Roman and Medieval migrations to the Balkans revealed in new study
Who were the peoples that came to the Balkan Peninsula during the Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages? This was the question that a new study has answered using Ancient DNA.
Cyril, Methodios, and the conversion of the Slavs, with Mirela Ivanova
Despite the huge importance attributed to these men and their activities in modern scholarship, national narratives, and Slavic Orthodox identity, our knowledge about them rests largely on two texts whose interests are quite different from our own. What do we really know about them?
Fear – Elements of Slavic ‘Psychological Warfare’ in the context of selected Late Roman Sources
The study covered 6th century historical sources depicting the fighting methods of the Slavs. A more in-depth analysis focused on the issue of fear in relation to group conformism, described in detail in Strategikon
Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the Deacon: medieval gens or ‘scourge of God’?
This article presents a new interpretation of the accounts of Slavs given by two early medieval Latin narrative sources.
Nourishment for the Soul – Nourishment for the Body: Animal Remains in Early Medieval Pomeranian Cemeteries
Late medieval sources clearly refer to souls, which in traditional folk beliefs were periodically returning to feed and warm themselves by the fires made by the living. This kind of conception can be merged with Slavic eschatology. There is multiple evidence to confirm that belief some form of spirit or soul was spreading amongst the people, who in the early medieval period, bordered directly with Pomerania.
Banditry and the Clash of Powers in 14th-Century Thrace: Momcilo and his Fragmented Memory
In the 14th century, a time of civil wars, religious and dynastic strifes, epidemics, natural disasters and miserable living conditions for the wider strata in the cities and the countryside that increased migratory movements, banditry, an indigenous phenomenon in the Balkan mountainous regions, intermingled with the intensified political struggles.
Hungary’s Conversion to Christianity: The Establishment of Hungarian Statehood and its Consequences to the Thirteenth Century
The Carpathian Basin occupies a peculiar place in history. It was the ground where Roman-Germanic world met that of the Slavs and mounted nomad peoples, where no group had achieved sustained unity before the state of Hungary was founded.
Castle Building and Its Social Significance in Medieval Hungary
The history of Hungarian fortification and castle-building has been a subject of Hungarian historiography ever since the 1870s, when Bela Czobor wrote his pioneering study, “Hungary’s Medieval Castles.”
Slavic and Greek-Roman Mythology, Comparative Mythology
In this paper I will present a number of similarities between Greek and Roman deities and the Slavic ones, basing my research as much as possible on the information provided by an etymological analysis, a description of the deity as well as rituals, offerings, sacrifices and celebrations dedicated to the deities.
Some Considerations Regarding the Slavic God Triglav
This article presents a description Triglav, a god or complex of gods in Slavic mythology.
The Riurikid Relationship with the Orthodox Christian Church in Kievan Rus
Prior to the late tenth century, the princes of the Riurikid dynasty were rulers over the loose collection of pagan Slavic tribes and minor city states that were Kievan Rus. However, in a relatively short period, the dynasty had linked itself and its legitimacy to rule to the Orthodox Christian Church centered in Constantinople.
Why There May Have Been Contacts between Slovenes and Jews before 1000 A.D.
The first documented evidence of a Jewish presence in Slovenia dates from the 13th century, when Yiddish- and Italian-speaking Jews migrated south from Austria to Maribor and Celje, and east from Italy into Ljubljana. This is a good three centuries after the first mention of Jews in the Austrian lands.
In search of a missing link: The Bogomils and Zoroastrianism
Both Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism are dualist relig- ions. Implicit in the beliefs held true by these religions is the notion of co-equal and co-eternal principles. Implicit in this notion is the belief that both good and evil exist and are acted upon from the very beginning.
The Development of Predicative Possession in Slavic Languages
As an active language, Early Proto-Indo-European (Pre-Indo-Euro- pean) had no category of syntactic transitivity (Subject-Object relation), which is the central characteristic of nominative (accusative) languages, and no verb ‘have’.
Transylvanian Identities in the Middle Ages
Identity has become a subject of historical exploration as it is also one of the themes examined from the perspectives of various disciplines belonging to the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology.
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
Despite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries.
The Forgotten Text of Nikolai Golovin: New Light on the Igor Tale
Mann argues that a rare text of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche comes from an early, fifteenth-century redaction that scholars could never locate—a redaction that is the prototype for all the redactions that have been studied heretofore. He maintains that unique parallels between this redaction and the Slovo o polka Igoreve support the hypothesis that the Igor Tale was an oral epic song in a tradition that actually continued into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when oral tales about the Kulikovo Battle (1380) were composed. He places the new parallels in the context of other evidence for oral composition in the Igor Tale.
Marriage Impediments in Canon Law and Practice: Consanguinity Regulations and the Case of Orthodox-Catholic Intermarriage in Kyivan Rus’, ca. 1000–1241
This paper focused on marriage alliances in Eastern Europe and the issue of canon law and consanguinity.
BYZANTINE EMPIRE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE IN GREAT MORAVIA
What could the Byzantine Empire offer to Great Moravia in the field of education? Let’s leave aside the political and theological aspects of the mission for a while and point out, that Byzantium complied with Rastislav’s request out of political reasons as well. They considered Great Moravia a possible ally.
Slavic Paganism
Before the advent of Christianity, the European population practiced various forms of paganism. Pagan beliefs were not centralized or codified; they exhibited specific regional characteristics that developed within relatively small territories (Afanas’ev). Slavic cities had differing pantheons comprised of deities whom the inhabitants considered to be most important.