Issue 3 (76)
| MEDIEVAL BENEDICTIONS (BENEDICTIONES) IN INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2022 | Number | 3(76) |
| Pages | 6-14 | Type | scientific article |
| UDC | 94(4)“4/14” | BBK | 63.3(0)4 |
| Authors | Arnautova Yulia E. |
Topic | CULTURAL PRACTICES: LIMITS OF PERCEPTION AND TRANSFERENCE STRATEGIES |
| Summary | Benedictions (Benedictiones) are liturgic rites in Catholic church, pronounced by a priest on individual occasions. Medieval studies viewed benedictions and sacramentals (sacramentalia) as a “clerical magic” due to multiple superstitions that surrounded these practices. The article uses Yu. M. Lotman’s communicative model of culture, which can be viewed as semiotically unbalanced (“core” and “periphery”, including foreign semiotic elements), to present destructive changes in this segment of the liturgy as temporary, corresponding to a certain phase of dynamic interaction of two separate cultures — the clerical one (written) and traditional (oral) culture of ordinary believers. The zone of their closest contact is the religious life in the parish, which the author correlates with the cultural periphery, where cross-border interaction takes place (dialogue between the “core” and “periphery”) thus producing the universal communication code (“semiotization”). It was at the level of the local parishes that a number of “unofficial” benedictions on different ordinary occasions (benedictions of fields, cattle, houses etc.) emerged in the 10th–11th centuries. Written in Latin, they were quite extended by specification, application of apocryphal sources, so the prayers mixed up with incantations using elements of folk oral tradition. Thus, the Church, represented by parish priests, got involuntarily involved in the process of creating a language understandable to its flock, adopting elements of traditional culture. Benedictiones deviating from strict orthodoxy vanish only in 16th century with the spread of printed literature and unification of liturgic books. | ||
| Keywords | medieval benedictions (benedictiones), parish, semiosphere, periphery, transboundary impact | ||
| References |
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