 Icon of Holy Week | |
| Folklore | Slavic Mythology |
|---|---|
| Details | The embodiment of the day of the week - Sunday |
Saint Nedelya (St. Sunday, St. Anastasia, [1] in folk Orthodoxy of the Slavs is the personification of Sunday as day of the week. [2] It is correlated with Saint Anastasia (in Bulgarians also with Saint Kyriakia. [3] The veneration of the Week is associated with the prohibition of various kinds of work (cf. the origin of the Slavic week from not to do).
The Old Russian sermons against paganism ("Word about creatures and days of the week" and "Word of St. Gregory... How the first Gentiles worshipped idols"), it is said that one should not venerate the image of the Week as a "goon", not the day of the week as such, but "Christ's resurrection". [4]
The formation of the popular cult of the Holy Week was also influenced by the translated apocrypha "Epistle of Jesus on the Week." According to the Apocrypha, a stone falls from heaven in Rome or Jerusalem in which a "scroll" is found. In the name of Christ, it prescribes righteous living and observance of Sunday (week), as many significant events have taken place on this day: the Annunciation, Baptism and Resurrection of Christ, on which the Last Judgment will also take place. In conclusion, it is said that he who does not believe the "scriptures" will be cursed and condemned to torment. Moreover, the Polish and Southwestern Russian apocrypha copies, based on the Western European editions, mention only the veneration of Week, while the Great Russian apocrypha copies, based on a Byzantine protograph, along with Week, also mention Wednesday and Friday as venerable days "by which the earth stands". The apocryphal plot is reflected in Ukrainian and Belarusian folklore and in Russian spiritual verses. Besides apocryphal writings, the popular veneration of the Week was influenced by the cult of St. Anastasia (Greek : άναστασία "Sunday"). [2]
Among the holy wives Paraskeva and Anastasia were especially revered in Russia. Their paired images are the most common in the iconography of Novgorod. The cults of the martyrs had much in common. Both saints were commonly associated in Russian tradition with the Mother of God, the events of the Gospel (Anastasia - with the "Birth of Christ", Paraskeva - with the "Crucifixion"), both patronizing the days of the week: Anastasia - with the Resurrection, Paraskeva - with Friday. According to popular beliefs, they were considered the patrons of women's work and worshipped as healers. Sometimes they were endowed with the same iconographic features. Paraskeva was usually represented wearing a red maforion, but occasionally Anastasia was also depicted in red. In the veneration of Anastasia her role as a healer is emphasized stronger. That is why she is more often depicted holding a vessel of medicine than Paraskeva. She was prayed to by women waiting for the birth of a child.
The Belarusians Grodno Province said that the day of rest (Belarusian : nyadzel) was "given to the people after one day a man hid the holy Week from the dogs that pursued her; before that there were only weekdays. Ukrainians Volhynian Province said that "God gave the Week a whole day, but told her herself to see to it that people did not work on that day." According to Croatian beliefs, Holy Week was without hands, so it was sinful to work on this day. [2]
The Holy Week was believed to come to those who did not observe the prohibition against working on Sunday. The Week appears as a woman in white, gold or silver clothing, with a wounded body and complains that she is being poked with spindles, spun her hair, chopped, cut, etc. In the West Belarusian legend, the Week is paired with an ornate and beautiful Jewish nedzelka (i.e. Saturday, Sabbath, a non-working day for Jews) and complains that the Jews honor their "week" and "you all work on Sunday, and my clean body is ripped off". [5]
The week asks people not to forget the veneration of the holiday or severely punishes violators of the prohibitions with a long or fatal illness, beats them to death with a flax-crushing roller, tears the skin off the hands and body of weavers who do not finish their work in time, and hangs it on the loom (similar plots are associated in Ukrainians with Paraskeva Friday), strangles, puts human life in danger (e.g., turning over a cart), threatens death, scares (the woman, who excuses herself that she spins on Sunday because she is hungry, tosses horse heads and dead bodies into the house: "Eat if you're hungry"). [2]
The veneration of the Week is closely related to the veneration of the other personalized days of the week - Wednesday and Friday, which in popular beliefs are related by kinship ties. Serbs believe that Paraskeva Friday is the mother or sister of St. Week (see the consecutive days of St. Paraskeva Friday - October 28 and Saint Anastasia - October 29) [2]
Prav (Правь), Yav (Явь) and Nav (Навь) are the three dimensions or qualities of the cosmos as described in the first chapter of the Book of Light and in the Book of Veles of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery). Older sources mention only Nav and Yav concepts of ancient slavic cosmology, similar to Yin and Yang in Taoism, and Prav was not part of the concept. The literal meanings of the Prav, Yav, and Nav words, are, respectively, "Right", "actuality" and "probability". They are also symbolised as a unity by the god Triglav. Already Ebbo documented that the Triglav was seen as embodying the connection and mediation between Heaven, Earth and the underworld / humanity; these three dimensions were also respectively associated to the colours white, green and black as documented by Karel Jaromír Erben.
Mokosh is a Slavic goddess. No narratives survive to the present day about this deity and so scholars must rely on academic disciplines like philology to discern details about her.
In the pre-Christian religion of Eastern and Southern Slavs, Rod is the god of the family, ancestors and fate. Among Southern Slavs, he is also known as Sud. He is usually mentioned together with Rozhanitsy deities. One's first haircut (postriziny) was dedicated to him, in a celebration in which he and the rozhanitsy were given a meal and the cut hair. His cult lost its importance through time, and in the ninth or tenth century he was replaced by Perun, Svarog and/or Svetevid, which explains his absence in the pantheon of Vladimir the Great.
Dziady is a term in Slavic folklore for the spirits of the ancestors and a collection of pre-Christian rites, rituals and customs that were dedicated to them. The essence of these rituals was the "communion of the living with the dead", namely, the establishment of relationships with the souls of the ancestors, periodically returning to their headquarters from the times of their lives. The aim of the ritual activities was to win the favor of the deceased, who were considered to be caretakers in the sphere of fertility. The name "dziady" was used in particular dialects mainly in Poland, Belarus, Polesia, Russia, and Ukraine, but under different other names there were very similar ritual practices, common among Slavs and Balts, and also in many European and even non-European cultures.
The Feast of the Holy Cross, or Feast of the Cross, commemorates the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus. In the Christian liturgical calendar, there are several different celebrations which honor and celebrate the cross used in the crucifixion. Unlike Good Friday, which is dedicated to the passion of Christ and the crucifixion, these feast days celebrate the Cross itself, as the sign of salvation. It is chiefly celebrated by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans, and to a lesser extent by Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. The most common day of commemoration is September 14th for Churches that use the Gregorian calendar and September 27th for Churches that use the Julian calendar, Ge'ez calendar, or Coptic calendar.
The Matins Gospel is the solemn chanting of a lection from one of the Four Gospels during Matins in the Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic churches which follow the Byzantine Rite.
Paraskeva of the Balkans was an ascetic female saint of the 11th century. She was born in Epivates, near present-day Istanbul, and had visions of the Virgin Mary. After living in Chalcedon and Heraclea Pontica, she settled in a convent in the desert near the Jordan River. An angel told her to return to her homeland, and two years later she died at the age of 27. The cult of Saint Paraskeva began to spread in the 14th century from Bulgaria into the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. There was confusion over her identity and attributes because her Greek name Παρασκευή "Paraskeuḗ, Paraskevi" means "Friday," and translations in other languages, such as Romanian and Serbian, were "Saint Friday". Her cult continues to be celebrated in many Orthodox countries, and her feast day is commemorated on October 14 in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Saint Paraskevi of Iconium is venerated as a Christian virgin martyr. According to Christian tradition, she was born to a rich family of Iconium. Her parents were Christian, and Paraskevi was named as such because she was baptized on a Friday and because Friday was the day of Christ's Passion.
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Holy Rus' or Holy Russia - is an important religious and philosophical concept which appeared from the 9th century and developed gradually from the 16th century to the 21st century by people in Grand Duchy of Moscow, East Europe, Central Eurasia and Great Russia. As a concept it has several meanings. It designates the Russian land as chosen by God and enlightened by the Christian faith. However, among the other spaces, Holy Rus' is not distinguished by geography, nor by the state it constitutes, nor by ethnicity, but by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Folk Orthodoxy refers to the folk religion and syncretic elements present in the Eastern Orthodox communities. It is a subgroup of folk Christianity, similar to Folk Catholicism. Peasants incorporated many pre-Christian (pagan) beliefs and observances, including coordinating feast days with agricultural life.
Festival of Perun, Perun's Day, Perunica is a Slavic festival in honor of the god Perun celebrated by modern Slavic neopagans (rodnovers); its existence in times before the Slavs began to be Christianized remains hypothetical.
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a collective term for new religious movements which are influenced by or derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern peoples. Although they share similarities, contemporary pagan religious movements are diverse, and as a result, they do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or texts.
In the folk Christianity of Slavic Eastern Orthodox Christians, Paraskeva Friday is a mythologized image based on a personification of Friday as the day of the week and the cult of saints Paraskeva of Iconium, called Friday and Paraskeva of the Balkans. In folk tradition, the image of Paraskeva Friday correlates with the image of Saint Anastasia of the Lady of Sorrows, and the Saint Nedelya as a personified image of Sunday. Typologically, Paraskeva Pyatnitsa has parallels with day-personifications of other cultures, for example, the Tajik Bibi-Seshanbi.
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Apocryphal prayer is a prayer modeled on the church prayer, but containing a large number of insertions from folk beliefs, incantations, in some cases rearrangements or excerpts from apocrypha. Performed as apotropeia, it is also used for medicinal purposes. Apocryphal prayers are mostly texts of bookish origin. It is found in all collections of zagovory.
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