"Entstand das Huhn aus dem Ei oder das Ei aus dem Huhn?" : ein alter Glaubensstreit zwischen Christen und Juden in der europäischen Apokryphenliteratur

In church folksongs of Orthodox Russians, Friday appears in two forms. In the songs entitled „Friday”, the day appears in a personified form as Friday Woman (Piatnica). In the Russian church folksongs and prose texts which are called „On the twelve Fridays”, the day appears in an entirely different role. The Russian cultic veneration of the twelve Fridays can be traced back to the apocryphal writing „Sage of the Twelve Fridays” attributed to St. Clemens, a Roman. The apocryphal „Sage of the Twelve Fridays” of St. Clemens, which was rooted in a Roman Catholic religious-cultural background, was well-known throughout Europe. Variants of the texts of the Clemens-group appear in French, Provencal, Latin, Greek, German, Svabian in Hungary, Italian, English and Hungarian languages. Howewer, the legend of the twelve Fridays exists in another type as well. This is the Eleftherios-group. The group is named so because in these versions the list of the twelve Fridays is preceded by an introductory part, which is about the religious dispute between Eleftherios, a Christian and Terasios, a Jew

"Apostolʹskaa truba i evangelʹskyj gromʺ vsja grady oglasi" : glavnye voprosy prinjatija na Rusi hristianstva i èpohi pravoslavno-jazyčeskogo religioznogo sinkretizma

The Kiev-centred Old Russian State converted to Christianity in 988–989. The conversion of eastern Slavs did not happen in a moment however; rather it took place gradually and was the effect of a long and complex process of development. Christianity started to take root in Kiev Rus well before the 10th century. It is known that at the beginning of his reign Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich I was dedicated to Pagan creed and even tried reforming it in order to consolidate the unity of his state. Christianization, the so called ‘state christening’ was confined to towns first, as testified in a 11thcentury report by Ilarion, the first Russian speaking metropolitan of Kiev: ‘The sound of the apostolic trumpet and the Gospel filled all the towns...’ The population of villages became intrinsically and spiritually truly Christian only later, in the 15th–17th centuries. The Pagan-Christian religious syncretism of the period is often called ‘double faith’, which is not the best term to describe a spirit and consciousness in the process of Christianization. In the name of its elastic mission strategy the clergy had significant initiatives contributing to Pagan Christian syncretism. This unique consciousness and spirituality created its own ideal of beauty and determined the characteristic features of the culture of Russia before the Mongol invasion

"Jesus ritt einmal zur Kirche..." : Heidnisch-christliche Varianten des Zweiten Merseburger Zauberspruchs als wirksame Mittel der elastischen Missionsstrategie

Through their formal conversion to Christianity the German tribes belonged to the community of Christian civilization. In the consciousness of the ‘new people’, however, Christian beliefs existed in combination with pagan myths, thus forming a specific ethos, a kind of pagan and Christian syncretism, which can distinctly be traced in various fields of their culture. Great masses of people retained their magical-mythological view of the world for centuries, although it was gradually extended to include Christian elements. Pagan-Christian syncretism had developed among the Anglo-Saxons earlier and it was transplanted, together with the well-tried methods of conversion, to the Germans. In their healing activities Christian priests and monks had to rival with pagan magicians as a heritage of the past. For a time in the beginning (for centuries!), the newly baptized people regarded their priests and monks as magicians. The magic spells of paganism were turned Christian by clerical leaders of the new religion, who substituted such important figures of Christian religion as Jesus, Maria and a variety of saints for pagan gods and goddesses. The Second Merseburg Incantation was reworded in a Christian spirit and had the Lord’s Prayeras well as Ave Maria attached to it. Thus these prayers lost their original functions and became part of a series of magic texts. Knowing the Lord’s Prayer was an essential condition of conversion to Christianity. Formal representatives of the Christian Church inculcated it in people’s memory by attaching it to earlier incantations, for example the Second Merseburg Incantation. All this took place within the framework of the flexible mission strategy. The pagan-Christian text variations of this incantation existed not only in oral form among the people all over Europe, but were also included in medieval codices and therefore can be collected even today. The present article discusses the pagan-Christian, Hungarian text variations of the Second Merseburg Incantation in their widest context of German culture

"Ich sah einen wunderbaren Traum..." : die großrussischen geistlichen Volksgesänge "Traum der Hochheiligen Gottesgebärerin" in der christlichen Volksfrömmigkeit und in den magischen Praktiken

Have Seen a Wonderful Dream...”: “The Dream of the Most Holy Mother of God” GreatRussian religious folk songs in Christian folk piety and magical practices. A possible source, and the oldest one, of the dream motif in “The Dream of Mary” is the dream of Mundane, which was reported by Herodotus and can be traced as far back as the ancient Persian times. It has however a more concrete relation to the tree of Jesse (Isaiah, 11:1–2), based on the prophecy of Isaiah, in which some very important events of the History of Redemption may also be represented instead of the ancestors of Christ. The closure has a function of key importance in the texts of “The Dream of the Mother of God”. Indulgence or pardon and remission of sins were often termed as the same, thus the differences in their meanings were lost. The closure suffered a distortion when people started to regard the heavenly powers (Christ and the Mother of God) as distributors of indulgence and started to use the prayers as well as songs deemed useful in the closures for magical purposes. The Russian adoption of the theme resulted in a complete loss of the Russian equivalent of “indulgence”. It was due to the preservative power of the written word that the term “indulgence” managed to survive in the texts of “The Dream of the Mother of God”, which was spread in copied written form, and it also survived in some of the contaminated prose texts of “The Dream” + “Heavenly Letter ”. Several researchers support the Western-European origin of “The Mother of God” Russian religious folk songs and prose texts. By all probability the theme reached Orthodox Russians via Catholic Poland

Als der Herrgott, der Satan und Sankt Petrus mit der Schöpfung beschäftigt waren : dualistische Schöpfungssagen in der schwedischen, ungarischen und russischen Kultur

In this paper I focus on dualistic creation stories, but without an attempt at an all-European overview. The analysis is confined to Swedish, Hungarian and Russian cultures, and references are made to various genres of literary fiction, folk legends, religious folk epic songs and annals. In the background of these examples the religious ideology of medieval bogomilism can be traced. “The Legend of Småland”, a chapter in Selma Lagerlöf’s children’s novel “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils”, draws on a dualistic cosmogonic myth of apocryphal traditions. This myth represents a modified variant of an etiological, dualistic belief. Satan is replaced by Saint Peter, who is believed to have created the mountains, which are symbolic of chaos, in the plain called Småland. In contrast, the plain was created by God. In the mythological view of the world, the plain is symbolic of the world of order, i.e. cosmos. The motif of soil or sand brought up from the bottom of the sea as well as the cooperation of the Creator and his Demiurge in the creation myth may be part of the ancient heritage in Hungarian mythology, or the motifs of the dualistic creation myth may have been borrowed later in the new homeland from nearby or distant neighbours whose tradition had been deeply affected by bogomilism. In the Russian Primary Chronicle, at the year 1071, an apocryphal story can be read in which magicians (‘volchvy’) present their ideas concerning the creation of man in accordance with the dualistic concept of Bogomils. The human body was created by Satan, from a bunch of straw hurled down from Heaven by God, and it was God who placed the soul in the body. Certain textual variants of “The Book of the Depths” (‘Golubinaja kniga’), a Russian religious folk epic, describe the single combat between Truth (‘Pravda’) and Falsehood (‘Krivda’). This combat can be interpreted, although indirectly, as the Bogomil tenet of the fight between Logos (Jesus) and Satan. Although Truth became victorious, the two of them shared the rule over the world. Heaven belongs to Jesus, whereas the Earth, with all the people, belongs to Satan. European literatures and folk poetry were intensely affected, although in different ways, by the apocrypha, including writings and oral traditions of Bogomil spirit, which spread widely and had a distinctly perceptible impact on the development of Christian culture in Europe

Alte Zeiten, ebenso viele Geschichten : Russische Apokryphen und geistliche Volksgesänge am Schnittpunkt von uralten Kulturen

The Kiev-centred Old Russian State converted to Christianity in 988–989. The conversion of eastern Slavs did not happen in a moment however; rather it took place gradually and was the effect of a long and complex process of development. Christianity started to take root in Kiev Rus well before the 10th century. It is known that at the beginning of his reign Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich I was dedicated to Pagan creed and even tried reforming it in order to consolidate the unity of his state. Christianization, the so called ‘state christening’ was confined to towns first, as testified in a 11th century report by Ilarion, the first Russian speaking metropolitan of Kiev: ‘The sound of the apostolic trumpet and the Gospel filled all the towns...’ The population of villages became intrinsically and spiritually truly Christian only later, in the 15th–17th centuries. The Pagan-Christian religious syncretism of the period is often called ‘double faith’, which is not the best term to describe a spirit and consciousness in the process of Christianization. In the name of its elastic mission strategy the clergy had significant initiatives contributing to Pagan Christian syncretism. This unique consciousness and spirituality created its own ideal of beauty and determined the characteristic features of the culture of Russia before the Mongol invasion