Papers by Vladimír Turčan
Zázemie antického stavebného komplexu v Stupave
Studia Historica Nitriensia, 2019
Studia mythologica Slavica, May 5, 2015
Presented are: the catalogue of ancient sanctuaries of the Czechian and Slovakian Slavs discovere... more Presented are: the catalogue of ancient sanctuaries of the Czechian and Slovakian Slavs discovered archaeologically, relations to the particular regions or tribal areas, the role of natural conditions by selecting the place for sanctuary build-up. The author makes comparisons of the ground-plans and geographical orientations. The interpretation of the preserved constructive elements is given. The evidences of fire and its signification in the religious ceremonies are discussed. The same was made for the ox as a cultic animal, for the finds of cultic sacrifices and gifts to the sanctuaries. The status of the "žrec" in the Old-Slavonic society is also discussed. The Old-Slavonic cult faded out at the time of Christianity. The sources of recognizing the pre-Christian religion of the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs are very fragmental. One of the basic reasons is the fact that the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs did not create any literature of their own before adopting Christianity. The documents registering political events and social conditions on the mentioned territory originated in relation to Christianity only. The authors, all to a man foreign annalists, did not make any note of information concerning the original religion of the Christianized ethnics. Therefore, due to the absence of any direct written reports, in studying the pre-Christian religion of the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs we are dependent on philological interpretations of some local names, etymology or folklore survivals documented in later records, exceptionally surviving in today's folk culture (Polák 1956, 119-121). This information fixes only several aspects of the Slavonic religiousness; e.g. the position of cultic places cannot be identified by means of written sources. One of the few attempts at identifying a concrete site with a Slavonic sanctuary is connected with the name of the Czech archaeologist I.Borkovský. This researcher stated his presumption that on the hill Žiži, mentioned by the annalists Kosmas and Vincencius in connection with fights between the army of the Polish King Boleslav the Brave and the Czech princes Jaromír and Oldřich in 1004, a pre-Christian sanctuary was located originally. The term Žiži was explained by him as an Old-Slavonic expression for fire, flame, or shining. He situated the hill below the foundations of the oldest church in the Prague Castle, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which should replace the original cult by Christianity as soon as possible (Borkovský 1949, 38, 40; 1969, 92-93). Borkovský's localization was doubted by later excavations according to which the church of the Virgin Mary was built within the common settlement layer whereby the reconstruction of the original surface geomorphology also opposed the aforesaid theory (Frolík-Smetánka 1997, 48, 63). Devín, the hilltop fort above the confluence of the rivers Danube and Morava is also sometimes mentioned as a cultic place, because of its especial position (Rybakov 1981, 285). But not even the long-lasting archaeological research offered
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Papers by Vladimír Turčan