Španiček Žarko: Slavonski pučki proroci i sveci: Studija iz pučke pobožnosti Slavonije

Žarko Španiček: Slavonic People's Prophets and Saints: A Study of Popular Piety of Slavonia

The research of popular piety belongs to the newer topics of Croatian ethnology. Among the earliest works in this area, Vitomir Belaj's work on Mary in the folk beliefs of the Croats, held in 1983 and published a few years later (Belaj 1988), should be mentioned. At the instigation of Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, in 1991, a scientific meeting of the Croatian Ethnological Society was held in Zagreb under the name "Research of popular piety", and the yearbook of this society, Etnološka tribina, in issue 14 from 1991, published four articles by Croatian authors and one by French authors. Thus, Croatian ethnology joined certain authors from church circles, mainly theologians and sociologists of religion (Franjo Emanuel Hoško, Jakov Jukić, Josip Šimić and others), who during the 1980s began to publish works in this area.

Themes and contents from the corpus of popular piety were also represented in earlier ethnological works, but mainly as part of one of the traditional orientations of Croatian ethnology towards life and annual customs (especially funeral, Christmas and Easter customs). It is a significant circumstance that the thematic set of papers in the Ethnological Forum no. 14 begins precisely with Dunja Rihtman Auguštin's article Christmas customs and folk piety, showing the way to new substantive and methodological possibilities for research based on older ethnological knowledge.

Encouraged by such developments in our ethnology, I started my own research and came to this important and new area of ethnological science.

Fifteen years of work on the protection of cultural monuments (research, documentation and protection of traditional architectural heritage) he directed me to folk sacred architecture, which can be divided into two main parts. The first part is made up of wooden churches and chapels, and the second part is made up of various smaller building forms - shrines, crucifixes, crosses, calvaries, facade chapels and pillars with sculptures of saints - to which I applied the name, taken from Anđela Horvat, small sacred architecture. The second group turned out to be ethnologically more interesting, since it was usually raised by individuals or several united individuals based on personal and concrete motives, and not by representatives of the Church. Therefore, the attachment of small sacral architecture to popular piety soon came to the fore. The reasons for building small sacral architecture and the ritual procedures associated with them are not limited to the expression and encouragement of piety. The creation of a chapel, shrine or crucifix is ​​often motivated by certain reasons, whether it is the fulfillment of a vow, the place of an alleged apparition, a source of water attributed to the miraculous power of healing, or something else. Particularly representative in this regard was the chapel of St. Ilija in Vukojevci near Našice. Along with devotions and beliefs related to her, the tellers mentioned St. Jula from Ceremošnjak and St. Ivo from Donja Motičina. It was intriguing that the attribute holy/holy was given to unknown people from the regiment. Research immediately began to provide a lot of information about these unusual people who combined into interesting and complex life stories, and it turned out that they were not isolated examples in Slavonia.

The initial results of this research were supplemented by Tihana Petrović with new information on this topic and new indicators. The joint research resulted in a smaller presentation in the magazine Otium (Španiček – Petrović 1996: 62-69).

Continuing this research independently, I noticed that I was entering an unknown and exciting world woven from non-conformist forms of piety and religious orthodoxy, ancient beliefs and ritual practices, and their contemporary application in the Christian cult, from everyday life problems and unusual existential dramas. This world of popular piety had its prominent figures - Slavonian folk prophets and saints and other mystics who can be traced continuously from the end of the 19th century to our days.

Introduction