Stone Crosses Research Articles

Historical Narratives and Spatial Strategies of Reappropriation in Three Romanian Orthodox Monasteries

Contrary to the abundance of shared religious places throughout south-eastern Europe, multi-religious interaction is not a regular feature in Romania. Pilgrimages and visits to the popular Orthodox monasteries of Prislop and Nicula in Transylvania and Dervent in Dobruja are an exception to this trend. Unsurprisingly, these two regions are historically characterized by a remarkable ethnic and religious diversity. The two Transylvanian monasteries attract practitioners of different Christian denominations (Orthodox, Greek-Catholic, Roman-Catholic and Evangelical), while Dervent is a devotional site for Christians and Muslims (Tatars, Turks and Roma) alike. Common to all three monasteries is the presence of allegedly miracle-working objects, artefacts and bodies: a stone cross at Dervent, the Virgin Mary icon at Nicula, and the tomb of the charismatic monk Arsenie Boca at Prislop, respectively. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the three monasteries during both important feasts and everyday monastic life, this article is a multidisciplinary exploration of the workings of inter-religious competition, sharing and interaction. It combines the methods typical of ethnographic research with observations on how the religious space is navigated and socialized through the support of cartography and archival satellite images. The article casts light on how the historical narratives and spatial strategies enacted by the Romanian Orthodox Church overlap in the attempt to reclaim legitimate ownership and exclusive primacy over three popular devotional sites with a composite ethnic and religious past.

Is bitumen the key to the quality of the Monasterboice Stone Crosses?

Is bitumen the key to the quality of the Monasterboice Stone Crosses?

Oneiric Authentication of a Miraculous Shrine. Case Study from a Dobruja Monastery, Romania

An interesting phenomenon of incubation ritual was attested in open air in southwest Dobruja at the very beginning of the 20th century, at a healing stone cross that, two decades later, was enclosed by an Orthodox Christian monastery. The article focuses on the narrative strategy that asserts Christian authority over the site. The strategy includes a corpus of legends that associate the origin of the cross with the local martyrdom past, its miraculous finding, and a modern hagiography whose main character is a thaumaturgic monk. The dream as a realm for divine communication, represents a theme that coagulates the entire narrative corpus and contributes greatly to the construction of a sanctuary. Over the last decades, energy and spiritual healing practitioners have enriched the group of visitors to the monastery.

Is Bitumen the Key to the Quality of the Monasterboice Stone Crosses?

The tenth-century high crosses at Monasterboice, with their remarkable panels of stone carving, are unusually well preserved compared with other monuments of the time. A clue to their durability recently came to light during examination of fragments of a small cross discovered at the site that are carved from sandstone impregnated with bitumen. If the major crosses at Monasterboice were carved from the same sandstone, as seems likely, the quality of the carving and its state of preservation might well have been enhanced by the bitumen acting as a weak binding agent and as a water repellent.

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT THE BURIAL GROUND NEAR THE VILLAGE OF VASKOVICHI, GLUBOKOE REGION

The paper is devoted to the description of archaeological research at the soil cemetery near the former village of Vaskovichi, Glubokoe region. The burial ground had a stone structure in the form of a lining and two stone crosses. Two male burials were examined. The skeletons are oriented with their heads to the west with deviations to the north. In the filling of the grave pits were the remains of coffins made of boards fastened with nails. The grave goods were present in both burials and were represented by buttons, a pectoral cross and a medallion. The funeral inventory is represented by fragments of ceramic dishes. The inventory allows dating the burials of the 19th – early 20th centuries.

Working with mise-en-scène and frame composition in the process of creating an artistic image

The article explores the concepts of “mise-en-scène,” “shot composition,” and “artistic image,” defining their fundamental aspects, interrelation, and differences in their application as directorial tools in the process of working on a theatrical production and an audiovisual work. This work emphasizes the importance of creating an artistic visual language to preserve the profound impact of screen works on the audience in the context of contemporary challenges associated with the oversaturation of audiovisual content production and consumption. This research represents an attempt to conduct a comparative analysis of the directorial process in shaping artistic images in theater and cinema, using examples from the play “Gas” (1923) directed by Les Kurbas, as well as the films “The Stone Cross” (1968) by Leonid Osykа, “Effi Briest” (1974) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and “12 Years a Slave” (2013) by Steve McQueen. Such an approach allows for the identification of methods for artistically emphasizing key plot events and demonstrates how this process contributes to the exploration of the underlying themes in the works while influencing the imagination and sensory experience of the audience.

THE SOUND PARADIGM OF VASYL STEFANYK’S NOVELLA «A STONE CROSS»

The aim. The article suggests a new view on the organization and structure of Vasyl Stefanyk’s novella “A Stone Cross” that determines the elucidation of an intermedial issue in the analysis of the writer’s famous work: the unity of a word and sound palette in the fictional text of the novella author’s prose. Therefore, the aim of the article is to study through the prism of one novella a general tendency of Vasyl Stefanyk’s creative work: the synthesis of literature and art, the study of methodological approaches to interpreting the phenomena of intermediacy in the novellas of the classic of our national literature. 
 The research methods. For the analysis the synthesis of principles and methods of scientific researchis implemented, first of all, of intertextual, comparative-typological, intermedial, poetological and biographical ones. 
 The research results. The interpretation of Vasyl Stefanyk’s novella “A Stone Cross” through the prism of verbal and music-sound aspects promotes understanding of the writer’s rich in senses well-known work. That is why the selected poetic analysis of each part of “A Stone Cross” is the most acceptable for researching the textual longevity of sounds and music in the novella’s general structure. In the research process of the sound paradigm of Vasyl Stefanyk’s work, its groundbreaking essence, the peculiarity of its style, modern poetics are proved that undoubtedly affected the precision and powerful energy of its word form. 
 The scientific novelty. In the research there is achieved a new reading of the text of Vasyl Stefanyk’s novella “A Stone Cross”, for the first time there is performed the analysis of its sound contour by means of which the subtexts and hidden senses of the work are decoded. Such a cutting-edge approach proposes a fresh view on the Ukrainian author’s modernistic searches: the sound, music, song, dance identify the main hero Ivan Didukh, generally psychologise the text of the work. 
 The practical significance. The obtained research results may be used in further research of Vasyl Stefanyk’s creative work from positions of contemporary literary studies, particularly the proposed interpretational approach is one of the segments of a poly-aspectual interpretation of the deep in its contents work that has already become classical both in the sphere education and in scientific studies of today’s researchers of Vasyl Stefanyk’s creative work.

VASYL STEFANYK IN THE FIELD OF HIS READING

On the basis of primarily epistolary and memoirs, various manifestations of Vasyl Stefanyk’s reading behaviour are considered. It consisted of active searching for books, thoughtfulconversation with texts, deep psychological reactions to some of them, forming his own opinion about them, involving of famous people in reading. It was observed that, given the dynamics and its external manifestations, Stefanyk’s reading action had several stages: the early one, which concerned primary and gymnasium education, the Krakow one, connected with his medical studies at the Jagiellonian University, and the last one (from the 1900s), a period spent mainly on native land.
 A rich factual material was analysed. It testified that the main segment in the field of Stefanyk’s reading was foreign, primarily Western European literature, especially prose, but also poetry and drama, as well as Ukrainian literature. The author of the «Stone Cross» also had ample opportunities thanks to mastering books in four languages: besides Ukrainian also Russian, Polish and German. The article also attempts to understand the features of the phenomenon of Stefanyk as a reader, which naturally agreed with the psychophysical features of Stefanyk as a man. Reading itself provided writer’s thorough, first of all philological education and turned out to be the same original and productive form of his creative activity as a purely literary work.

The Pictorial Compositions on the Cross Stelae in Georgia (Fifth-Ninth Centuries)

In the Gogarene region, the period of peak production of the area’s stone crosses - the mid-sixth century through the seventh - was particularly favorable for local governors. This paper investigates the practice of incorporating real persons into devotional images, focusing on many depictions of local personages included in Gogarene crosses’ pictorial compositions amid biblical scenes, with local saints, and in symbolic imagery. The desired effect of this practice was to guarantee the commemoration of these persons in prayers said before the crosses. In the case of the cross at Mtskheta, comparison between the Georgian Lectionary’s content and information surrounding the stational liturgy of Jerusalem confirms that, besides prayers, biblical texts were also read before such crosses.

Хрестологія лемків-русинів: історичний аспект

The Lemko Region (Lemkivshchyna) is a region with many sights of sacred art, among which crosses hold a special place. The crosses testify to the belonging of the Lemko-Rusins to the church of the Eastern rite, which is very important, since it helped the Lemko-Rusins maintain their rite, customs, language and culture in a foreign confessional and foreign-language environment. Today, there are many tourist routes through the territory of Lemkivshchyna, and many of wooden and stone crosses need examination and restoration. After the division of the church, the Lemko-Rusins became part of the Eastern Rite. It was the Logos, the preaching of the Eastern Rite Cross, that played an important role in the historical preservation of Rusins from assimilation. Hand-made crosses were of a great importance for that. Carved hand-made crosses continued the medieval Eastern Church tradition of indoor sculpture of metal, stone, trees, bones, and ceramics. Typical handmade wooden crosses of the Eastern Rite church are septangular, sometimes octagonal, with a long jumper. They are decorated with images influenced by Byzantine iconography, as well as inscriptions in Cyrillic. A separate group consists of Lemko stone crosses. They are special, since they belong to the Eastern Rite and reflect the history and culture of Rusins. The Lemko-Rusins crosses are a separate understudied layer of history and world sacred culture. In the long run, it is worth studying the history and value of the cross in the history and church life of other ethno-cultural groups of Rusins: Hutsuls, Boykos, Podolyans, etc.

The cultural and historical landscape of the Izborsko-Malskaya valley as a unique monument of nature and history in Pskov region

A cultural-historical landscape is understood as a compound historical-cultural and natural formation that developed in a specific territory possessing certain homogeneous natural (landscape) properties as a result of long-term interaction between the man and the landscape that occurred in the course of their coherent development. The Izborsko-Malskaya valley is a single, coherent cultural and historical landscape, with the unique nature of which modern villages and an archaeological monument – Truvorovo gorodische of the VII-VIII centuries, the Izborsk city fortress of the XIV century, the remains of the Malskaya fortress-monastery, churches and chapels, ‘Truvorov’ stone cross – blend in. Already in the X century, an agricultural district with a dense network of settlements was formed around the city. The Malsky cross stands as a witness to one of the branches of the historical path From the Varangians to the Greeks, since it served as a special indicator of the route’s direction. The specific nature of the Izborsko-Malskaya valley is due to its geological features and the history of its relief evolution. The dissected topography, with outlets of picturesque karst springs – the Slovenian springs – and the mosaic nature of the local landscape complexes predetermined the great variety and variegation of vegetation and fauna. The natural basis for the morphological structure of the Izborsk-Malsky cultural-historical landscape is formed by four physical and geographical areas belonging to three interfluvial plains: undulating end-moraine, glaciolacustrine and abrasion-depositional, dissected by dells formed by streams of melt glacial water, with inherited river valleys. The cultural and historical landscape of the Izborsko-Malskaya valley is characterized by a balanced combination of the natural and anthropogenic components, aesthetic appeal and economic feasibility, which all together created the cultural and historical image of a national landscape, formed by the culture of many generations.

Поминальні традиції: візуальна антропологія сучасного цвинтаря (на прикладі сільських некрополів Лохвиччини)

The article analyzes the main markers of the memorial tradition of the village cemetery. The process of modification, disappearance and appearance of new features of the memorial culture connected with the cultural space of the cemetery is considered. The permanent functioning of funeral rites and the state of preservation of rural necropolises is a strong tool for maintaining and activating cultural memory not only within the family or community, but also society as a whole. The age of digital communications allows the rapid borrowing of individual mortal practices, which are fixed by the methods of visual anthropology. All surveyed cemeteries are "new", arranged in the twentieth century. Over time, as the village grew, some cemeteries found themselves within settlements or close to them. The tombstone is installed in a year. Usually a metal or stone (granite, marble) cross or slab of different sizes and configurations is installed with a embossed cross on the ceiling itself or attached to its top. The signatures on the tombstones reflect the national language policy: graves marked in Ukrainian in the 1940s and 1960s, in 1970-2010 in Russian, and in the last decade the Ukrainian language has returned to personalized signatures and epitaphs. Marble and granite tombstones have all the hallmarks of urban "memorial fashion". Ecological culture is also actively introduced in rural cemeteries: every year the number of plastic flowers and wreaths on graves decreases during their arrangement, preference is given to living perennials and annuals. The main day of remembrance in the calendar of the people of Lokhvytsia district remains the day of remembrance on the next week after Easter - Provody. To this day, the cemetery remains a special public space of the village, where certain socio-cultural norms are broadcast and reproduced, and symbolic mechanisms of representation of the ritual practice of interaction between the dead and the living are activated.

The Medieval Christian Necropolis in the Kopachyntsi hillfort (Ukraine). Unpublished Research Materials

The article deals with unpublished research materials from the medieval Christian cemetery located on the territory of the hillfort in the village of Kopachyntsi in Sub-Carpathian region (Ukraine) which were conducted in 1953. Excavations were verified, objects and artefacts were analysed, and an attempt to attribute and date them was made. The site is represented by inhumations in pits, as well as burials under stone slabs. The so-called “under the slab burials” are a separate category of monuments of funeral culture, which is characterized by its diffusion only on the territory of Halician-Volhynian state, but not the whole of Kyiv Rus’. At the same time, such monuments are known in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Poland. Data on most of the under the slab monuments discovered on the territory of Ukraine are often uninformative, and therefore the publication of the results of stationary archaeological excavations is extremely important for understanding this cultural and religious phenomenon. Special attention is paid to a rare stone cross that was found by the deceased. The search for analogies allows us to conclude that it may be a pilgrimage relic.

A Unknown 10th-11th Century Stone Cross Inscription about Kalonapetrisdze and Mikael the Blacksmith from the City of Kars (Historical Kar)

A Unknown 10th-11th Century Stone Cross Inscription about Kalonapetrisdze and Mikael the Blacksmith from the City of Kars (Historical Kar)

Open Workflows for Polychromatic Reconstruction of Historical Sculptural Monuments in 3D

Many historical monuments were originally vividly painted (polychromatic), and researchers have been able to reach consensus on this even for monument classes in which only indirect evidence of painting survives. However, academic caution has led to an understandable reluctance to pass this knowledge to the public through use of reconstructions showing the colour schemes of these monuments. As a result, use of polychromatic reconstruction has been very limited and has made a significant impact on public perception for the classical period, with insignificant progress for many other important monument classes. We argue that large-scale projects to create digital reconstructions are inevitable but that adoption of open workflows is vitally important to achieve the objectives of the London Charter. We demonstrate a practical workflow with two medieval stone crosses.

Between the Embodied Eye and Living World: Clonmacnoise’s Cross of the Scriptures

More than two hundred monumental, carved stone crosses survive from medieval Ireland. Art historians have cast them either as romantic survivals from an exotic, pagan past or as scientific specimens requiring classification and categorization by an objective, detached observer. Shifting to focus on the whole iconographic program and drawing from phenomenological methodologies resituate the tenth-century cross of the scriptures at Clonmacnoise within a living, dynamic world, demonstrating how changing perspectives, audiences, times of day, seasons, weathers, viewing pathways, and proximity to the beholder elicit a series of encounters with a polymorphic, performative object.

Entre le Parnasse et le modernisme: L'affirmation feministe de Maria Krysinska dans les Rythmes Pittoresques (1890)

A brilliant pianist, singer, and poet at age sixteen, Maria Krysinska went to Paris to study music at the Paris Conservatory. She soon left it to join the hippie Hydropathes (mad dogs) to sing and play at Le Chat Noir café, as the only female member. Her role in reviving Free Verse (already used by La Fontaine) has been much discussed, but the structure and meaning of her best collection of verse,Rythmes Pittoresques, still needs attention. Its five sections suggest a five-act play. The poems in MIRAGES depict the awakening of consciousness. SYMBOLES dramatizes an ontological degradation, where plants and animals—and finally, a sentient stone cross—lament. FEMMES corrects misogynist mythology by depicting women in charge, and with positive roles. CONTES, at the climax, expresses disillusionment as the female dancers from various countries are dominated and abused by men, but their proprioception endows them with kinetic potential for exercising force and movement, and the selfhood of the implied author expresses itself through the especially free and dynamic irregular versification, and through the worldwide roaming of her settings. RÉSURRECTIONS suggests the poet's passing doubts concerning her self-exile, as she briefly turns toward orthodox Catholicism, but the Rythmes Pittoresques' pervasive synesthesia; the addition of a sixth sense, proprioception; the premodernist emphasis on the Classical Four Elements of Creation (earth, air, fire, and water), and the versatile poet's depiction of her implied roles as painter, actress, dancer, musician, and dramaturge create a miniature Gesamtkunstwerk worthy of Wagner.

Thorgrim, the Killaloe Cross, and the Norwegian Campaign in Ireland in 1102–1103

This note offers an identification, for the first time, of the individual named in inscriptions in Old Norse runes and scholastic ogham on a stone cross fragment at Killaloe, Co. Clare, and discusses the potential political context that led to the erection of the cross at the beginning of the twelfth century.

Українська еміграція на межі: кінострічка Л. Осики “Камінний хрест” (1968)

Historical realities of Ukrainian society actualize the centuries old topic. In particular, the theme of emigration, extremely productive at the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth century, was actively continued in the 60's of the twentieth century, no less relevant today. Created by V. Stefanyk in 1900, “The Stone Cross” on “alienation of people from their native land”, which contains a generalizing image of all Ukrainian people forced to emigrate overseas, appears to be a true cry of the human soul leaving their native land and doomed to be eternal “Stranger”. This tragic image was also embodied in another artistic plane: in 1968, based on the stories of “The Stone Cross” and “The Thief”, L. Osyka shot the eponymous film that appeared as a tragic film about emigration. The film today is striking with the philosophical depth and high imagery culture. The comparative key analyzes the first text of the “The Stone Cross” by V. Stefanyk, the corresponding script by I. Drach and the film by L. Osyka. It is noted that at each historical point due to new destabilizing factors, the theme of “emigration” is updated every time and, at the same time, expands, supplemented by new content realities. The receptive potential of the first text and it’s already screen version once again prompts the recipient to rethink the present: whether it is 1900, or 1968, or 2018.