Votive holidays in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye
https://doi.org/10.28995/2658-5294-2025-8-2-129-155
Abstract
Votive holidays include holidays that are established by the rural community according to a vow. They are a form of a folk vow, a commitment that a person or community undertakes to get rid of various disasters: cattle plague, droughts, hail storms, etc. Within the framework of the calendar cycle, votive holidays also act as one of the varieties of locally timed, or local holidays. This article is devoted to the study of the tradition of establishing votive holidays in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye – in the territories of the Nizhny Novgorod region located below the Oka and Volga rivers. The work is based on field materials from the folklore archive of Nizhny Novgorod State University named after N.I. Lobachevsky, as well as information about votive holidays contained in pre-revolutionary publications in the“Nizhny Novgorod Diocesan Gazette”. These materials reflect the state of the studied tradition in the second half of the 19th – 20th c. In the article, we explore the terminology of votive holidays. We identify the reasons for the establishment of votive holidays (loss of crops, livestock deaths, fires, etc.). We determine the specifics of their assignment to specific calendar dates, as well as the spatial and temporal characteristics of votive holidays. We analyze the variants of the structural organization of votive processions with a prayer service, which form the main content of votive holidays. At the end of the work, we consider how in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye in the second half of the 20th c. the transformation of votive holidays into patronal holidays.
About the Author
A. N. Karakulov
Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Anton N. Karakulov
bldg. 6, bld. 6, Miusskaya Sq., Moscow, 125047
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Review
For citations:
Karakulov A.N. Votive holidays in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye. Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics. 2025;8(2):129-155. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2658-5294-2025-8-2-129-155
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