O Maji, Jobu i pčelama
On Maja, Job and Bees

Summary/Abstract: While marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maja Bošković-Stulli in 2022, I joyfully shared my memories of Maja connected to two somewhat unusual topics that marked my scholarly life: the biblical Old Testament Book of Job and culturalanimalistic themes. The paper shows how the story of St Job, i.e. its apocryphal variant, is woven into a somewhat forgotten European folk tradition, especially regarding Job’s patronage of musicians. The analysis focuses on the Slovenian folk tradition of St Job, whose patronage of music is visible today on the front panels of beehives (panjske končnice), a specific Slovene folk-art heritage that highlights Job’s patronage of bees and beekeepers, which is little known in the entire European folk tradition of St Job. The paper provides an overview of the depictions of St Job identified thus far on wooden front panels of beehives and kept in Slovenian museums. We classified them into seven groups according to the groupings of characters they contain (Job, woman, musicians). A new depiction is added to the existing ones, revealed to the public for the first time in this paper; a panel which Maja Bošković-Stulli entrusted me with to describe it one day. In the interpretation of this beehive panel, we primarily focused on its philologicalfolkloristic aspect, with an inevitable reference to its iconographic aspect in the context of the connection of Job’s patronage with music and musicians, and especially with bees, as a specific Slovenian cultural-animalist link of St Job, music and beekeeping.

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