GLORIOUS WOODEN FIGURES

GLORIOUS WOODEN FIGURES

For more than 300 years these remarkable wooden figures have stood as sentinels of conscience , collecting

Alms.

They stand before nearly every wooden church in the picturesque fields of mid-western Finland : life-size people of wood begging for coins to aid the sick and the poor

It is said that there were about 30 of these strange wooden figure . But’ if one go around can find about 120 examples. Called Pauper statues , they have their roots in the medieval Roman Catholic tradition of the offering log, a wooden chest for collecting money towards, among other thing , religious wars . Banned during the Reformation,they reappearedd in 1649 that such Queen Christina suggested that such logs be used to raise funds for the need .

Plain and unadorne , they were of little interest to a predominated illiterate population until craftsmen began to embellish them.

The Reformation had banned the use of saints’ images in conjunction with offering boxes , so artists used small carvings of Biblical characters such as Lazarus and Bartimeus , the blind beggar . Later a taller human figure with an offering box replaced the log and, from this , the true pauper statues evolved . These life-size wooden figures have slots at chest-level through which coins fall directly into a concealed cavity or pass along a tube to box in the wall behind .

Meaningful Message . Although earlier examples once existed , the oldest surviving pauper sculptures date from the eighteenth century . And most of those that remain todayy were carved in the 19th century . Only a dozen have been added since 1900.

The sculptors were common people: church builders , village carpenters ,and possibly shipwrights some carved self-portraits; others used any model close at hand .

The Krnunupr Church figure , carved in 1986, is of a man with female features simply because the carpenter modeled it after the first person he came across when he set about his task – a woman.

Few figures portray someone who is sick or poor . May be the theory is that their creators sought to depict how a person collecting for should like; young boys with pleading eyes, war veterans, Parsons.

In a way , Pauper sculpturess acted as the common man’ substitute for images of their saints.

And many of the statues have become imbued with religious or magical significance , drawing local sinners with offerings for forgiveness, and others to pledge gifts for granting of their deepest wishes . It is said Kuortane couple promised their church statue a sizeablel sum .if their marriage proved a success.