Archaic religious predicates in contemporary East Slavic folk Orthodox culture: Interpreting of symbols in the structure of religiosity

Authors

  • Archpriest Oleg Korytko Moscow Theological Academy, Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad, 141300, Russian Federation https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0812-4350

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu28.2024.303

Abstract

This academic work is an extension to the article “Christian theology and the archetypal in religion: A reconciliation experience for the stances” that was published in the journal “Issues of Theology”, 2024, no. 2. As a critical characteristic of spiritual culture, religiosity can be described as sacred acts significant for this culture, i. e. as religious predicates. The compiling of a “predicate pattern” of East Slavic religiosity is an intriguing and promising academic task which can aid in defining the key features of Russian culture in its ecclesiastical and folk Orthodox interpretations. The article draws attention to the fact that Russian culture, which was formed under the unquestionable influence of the Orthodox faith and Church tradition, experienced a considerable influence of pre-Christian ideas in the course of its development. The text presents an attempt to consider the phenomenon of Russian religiosity through the prism of religious predicates that are significant for the Eastern Slavs, which not only reflect the specifics of folk religious practice, but also determine the uniqueness of Russian ecclesiastic culture. The circumambulation and other variants of circular movement, drawing of a sacred symbol, tying and tearing apart, touch and remembrance are the most vivid religious predicates isolated on the basis of the semantic load they are conveyed and of the functions they perform. The analysis of predicates is followed by examples from modern folk ritual customs and Church tradition. The archetypal nature of many practices is evidenced. The article identifies and suggests possible solutions to the main problems associated with the isolation of predicates in the spiritual culture language.

Keywords:

religiosity, folk Orthodoxy, cultural predicates, circular movement, drawing of a cross, sacred tying, ritual tearing, touching of sacred objects, memory of ancestors

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
 

References

Belova O. V. (2009) “Razryv-trava”, in Slavianskie drevnosti: etnolingvisticheskii slovar’. Ed. by N. I. Tolstoi. In 5 vols, vol. 4, pp. 396–397. Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia Publ. (In Russian)

Benveniste É. (1995) Indo-European language and society. Rus. ed. Moscow, Progress — Univers Publ. (In Russian)

Bogatyrev P. G. (1971) Questions of the theory of folk art. Moscow, Iskusstvo Publ. (In Russian)

Eliade M. (1999) Patterns in comparative religion. In 2 vols, vol. 2. St. Petersburg, Aleteiia Publ. (In Russian)

Kolesov V. V. (2004) Ancient Russia: Heritage in the word. In 5 vols, vol. 3: Life and being. St. Petersburg, Filologicheskii fakul’tet SPbGU Publ. (In Russian)

Kriukova A. N. (2020) “The Procession of the Precious Wood of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord”, in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 58, p. 284. Moscow, Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia Publ. (In Russian)

Levkievskaia E. E. (2012) “The walking dead”, in Narodnaia demonologiia Poles’ia. In 4 vols, vol. 2: Demonologizatsiia umershikh liudei, pp. 273–400. Moscow, IaSK Publ. (In Russian)

Maximus the Greek, st. (1910) “The Explanation of the handwriting of sins”, in Sochineniia prepodobnogo Maksima Greka v russkom perevode. In 3 vols, vol. 2: Dogmatiko-polemicheskie sochineniia. Sergiyev Posad, Sviato-Troitskaia Sergieva lavra Publ. (In Russian)

Mud’iugin M., archpriest (1995) The Russian Orthodox churchliness. The second half of the 20th century. Moscow, Bibleisko-bogoslovskii institut sviatogo apostola Andreia Publ. (In Russian)

Plutarch. (1996) Isis and Osiris. Kiev, UTsIMM-Press Publ. (In Russian)

Sedakova O. A. (2004) The poetics of the rite. Funeral rites of the Eastern and southern Slavs. Moscow, Indrik Publ. (In Russian)

Surikov I. E. (2010) “Paradoxes of the ‘father of History’: Herodotus — a researcher of Archaic and Classical Greece”, Vestnik Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo gumanitarnogo universiteta. Ser.: Istoricheskie nauki, no. 10 (53), pp. 66–100. (In Russian)

Tolstaia S. M. (1995) “Pregnancy, pregnant woman”, in Slavianskie drevnosti: etnolingvisticheskii slovar’. Ed. by N. I. Tolstoi. In 5 vols, vol. 1, pp. 160–164. Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia Publ. (In Russian)

Tolstaia S. M. (1996) “The action code of the symbolic language of culture: Movement in ritual”, in Kontsept dvizheniia v iazyke i kul’ture. Moscow, Indrik Publ. (In Russian)

Tolstaia S. M. (2015) The image of the world in the text and ritual. Moscow, Universitet Dmitriia Pozharskogo Publ. (In Russian)

Toporov V. N. (1995) Holiness and Saints in Russian spiritual culture. In 2 vols, vol. 1: Pervyi vek khristianstva na Rusi. Moscow, Gnozis Publ.; Iazyki russkoi kul’tury Publ. (In Russian)

Trubachev O. N., еd. (1977) Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages: Proto-Slavic lexical stock. Vol. 4. Moscow, Nauka Publ. (In Russian)

Vinogradov V. V. (2019) North Russian revered places: Topics of shrines. St. Petersburg, Proppovskii tsentr Publ. (In Russian)

Vinogradova L. N. (2001) “Folk demonology of Polesye in the context of East-Slavic traditional beliefs”, in Vostochnoslavianskii etnolingvisticheskii sbornik, pp. 10–49. Moscow, Indrik Publ. (In Russian)

Vinogradova L. N. (2004) “Bridge”, in Slavianskie drevnosti: etnolingvisticheskii slovar’. Ed. by N. I. Tolstoi. In 5 vols, vol. 3, pp. 303–307. Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia Publ. (In Russian)

Vinogradova L. N. (2014) “Destruction”, in Slavianskie drevnosti: etnolingvisticheskii slovar’. Ed. by N. I. Tolstoi. In 5 vols, vol. 5, pp. 371–373. Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia Publ. (In Russian)

Downloads

Published

2024-10-29

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 3 (2024)

Section

Research

License

Articles of "Issues of Theology" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.