The “Feast” in Medieval Russia

20
The “Feast” in Medieval Russia:
On the Question of Its Specific Historical Features*
Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin
The feasible question about feast, more precisely, about the role of festive culture
as a part of everyday and “official” culture of medieval Russia, was actively
debated in Soviet literature in the 1970s-1980s. In the review of the book by
Dmitrii S. Likhachev and Alexandr M. Panchenko Smekhovoi mir Drevnei Rusi
(The world of laughter in Old Rus’) (Leningrad, 1976), in which the authors examined
the “festive” constituent part in Old Russian writing and culture through
the glass of M. M. Bakhtin’s ideas about carnival culture of the Western European
Middle Ages and Renaissance, Iurii M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspenskii
expressed the idea that the phenomenon of laughter in medieval Russia crucially
differed from the renewing carnival laughter of Renaissance Europe.1 The
“laughter” of Ivan the Terrible sounded simultaneously with Rabelais’ laughter,
but the orgy of oprichnina had a function which contradicted to that of Renaissance
carnival, its mission was to divide, not to unite. The “festive” actions of
oprichniki included, of course, some “popular” features, such as mummery
(“mashkary”), participation of skomorokhi etc., but it was the theater for one
actor; the “feast” was celebrated not on the carnival square, but in the Alexandrova
Sloboda. Nevertheless, quite naturally, it did not prevent Ivan the Terrible
from accusing his opponents of being skomorokhi – “pipe’s tribe”; he ordered to
bring Novgorod’s archbishop to Moscow sitting on a mare back to front with a
bagpipe in his hands. Another “archetypal” act of Ivan the Terrible seems also to
be appropriate for a skomorokh: the refusal of the tsar’s title and passing it to
Simeon Bekbulatovich, Khan of Kasimov, reminds on the traditional substitu-
* Originally published as ‘Прасдник’ в средневековой Руси; қ проблеме исторической
специфики,” Одиссей. Человек в истории 2005, 81-88. Translated by Elena Glushko.
1 Iu. M. Lotman, B. A. Uspenskii. “Novye aspekty izuchenia literatury Drevnei Rusi” (New
approaches towards research on the Old Russian literature), Voprosy literatury 1977, no. 3.
Some later events and changes which had occurred in the Soviet culturology, in particular,
created an incorrect, from my point of view, impression that the problem posed by Lotman
and Uspensky had been actually “forgotten” (see I. Z. Serman. “Priroda smekha po Lixachevu”
[The nature of laughter according to Likhachev], Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury
54 [2003], 16). The aim of the present article is to draw once again attention to
specific historical features of the Old Russian “festive culture.”
21
tion of the king with a slave or about appointment of mock king during saturnalias
or other traditional annual feasts as described in Frazer’s well-known compendium
The Golden Bough. 2 However, the similarity is rather superficial: not
the tradition and time of an annual feast, but the political games of the Moscow
tyrant determined the symbolic act of Ivan the Terrible.
In the book about the culture of laughter in Old Rus’ the problem of origin
– what was the cultural pattern for quasicarnival actions of the tsar – was not
yet clearly posed. The new edition, which appeared in 1984 under the title
Laughter in the Old Rus’, included a part written by Natal’ia V. Ponyrko, which
was dedicated to the “popular” laughter of sviatki3 and maslenitsa4 and which
was supposed to support Dmitrii S. Likhachev’s idea about popular origins of
festive plays that “did not have any audience, only participants.”5 In the studies
dealing with annual “feasts,”6 the view that all such festivities as sviatki with
Christmas carols, maslenitsa, rusalii7, the night before the Ivan Kupala Day8 etc.
had pagan, pre-Christian origins, long ago became a commonplace.9 However,
Natal’ia V. Ponyrko herself concluded that “popular customs of sviatki were to a
considerable extent the results of development or travesty of ecclesiastical customs.”
10 If to connect their origins with medieval Russian “popular culture,”
which includes the tradition of skomorokhi, is possible at all, then only with its
not very well examined part which derived from Byzantine culture.
Iakov N. Lubarskii noticed the similarity between “carnival” actions of
Ivan the Terrible (and Peter the Great) and the characteristic of the Byzantine
emperor Michael III (856-867) given in the tenth century by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
11 He said that Michael, like a mime, after visiting a bath-house organised
mock dinners; imitating the Supper of Christ himself, he dressed his table-
companions, wicked “satyrs”, in chasubles, he called their leader a patriarch,
2 J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1st edition, 2 vols, London,
1890; reprint of the 3rd edition, 8 vols., Basingstoke, 2002).
3 The Christmas season – twelve days from December 25 until January 7 (translator’s note).
4 The week before Lent (translator’s note).
5 D. S. Likhachev, A. M. Panchenko, N. V. Ponyrko, Smekh v drevnei Rusi (The laughter in
Old Rus’) (Leningrad, 1984), 6.
6 The term “feast” needs to be put into quotation marks, because in Medieval Russia it actually
meant not so much the period of release from everyday labour, but rather the period
when certain types of activities were strictly prohibited on certain days, which created a lot
of problems for peasants’ households. See S. M. Tolstaia, “Prazdnik” (The Feast),
Slavianskie drevnosti 3 (1984).
7 The week after the Feast of Holy Trinity (translator’s note).
8 That is, of the feast of John the Baptist (June 24) (translator’s note).
9 See, for example, one of the latest studies: A. S. Kotliarchuk. Prazdnichnaia kul’tura v
gorodakh Rossii i Belorussii XVII veka (Festive Culture in the cities of Russia and Belorussia
in the 17th century), St. Petersburg, 2001.
10 Likhachev, Panchenko, Ponyrko, 156.
11 Ia. N. Lubarskii, “Tsar-mim” (The Tsar-mime), Vizantia i Rus’, ed.by G. K. Vagner (Moscow,
1989). Compare: S. A. Ivanov, Vizantiiskoe iurodstvo (The Byzantine Holy Foolishness)
(Moscow, 1984), 80-82.
22
and eleven others – metropolitans, he ordered to play to church hymns on ciphers,
he mocked Patriarch Ignatius himself, sending towards him one of his
mummers, an “indigenous pagan,” etc.12 One can certainly consider these passages
as an etiquette description of “anti-behaviour,” composed by Michael’s
political opponent (see a similar accusation of participation in “devil’s feast” –
pagan brumalias – brought against emperor-iconoclast Constantine Copronymos),
but one should also remember that later on Russian autocrats (Ivan the
Terrible and Peter the Great) acted in the same sacrilegious way, and their “antibehaviour”
cannot be simply ascribed to the conventions of literary etiquette.
In Byzantium, though, an act of parody with a different function had also
occured: in Constantinople in the year 600 a mime imitated Emperor Mavricius
wearing a garland of garlic and sitting on a donkey, while his street retinue sang
a song mocking private life of the emperor. Vladislav P. Darkevich found a parallel
with this episode in the Russian festive life: he quoted a famous petition,
which one of Tver’s landowners, Nikita Pushkin submitted to the tsar in the year
1666. Pushkin reported that on maslenitsa his peasants chose among themselves
two kings, walked under their leadership through villages and “made a commotion
with flags, and drums, and a gun.” In front of the procession varenets and
sheaf of straw on a pole were carried; both of them are traditional elements of
maslenitsa. This maslenitsa mummery was certainly supposed to imitate royal
ceremonials of the seventeenth century; popular culture in general leans towards
imitation of aristocratic examples – one can recall a “prince” (a bridegroom), a
“princess” (a bride) and boyars of traditional Russian wedding. Nevertheless, the
grave (and quite “historical” for the seventeenth century in Russia) reaction of
authorities on such a report is characteristic enough: the mummers were accused
of “imposture,” fingers on right hands of “kings” were chopped off, other participants
together with their families were exiled to Siberia.13
It is obvious that the way how this tradition to elect “the king of Saturnalias”
etc., tradition which was coming from the Byzantine Empire, moreover,
from antiquity, was adopted in Russia, contradicts in its essence completely to
the “carnival” popular culture of Renaissance Europe (which developed the
same tradition) as understood by Bakhtin. In Russia it was not the lowest social
strata which derided and debased higher officials; on the contrary, it was upper
classes who showed their predominance and even omnipotence (as was justly
pointed out by Lotman and Uspenskii, as well as by Likhachev), when they al-
12 Prodolzhatel‘ Feofana. Zhizneopisania visantijskikh tsarei (The Continuator of Theophanus.
The Biographies of Byzantine Emperors), ed. by Ia. N. Lubarskii (St. Petersburg,
1992), 86-87, 104-105.
13 See V. P. Darkevich. Narodnaia kul’tura srednevekov’ia (Medieval Popular Culture),
(Moscow, 1988), 164; B. A. Uspenskii, “Tsar i samozvanets: samozvanchestvo v Rossii
kak kulturno-istoricheskii fenomen” (The Tsar and the Impostor: Imposture in Russia as a
cultural and historical phenomenon), Khudozhestvennyi iazyk srednevekov’ia, ed. by V. A.
Karpushin (Moscow, 1982), 208-209.
23
lowed themselves masquerade of oprichnina, but put a stop to every attempt of
popular “carnivalising” from below.
The above mentioned ritual debasement of Pimen, archbishop of Novgorod,
by Ivan the Terrible was of no less importance; the Byzantine model for
that is also evident – there it was usurpers and rebels who were put back to front
on donkeys. The appearance of this ritual in Russia is, however, a bit problematic.
The point is that at the first time it is described in all details in connection
with massacre of heretics – Judaisers in 1490. Another archbishop of Novgorod,
Gennadii (who could not imagine the fate of his successor) ordered to set them
on horses back to front, put on them peaked caps of birch bark with inscription
“this is devil’s army” (се сатанино воинство) and they were to look “to the
West” observing prepared for them hell torments. Iakov S. Luria, who studied
the movement of Judaisers, cautiously suggested that the director of this play,
Gennadii, could follow not his own “vindictive inventiveness” but a Spanish
pattern,14 the more so as the archbishop himself referred to this pattern, that is,
the Spanish king’s method of extirpation of heresies. According to Likhachev,
however, Gennadii arranged public exposure of heretics in a quite “Old Russian”
way.15 Clearly, Luria is right: by using material that came to hand (birch
bark etc.), Gennadii imitated the inquisition ritual, which was, actually, also intended
against Judaisers, that is, Jews forced to baptism, but secretly remaining
faithful to Judaism. That makes one ponder on the way how not only Byzantine,
but also alien “Latin” traditions were adopted in the medieval Russian “official”
culture.
In connection with this transmission one should mention a central figure
of medieval Russian festivities – skomorokh, which is usually considered to be a
historical predecessor of “carnivalesque plays” (including one in which
archbishop Pimen was forced to participate): quite a few monographs were
dedicated to skomorokhi, but they still remain enigmatic figures. First of all, the
origin of the word itself is not certain – it is obviously not Slavic, but Greek,
Western European and even Arabic etymologies are unreliable.16 Skomorokhi
are first mentioned in the Russian Primary Chronicle in the year 1068: “By these
and other similar customs the devil deceives us, and he alienated us from God
by all manner of craft, through trumpets and clowns (skomorokhi), through
harps and pagan festivals (rusalii). For we behold the playgrounds worn bare by
the footsteps of a great multitude, who jostle each other while they make a
spectacle of a thing invented by the devil. The churches still stand; but when the
14 N. A. Kazakova, Ia. S. Lur’ie. Antifeodal’nye ereticheskie dvizhenia na Rusi XIV- nachala
XVI veka (Antifeodal heretic movements in Russia in the 14th-beginning of the 16th centuries)
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1955), 130.
15 Likhachev, Panchenko, Ponyrko, 16.
16 M. A. Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka (The Etymological Dictionary of
Russian Language) 3 (Moscow, 1987), 648-649.
24
hour of prayer has come, few worshippers are found in the church…”17 This
characteristic of popular “festive” culture, given by a monk-chronicler, was
many times repeated in ecclesiastical sermons and rules, including Stoglav
(1551), composed at the time of Ivan the Terrible: “Also the rule sixty-two (of
the general council – Author’s note) on calends and brumalias, as they are called
in Hellenic and Greek language, which are the first days of each month … refutes
and prohibits making great and splendid feasts, playing games according to
Hellenic custom, the same with women’s dances in public, because they are
shameful and lead many people to laughter and lechery; and also for men and
boys, they should not decorate themselves with woman’s clothes… and for
women, they should not put on man’s clothes… The same about inappropriate
clothes, and songs, and dancers, and skomorokhi; one should not perform their
goat’s shouting and recitation. For when they are trampling grapes, or when they
are pouring wine into vessels, or when they are drinking from drinks, they make
unwise clamour and shouting, according to an ancient custom, they call Hellenic
apparitions, the Hellenic god Dionysos, the teacher of drunkenness…”18
It is clear that all these actions do not have any connection with medieval
Russian traditions as such. The source of these prohibitions is the same for
Western and Eastern, Greek and Latin Christianity, namely, the decision of the
Sixth general council held in Constantinople in 680. The word skomorokh is
actually the translation of the Greek word “mime.” It is no less clear that those
prohibitions were not observed neither in Byzantium, nor in Russia: for example,
secular motifs in frescoes of St. Sophia’s cathedral in Kiev (11th century)
mirroring the everyday life of an emperor (here a prince), that is, the racecourse,
the fight of a knight with a mummer, bear hunt and musicians (sometimes without
any special grounds called skomorokhi), evidence the perseverance of ancient
traditions, which were the subject to denunciation by church authorities.
These scenes were, of course, marginal, they decorated the stairs leading to the
17 “Но сими дьявол лстить и другыми нравы, всячьскыми лестьми пребавляя ны от
Бога, трубами и скоморохы, гусльми и русальи. Видим бо игрища утолочена, и
людий много множьство на них, яко упихати начнуть друг друга, позоры деюще от
беса замышленаго дела, а церкви стоять.” Translation in: The Russian Primary
Chronicle. Laurentian Text. Tr. and ed. by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-
Wetzor. (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 147-148.
18 “Тоже правило шестьдесят второе, коленды и витай-врумалия, Эллинским и
Греческим языком глаголется, еже есть первые дние коеждого месяца… празнование
велие и торжественное сотворяюще, играния многая содевашеся по Эллинскому
обычаю… Отметает и запрещает, сице же и женская в народех плясания, яко срамна
суща, и на смех и на блуд воставляюще многих, такожде и мужем и отроком,
женским одеянием не украшатися… ни женам в мужеские одеяния облачатися…
Також неподобных одеяний и песней, и плясцов и скоморохов; и всякого козло-
гласования и баснословия их не творити. Егда же вино топчут, или егда вино в
сосуды преливают, или кое питие испивают, гласования и вопли творят неразумнии,
по древнему обычаю, Эллинския прелести, Эллинскаго бога Диониса, пьянству
учителя призывают…” Stoglav (The Hundred Chapters), ed. by M. B. Danilushkin (St.
Petersburg, 1997), chapter 93.
25
gallery designed for a prince’s family; however, precisely this outside space created
the special “extra-ecclesiastical” culture, which is sometimes perceived by
our contemporaries (after Boris A. Rybakov etc.), following the example of medieval
Russian writers, as “pagan”. In medieval Russia this extra-ecclesiastical
culture was that of princes and kings (unlike in Byzantium, which preserved in
its everyday life ancient traditions), but it also set a pattern for popular performances.
The transmission of this pattern is described precisely in connection with
skomorokhi, who were permitted to participate in the church play about three
children in the oven (Peshchnoe deistvo). Giles Fletcher (1591) testified that
disguised “chaldeans” were allowed to run about the town during the sviatki and
“make much good sport for the honour of the Bishop’s pageant.”19
Scholars tend to liken the tradition of sviatki to European carnivalesque
festivals by underlining the tolerance of officials towards those activities.20 But
it was actually not more than tolerance: according to Adam Olearius, “during
their escapades the Chaldeans were considered pagans, and impure. It was even
thought that if they should die during these days they would be damned. Therefore,
on the Day of the Three Saintly Kings, a day of great general consecration,
they all were baptised anew, to cleanse them of their godless impurity and to
join them once again to the church.”21
Skomorokhi, as well as every participant of the mummery, should have
cleansed themselves of their sins on the Day of Baptism in an ice-hole.22 Moreover,
it is said in the “Pandects” of Nikon of the Black Mountain, well-known in
medieval Russia: “We equally want to prohibit for the faithful the so-called calends
and votas and rusalia23 and the feast celebrated on the (first – Author’s
note) day of March, and also the dances of town’s women as shameful and very
dangerous and disgusting; this council unfrocks all those who participate in such
games, if they are clerics, and excommunicates them, if they are commoners.”24
19 Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth (Cambridge:MA, 1966), 105.
20 Likhachev, Panchenko, Ponyrko, passim.
21 The travels of Olearius in seventeenth-century Russia, tr. and ed. by Samuel H. Baron
(Stanford, California, 1967), 242.
22 Kotliarchuk, 154-156.
23 The Greek original describes brumalias – the feast of Dionysos-Bromios. Kormchaya
(1284) keeps the term, attaching the following comment: “Let all the faithful reject
sacrifices and brumalias and kalendas and dances, which are to the honour of gods. …
Calendas are the first days of months, and on those days Greeks had the custom to make
sacrifices and offerings, and brumalia, and those are Greek feasts, for Bromios established
them.” (Да отвержена боудоуть от верных жития вота и вроумалия и каланьди и
плясанья, иже на поч(с)ть б(о)м… Каланди соуть первии в м(с)ци днье, в них же
обычаи бе и елином творити жертвы и вота же, и вроумалия, и елиньстии бехоу
праз(д)ници, Вроум бо порекл есть.) See: Slovar’ drevnerusskogo iazyka (The Dictionary
of Old Russian Language) 1, ed. by R. I. Avanesov (Moscow, 1988), 499.
24 Сице рекомы каланды и рекомыя воты и рекомая роусалия и еже в [первый] день
марта месяца творимое тържьство по единомоу же къждо от верных жития отъяти
хощем, нъ и еще и жен градных плясания яко бещьстьных и многоу пагоубоу и
пакость творити могоущих, сии собор всех сих, неже подобная игры творящая, и
26
Not only clerics and commoners were in danger of excommunication. “clowns”
or even “fools of God” (joculatores Domini), as Franciscans called themselves,
the Parodia sacra, the participation of church officials in “devil’s” plays, the
singing of canons on the mock funeral of dummies, – all this was out of question.
25
Nevertheless, such kind of performances (of course, without any clerics)
was quite widespread in Russia in the middle of the seventeenth century, and
those were already not simply traditional calendar plays, whose pagan origin ecclesiastical
authorities continued to underline. In the petition to Alexei I Mikhailovich
(1651) an icon-painter of Viaz’ma reported that during the sviatki in
Viaz’ma “diverse and disgusting plays… where they name saints, and imitate
monasteries, and name archpresbyter and cellerer, and abbots” occurred.26 This
sviatki custom actually reminds on Parodia sacra, and one can find parallels to
it among the texts from the second half of the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries,
such as “The Service to a Tavern” (“Sluzhba kabaku”) (especially because the
“Service” was widely known among lower clergy). Dmitrii S. Likhachev has
shown that “The Service,” where the tavern is depicted as a church, parodied not
the church as an institution, but rather liturgical and didactic texts.27 In any case,
in the eighteenth century “The Service” was also perceived as a sacrilege and a
blasphemy, which should be subject to a trial.28 Only in the last third of the eighteenth
century, at the time of Catherine II, the Synod refuted Tikhon Zadonskii’s
statement about illegality of maslenitsa’s popular celebration by reference to the
law of “regular state” (регулярное государство): “the last week before Lent is
set free from all work, including penal servitude.”29
оубо аще клирицы суть, сих измещеть, простьца же отлоучает.” K. A. Maksimovich.
Pandekty Nikolaia Chudotvortsa (The Pandects of Nicholas the Miracle worker) (Moscow,
1998), 133. Compare with preachings against rusalia and plays of skomorokhi in: A. N.
Veselovskii. Razyskania v oblasti russkogo dukhovnogo stikha (The Research on the Field
of Russian religious verses) (St. Petersburg, 1889) 11-17, 278 sqq. Characteristically
enough, according to the decree of the Polish king Jan III, issued in 1695, in Pinsk and
Turov non-participation in koliadki was officially punished, because it was the bishop
himself who gathered gifts. See: Kotliarchuk, 192.
25 Compare: A. Ia. Gurevich, “Prazdnik, kalendarnyi obriad i obychai v stranakh zarubezhnoi
Evropy” (Feast, Annual Ritual and Custom in European Countries), Sovetskaia etnografia
1985, 3.
26 “…Игрища разные и мерзкие… на коих святых нарицают, и монастыри делают, и
архимарита, и келаря, и старцов нарицают.” Darkevich, 167.
27 Likhachev, Panchenko, Ponyrko, 20.
28 E. B. Smilianskaia, Volshebniki. Bogochul’niki. Eretiki (Magicians. Sacrilegers. Heretics.)
(Moscow, 2003), 225 sqq. I. Z. Serman supposes that the motif of “tavern” had certain
historical basis, namely, the state monopoly on alcohol, which was introduced in the seventeenth
century and led to mass drunkenness. In any case, the parody reflexion was connected
with the real cultural situation, it was not limited only to popular rituals.
29 “…Последняя сырная неделя дни учинены от всяких и каторжных работ
свободными.” N. N. Pokrovskii. “Dokumenty XVIII veka ob otnoshenii sinoda k
27
Practically all scholars agreed that the appearance of such parodies was
due to the fact that in the seventeenth century the medieval Russian, or better
simply Russian culture, already separated from medieval moralistic traditions,
was influenced by “Western Russian” and through it by Polish, “Latin” culture.
Not without reason, mummery and especially masks were associated in Russian
culture with the way “how they usually do evil things in Latin countries” (Nomokanon,
Moscow, 1639); and skomorokhi, who were ordered to entertain
“German ambassadors,” also appear to be dressed in “Latin” vestments (it is
worth mentioning that Belorussian skomorokhi were of special importance).30
Not without reason, the zealous Old Believer Archpriest Avvakum lamented a
Christian, who “will on Sunday come to a church to pray to God and to sanctify
his deeds: but there is nothing to listen to – they sing in Latin and dance as skomorokhi!”
31
For an Old Believer the church reform was associated with alien, “Latin”
faith and with sacrilegious performances of skomorokhi. At the same time Ivan
the Terrible sought for symbolic forms for oprichnina among the “outside” traditions,
including “Latin” ones, in particular Polish, that is, the one from which
his interest in costumes and masks has clearly derived.32 Peter the Great used
narodnym kalendarnym obriadam” (Seventeenth-century documents about the attitude of
Synod towards popular annual rituals), Sovetskaia etnografia 1981, no. 5, 96-108.
30 Kotliarchuk, 30-33, 193. Quite naturally, “alien faith” of skomorokhi presumed wearing of
alien dress; compare with “Saracen by origin in the dress of skomorokh” mentioned in a
Prologue of the 15th century. See Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI-XVII vekov (The Dictionary of
Russian Language, 11th-17th centuries) 24, ed. by L. Yu. Astakhina et al. (Moscow, 1999),
226.
31“…В день воскресной прибежит в церковь помолити Бога и труды своя освятити: ано
и послушать нечево – по латыне поют, плясавицы скоморошьи!” Zhitie propopopa
Avvakuma im samim napisannoe i drugie ego sochinenia (The Life of Protopop Avvakum
Written by Him and Other of His Works), (Moscow, 1960), 140.
32 Andrei Kurbskii described in his History of the Grand Prince of Moscow the famous scene,
when the tsar, who was drinking heavily, put on a mask, began dancing with the skomorokhi
and wanted to place the mask on the face of Mikhail Repnin, who reproached “the
Christian tsar” for the unpious behaviour (Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi [The Library
of Medieval Russian Literature] 11, ed. by D. S. Likhachev et al. [St. Petersburg, 2001],
414). Kurbskii did not hesitate to criticise the Polish king as well, saying that he preferred
“colourful masks” to state tasks (Ibid, 380). One thinks here about Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii’s
characteristic of the “bearers of Western influence” on Russia: “Between old Muscovite
Russia and Western Europe, Poland was situated: the Slavic, however, Catholic country.
Ecclesiastical proximity and geographic closeness associated it with Romano-Germanic
Europe, and early and rapid development of feudal law connected with the political freedom
of upper classes made Polish nobility the pure and perceptive ground for Western
education; but specific features of the land and the national character provided special local
colour for the borrowed culture. Limited to the one social strata of exclusive predominance
in the state, this culture brought up joyful and vivid, but narrow and loose world perception.
And this Poland was the first to exert spiritual influence of the Western Europe on Russia.”
See V. O. Kliuchevskii. Sochinenia v 9 tomakh (Works in nine volumes) (Moscow, 1988)
3, 258-259.
28
even broader these European patterns, which in the seventeenth century became
almost the part of the tradition.
It is hardly possible to associate these innovations of Russian rulers with
popular festive culture; on the contrary, one can rather say that popular culture
imitated these new forms.
M E D I U M A E V U M
Q U O T I D I A N U M
54
KREMS 2006
HERAUSGEGEBEN
VON GERHARD JARITZ
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER KULTURABTEILUNG
DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Titelgraphik: Stephan J. Tramèr
Copy editor: Judith Rasson
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der
materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, 3500 Krems, Österreich.
Für den Inhalt verantwortlich zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche
Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. –
Druck: Grafisches Zentrum an der Technischen Universität Wien, Wiedner
Hauptstraße 8-10, 1040 Wien.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Vorwort ……………………………………………………..…………….…… 5
Grigorii V. Bondarenko, Some Specific Features of the Perception
of Early Medieval Irish Feasts ……………..………..………….……… 7
Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin, The “Feast” in Medieval Russia:
On the Question of Its Specific Historical Features ………………….. 20
Besprechung…….……………………………………………………….…….. 29
Verzeichnis der Veröffentlichungen des
‚Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit‛
der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften …………………. 31
5
Vorwort
Der vorliegende schmale Band von Medium Aevum Quotidianum konzentriert
sich, wie angekündigt, auf zwei Studien aus der russischen Forschung, die sich
der Untersuchung mittelalterlicher Festkultur widmen. Wieder ist die Möglichkeit
dieser Veröffentlichung unserer Kooperation mit den Herausgebern der am
Institut für Universalgeschichte der Russischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
erscheinenden Jahresschrift Одиссей. Человек в истории, und dabei im Besonderen
mit Frau Professor Svetlana Luchitskaya, zu verdanken. Der Band des
Jahres 2005 setzte sich zentral mit dem Thema „Fest: Zeit und Raum“ auseinander,
und die zwei hier vorliegenden Beiträge stellen die Übersetzungen von für
unser Forschungsfeld relevanten Forschungsansätzen dar.
Die Vereinbarung zur Publikation der zwei Aufsätze geschah zu einem
Zeitpunkt, als Professor Aron Ja. Gurevich, der auch als leitender Redakteur von
Одиссей fungierte, noch unter uns weilte. Herr Gurevich, einer der weltweit bedeutendsten
Repräsentanten einer Geschichte mittelalterlicher Kultur und Mentalität
ist im August 2006 seinem Leiden erlegen. Seine Methoden und Forschungen
haben international die heutigen kulturhistorischen Fragestellungen
und Ansätze entscheidend beeinflusst und geprägt. Dafür sind wir ihm sehr
dankbar.
Die für das Jahr 2007 vorgesehenen Hefte und Sonderbände von Medium
Aevum Quotidianum werden sich einerseits wieder neuen Untersuchungen zu
Alltag und Sachkultur des Mittelalters widmen, welche im nächsten Jahr bei den
wichtigen internationalen Mittelalter-Kongressen von Kalamazoo und Leeds
präsentiert werden. Ein Sonderband wird sich mit dem Aussagegehalt von Testamenten
für eine Geschichte der materiellen Kultur im kleinstädtischen Raum
des Spätmittelalters beschäftigen. Darüber hinaus wird wiederum ein Schwerpunkt
auf die Funktion, Perzeption, Repräsentation und Symbolik von Tieren in
der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft gelegt werden. Gerade diese Fragestellungen
finden sich augenblicklich häufig in der internationalen kultur- und alltagsgeschichtlichen
Forschung und werden auch in einigen länder- und fächerübergreifenden
Forschungsprojekten kontextualisierend und mit komparativen Methoden
analysiert.
Wieder möchten wir allen Mitgliedern und Freunden von Medium Aevum
Quotidianum für das fortgesetzte Interesse, für die gute Zusammenarbeit und
vielfältige Unterstützung herzlich danken. Wir hoffen, auch im nächsten Jahr
und in weiterer Zukunft dazu beitragen zu können, dass die Geschichte von
6
Alltag und materieller Kultur des Mittelalters mit Hilfe interdisziplinärer Ansätze
und im Rahmen verstärkter internationaler Zusammenarbeit eine anerkannte
Rolle im Rahmen der kritisch analysierenden historischen Wissenschaften
einzunehmen imstande sein wird.
Gerhard Jaritz, Herausgeber