Worshipping Patron Saints: Ethnological Research in Croatia

The author presents selected outcomes from her research on belief in patron saints in Croatia. The emphasis is placed on contexts in which such beliefs are manifested, on the ways in which they are expressed and on the significance that believers appear to attribute to patron saints. The analysis of these questions is based on the nature and forms of relationship to patron saints on two levels: community religiosity, and individual religiosity. At community level, patron saints are not only associated with economic betterment, but are also given a significant role with respect to the identity formation of a given community and its social life. At the level of individual religiosity, the patron saint is seen as a personal protector who is called on at various moments in life, which leads to the annulment of the acknowledged âspecializationâ of the different saints. The author outlines a number of guidelines for future research into this and associated topics, primarily the research of sacred places and the processes involved with their consecration

Ecclesia sancti Johannis apud Cruciferos in Bynna The Problem of the Presence of the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John in Ludbreg

O mogućoj nazočnosti ivanovaca u Ludbregu do sada se u historiografiji relativno dosta pisalo, uglavnom na temelju pojedinih povijesnih isprava i mišljenja prijašnjih istraživača. Čvrsti dokaz o njihovoj nazočnosti još nije predočen, ali neke indicije su ostale. U ovome se radu u kontekst razmatrane problematike smješta još jedan objavljen izvor koji na nju baca novo svjetlo i otvara nove mogućnosti interpretiranja. Riječ je o listini koju je izdao ban Opoj 1239. godine, u kojoj se posredno spominje preceptorat Sv. Ivana te susret preceptora i bana u križarskoj crkvi Sv. Ivana u Bynni. U radu se zaključuje da se preceptorat Sv. Ivana najvjerojatnije nalazio u Varaždinu, a ivanovačka crkva Sv. Ivana u Ludbregu (nekadašnjoj Bynni).A relatively great number of historiographic papers deals with the presence of the Order of the Hospital of St. John (Hospitallers) in Ludbreg. Their origins can be found in certain documents or in the (inadequately) critical opinions of earlier scholars. The aim of this study is to show how cautious one has to be with source interpreting and how earlier interpretations need to be scrutinized. Military orders were closely connected with the Crusades undertaken at the end of the eleventh century by the Roman Popes and European rulers against the Muslims. A part of the Christian army passed through Croatia towards the East. Since all military orders that emerged in the Crusades were called Crusaders, historical sources sometimes make no clear distinction, nor do later historians. A further obstruction is caused by the fact that the historical data on the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre (the Sepulchrines), who were not a military order, got confused with the data on the Hospitallers and the Templars (DOBRONIĆ, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c). Ludbreg is situated where an extraordinarily important antique Podravina route crossed the Bednja River, and where antique Iovia developed (VIKIĆ-BELANČIĆ, 1984; TOMIČIĆ, 1999, 146-148). Due to its location, Ludbreg must have played an important role in the period of the Crusades through the territory of today’s Croatia. But the sources make no mention of this. We only learned that at the beginning of the fourteenth century Nikola of Ludbreg returned Bela to the Hospitallers, and in turn in 1320 the Hospitaller’s prior gave him a plot of land called Črnec, in the vicinity of the Ludbreg fortress (CD VIII, 566, 456). In the deed of gift the borders of the property are described, but it is not easy to recognize them any longer (BELAJ, 2001, 83). Another source, but from the seventeenth century, Informatio circa alienationem agrorum Ludbregensium (AH, Acta Coll. SJ. fasc. 6 Nr. 23) mentions the monastery of Ludbreg and the opinion that it belonged to the Sepulchrines (Crusaders). In 1373, documents mention the Franciscan monastery of Ludbreg for the first time (HOŠKO, 1971, 83). Its titular is St. John, which led a number of scholars to think that the Franciscan order inherited this complex, along with the one in Varaždin, from the Hospitallers (ILIJANIĆ and MIRKOVIĆ, 1984, 132; PETRIĆ, 1997, 45; MARKOVIĆ, 1997, 78, N. 9). Thus there is no certified information as to the Hospitallers owning a building in Ludbreg, although there are some indications. But there is a published source that has never been viewed in the context of these problems, which enables a completely new perspective and opens new possibilities for interpretation. This is the muniment of 1239 in which Opoj, the ban, or royal governor, of Slavonia, awards the soldier Salomon a plot of land in a suit against district prefect Puchuna (CD IV, 98-99, 91). In the document, indirectly the preceptory of St. John is mentioned. Years ago Kukuljević believed that the Hospitallers had the seat of their preceptory in Varaždin (1886, 39). Up to the present day there is a rather vehement debate on the presence of the Hospitallers in Varaždin, and in another paper, I reached the conclusion that the preceptory of St. John probably was indeed in Varaždin (BELAJ, 2001, 37-43). The document from 1239 says that ban Opoj personally met the preceptor of St. John in the Church of St. John with the Crusaders in Bynna. The key question arises as to the location of Bynna? V. Klaić associated the name Bynna with the name of the Bednja River and assumed that it might have been situated in the vicinity of Bela or Ivanec (1909, 6-7). N. Budak restricted the choice and connected Bynna with Ivanec (1994, 72). Obviously the hydronym Bynna indeed stands for the river of Bednja. Many properties and settlements of that time were named after rivers and streams along which they stretched; consequently we should look for Bynna on the banks of the Bednja. Is it really today’s Ivanec? This is where, not far from the Bednja River, the Hospitallers did have the Church of St. John. But Ivanec was not in the precincts of the preceptory of Varaždin, but that of Bela (KUKULJEVIĆ, 1886, 47). A church dedicated to St. Marget (Margaret), and not St. John, was close to Bela (KUKULJEVIĆ, 1886, 46-47). So where was the Crusader Bynna? Ludbreg of that time was doubtlessly much more important than Ivanec, and it was also much more closely connected with the Bednja River, placed on a strategically more significant position, controlling the river crossing. Only somewhat later a Franciscan monastery of St. John, a name rather unusual for the Franciscan order, is mentioned. If we take the legend of the Knight Lodbring who founded Ludbreg on his return from the Crusades in the year 1100 with caution, that would imply that at the beginning of the Crusades the settlement (which doubtlessly existed longer than that) must have had another name. Therefore it is not impossible that Ludbreg today hides behind the name Bynna in the muniment of 1239. Ž. Tomičić’s convincing interpretation of the connection between the name Bednja with the name of the settlement which is called Botivo in the Tabula Peutingeriana and in the Cosmography by John of Ravenna (TOMIČIĆ, 1999, 164) also favours equating Bynna with Ludbreg. In my opinion, the first task of scholars investigating military orders is to conduct archaeological excavations. Admittedly it is difficult to expect extraordinary results in larger towns such as Ludbreg. Anyway, considering the fact that this part of Croatian history very much lacks written sources, archaeology is the only science that can - and must - offer more abundant data for the reconstruction of life in the observed period. Future research of similar problems shall produce the best results if we take a holistic approach, co-operating with other disciplines (history, archive keeping, linguistics, ethnology, architectural history, geography, toponymy, iconology, etc.). That is the only way to avoid taking the observed matter out of context, leading to false perspectives and conclusions

The Gradišče Fortification near Margečan - Results of Trial Excavations

Autor u tekstu donosi kratki prikaz desetodnevnih pokusnih istraživanja utvrde Gradišče kod Margečana, provedenih u jesen 2004. godine. Arheološkim se iskopavanjem nastojao prikupiti materijal koji bi pomogao pri njezinu datiranju, jer se o toj velebnoj utvrdi ne zna ništa iz povijesnih izvora. U literaturi prevladava mišljenje da ju je izgradio viteški red ivanovaca. Nažalost, materijal pronađen u nevelikim sondama pripada uglavnom pretpovijesnome horizontu, a ono malo srednjovjekovnoga keramičkog materijala je suviše fragmentirano da bi bilo od veće pomoći. Pojedinim je sondama stečen bolji uvid u tlocrt utvrde te u način zidanja zidova, u prosjeku debelih blizu 2 m. Vjeruje se da bi nastavak sondažnog istraživanja u budučnosti ipak mogao pružiti barem dio očekivanoga materijala.In autumn 2004, trial excavations of the Gradišče fortification near Margečan in the Ivanec Municipality were conducted over a period of ten days. The excavations were conducted by the Institute for Archaeology in co-operation with the project of archaeology students of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University in Zagreb entitled Field Survey and Documentation of Gradišče Site on Cukovec. Since historical sources do not mention the fortification, we hoped that the excavation would provide an opportunity to collect archaeological material that would in turn help us date it. In the literature, the opinion prevails that the Knights Hospitaller built it. The size of the fortification is magnificent, with a length of approximately 152 m and an average width of approximately 28 m. It is situated between 328 and 315 meters above sea level, or 128 meters above the Bednja River valley below. Above ground there are not many walls left, as usable stones were taken away from the site. Best preserved is the rectangular tower in the eastern and lowest part of the longitudinal fortification. The external dimensions of the tower are approximately 11 x 11 m. During trial excavations, several smaller sondages were opened, which revealed the width, appearance and arrangement of the walls at several points. The width of the walls varies, ranging from approximately 150 to 210 cm, depending also on the unearthed segment. The bottom of the foundations is, of course, broader than the wall above it. In two trenches in the eastern part of the fortification, we discovered ruptures in the wall, which was to a great extent removed. In one part we found a ditch that emerged by removal (“robber”) of stones from the wall and its foundations. Therefore, unfortunately, no connection between the fortification walls and the tower was found. Even so, the turn of the wall toward the tower found in the trench to its south shows that the wall was probably linked with the tower at its southern, and most likely also at its northern side. In the tower itself, beneath a relatively thick imploded layer we also unearthed older layers with small finds of pottery and daub. The detected width of the walls, i.e. the foundations of the tower walls, is approximately 230/270 cm. Almost two meters of the height of the internal face of the tower wall was preserved. After excavation, all wall remains were recorded by a total station, and by subsequently linking the points, an approximate outline of the fortification was made. Unfortunately, the movable archaeological material found in small and mostly flat trenches belongs chiefly to the prehistoric horizon, and it originates from a hillfort settlement built at the early stage of the Urnfield culture. The small amount of medieval pottery artifacts (ten fragments of medieval pottery) is much too fragmentary to be of much help in dating the existence of the fortification. It is still not possible to either confirm or refute the theory that the fortification was built and owned by the Knights Hospitaller. We believe that the continuation of trial trenching in the future might generate at least a part of the expected material

Archaeological Excavations at the Old Town (Stari grad) Site in Ivanec

Autor u tekstu donosi kratki prikaz dosadašnjih te nešto opširniji prikaz istraživanja provedenih 2004. godine u Ivancu na lokalitetu Stari grad. Do sada su u znatnoj mjeri otkriveni temelji Staroga grada, a intenzivnije su istraživani ostaci kapele Sv. Ivana Krstitelja, pronađeni u dvorištu Grada. U kapeli i uz njeno svetište do sada su pronađeni brojni grobovi među kojima se ističu oni s nalazima karičica sa S-petljom. U okolici kapele specifične arhitekture otkriveni su i pojedini kulturni slojevi u većoj mjeri oštečeni naknadnim ukopima. Pronađeni su i mnogi nalazi iz raznih razdoblja koji zajedno svjedoče o kontinuitetu naseljavanja na promatranom području.The town of Ivanec is located on the road leading from Varaždin through Lepoglava to Krapina. There was a medieval castle, called the ‘Old Town’, in its present-day center, on a hilltop near the parish church, until the middle of the twentieth century. Historical documents indicate that an organized settlement certainly existed in the territory of Ivanec even before the “free municipality of St. John” was first mentioned in 1396. It would have been unusual indeed if the Knights Hospitaller of the Bela Preceptory did not have a fortified site at the boundary of their large estate, and this on one of the routes leading from their hostile Teutonic lands. Historical sources mention the castle of Ivanec as late as at the end of the fifteenth century, when the ban, or viceroy, John Corvinus owned it, but the castle was probably inherited from the Knights Hospitaller. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist was located near the castle. Historical sources first mention it as late as 1649, but already then as “very old” and derelict. Its founders were most likely the former feudal lords of this land - the Knights Hospitaller. Due to an obvious lack of written sources, the Town of Ivanec initiated excavations at the site Old Town of Ivanec, conducted by the Institute of Archaeology since 1998. The excavations continued in 1999, 2002 and 2004. The excavation soon uncovered the most recent layer of the Old Town rather flat beneath the surface, with some visible earlier phases of construction. Most of the gathered finds originate from the late Middle Ages and later, more recent periods. These are primarily fragments of pottery, tiles (among them many ornamented, originating chiefly from the Renaissance), various metal artifacts, fragments of worked stone, glass, etc. Various coins from the sixteenth century and later were found, as well as products made by artisans (such as pipes, keys, etc.). The medieval Chapel of St. John the Baptist was discovered in the courtyard of the Old Town. It has an east-west orientation, with a rectangular sanctuary, slightly narrower than the nave, and with diagonally constructed heavy pillars. In front of the entrance to the Chapel a porch was unearthed with the remains of columns and an extraordinarily well-preserved pavement. In the Chapel and near its sanctuary, numerous graves were found, among them those having chain links with an S-loop found at the head of the diseased. In the environs of the Chapel, with its specific architecture, individual cultural layers were found, which were largely destroyed by subsequent burials. In the exceptionally black, rich layer, but also in the other excavated layers, pottery fragments were found, ornamented with wavy lines, their texture and decoration suggesting that they were made prior to the thirteenth century. Many artifacts from various periods of history were discovered, that altogether testify to the continuity of life in the examined area. In mixed layers that were successively dug by periodic burials, we found a significant number of fragments of prehistoric (Late Bronze Age and late La Téne) pottery. In the foundations of the Chapel a fragment of a Classic-era stela was found, built in as a spolium, as well as a fragment of a capital, probably of Romanesque origin, and several Roman bricks or tegulae

O NEKIM RUBNIM TIPOVIMA HRVATSKOGA IZRAVNOGA OBJEKTA U AKUZATIVU: KOGNITIVNA ANALIZA

Applying methods of cognitive grammar, the author discusses three peripheral types of accusative direct object in Croatian. The peripheral status of the first two types follows from the morphosyntactic peculiarity as manifested in the impossibility of passivizing the active clauses they are part of. The third type appears in one type of impersonal sentences.Autor, primjenjujući metode kognitivne gramatike, raspravlja o trima rubnim tipovima izravnoga objekta u akuzativu u hrvatskom jeziku, od kojih dva svoj status zahvaljuju morfosintaktičkim posljedicama vidljivima iz nemogućnosti pasivizacije aktivnih rečenica kojih su dio, a treći se pojavljuje u jednom tipu obezličenih rečenica

Interview with Anthropologist Simon Coleman

In this interview Simon Coleman talks about religion and religiosity today, particularly about the concepts of spiritual marketplace, religious pluralism and spiritual revolution. He also talks about his fascinations with contemporary religiosity and about challenges, blind spots, ethical issues and research directions in the anthropological study of religion today

O KOGNITIVNOM STATUSU MENTALNIH PROSTORA I O NEKIM TIPOVIMA METONIMIJE U OKVIRU TEORIJE KONCEPTUALNE INTEGRACIJE

In the light of the automatic nature of the process of conceptual integration we examine the cognitive-conceptual status of the four types of mental spaces and their elements: the input spaces, the generic space and the blend. On the basis of the differences obtaining between the four types of mental spaces we divide them into defocused, highlighted and focal mental spaces. We further discuss the place and manner of intepretation of two basic types of metonymy in the context of blending theory and propose the introduction of a fifth mental space where such metonymies would be interpreted, namely the pre-input spaces in the case of nonmetaphoric counterfactuals, or the pre-target space when metonymy operates within a metaphoric utterance.U svjetlu trenutnosti procesa konceptualne integracije kritički se pristupa kognitivnokonceptualnom status četiriju vrsta mentalnih prostora i njihovih elemenata: ulaznih prostora, generičkoga prostora te blenda, a u skladu s razlikama među njima dijele se na defokusirane, istaknute i fokalne mentalne prostore. Također se raspravlja i o mjestu i načinu interpretacije nekih tipova metonimije u kontekstu te teorije i predlaže se uvođenje petoga mentalnog prostora - predulaznoga prostora ukoliko je riječ o protučinjeničnom iskazu, odnosno predizvornoga i predciljnoga prostora ukoliko se radi o djelovanju metonimije unutar metaforičkoga iskaza, kao mjesta njihove interpretacije

Metonimija i hrvatske adverbijalne klauze

In this article I examine some metonymic aspects of the semantics of Croatian connectives introducing adverbial clauses of cause, condition, purpose, and concession. The analysis leans on the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy and, to a lesser extent, on cognitive grammar. It is also informed by grammaticalization scholarship within typological functionalism. I explore metonymic mappings between the categories of time and cause, manner and cause, cause and condition, purpose, cause and concession, condition and concession, time and condition, and metonymic mappings operating at the level of speech acts. The goal is to contribute to the growing, though still arguably small, body of cognitive linguistic research into the relevance of metonymy for the semantics of complex sentences, specifically the role it plays in subordination, and to expand this analysis to subordinate constructions in Croatian. Some attention is given to grammaticalization studies, where metaphor and metonymy are seen as two types of pragmatic inferencing facilitating interactions between the mentioned semantic categories in complex sentences.U radu se metodologijom teorije konceptualne metafore i metonimije i u manjoj mjeri kognitivne gramatike te pristupa gramatikalizaciji u okvirima tipološkoga funkcionalizma analiziraju metonimijski aspekti u prvom redu veznih sredstava hrvatskih uzročnih, uvjetnih, namjernih i dopusnih klauza. Analiziraju se metonimijska preslikavanja između kategorija vremena i uzroka, načina i uzroka, uzroka i uvjeta, uzroka i koncesivnosti, uvjeta i koncesivnosti, vremena i uvjeta te metonimijska preslikavanja koja uključuju govorne činove. Cilj je rada doprinijeti još uvijek skromnom obimu kognitivnolingvističkih istraživanja o utjecaju, važnosti i ulozi metonimije u analizi složenih rečenica na razini subordinacije te kognitivnu perspektivu proširiti na analizu hrvatskih subordiniranih struktura. Nešto se pozornosti pridaje i raspravama o gramatikalizaciji u okvirima tipološkoga funkcionalizma, u kojima metafora i metonimija kao dva vida pragmatičke inferencije također imaju vrlo važnu ulogu u analizi suodnosa navedenih kategorija u složenorečeničnim strukturama

Sintaktički, semantički i pragmatički aspekti nekih kvazisubjektnih imenskih skupina u hrvatskom jeziku

This paper analyzes the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of datives in sentences like Iskliznuo mi je tanjur iz ruke (lit. ’Slipped to me is plate from hand’) and Vru}e mi je (lit. ’To me is hot’). The first sentence contains two possible candidates for the subject function: the dative mi, which has some semantic and pragmatic subject properties, and the nominative NP tanjur, which controls agreement. The second sentence contains only the dative pronoun, which has the semantic and pragmatic but no syntactic subject properties. At first blush it seems that the first sentence has two subjects none of which, to paraphrase Keenan (1976), has a clear preponderance of subject–like properties. In this paper we shall argue that such non–canonical subject–like NPs are best described as quasi subjects, i. e., as NPs which have some morphosyntactic or semantic/pragmatic properties of subjects, but not sufficient properties to qualify as the subject of the sentence.Predmet je ovoga rada sintaktička vrijednost dativnih dopuna koje imaju semantička i pragmatič ka svojstva subjekta, ali nemaju formalna, odnosno nema sročnosti s predikatom preko prototipnoga padeža subjekta – nominativa. Naime, hrvatske gramatike vrlo vješto izbjegavaju ući dublje u raspravu kada su u pitanju sintaktičke funkcije dativa u hrvatskom jeziku tipa Hladno mi je, Vruće mi je... s jedne strane; Spava mi se, Kiše mi se... s druge... i recimo Iskliznuo mi je tanjur iz ruke, Ispala mi je žlica na pod s treće strane, a što je na neki način i razumljivo jer je rješenje u nekim slučajevima nemoguće pronaći ako se ne želi odstupiti od analize preko tradicijskih pojmova subjekta i objekta. Naime, tradicijski pojmovi subjekta i objekta u većini su suvremenih lingvističkih teorija, pa tako i u hrvatskim gramatikama (npr. Katičić, 1991, Barić et al., 1995, Silić, Pranjković, 2005) općeprihvaćeni termini koji se upotrebljavaju pri analizi sintaktičkoga pola rečenice, no pri tome uvijek treba imati na umu da su oni usto i puno širi filozofsko–logički pojmovi koji onda po samoj naravi stvari u svoju definiciju odnosno, bolje rečeno, u svoj iskonski koncept uključuju i određene značenjske komponente. Stoga se, primjerice, vrlo često, posebno u znanstvenim raspravama, može vidjeti da se govori o semantičkim i pragmatičkim svojstvima subjekta što se u prototipnim slučajevima odnosi na agens i topic, a u pojedinim se funkcionalnosintaktič kim teorijama oni i promatraju kroz prizmu semantičkih funkcija (Dik, 1978, 1989) ili se čak i definiraju kao gramatikalizirane pragmatičke padežne uloge (Givón, 1984, 1990), pri čemu je subjekt primarni, a objekt sekundarni klauzalni topic). U analiziranim rečenicama sintaktička funkcija imenskog izraza u dativu nije posve jasna; s jedne strane, dativ je kodiran kao indirektni objekt, a s druge strane, dativ ima semantička i pragmatička svojstva prototipnog subjekta. U rečenicama s imenskim izrazom u dativu i imenskim izrazom u nominativu, prvi ima semantička i pragmatička svojstva subjekta, a drugi ima svojstva kodiranja (nominativ i kontrola sročnosti). Budući da većina definicija subjekta sadržava mješavinu morfosintaktičkih, semantičkih i pragmatičkih kriterija, bilo bi potrebno te kriterije i terminološki razlikovati