Ritual self-plights of Ukrainians in the medieval – early modern period (in the context of the Black Sea region’s ties)
Abstract
In the medieval – early modern period, pledging one’s word was a common practice among all social strata. Important communicative actions, especially those involving a dispute, were accompanied by the rituals of pronouncing a pledge, which often included self-plight. We are interested in the role, origins and existence of self-plights in the context of intercultural interaction. These aspects were already studied by Mykola Sumtsov, Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Viktor Petrov, but the study of self-plights in Ukrainian culture, especially in diachrony, cannot be considered complete. One also has to bear in mind a substantial fragmentariness of the sources and incomplete coverage of this phenomenon in these sources at that time. This is not a material of traditional field study of folklore or ethnography, and therefore, our research must be categorized as belonging to historical anthropology.
The sources cover most extensively the pledges/oaths taken in the 14th – 16th centuries under various agreements between princes and with other high-ranked persons, including the entry into the suzerain-vassal relationship. Private persons of various social statuses were also taking an oath when resolving various (including legal) disputes. Unfortunately, the majority of sources do not contain full texts of oaths. Still, we were able to find a text of this kind, related to the rite of passage into woźny (a low-ranked court official) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1635, which ended with a ritual self-plight whose formula tends to originate from bygone pagan times. The one taking the pledge by swearing to God would bring a punishment upon himself in the event of failing his duties as a woźny: loss of speech and triple “burning” of head. Numerous mentions in the sources of the instances of avoiding the pledge by persons who had to take it, voluntary recognition of guilt by these persons, and even relieving the counterparties from oath give reasons to assume that these texts did contain self-plights. For it was believed that self-plight would bring a horrible danger upon those who breached the pledge.
The origins of self-plights of Ukrainians in the medieval – early modern period date to ritual pledges of the 10th century, taken by ambassadors of Kievan princes when making agreements with the Byzantine Empire. It is corroborated by their structural and functional similarity (the role of gods and Christian saints, Mother Earth, weapons, various ailments, etc. in punishing the oath-breaker). Ukrainian pledges and selfplights have formed and existed in a broad context of intercultural contacts of the Pontic region. There, Slavic customs intertwined with Byzantine, Scandinavian, Iranian, Turkic and other influences, forming a specific local (basically proto-Ukrainian) and then Ukrainian tradition per se as one of its Indo-European variants.
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References
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