Енорията на централните Балкани през османската епоха - поглед "отвътре": Православният свещеник и неговото паство през призмата на един свещенически текст от средата на XVII век

Author(s): Olga Todorova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

This article to challenge the notion of an entirely harmonious Christian-Orthodox parish that dominates the historiography of the Ottoman Balkans. The interrelations between Orthodox priests and their flocks are analyzed here in the light of the so-called Chronicle of Serres (ca. 1642), composed by Papa Synadinos, a Greek Orthodox priest and a member of the local Christian elite. It is claimed that two distinct images of the parish, quite opposite to each other, emerge from the text of the Chronicle. The first one is the image of the "ideal" parish, free of any conflicts between the priest and his parishioners. In the Chronicle it was exemplified with the parish of Papa Siderus, Synadinos' father, who has been portrayed as e perfect priest and a role-model for his time. This image, however, proves to be no more than a literary construct. Much more interesting is the second image representing the "real" parish led by Synadinos himself. It was depicted as a place where frictions between the "enlightened" priest and his flock were a common occurrence. The present study attempts to delineate the economic as well as the cultural (in the broadest sense of the word) cause which stood behind the constantly evolving tensions between laity and priests. It is argued that disagreements deepened even more due to options available to both sides to compete against each other by petitioning either to the Ottoman or the Church authorities.

Църква "Св. Никола" в с. Гинци

Author(s): Zdravka Kosturkova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

The village of Gintsi is located in Western Bulgaria, at the foothills of the Western Balkan Range and at about 50 km of Sofia. Once a road connecting Moesia and the river Danube with Sardica and Macedonia used to pass through the village. There were also fortifications around it, as evidenced by the toponym "Kaleto", relevant to two elevations at both sides of the route to Petrohan pass. According to a record dated from 1490, the village had an entirely Christian population, as did the entire area in the vicinity of Sofia. A Turkish register shows that the church in the village, that can be dated from the Middle Ages, continued to exist. According to its plan, the St. Nicholas of Myra belongs to the most widespread type of churches in Bulgarian lands in the Middle Ages and the National Revival, the single-naved basilica. The church has a semi-circular central apse inside and out, a naos and a narthex (added later). The entrance is one from the west, through the narthex into the naos. It has a barrel vault and has a gable roof with wooden casing and tiles, completely in the style of West Bulgarian single-naved churches in the period from the end of the 12-th to the 19-th century. The building technique is traditional for West Bulgarian lands. The material used was hewn and river stone, joint with white mortar. The church was decorated with murals. There were three distinctive period of decoration, with almost nothing remaining from the first murals. The murals are in three artistic layers.

Религиозен живот в Източна Румелия

Author(s): Stanislav Boyanov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

Eastern Roumelia received its fundamental law drafted by a specially European commission. It is quite a detailed document providing for all aspects of life of the Roumeli citizens. The Organic Statute of Eastern Roumelia defined the new political formation in the Balkans as a state of modern (for that time) bourgeois-liberal type. It had all the features of and independant state: its own government, a representative authority elected by the people and a national army. The sovereignty of the sultan was included in the Statute, but thanks to the efforts of Eastern Roumeli political figures, it soon became nominal, without any serious power in the region. Unlike the neighboring countries (the Ottoman Empire, the Principality of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Romania) there was no legalized and preferred religion in Eastern Roumelia. All religious issues were placed in the hands of the religious communities and the state did not involve itself with them. The only condition was that they should not violate any of the laws valid to the region.

Свети Йоан Дамаскин, Теодор Абу Кура и ранният ислям

Author(s): Yuliyan Velikov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

With the formation of Islam as a religion in the 7th century, initially spread over the Arabian Peninsula, Christianitu faces a new challenge, which the Christian theologians are not entirely prepared to meet since this "doctrine" can not be "seen" through the eyes of the Antiquity. Saint John of Damascus and Theodore Abu Qurrah represent the early polemics with Islam. Their answer to the call of the minaret reveals two important aspects of the Christian polemics with Islam: through knowledge of the Qur'an as a text and highly competent polemical presence. These two features, in one way or another, were later recognized, assembled and followed by all Christian polemicists in the East and West.

Две кратки редакции на чина на Свето Богоявление

Author(s): Hristina Toncheva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

The Old Bulgarian Blessing of the Waters on the Eve of Epiphany from X-XI centuries is the earliest Slavic copy of that work, giving an account of the very old routine of the Holy Sanctification of the Water, which is performed nowadays on the eve of Epiphany (January 6 - new stile). During the examination of the later Slavic copies of this Convention from the XV-XVII centuries, were discovered two unknown short redactions - one of them from the XVth c. - in Russia, Serbian, and Bulgarian Books of divine services and Prayer-books, and the other - from the year 1782 (in a Church Slavic prayer-book from Hilandar monastery, in Mount Athos). In the article, for the first time, is published the text of the short redaction of the Blessing of the Water on the Eve of Epiphany, from the above mentioned XVIIIth c. Preayer-book.

The Lost Readers of the Scripture: Some notes on the Karaite community of Hīt

Author(s): Thomas Schmidinger / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Karaites are one of the religious communities erased from the memory of Iraq. Today hardly anybody in Iraq remembers this centuries-old religious community rooted in the Abrahamic faith of Islam, Christianity and mainstream Judaism. Multiple marginalisations resulted in nobody ever telling the story of the last Karaites in Iraq. The isolated and rural community in the town of Hīt in Anbar did not have any intellectuals to document their history. Later, Karaite Jews became a minority among the rabbinic Jews in Israel and the Iraqi Karaites were even a tiny minority within the minority of the Karaites of Israel. Without anyone interested in their history, even the second generation in Israel did not think that the stories of their parents and grandparents would be worth recording and telling.

Fransa’da Müslüman Kadınlar ve Feminist Hareketler

Author(s): Şirin Dilli,Senem Gürkan‬ / Language(s): Turkish Publication Year: 0

Batı merkezli tarihsel feminist hareket, seksenli yıllarda İspanya gibi bir-çok Avrupa ülkesinde güçlenirken (Andújar, 2014; Nash, 2004) Fransa gibi diğer Avrupa ülkelerindeki yeni feminist akımlar hegemonyacı feminist teoriyi ve uygulamayı yeniden tanımlamaya başlamış ve tartışmaya açmıştır (Badran, 2010).

Engelsova misao o (ranom) hrišćanstvu kao preludijum za sociologiju religije

Author(s): Nataša Jovanović Ajzenhamer / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

Engels’s study of the origins and ethics of early Christianity is an autonomous sphere of study that is independent of his works with Karl Marx. In several stages, Engels engaged himself in a critical study of historical sources on Christianity, as well as in the study of the revolutionary potential of religious movements in different historical periods. In this paper, we will first reconstruct Engels’ thought of Christianity, and then we will answer the question of whether Engels’ religious studies can be included in the corpus of research of the sociology of religion? The benefits of this way of designing the research problem are twofold: on the one hand, the history of the sociology of religion may pay more attention to Engels’s work and conclusions, while, on the other, it draws attention to another relatively neglected aspect of independent Engels study.

Engelsovo »Rano kršćanstvo«: model kako proleterskim pokretima mijenjati društvo

Author(s): Ivan Markešić / Language(s): Croatian Publication Year: 0

Friedrich Engels was philosopher, social theoretician, historian and journalist but also an incorrigible and an incorruptible heretic. In the society of religious-ideological obscurations he sought for truth and equality. To this end, relying on Bruno Bauer’s work on the historical origins of Christianity, he makes a comparison of the origins of the newly formed proletarian movement with the emergence of early Christianity, with the social, political and religious reasons for its emergence and survival as well as with the historical circumstances in which it from the unwanted became the desired state religion of the Roman Empire. With this text Engels wanted to sensitize so called “Christian” philosophical and theological public for his idea of creating a just society by the actions of emerging proletarian movements that were similar to the first steps of Christianity as a religion of slaves, freemen, oppressed and disenfranchised. However, societies of “real socialism” shows how great Engels’ illusion was.

Friedrich Engels, reformacija i rano kršćanstvo - Kratki doprinos za dijalog marksista i kršćana

Author(s): Mislav Miholek / Language(s): Croatian Publication Year: 0

This paper presents several topics related to the person of Friedrich Engels. It shows the basics of the critique of the religion by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Also, the paper presents the historical relationship between Christianity and Marxism, the creation and development of dialogue between Christians and Marxists in the Sixties of the Twentieth Century around the world and in Croatia. Part of the paper is devoted to Engels‘ thoughts about the Reformation and the reformers like Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Thomas Müntzer, as well as Engels‘ relationship to early Christianity. The work is based on various sources, works of theologians of different traditions, philosophers and sociologists.

Conflicting Methodological Metaphors Pertaining to Sameness and Difference: Eliade and Deleuze in Dialogue

Author(s): Carl Olson / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In this paper, I propose to examine the postmodern challenge to hermeneutics exercised by historians of religions by using the hermeneutical method of Mircea Eliade as an example of an approach that has been used in Religious Studies scholarship. This hermeneutical method is compared to the postmodern approach of Gilles Deleuze and special attention will be focused on the importance of difference among postmodernists. We will witness that Eliade’s approach to the study of religion is shaped by fundamentals of Enlightenment philosophy and its representational mode of thinking that is evident in his use of the phenomenological method, intentionality, intuition, morphological classification, and his stress upon order over chaos instead of the simulacra discussed by numerous postmodern thinkers. It is possible, of course, to also find romantic thinking and the influence of Eastern Orthodox religiosity on Eliade’s thinking, but such considerations can be suspended for another paper. The phenomenological aspects of Eliade’s method presuppose a metaphysical stance and a coherence theory of truth, which are diametrically opposed to the overall postmodern position of Gilles Deleuze and his emphasis on difference. Moreover, this paper is narrowly focused on Eliade’s morphological classification expressed by the metaphor of a tree, which is compared to Deleuze’s rhizomatic method and its reliance on the metaphor of the root. This essay also compares the two thinkers on the problem of time and history because of their relationship to the hermeneutics of the two thinkers. Moreover, this paper examines the presuppositions of both positions and the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches for the future study of religion.

Between Colonial Laws and Religious Traditions: Hindu Women in the Nineteenth Century India

Author(s): Maria-Daniela Pomohaci / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In order to understand social reforms regarding women’s rights in nineteenth century India, one needs to begin by taking a look at the ideas of “rule of law” and at the “rule of colonial difference”, which animated legislation initiatives in the field of gender and discrimination in colonial India.

MODALITĂŢI DE COMUNICARE UTILIZATE DE TRIBUNALELE INCHIZITORIALE

Author(s): Mihai Floroaia / Language(s): Romanian Publication Year: 0

Considering that, throughout history, no theme has been so impressive and interpreted in such a variety as that of the Inquisition, in this study I will explain some issues regarding the ways of communication of people involved in this phenomenon, both clergy as laity. As sources of research on ways of communication we have the collections of laws and decrees, papal bulls, church canons, council acts, monastic annals, histories of local communities and abbeys, minutes of trials, sentences of inquisitorial trials, biographies of bishops, popes, various panegyric etc.

Mitropolitul Gavriil Bănulescu‑Bodoni, Generalul Prozorovski şi Galaţii

Author(s): Eugen Drăgoi / Language(s): Romanian Publication Year: 0

Războiul Ruso‑Turc din anii 1806‑1812 a adus, aşa cum se cunoaşte, importante schimbări în viaţa politică şi religioasă a Principatelor Române Moldova şi Valahia. Comunicarea noastră doreşte să îndrepte atenţia participanţilor către colaborarea a doi din protagoniştii acestor evenimente, anume mitropolitul Gavriil Bănulescu‑Bodoni şi generalul Alexandr Prozorovski, şi, în final, să propună câteve elemente noi referitoare la legătura lor cu oraşul nostru Galaţi.

The contribution of the Patriarchate of Romania at the beginning of preparation of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (1902-1932)

Author(s): Ioannis Ladas / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church is admittedly one of the most important Orthodox ecclesiastical events of the 21st cent. The Council’s 2016 convening was finally made possible after a very long and arduous preparatory process of circa 93 years, in which process the Patriarchate of Romania appears to have played an important and constructive role. In fact, the Church of Romania, in 1920, shortly before the official preparation begins, dispatched Prof. Dragomir Demetrescu to the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the mandate to exchange views on the possibility of convoking a “Council of the Orthodox Churches”, and to propose potential issues to be considered in such a Council. Since then, the Church of Romania has responded positively to all the relevant invitations of the Great Church of Constantinople and participated constructively in all the preparatory bodies and phases of the Holy and Great Council, while the Romanian Primates - from Patriarch Myron to Patriarch Daniel - demonstrated a profound synodical awareness and fought devotedly for the unity and cooperation of the Orthodox Churches. The current article has a double scope: on the one hand, it presents the historical contribution of the Patriarchate of Romania at the beginning of preparation of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, and on the other hand, it attempts to evaluate it.

Výtvarné hodnoty a ideogram na kovaných krížoch na sakrálnych objektoch v okolí Bardejova

Author(s): Martin Mešša / Language(s): Slovak Publication Year: 0

In north-east Slovakia, complex as well as simply-forged crosses have survived at sacral buildings and in museum collections. Craftsmanship and artistic sense of the blacksmiths in the 17th to 19th century made from forged crosses, placed on churches, bell towers and chapels an interesting picture of folk plastic art, which however was conditioned by theological teaching, regulated, and controlled by church dignitaries. The basic types of crosses are enriched by a lot of other symbols and signs crafted as one unit. Some forged crosses can be found at their original place and in their original function even today, some others are not complete, or crosses of the basic shape replaced them later, because the signs and symbols gradually lost their importance in human mind or because the Christian learning and its interpretation changed. The basic types of crosses, the signs used and the symbolism of the crosses and combinations thereof say something about the time of their origin. The applied signs created an ideogram, but mostly more ideograms connected into one unit. Every forged cross not only is a set of signs or ideograms, but – to a certain extent – also an artistic element making the whole building complete.

Патриарх Евтимий Търновски (1375 – 1393) за смисъла и значението на историята

Author(s): Vasil Gyuzelev / Language(s): Bulgarian,Old Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

Мощи на светци, придобити по време на войните през Второто българско царство

Author(s): Aneliya Markova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

The practice, connected to the transferring of relics, imported to the Bulgarian tradition from Byzantium, can be treated as a part of Bulgarian rulers’ “Empire idea”, which has changed at the beginning of 13th century. The formation of an independent pantheon of saints helps to successfully Trinova’s competition with Constantinople and striving for the Bulgarian capital to become “Third Rome”. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, Bulgarian empire has claimed to be new Christian centre in the Balkans. The construction of its own pantheon of saints’ relics is a necessity for realization of the Bulgarian tsar’s imperial claims. The creation and following of this tradition led its beginning of the military actions and become a part of the ideological platform of the Bulgarian tsars.

Изследванията на латинската християнска литература (II – XI в.) в България

Author(s): Rosen Milanov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

Latin Christian literature of the first thousand years is a wide area for scientific studies. In this article a periodization of Latin Christian literature (2nd – 11th cc.) is made. A search has been carried out for the authors, firstly, who are an object of Bulgarian scientific articles and monographs; in the second place, topics of these studies have been found. A conclusion about the contemporary state of the studies on Latin Christian literature in Bulgaria has been also taken. Finally, the perspectives for the future Bulgarian studies on Latin Christian literature in Bulgaria have been drawn.

Изследване на рисковете пред етнорелигиозния мир в Югоизточна и Централна Европа: взаимодействие между държавната политика, етническите отношения и националната и международната сигурност

Author(s): Georgi Minkov Minkov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

The region of South-Eastern and Central Europe faces a number of certain risks that are closely related to ethnic and religious factors. The historical conflicts that underlie many of these risks include territorial disputes, cultural differences and identity. These conflicts often affect regional stability and security, manifesting in violence, terrorism and human rights violations. The presence of diverse ethnic minorities in the region and intense migration flows present additional security challenges. State policy has a key role in managing these issues, striving for integration and promoting ethnic coexistence. Religious communities in the region can also influence security. Their role in interfaith dialogue and relations with state institutions can help or destabilize stability.