Between Worlds: Beliefs and Ritual Practices at Saints’ Graves and Relics
Between Worlds: Beliefs and Ritual Practices at Saints’ Graves and Relics

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on a specific aspect of Christian religiosity, the veneration of saints’ relics and graves, traditionally considered as a locus of connection between the mundane human world and the realm of the sacred. I present observations on practices performed at the graves and relics of Christian Orthodox saints and analyze the relevant concepts and beliefs drawn from examples found in Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia: the cult of St. John of Rila in the Rila Monastery; the devotion to the new saint Seraphim Sobolev in the Russian Church in Sofia; the relics of the Serbian king Stefan Urosh II Milutin in the church of St. Nedelya in Sofia; the sarcophagus with the body of St. Joachim of Osogovo in the Kriva Palanka Monastery; the grave of St. Naum of Ohrid in the eponymous monastery; the grave with the relics of St. Clement of Ohrid in the church of St. Clement and St. Pantaleon and his former burial place in the Holy Mother of God Peribleptos Church in Ohrid. The practices discussed here comprise both the widely popular and the idiosyncratic. These include prayers, body gestures of veneration, offerings, intercession of sacred objects, written notes and letters to the saint, listening to his beating heart, sleeping by the relics, etc.

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