Author(s): Bogdan Neagotă / Language(s): Italian
Issue: 03+04/2011
Our paper approaches a ritual-ceremonial complex, largely documented in rural communities from Transylvania (more than 100 villages), during the 20th century: the feast, bearing various names (Pǎpǎlugǎra, Gheorghe, Sângeorzul, Mǎtǎhula, Burduhoasa, Goțoiul, Bǎbǎluda, Borbolatița etc.) is performed on occasion of different spring feasts (Saint George/Sângeorz, the measuring of milk/mǎsurişul laptelui (i.e. Saint George according the Julian calendar: Sângeorzul vechi), Ascension (Ispas), Whitsunday (Rusalii). In the second half of the 20th century, this feast entered its terminal stage. Nowadays, it continues to be performed in a number of villages in the region of Central Transylvania and on the valley of Someş river. Morphologically, the ceremonial has two dominant variants: (1) the linear procession (organized according to the carolling scheme), along the central axis of the village, of a youth dressed in green branches collected from the forest; the procession comprises stopping by virtually every house in the village, like with Christmas carolling, and water being tossed on everyone: masked figure and accompanying party; (2) the dramatized variant, having a complex ceremonial distributions and scenarios.
The custom, widely documented for European popular cultures, is intimately bound to the rites of rain invocation, and with the magic practices of stimulation of germination of all kinds (vegetal, animal, human). Beyond the evident agrarian substratum, the ceremonial is tied, too, to masculine pubertary rites, and to the group of youth, respectively: a traditional institution still active in a number of regions in Transylvania.
The ethno-anthropological materials proceed from our field researches (2004-2011) and from classical bibliography. We tried to pass beyond the ethnographical-morphological description, and to assume the deep diachrony of phenomena. In this context, we are using historical-religious methodology as a vessel for exploring long-concealed archaic strata, otherwise unnoticed by modern eye. Passed through anthropological-historical and historical-religious analyses, these rituals work, for the modern researcher, as finest seismographs, best at understanding mental horizons underlying the religious history of profound Europe.
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