«The cult of Saints in Greek traditional culture», στον τόμο Mir. Detelić – Gr. Jones (εκδ.), Saints of the Balkans. Donington 2006, εκδ.Institute for Balkan Studies – Shaun Tyas Publishing [σειρά: Cult and Culture], σ. 99-108. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cult of the Saint in the Balkans
Gerda Dalipaj, Saint"s day celebrations and animal sacrifice in the Shpati region of Albania: Reflections of local social structure and identities (81-89) Raĉko Popov, Paraskeva and her "sisters": Saintly personification of women"s rest days and other themes (90-98) Manolis Varvounis, The cult of saints in Greek traditional culture (99-108) Ljupĉo Risteski, The concept and role of saints in Macedonian popular religion (109-127) Biljana Sikimić, Saints who wind guts (128-161) Mirjam Mencej, Saints as the wolves" shepherd (162-184) Mirjana Detelić, Two case studies of the saints in the "twilight zone" of oral literature: Petka and Sisin (185-204)
THE CONCEPT AND THE ROLE OF SAINTS IN MACEDONIAN POPULAR RELIGION
Gerda Dalipaj, Saint"s day celebrations and animal sacrifice in the Shpati region of Albania: Reflections of local social structure and identities (81-89) Raĉko Popov, Paraskeva and her "sisters": Saintly personification of women"s rest days and other themes (90-98) Manolis Varvounis, The cult of saints in Greek traditional culture (99-108) Ljupĉo Risteski, The concept and role of saints in Macedonian popular religion (109-127) Biljana Sikimić, Saints who wind guts (128-161) Mirjam Mencej, Saints as the wolves" shepherd (162-184) Mirjana Detelić, Two case studies of the saints in the "twilight zone" of oral literature: Petka and Sisin (185-204)
Religious Coexistence through the Cult of Saints in Albania: Saints George and Blaise
Theology & Culture 4, 2022
The paper examines the importance of the cult of saints in the popular tradition of our country, which contributed over the centuries to the consolidation of religious coexistence. It mentions the forms of reverence of folk traditions especially dedicated to Saint George and Saint Blaise, relying on historical data and phenomena before and after the Ottoman occupation in our country, which crystallized religious tolerance and coexistence even when the religious structure and the social conditions of our people suffered great disproportions. The reason that these two saints are considered is that they are widely honored by the people regardless of religion and are general examples and representative factor for religious harmony and coexistence in Albania. Yet, it is not an isolated paper regarding the cases of these two saints but also in forms of veneration of other saints. The bibliography from the National Library and the Central State Archive, Tirana and materials containing data and information on the forms of honoring Saint George and Saint Blaise will be used for this paper. The latter will be analyzed according to the case of each saint and through their comparison. The purpose of the paper is to show that the cult of honoring the saints in our case study of Gjergj Trofeprurësi and Vlashi of Sebasta, as two of the most popular saints in Albania, being the final factor of religious coexistence which the latter is rightly considered and is trumpeted not only as the unique experience of a people but also as the achieved example of coexistence for the multicultural and multiethnic diversity of the whole human society.
Worshipping Patron Saints: Ethnological Research in Croatia
2009
The author presents selected outcomes from her research on belief in patron saints in Croatia. The emphasis is placed on contexts in which such beliefs are manifested, on the ways in which they are expressed and on the significance that believers appear to attribute to patron saints. The analysis of these questions is based on the nature and forms of relationship to patron saints on two levels: community religiosity, and individual religiosity. At community level, patron saints are not only associated with economic betterment, but are also given a significant role with respect to the identity formation of a given community and its social life. At the level of individual religiosity, the patron saint is seen as a personal protector who is called on at various moments in life, which leads to the annulment of the acknowledged âspecializationâ of the different saints. The author outlines a number of guidelines for future research into this and associated topics, primarily the resear...
In our ever-changing times, the interactions of the various ecclesiastical and social facts and events are daily and frequent. In the urban parishes of our times a series of modernist religious customs see the light, which also define contemporary urban religiosity. This study examines some of the most characteristic forms of the newly-established customs, which relate to urban parishes' religious festivals and excursions. Over and above their cultural aspects, the identification and study of these customs presents pastoral dimensions, as they constitute characteristic cases of observances and rituals that priests are confronted with on a daily basis and to which, on occasion, they contribute decisively in terms of their formation and establishment. Because of this, their study presents a broader social and cultural interest, as they constitute contemporary expressions of existing human feelings and aspirations, but enriched with forms of modernist daily life.
Bearers of Faith: Local Practice, Communal Ritual, and the Expression of Religious Identity in the Ancient and Late-Antique Mediterranean, 200 BC – AD 600 workshop, 11 September , 2023
A spectre of an ethnic group appears in the fifth story in the second collection of miracles attributed to St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki, written by an anonymous author in that city around AD 680. The author of the miracle tale indicates to the reader (or listener) that the ‘Sermesians’, who appear in the city as refugees, are distinct from the Bulgars and Avars that menaced the Thessalonians, as well as the various Slavic tribes that are presented elsewhere in the collection. Instead, we are encouraged to identify them with the Roman population of Thessaloniki: with ‘us’. Why does a hagiographical work spend any time on such ethnographic discourse? What purpose did it serve in advancing the saint’s cult within the city and elsewhere? And, moreover, what does the impulse to identify the Sermesians as ‘one of us’ tell us about civic identity in Thessaloniki and its relationship with the Demetrios cult? This paper will seek to address these questions both in relation to the specific information provided about the Sermesians in the Miracles, as well as the wider development of the Demetrios cult in Thessaloniki. It will hypothesise an awareness on the part of the author of the ultimate common point of origin for both the Sermesians and Demetrios - the ancient city of Sirmium. Tracing the development of the cult from the fifth century AD, the paper will argue that the decision to include the Sermesians in the Miracles and the impulse to associate them with the local population of Thessaloniki was as much due to their connection with the city’s patron saint as it was their Christian faith. It will hope to show how local saints’ cults and the texts and rituals associated with them could be used both to integrate and to exclude.
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.
The polyphony of the memories of saints in Late Medieval and Early Modern Central Balkans
Balkanforschung an der ÖAW. Vortragsprogramm. Oktober 2021 – Jänner 2022., 2021
The characteristics usually attributed to modern memories, such as synchronic and diachronic dynamics, are not exclusive to modernity, but can be found in many pre-modern memories. One of them is the veneration of saints (or the cults of saints), which essentially represents an act of preserving the memory of his/her exemplary life. The state of preserved sources from the Central Balkans allows the discernment of saints’ liturgical, political, and historiographical commemoration. Moreover, the contents of memories differed not only between the types of memories but also within each of them. This brought about a polyphony of the memories of saints, which was subject to diachronic change as well. Even though the complexity of these memories still evades us, it presents a compelling subject of research. This lecture aims to show that the methodology used in contemporary memory studies can also be applied to distant times.
St. George is very popular not only to the Greeks, but also in other Orthodox Christian peoples of the Balkan peninsula. 1 Patron of shepherds and farmers, but also holy military protector of the army, celebrated by the Greek people with many customs, which are found in almost all Greek regions and manifested by the festivals of ubiquitous the temples. From what we mention in this paper, it made clear that St. George has a prominent place in Greek customary annual cycle of religious festivals. But also as protector of the army honored within relevant official celebrations, also appeal to our people. And it is this long and strong religious tradition that contributes to temples, monasteries, churches and chapels to be found in all Greek places. In areas particularly that coexisted and continue to coexist and live together Orthodox and Muslims, as for example in Thrace or on the island of Pringipos, the monastery of St. George «Koudounas», where Muslims also worship St. George, making offerings and attending the devotional acts of year feast. It is thus a famous and very popular saint for the Greek people, who always reminds the people the strength of the embattled youth, and moves with spontaneous offering of his life for his faith in Christ. That is why the celebrations and festivals are all about our people in connection intellectual uplifting, social and recreational annealing respite from the sometimes harsh and laborious routine.