This study examined marginalia and colophons in South Slavic manuscripts to establish their value as primary historical source documents. The evidence of a "history from below" was compared with other primary sources to provide an understanding about the lives of Bulgarian Christian Slavs during the Ottoman period and a history of their language, scripts, and book production. The Ottoman Empire invaded Bulgaria in 1393, to remain in power there until 1878. During that time, scribes preserved Bulgarian literary heritage by copying manuscripts. They also recorded in the margins of the manuscripts their thoughts and perceptions, formal transactions of the church, and interactions between the church and its community. While the first marginalia were prayers for forgiveness, later marginalia became a somewhat hidden repository of the marginalized voices of the Ottoman Empire: clergy, readers, students, teachers, poets, and artists who repeatedly started with "Da se znae" (Let it be known). This study analyzed the 146 manuscripts in the Historical and Archival Church Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria (HACI) that contain marginalia and colophons. Content analysis of the corpus yielded 20 categories that clustered into six thematic groups: religious texts; marginalia related to book history and production; interactions between the readers and the book; interaction between the Church and the religious community; to historical events; the cosmos and natural history. This study employed a triangulation of methods, including traditional historical and the New History "grass-roots" methods, deconstruction, critical theory, codicology, diplomatics and linguistic analysis to understand the deeper meanings of marginalia and colophons. This inter-disciplinary study can be considered the first comprehensive, systematic study of South Slavic marginalia and colophons of any magnitude to be made available to Western scholars, and the first substantiated "history from below" of the Ottoman Empire. / text

The main intent of this thesis is to review the history and roots of the Cossack assembly, and to analyze its connection to western civilization. In terms of the roots of the Cossack assembly, this thesis will explore the Scytho-Sarmatian, the early Slavic, the Novgorodian, as well as the Turkic-Mongol influences that led to its creation. While the Zaporozhian Cossack assembly will be discussed, the primary focus of the history of the Cossack assembly section will deal with the Don Cossacks’ assembly, since the practices and traditions inherent in this structure are representative of most Cossack groups. In addition to reviewing the Sarmatian Hypothesis, this thesis will also examine the connections and parallels between the Arthurian legends, the ancient Iranian governing practices, and the Cossack assembly. It is thus hoped that this multileveled analysis will generate a comprehensive portrait of the Cossack assembly and, through its ancient Iranian predecessor’s connection to the Arthurian Round Table, prompt a reconsideration of analytical approaches to both the foundations of Cossack and western democracy. / text

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Jiří Dynda Gods and Demons: The Construction of the Slavic Paganism in the Medieval Textual Sources PhD Thesis, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Abstract The thesis focuses on the analysis of ways of discursive construction of Slavic paganism in medieval written sources. Three chapters attempt to answer the basic research question: how are the elements of Slavic paganism (and especially its concept of divinity) described before; shortly after; and long after Christianization. In other words, how paganism was portrayed as an active external enemy, as a defeated enemy, and as an internal enemy of medieval Christianity. The discourses analysis is applied to more than a dozen case studies of specific sources or their groups. These written sources are analysed also in comparison with other textual, archaeological and ethnographic sources. By thorough identification of several discursive strategies (idolatric, demonological, ortho-practical, euhemeristic and Graeco- Roman interpretation) in the sources the thesis is directed towards a detailed knowledge of the specifics of the Christian perspective (interpretatio Christiana) on the Slavic pagan religions. Thus, the thesis contributes to the possibilities of their understanding. In particular, the concept of divinity in functioning pagan societies in comparison...

The study focuses on the manners of representations of Czechs and other nations/ethnicities in the journalist work of Karel Havlíček Borovský before and after the 1848-9 revolution. Its methodology is based on concepts and approaches elaborated in the area of literary imagology. The theoretical part of the study deals with the issue of emergence of images, their stereotypical components and the mutual relations between self-image and hetero-image. It also describes the features, functions and the process of formation of national stereotypes. The following chapter describes the development of national-political tendencies emerging in the Czechs lands and corresponding to five different concepts of a nation (Austrianness, Germanness, Slavness, Bohemism and Czechness). The following chapter depicts the course of the revolution, where tensions between the individual national-political tendencies were increasing, and Havlíček's work before and during the revolution. The next chapter analyses the individual stereotypical character features of Czechs and other nations in Havlíček's journalist work in 1846-50. This imagological analysis shows that when constructing the Czech character, Havlíček uses older stereotypical qualities of Slavs (justice, peacefulness, their fundamental democratic nature,...

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Bei den langjährigen Ausgrabungen im Ringwall von Starigard/Oldenburg, der Hauptburg des westslawischen Stammes der Wagrier, wurde auch ein Gräberfeld freigelegt. Es datiert in das 10. Jh. und ist aufgrund der ausgesprochen reichen Beigaben als „fürstlicher“ Bestattungsplatz anzusprechen. Die Langknochen und Wirbel der 34 Erwachsenen des Fürstengräberfeldes von Starigard/Oldenburg wurden auf das Vorhandensein degenerativer Gelenkveränderungen nach den Vorschlägen von Schultz (1988) untersucht. Ausgewertet wurden die erhobenen Daten nach Kreutz (u.a. 1995). Die Auswertung der Arthrosebelastung der Toten aus dem sog. slawischen Fürstengräberfeld Starigard/ Oldenburg (10. Jh.) ergab, dass Männer und Frauen unterschiedlich starke Veränderungen im Bereich der Handgelenke aufwiesen. Dies lässt sich vermutlich mit verschiedenen Aufgabenbereichen beider Geschlechter in Verbindung bringen. Die stärkeren Veränderungen im Handgelenk könnten auf eine Tätigkeit der Frauen im Textilhandwerk deuten, eine Aufgabe, die v.a. sozial hochstehenden Frauen seit der Eisenzeit vorbehalten war. Die großen Körpergelenke waren recht ähnlich belastet, wobei Hüft- und Schultergelenke den größten Arthrosegrad aufwiesen. Dies entspricht den Verhältnissen, die - nach der Literatur - auf anderen slawischen Gräberfeldern herrschten. Die hohe degenerative Belastung von Hüft- und Schultergelenk ist typisch für präindustrielle, landwirtschaftlich orientierte Populationen. Die Bestattungen aus dem sog. Fürstengräberfeld von Starigard/ Oldenburg belegen, dass auch sozial hoch stehende Menschen starkem physischen Stress ausgesetzt waren. Aus archäologischer Sicht lassen sich bei ihnen die degenerativen Veränderungen eher mit Reiten und Fahren in Verbindung bringen. / Materials: From 1972 to 1986 the early medieval ringwall of Starigard/Oldenburg, main fortress of the western Slavic tribe wagrii was excavated. A cemetery of the 10th century AD belonging to the chiefs/kings of the wagrii was discoverd. The 34 adult skeletons were examined by macroscopic, radiological and scanning-electron microscopic techniques. The skeletons were well preserved. The degenerative joint diseases (DJD) and other pathological alterations were scored according to Schultz 1988, data analysis was carried out according to Kreutz (et al. 1995). Generally, a high degree of DJD was observed. Nearly all adult skeletons showed traces of DJD. The severity is clearly age dependent. Hip and shoulder joint were most affected. The other joints of the lower extremities were generally more affected than those of the upper extremity. 9 out of 34 adults (26.5%) showed also osteochondrosis dissecans on different joints. Inflammatory changes were rare: Prevalent chronic polyarthritis was recorded in one female skeleton (50+ years). Conclusions: The skeletons of the population of high social status showed clear evidence for heavy physical stress similar to patterns shown by agriculturalists. High rates of DJD in the lower extremities can further be interpreted as the result of riding and driving, both archaeologically documented by grave goods on the site. The results of this investigation was compared with other Slavic populations.

This dissertation considers the ways that artistic collectives have become legible and value-producing social forms as they circulate within the institutions and economic geographies of contemporary art. My project focuses on Slavs and Tatars, a multilingual artist collective that began as a geographically dispersed reading group in 2006, and has been based in Berlin since 2014. I highlight the aesthetic, semiotic, and infrastructural dimensions of their practice and its modes and forms of production. I position the group as a lens through which to analyze the language and labor of knowledge production across economic geographies of contemporary art, the value projects of the German cultural state, migration and mobility politics, and the tensions of 'multicultural' Berlin. The design of the dissertation reflects two strategic methods. First, I instrumentalize the mobility of the collective in order to better understand the structural interdependencies across scalar geographies of cultural value. Second, I bring attention to Slavs and Tatars' linguistic and discursive practices, and the aesthetic forms these produce. Across the arc of the dissertation, I analyze how Slavs and Tatars is discursively produced, and thus mobilized through the spaces and public contexts of contemporary art. Each chapter discusses a distinct instance of the collective's circulation, semiotic practice, and the entailments of value that emerge across the situated publics and economic geographies of contemporary art: from translation and exhibition projects that engage the collective's conceptual region of Eurasia, to the linguistic infrastructures of studio practice in Berlin's Moabit neighborhood; from a lecture performance at renowned public institution Haus der Kulturen der Welt, to the circulation of books in market, gallery, and exhibition contexts. I analyze these forms in contexts of their public circulation in order to understand the effects of semiotic labor in the production of cultural value. I chart how semiotic practices of the collective productively engage economies of global art and state cultural funding—indexing place and social identity to derive value from a liberal politics of representation, on the one hand—while fostering emergent counterpublics through knowledge production on the other. Strategic language practices work to shift the accumulation and redistribution of material resources to artistic collectives and social projects throughout their region. I argue that this moves away from a politics of art that contests the state on ideological grounds, to one that engages regional, state, and municipal cultural economies in an effort to redistribute social capital and material resources. The dissertation puts forward a model for theorizing the political and economic geographies of contemporary art and culture, and the semiotic practices through which value, resources, attention, and meaning are made redistributable.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Key Words Polabian Slavs, Polabian area, Obodrite, Populus, Gens, Nacio, State, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Obotritic confederation tribes Abstract The thesis analyses and interprets the key events in the state-forming process of so-called Obotritic confederation tribes in 789 - 1178. It focuses on the analysis of written sources, which serve as a basis for three models of inter-tribal units in Polabian area. The thesis argues against the traditional evolutionistic point of view, which considers the confederation tribes to be the predecessors of early medieval states. The main focus of the analysis is put on the starting point form which the Obotritic state-forming process originated. The main question is whether the Obodrite, upon their first appearance in written history, were more federation of tribes or one large tribe, whose break-up at the turn of 9th and 10th century started a new phase of the process. For the next period, the thesis introduces unique model of so-called tribal state, created by the combined effects of various factors, such as location, political situation, social changes in 11th and 12th century etc. The inner and outer factors that lead to the break-up of the Obotritic tribe state in 1270s are discussed in the same manner. The last part of the thesis is an analysis of later...