Studi Slavistici XXI (2024) 1
Articoli

Unofficial Cults of Women in the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Example of the Nun Stefanida of Skadar, Bitola and Dečani

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  • Dominika Gapska
Dominika Gapska
Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy, Poznan
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Studi_Slavis-15140

Published 2024-07-11

Keywords

  • Serbian Orthodox Church,
  • Serbian hymnograpgy,
  • Serbian modern hymnographers,
  • female saints

How to Cite

Gapska, D. (2024). Unofficial Cults of Women in the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Example of the Nun Stefanida of Skadar, Bitola and Dečani . Studi Slavistici, 21(1), 33–44. https://doi.org/10.36253/Studi_Slavis-15140

Copyright (c) 2024 Dominika Gapska

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

The paper is focused on  a corpus of hymnographic texts dedicated to nun Stefanida/Stevka as an example of a literary work focused on the promotion of a newly revealed saint by the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose role is to elevate the spiritual essence of a society that underwent secularization during the socialist era, while revisiting the core principles of this society’s ideological resilience. By using means of expression, such as modern language (vernacular), fragments of Stevka’s letters, and Serbian cultural and religious topoi, the authors of the hymnographic texts made them more accessible to the contemporary believer. Additionally, the hymnographic texts symbolically represent the spiritual landscape of both past and contemporary Serbia, adding to a more comprehensive narrative about the historical cohesion of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
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References

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