# Wax ex-votos

**Ex voto*; *boti**

**Known today as.** Offerings of wax shaped as eyes, limbs, hearts, children, or whole bodies, hung at a shrine in petition or in thanks for a cure.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Placed before the image of the saint who was asked, or who had answered, the part healed.

## What does modern science say?

Wax, tin, and silver ex-votos are still left at shrines across southern Europe and Latin America.

## What lore surrounds it?

The custom continues the anatomical offerings of the ancient healing sanctuaries of Asclepius. At the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, wax effigies of donors, some life-size and clothed, crowded the church until they had to be hung from the roof.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia divides votive offerings into “things vowed to God or the saints in some trouble or crisis of life” and “things presented in gratitude for a recovery or deliverance.” The commonest “represent the person to whom the favour has been accorded, or the thing that has benefited under the miracle”: a full-length figure of Duke Alessandro de' Medici “was moulded in wax for the Church of the Annunziata at Florence by Benvenuto Cellini,” Edward I offered “a falcon in wax at the shrine of St. Wulstan” when his bird was cured, and “sometimes a wax taper of the height of the sufferer, or even of his dimensions was brought or sent to be burnt where the cure or favour was implored.” It recalls “the parallel of the golden boils and blains placed by Divine command within the Ark.”

## Sources

- Duffy, E. (1992). *The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580*. Yale University Press.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Votive Offerings.” newadvent.org/cathen/15509a.htm

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*Wax ex-votos.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/wax-ex-votos

Historical description, not medical advice.