Enigma in Rus and Medieval Slavic Cultures / / ed. by Ágnes Kriza.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2024 Part 1
• Funder: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
• MitwirkendeR: Afanasyeva, Tatiana,; Angusheva-Tihanov, Adelina,; Babalyk, Marina,; Bulanin, Dmitrii M.,; Dimitrova, Margaret,; Gippius, Aleksei A.,; Hunt, Priscilla,; Korogodina, Maria,; Kriza, Ágnes,; Litvina, Anna,; Mikheev, Savva M.,; Miltenova, Anissava,; Preobrazhensky, Aleksandr S.,; Ryan, W. F.,; Ryan, William F.,; Sullivan, Alice Isabella,; Uspenskij, Boris,; Uspenskij, Fjodor,; Willson, Justin,; Yaneva, Petya,
• HerausgeberIn: Kriza, Ágnes,
• Author: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2024]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Language: English
• Series: Sense, Matter, and Medium : New Approaches to Medieval Literary and Material Culture , 8
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XX, 388 p.)

Enigma in Rus and Medieval Slavic Cultures is a thematic essay volume to investigate the history and function of enigma in Orthodox Slavic cultures with a special focus on the cultural history of Rus and Muscovy. Its seventeen case studies across disciplinary boundaries analyze Slavic biblical and patristic translations, liturgical commentaries, occult divinatory texts, and dream interpretations. Slavic riddles inscribed on walls and compilations of riddles in question-and-answer format are all subjects of this volume. Not only written, but also pictorial enigmas are examined, together with their relationships to texts suggesting novel methodologies for their deciphering. This kaleidoscopic survey of Enigma in Rus and Medieval Slavic Cultures by an international group of scholars demonstrates the historiographical challenges that medieval enigmatic thought poses for researchers and offers new approaches to the interpretation of medieval sources, both verbal and visual.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- List of Contributors -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- Translating Enigma -- 1 Enigma and the Enigmatic in Medieval Slavonic Biblical Manuscripts -- 2 Enigma, Mystery, and Parable as Key Words in the Miscellany of Simeon (the Izbornik of 1073) -- Mystery of the Rite -- 3 Slavonic Commentaries on the Liturgy: Symbols and Church Usage -- 4 The Gospel of Nicodemus and the Cult of St Longinus -- Canonical and Prohibited Secrets -- 5 The Enigma of the Night: Dream Interpretations in Medieval Slavonic Apocrypha -- 6 Occult and Esoteric Texts in Sixteenth-Century Russia: The Secret of Secrets and the Rafli -- 7 Riddles in the Apocryphal Conversation of the Three Hierarchs -- At the intersection of the Visual and the Verbal -- 8 Enigmas and the Enigmatic in Early Rus Epigraphy -- 9 Cryptography in medieval Rus from the Synchronistic and Diachronistic Point of View (Manuscripts of the Fourteenth–Fifteenth Centuries) -- 10 Visual Riddles and Spiritual Perception in Medieval Slavic Manuscripts -- Late Medieval Russian Visual Riddles -- 11 Verbal and Visual Riddles in Medieval Russian Iconography -- 12 The Literalist Mindset of Early Muscovite Painting -- 13 “You are a Priest Forever”: An Anti-Heretical Mnemonic Icon -- Decoding Medieval Enigmas -- 14 The Tsar’s Hidden Wisdom -- 15 Enigmatic Motifs in Medieval Russian Icons -- 16 The Sacralization of Canon Law in Rus (Thirteenth–Sixteenth Centuries) -- 17 The Sovereign’s Two Names (Potapii Maksimovich the Grandson of Matvei, or Vasilii Ivanovich Shuiskii) -- Plates -- Abstracts and Keywords -- Index of Art works and Manuscripts -- Index of Persons and Names -- Index of Subjects