Academic literature on the topic 'Cult of Holy Mountain's Virgin mary'

The cult of the saints, according to Emile Male, ‘sheds over all the centuries of the middle ages its poetic enchantment’, but ‘it may well be that the saints were never better loved than during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ Certainly their images and shrines were everywhere in late medieval England. They filled the churches, gazing down in polychrome glory from altar-piece and bracket, from windows and tilt-tabernacles. In 1488 the little Norfolk church of Stratton Strawless had lamps burning not only before the Rood with Mary and John, and an image of the Trinity, but before a separate statue of the Virgin, and images of Saints Margaret, Anne, Nicholas, John the Baptist, Thomas à Becket, Christopher, Erasmus, James the Great, Katherine, Petronilla, Sitha, and Michael the Archangel.

Emblematic figures of godly and faithful women proliferate throughout the literature of the English Renaissance and Reformation. Characteristically they hold books in their hands symbolic of divine revelation, or they appear in books as representations of divine inspiration. While such representation of a pious feminine ideal was traditional in Christian art, Tudor reformers attempted to appropriate the devout emotionality linked to many female saints and to the Virgin Mary, both as the mother of Christ and as an allegorical figure for Holy Church, providing instead images of Protestant women as embodiments of pious intellectuality and divine wisdom. Long before the cult of the wise royal virgin grew up in celebration of Elizabeth I, Tudor Protestants began to praise learned women for applying knowledge of the scriptures to the cause of church reform.

This article examines the Marian shrines of Walsingham (England) and Meryem Ana (Turkey). Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the Reformation, when Catholic sacred places were disestablished or destroyed by Protestants. Meryem Ana is linked to Walsingham, in that both shrines feature healing springs and devotion to the cult of the “Holy House” of the Virgin Mary. Walsingham is now home to multi-faith pilgrimages, New Age seekers and secular tourists. Meryem Ana is a rare Christian shrine in Islamic Turkey, where mass tourists rub shoulders with devout Christians supporting the small Greek Catholic community in residence. This article emerged from the experience of walking the Walsingham Way, a modern route based on the medieval pilgrimage in 2012, and visiting Meryem Ana in 2015 while making a different pilgrimage, that of an Australian attending the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. Both shrines are marketed through strategies of history and heritage, making visiting them more than simply tourism. Both sites offer a constructed experience that references the Middle Ages and Christianity, bringing modern tourism in an increasingly secular world into conversation with ancient and medieval pilgrimage and the religious past.

The letter of the Holy Father John Paul II written in Rome in 1987, in the tenth year of His pontificate, on December 4th, on the day of memorial of Saint John Damascene, the doctor of the Church, on the Twelfth Centenary of finishing the controversy over the icon, is of great importance for the Pope’s program of ecumenism. The Holy Father indicated various directions of the dialogue, however, the one of the utmost importance concerned the agreement with the Orthodox Church, which was confirmed in the letters and in His other documents quoted in this paper. The image used to be essential for religious practice, for illustrating the word of prayer and of the song, in order to preserve the tradition of the Church. The strict prohibition introduced by the iconoclasm depreciated not only the artistic tradition of paintings but also the basic dogmas of Christ’s Incarnation and the one which introduced Virgin Mary as the Theotokos (the God-bearer). The ban constituted a threat not only for the icons but also for the Christian faith. In His Letter, the Pope underlined the important role of the Second Council of Nicaea which reintroduced icons and maintained and deepened the meaning of the cult in the faith of believers. Furthermore, the Holy Father indicated the connection with the Second Vatican Council in understanding the function and form of images in contemporary Church. Contemporary trends are overwhelmed by the impotence of the spiritual expression of sacral art, which is a great concern for the Pope. The Letter is, therefore, a dramatic warning of the threats for religious art in contemporary time, expressed by the Holy Father with these words: ‘The rediscovery of the Christian icon will also help in raising the awareness of the urgency of reacting against the depersonalizing and at times degrading effects of the many images that condition our lives in advertisements and the media.’ (DS, 11).

In the Vita of despot Stefan Lazarevic, Belgrade is compared to Jerusalem The use of this topos is aimed at a social construction of meaning within the framework of historically determined cultural discourse, based on the premise that culture itself can be observed as a complex system of signs constantly open to redefinition. This implies that the approach to its more profound understanding must rely on a method based on reconceptualization of the problem of text and context. Therefore, the true object of investigation becomes the relation between text and society whose activities are themselves perceived as a sort of behavioral text, in which that relation functions as two homologous systems of signs. As a result, our attention is focused on activities which produce social and cultural phenomena and objects ? actually on the means by the use of which a world filled with meaning is created. Apart from texts, those means, as real as the text itself, belong to the instruments of creating sacred space or hierotopy, a phenomenon historically recognized as translatio Hierosolymi. Beyond any doubt, in the eyes of homo medievalis, the absolute paradigm of hierotopic activity is Constantinople the capital of the Empire and universal model through the emulation of which or through the appropriation of whose elements of identity (ranging from cults of saints to visual identity) throughout history, and in particular in the later middle ages (especially following the events of 1204), a growing number of other points in the Christian oikoumene gains the status of center as a God-chosen and God-protected place ? Arta, Trebizond and Nicea, Paris and Venice, Novgorod and Moscow, to name just the most prominent examples In investigating the case of Belgrade, attention is focused on the modes and vehicles of hierotopy which in the days of despot Stefan Lazarevic (1402-1427) were laid as the foundation of likening Belgrade and Jerusalem as the utmost example of sacral space and their relation to the universal prototype of translatio Hierosolymi realized in Constantinople. Although related to that of Trnovo (relics of Agia Paraskevi were translated from Bulgaria to Serbia and encomiastic rhetoric developed within the Trnovo literary school was adopted in the Serbian milieu through the engagement of Constantine the Philosopher from Kostenec as the author of the highly learned and sophisticated text of the despot's Vita), the program of Belgrade appears to have more universal pretensions. Its emulation of Constantinople as a means of sacralisation is corroborated by a considerable number of phenomena in its hierotopy: the dedication of the city to the Virgin, the presence of her miracle working icon of the Hodegetria type (possibly even relics related to Mary), visions of her intercession and protection in the skies above the city, but above all the presence of imperial relics of the highest rank namely those of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, and the holy empress Theophano (wife of Leo VI the Wise, dynastic saint of the Macedonians). As for topography, in the text of the despot's Vita the entire city is referred to as eptalophos polls, a notable Constantinopolitan epithet, while the location of its metropolitan see with the church of the Dormition of the Virgin is, in accordance with its dedication, likened to the Valley of Kidron and Gethsemane. Thus, although it is not the first sacral focus of the Serbian medieval state, Belgrade, as opposed to its monastic predecessors in that role ? Chilandar, Studenica and Zica, is the first such center created on an urban matrix and with a program of hierotopy focusing not on national but rather universal cults, a locus envisaged as the point of salvation drawing all the nations of the oikoumene. Such a concept of Belgrade as the capital of the Serbian state in the days of despot Stefan Lazarevic is only one constituent part of a broader phenomenon of appropriating Constantinopolitan models as instruments in the process of sacralisation of the entire space of his state aimed at welcoming the eschatological reality expected to arrive with the year 7000. At the same time, this process was perceived as a political instrument, a true shield of divine protection against imminent Turkish threat. In the act of translating and mapping of sacred space, in asserting the occurrence and circulation of divine presence throughout the despot's land, other places, alongside Belgrade, also played an important role. Belgrade, politically certainly of utmost importance, together with its holy mountain located in its immediate vicinity, on Mt. Kosmaj, marks the northernmost point of that hallowed ground. Its southern perimeter is marked by Krusevac, Kalenic, Ljubostinja and other sacral focuses of so-called Morava Serbia while its ideal center so to speak, could be located in Manasija itself, despot Stefan's mausoleum or, in the words of Constantine the Philosopher, that other city which has the path towards celestial Jerusalem and is its likeness. .

The article analyses the iconographic programme of the altars of St Trinity Church of the convent of former Bernardine nuns (Sisters of the Third Order of St Francis) in Kaunas until its closure in 1864 and reveals the expression of the spirituality of this order in the sacral art as far as the surviving few sources and heritage allow. In order to achieve the goal, the following objectives were established: (1) to reconstruct the old interior of the altar ensemble, (2) to reveal the most important peculiarities of the Bernardines’ spirituality, and (3) to highlight the logical connections between art and Bernardine spirituality in church art through the icono-theological approach. Scarce earliest sources indicate that the most venerated representation of the Virgin Mary and the relics of the True Cross were in the church in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the Feast of the Discovery and Exaltation of the Holy Cross was celebrated. These hints suggest that piety to the Crucifix and the Mother of God was prevalent at that time. The cult of the Crucifix is associated with the common origin of Franciscan religious devotion, which encourages following the example of St Francis by contemplating the suffering of Jesus Christ. Also, it is not difficult to infer that based on the name of the church, the high altar should have been dedicated to the Holy Trinity; therefore, there should have been appropriate piety practices. It is believed that the fraternity of the Holy Trinity was active from the time of the completion of the church. The main accents of iconography of the altars of the Bernardine Church in Kaunas were formed after the disasters in the mid-seventeenth century, the last fire in 1668. The Holy Trinity was the dominant accent of piety. A painting dated to the early eighteenth century that reflects the post-Tridentine recommendations for visual arts decorated the high altar of the same name. In the early eighteenth century, the exceptional piety to St Joseph also gains prominence: in 1703, the fraternity of St. Joseph was established and a separate altar was dedicated to this saint. The feasts of the Holy Trinity and St Joseph were celebrated. It is believed that the Bernardine nuns in Vilnius, who had settled in the city a little earlier, influenced the piety to the Holy Trinity. A highly developed and majestic iconography distinguished their high altar, visually emphasising the figure of the Crucifix. The exceptional piety of the Bernardine nuns of Krakow to St Joseph influenced the cult of this saint. The first Bernardine nuns came to Lithuania from Krakow and, without doubt, the Lithuanian nuns must have kept in touch with the nuns from Krakow. Devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Crucifix was further developed. Two altars in the church were dedicated to the Mother of God (Mary, Consoler of the Afflicted and Our Lady of Sorrows); also, there were altars of Jesus at the Pillar and the Crucifix. The relics of the True Cross preserved and venerated in the altar of the Crucifix are mentioned from the first half of the seventeenth century. The Feast of the Discovery and Exaltation of the Holy Cross was celebrated. The Bernardine nuns venerated the Franciscan saints and close followers and brothers of St Francis. This is confirmed by the altars of St Francis of Assisi (stigmatisation plot), St Clare, and St Anthony of Padua in the church. A closer study into the lives of the lesser-known saints who can be easily confused with other popular saints of the same name revealed a rich gallery of Franciscan saints, especially females, among them. Bernardine nuns had a separate altar and a feast dedicated to St Elizabeth of Hungary, the patron of the Third Order of St Francis and one of the most venerable followers of the example of St Francis’ life. In the context of other Bernardine monasteries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Bernardine nuns in Kaunas stood out for their veneration of this saint. Bernardine nuns also distinguished St Rose of Viterbo, St Agnes of Assisi, and St Barbara, whose cult is associated with active devotion of the Lithuanian Bernardines to this saint. The iconography of the Bernardine Church was influenced by the Convent of St George the Martyr in Kaunas, whose church was naturally richer and whose iconographic programme covered a broader spectrum. Interestingly, it also contained images or sculptures of all the above-mentioned saints associated with the Franciscan Observants, including the female saints lesser known to other communities of believers, while individual altars were dedicated to St Rose from Viterbo and St Barbara. The ensemble of church altars, which had been gradually evolving from the seventeenth century, and the practices of piety hardly changed until the closure of the convent in 1864. It is unfortunate that due to the lack of sources, many assumptions and questions remain, and one can only hope that further research into the interior of the church will lead to more discoveries.

In my work I deal with the place of pilgrimage of the Virgin Mary on the Holy Mountain in Příbram in the interwar period. In the newly established Republic of Czechoslovakia, tense relations between Church and State has prevailed. Even iconoclastic acts are documented from that time. My assumption is that the Holy Mountain functioned as a place that helped to bring together believers, unite Catholics, and restore the faith. A catholic group called Matice Svatohorská was founded to focus on repairing extensive grounds and spreading the awareness of the Holy Mountain and the cult of the Virgin Mary through a published journal. Through an analysis of this journal I want to capture the resources that Catholic leaders used in consolidating and expanding the Catholic Faith in Bohemia. Through the analysis of the journal I want to know how the magazine reflected the relationship between church and state and what additional information reflects. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The chapter deals with the role of the Virgin Mary in the nation- state building process in Serbia. The beginning of the process of religious revival in Serbia coincided with the beginning of the social, economic and political crisis in the former Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s. There was an urgent need to find new collective identity, since the earlier had been reduced to rubble. At the individual level, this process primarily implied increased participation in rites within the life cycle of an individual (baptism, wedding, and funeral), followed by popularisation of the practice of celebrating family's patron saint days and, only in the end and on the smallest scale, by an increase in the number of believers taking an active part in regular church services. On the collective level, the traditional closeness of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serb people and the state was the basic paradigm of such restructuring. The attempt to establish continuity with the tradition of the medieval Serb state, which implied active participation of the Church in both social and political matters, as well as the grafting of this relationship in the secular state and civil society in Serbia at the end of the second millennium, turned out to be a multi-tiered issue (Jevtić 1997). At mass celebrations, as well as at revolutionary street protest rallies (which were plentiful in the capital during the last dozen years or so) and at celebrations of the town's patron saint days and various festivities, the image of the ‘Bogorodica’ [Gr. ‘Theotokos’, i.e. The Mother of God]; appears. Leading the processional walks of the towns, it emerges as a symbol which manages to mobilise the nation with its fullness and multi-layered meaning. The main thesis of the chapter is to explain the historical roots of her cult and her embeddedness in the national history and identity in Serbia. The cult of the ‘Bogorodica’ has always had greater importance on the macro than on the micro level. This is corroborated by the fact that a relatively small number of families celebrated some of the ‘Bogorodica’ holidays as their Patron St Day, while a large number of monasteries and churches, as well as village Patron St Days were dedicated to one of them (Grujić 1985: 436). On the other hand, some authors believe that, with the acceptance of Christianity, it was the cult of the ‘Bogorodica’ which was the most developed among the Serb population, because her main and most widely recognisable epithet Baba, connected to giving birth, was directly associated with the powerful female pagan divinities such as the Great Mother, Grandmother etc. (Petrović 2001: 55; Čajkanović 1994a: 339). In the folk perception, the ‘Presveta Bogorodica’ [The Most Holy Mother of God] is unambiguously connected to the phenomenon and process of birth-giving and, that is why, barren women most frequently addressed the ‘Bogorodica’ for assistance. The observance of the image of the ‘Bogorodica’ was specifically connected with the so-called miracle icons, that is, her paintings linked to some miraculous event, either locally or generally. This was most frequently related to the icons which were famous for discharging myrrh, as well as icons which would ‘cry’ in certain situations, as well as those that changed the place of residence in a miraculous manner. The use of icons in wars, either those of conquest or defensive, appears to be a widely spread practice in the Orthodox world. It was noted that Serb noblemen carried standards with images of various saints to wars, and that the cities were frequently placed under the protection of certain icons. The author shows how, travelling through towns and battlefields, throughout the decades and centuries, the ‘Bogorodica’ appeared through its holy image at the end of the second millennium as the protectress, advocate, Pointer of the Way and foster mother of those who were, possibly more than ever, in need of miracles and waymarks.

The chapter presents Marian worship in one of its specific local manifestations – the cult to the Virgin in the region of Asenovgrad, Central Southern Bulgaria. The fact that it is the most representative example of the vital and well-developed Marian cult within present-day Bulgaria, as well as authors' long-term fieldwork in the region (started 1996), influenced the choice of Asenovgrad as the focus of their attention. The methodological framework is based on the concept of local religion (Christian 1989: 3), reformulated by the authors into the concepts of local religiosity and local religious culture. The local Marian cult in Asenovgrad region is used as an example of how to understand this local and cultural embeddedness of religiosity, presented via (1) devotional sites and the images belonging to them (in this case, miracle-working icons of the Virgin); (2) local feasts and ritual practices; and (3) local and personal religious narratives. The authors regard places, rituals and narratives as basic elements which complement, influence and support each another, constituting a complex system of local religious culture. Following this pattern, the authors pinpointed for their analysis the three most important places of Marian worship in the region: the Dormition of Mary Monastery of Bachkovo, the Annunciation of Mary Church in Asenovgrad, and the Dormition of Mary Church in Gorni Voden. Besides the contextual information, the authors also focused on a more intimate, individual dimension of Marian worship, exploring the presence of the Virgin in personal narratives about miraculous recoveries, dreams, visions, etc. and delineating the connection between individual experience and cultural background. According to the authors, the local worship of Mary in Asenovgrad region is a brilliant example of the ways in which local religiosity exists and develops in the intersection of universal religion and local traditions, folklore and cultural specificities. On the local level, the general Christian figure of the Virgin acquires characteristic features, associated with her motherly aspect and her quality of a divine patroness and immediate helper in every need. Her intercession is achieved by means of sacred intermediaries that have the power to connect the common devotee with the celestial power: holy places, miracle-working icons, springs and caves. Apart from the well-known Marian feasts, idiosyncratic local holidays are observed, too, and the related ritual actions span from the canonical to the folkloric and ‘magical’. Specific symbols, such as the apple, the water, and the fish, come to the fore as a material representation of Mary's sacred power and assistance. Local and personal narratives add a private, sometimes even intimate aspect to the Marian devotion, binding the universal sacred figure of the Virgin with the history and geography of the local community, as well as with the individual life trajectories of the believers.

The article is devoted to the isolation and analysis in the poetic texts of D. Kremen, groups sacred concepts, microconceptospheres, the discovery of conceptual meanings in nature which clearly feels the spiritual, linguistic and cultural and individual-authorial components. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the increasing attention of linguists, on the one hand, to the problems of linguoculturology and linguoconceptology, on the other - to the set concepts filled with religious, sacred meaning in general. The aim of the article is to trace how in the modern scientific paradigm one of the concepts "sacred" is interpreted, connected with the thematic concept of the conceptosphere of the sacred; demonstrate new trends in the implementation of the conceptosphere sacred, whose representatives are concepts to denote God and all that is holy in the understanding of the Divine, to identify by verbalization of microconceptospheres "biblical characters", "biblical loci", "church organization and cult", "sacred-chthonic beings". The subject of research is LEXICAL MEANS OF VERBALIZATION OF THE CONCEPTOSPHERE OF THE SACRED in poetic texts. The object is the microconceptosphere in the realization of the conceptosphere of the sacred in the poetic idiosyncrasy of D. Kremen. The methodological basis is the basic provisions of linguoconceptology, in particular the problems of interaction between language and culture. Research methods: the method of continuous sampling, which is used to collect the actual material; descriptive method, which allowed to analyze the results in a certain aspects; method of contextual and interpretive analysis associated with decoding units of secondary nomination, identification of symbolic and metaphorical and individual-authorial meanings and functional-semantic load. It was found that in the poetic idiostyle of D. Kremen the dominant of theonyms in the poetic idiostyle of D. Kremen is one of the most important cultural universals, the basis of all world religions is God. From the point of view of linguocognitology, the conceptual sphere, the conceptual image of "God", is a multifaceted, multifunctional, hierarchical structure, which is realized by multilingual connections and oppositions. The analysis of the isolated units shows that in the concept is dominated by meanings relevant to the Christian scenario, but also recorded in relation to certain pagan and ancient notions of the supreme deity. Nuclear concepts-images "Jesus Christ", "Virgin Mary" in the studied texts are characterized by a clear syncretism, due to the intersection of the manifested in its structure biblical and mythopoetic meanings. Linguistic means are singled out and characterized, which reveal both its traditional canonicity and symbolic-metaphorical representation in D. Kremen's poetic idiosyncrasy. The specificity of the linguistic representation of the concept is represented by the actual poetic semantic individual-authorial and expressive-pictorial properties in poetic speech.against the background of preserving the traditionally established means of its verbalization. The concept of God and other specified conceptual quantities are represented in the language through the corresponding tokens by a wide range of names of different linguistic nature and stylistic specificity, used with direct and figurative meaning, synonyms, paraphrases, etc.