folklore – RCS

Atanas Stoychev Orachev PhD in History, Chairman of the Academic Council of the Black Sea Strandja Association, curator of the museum exhibition History of the Anchor in Ahtopol (Neptune Street, No. 2, apt. 5, Ahtopol, Bulgaria, 8280)
aso_1953@abv.bg

Orachev A. Orpheus in Thracian Rural Beliefs and Rites, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2019, vol. 8, pp. 102–135.

doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2019-00007

Language: Russian

The available database from the Thracian lands allows us to understand how the prehistoric civilizational models began and how the principles of interacting between their two main structures — the village and the city have crystalized. Nowhere else in Europe it is possible to trace better the peculiarities throughout thousands of past years and outline the essential differences between rural and urban culture. And to understand the fundamental differences in worldviews, to look at the differences in everyday stereotypes and the ways in which peasants and citizens conceive, perceive and strive to organize the world. This is also illustrated by the available written information and monuments about one of the most ancient cultural heroes — Orpheus, which should not be associated with the Thracian Orphism postulates in Thracology. In fact, for the Thracian cattle-breeding community, the invention of agriculture, the cleansing of wicked deeds, the remedies for diseases and the redemption of God’s wrath were most important in order to ensure fertility of flocks, fields and people. It is significant that in the Bogomil Books and Legends, in the Bulgarian apocryphal works and folklore there are many Orpheus notions: about Good and Evil and the corresponding anthem-prayers; data on medicines, divinations and prayers; substances for the remission of sins; fortune-telling; and last but not least, prayers and blessings for fertility.

Key words: Orpheus, Thrace, civilization models, dolmens, rural rituals, folklore

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/en/orachev-2019-en/

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Andersen independent researcher (Corso Valparaiso 32, ap. 5, Chiavari (GE), Italy, 16043)
vlad.andersen@gmail.com

Andersen V. V. Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dialogus miraculorum. Dictio V: On demons. Russian translation, preface and commentary, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2018, vol. 7, pp. 208–231.

doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2018-00011

Language: Russian

This is the first Russian translation of the 5^th distinctio of the Dialogus Miraculorum, perhaps the most interesting part of the famous collection of exempla compiled by Caesarius of Heisterbach in 1220s. The chapter is meant to illustrate how the presence of evil, or more precisely, the demons, can be felt, and is roughly structured in the following groups: visions of demons, the obsessed and the proofs of them being truly obsessed; heretics and their heresies; how the apparitions of demons can hurt people; demons as servants; demons as provokers of iniquity; demons hurting nuns; different apparitions demons can take; demons laughing over impious monks.

Dialogus is, as its title suggests, a dialog: two characters (Caesarius eagerly disavows them as fictional in the preface), a monk and a novice, discuss miraculous events, how one needs to interpret them for the salvation of the soul proper. Together with the works of Jacques de Vitry and Étienne de Bourbon, Dialogus is a work where the exemplum appears at its best (not a literary form to be readily discarded as per E. R. Curtius, who based his view on the exempla on a later, and perhaps very flawed, evidence from Dante). The «new» exemplum of the 12^thcentury, preached to a modernized monastic or a «homines novi» urban audience, had to be realistic (in a medieval sense) and tended to include folk legends or beliefs in the narrative: this means that the literature of exempla contains invaluable evidence on the civilization of the Middle Ages as well as the European folklore. The 5^th distinctio of Dialogus is translated for the first time in Russian in full, and the reader hopefully would appreciate Caesarius’ style: after all, it’s the genre of the exemplum that predecesses the Renaissance novella and modern short story.

Key words: examples, medieval literature, folklore, demons, heresies, Waldenses, Cathars

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/andersen-2018-en/