This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:09:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LETTERS FROM HEAVEN: POPULAR RELIGION IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:09:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This page intentionally left blank This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:09:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Edited by JOHN­PAUL HIMKA and ANDRIY ZAYARNYUK Letters from Heaven Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:09:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN­13: 978­0­8020­9148­2 ISBN­10: 0­8020­9148­2 Printed on acid­free paper Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Letters from heaven : popular religion in Russia and Ukraine / edited by John•Paul Himka and Andriy Zayarnyuk. ISBN­13: 978­0­8020­9148­2 ISBN­10: 0­8020­9148­2 1. Russia – Religion – History. 2. Ukraine – Religion – History. 3. Religion and culture – Russia (Federation) – History. 4. Religion and culture – Ukraine – History. 5. Eastern Orthodox Church – Russia (Federation) – History. 6. Eastern Orthodox Church – Ukraine – History. I. Himka, John•Paul, 1949– II. Zayarnyuk, Andriy, 1975– BX485.L48 2006 281.9 947 C2006­903711­6 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:09:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Contents Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 andriy zayarnyuk and john­paul himka Death Ritual among Russian and Ukrainian Peasants: Linkages between the Living and the Dead 13 christine d. worobec Folk Orthodoxy: Popular Religion in Contemporary Ukraine 46 natalie kononenko The Miracle as Sign and Proof: ‘Miraculous Semiotics’ in the Medieval and Early Modern Ukrainian Mentality 76 roman holyk Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Russian Orthodoxy: Sin and Virtue in Cultural Context 100 valerie a. kivelson The Christian Sources of the Cult of St Paraskeva 126 eve levin Popular Religion in the Time of Peter the Great 146 paul bushkovitch This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:14:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions vi Contents Letters from Heaven: An Encounter between the ‘National Movement’ and ‘Popular Culture’ 165 andriy zayarnyuk For the Beauty of God’s House: Notes on Icon Vestments and Decorations in the Ruthenian Church 201 sophia senyk ‘Social’ Elements in Ukrainian Icons of the Last Judgment through the Eighteenth Century 235 john­paul himka Between ‘Popular’ and ‘Official’: Akafisty Hymns and Marian Icons in Late Imperial Russia 251 vera shevzov Contributors 279 This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:14:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Illustrations Kononenko/Folk Orthodoxy: Popular Religion in Contemporary Ukraine Maria Petrivna Onykienko showing her funeral bundle. 52 Tetiana Oksentivna Levchenko showing some of the contents of her funeral bundle. 53 The icon corner in the home of Antonina Mykolaivna Shtyka. 57 Funeral of Ivan Zapharovych Dolych. Men carrying the coffin. 58 Funeral of Hryhorii Pylypovych Novak. Lament at the crossroads. 58 Funeral of Hanna Petrivna Mateiko. Service in the church. 59 Funeral of Mykola Romanovych Shekenia. The open coffin in the graveyard, right before interment. 60 Funeral of Hanna Petrivna Mateiko. The zapechatuvannia. 61 Kivelson/Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Russian Ortho­ doxy: Sin and Virtue in Cultural Context Tikhvin Mother of God, ca. 1600, Moscow. 105 Adam and Eve in paradise, 16th•century miniature. 107 Senyk/For the Beauty of God’s House: Notes on Icon Vestments and Decorations in the Ruthenian Church Icon mounting, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, Suzdal. 203 This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:19:49 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions viii Illustrations Adorned icon. 204 Diadem and crescent (venec and cata ), seventeenth century, Suzdal. 205 Fragment of a twelve•feasts icon, sixteenth century, Novgorod. 213 Himka/‘Social’ Elements in Ukrainian Icons of the Last Judgment through the Eighteenth Century Miller in hell. Lipie, first half of 17th century. 239 Card game in a tavern. Ko íany, 1790s. 240 Death of a rich man. Dolyna, 1560s. 241 Unjust judges and merciless landlords. Vovche, end of 16th century. 241 Landlord and his wife off to hell in a hand cart. Lipie, first half of 17th century. 242 Devils ploughing with lords. Pohorilivka, 18th century. 242 ‘The death of the rich sinner is evil.’ Radelychi, second half of 16th century. 246 This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:19:49 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Acknowledgments We would like to thank the Faculty of Arts Support for Advancement of Scholarship Research Fund of the University of Alberta, which pro­ vided funds that partially subsidized the publication of this book and also paid for editing some of the pieces enclosed. In this connection we would also like to thank Dr Susan Ingram for her editorial work. The two anonymous reviewers for the University of Toronto Press provided thoughtful and helpful commentaries on the individual articles in this book. Dr Miriam Skey’s work as copyeditor was excellent. Thanks are also due to Suzanne Rancourt, Humanities Editor at the University of Toronto Press, for her interest in this project and guidance. This content downloaded from 130.64.11.153 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:20:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This page intentionally left blank This content downloaded from 130.64.11.153 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:20:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LETTERS FROM HEAVEN: POPULAR RELIGION IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE This content downloaded from 130.64.11.153 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:20:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This page intentionally left blank This content downloaded from 130.64.11.153 on Tue, 08 Dec 2015 11:20:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Introduction andriy zayarnyuk and john­paul himka One might well ask: Why put together at this time a collection on popular religion? When two leading European philosophers were choos­ ing the theme for their seminar on Capri in 1994 they independently decided on religion, believing it to be the foremost concern of our times. 1 Although it is clearly the case that religion has become increas­ ingly prominent in East European historiography over the past decade, our collection was not meant simply to reflect this current interest in religion among intellectuals. 2 Religion seems to retain its currency in scholarship, but another component of this collection’s subtitle, popular, has been less fortunate. At a certain point historians believed that popular culture was a con­ cept well worth using. They believed that it allowed them to uncover the attitudes, values, and beliefs of ordinary people, things from which their learned contemporaries felt estranged and which they could not articulate. The starting point for many studies of popular culture was Peter Burke’s work, which claimed to show how the split between popular and elite had occurred and why folk or popular culture had to be rediscovered in the nineteenth century. 3 For many scholars popular culture was a concept that helped challenge definitions of culture as something shared, and pointed instead to inherent splits and conflicts as well as to symbolic resources for the resistance of the dominated and disempowered.4 This interest in popular culture among historians coin­ cided with the paradigmatic shift from ‘hard social’ to ‘new cultural’ history, which is said to have occurred in the 1980s. Instead of deducing people’s experiences from social structures and conflicts, historians turned to the mechanisms of cultural production. 5 This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 18 Oct 2015 23:02:55 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 Andriy Zayarnyuk and John•Paul Himka Outside of the discipline of history, popular culture became a promi­ nent research topic in the context of a new academic project – namely, cultural studies – developing on the tradition of works associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (established in 1964). Drawing on Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony revived and rearticulated by Stuart Hall, scholars in cultural studies came to see popular culture as resistance through appropriation based on the po­ tential multiplicity of meanings available in any cultural product. 6 An­ other theoretical impetus influencing the turn of cultural studies to the popular came from Michel de Certeau’s work. 7 In both cases, in history (usually early modern) and in cultural stud­ ies (usually contemporary), the convergence of all these trends resulted in a wave of works on popular culture in general and popular religion in particular that appeared in the mid­1980s and early 1990s. 8 But as often happens with paradigms, the high moment of the concept was also the time when assumptions behind its usage were seriously questioned.