Raport z badań podlaskich
Report on Research in the Podlasie Region, part 1

Summary/Abstract: The following article is an excerpt of the Ethnographic Archive Podlasie research summary from 2007, concerning the cult of Saint Gabriel Zabłudowski [Gavriil Zabludowsky], the saint of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, patron of Orthodox youth. According to the legend the saint was killed by Jews in 1690. At the beginning his cult developed slowly with his relics absent and carried off to Russia. After 1989 we noticed a sudden boom in the cult which contained clear threads of the blood legend. It has been reinforced by openly anti-Semitic films coming to Poland from Russia, shown once in a while in religious education rooms throughout eastern Podlasie without the Orthodox Church’s approval. In the article the author presents theoretical bases for the analysis of the informants’ statements and outlines a broader comparative context. Both of them have been formed through research carried out in Sandomierz in 2005, connected with the presence of paintings showing Jews committing ritual murder in two churches in that town (cf. J. Tokarska-Bakir, Legendy o krwi. Antropologia przesądu, [Blood Legends. Anthropology of Prejudice], Warsaw 2008).

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