Tattoos as Sacramentals
by Alyssa J. Maldonado-Estrada
Saints and the Virgin Mary often live in grottos and chapels, tucked into arched recesses. On a smaller scale, they live on mantles or are pictorially frozen in prayer cards. Sometimes they are represented in miniature on sacramentals. Sacramentals, like rosaries and holy water, are objects that “channel grace” and are “sacred signs” and “material things” authorized or blessed by the Church. The Virgin or saints might have their likenesses printed on scapulars and medals to be worn on the bodies of devotees. Whether life-sized and carved of wood or molded from plaster, or tiny and made of gold and wool, religious figures are affectively present in the lives of Catholics. They are present in their homes, in their churches, and through the adornment of their bodies. But they can also be etched and inked into Catholics’ skin.
Summer in Brooklyn means exposed limbs, especially at the annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg. Here, religious images are not encased within the walls of a church, but very much visible on tattooed bodies. Some tattoos are replicas of common devotional imagery: like an old faded tattoo of the Sacred Heart of Mary. This tattoo features Mary in red and blue robes, her head covered in a white veil, a tiny flaming heart in the center of her chest. Other tattoos feature the head of Christ with the crown of thorns outlined in thick, dark lines. Some tattoos are of devotional objects, like a rosary sulking down an arm with the Italian and American flags draped inside of it. And still others are creative takes, like a tattoo featuring an image of the Virgin Mary in stained glass, the colors and line breaks beautifully evoking multicolored window panes.
Like any devotional object, a tattoo can range from artful to pedestrian. Despite the skill, virtue, or intent of the creator, its use, display, and personal and communal meaning matter much more. Tattoos are key sources for the study of religion. They are much more than visual markers of individual belief or values, “texts” writ on the body, or repositories for stories of the self. By this I mean they are more like objects: they are in use, activated, and even efficacious. Tattoos are not just signs of devotion. Wearing them constitutes an act of devotion, much like using a sacramental or making a votive offering.
One man’s story reveals how tattoos are devotional media. Joe’s body is covered in tattoos, most of them “cultural or religious” according to him. From cartoon cave-men, to a funny ode to a friend group, a Lithuanian and an Italian flag, a cross with a Sacred Heart in the center, and the Knights of Columbus insignia, Joe’s tattoos reflect his many group identities. Joe’s tattoos do relational work, locating him in networks of friends and ancestors. But his tattoos also do devotional work. On his forearm he has a tattoo of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Her features are delicate; wispy lines hint at downcast eyes and pouty lips. The Christ Child in her arms seems to smile, his eyes tiny half-moons. The tattoo is an iconographic hybrid, the crown atop her head indicates she is Mary, Queen of Heaven, as Our Lady of Mount Carmel is typically represented, but the twelve stars encircling her head come from iconography of the Immaculate Conception. Her robes are voluminous, cascading around her body. There are hints of color like a whisper of golden yellow now faded with age. She sits atop a mound of clouds and holds a scapular in her hands, her gaze and the gesture making it clear she is offering it. Joe’s skin, his freckles, and his sunburns are all part and parcel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, but this tattoo has potentiality we do not typically expect from ink. It has sacramental functions and meanings.
When I asked Joe about his tattoo he told me, “I work[ed] in a hospital and I wore my scapular everyday, but because it is made of cloth they were worried about infection control, it gets gross in there. I didn’t want to risk taking it off, I always have my scapular and I want her close to me so I got the tattoo.” The scapular is a marker of devotion to the Virgin Mary. A scapular, which comes from the Latin word shoulder blade, was originally a long piece of cloth that was worn as part of a monastic habit as a sort of work-apron or as a badge of membership in a confraternity. When Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared to Saint Simon Stock in the thirteenth century atop Mount Carmel, she bestowed the scapular to the Carmelite order and it was adopted as part of the habit. Those that wore the scapular would “not suffer eternal fire.” Most lay people who wear a scapular wear one made of two small pieces of wool or felt, often laminated in plastic and bearing images of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Simon Stock. The small pieces of fabric are attached with a ribbon or string and hang down the chest and back of its wearer. Joe’ tattoo is not just an insignia of his belonging to the parish, or of his Marian piety, but a functional stand-in for a sacramental object. Sacramentals “serve as a doorway between the secular and sacred world,” they are sacraments in miniature, conduits for the divine.
While sacramentals are often formally authorized by the church, sanctioned for devotional use, and blessed by priests, Joe has found an innovative workaround to enact his devotion while adhering to the norms of his workplace. For Joe, it has the efficaciousness of the scapular, but bypasses two sets of institutional rules on the use of devotional objects, the hospital’s and the Church’s. The tattoo, more than just an inscription of devotion, can be a channel of presence. When he says, “I want her close to me—” he implies that it is through the very skin that closeness is achieved. Skin and ink are the media of that closeness.
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada is Assistant Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College, and received her PhD from Princeton University. She is an ethnographer specializing in Religion in the Americas, with a focus on masculinity, Catholicism, material culture, and urban religion. Her forthcoming book Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Practice in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is an ethnographic study that examines the religious and devotional lives of Catholic men. It explores how the parish is a vital site for the making of masculinities and how devotional traditions—and the very materiality and labor essential to their making—structure mens’ pursuit and achievement of manhood.