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Traditional scholarship of Russia’s involvement in the Middle East has focused on confessional politics, usually arguing that Russian policies were designed to support the region’s minority Orthodox Christian populations to build pro-Russian constituencies among them. Important as this work is, it has devoted relatively little attention to Russian interaction with the region’s other confessional communities, including, oddly, its Muslims. Following the work of Edward Said and other theorists of “Orientalism,” some work on that relationship has argued that Russians looked down upon Middle Eastern Muslims, finding them in some contexts inferior and primitive, in others similar enough to provoke unsettling challenges to the assumption by Russians of a “Western” identity, and in still others simply uninteresting. More recent studies, however, have argued that this interpretation is neither consistent with the Russian Empire’s treatment of its own large domestic Muslim population nor uniformly accurate in its interactions with Muslims beyond its borders.
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Review of: Mirko Mlakar - Радмила Радић, Војислав Јанић (1890–1944). Свештеник и политичар. Поглед кроз аналитички прозор (Београд: Институт за новију историју Србије, 2018), 482 str. Mirko Mlakar - Радмила Радић, Мисија британске Хришћанске заједнице младих људи у Краљевини Југославији (Београд: Институт за новију историју Србије, 2019), 375 str.
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The article tells about the early history of the Bulgarian church in the Romanian town of Braila in the third quarter of the 19th century. In this city at that time there was a large Bulgarian emigrant community, resettled there mainly after the Russo-Turkish war of 1828–1829. It was distinguished by its active economic and socio-cultural activities and in the 1860s turned the city into the cultural capital of the Bulgarian diaspora in Romania. There was a Bulgarian school there, Bulgarian newspapers were published, Bulgarian printing houses functioned; prominent Bulgarian writers, playwrights, publicists such as Dobri Voynikov, Vasil Drumev, Hristo Botev lived and worked in the city for some time… The Bulgarian Literary Society (predecessor of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) was founded there (in 1869), a community center and other social and cultural organizations operated, and a fruitful theatrical activity developed. But even in the 1860s, the Bulgarian community still did not have its own church to worship in their native language. The article traces, on the basis of the currently available documentary and other sources, the preparation and implementation of the construction of the Bulgarian Church of the Ascension of Christ in Braila, carried out mainly in the years 1868–1875. This endeavor was guided by the elected church boards, which managed to mobilize for this purpose the spiritual potential and material resources of the Bulgarian community there. The funds for the construction of the temple were raised through voluntary donations and loans, in which representatives of all strata of the Bulgarian diaspora participated: rich merchants and bankers, as well as smaller merchants, craftsmen, innkeepers, gardeners, etc., as well as many activists of the local intelligentsia, active participants in the national liberation movement, etc. Thus, the construction of the Bulgarian church in Braila, which still exists today – a century and a half later, became a real nationwide affair and despite some accompanying negative phenomena, became one of the most positive and successful pages in the history of Bulgarian emigration to Romania.
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Report from the scientific symposium Mary, Mother of God, in theology and Christian art, Stadniki, May 6th, 2021
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The aim of this paper is to provide a starting point for a comparison between the four edited versions of the Palaea Historica: the Greek one, the first Slavonic translation, the Romanian translation and the recently published second Slavonic translation. The four versions diverge from the very beginning, with the Greek and the first Slavonic translation providing a discussion on the Holy Trinity before moving on to God’s creation of the world, whereas the Romanian version omits the theological introduction and expands the cosmogonical portion with a paraphrase of Epiphanius’ Hexaemeron. The second Slavonic translation omits the entire description of the six days of creation in order to focus on Adam and the symbolic importance of his name. Another point of interest is the treatment of a fragment condemning the heretical view that Satan was Cain’s father, which is not conserved in the first Slavonic version and the Romanian versions.
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The study, published in Greek in 1983–1985, is devoted to a phenomenon in the Eastern Orthodox Church that had not, until then, been the subject of a special research in the field of social history. Based on a vast array of historical sources, the author presents and comments on facts about the production and distribution of indulgences from the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch from the 16th to the 20th century. The emergence and gradual establishment of the institution of indulgences in Eastern Orthodoxy is traced within the socio-political and cultural context of four centuries, focusing on the reasons for the introduction of indulgences, the stages of gradual standardization of their text, and the various forms of their distribution. The phenomenon is reflected in detail, taking into account its extension into the field of dogma, economics, social and political relations. The study sheds new abundant light on important issues in the history of the church, societies and attitudes in the world of Eastern Orthodoxy. An inventory of 57 printed Orthodox indulgences is also attached.
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In 1858 Petko R. Slaveykov (1827–1895) was already an influential public figure in his homeland – the regions of Tarnovo and Tryavna. Gradually, it was becoming more and more visible nationally – especially in the field of the church struggle against the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its metropolitans on Bulgarian lands. Slaveykov’s literary endeavors were becoming more and more recognizable. In this context, one of his unpublished and unknown pamphlets is presented and interpreted in the paper. The attribution of the manuscript is based on a wide range of data – archival, biographical, literary. The connection with the other components of the writer’s work is implemented through facts, topics and language specifics. The full text of the manuscript is presented in compliance with the current rules for publishing archival materials from the Revival epoch.
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This article discusses the original translation style of St. Euthymius the Athonite (10th11th centuries), a great Georgian monk working in the Iviron Monastery of Athos (Greece), which was called an ‘omission-addition style’ in the scientific literature, and was entirely conditioned not by linguistic but by cultural-religious context. The main goal of the article is to examine that unique phenomenon we are dealing with in the form of his translations, that sheds light on how a translator may turn linguistic tools into cultural vectors of a society, a country, determining the main path for spiritual and intellectual development of the nation in a particular historical epoch and along the centuries. From the rich Greek theological literature, Euthymius the Athonite selected for translation those works that would best reflect the knowledge accumulated in that field at the time, and presented them to Georgian readers, still less knowledgeable in theological matters, in such a way that would best suit them and strengthen their Christian faith, on the one hand, and introduce them to the advanced Western thought, on the other. Research focus is on the translations of theological content. Based on the comparative analysis of the Greek-Georgian texts, I examine those methods and means that Euthymius the Athonite used to keep the Georgian nation from possible religious threats, misunderstandings, and difficulties that accompanied the misinterpretation of religious texts in the Middle Ages. Euthymius the Athonite laid a solid foundation for the process of Europeanization of Georgian literature and culture, which his descendants continued with dignity.
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The article is devoted to the 1934 philosophical and historical essay by Petar Mutafchiev entitled The Priest Bogomil and St. John of Rila. The Spirit of Negation in Our History (Поп Богомил и Свети Иван Рилски. Духът на отрицанието в нашата история), discussed in the context of both the author’s general historiographic output and the spiritual and cultural explorations of Bulgarian intellectuals in the interwar period. The study examines certain external influences on Mutafchiev’s scholarly work, first and foremost Benedetto Croce’s views on ‘absolute historicism’. It also investigates three central historiosophic concepts of the Bulgarian medievalist: 1) the ‘saltatory’ development of Bulgarian history, 2) the destructive impact of Byzantinism on the political, religious and cultural life of medieval Bulgaria, as well as 3) the superficial character of the Bulgarian people’s religion – the effect of receiving ‘foreign’ Christianity from the very same Byzantine hands. In this regard, Bogomilism appears to be an ‘external’ doctrine, having incorporated older dualist ideas, which passed through Byzantium and therefore also reflected the destructive Byzantinism to some extent. Mutafchiev’s original conception goes off the beaten paths of earlier views and testimonies, attesting to the excellency of both the essay itself and the historian’s overall vision of Bulgarian history.
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The article discusses two historical events taken from texts from the Holy Scripture – the Old and the New Testaments, and a spiritual view on human soul, as found in the Holy tradition of the Orthodox church: they support the thesis that, according to the method of allegorical interpretation, the three evidences point to three inner stages through which human soul passes in its transition to a holistic spiritual development: from the act of the Holy Baptism to the entry into the Kingdom of God.
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In this article I return to St. Marina, on whose folkloric image and faith I worked many years ago. My goal is to supplement my previous observations with new ones and to expand the territorial scope. Special attention is paid to the veneration of the saint’s sacred relics in the Mediterranean and the reactivation of her cult. I also consider the transformational models in the believers’ notions of the cave and nature, and the periodic renewal of those notions through archaization and return to archetypes personified in the cult of St. Marina.
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We consider the process of taming space, turning a profane place into a sacred one, mythologizing, overgrowing with legends and rituals on the example of objects in the southern Urals: Arkaim, the rock complex “Steppe Madonna”, makeyevskaya arbor, the island of Faith, etc. We distinguish three types of “sacralization” of space: political, commercial, and spontaneous. We note the commercial type of sacralization in Arkaim. The spontaneous type includes the sacralization of other listed objects. We note a tendency to hierotopical elements of the cultural landscape. It 45 reflects, first, the desire of modern man to understand the past, a protest against the Erasure of national identity, and secondly-an eclectic picture of the human world, including both elements of traditional religion and pagan components.
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The paper focuses on The Assumption of John the Theologian (BHG 916), which commemorates the feast of the Saint on 26 of September in the South Slavic calendrical collections. It researches the dissemination of this text in the South Slavic milieu. A comparison between the witnesses was according to which a preliminary systematization of the manuscripts in which the text has been copied is suggested.
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The main question of ethnology is: What is the attitude of the researchers (ethnologists, folklorists, anthropologists, and in general researchers in humanities) towards the spiritual word, that is, towards the religious and mythological believes and ideas. What is their answer to the fundamental question if there are two worlds, material and spiritual, or is there only one world, the material one? A researcher could take only one of these two positions. A constituent premise for solving this question is the understanding that the Bulgarian, the so-called “folklore person”, till recent time is homo religiosus, that is a person who lives in and through the religious world. If ethnologists do not have this view point, how could they interpret the phenomena of present-day Bulgarian folklore culture?
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In the eastern part of R. N. Macedonia, under the slopes of the mountain Plachkovica is the city of Vinica. With exceptional natural wealth and predispositions, it has always been a place where many civilizations, traditions and cultures intertwined and complemented each other. The celebrating and respecting of the religious holidays, among which the holiday dedicated to St. Theodore is especially important, are part of the rich Vinica tradition. Theodore’s Saturday or Todorica is a holiday dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr Theodore. This Orthodox Christian holiday does not have a permanent date but is celebrated on the first Saturday of Easter 306 fasting, i.e. on the first Saturday after Procka (the Holiday of forgiveness). Although Theodore’s Saturday is a church holiday and this is indicated by many customs that are performed in the church, on this day there are also many customs performed that originate from much older times. In our region, in Vinica, this holiday is marked by two significant events. One of the events is connected with the church where on this day all newlywed brides (wedded from March of the previous year to this year’s) gather together with their mothers-in-law, the young daughters-in-law bow to their mothers-in-law and kiss their hands and their mothers-in-law give them presents. This custom has been practiced for years. The second event is related to the event “Theodore’s races” where people take part in sports games with a competitive and fun spirit, which were practiced by our ancestors hundreds of years ago. People from 7 to 77 years old take part in these races. This is also the most massive event held in Vinica. Proof that this saint was revered a long time ago in these parts of the country, is the “Terracotta icons” St. Theodore from the 5th – 6th century found at the archeological site Vinichko Kale.
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The article is a continuation of a study published in 2012 in the journal “Historical Review” under the same title. Here the author summarizes data on Russian liturgical books delivered to the Bulgarian lands at the request and with the assistance of the Russian Vice Consul in Plovdiv Naiden Gerov. The information was found in the archive fund of N. Gerov in the Bulgarian Historical Archive at the National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” (NBCM–BIA) after the publication of the study, published in 2012.
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Since its discovery in 1965, the 14th-century Kastoria 8 Asmatikon has attracted scholarly attention. Distinguished by its two rows of neumes: a row of Middle Byzantine signs overlaid by a system of great hyperstases, its existence suggests that it bridges stages of notational development and chanting practices from an earlier period. Particularly noteworthy, its system of large signs could also provide a key to the Palaeoslavonic kondakarian musical notation which disappeared earlier in the 13th century.
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