Religious psychoses and various forms of superstition are widespread, as a rule, in the days of severe upheavals and in the times of crisis in history. One of the most common phenomena of this kind in the 19th – first half of the 20th century was the discovery of holy wells or springs, in the waters of which numerous pilgrims observed visions with images of icons and faces of saints, as well as other paintings, most often on religious or historical themes. The purpose of the study is to analyze the distinctive features and the range of narratives about a certain group of events that are considered miraculous in the folk tradition – the appearance of saints and icons in the water. It is established that a place of pilgrimage is often a symbolic sacred center of a certain area (spring, well, krinitsa, bend of the river), or a certain narrow-local territory (hospitals, houses, churches). The most susceptible categories of the population – young girls and boys, elderly widows, etc. – become visionaries most often. Usually, the observers are either already prepared in advance by other people, or are in a holy place with a certain mood “for a miracle”. Such phenomena themselves can be observed during certain crisis phenomena, deterioration of the socio-economic situation in the country, or if a person is experiencing an individual crisis. That is, the appearance of/the opening of wells, holy springs, springs and krinitsas is one of the peculiar markers of the growing religiosity of the local population. The obtained data are of practical significance and can be the basis for complex developments in the field of folklore studies, sacred geography and topography of individual territories.
Keywords: miracle, stories about miracles, vision on a religious theme, the appearance of the Virgin, rumors
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2021.4.117-125
About the author
 |
Ilya S. Butov – PhD (Agricultural Sciences); senior research fellow; Republican Laboratory of Historical and Cultural Heritage of the National Research University “Center for Research of Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus”; build. 2, 1 Surganova str., Minsk, 220072, Belarus; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |