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Santinho

10 de out.
5 min de leitura

Atualizado: há 8 minutos

Santinhos are printed cards that have a face on one side and a message on the other. They have a religious origin (a Catholic saint on one side and their prayer on the other), but they came to be used in politics (the candidate on one side and the so-called “cheat sheet” on the other, with his numbers and other candidates from the same party). They are different, but they represent the same element: the iconography of Western visual culture. In their religious origin, the santinho breaks a paradigm: rites of devotion depend on the aura of eternity and repetition; the altar is revisited on Sunday, the rosary is used every day, faith is polished. But what happens when the object is made with minimal print quality, in high quantities, which under these conditions can be treated as a disposable object?


The thesis “The sacred image in the era of technical reproducibility: on santinhos,” carried out at the Franciscan Convent of Santo Antônio (RJ), explores this theme from the point of view of philosopher Walter Benjamin and asks whether the mass reproduction of the santinho destroys the sacred potential of the image or, according to Benjamin, destroys its “aura.” The answer is not a consensus among religious people, but, in general, the answer is no, it does not destroy it, and in fact it can even strengthen it. According to anthropologist Marcel Mauss, the santinho reinforces the performative character of prayer, which is momentary, and combines speech, gesture, and context. It also helps to think of religion as a network of relations. Belief is not the object itself; it is what is between all the things the object connects. What is curious when thinking about how the history of the santinho has such a broad network that it connects politics and the evolution of communication technologies.


Images of saints have always circulated in the form of painting, as an exclusive object for those who could pay for a painting, but the circulation of images changed with the invention of woodcut, which made it possible to reproduce religious images on paper. Woodcuts were engraved in black and white and then colored by hand. The first best-known example is a German woodcut from 1423 representing Saint Christopher.


Catholicism, known for its artistic opulence, found a way to make a printed card have a grandiose aesthetic experience: the Holy Card, a mix between printing and embroidery. It is printed on paper and then embroidered by hand. Because it describes a small “holy card,” it is perhaps the closest to the name used in Portuguese, the santinho. Another form of artistic opulence are the Canivets, which look like embroidery, but are cut paper; their openwork texture is cut with delicate blades, hence the name canivete (penknife). They were produced in female convents in the 18th and 19th centuries as a source of income. Visually, it is similar to the holy card. A meticulous eye is needed to discern between the two.


In the 20th century, the context of war brought a new chapter to santinhos. It is impossible to tell the history of design and image in the 20th century without going through war propaganda, which shaped the artistic avant-gardes and the use of printing technology. And santinhos had a specific place in anti-communism and in the Soviet Union’s relationship with religion, which it saw as “the opium of the people.” In the US, the organization “Blue Army of Our Lady” emerged, supported by Pope Pius XII (1939–1958), who described himself as the “world leader against communism.” He encouraged the faithful to pray for the “conversion of Russia.” The Blue Army, which became an international organization with millions of members, made anti-communist campaign materials: books, pamphlets, magazines and, of course, santinhos. But the most striking image and also the most reproduced santinho of all history was actually made by a Protestant church, the Evangelical Alliance Church, which in 1940 held a contest to choose what would be the “ideal face of Christ,” and the painting “Head of Christ,” by Werner Sallman, won. More than 14 million copies were sold in just the three years after its creation. The image was distributed in formats ranging from large paintings for churches to small pocket cards.


The term “card-carrying” is an adjective used for anyone who is a big fan of something, but in the US, this term had a specific use. In McCarthyism, the policy of hunting communists organized by Senator McCarthy, there was the goal of cleansing America of card-carrying communists, referring to the red card that someone received when joining as a member of a communist party. Sallman’s Christ image served to create the card of “card-carrying Christians,” and the santinho became a weapon of spiritual war. The Salvation Army and the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) began a campaign to distribute santinhos of Sallman’s Christ for all American soldiers and their allies to carry on their uniforms in the war.


The fact that the most distributed religious image of all time was made precisely by a religious group known for its iconoclasm is a paradox. A research work that debates this theme is “The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America,” which talks about the idea of “branding Christ as an American icon.” The authors describe Sallman’s Christ as an icon of white supremacy and the American racial imagination, because his Aryan features were also disseminated in Black churches.


In Brazil, the connection with politics took another path: the santinho became an electoral campaign item, and the association is so common that, in online searches, electoral use usually comes before religious use. In a study on the history of political propaganda in Brazil, author Tiago Valenciano identifies Getúlio Vargas, in the 1930 campaign for the presidency, as one of those responsible for popularizing the use of the santinho as political publicity material. By transporting the logic of the object of adoration to politics, the candidate’s santinho seeks to create an affective connection and a feeling of proximity and trust. With the dominance of television, radio, and the internet, santinhos seemed doomed to disappear. However, they resisted. In 2024, print shops recorded a 10% to 15% increase in santinho printing compared to the previous election. More recently, an innovation that drew attention was the “virtual santinho”: President Lula’s campaign distributed among allies material aimed at evangelical voters, with phrases such as “It is not a sin to vote for Lula.”





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