Castile. Each cross marks the location where Queen Eleanor’s body rested while in procession from the village of Harby in Nottinghamshire to Westminster Abbey in London where she was to be interred. At each stopping point, the members of the religious house nearest the royal procession would keep a nightlong vigil of prayer, followed by a Requiem Mass offered for the repose of her soul the next morning.5 The base of each of these memorials was graced with stone statues, some of which portrayed Our Lady, the deceased queen, the saints, and Our Lord. This was done in order to fulfill King Edward’s desire to inspire wayfarers to “kneel at its foot and pray for the repose of her soul.”6
Throughout life, the Christian soul is on a journey. And just as the body needs proper training and nutrition to achieve the stamina necessary to complete a journey, so also does the soul require wholesome nourishment in order to thrive and make it to its heavenly destination. The concept of a spiritual “journey” on which Catholics embark on springs from the Mass and sacraments, and goes hand-in-hand with our more evangelical mission to bring souls to Christ. Many Catholic homes contain one or more family shrines, oftentimes devoted to the Holy Family or a patron saint. These household shrines serve as daily reminders of the love that the saints have shown for Christ and the Church in their own lives. They also have the ability to inspire within those who frequent them a desire to emulate the “charity of His Deeds in our daily actions.”7
This tradition of household shrines is often further enhanced by the addition of outdoor statues of Our Lord and the saints on the household lawn as a visible icon to those outside of the home. This more public witness of the Christian faith gives the outer world a tangible image to reflect upon.
Benefits of Wayside Shrines
For Catholics, the primary purpose of erecting a wayside shrine can be considered as an effort to put forth visible reminders to fellow Christians of the earthly trials and heavenly reward of the blessed in Heaven. Seeing and hearing of the lives of the saints while on earth often inspires us to persevere through the struggles of life, as they did, by providing us with instances through which we are able to relate to the blessed in Heaven. Wayside shrines have the ability to bring a person, who might otherwise be driving to the grocery store thinking about what to make for supper, to contemplate the Christ’s Passion or the beauty of the fiat of the Blessed Virgin that would eventually bring about the salvation of mankind. This type of call to contemplation is similar to how Catholics pray the St. Gertrude prayer for the Holy Souls when passing a cemetery, or how the sign of the Cross is made in reverence when passing a Catholic Church.
The benefit of setting up wayside shrines in today’s society is twofold. Aside from deepening devotion in the hearts and minds of Christians, wayside shrines also have the potential to arouse curiosity in the minds of non-Catholics individuals who may come across these tangible representations of the faith. The mountainous community of in South Tyrol is one location that is famous for its wayside shrines. In a lecture given by Stoddard about this location, the poet described South Tyrol as an area where
Each vineyard has its crucifix, each path its wayside shrine,
Where flowers adorn the Virgin’s brow, and crown the Child divine;
And few will pass those sacred spots without a lifted eye,
A crossing of the weary breast, a prayer – at least a sigh.8
Wayside shrines are especially prevalent throughout the rural towns of Europe. They often dotted the paths traveled by pilgrims on their way to well-known shrines and monasteries, one of which is the Camino de Santiago in Spain. The pilgrims traveling along this route to the tomb of St. James did so “fasting, eating no meat, staying only one night in any one place, leaving hair and nails uncut, not having a warm bath and not sleeping on a comfortable bed.”9 Due to their inability to stay in one place for more than a day, wayside shrines were set up along the route neighboring both religious houses and hostels where the weary could find safe haven.10
In Poland, wayside shrines were typically built on or near former pagan places of worship after Christianity spread throughout the country.11 These religious monuments, along with crosses and religious statues, were “markers of religious devotion located in public places” and were, in consequence, some of the first traditional elements of Poland that the Gestapo sought to destroy after German occupation of the country in 1939.12
Wayside shrines are one way in which Catholics living in modern times can passively and positively influence society as a whole. Call to mind a typical kindergarten classroom. Aside from a variety of toys and building blocks, an abundance of young children, and the possible appearance of an archaic picture drawn on the wall by an overly zealous pupil, what things typically characterize the setting of such a room? Whether the schooling is taking place at home or in a traditional brick-and-mortar building, the majority of early child classrooms are decorated with brightly colored maps, charts, and pictures. Matching games often complement the lessons, along with picture-book story-time and lesson-oriented arts and crafts. Tangible items and engaging images are usually included in primary educational settings because man is, by nature, a visual creature. These visible elements are placed in this learning environment in order to further prepare the young pupils to receive and absorb the information with which they will be presented.
Human beings learn and are shaped from infancy by the witness of those in one’s daily life. From sense experience, man is able to abstract intelligible species to form what Aquinas called a “phantasm” of the thing perceived by the senses.13 Just as a baby learns to speak by watching and hearing its parents converse, so also do we continue to learn as adolescents and adults from our surroundings and how the cognitive faculty processes the things that our senses interact with.
Society itself borrows rudimentary pedagogical tools like those listed above in the classroom to assist with advertising and sales. In the past, most well-traveled roads and obscure dirt paths were graced by small statues and religious monuments. These shrines along the road were set up in thanksgiving for answered prayers, as a request for safekeeping along the journey, and as a reminder that life on earth is temporary, whereas life after death is eternal. In current times, large billboards are scattered along the highways, and shrines erected along the wayside most commonly mark the places where loved ones have lost their lives in automotive accidents while traveling. The things which surround us in our daily life should be both uplifting and inspiring. In honoring the saints, we are drawn closer to them and to the Redeemer. As Christ said, “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”14 By setting up small shrines throughout the areas in which we live, the atmosphere outside of church and home can be transformed from the bustle of the commercial world into a place more conducive for contemplation of the sacred in our own hearts and those of others. By establishing wayside shrines in small towns and neighborhoods, Catholics can take a proactive approach to both beautifying and edifying local communities and, in tiny increments, the rest of society.
Endnotes
1 Genesis 28:18-22 (Douay-Rheims Version).
2 Andreas Alfoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 16.
3 Fulton J. Sheen, Calvary and the Mass: A Missal Companion (Garden City: Garden City Books, 1953), 16.
4 Oliverson Nicholson, “Constantine’s Vision of the Cross” in Vigiliae Christianae 54, No. 3 (2000): 312-313, accessed February 5, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2307/1584644.
5 Frank Byrne, “A Causeway and a Cross” in Blackfriars 6, No. 64 (1925): 419, accessed February 4, 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43810479.
6 Ibid., 423.
7 Fulton J. Sheen, Calvary and the Mass: A Missal Companion, 11.
8 John L. Stoddard, “South Tyrol. Part 12” of John L. Stoddard’s Lectures: South Tyrol (Tualatin: Norwood Press, 1901), Chest of Books, accessed February 4, 2024, https://chestofbooks.com/travel/italy/south-tyrol/John-Stoddard-Lectures/South-Tyrol-Part-12.html.
9 Brian Grahm and Michael Murray, “The Spiritual and the Profane: The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela” in Ecumene 4, No. 4 (1997): 392, accessed February 5, 2024, https://jstor.org/stable/44251953.
10 Martin Fitzpatrick, “Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela” in Archaeology Ireland 24, No. 4 (2010): 15, accessed February 5, 2024, https://jstor.org/stable/40961787.
11 Anna Soltysik, “Small Sacral Architecture in the Sub-Carpathian Countryside Landscape. The Case of Czarnorzeki and Wydrze” in Topiarius. Studia Krajobrazowe 4 (2017): 1, accessed February 5, 2024, https://paperity.org/p/229978887.
12 Jonathan Huener, “Profanacja: Desecration and Plunder” in The Polish Catholic Church Under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland (1939-1945): 115, accessed February 5, 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1d5nm92.16.
13 Therese Scarpelli Cory, “Averroes and Aquinas on the Agent Intellect’s Causation of the Intelligible” in Recherches de Theologie et Philosophie Medievales 82, No. 1 (2015): 5, accessed February 5, 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26486036.
14 Matthew 25:40 (Douay-Rheims Version).
TITLE IMAGE: A Wayside Shrine at the Edge of the Forest, Thomas Leitner (1876–1948).
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