Martinšćak, martinšćina,Martinje: Razvoj kulta sv. Martina u sjeverozapadnoj Hrvatskoj
Martinšćak, Martinšćina, Saint Martin's Day: The Development of St. Martin's Cult in Northwestern Croatia

Summary/Abstract: When researching diverse characteristics of saints' cults, the main starting points of the studies, were first of all, liturgical reverences which, on a certain day, through Mass readings, evoke in more detail the most memorable parts of the saint's life, pointing out his or her moral, educational and religious values. The reverence of the saint is an apotheosis of his or her personality, which is deeply emotionally expressed in the sanctuary which he or she is the titular of. Toponyms with the name of a saint exude more widely the saint’s deeply rooted cult, whose beginnings are sometimes hard to reach, and which are shown on a certain day through various customs and events, which sometimes completely lose the apologetic characteristics of the traditional feast. The reasons for such contradictions were researched on the example of the tradition of Saint Martin in northwestern Croatia. After the submitted "Martin vocabulary" which is a component of everyday life, in this article we concentrate in more detail on three specific terms: martinšćak, martinšćina and Martinje (Saint Martin's Day). They developed through generations of folk insights and life experience sedimentation, which directly relate to the civilizational time frontier between the winter and summer period, which falls exactly on St. Martin's day — November 11.

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