A Painted Bookbinding for a Controversial Devotion

Abstract

The Museum of Aveiro/Santa Joana, in Aveiro, northern Portugal, has, among the liturgical books that once belonged to the Dominican Convent of Jesus in that city, a fifteenth-century antiphonary whose binding was replaced in the early seventeenth century and decorated with what I argue is a representation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Although the presence of such a theme on the cover of a Dominican liturgical book would be striking, since the Dominicans were opposed to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, an analysis of the liturgical texts of the convent and other elements of material culture that testify to the religious practice of this community show that, despite the controversy surrounding the immaculist doctrine among the Dominicans, devotion to the Immaculate Conception was deeply rooted in the history of Jesus of Aveiro, and local traditions could sometimes prevail over the doctrine of the order, even in Observant communities.