КРСТ КАО СУПСТИТУТ СВЕТОГ ДРВЕТА У ТРАДИЦИОНАЛНОЈ КУЛТУРИ БАЛКАНА
А CROSS AS А SUBSTITUTE OF A HOLY TREE IN THE TRADITIONAL BALKAN CULTURE

Summary/Abstract: In traditional Balkan culture, which preserved very archaic religious forms even until these days, cult worshipping of the tree is very ob vious and vivid. The tree is worshipped as a holy tree in an open space (so called запис or оброк), as a tree on the grave of a deceased, as a Christ mas tree (so called бадњак) and as a fruitful tree in many customs. How ever, the holy tree has many of its substitutes (replacements) – wooden objects in which this aspect of a substitute is not often obvious, but it is revealed through the comparison of ethnographic material. This paper presents facts indicating that a cross is, as a pre-Christian symbol dating from even pre-historic times, in fact, a substitute for a holy tree. Those 184 facts relate to the connections, more precisely to the common presence and common customary context of the aforementioned cult trees and tree like symbols, as well as certain substitutes for the holy tree (house ceiling beam, door, lintel, icon, stamp with IC XC NI KA Christogram, ard). Cross appears in the most diverse forms: cross-like stone and wooden monuments (that can be both votive cross and gravestones), cross-like symbols on these stones, crosses on ritual breads related to cult trees and these gravestones, small crosses made of remains of burnt Christmas Eve tree badnjak, crosses of dough made on Christmas or of the first dough made in a calendar year that are stuck to certain substitutes for holy trees (house ceiling beam, door, lintel).

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