The Plot of the Pilgrimage in the Latest Bashkir Prose

The article touches upon the study of the pilgrimage plot in the works of modern Bashkir prose writers, which is presented in two directions: visiting local shrines and Hajj to Mecca. Various existing forms of pilgrimage, as an integral part of many religions, continue to arouse the interest of both researchers and writers. The plot of the pilgrimage to the local sites in the trilogy of F. Galimov and the book of L.-A. Yakshibayeva has parallels with the religious traditions of the Muslims of Central Asia, where Sufism was one of the forms of Islam. The plot-forming element of the Hajj pilgrimage is the real geographical places of the sacred land that form the sacred space and connect the mortal world with the eternal in the minds of believers. The carefully thought-out integral composition of the story by T. Dayanova, and the novel by L.-A. Yakshibayeva includes events where the lives of the characters are intertwined with the fates of the characters of religious legends from the history and culture of Islam, which reveal the internal laws of the development of the main characters of the works and determine the role of Islam in human life.

Veneration of Rural in Armenia: The Transformation of Tradition

В сельских областях Армении повседневная религиозная жизнь протекает в сурбах - местных святилищах, домашних реликвариях, часовенках и молельнях. Сурб - в переводе с армянского «святой» - это комплексное понятие, которым верующие обозначают и святого, и пространство его почитания. Сурбами могут быть действующие или разрушенные церковные и монастырские постройки, книги, хачкары, родники, деревья, камни. Материальная форма сурба не ассоциированный со святым предмет, несущий на себе печать его святости, как принято в традиционном христианском культе святых, а сам святой. Именно это делает культ сурбов уникальным в ряду похожих культов народного христианства. Обустройство сурбов и паломничество к почитаемым локальным святыням - наиболее распространенные вернакулярные формы духовной жизни местных жителей. В статье исследуются изменения традиционных аспектов почитания сельских сурбов на основе доступных историко-этнографических источников и полевом материале, собранном автором в Армении в 2016-2021 гг. In rural areas of Armenia, daily religious life takes place in “surbs” - local shrines, domestic reliquaries, chapels and oratories. “Surb” means “saint” in Armenian; it is a complex concept that believers use to designate both a saint and the space of his veneration. Surbs can be an active or demolished church or monastery building, books, khachkars (carved stone stelae with the image of a cross), springs, trees, stones. The material form of the surb is not an object associated with the saint, bearing the seal of his holiness, as is customary in the traditional Christian cult of saints, but the saint himself. This is what makes the surb cult unique among similar cults. The arrangement of surbs and pilgrimage to revered local shrines are the most common popular expressions of the spiritual life of local people. The article examines changes in the traditional veneration of rural surbs on the basis of available historical and ethnographic sources as well as field material collected by the author in Armenia in 2016-2021.

A PRESENTATION LETTER TO THE SYNOD BY BISHOP SERAPHIM (OSTROUMOV) OF ORYOL AND SEVSK ON THE MIRACULOUS TIKHVIN ICON OF THE MOTHER OF GOD FROM MTSENSK

This paper is devoted to the letter of Bishop Seraphim (Ostroumov) of Oryol and Sevsk to the Synod on the subject of miraculous Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God from Mtsensk. The document is kept in the archives of Patriarch Tikhon and the Holy Synod office (RSIA). Thanks to that archival document, one can trace how the parish church authorities could relax strict rules of “synodal period” that limited the veneration of local shrines not recognized by the Church formally.

Miracles

The period of the Renaissance witnessed an extraordinary proliferation of miraculous events in Italy. Many of these miracles were connected to images of the Virgin Mary that were seen to weep, move, or speak out. In turn, these miraculous images acquired a reputation for helping the laity and were often called upon in times of crisis. Cults also grew up around miracle-working saints and printed accounts served to boost the fame of local shrines and pilgrimage sites. Making use of extensive visual and textual evidence, this chapter points to the many ways in which the Virgin and saints intervened in everyday domestic life. More fundamentally, it demonstrates for the first time the important role played by miracles in locating religion in the Italian Renaissance household.

Conclusions

This chapter serves as an editorial overview summarizing salient topics appearing in the chapters of Part 5, which focus on religious aspects of Inca expansion and administration. The Incas emphasized the sacred power of their capital, Cuzco, as they entered local landscapes populated by supernatural forces. Cuzco held important temples and shrines, and its imperial highways connected to the sacred networks of other peoples. Like other Andean societies, the Incas moved between sacred places to offer sacrifices, and as their empire grew they developed long-distance pilgrimages to important locations. The most important imperial sacrifice was the capacocha, which offered human victims to powerful supernatural entities. Inca efforts to build new sacred networks reflect their desires to appropriate local sacred power, and the constraints that local shrines presented for establishing imperial authority.

Shrines For Lares in Rome

This chapter looks at the many types of shrines for lares in public places in Rome, from the largest to the smallest. It starts with two temples (aedes) and moves on through various local shrines to named lares (notably the praestites and grundiles) and ultimately to the shrines at the crossroads (compita). Pliny tells us that the census of Vespasian and Titus officially recorded 265 compita larum (crossroads shrines for lares) in AD 73–74. These crossroads shrines are considered in relation to other local shrines, particularly open-air ones (sacella) that did not have cult buildings. The chapter also offers an overview of street shrines in Pompeii, and concludes with a broader consideration of the nature of lares and of the many places they inhabited and protected.

The Sensory Experience of Caracalla’s Supplication at the Pergamene Asclepieion

An imperial visit to a city was a grand affair, from the emperor’s adventus, to sacrificing at local shrines, to the commemorative acts which followed. This article aims to examine the multi-sensory impact of an imperial visit to a sanctuary and the lasting effects of these supplications via the case study of Caracalla’s worship of Asclepius in Pergamum in AD 213-14. This visit was commemorated on a series of medallions struck shortly after the event, which depict the acts of the emperor as he moved through the city to the Asclepieion and from secular to sacred space. This article will bring new depth to the study of imperial and divine relations as well as address the issue that often events such as these were not as neat and as clean-cut as is sometimes imagined nowadays. This article will address the following questions: How does our understanding of an imperial visit and supplication change when the sensory nature of such an event is examined? And for what reason are the senses manipulated in these images?

Strategies for constructing religious authority in ancient Hawai'i

Through intensive archaeological investigation of temples in Hawai'i, the authors reveal a sequence of religious strategies for creating and maintaining authority that has application to prehistoric sequences everywhere. Expressed in the orientation and layout of the temples and their place in the landscape, these strategies develop in four stages over the course of a few hundred years, from the fifteenth to nineteenth century AD, from local shrines associated with agriculture to the development of a centralising priesthood serving the larger political economy.