Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice

‘Folk religion’ is a contested category within the study of religions, with scholars increasingly advocating its abandonment. This paper encourages a new critical engagement with ‘folk religion’ as both a category of analysis and as a field of practice. I argue for a renewed attentiveness to the ideological dimensions of categories deployed by scholars and to the relationship they bear to the field of practice they seek to signify. Firstly, I explore the discursive nature of the construction of ‘folk religion’ as a category of analysis and how its semantic loading functions to ‘pick up’ distinctive practices from the religious field. Secondly, drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Riesebrodt, I characterise the ‘folk religious field of practice’ as relational, a shifting site of competing agencies. My argument is illustrated with empirical examples drawn from ethnographic research in Romania and Moldova

Narratíva és kozmológia az inochentizmus ikonográfiai hagyományában

This paper explores the religious iconography of the Inochentite movement in 20thcentury Moldova. The Inochentite movement emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century in the Russian Province of Bessarabia and the Governorate of Podolia. This apocalyptic movement, inspired by the Orthodox monk Ioan Levizor, was soon portrayed as both heretical and subversive. Persecuted during the Soviet era, the movement went underground re-emerging into the public domain in the post-Soviet era. The Inochentite revival gave rise to a rich iconographic tradition, reflecting the significance of its charismatic founder and revealing the cosmological claims of his followers. This paper focuses on two aspects of Inochentite iconography and hagiography; representations of the Tsar Nicholas II and images of Inochentie as the Holy Spirit

Spirit, mind and body: the archaeology of monastic healing

Archaeology and material culture are used in this chapter to consider how monastic experience responded to illness, ageing and disability. The approach taken is influenced by the material study of religion, which interrogates how bodies and things engage to construct the sensory experience of religion, and by practice-based approaches in archaeology, which examine the active role of space and material culture in shaping religious agency and embodiment. The archaeology of monastic healing focuses on the full spectrum of healing technologies, from managing the body in order to prevent illness, through to the treatment of the sick and preparation of the corpse for burial

Pots, chicken and building deposits: the archaeology of folk and official religion during the High Middle Ages in the Basque Country

In this paper, a particular type of unusual archaeological deposits found at some high medieval (12–13th centuries CE) sites located in the Basque Country (northern Iberian Peninsula) is examined. These structured deposits consist of inverted pottery vessels containing the remains of a chicken, placed in pits created on purpose for keeping them, and are generally found in archaeological contexts related to the foundation or reconstruction of public buildings, including churches and city walls. The implications of the occurrence of these rituals in Christian contexts are discussed in the framework of folk religion, suggesting that medieval religion was hybrid and dynamic, even after the Gregorian Reform (11th century CE) that, supposedly, unified the Christian administration and liturgy. It is suggested that the occurrence of such public ritual practices in the Basque Country during the High Middle Ages might be related to the formation and negotiation of new social and political communities

‘She read me a prayer and I read it back to her’: Gagauz Women, Miraculous Literacy and the Dreaming of Charms

This paper explores the polyvalent and gendered nature of the relationship between the practices of reading and charming and the Mother of God in the dream narratives of Gagauz women in the Republic of Moldova. The most widespread healing text used by this Orthodox Christian minority, The Dream of the Mother of God, is paradigmatic of this relationship being the principle ‘site’ where images of and beliefs about healing and dreaming meet with women’s reading and writing practices. Women’s knowledge of reading and charming constitutes dangerous knowledge and their dream narratives of literacy and healing represent an important way in which gender and identity are performed by this group of women. I argue here that although dreams with the Mother of God and her text represent transgressions of patriarchal religious boundaries their ability to contribute to the reimagining or renegotiation of gendered social roles for these women is limited.

‘She read me a prayer and I read it back to her’: Gagauz Women, Miraculous Literacy and the Dreaming of Charms

This paper explores the polyvalent and gendered nature of the relationship between the practices of reading and charming and the Mother of God in the dream narratives of Gagauz women in the Republic of Moldova. The most widespread healing text used by this Orthodox Christian minority, The Dream of the Mother of God, is paradigmatic of this relationship being the principle ‘site’ where images of and beliefs about healing and dreaming meet with women’s reading and writing practices. Women’s knowledge of reading and charming constitutes dangerous knowledge and their dream narratives of literacy and healing represent an important way in which gender and identity are performed by this group of women. I argue here that although dreams with the Mother of God and her text represent transgressions of patriarchal religious boundaries their ability to contribute to the reimagining or renegotiation of gendered social roles for these women is limited.

New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent: Joint Review Report: Report prepared by the participants of the COST Action CA16213

The present document, the Joint Review Report (JRR), concludes the first stage of COST Action 16213, New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent (NEP4DISSENT), which is aimed at leveraging the power of an international, multidisciplinary, and technology-conscious research network to survey the state of the art and chart new directions in scholarship. The JRR builds on and deepens the shared framework for the understanding of the methodological and conceptual challenges to the state of the art in this domain of research (described in Section 1), which has brought together a large and diverse group of scholars, curators, and digital humanities practitioners (see further in Section 2). This group grew into a robust and integrated research network through the process of the State of the Art Review (SotAR), whose outcome the JRR now presents to a wider audience. The SotAR process (described in Section 3) was designed to pool together research agendas and to identify specific focus areas into which this Action will intervene in order to trigger a new exploratory phase in research on Eastern European cultures of dissent. The chapters of this report, each prepared by a different NEP4DISSENT Working Group (WG), represent the outcomes of the SotAR process