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Review of: Елена Никифорова - PELKMANS, MATHIJS. DEFENDING THE BORDER: IDENTITY, RELIGION, AND MODERNITY IN THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA. ITHACA: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006. 240 P. ISBN 978-0-8014-7330-2.
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The paper considers whether it is possible and appropriate to differentiate between the types of saints in the Middle Ages and the early Modern Era in Europe. The study is based on the analysis of various types of sources, such as saints’ lives, protocols of canonization processes, and other church acts. The typologies of “old” (late antique and medieval) and “new” (represented by the so-called beati moderni) saints were compared. The differences between the medieval and the modern vision of sanctity in Catholic Church were revealed. The classifications of saints proposed by A. Voshe and M.Yu. Paramonova were discussed. A new classification of beati moderni was suggested. The specifics of canonization of “new saints” and the phenomenon of their emergence were explored. Using the results of the comparative analysis, it was concluded that “new saints” must be distinguished from the medieval ones, because they are a reflection of the realities and values of the early Modern Era. In many cases, they determined a new image of saints in Catholic Church, which has been common since the Council of Trent until the present times.
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The Christian East is extremely diverse. Some Churches of the Christian East have developed extensive iconographic art along with the theory of this art, while others have not. The Church of Constantinople developed patterns in the field of iconography, including Marian iconography. Byzantine Marian icons can be divided into four groups: (1) Marian feasts; (2) theological icons; (3) symbolic icons; (4) liturgical icons. A characteristic feature of theological icons is the focus on the close relationship between Mary and Christ (God). These icons include the types: Kyriotissa, Hodegetria, Eleusa, Platytera. These are the most important basic icons of Mary discussed in the article.
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The discourse on the human–animal relationship has recently received wider attention in Poland. Periodicals with different ideological backgrounds have taken strong and mutually exclusive positions. This social phenomenon provides an opportunity to apply a novel theoretical approach to sociological analysis. In regard to theory, this paper shows how categories of heresy and orthodoxy can be applied beyond theology. The proposed outline of Christian heresiological discourse is used to indicate aspects worth considering in analyses of the changing relationships between humans and animals. In particular, the focus is on how people present themselves and their doctrine as orthodox while viewing their opponents as heretics holding heretical principles. The empirical analysis covers the special issues on animals published by influential Polish periodicals between 2017 and 2019. These periodicals (Newsweek Polska, Polonia Christiana, and Tygodnik Powszechny) were chosen for their different world-views. The paper demonstrates how relationality, inherent in the heresy–orthodoxy pair of concepts, allows to bring out contradictory narratives regarding the postulated way of perceiving animals and shaping human–animal relationships. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the present conflicting views and spill-over effects, as well as of the dynamic process of recognising these views as true or false. Considering the heresiological discourse makes it possible to better understand the competition for cultural dominance.
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The article attempts to analyze the semantic structure of the “God’s fool” concept in the essay Pepiniere by I. A. Goncharov. As a term, this concept is interpreted from the point of view of culturology. The essay reveals the basic structural components of the “God’s fool” concept, as well as its core and additional semantic features. The author of the article believes that the religious component is embodied in the structure of the concept one way or another, but is not reflected directly in the word usage. The “God’s fool” lexeme mainly comprises various secular meanings that are expressed via metaphors, repetitions and comparisons. The specific nature of the “God’s fool” concept in I.A. Goncharov’s Pepiniere is revealed in its periphery, which is formed by certain artistic techniques and categories (intertextual exchanges, comic elements). For instance, the function of the quote of Friday’s nomination from Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Written by Himself, as well as the comparative quote from Boris Godunov by A. S. Pushkin are considered in this article. Furthermore, quoting is an artistic technique that creates the game motive, to which I. A. Goncharov resorts indirectly. The gaming component not only creates and emphasizes the comical element, but also serves as one of the writer’s artistic principles that contributes to the creation of the harmonious, negentropic worldview. The study of I. A. Goncharov’s sphere of concepts allows to identify not so much the variability of the writer’s worldview as its invariability.
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The article examines the F. M. Dostoevsky’s Pushkin’s Speech in the context of modern studies of the way ancient heritage was reflected in the writer’s work. The analysis of the speech was carried out in the categories of rhetorical poetics. The author proves that the speech is structured according to the rules of epideictic eloquence, with a pronounced emotional component characteristic of Christian preaching. The author identifies established stylistic figures, the use of which is always justified: repetition, parallelism, gradation, amplification, polyphonic forms, period, allusion, irony. Rhetoric is translated into poetics. Pushkin’s characters (Aleko and Onegin, Tatiana, Pimen) become images with apparent features of both Christian culture and antiquity. Evangelical motifs and images, allusions to antiquity, concepts of Orthodox and ancient culture are integrated in a journalistic form. Christ and Pushkin are connected figuratively in poetics and rhetoric of the speech. Dostoevsky creates a portrait of the Russian poet, his image, and it is no accident that the “speech” is called an essay by its author.
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The subject of article is the history of the musical and poetic composition of the Christmas sticheron “Σήμερον ὁ Χριστός” by Johann Damascene with the Gospel quotation “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will toward men” (Lk. 2:14), as well as the circle of associated stichera in Byzantine, Old Russian and Kiev-Lithuanian traditions. The musical text of the hymns is represented in Greek manuscripts by Chartres, Coislin and middle-Byzantine neumes; Old Russian chant books were analyzed using znamenny neumes and singer notation; and Kiev manuscripts - using Kievan five-line notation records. The melody of the Christmas sticheron emphasizes the importance of the Gospel quotation with long melismatic musical fragments of the quotation itself and the previous sentence. This sticheron became a model for several hymns to Epiphany, Purification of the Most Holy Mother of God, Annunciation and Entry into the Temple of the Most Holy Mother of God, the majority of which were excluded from liturgical use. There are various ways of creating a new sticheron based on the model: prosomoion may be a calque or an independent composition with certain elements of model tune. The latter case of the sticheron to the Entry into the Temple “Σήμερον τῷ ναῷ προσάγεται” has its own musical text history in three traditions, independent from that of the model. Chants of Old Russian manuscripts of 11th-14th centuries are similar to those of a Byzantine origin, but in the 15th-17th centuries the music of these two traditions has developed in different ways. The Kievan chant tradition, similar to both Old Russian and Byzantine ones, is a point of intersection of chant cultures.
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The article focuses on the unsolved mystery of the novel by I. S. Turgenev Fathers and Children - the Italian-style al fresco painting The Resurrection of Christ, located above the entrance to the church at the entrance to the Odintsova estate. None of the researchers and commentators of Turgenev’s novel were puzzled by the question: what does “Italian-style” mean in the Easter image? Meanwhile, Turgenev directly points out that, instead of the gateway Orthodox icon, there is a religious painting The Resurrection of Christ (al fresco painting) in the church, where both the sacrament itself and the outsider witness (“a swarthy warrior in a spiked helmet in the foreground”) are presented. In the Orthodox Easter iconography, however, an outside figure is an unacceptable detail, and the sacrament of the Resurrection as the highest sacred reality in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Gospel was not depicted. The Easter sacrament was replaced by the scene of the Descent into Hell, but such an icon was still called Resurrection. Meanwhile, canonically, the procession of Christ is captured, when the Savior does not descend into hell, but rises from there on the icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell: he leads Adam and other biblical heroes out of the underworld by “grabbing of the wrist.” In this way, the Resurrection of Christ begins with the salvation of man, with co-resurrection. In the value and semantic space of the novel, the Orthodox icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell is concealed behind the “Italian” fresco-veil. If Turgenev knows the “Italian” semantics of the Resurrection, then it is quite natural that the author is more familiar with the semantics of the Orthodox icon from liturgical recollection and makes it covertly actual. The behind-thescenes presence of the icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell and everything that is liturgically and theologically associated with it and experienced transubs the structure of Fathers and Children. The Easter hierotopy of the novel, outlined by the Orthodox icon and supported by the prayerful hopes of the finale 1) creates a very special, breathtaking and enlightening value space, correlated with eternity, the infinity of the spiritual, which affirms, elevating all present to endless life through participation; 2) sets up the supertext dimension, gives rise to the motive of transcendental hope: “You will not leave my soul in hell”; 3) and also strengthens the Russian word as the Christocentric foundation of Russian culture.
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The article deals with the anthropological aspects of Dostoevsky’s creative work. Its study requires researchers to take into account the classic’s pronounced Christian orientation of the artistic system. In the center of this system is the ideal of Christ, in whose light Dostoevsky’s concept of man is formed and the typology of characters is determined. The dominant type is the hero-ideologist, however, in addition to the underground type, he is also represented by the heroes of the “positive idea”. The latter preach the idea of salvation through the transformation of the person in Christ, rather than the idea of forcibly changing the world to achieve universal happiness. However, Dostoevsky’s anthropological discovery was not only the idea of compassion for a person fallen in sin, but also the concept of human transience in earthly existence, and hence the assertion of the idea of immortality, in which man will achieve his fullness and harmony. The quintessence of Dostoevsky’s anthropological concept is the idea of “all-humanity” (“vsechelovechnost”) and “universal responsiveness”, capable of uniting people on the basis of spiritual brotherhood and acceptance of the alien as one’s own.
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The article studies the topic of excessive drinking in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky in the light of the tradition of the ancient feast, or symposium. The wine offered at a symposium did not merely incline people to philosophical conversations and discussions about eternal questions, but also revealed the inner human essence, thoughts and intentions. There is ancient understanding of wine as a means of forgetting sorrows and attaining temporary joys. Excessive drinking is associated with the ancient Dionysian idea - excessive drinking at the festival of Dionysus, and the concept of metamorphosis - people lose their human essence and begin to resemble animals. In the fates of the heroes of Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk, Humiliated and Insulted, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, the ancient tradition is combined with the Christian understanding of a feast as reveling, and amusements at a feast, and excessive drinking as a moral transgression. On the pages of Dostoevsky’s magazine Citizen excessive drinking is equated to a serious illness, a flood, a fire, an enemy invasion, that is, to a catastrophe that affects the Russian people. The ancient tradition allows to reveal additional meanings in Dostoevsky’s interpretation of the topic of excessive drinking.
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The article analyzes the semantic functions of the Old Testament and New Testament texts in the story Polosa (Stripe), a landmark for the literature of the final stage of Russian classical realism, written by Lydia Nelidova, whose work has not yet been the subject of special study. The relevance of the research is defined by the rather high role of Nelidova’s creative activity in the literary process of the last decades of the 19th century. Biblical references, quotations, reminiscences, allusions and paraphrases, which determine the sequence of the text that creates the semantic field of the work, perform the dominant ideological and aesthetic function in creating the story as a “non-trivial new text.” Nelidova’s innovation is based on the active use of Dostoevsky’s literary traditions (orientation toward the idea of “finding a person in a person” and the “living life” constant). As a “semantic whole,” Nelidova’s story is organized by the internal dialogue of three concepts of “life.” One of them is based on the Christian teaching, the other on an appeal to science, and the third - on the idea of life as an all-dominating objective force. The author’s moral and aesthetic position, which confirms the biblical concept of life, is objectified in the logic of semantic actualization of the gospel truths associated with the interpretations of the eternal theme of the struggle between good and evil, ways of human salvation, overcoming the sin of thoughts, pride and selfishness. The artistic historicism of the story, manifested in the coverage of the social contradictions of the post-reform Russia, sanctions the author’s intentionality associated with the assertion of universal human spiritual, moral and humanistic ideals. Formation of meaning at the level of the author’s intentionality and at the level of meaning generation is carried out by activating the intertextual, hypertextual and contextual functionality of biblical pretexts and traditions of Orthodox Christian culture. It is implemented in the process of illuminating conflicts of time and characters’ psychological disclosure. Intertextual reminiscences and quotes from biblical texts, the works of Christian ascetic writers and patristic sources aim to form the semantic core of the main character’s narrative and implement the principle of intersemantization of meanings enshrined in sacred texts. Thanks to these texts, they manifest in the thoughts of a character seeking a way out of spiritual and moral impasse. The author’s artistic experience stimulated the formation of the Dostoevsky school in the literature of the last decades of the 19th century. The author’s quote-based thinking anticipates the narrative strategies that will become characteristic of the artistic discourse of subsequent historical and literary eras.
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The article offers an interpretation of Innokenty Annensky’s poem Magdalene written in 1885, but published only in 1997. This early work of the poet differs significantly from his poetry, known from published collections (Quiet Songs and Cypress Box), which are not characterized by an appeal to biblical images and motifs. In the poem Magdalene Annensky offers his interpretation of the Gospel story, depicting the conflict and struggle between human feelings (Mary Magdalene) and divine vocation (Jesus) in the dialogues between Magdalene and Jesus. Analysis of the structure of the poem allows us to determine the presence of three literary traditions in it: 1) ancient Greek tragedy and the chorus as one of its main actors; 2) a romantic poem about unrequited love (first of all, The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov) and the concept of romantic duality; 3) Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The combination of antique concepts (fate, destiny, metamorphosis) with the ideas of Christianity, as well as allusions to the works of Russian romantics, allowed the author to combine three aspects in the image of Mary Magdalene: ancient fate (destiny), Christian (Orthodox) holiness and romantic alienation from the world. The combination of these three aspects in the poem by I. Annensky forms a new quality: the romantic poem did not provide for the chorus as a character, and the ancient Greek tragedy did not allow for such lyrical digressions typical for a romantic poem. The Gospel text in the poem by I. Annensky is transformed in line with the three mentioned traditions, and thus the theme “grows” into a dramatic poem.
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The article addresses several important questions for understanding various views about Muslim-Christian relations from a theological perspective. These questions are: understanding narratives, ethical monotheism, historical circumstances in the development of Islamic and Christian teachings, legal and political circumstances in which Muslims and Christians live, and the possible perspective for dialogue and development of relations which would go beyond the struggle for competition and proving the superiority of one teaching over the other. The article analyses the phenomenon of the instrumentalization of religion, which has increasingly become part of the profane world, the issues of political competition and of reduction of religious questions to everyday political problems. All this leads to pushing out the enduring values, the sense of the supernatural, and of the value system which for centuries has aided man in preserving a balance between the material, cultural and spiritual view of the world.
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Review of: Almir Fatić - Enes Karić, U potrazi za dubinama nebeskog plavetnila. Eseji o vjeri u XXI stoljeću. El-Kalem & Centar za napredne studije, Sarajevo, 2014./1435. god. po H. – 183 str.
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Mohammed Iqbal “spiritual father” of Pakistan, philosopher, political thinker, reformer and lawyer, is one of the most important Muslim figures of the first half of the twentieth century. Educated in both East and West, understanding and writing the two “big” Western (English and German) and two “large” Eastern (Urdu and Persian) languages and cultures well established in these languages , he has, with the casual ease and great poetic talent, sailed endless arches of these great cultures. He was fully convinced that Islam is non-dogmatic and that it is the moral and spiritual foundation and the dynamics of society and the individual. He considered Western philosophy inferior in comparison to the legacy of Islam, as he emphasized that the source of his ideas was the Qur’an and the rich heritage of the Muslim Sufis and thinkers. Iqbal believes that political activity is the expression of Islamic spirituality and that it stands opposite to Christian separation of church and state. Islam “needs” state and stability and welfare of the country and its economic effects are the essence of the faith, because the economies of the Ummah and its well-being of is the essence of Islam, such as the Islamic spirituality is unthinkable without a fair economic activity.
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On the occasion of twentieth anniversary of passing away of Dr. Ahmed Smajlovic (1938-1988), who was a theologian, publicist, leader of Islamic community in Bosnia-Herzegovina and who essentially contributed towards the foundation of the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Sarajevo 1977, this author explores his theoretical and practical engagement in dialogue between Muslims and Christians of Yugoslavia and all over the world as well as with followers of other faiths and convictions. His conclusion that A. S. was a promoter of dialogue accompanied by an awareness of differences the author has based on an interview of A. S. to Mladi teolog 1983, 1, 15-28 (the periodical of students of Vrhbosanska katolicka teologija in Sarajevo), as well as on articles of A. S. published in Preporod, Islamska misao and on speeches at the inauguration ceremony of the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Sarajevo 1977 published in Glasnik vrhovnog islamskog starjesinstva 1977, no. 5.
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In our paper we deal with testaments of clergymen in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages in relation with bishops and archbishops. As the highest ranked officials of the Church, bishops represented guarantees and protectors of testamentary law of clerics. Their episcopal power became a pledge for practical exercise of their testamentary law in the kingdom. They performed tasks as witnesses, executors or they provided confirmation of last wills in higher ranks of the hierarchy. At the same time they were recipients of various testamentary messages in material, financial or spiritual forms or they formed messages of such kinds. In our paper we also analyze personal testaments of bishops and archbishops.
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