РЕЛИКТИ ПАГАНСКОГ ПОРЕКЛА У КАРАШЕВСКИМ ВЕРСКИМ ОБРЕДИМА
RELICТS OF PAGAN ORIGIN IN THE RELIGIOUS RITUALS ОF THE KARASHOVEANS

Summary/Abstract: The ethnic Karashovean community, well known in the specialized literature, has preserved numerous customs, with many rites and magical-mythical practices, taken over, modified and adapted by the Christian religion. On the other hand, many of these customs, along with the rites and practices that accompany them, have been gradually abandoned in the last century due to objective factors, but many of them are still preserved today in the collective memory of the Karashoveans, such as Christmas Eve, slavenje (patron saint of the household day), komkanje (a kind of communion, pagan sacrament), namenjanje za prikajanje (giving offerings one year after one’s death for ending the mourning) zadušnice (The Sabbath of the Dead), Todoreši (in Romanian: Sântoader’s Horses, the horses of Saint Toader/ Theodor), Fašanjke (the carnival before Mardi Gras/ Shrove Tuesday) and others. Such customs and the rituals that accompany them will be subjected to a comparative analysis with the purpose of determining which are the native Slavic (Serbian) elements and to identify the elements taken from the culture of other Balkan nations (elements of the Balkan substrate). Given that the initial faith of the Karashoveans is not fully clarified, if the results of the analysis will contain indications in this respect, conclusions will be drawn on this issue.

• Details
• Contents