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In recent days, with anxiety a series of trials and plans are identifying for another replacement and revision of the Bulgarian position regarding EU membership of the Republic of Macedonia.
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My aim is to explain patterns in the areal distribution of sets of motifs selected from traditional mythological texts. I am concerned with distributions over very wide geographic areas. I claim that these patterns contain evidence on the distant past, and can be correlated with information provided by archaeology. I offer particular hypotheses concerning plausible causes of some of these patterns, but am ready to accept any hypotheses other than mine which would provide cogent explanations. Traditional narratives contain ready-made elements which I call motifs. Motifs are reproduced when people retell their texts. Motifs preserve their form during very long periods of time, while the mythological texts which are composed of them change their meanings more rapidly. The database consists of more than 25,000 abstracts of texts (on disc), mostly American and Siberian. There remain no significant gaps in the database, but more and more publications do become available with time. With a such a volume of information already accumulated, additional data do not change major conclusions. But some new, previously unrecognized, minor patterns are revealed. The differences between areal mythologies become visible thanks to comparison of statistical indexes which characterize mutual correlation between the motifs. Motifs with the largest but sharply restricted areas of distribution influence the overall picture more than others. Sets of motifs demonstrate territorial correlation not with the ethnic cultures and separate languages but with big culture areas. Any culture area is a historical product of particular environment and technology. The statistically significant similarities between mythologies of distant areas must go back to the time when the corresponding populations shared similar culture. This could hardly be later than in the Terminal Pleistocene – Early Holocene times. Most of the motifs that have been checked are neutral in respect to any forms of economic activity, social organization or environment. The Principal-Components Analysis is computed. It reveals major patterns in the distribution of about 1000 motifs across 165 selected areas. Separate patterns correspond to each of the principal components (PC). The program assesses pairwise the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between sets of motifs recorded in each area and assigns a value for the contribution of each motif to the overall pattern. The greater the number of elements (motifs, in our case), the more axes (PC) will be meaningful and the smaller the percent of information (general dispersion) which is accounted for by each PC. The combination of all principal components which have been analysed here together account for slightly more than one fifth of the total information. The remainder corresponds to distributions of motifs on a local and subregional level. Every PC axis is independent and has two extremes for the most different complexes of motifs. The 1st PC reveals the difference between North American mythologies from one side, and Central and South American ones (Amazonia at the extreme), from another. The greatest number of «North American» motifs in Latin America contain mythologies of the South Cone. Geographically, just they are the farthest from North America. This picture correlates well with distribution of Clovis derived fish-tail (Fell) type stone points in South America. Australian mythologies contain more «Amazonian» than «North American» motifs. The Amazonian parallels are even more characteristic for Melanesia. The Melanesian data have not yet been statistically processed but available publications suggest this conclusion. It is plausible that a particular set of motifs was brought to New World 12,000 bp or slightly earlier (along the Alaskan coast?) and that it was similar to one that was carried from the East Asia to New Guinea. In the Asian Pacific rim, the percent of «Amazonian» motifs increases along from Chukchi Peninsula to Kamchatka and further to Japan. «North American» motifs dominate in Siberian mythologies. In North America the Inuit Eskimo share the largest number of common motifs with Amazonia. The mythologies of Alaska Eskimos contain more «North American» motifs than the Inuit, probably because they have been subject to longer and more intensive interaction with Indian and Paleoasiatic traditions. Other traits, however, place the Eskimo as well as the groups of the Northwest Coast nearer to Siberian clusters than to most of the Amerindian ones. The 2nd PC differentiates areal clusters according to the number of motifs from the check list. The 3rd PC sets mythologies of Mexico, Central America and most of the inner North America («Pueblo-Mesoamerican», or «Midwestern» complex) against the mythologies of the Northwest Coast and American Subarctics («Alaskan» complex). The plausible way to interpret these data is to see here traces of two routes of early movement of people. One along the Mackenzie corridor entering Plains. Another along the Pacific Coast entering California, Plateau and Great Basin. On the NW Coast, the last and the most securely reconstructed migrational episode was the spread of the microblade-microcore industry related to Denali. This industry could be connected with the appearance of Na-Dene languages (Eyak-Athabascan, Tlingit, and possibly Haida). Some non-adaptive ethnographic traits (types of baskets and fishing hooks) distinguish Tlingit and Haida from the more southern people of the NW Coast. There are also motifs common to both northwestern part of North America and eastern South America. The Asiatic clusters nearest to Mesoamerica and the Southwest are Buryat (with Mongol) followed by South Siberian Turks and Tungus. The Southern Siberian and Mongolian mythologies are saturated with South Asian, Iranian and Near Eastern elements. American analogies for this region demonstrate not so much particular Transbaikal or Altai but general Central Eurasian links to the New World. Northern Siberia and the Far East are mostly outside of the respective set of parallels. The 4th PC contrasts «Western» and «Eastern» sets of motifs. The first unites mythologies of the NW Coast (Coastal Salish at the extreme followed by Tlingit) and Mesoamerica. In South America, this complex can be traced down to Northwest Amazonia and Central Peru. «Eastern» complex is best represented across northern Plains. In South America it finds parallels in Central and Eastern Brazil. According to the 5th PC, mythologies of Plateau and Great Basin, on one side («Plateau» set of motifs), and northern Great Lakes region, on another («Canadian» set of motifs) are the most different. The «Plateau» complex can be connected with caution with Penutian language stock. Its core area coincides with distribution of Early Holocene stemmed stone points. In South America «Plateau» motifs are recorded mainly in Chaco and Patagonia. This pattern fits well the suggestion about western United States as a region from where «North American» motifs had been introduced into South America. The precise set of motifs brought to New World by the Clovis people is difficult to select because once established, contacts across Beringia and then across the Bering Strait probably never ceased. Two types of distributional patterns with all possible intermediate variants in between can be distinguished within the North American complex. Some motifs are absent in the Northeast Asia or are known exclusively in the New World where they are recorded not only in North America but also in South America. Others (probably spread later in time) demonstrate extensive Siberian parallels but are unknown in South America or recorded there rarely and only in the areas not too distant from Panama Isthmus. All sets of motifs selected by the 3rd, 4th, and 5th PC are local manifestations of the «North American» complex. The opposition between «North American» and «Amazonian» complexes is the basic one. The «Amazonian» mythology can be assessed as the relic of earlier situation which was characteristic for the Eastern Eurasia in Late Pleistocene and survived in the isolated refugia such as Eastern South America, Australia, Melanesia and to much lesser extent, American Arctic and Japan. The «North American» mythology is the product of further change and differentiation. This scenario basically coincides with results of recent research in craniology, odonthology and populational genetics.
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Aux XIe–XIIe siècles, de même qu’aux premières décennies du siècle suivant, la Russie kiévienne connaît un remarquable développement culturel, répercuté aussi dans le domaine des métiers liés à la réalisation des objets de culte. Parmi ces pièces une place à part revient aux petites croix pectorales en métal, autant simples, que doubles aussi, de type reliquaire. Le principal centre de production de petites croix a été la ville de Kiev, mais, au fur et à mesure de l’essor d’autres centres princiers et du morcellement de la Russie kiévienne on a commencé à les travailler en divers habitats àcaractère urbain. Parmi les objets à caractère rituel, produits durant la période prémongole dans les knésats vieux russes, ayant une iconographie distincte, ancrée dans les réalités locales, il y a aussi ceux à l’image des saints Boris et Gleb. La popularité du culte des deux saints explique la diversité des pièces de culte où l’on a figuré des images reproduisant leurs visages. Dans la présente étude nous ne nous proposons pas de nous rapporter à la totalité des portraits médiévaux des deux illustres sanctifiés, mais seulement de viser les petites croix de type encolpion ayant leur image individuelle et qui sont, d’ailleurs, paraît-il, les plus anciennes et en même temps les plus répandues.
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Philippus Aureolus Teophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheimm, known also as Paracelsus, is one of the most eminent representative of European alchemy. His achievements and fragments of the course of life are both presented in this article.
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The review deals with the publication "Valdis Āboliņš. Avangards, meilārts un kultūras sakari aukstā kara laikā = Valdis Āboliņš. The Avant-garde, mailart, the New Left and Cultural Relations during the Cold War", eds. Ieva Astahovska and Antra Priede-Krievkalne (Riga: Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2019). The book comprising articles by art historians, curators and other contemporaries as well as Āboliņš' correspondence, writings and mailart is seen as a significant effort to establish the significance of this Latvian in exile, art curator and leftist activist.
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This article proposes the brief reconstruction of the philosopher Constantin Noicaʼs biography. During the communist regime, his life was marked by two political events: the establishment of compulsory residence in the provincial town Câmpulung-Muscel in 1949 and his arrest in December 1958. Actually, at the end of the 1950s the communist judicial authorities consider the writers Constantin Noica and Constantin Pillat responsible for the subversive activities practiced by a group of 23 intellectuals, who remained in the history of communism in Romania under the name of the „Noica-Pillat batch”.
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The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was a critical event in the history of the Balkans, that left its profound imprint on the notions of Bulgarians of their past and of their self-image. Behind the seemingly unambiguous evaluation of this event – a defeat of Christendom that has to do with the fall of the Bulgarian Kingdom – an observer could trace one more complicated, ambivalent picture. The paper marks some of its premises:A) The city was unsuccessfully attacked by Bulgarians several times in the past and they still think themselves through the prism of these wars. B) Byzantines (Greeks) and Ottomans (Turks) are the traditional enemies in the Bulgarian national mythology. Their conflict and their interrelations as a whole generate different reactions, multiple plots.C) In the nineteenth century when the foundations of Bulgarian nationalism were set up, Constantinople (Istanbul) was probably the city with the largest Bulgarian population and the stage for many of the important events in the Bulgarian society.This paper offers а brief review of the main types of Bulgarian texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries dealing with the fall of Constantinople, comparing them with some Byzantine sources, with some Greek and other interpretations of this event and focuses on one not so popular dramatic work, written in verses by Svetoslav Milarov in the early 1870s. Here the ambivalent attitude of a part of Bulgarian society to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was more visible.
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The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the advancing process of the ethnopolitical and ethnocultural prerequisites of the autonomy of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia in XIX-early XX century and attempts of their implementation. Methodology. The research is based on the principle of methodological synthesis. It provides the consolidation of the instrumental findings of famous scientific schools, in particular, the civilization approach to the analysis of the historical process and the methods of social and anthropological history along with the mentality discourse. That has enabled to take account of the features of stage development of state and religious institutes, the extent of civilization likeness of states and peoples, possibilities of their cultural and religious self-identification in the polyethnic society. The scientific novelty is in finding out the conceptual approaches to the interpretation of the history of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia in XIX-early XX century, determining the dominant factors of the development of the national and foreign models of Orthodoxy, substantiating the fact that there were necessary ethnocultural prerequisites for beginning of the autonomy process in the country in the early XXth century. Conclusions. In spite of over hundred-year Russian colonization and serial russification of Orthodox Church in Bessarabia, it preserved ethnocultural and ethnoreligious principles of national identity. Russian bourgeois-democratic revolutions naturally aroused not only the country autonomy movement but also autocephalous one violently ceased by Romanian conquest of Bessarabia.
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In the last decade of the 19th century the Bulgarians appeared in the theatrical life in Ottoman Salonica. Their theatrical activities and their preferences were entirely in line with those of the Jewish and Greek communities in the city. The prevalent performances were those dedicated to some charity cause and presented patriotic themes. The theatrical activities of the Bulgarians were driven mostly by teachers and students at the Bulgarian educational institutions.
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The article aims at exploring the celebration of the Day of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius among the Southern Slavs in the 19th and 20th centuries. The personality, activity, cultural and historical heritage of Saints Cyril and Methodius were imposed permanently in the mass consciousness of the Slavic nations in the 19th century owing to Slavic studies, the Slavophil movement and the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. This holiday evolved faster and more widely among Western Catholic Slavs than among Eastern Orthodox Slavs, and through a third model, unique only to the Bulgarians. They have the oldest tradition among all Slavic peoples in this area. On the basis of that historical tradition and actual political necessity in Bulgaria, a transition from the celebration of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius from the religious sphere to civil life occurred already in the mid-19th century. The Day of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius became the first Bulgarian national holiday celebrated on May 11 on the Orthodox Church Calendar. After the change of calendar style in 1916, this holiday began to be celebrated on May 24. Among Slovenians and Croats this holiday is part of the Catholic Church calendar on July 5. Among the Serbs throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries there was absolutely no tradition of civil or church celebration of Cyril and Methodius. In the Republic of Northern Macedonia the Day of the Slavic Apostles became an official holiday in 1998, in the Republic of Serbia – as late as in 2019. In both countries, as in Bulgaria, it is celebrated on 24 May.
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This work looks at the political discourse of Marshal Ion Antonescu from the perspective of international relations theory, specifically realism and idealism. There is no agreement yet among historians and political scientists regarding the nature of the regime of Ion Antonescu. Some have called him a nationalist, a fascist dictator, others see in him a moderate dictator, or simply an opportunist politician. Therefore, further exploration of his political personality from the lenses of international relations theory should not be dismissed. One way of conducting this exploration can be done by comparing his personal writings, diplomatic letters and political correspondence with the main features of realism and idealism. The existent literature on the subject is also used in order to provide insight into how other scholars have perceived Ion Antonescu. The study is first concerned with identifying the main characteristics of realism and idealism, afterwards it analyses Ion Antonescu’s political ideas as selected from his published volumes, correspondence, political statements and actions. The conclusion shows how despite the existence of serious examples where Ion Antonescu displays an idealist ideology (most of these are found in the pre-1939 period), the circumstances of his political activity have led to this aspect of his political thinking being replaced with realism.
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The aim of presented study is a philosophical analysis of education in the works of St. Augustine and Boethius. The study deals with the concept of seven liberal arts in the philosophical context and it is focused on the personality of Aurelius Augustine and Boethius, their works and impact on formation and transfer of the tradition of septem artes liberales (seven liberal arts). Each section contains a selection of the Latin texts written by Augustine and Boethius and our own Slovak translations. The set task of the texts reflects the idea of education and the principles of selected disciplines from the septem artes liberales cycle. The study also analyses the reception of seven liberal arts in the Middle Age and the idea of comprehensive education. It is focused on the idea of the medieval university and the content of teaching programmes at the first universities. In addition, the study deals with the importance of humanistic values of education for today’s man and society. The intention is using the selected Latin texts to justify the both – the need for the humanity component of education for society and the presence of humanities programmes at universities.
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The present paper stakes out the destiny of certain ideas on scientific methods and epistemic and ontological representations that spread in 17th century Europe like a cultural epidemiology of representations against a deist, theosophical, empiricist and occult maze-like background. Our intellectual history study evaluates the family resemblances of auctoritas of three polymaths: Francis Bacon, Jan Baptist Van Helmont and Demetrius Cantemir along the cultural corridors of knowledge. If Francis Bacon was a theoretical founder of doctrines and Jan Baptist Van Helmont was a complex experimenting spirit, Demetrius Cantemir was an able disseminator of philosophy in South Eastern Europe and a creative synthetic spirit bridging the Divan ideas of Western and Eastern minds caught up in the busy exchange of ideas of the Republic of Letters.
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Un thème important de l’historiographie roumaine est le rôle culturel et scientifique de l’intelligentsia transylvanienne, à l’est et au sud des Carpates, au cours du XIXe siècle, jusqu’à la Grande Union de 1918. Mémoires, correspondance, articles de presse, biographies sont des sources multiple, qui offre une explication importante des motivations, des sentiments, des attitudes et des actions de l’intelligence transylvanienne, afin d’intensifier le lien culturel et spirituel avec l’intelligentsia moldavienne, banatienne, bessarabe et bucovinienne. Les racines de cette connexion sont profondes, dans l’histoire des siècles précédents. La prise de conscience de la vision de la nation, depuis la période des Lumières, puis romantique, signifiait l’établissement d’identités communes, liées à l’origine ethnique, l’histoire, la langue, la patrie, la foi chrétienne, la culture, la tradition, les coutumes, etc. Les clercs, les érudits et les professeurs d’école étaient les plus réceptifs à l’établissement de liens concrets entre toutes les provinces habitées par les Roumains. Les raisons liées à la présence des Transylvains dans le sud et l’est des Carpates, afin de faire, notamment, un travail culturel et éducatif, ont été diverses : des persécutions des autorités, à l’appel de bonnes personnalités, par les dirigeants, boyards ou dirigeants des institutions public ou privé. Près de chaque grande ville des Principautés, un enseignant de Transylvanie a été établi : Ion Maiorescu à Craiova, Aaron Florian et Axente Sever à Bucarest, Simion Bărnuțiu et Alexandru Papiu Ilarian à Iași, Aron Pumnul à Cernăuți, et d’autres. Certains des Transylvains ou des Banat n’avaient que des initiatives éducatives, culturelles et publicistique d’autres se sont également aventurés dans le tourbillon d’actions politiques, risquant leur liberté et leur vie. Le militantisme national de l’intelligentsia transylvanienne visait à l’émancipation nationale, au-delà des frontières politiques, émancipation qui signifiait la préservation de l’identité nationale, en tant qu’acte de justice sociale et politique, dans des conditions de domination étrangère, incompatibles avec l’âge des nationalismes. Les polémiques, l’hostilités ne manquaient pas, causées par des divergences d’opinion ou la fierté personnelle. Le solidarité entre les représentants de l’intelligentsia était lié de leur compatibilités spirituelles, culturelles et politiques, au-delà des différences de mentalité entre les générations ou de la spécificité mentale régionale. L’esprit de l’intelligentsia transylvanienne, ainsi que celui de toutes les provinces historiques, s’est manifesté, non seulement par le partage des connaissances, par la vigueur et le courage des opinions, la défense des valeurs nationales, mais aussi par l’implication messianique « au sens de la mission, du saint devoir! » dans les affaires publiques. Leur activité publique dépendait, dans une large mesure, des lois, des normes et des décisions politiques des autorités, des autorités locales aux autorités gouvernementales et monarchiques.
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The study represents an excursion into the biography of a great Transylvanian historian, former professor at the University of Cluj: Silviu Dragomir. His life started in a village from the Hunedoara region. He descended from a family of notaries, who encouraged him to study seriously. The path of Silviu Dragomir’s studies is interesting. He studied in Blaj, Novi Sad, then in Cernăuți, where he studied theology. His passion for historical studies led him to Vienna. He visited the archives of Karlowitz and those of Moscow, devoting himself to the history of the church. This was, in fact, the discipline that he taught as a new professor at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Sibiu in 1911. If the studies of church history reveal the confessional attachment of the historian involved in the life of the Orthodox Church, another direction of research, which extended over several decades, namely the 1848 revolution, is linked to his political beliefs. Formed in a period when Transylvania was integrated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he devoted his entire life in writing and through political activity to the political and cultural affirmation of the Romanians. Silviu Dragomir expressed his interest in the national and political struggle in the decade before 1918, in accordance with the political activism of a group of Romanian young people at the time, focusing on the political movement at the time of the Supplex, which, in his opinion, prefaced the political program of the revolution of 1848. He approached the personality of Avram Iancu with an assumed subjectivity, he tried to understand him based on his own experience and acknowledged the considerable influence that Avram Iancu exercised on himself and his generation. He supported the union of Transylvania with Romania through his writings of 1918, through the contributions to "Gazeta Poporului” from Sibiu (to which he contributed as a founder) and then through the participation in the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia. He was elected secretary and then head of the press office of the Governing Council. His own career began in 1919, when he became a professor of history of the peoples in South-Eastern Europe at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Cluj. In the political and institutional environment of Greater Romania, as a professor and researcher, he illustrated, together with Alexandru Lapedatu and Ioan Lupaș, the new study direction meant to establish the place and role of Transylvania in the Romanian historical life, the originality of the Romanian civilization, a direction that gave history the role of legitimizing the present. The political finality of his historical writings is highlighted by the contributions to "La Revue de Transylvanie”, established with his help in 1934. Dedicated to informing the Western public about Transylvanian issues (ethnic, minority-majority relations), the magazine reflected the tensions in the Romanian-Hungarian political relations of those years and, therefore, had the role of counteracting the increasingly active propaganda of the Hungarian state that notified the international courts regarding the Romanian state policy towards the minorities.
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