![Петър Шукеров, Иван Патев, Димитър Михайлов. Земята гледа небето. Хора и православни храмове в Средните Родопи. София, 2015](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2016_33886.jpg)
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In the folklore of many peoples, the luminous bodies and phenomena are related tothe traditional concepts of the world structure. In the Bulgarian popular astronomythe Milky Way is seen as a Straw Road. The folklore texts present the “road” as both aborder and a bond between the “own” and the “alien” space, between the earthly andthe “divine” world. It is a process of movement in the mythological space but it couldalso be a place where the worlds in this space meet. Such development of the conceptof the “road” in the Bulgarian popular tradition is related to liminal rituals typical ofcalendar festivals including Christmas.
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Anthony is a highly honoured saint, considered to be a patron and a defender of various diseases. The church “St. Anthony” in the smallest town in Bulgaria – Melnik – is known exactly for its healing aspect and can be identified as one of the most sacred cult sites in the surroundings, connected with numerous stories of miracles, healings, interesting and rare ritual practices. The modern state and functioning of the church is a complex of different components that build the role and importance of the cult site as a very attractive place for pilgrimage and healing. Besides of the cult of the patron itself, these components include also various miraculous objects, iconographic features, the location of the church, and characteristic stories of miracles, media, and personal representations and interpretations. In this article, I will examine the cult of St. Anthony in the city and church dedicated to him through the prism of two basic elements – miraculous objects or other ones in the church area and beliefs and ritual practices related to them. It is precisely the connection between the different components of the cult site, combining diverse objects of pilgrimage, honoring, and usage, that creates a truly unique context in which this church, the only one in the country until recently dedicated to the St. Anthony, exists. The analysis is based on observations from conducted fieldwork studies in Melnik and bibliographic and online surveys in the period 2016–2018.
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Over the last decades, the Strandzha region suffers a serious demographic crisis and the outflow of population results in significant change in the local culture. The empirical data of the current research is based on fieldwork in villages of Fakia (Central Strandzha, Sredets Municipality). The aim is to give a picture of the current condition of the folklore and religious culture through symbolic and specific phenomena. Enyova bulya custom is widely spread in Strandzha region and is conceived as an accent in the Enyovden (Yanovden) celebrations that take place on the 24th of June and is one of the main summer feast days until the ’60s of the 20th century. Enyova bulya is associated with fertility, maiden's transition and the well-being of the settlement community. Today, the custom is disconnected from the context of the festive life of the researched community as far as the world view of the main actors has been changed. Main doers are elderly women, the time of the celebrations is not exactly fixed thus the sacredness of the actions is automatically degenerated. A conclusion can be made that the custom nowadays has the characteristics of a tourist attraction in some aspects. Keeping the celebrations is perceived as a need to declare local identity and local diversity. The transformations in the religious culture of the researched community can be analysed in a similar direction. St. Modest cult (celebrated on December 18) is seen as “typical only for Strandzha region”. In the past, the cult is related to the local livelihood – livestock-raising and agriculture. For example, in Fakia village is believed that the woman that gives out ritual bread first will be the first to finish harvesting. Today, as a result of drastic changes in livelihood, the cult exists as a characteristic of local religious culture – grounds for the local dimensions of cultural identity. Anyway, ritual practices serve the local identity. Searching a motivation in tradition keeps alive a local peasant community in process of dramatic demographic and social crises in Strandzha region.
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A widely popular concept among Orthodox Christians is that religious images as intermediaries between man and God (the Mother of God or the saints) can give material signs of the divine presence on Earth and often do so. First comes the veneration of miracle-working icons, which are connected to narratives of miraculous events and considered the most helpful mediators for prayers addressed to God, the Virgin or a saint. Another popular notion is that icons can miraculously renew themselves or exude holy oil or blood, and give out fragrance. Two cases of largescale myrrh-gushing from the recent years offer different examples of the emergence, development and interpretation of such miraculous events in Orthodox shrines. The first case is from the town of Terespol in Eastern Poland (since 2010) and the second one comes from the town of Shumen in Northern Bulgaria (from 2017). In the Polish case, the myrrh-streaming continued for a long period of time, encompassed other icons as well and was accompanied by stories of miraculous healings. It was approved by the Church as a manifestation of divine nature. All these occurrences gave an impetus to the development of the veneration of the myrrh-streaming icon of the Theotokos Gorgoepēkoos (She Who Is Quick to Hear) and stimulated pilgrimage to the town.In the case from Bulgaria there was also large-scale myrrh-streaming, but it happened only once, at the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (15 August). The event was accepted just as a divine sign and was interpreted mainly as given for the sake of penance and strengthening of faith. The fact that no myrrh was gathered and there were no consequent miracles made the Church take a more passive position and the local bishop just unofficially referred to the general Orthodox idea of myrrh-streaming icons.Events of this kind, which were traditionally taken for miracles, often provoke scepticism and doubts of falsification in modern times. For that reason, they are examined by committees appointed by the Church or inspected by bishops, and even submitted to chemical tests. All these processes emphasize the icons’ multifaceted presence in local communities and in society in general.
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The article presents religious practices and politics of memory, related to the cult of the “new martyrs” (“martyrs of totalitarianism”) in the Catholic Church in Bulgaria after 1989. The paper is based on terminological apparatus and methodology in the field of anthropology of memory and anthropology of religion, and describes the procedures of beatification of Blessed Eugene Bossilkov (beat. 1998) and bishops Fr. Kamen Vichev, Fr. Pavel Dzhidzov, Fr. Iosafat Shishkov (beat. 2002), Fr. Fortunat Bakalski, Fr. Rafael Peev, and others. The objective of this study is to elucidate major moments related to the institutionalisation of the cult, the processes of construction of sacredness, the creation of new religious practices, the commemoration practices, and the places of memory. The study explores the elements of the veneration of the “new martyrs” in Bulgaria, the connection between cult and history, and the issues of memory and the policies of memory as a form of heritage. The observations and the examples are obtained through field research and interviews conducted in several settlements in the Diocese of Sofia and Plovdiv and the Diocese of Nicopolis (primarily the towns of Plovdiv, Rakovski, Ruse, and Belene, the village of Oresh, and the city of Sofia). Relics, testimonies of martyrdom, stories of miracles, hagiographical and iconographical innovations, commemorational festivities, places of memory, related to the “new martyrs” – all of these are analysed through the prism of processes of invention of cultural-historical heritage, renovation of confessional identities, and creation of reworking models of traumatic memory in the period of socialism. The article looks for answers to the following questions: What is the character of the totalitarian martyrology in Bulgaria? How are the confessional consciousness of the Catholic communities and the character of their religious culture being transformed through the religious cults of the “new martyrs”?
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Grégoire Zugravul (‘le Peintre’), connu toute sa vie comme Papathodor, Popovici et Frujinescu, a été l’un des peintres les plus importants de la Valachie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et l’initiateur du courant d’occidentalisation dans l’art local. Constantin Săndulescu-Verna a découvert dans un carnet de croquis ayant appartenuau peintre que Grégoire est né près de Bucarest, dans le village de Frunzănești, au sein de la famille du prêtrepeintre Tudor, et qu’il a fait son apprentissage en 1766, à la l’âge de 16 ans, auprès d’un certain maître Jean / kirIancu. Ensemble, les deux hommes ont voyagé pendant dix ans sur le territoire de l’Empire des Habsbourg etont signé ensemble l’iconostase du monastère de Lepavina en Croatie, ainsi que celui de l’église de la Nativité de Saint-Jean-Baptiste à Székesfehérvár, en Hongrie. De retour en 1777, Grégoire a commencé une carrière prolifiqueen tant que peintre d’icônes; mais il a également peint les fresques de l’Église de l’Icône (Biserica Icoanei) àBucarest, des enluminures de manuscrits et des peintures à l’huile, y compris la vaste composition historique représentant Nicolas Mavrogheni distribuant des récompenses aux soldats qui avaient participé aux combatscontre les Autrichiens (1789), aujourd’hui dans les collections du Musée National d’Art de Roumanie, à Bucarest. Jusqu’à présent, cependant, l’identité de Maître Jean et la portée européenne de la carrière de Grégoire n’étaient pas connues en Roumanie. On considérait à tort que Jean devait être un peintre local, identifié soit au maître de l’école de peinture de l’évêché de Râmnic, soit à Ivan ‘le Russe’ (Rusul), maître de l’école de peinture du monastère de Căldărușani. Plus récemment, C. Săndulescu-Verna et M. Sabados ont supposé qu’il pouvait être d’origine balkanique, mais sans réussir à repérer son identité précise : peut-être un peintre grec ou macédo-valaque. La présente étude relie pour la première fois les recherches roumaines sur ce sujet à celles menées en Serbie(Aleksandra Kučeković), Bulgarie (Emmanuel Moutafov) et Bosnie-Herzégovine (Ljiljana Ševo). Les documents permettent d’identifier ‘kir Iancu’ avec Jovan Četirević Grabovan, aroumain d’Albanie, auteur de fresques dusanctuaire et de la nef de la cathédrale épiscopale de Roman (Moldavie). La carrière de ce dernier est jalonnéepar les étapes d’un parcours remarquable pour cette époque. Ses voyages relient littéralement l’Occident à l’Europe de l’Est, de la Croatie en Russie à travers Buda et Bucarest, et dessinent une perspective entièrementnouvelle sur les relations qui animaient le milieu culturel des peintres valaques du XVIIIe siècle. Comme Jovan, son élève Grégoire a joué également le rôle d’un ‘véhicule’ exemplaire des transferts culturels entre Occident et Orient, maillon d’un grand réseau commercial et politique développé à l’intersection des trois grands Empires: ottoman, russe et autrichien. Il a influencé de manière décisive l’évolution de l’atelier de peinture du monastèrede Cernica et s’est imposé comme une figure clé de la scène artistique locale ; il a été l’un des premiers peintresà moderniser l’art local. Par-delà les éclaircissements qu’elle apporte sur l’apprentissage de Grégoire Popovici,cette étude permet aussi d’attribuer les icônes de l’iconostase de l’Église Manea Brutaru de Bucarest au peintreJovan Četirević Grabovan, et d’identifier dix nouvelles oeuvres du peintre Grégoire, y compris les fresques del’Église de l’Icône à Bucarest. Elle transcrit sept inscriptions inédites des icônes de cette église et identifie le ssources artistiques du cahier de modèles du peintre et des icônes de l’iconostase de la chapelle dédiée à Saint Lazare au monastère de Cernica dans un exemplaire de la Bible Ectypa ayant appartenu au même Maître Jean.
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Articolul prezintă câteva observații asupra a două instituții monahale rusești înființate pentru comemorarea vitejiei și eroismului soldaților și ofițerilor ruși morți în timpul războiului ruso-turc din 1877-1878: Mănăstirea Înălțării Domnului, cu biserica „Sf. Alexandru Nevski”, construite între 1879-1882 pe dealurile Bakadzhik de lângă Yambol, la ordinul celebrului „General Alb” Mihail Skobelev, și Mănăstirea Nașterii Domnului din orașul Shipka, construită (și probabil și sfințită în 1902) la inițiativa mamei generalului, OlgaSkobeleva, de către un comitet director condus de diplomatul și omul de stat rus Nikolai Ignatiev.
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L’article présente l’histoire des fouilles archéologiques polonaises à Faras, au Soudan, dans le contexte des changements politiques de la seconde moitié du xxe siècle, à partir des découvertes qui ont eu lieu avant quele professeur Kazimierz Michałowski ne commence les fouilles archéologiques en 1961. Les recherches des archéologues américains (1907-1910), allemands (1907-1908) et britanniques (1911) sont discutées par la suite, demême qu’une documentation iconographique, suivie par les différentes étapes des découvertes de la cathédralede Faras et des peintures murales au cours de quatre campagnes archéologiques polonaises, achevées en 1964, enrelation avec l’activité de Kazimierz Michałowski. La suite concerne l’histoire et la manière dont le professeur Michałowski a annoncé ses découvertes au Soudan, ainsi que les expositions individuelles, voire temporaires, dans les pays européens, surtout au Musée national de Varsovie, et une exposition permanente préparée dans lacapitale de la Pologne en 1972. L’article étudie aussi la manière dont le régime communiste a influencé la présentation des découvertes et comment les Polonais ont souhaité présenter l’art chrétien pendant la répression du Catholicisme dans leur pays, à une époque dominée par la censure de toutes les expositions et publications scientifiques. En conclusion, cette recherche évalue les résultats de l’étude scientifique des monuments fouillés lors des campagnes archéologiques, et propose la vérification (à l’avenir) de la datation des pièces polychromes, de mêmequ’une discussion de l’ensemble du programme iconographique de l’intérieur de la cathédrale de Faras.
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The ‘life’ of an object (the date of creation and its ‘adventure’ throughout time) can be revealed through a masterly interplay of historical, conservation, and scientific investigation. This is why a fruitful collaboration between chemists and restorers within the RICONTRANS Project(Visual Culture, Piety and Propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th-early 20th c.) has been initiated, in order to gain new insights into the phenomenon of the transfer and reception of Russian iconography in Transylvania.
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This study is aimed at identifying the most noticeable Slavic elements in the calendar rites of Bukovyna. It analyzes material collected by Romanian researchers in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century (E. Niculiță-Voronca, T. Pamfile, L. Bodnărescu, А. Fochi, A. Zașciuc), documents from the Central Scientific Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Moldova, the New Linguistic Atlas of Romania, Moldova and Bukovyna (1987), as well as personal observations recorded by the authors of the study in Ukraine and Romania during ethnographic expeditions. In the calendar rites of the Romanians of Bukovyna, some clear Slavic elements can be identified, such as some names of calendar holidays, Ukrainian elements in such rites as koliada, the Christmas star, shchedruvannya. Ukrainian motifs of musical folklore in winter rites, as well as the use of the names of Ukrainian opryshky and haidamaky, the adaptation of the “walking with vertep”, the use of the term vidma of Ukrainian origin, the penetration of the name and main text of the Ukrainian Malanka, etc.
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This paper aims to reconstruct the way in which the Romanian written culture from the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth gradually built the image of the Russian Enlightened monarchy with three of its most famous representatives: Peter II, Catherine II and Alexander I. By means of translating from Italian and German historiography, these texts served a double goal: on the one hand they satisfied the reader’s need for knowledge and understanding of the contemporary events, and on the other they contributed to a political discourse that viewed Russia and the Russian Orthodox monarchy as potential saviours of the Romanian principalities from the oppression of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. By means of translation analysis, we have attempted to illustrate how the Western image of an Eastern monarch, guided by a blend of Western philosophy and Eastern Orthodox tradition, was transferred in the Romanian culture as a scientific base for political and cultural decisions.
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in the current year
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After 1517 the Holy Places of Jerusalem, Palestine and Sinai as well as the three ancient Eastern Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antiochia and Jerusalem were included into the imperial domain of the Sublime Porte thus connecting its Orthodox subjects in Rumelia, Greek islands, Asia Minor and the Danubian Principalities to the most worshipped common Christian shrines. In the following two centuries the number of the pilgrims to the Holy Land from the Ottoman Balkan provinces was permanently increasing. The South Slav pilgrims’ glosses and travel notes reveal the shaping of the common orthodox space, the parts of which were the visitors’ living places, sacral centers, monasteries and travel communications. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the return back lead them across administrative, canonical, ethnic and territorial metes and bounds creating in their minds the image of the Ottoman Empire as mighty world power with multinational and multi-confessional population thus laying foundations for the development of protonational identities.
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This manuscript is called Chehlarov’s copy because it is known that Chehlarov was one of his possessors. Also it is known as the Fourth Tarnovo Copy of “Istorija slavjanobolgarskaja“ because it was found in Veliko Tarnovo. This paper contributes to its codicological (it reconstructs the correct order of folios) and language (East Bulgarian dialectal features) characteristics and also argues that it belongs to the family of Father Pantelejmon’s redaction but not to its branch of which Vlad Gladichov’s copy was a protograph. Therefore, terminus ante quem non is 1809 when Father Pantelejmon produced his manuscript.
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Ajunsă în stare de ruină, biserica Mântuitorului de la Berestovo a fost restaurată între 1643–1644 de mitropolitul Petru Movilă al Kievului, cu intenția de a-l comemora pe prințul Volodymyr, sfânt și egal cu apostolii, cel prin care a fost botezată Rusia kieviană. Pictura murală și inscripțiile reflectă ideea transformării Kievului într-un oraș sfânt, un nou Ierusalim și, în același timp, indică succesiunea neîntreruptă a autorității mitropolitane stabilită de prințul Volodymyr. Această decorație murală realizată în secolul al XVII-lea urmează programe iconografice mult mai vechi, asemănându-se cu cele din vremea Renașterii macedonene. Tabloul votiv îi înfățișează pe Născătoarea de Dumnezeu, pe prințul Volodymyr și pe Petru Movilă stând înaintea lui Hristos, Movilă fiind cel care îi prezintă Mântuitorului macheta bisericii restaurate. O analiză comparată permite afirmația că noua pictură a bisericii Mântuitorului a avut ca model ansamblul monumental al bisericii Sfânta Sofia din Kiev, datând din secolul al XI-lea. Puternica insistență asupra temei Încarnării, tipică polemicilor post-iconoclaste, a fost inspirată de imaginea în mozaic a Maicii Domnului Orantă din catedrala Sfânta Sofia și de inscripția care o însoțește și care reproduce versetul 6 al Psalmului 45. Imaginarea Kievului ca Nou Ierusalim și punerea lui sub protecția Maicii Domnului au fost gândite de Petru Movilă ca pietre de temelie ale efortului său de reactivare a Mitropoliei Kievului.
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