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Nautical Research Journal 321


1. L’ex-voto (Ulysse Butin, 1880). A family procession to giſt a nave model to their church. Pagan cultures also had ship and nautical votive off erings centuries before Christianity’s church traditions. Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, France, via Wikimedia Commons. All images by the author unless otherwise indicated.


Building a nave model: His Majesty’s Ship Godspeed By Ron Neilson


Researching pagan and Christian maritime votive traditions


For more than a millennium, model sailing ships have been displayed in churches, notably in the seaside communities of what became the predominantly Lutheran nations of Northern Europe: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. However, church ship models are also found in the British Isles, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Northern Germany, Holland and the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There is hardly a country in Western Europe that does not have some tradition of ex voto ship models.


Most church ship models are believed to be votive (ex voto), a tradition so named from the Latin word votum: given in fulfi llment of a vow. The tradition has two distinct sources of origin. The custom of giving a replica of a ship—or a ship painting— to a place of worship can be traced back to pre-Christian times, when pagan belief taught that the offering of a miniature ship (or painting) would assure a safe voyage for the real ship and its crew. Many a Viking family built such replicas of the ships in which husbands and sons set sail. This pagan folk custom coincided perfectly with an ancient Christian metaphor of comparing the church itself to a ship. The word nave is derived from the Latin word navis, meaning ship or vessel. Navis is also the root Latin word for navy and naval. A church’s nave has the purposeful appearance of an inverted wooden ship under which religious adherents take shelter. In Christian hagiography St. Gregory the Great wrote in 570 CE: “…the Church is a ship in which God takes us safely through life from one shore, birth — to the other — death.”


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