Сушишката светица Стойна. 3. Пpoблeмът за светостта
Saint Stoyna from Sushitsa. 3. The Meaning of the Notion “Holiness”

Summary/Abstract: Who is regarded as a saint in Bulgarian villages and is he the same just, pious follower of the Christ venerated by the Church? The problem studied in the article was suggested by data collected from the population in Petrich district believing that the healer and clairvoyant Stoyna Dimitrova, dead in 1933, is a saint. The population regards her with an attitude which has all the principal characteristics of a religious cult. There are two icons of the Saint in Sushitsa Church, the village where she lived, her tomb is a place of veneration, the women of the village have composed her biography which the priest reads on her anniversary days. The Saint’s life and the folklore legends about her are published in the previous issues of the journal. The comparison between the Christian and the folklore interpretation of holiness shows that according to the Christian tradition the saint is a perfect Christian whose life must be an example for the others, the miracles he produces after his death serve to prove that the sample must be followed as closer as possible, and in folklore tradition the saint is regarded as an anthropomorphized supernatural “power”, it is not an example to follow but a power able to produce miracles and able to help people in resolving their problems, especially as a remedy against illness and mortal diseases. The saints which are most helpful to village people (St. George, St. Nedelya, St. Mina) are considered to be “alive” and are treated as members of the folk village community. That motivates the fact that other members of the same community gifted, according to their fellow countrymen, with “supernatural” power to cure and foretell the future, are considered to be saints during their lifetime. That is exactly the attitude towards the saint from Sushitsa whose extraordinary gifts, as well as her pious life had determined her as a saint as well as before and after her death. The authors mention also other cases of village curers and fortune-tellers considered to be “saints” but they are extremely rare because the common nomination of such persons in folklore culture are “wiseman/woman” or “sorcerer”.

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