Periklieva, V. 2015: The Cult of Our Lady of Lourdes – Different Levels of Identity Construction of the Bulgarian Catholics from the Town of Rakovski. – In: Contextualizing Changes: Migrations, Shifting Borders and New Identities in Eastern Europe. Sofia: Paradigma Publishing House, 257-266. (original) (raw)
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Religious Identity of Bulgarian Catholics’ Communities
Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies
This article analyses the issue of religious identity of Bulgarian Catholics during the start of the 2000s. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork materials gathered by the author in Bulgaria in 2015-2017. It presents the results of a research, carried out on a comparative basis among the communities of Bulgarian Catholics from Sofia, Plovdiv and its regions (in the villages of General Nikolaevo, Sekirovo (today forming the quarters of the town of Rakovski), Kaloyanovo, Belozem, Zhitnitsa).
IDENTITY OF THREE BULGARIAN CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN SOFIA
THE YEARBOOK OF BALKAN AND BALTIC STUDIES. Vol. 4. No. 1., 2021
This article focuses on the history and identity of three Bulgarian Christian communities from the second part of 20th c. until today. The article presents the results of ethnographic explorations between 2010 and 2020 carried out on a comparative basis among three Bulgarian Christian denominations in Sofia. The case of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church shows that believers might be described as ‘believing and belonging, without behaving’ (PRC 2017b). The case of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity testifies to the strong faith of the parishioners, as well as their respect for the church’s assistants, inspiring priests to look for new forms of evangelization and of the expression of religious identity, such as concerts of sacred church music, pilgrimages, free piano lessons for the poor parish children and various means of education. The Bulgarian Catholic Church of the Eastern rite is characterized by a profound liturgical and spiritual tradition. During the totalitarian Soviet period members of the Church managed to maintain their religious identities due to their spiritual unity and inter-faith links with the Roman Catholics, who helped to create a friendly environment and close social support networks. During that period, the religious identity of the Roman Catholics was strengthened by their awareness of repressed priests, clandestine monks, nuns and selfless members of the laity. The modern religious identity of Bulgarian Roman Catholics is related to their everyday commitment, their nourishment of Christian values and the continuity of Church traditions, thus ensuring that this religious inheritance is passed on to younger generations. In summing up the insights of the research material, it should be emphasized that modern Bulgarian Christians have multiple identities, but prioritize their ethnic identity, following that with their overall religious identity, and ending with their specific confessional identity.
The Thesis consists of Introduction, six chapters and Conclusion, Bybliography and ilustrations. Chapter 1. “Chronological and contextual frame”. It explores the main factors influencing religiousity of Bulgarian citizens during post-communist period (1989-2013); Chapter 2. “Krastova Gora” – invention of a holy shrine. It explores culture mechanisms allowing the invention of a new pilgrimage center. Chapter 3. “The end of a holy shrine”. It explores the slow going process of abandoning former muslim monastery. The questions related to management of social capital are the main focus of this chapter. Chapter 4. “Borders and border zones”. It explores mixed pilgrimages at Christian and Muslim shrines. The pervious ethnic and religious borders are the main focus of the chapter. Chapter 5. “Power and control contests”. It explores the attempts of different actors to gain the control over holly shrine. Chapter 6. “Religious tourism and pilgrimage”. It explores dinamics of contemporary religious tours of Bulgarian citizens to Meteora monasteries in Greece. The main focus is on dinamics of spiritual conditions of tourists.
Pilgrimage, the Assumptionists and Catholic Evangelisation in a Changing Europe: Lourdes and Plovdiv
2015
The rapid development of academic research into pilgrimage in Europe has encouraged an exploration of the growing links which have emerged between west and east Europe after the collapse of the ‘Iron Curtain’ in 1989. This recent development has to be set within a longer historical perspective, however, and analysis must consider not only religious contexts but also the influence of political, economic and cultural processes at local, national and international levels. These related processes are examined here through an analysis of the development of a major Roman Catholic in the south-west corner of France – Lourdes - and the ways in which the Assumptionist Order and the Vatican sought to link this shrine to an evangelising mission in south-eastern Europe during the late 19th and early twentieth century. This leads on to a discussion of the Bulgarian Catholic Church during the Communist period, Vatican policy and the revival of links between the Bulgarian church and Lourdes after ...
Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe, 2020
The chapter presents Marian worship in one of its specific local manifestations – the cult to the Virgin in the region of Asenovgrad, Central Southern Bulgaria. The fact that it is the most representative example of the vital and well-developed Marian cult within present-day Bulgaria, as well as authors' long-term fieldwork in the region (started 1996), influenced the choice of Asenovgrad as the focus of their attention. The methodological framework is based on the concept of local religion (Christian 1989: 3), reformulated by the authors into the concepts of local religiosity and local religious culture. The local Marian cult in Asenovgrad region is used as an example of how to understand this local and cultural embeddedness of religiosity, presented via (1) devotional sites and the images belonging to them (in this case, miracle-working icons of the Virgin); (2) local feasts and ritual practices; and (3) local and personal religious narratives. The authors regard places, ritua...
Betwixt and Between: The Cult of Living Saints in Contemporary Bulgaria (1)
FOLKLORICA, 2003
The exemplary persona of Christianity known as the saint is a junction of antinomies: "hereness" and "thereness", immanence and transcendence, familiarity and incomprehensibility. In social terms, however, the saint is above all the figure of a religious virtuoso emerging at the interface of official and popular religion.(2) Various hagiolatric communities, from loosely defined local groups to well organized religious societies and sects, constantly cultivate their religious specialists who are often dubbed "saints" and treated as saints while still alive. Such holy persons, aspiring for saintly status in their lifetime who have not been canonized by the official Church, are usually designated in the scholarly tradition as 'folk,' 'near-,' 'would-be,' 'living' [see, e.g., Macklin and Margolies 1988], or in general not-quite-saints, to differentiate them from their canonized, "otherworldly" colleagues. The majority of cases of modern folk saints (19th-20 th c.) within Bulgarian hagiolatric communities are healers and clairvoyants sometimes called "living saints," who only rarely enjoy popularity beyond the narrow scope of their initial local cults. Against this background of ephemeral and amorphous saints a few cases stand out as epitomizing the general tendencies of popular religious saint-making in Bulgaria: the miracle-maker of Silistra Angelush Trifonov (1827-after 1904), the Holy Virgin Korteza Khadzhiiska from Sliven (c.1873-after 1920), the prophet Bona Velinova from Grigorevo (1885-1960), the Venerable Stoina Dimitrova from the district of Melnik (1883-1933), and the most celebrated near-saint of present-day Bulgaria, the oracle from the town of Petrich Vanga Dimitrova (1911-1996). This study is based primarily on ethnographic data about them, (3) as well as on wide-ranging narrative material reflecting Bulgarian folk cosmological concepts. Saints are analyzed here as cosmological agents of the communities that worship them and their status is compared and contrasted with the communal status of other cosmological figures, such as vampires or witches. Our approach is centered on the folk term "living saint" in an attempt to outline a structural profile of the saintly figure in Bulgarian popular religion from the viewpoint of the ethnography of speaking, that is, the study of speech episodes in their social context. The paper is built upon our trust in the capacity of folk terminology to manifest an insider's understanding of folk phenomena. Its first, descriptive part, presents a case-study of the unofficial cult of the Venerable Stoina, as seen through the term "living saint" used in the cult. The second, analytical, part is an attempt to reconstruct the Bulgarian folk concept of living holiness that underlies the ostensibly divergent and often contradictory discourses about different living saints.
A focus of research interest is the rock church “Saint Petka” located in the town of Tran, close to the Bulgarian-Serbian border. This religious site is connected to a strong and vigorous local worship toward the known in a wide Balkan perspective Saint Paraskeva/Petka. The cult is maintained by an interesting local legend according to which St. Petka has lived in the same small cave in which today the church is situated. Because of this St. Petka is considered as a saint-patron of Tran and its inhabitants. This worship site and the specific cult to St. Petka in the past, as well as nowadays, have an important role in the structuring of religious life and the constructing of identity of the local community. Proceeding from the historical preposition and formation of the St. Petka’s cult in the region the aim of the article is to examine some today’s characteristics of development and functioning of the rock church “St. Petka” as worship site, as well as to study the changes occurred during the last two decades when this religious site were identified as cultural heritage and resource for development of the local touristic product in a wide context of local sustainable development.
Betwixt and Between: The Cult of Living Saints in Contemporary Bulgaria
Folklorica, 2010
The exemplary persona of Christianity known as the saint is a junction of antinomies: "hereness" and "thereness", immanence and transcendence, familiarity and incomprehensibility. In social terms, however, the saint is above all the figure of a religious virtuoso emerging at the interface of official and popular religion.(2) Various hagiolatric communities, from loosely defined local groups to well organized religious societies and sects, constantly cultivate their religious specialists who are often dubbed "saints" and treated as saints while still alive. Such holy persons, aspiring for saintly status in their lifetime who have not been canonized by the official Church, are usually designated in the scholarly tradition as 'folk,' 'near-,' 'would-be,' 'living' [see, e.g., Macklin and Margolies 1988], or in general not-quite-saints, to differentiate them from their canonized, "otherworldly" colleagues. The majority of cases of modern folk saints (19th-20 th c.) within Bulgarian hagiolatric communities are healers and clairvoyants sometimes called "living saints," who only rarely enjoy popularity beyond the narrow scope of their initial local cults. Against this background of ephemeral and amorphous saints a few cases stand out as epitomizing the general tendencies of popular religious saint-making in Bulgaria: the miracle-maker of Silistra Angelush Trifonov (1827-after 1904), the Holy Virgin Korteza Khadzhiiska from Sliven (c.1873-after 1920), the prophet Bona Velinova from Grigorevo (1885-1960), the Venerable Stoina Dimitrova from the district of Melnik (1883-1933), and the most celebrated near-saint of present-day Bulgaria, the oracle from the town of Petrich Vanga Dimitrova (1911-1996). This study is based primarily on ethnographic data about them, (3) as well as on wide-ranging narrative material reflecting Bulgarian folk cosmological concepts. Saints are analyzed here as cosmological agents of the communities that worship them and their status is compared and contrasted with the communal status of other cosmological figures, such as vampires or witches. Our approach is centered on the folk term "living saint" in an attempt to outline a structural profile of the saintly figure in Bulgarian popular religion from the viewpoint of the ethnography of speaking, that is, the study of speech episodes in their social context. The paper is built upon our trust in the capacity of folk terminology to manifest an insider's understanding of folk phenomena. Its first, descriptive part, presents a case-study of the unofficial cult of the Venerable Stoina, as seen through the term "living saint" used in the cult. The second, analytical, part is an attempt to reconstruct the Bulgarian folk concept of living holiness that underlies the ostensibly divergent and often contradictory discourses about different living saints.
Pilgrimage and Roman Catholic Evangelisation in a Changing Europe, Cargo 10 (1–2): 29-48.
Academic research on the growing links between East and West Europe have largely focussed on secular processes, especially labour migration. Because far less attention has been paid to the role played by religion in forging these links, this article seeks to uncover the historic and contemporary religious networks promoted through pilgrimage. It examines the development of Europe's most popular shrine -Lourdes in the southwest corner of Franceand the ways in which the Assumptionist Order and the Vatican sought to link the shrine to an evangelising mission which extended across a declining Ottoman Empire. This leads on to a discussion of the development of both Lourdes and the Catholic Church in Bulgaria during the 20 th century, Vatican policy and relations with other religious traditions and secular politics, as well as the renewed links between the shrine and the Bulgarian Assumptionists since the collapse of the Communist regime.