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Catholic Art and Jewelry

Traditional Catholic Memorial Card – DOWNLOADABLE – Exclusive Restoration

Traditional Catholic Memorial Card – DOWNLOADABLE – Exclusive Restoration

Regular price $ 15.00
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This beautiful memorial card was originally published about 1880 the Louis Turgis Company, one of the great holy card publishers of the 19th Century. This is a very traditional picture. It is somber, occurring at night with a grieving angel, and yet points to the glories of Heaven through the darkness of our mourning. A traditional poetic metaphor for the departed dead is that their souls become stars in Heaven, as the one bright star in this picture suggests. It also suggests the Bethlehem star, which heralded our redeemer.

Originally the acronym R.I.P. was a shorthand for a Latin phrase, Requiescat In Pace, which means "may (the person who has died) rest in peace." The phrase was used on Christian graves at least as early as the 700s AD. This was just after the English language got started. It was later that we English speakers substituted the words Rest In Peace, though it means the same. As Mr. Turgis distributed these cards across multi-lingual Europe, it was the Latin phrase being referred to.

As you can see on the picture, the quote is from Isaiah 25:8, "The Lord will swallow up death forever and wipe away every tear." It is a strong Old Testament encouragement to the bereft about the eternal life of our departed loved ones.

Our hope with our funeral cards is that their beauty will help in some small way to bring comfort to the bereaved, and that the same beauty will also be a little bit of evangelism to those at the service, especially the ones who need it the most.

We offer this as a digital downlead because there is not enough time for us to print and deliver a holy card for the services. Our regular prints are no longer available as digital downloads, so we started this new line of products as a way of bringing traditional Catholic art to serve this need. We hope to offer a large line of these traditional memorial cards in the future.

We spent quite a bit of time restoring this card. See illustration for the original. As such, this image is exclusive to us, and it is also copyrighted.

Legal notes and commercial use: We are not selling this image to you. We are licensing it. Here's what we are asking in that license: You may use it for funeral cards or a personal print. You may not resell the image or make other kinds of commercial prints of it. You may not remove or alter the copyright notice on it. (We're talking about the light gray copyright notice beneath the Isaiah quote. The other copyright notice that goes across the Cross and the angel's feet is just a watermark for the Etsy picture, and does not appear in the download.)

Wondering if you can use this in your business? Yes, if you are a non-chain, one-location funeral home or small, one location print shop; in those cases you may purchase the license to use for funeral cards at the same price as an individual person. Not other uses. Remember to leave the copyright notice on! Chain, multiple location funeral homes and large printing companies can contact us to arrange a license. Our copyright imprint is unobtrusive and does not dishonor the dead or mar the beautiful image of the card. Please do not dishonor the dead by stealing this image.

Isaiah lived around 700 BC, about three centuries after King David.

If you would like an art print on archival paper of this image in the many sizes we offer, we expect to be offering it soon at our Catholic Quote store here on Etsy.

Thank you for your interest in traditional Catholic art!

Blessings,
John and Sue Kouma Johnson
St. Mary's Parish, Lincoln, Nebraska
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