What were wax votives?
Short answerTrue
Wax objects left at shrines — models of limbs, bodies, animals or whole figures — offered in petition or in thanks. Cheap to mould, and remelted and reused by the shrine, which is why so few survive.
The practice
A votive fulfils a vow. In the wax tradition it is commonly a model of the thing at issue: a leg, an eye, a heart, a child, an animal. It is attested in Greek and Roman shrines, through Catholic Europe from the medieval period into the present, and in Orthodox practice — with candles, which belong to the same economy of giving, far outnumbering figures.
Wax suited it for practical reasons: cheap enough to buy in quantity, mouldable without skill, and remeltable by the shrine. That last property is exactly why the archaeological record understates how many there were.
The darker strand, and the material question
Wax images used in cursing and binding are recorded in classical sources, medieval accusations and early modern trial records — the same logic of an image standing for a person, turned to harm. Those trial records are good evidence of what people were accused of and what courts found plausible, and poor evidence of what was actually done.
Sources
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
- The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore — Houghton Mifflin (1937) · Ethnographic record
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.