scholarly journals Christian Saints in Russian Incantations

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 556
Author(s):  
Aleksey Yudin
Keyword(s):  
Christian Saints

This article discusses the Christian saints who are most often mentioned in Russian incantations: Sts. George, Nicholas, Florus and Laurus, Kossma and Damian, Zosima and Savvaty of Solovki, as well as the semi-apocryphal saints Sisinius and Solomonia. The first six are among the most popular saints of Russian folk Orthodoxy. The article presents the naming conventions of saints, and their attributes and functions in Russian folk magic. Depending on their magical function, the protagonists of the incantations can act as helpers, protectors, and healers. They assist in various practical areas of life, and protect against real and magical dangers, in addition to helping healing from diseases and wounds.

The Complex of Elvan Çelebi: Problems in 
Fourteenth-Century Architecture

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
Christian Saints

The fourteenth-century complex of Elvan Çelebi is often cited as an example of the survival of local Christian saints’ cults in later medieval Anatolia. The reuse of Byzan­tine materials in the complex’s buildings and the stories told by its sixteenth-century residents about the exploits of Khidr have been used to argue that the local cult of St. Theodore of Euchaita was maintained by Muslims. Furthermore, portions of the complex have been identified as the remnants of a Christian church. However, there is no evidence that the complex incorporates parts of, or was built on the site of, an earlier Byzantine structure. The most prominent displays of reused material date to the later sixteenth century, and the der­vishes’ stories are best understood as an example of the widespread Anatolian identification of Khidr with St. George. However, the complex still has much to tell us about the patronage of architecture by family networks in the absence of state intervention in fourteenth-century Anatolia. Local stories according to which the spolia in the building were donated by Elvan Çelebi’s father are more telling indicators of the complex’s significance than speculations about the survival of cult.


Marauders, Daredevils, and Noble Savages: Perceptions of Arab Nomads in Late Antique Hagiography

Der Islam ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin M. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Past ◽  
Christian Saints

AbstractThis contribution investigates perceptions of Arab nomads in the hagiography of the Late Antique East. Over the past decades, these texts, mostly saints’ lives and episodes from church histories, have often been used to provide social and cultural historians with information on the ethnography, geography, customs and manners of those labelled “Saracens” or “Ishmaelites” in the texts. However, the historicity of the narratives is difficult to assess, and a closer inspection reveals that most of the motifs used in Late Antiquity revert to older models from Classical Antiquity. The article therefore focuses on specific aspects, such as how the writers depicted the Arabs’ manners and customs as contrasting with their own societies and constructed a dichotomy between the civilisation and the animal-like ferocity of the former. It becomes clear that Christian authors used the depiction of the Arabs’ seemingly deviant lifestyle in order to both reassure their readership and excite its curiosity. The display of God’s omnipotence in a large number of the texts discussed here offered a chance to demonstrate that Christian saints could eventually convert such people, or, when conversion was not possible, could still hope for very potent miracles.

6. The Blessed Virgin Mary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Yarrow
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
Christian Saints

The Blessed Virgin Mary is pre-eminent among Christian saints. Her giving birth to Jesus the God-man distinguishes her from other women, even as it draws attention to that experience uniquely distinguishing women from men: childbirth. ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary’ shows how this delicate partitioning of empathetic possibilities in the veneration of Mary, intimately grounded in biology and played out through ideas of gender difference, has stimulated profound and sometimes conflicted religious emotions in men and women. St Mary presents a conundrum to Christian theology: a virgin mother, a Jew who became a Christian, a redeemer of humanity from Eve’s sins, a human who gave birth to God, and the Queen of Heaven.

“No synagogue shall be constructed from now on”

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-239
Author(s):  
Ross Shepard Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
State Service ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
Interreligious Violence ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Christian Saints

In the early fifth century, anti-Jewish legislation and other pressures on Jews increased. Stories of attacks on Jewish synagogues—and other interreligious violence—proliferated in the suspect Lives of Christian saints, like Salsa, Marciana, Sergius, and especially Barsauma. In Alexandria, a Christian mob murdered the philosopher Hypatia. The city’s Nicene bishop, Cyril, expelled Jews after an alleged attack on Christians. A few inscriptions and a Jewish marriage contract from Antinoopolis may allude to these events. Theodosios’s wife, Eudokia, a convert to Nicene Christianity, seems to have been sympathetic to Jews. His sister, Pulcheria, may have orchestrated a law banning construction of new synagogues and helped demote the Jewish patriarch, Gamaliel VI. Accused of illicit synagogue construction, owning Christian slaves, and other crimes, his downfall may relate to events on Minorca only two years later. Not long after, Honorius expelled Jewish men from all branches of the state service. An ominous new law protected “innocent” Jews from arson and vandalism, but cautioned them against anti-Christian acts.

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