Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia: A Post-Modern Religious Response to Marginality [1st ed.] 9783030563639, 9783030563646

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Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia A Post-Modern Religious Response to Marginality

Tatiana Zachar Podolinská

Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia

Tatiana Zachar Podolinská

Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia A Post-Modern Religious Response to Marginality

Tatiana Zachar Podolinská Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, Slovakia

ISBN 978-3-030-56363-9    ISBN 978-3-030-56364-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Post-modern societies are still working with the concept of ascribed collective identities, classifying people into groups that are supposed to share certain common characteristics and even predispositions. The spontaneous classification, based on folk taxonomies and intuitive folk sociology, serves as a basic roadmap in our daily lives. For us, it is important to know where we fit the most in order to develop our secondary networks in the ‘bubbles’ of safety for sharing joy, fears, and sorrows. Both individually and collectively constructed ‘bubbles’ serve as reservoirs of our social and symbolic capital, which we mobilise when seeking support, active interventions, or protection. However, during the process of our socialisation, we become familiar with learned classification that serves as an instrumental tool for both privileging and peripheralising groups and communities based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, and so forth, the members of which may face multiple prejudices and stereotypes. Therefore, on the one hand, learned classification gives us an approach to collective memory and inherited tradition and the culture of both ancestors and living group members. At the same time, however, it may serve for the shaping of exclusivist political and discursive ism-ideologies—for example, racism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and ageism. This book exemplifies such group peripheralisation through specific examples of Roma communities in Slovakia, which are marginalised based on ethnic, social, and religious principles. More precisely, this book explores how they cope with marginalisation, creating their islands of v

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marginal centrality, and the role of the post-modern Virgin Mary in this internal process of self-centralisation. The Virgin Mary herself has successfully managed her way ‘from the periphery to the centre’, becoming a pivotal figure of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century. She could even be denoted as one of the most crucial influencers of the Christian world of the twentieth century, shaping the special branch of theology—Mariology—as well as ruling papal acts. She has successfully survived mandatory atheism in communist countries as well as liberalism, de-traditionalisation, and secularisation of Western societies by enchanting the world with her apparitions, miracles, and wonders. The book explores how Marian devotion represents both the continuation of tradition and the restoration of interrupted tradition, fluidly mixing pre-modern and ultra-modern elements of beliefs and practices with the grassroots stream of post-modern Christianity. At the same time, the book illuminates how Mary became the voice of those on the periphery, being the pillar of nation-building processes, fighting for the cultural and ethnic rights of peripheral ethnic groups and nations. In order to better approach the people She speaks to and for, Mary became ethnicised (ethnically transcribed) and enculturated (culturally translated). The book particularly exemplifies the devotion of post-­ modern Mary among the Roma in Slovakia, approaching her ethnicised and enculturated forms (Chocolate Marys), and explores her potential for helping the Slovak Roma on their own path ‘from the periphery to the centre’. The idea to write the book on the post-modern Virgin Mary with a focus on her potential of becoming a herald of endogenous Romani emancipation in Slovakia was conceived at the end of 2019, on the shore of the charming fishing village of Crail on the East Neuk coast of Scotland, washed by the massive, cold waves of the North Sea. I remember the enthusiastic and enriching discussions with my friend, tutor, and personal couch, Prof Elena Marushiakova from University of St Andrews, during our evening walks among the raindrops, inseparably mixed with the salty ocean aerosol, the soft fragrance of the sand, and the odours of decaying algae, crabs, and other marine animals. In the course of these discussions, I had the opportunity to crystallise my deep and fascinating, long-term yet still dispersed, unencapsulated field experiences. When I later, seemingly by accident, discovered—hidden around the corner in a nearby wall-­ garden of Kellie Castle—an impressive and timeless statue of the Virgin

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Mary Stella Maris [Lat., ‘Star of the Sea’], the patroness of seamen and fishermen, for me, it was as if I had suddenly received a compass and final order to undertake the mission of writing this book. This book uses multifocal lenses, combining both the macro- and micro-perspective. For me, as the author, the fluent changing of focus was both exciting and challenging. And so, in this book, I am offering an eagle’s-eye view, focused on distant, theoretical horizons, while maintaining the main line of my argument. My approach combines a detailed, earthly perspective of ethnographic research and pinpoints the intimate details and private experiences of the lives of particular individuals. In this regard, I invite the reader to collaborate in the creative reading of this book in order to (re)interpret and (re)evaluate the offered thoughts and data, as well as to potentially give them new horizons and perspectives. I would like to thank the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) for granting the SAS-ERC Scholar Visiting Fellowship (September–November 2019) and University of St Andrews for receiving me as a hosting scholar. I would also like to acknowledge my home institution, the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of SAS in Bratislava, for its continuous support and working opportunity. A special thank-you goes to the VEGA grant agency for funding the ‘Ethnographic Research of Non-­ religion and Secularism in Modern Slovak Society–Life Trajectories and Stories’ (VEGA grant No. 2/0060/19) and the Slovak Literary Fund for granting the Creative Writing Scholarship that enabled me to finish the manuscript. I especially thank Prof Tomasz Kamusella from University of St Andrews for reading and commenting on my proposal, an anonymous reviewer for a positive recommendation, and, last but not least, the Editorial Board of Palgrave Macmillan for accepting my proposal. My thanks also go to the translator and proofreader of the manuscript, Judita Takáčová, as well as to the native speaker of English, Michael Sabo. For scientific insight, meticulous reading, and commenting on several versions of the manuscript, I am particularly thankful to Prof Elena Marushiakova. I would like to acknowledge my parents Mária and Ladislav, my husband Martin, and my sons Sebastián and Damián, for their love and support. My greatest thank-you is reserved for Mary and all the people She accommodates in the centre of her loving heart. Bratislava, Slovakia June 25, 2020

Tatiana Zachar Podolinská

Contents

1 Traces of the Virgin Mary in the Modern World  1 2 Romani Christianity in Slovakia: Religiosity of Those on the Periphery 41 3 Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia: Ethnicised and Enculturated Mary 75 4 Marian Apparitions Among the Roma: From the Periphery to the Centre121 Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

Fresco of the Holy Family above the stove in the kitchen. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.2 Domestic altar in the living room decorated with plastic flowers. Svinia (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.3 Holy corner in the living room. Žehnˇa (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.4 Holy corner in the living room. Abranovce. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.5 Holy corner in the kitchen with a new-born sleeping under the protection of the Virgin Mary. Žehnˇa (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.6 Various statuettes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary as part of the living room secretary. Abranovce. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.7 Holy corner/altar arranged on top of the TV in the kitchen. Žehnˇa (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.8 Corner with a TV in the living room, decorated with plastic flowers in a manner of a holy corner. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.9 Wall fresco with the Virgin Mary and child in the bedroom. The adjacent corner contains family photos, a TV, and a tape-recorder with radio. Žehnˇa (Household 3). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.10 ‘Holy corner’ arranged like an altar, richly decorated with plastic flowers. The statues of Mary and Jesus were moved out of composition after the householders’ conversion to the local

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

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Fig. 3.11

Fig. 3.12

Fig. 3.13 Fig. 3.14 Fig. 3.15 Fig. 3.16 Fig. 3.17 Fig. 3.18 Fig. 3.19 Fig. 3.20 Fig. 3.21 Fig. 3.22

Fig. 3.23 Fig. 3.24

Apostolic Church. Rokycany (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 90 ‘Holy corner’ in the living room. Statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus were moved out after the conversion to the local Apostolic Church. The wall-­poster [Slov., nástenka] with the photos of family members is still attached to the ‘holy place’. Rokycany (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 91 Wall-poster [Slov., nástenka] composed of family photos mixed with prayer cards and other religious pictures stuck on carton. ̌ Uzovské Peklany (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 92 Wall fresco of the Holy Family in the kitchen, painted by Author 1. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 93 Wall fresco of Madonna with a child in the living room, painted by Author 1. Svinia (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 94 Wall fresco of the Virgin Mary, painted by an Author 1. Prešov-­Tehelnˇa (Household 1, living room). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 95 Wall fresco of the Holy Family in the kitchen, painted by Author 2. Ternˇa. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 96 Painting of Madonna and child on a piece of carton. Author 3. ̌ Uzovské Peklany (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 97 Pencil drawing of the Saint Therese of Lisieux devoted as the Virgin Mary on the wall in the kitchen. Malý Slivník-­ Furmanec. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 98 Wax and pencil drawing of Jesus on the wall in the kitchen. Malý Slivník–Furmanec. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 99 Façade covered with holy pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Raslavice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 105 Roma domestic chapel of the ‘Holy Trinity’. Žehnˇa (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 108 ‘Triple Mary’. Three identical statues of the Virgin Mary, which should multiply her power in a hostile (Pentecostal) ̌ (Photo: © T. Zachar environment. Žehra–Dobrá Vôla. Podolinská, 2007) 109 Iconography of the Virgin Mary and female Saints in Romani households. (Podolinská research 2006–2007) 110 Woodcut by Author 4 from Jarovnice. In addition to the dark skin colour, Mary and Jesus also have Romani facial features. Jarovnice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) 111

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Fig. 3.25 Detail of a wall fresco in the kitchen (See Fig. 3.16). The Virgin Mary is depicted with dark skin and with the face of a Roma-like woman. Ternˇa (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.26 Dark-­skinned Madonna coloured at home. Svinia (Household 3). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.27 Dark-­skinned Madonna and child. Jarovnice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006) Fig. 3.28 Tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the kitchen. Žehnˇa (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

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CHAPTER 1

Traces of the Virgin Mary in the Modern World

Abstract  In this chapter, we will trace how the Virgin Mary herself has successfully managed her way ‘from the periphery to the centre’, becoming a pivotal figure of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century. We will approach the Marian devotion as representing both the continuation of tradition, as well as the restoration of interrupted tradition, fluidly mixing pre-modern and ultra-modern elements of beliefs and practices with the grassroots stream of post-modern Christianity. We will seek testimonies of those who believe in her direct interventions in the world, causing, for example, miraculous healings and other miracles. We will explore how her messages impact the Church, including the popes and the highest clergy elite. We will examine the ways people believe in her potential to share her sacrum with shrines, statues, images, and other devotional objects. We will discover how Mary became the voice of those on the periphery, being the pillar of nation-building processes, fighting for the cultural and ethnic rights of peripheral ethnic groups and nations. We will illuminate, how She has successfully survived mandatory atheism in communist countries as well as liberalism, de-traditionalisation and secularisation of Western societies, keeping enchanting the world with her apparitions, miracles, and wonders. Keywords  Marian devotion • Modern Mary • Post-modern religiosity • Post-communist Mary • Traditional Mary

© The Author(s) 2021 T. Zachar Podolinská, Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6_1

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Although Jesus had only one Mother, and there is only one Virgin Mary, tracing her mundane faces and varieties of her devotion across the centuries and continents has led us to the conclusion that there are as many Marys as there are people and nations who are devoted to her. Along with the spread of Christianity, her role through the ages has become more central, her presence more visible, and her voice more audible. With the help of mass-media communication, new forms of transport, and the ever-growing ease of mobility in the twentieth century, She, as the Mother of Jesus, has become the leading figure of global missionary activities, captivating the world with her public and globally addressed messages (Chapman 2000). Her popularity at the beginning of the twenty-first century is sometimes compared to those of pop-culture ‘megastars’ (Hermkens et al. 2009, p. 1). From a strictly scientific point of view, the Virgin Mary, being herself a transcendent entity, cannot be traced. Anyhow, we can trace her based on her mundane ‘imprints’ in the ‘real world’ and human lives. Thus, we can talk to people and seek testimonies of those who believe in her direct interventions in the world, causing, for example, miraculous healings and other miracles. We can follow statistics of how many people in the world are on the move because of Mary. We can explore how her messages impact the Church, including the popes and the highest clergy elite. We can examine the ways people believe in her potential to share her sacrum with shrines, statues, images, and other devotional objects. We can explore how her devotion has changed the symbolic map of the world, giving importance to the places which were formerly considered nowhere. We can trace the ways of her enculturation by local people, being venerated as a European, Indian, African, Asian, or Roma woman, or the intriguing ability of people to accommodate her in nearly every place, time, condition, or circumstance. Therefore, tracing the implicit faces of Mary mirrored in the mundane world, we also trace the faces of the people who believe in her as the Divine Mother of Christ and ultimate Love.

‘The Virgin Mother’: The Conceptual Roots of Tradition Her person is veiled with the mystery of being both the Immaculate (ever) Virgin and the human Mother of Jesus, who is also the Son of the Celestial Father (God). The enigma of her being both a Virgin and a Mother has

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compelled scholars of religious studies to make multiple phenomenological comparisons with other pre-Christian and non-Christian female deities of the Great Mother Goddess type. In this context, it is also interesting that the Third Ecumenical Council (431 A.D.) was held at the Church of Mary in Ephesus, Anatolia, the former important centre of the cult of Artemis. The council condemned the teachings of Nestorius on the Virgin Mary for being only the Christotokos [Gr., ‘The Christ-bearer’] and proclaimed her to be the Theotokos [Gr., ‘The God-bearer’]. Some scholars believe that Mary was declared the Mother of God and was allowed to be venerated as such because of the urgent need of the post-Hellenistic world for a heavenly feminine principle as a compromise with pagans so that Christianity could become acceptable. In her study, M.  Rigoglioso (2010, pp.  51–65) noted that various female deities of Graeco-Roman antiquity were conceived as Virgin Mothers in the earliest layers of their cults. The Christian idea of Mary as the Virgin Mother of God has many similarities to the Graeco-Roman concept of the Great Goddess as the simultaneous embodiment of three female aspects—the Ever-Virgin, Holy Bride/Wife of the Father (God), and the Great Mother of the Son of God—unified in one divine person. The figure of the Virgin Mary has also been explored in the post-­ conquest Maya context as a hybridised form of the pagan concept of ritual sexuality, as well as the Christian formulation of virginity prescribed by colonial Spanish Catholicism. In this context, P.  Sigal (2000) explored how the Moon Goddess of Yucatec Maya was culturally conflated with the Virgin Mary, thus becoming a hybrid Christian symbol. Sigal speaks about conceptual translation and describes how the Maya Moon Goddess lost her original meaning and how the Spanish Virgin Mary was reformulated into the final hybrid Goddess figure—The Unvirgin Virgin. On the European continent, the Virgin Mary has flexibly absorbed the elements and ritual functions of many local female pre-Christian goddesses; just to mention the cult of Baba [Srb., ‘the Great Mother’] in Serbia (Petrović 2001), or the connection of Mary with the so-called Boldogasszony [Hung., ‘Blessed Woman’] in Hungary, which is a special Hungarian denomination of the Virgin Mary and also the alleged Mother Goddess of the ancient Hungarians (Kis-Halas 2019).

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The Traditional Virgin Mary Traditionally, Mary was perceived to be a powerful Protector and Healer, mediating celestial protection and miraculous healings. In this respect, She is connected in traditional European popular religious cultures with diverse healing herbs and aromatic flowers used for healing or to symbolise some aspect of her personality. She also has a strong connection with healing springs and wells, absorbing the pre-Christian cults of healing waters connected with local water spirits. In her cult and imagery, the astral symbolism is deeply inherited. Finally, She is also believed to be the reason behind specific miracles—sun-miracles, as well as miracle-performing icons, paintings, and statues. Marian Flowers Originally, flowers and plants were named after ancient pagan deities (Schroedel and Schroedel 2006). During the fourth century, Saint Ambrose referred to the Virgin Mary as ‘the rose of modesty’. The Venerable Bede (673–735 A.D.) wrote of the white lily as the emblem of the Virgin Mary, symbolising the purity of Mary’s body and the glory of her soul, as She was assumed into heaven. Later, Saint Bernard (1090–1154 A.D.) praised the Virgin Mary as ‘delightfully blooming with the beautiful flowers of every virtue, among which three are exquisite: primarily, the violet of humility, the lily of chastity, and the rose of charity’ (Mellon 2008). In the Medieval era, hundreds of flowers were named after the Virgin Mary. Among these, some of the most important were the rose [Lat., Rosa canina] as the emblem of Mary’s love of God; the white lily [Lat., Lilium candidum; ‘Madonna lily’], symbolising her purity; the myrtle [Lat., Myrtus communis], her virginity; and the marigold [Lat., Calendula officinalis], her heavenly glory (Herbs and Flowers…, n.d.). Roses and lilies both played a prominent part in apocryphal medieval literature about the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. ‘The Assumption lily’, also called the ‘August lily’, blooms during August and is therefore associated with Assumption Day on August 15, the most prominent feast of the Blessed Mary celebrated today. In the Medieval era, little gardens devoted solely to the cultivation of the plants associated with Mary were created, which are called Saint Mary’s Gardens, or Mary Gardens. Even today, there are blogs and websites for

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passionate devotees with instructions on how to create one’s own Mary Garden by cultivating flowers that are symbolically connected with Our Lady (Get Inspired…, 2017). The deeply rooted medieval flower symbolism has also been transmitted to the New World. The Christian colonisation of the New Continent resulted in the association of native wild plants with symbolic Marian names (Herbs and Flowers…, n.d.). After the Reformation, many traditionally Marian flowers were renamed in Protestant countries, or in some cases, their connection with Mary became less obvious; for example, the ‘Milk Thistle’ was known as ‘Our Lady’s Milk Drops’, and the ‘forget-me-not’ as ‘Our Lady’s Eyes’ (Schroedel and Schroedel 2006). The medicinal aspect of Marian plants and flowers is also strongly present. In some apparitions, the Virgin Mary herself pointed to several plants and flowers and explained how they could be used for healing (e.g. during an apparition in Vietnamese La Vang in 1798; Schroedel and Schroedel 2006). In many other cases, her name—following the traditional belief in her spiritual and physical healing powers—is nowadays also associated with local plants and herbs used for traditional healing (lily, rose, marigold, rosemary, alchemilla, chamomile, lavender, mint, etc.). In Slavic regions, there is a particular abundance of flowers and herbaceous plants connected with the Virgin Mary. The names of flowers from Slavic ethno-botanic taxonomies of which a few are worth mentioning are: Bogorodka and Bogorodnaya trava in Russia, Bogorodičina trava [Lat., Hypericum perforatum] in Serbia, and Bogorodichno cvete [Lat., Lonicera Caprifolium] or Bogorodichka in Bulgaria (Kolosova 2011), in folk imagery connected with the stars [Lat., Callistephus genus belongs to the Asteraceae family; asters being traditionally associated with stars]. Likewise, many other flowers associated with fragments of folk Marian legends combined with some kind of visual similarity can be listed—for example, ‘common chicory’ being interpreted as a skirt of the Mother of God [Lat., Cichorium intybus]; ‘dead-nettles’ [Lat., genus Lamium] or ‘touch-me-­ not balsam’ [Lat., Impatiens noli-tangere] as her slippers; ‘great mullein’ [Lat., Verbascum Thapsus] as her pigtails; ‘common vervain’ [Lat., Verbena officinalis] as her cupcakes; ‘Saint John’s wort’ [Lat., Hypericum Perforatum]; ‘Carthusian pink’ [Lat., Dianthus carthusianorum] as her tears; ‘chickpea milkvetch’ [Lat., Astragalus Cicer] as her hair; ‘bogbean’ [Lat., Menyanthes trifoliata] as Mary’s spoon; and ‘Lady’s bedstraw’ [Lat., Galium verum] as her straw.

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With regard to herbaceous plants, which are specifically associated with the Virgin Mary in Slavic regions, we should also mention ‘Mary’s flower’ [Lat., Anastatica hierochuntica]—known as Ruchka Bozhskoy Materi (Ukraine) [Ukr., ‘The Little Hand of the Mother of God’] or Bogorodicha rachichka (Bulgaria) [Bg., ‘The Little Hand of the Mother of God’], connected with a folk Marian legend mentioning flowers which emerged from the spots where Mary touched the ground with her hands when delivering the Jesus child. The plant is thus used in traditional Balkan folk medicine to relieve the pain of childbirth or severe menstruation pain (Kolosova 2011). From a myriad of other Marian flowers with an important, officially recognised medicinal effect, the ‘Mary’s Thistle’ [Lat., Silybum Marianum], which is used for the healing and recovery from liver diseases is worth mentioning. Marian Springs and Wells In her cult, the aquatic element is deeply rooted. In numerous cases, She is connected with healing waters, springs, and baths. There are several that can be mentioned, for example, Lourdes, where pilgrims can drink from the spring that the Virgin directed Bernadette to locate at the base of the grotto, as well as wash in the baths where miraculous cures have taken place; the miraculous fountain of La Salette in France, the springs of Fatima in Portugal, and so on. It is remarkable to consider the number of healing springs associated with the Virgin Mary all over the world: for example, in places such as Vailankanni (sixteenth century, India), Banneux (1933, Belgium), a healing water fountain near the House of Mary in Ephesus (Turkey), or San Nicolás de los Arroyos (1983, Argentina), near the Parana river. Another apparition of the Virgin Mary in Betania in 1976 (Venezuela) occurred near a healing waterfall. Mary appeared in Yankalilla in 1994 (Australia) and acted as a guide to a local healing stream. The healing spring discovered in the nineteenth century in El Santuario de Chimayo—nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico—is often called the ‘Lourdes of America’ (examples extrapolated from Varner 2009, pp. 165–171). In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the Mother of God [Gr., Theotokos=‘God-Bearer’] is frequently compared with a ‘Holy Fountain’. In old Russia, a custom existed based on the Greek traditions of sanctifying springs that were located near churches. These springs were dedicated

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then to the Holy Mother, and icons of her were painted under the title ‘The Life-Giving Spring’. This epithet originated with her revelation of a sacred spring [Gr., hagiasma; Tr., ayazma] in Valoukli, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul in Turkey). The Byzantine Emperor Leo I (457–474 A.D.) built a church over this site, which witnessed numerous miraculous healings over the centuries, becoming one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Greek Orthodoxy. The fountain of holy water is now situated in the complex of the Church of Saint Mary of the Spring (Albera and Couroucli 2012, pp. 97–99). In Istanbul, there is also the Church of Saint Mary of Blachernae. In 450 A.D., Empress Aelia Pulcheria began to build a church near a fountain of holy water. Emperor Leo I erected a holy reliquary near the church, since it hosted the holy mantle and robe of the Virgin, as well as a sacred bath edifice, which enclosed the fountain (Albera and Couroucli 2012, pp. 97–99). The belief in healing springs connected with the power of the Virgin Mary is deeply rooted in the Eastern Orthodox religious culture. For example, many places with mineral baths are connected with the Bogoroditsa [Bg., ‘The Bearer of God’] and called Bogorodichna stapka [Bg., ‘Virgin Mary’s step’] (e.g. Stara Zagora, Haskovo, and others). In Stara Zagora, the place consists of a rock formation resembling a female footprint that, according to legend, belongs to the Virgin Mary herself (The mineral baths…, n.d.). Another famous healing spring connected with the Virgin Mary in Bulgaria is near the Church of the Annunciation of Mary in the Asenovgrad region. Next to the church with the popular name Ribnata [Bg., ‘The Fish Church’], there is a chapel reputed for its holy spring [Bg., ayazmo]. It is believed that seeing fish in the spring is a sign that the prayer will be heard (Baeva and Georgieva 2019, pp. 263–264). Near Asenovgrad, in the realm of Bachkovo Monastery, there is another, which is perhaps the most famous spring near the Chapel of the Protecting Veil of Mary. Devotees drink from the spring, wash their faces, hands, or ailing parts of the body. It is believed that taking a bath in the basin at midnight for three nights running is to have an even stronger healing impact. For this reason, there is a small building near the chapel, where pilgrims can stay for the night (Baeva and Georgieva 2019, p. 259); however, in order to receive a healing effect, it is enough to sleep anywhere near ayazmo.

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In this respect, it should be mentioned that the tradition of healing spas was typical for the ancient Greek and Roman world, either in the form of temple areas or sanctuaries for the worshipping of water deities. Healing sleeps [Lat., Incubation] were practised by many ancient cultures. It was believed that sleeping could create a divinely inspired dream or cure (Renberg 2017). In countries with Protestant forms of Christianity, in the era of the Reformation, many sacred wells—as they were closely linked with the cults of the saints—fell into disuse and were lost. It was also the fate of the most famous pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham (Norfolk, England). According to the tradition, in 1061, a noble widow had a vision of the Mother of God and, as a commemoration of the apparition, a shrine near the local spring in Walsingham was erected (Haffner 2010, pp. 438–439). The spring was reputed for its miraculous healing properties, thus making Walsingham a popular pilgrimage site. In 1513, Erasmus of Rotterdam visited the shrine and noted that the water from the spring was ‘efficacious in curing pains of the head and stomach’. In 1538, during the reign of Henry VIII, the shrine in Walsingham was desecrated and its sacred image of the Virgin Mary carried to Chelsea and burned (Haffner 2010, pp. 440–441). However, in the nineteenth century, the shrine was restored near the original site. In 1934, English Roman Catholic bishops named Walsingham the National Shrine of Our Lady. The belief in the miraculous power of local springs is inherited as part of the veneration of the entire site. Nowadays, water from the well is often taken home by the faithful and distributed among their family, friends, and parishioners (Barnes 2017, pp. 14–17). There are numerous springs connected with the Virgin Mary all over Europe. Some of the most famous include the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariazell in Austria, which is the most-visited Marian shrine in Central Europe that receives about a million pilgrims each year (Wright 1999). There is also the splendid system of natural mineral springs and wells in Mariánske Lázně [Cz., ‘Mary’s Baths’] in the Czech Republic. In Slovakia, there is also a plenitude of mineral water springs, which are said to heal, as well as ‘miraculous wells’ associated with the Virgin Mary in local shrines, many of them connected also with local Marian apparitions, such as Turzovka–Živčáková, Litmanová, Dechtice (near Trnava), Marianka, Staré Hory, Vysoká (near Sabinov), Lehota (near Nitra), and Marian Hill (near Levoča), to name a few.

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Astral Symbolism The Virgin Mary has been traditionally connected with objects in the sky, such as the Sun, the Moon, stars, planets, and constellations, which are all expressed in traditional Marian vocabulary and iconography. There are no doubts that early Christianity was nurtured by the Hellenistic world. Thus, the early Virgin Mary absorbed the attributes and functions of prominent Hellenistic sky goddesses. Lunar symbolism often accompanies Hellenistic Mother Goddesses, such as Isis, Artemis, and Selene. Another classical sky goddess implemented into the imagery of the Virgin Mary was Diana, who was responsible for women’s fertility and eased their pain during childbirth. In Chapter 12 of the Biblical Book of Revelation, Saint John describes in his famous apocalyptic prophecy a mysterious woman: ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head, a crown of twelve stars (12:1)’. The woman from his prophecy is called the Woman of Revelation or the Woman of the Apocalypse. First, the feminine person described in John’s Revelation was identified with the Church. Only afterwards, the woman was interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and the sun was identified as Christ. The Virgin thereby acquired the lunar imagery previously applied to the Church (Warner 1983, pp. 257–258). As a lunar deity, Mary was also closely associated with water, particularly the sea. The moon moves the waters of the world—the sea—in its rhythm (Warner 1983, p.  262). The same is true for the liquids of the human body, particularly the blood. Thus, with regard to the menstruation cycle, women are directly connected with the cycle of the moon. Ave Maris Stella [Lat., ‘Hail, Star of the Sea’] is a Marian hymn that has been used at Vespers since approximately the eight century. The title, Stella Maris, is one of the oldest and most widespread titles applied to Mary. She thus appears to be identified with the prominent ocean’s guide—the Pole Star (Warner 1983, p. 262). In iconography, Mary, as Stella Maris, was depicted as standing on a boat with a rising star over her head. Stella Maris was first prayed to by travellers and sailors for a safe return home. It has, however, deeper symbolism, since Mary makes our entire life’s journey safe and guides us towards our final destination—salvation. Mary has also been identified as the Stella Matutina—the last star in the morning and the first star in the evening—the planet Venus,

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connected with the ancient goddess of love (Lat., Venus; Gr., Aphrodite). Finally, Mary has also been associated with the Virgo constellation (Warner, 1983, pp. 263–264). The vision of the Virgin by Saint Catherine Labouré in Paris 1830 strengthened the identification of Mary with the moon. The Virgin appeared to her in a white silken rustling dress, swathed in a white veil with dazzling rays flashing from her extended hands. Her feet were crushing the head of a serpent as it rested on a blue globe (Warner 1983, p. 259). When exploring the recent Marian apparitions worldwide, a number of them are connected with the sky symbolism or so-called sun-miracles. A. Meessen explored several of them and compiled a list of the most popular: the apparition in Tilly-sur-Seulles (France, 1901), Fatima (Portugal, 1917), Onkerzeele (Belgium, 1933), Bonate (Italy, 1944), Espis (France, 1946), Acquaviva Platani (Italy, 1950), Heroldsbach (Germany, 1949), Fehrbach (Germany, 1950), Kerezinen (France, 1953), San Damiano (Italy, 1965), Tre Fontane (Italy, 1982), and Kibeho (Rwanda, 1983) (from Meessen 2005, p. 200). Sun-miracles have been reported at other Marian sites, too—in Betania (Venezuela, 1976–1990), Lubbock (Texas, 1989), at the Mother Cabrini Shrine near Denver (Colorado, 1992), Conyers (Georgia, early 1990s), in Medjugorje (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1980s), Seuca (Romania, 2008; Peti 2019), in Litmanová (Slovakia, 1990–1995), and so forth. Probably the most famous is the sun-miracle of Fatima (October 13, 1917). An estimated 70,000 people attended the site, anticipating the Virgin’s final visit. As previously described, the figure appeared and identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary, but only to children. Nevertheless, the gatherings witnessed unusual celestial signs, such as a silver disc that emerged from behind the clouds, the sun began to spin and revolve ‘vertiginously on its axis’, and then zig-zag towards the earth as if it had become unfixed from the heavens. The entire event took about ten minutes, and this ‘Miracle of the Sun’, as it later became known, is one of the best-known events at Fatima. The event was officially accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as a miracle on October 13, 1930 (The Anniversary…, 2018).

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Healing Miracles, Wonder-Working Icons, Paintings, and Statues The most common miracles connected with the Virgin Mary are miraculous healings. There are thousands of miraculous healings reported yearly, which take place at the most visited places of Marian devotion in the world—Lourdes (France), Fatima (Portugal), Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico), and many others. In addition to miraculous healings, the Virgin Mary is also believed in many parts of the world to act directly through material objects—her statues, images and pictures, medals, devotionals, and so on. Images of the Virgin Mary are not only thought to be a direct embodiment of Mary herself, but—according to devotees—the images themselves dispense graces and favour (Morgan 2009, pp. 49–65). Each image possesses its own miracle stories that uniquely exhibit Mary’s strength (Dubisch 1995). These phenomena are known worldwide as ‘miracle-performing’ or ‘wonder-­ working’ icons or ‘miraculous’ statues. Many miracle stories begin with the miraculous apparition of the image—icon, painting, or statue—itself. In many instances, the miraculous image or statue was made following the direct command of the Virgin Mary during a private apparition. The miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, the icon of Our Lady of Tinos in Greece, the wonder-­working icon of Our Lady of Kazan in Russia, or the miraculous wooden statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary that were found in the woods near Dunajská Lužná and Marianka (Slovakia), or the miraculous image of the Madonna and Child discovered in a field by a peasant in Slovenský Grob (Slovakia), and so on are good examples of such miraculous events. In general, the number of miracles connected with images, paintings, icons, and statues of the Virgin Mary all over the world is enormous. The most reported are cases when religious statuettes suddenly began to bleed, sweat or weep blood, salt-water or oil, or produce a scent. In some cases, whole statues were reported to move, or they moved their hands, head, or changed their gaze. The phenomenon of weeping icons of Mary is a relatively commonly reported issue among the Orthodox. Weeping and moving statues are more evident among Roman Catholics. Church approval of these events among Catholics is very uncommon. The weeping bust of Our Lady of Syracuse in Italy (1953), which was approved by Pope Pius XII, is among these few (The Weeping Madonna of Syracuse, n.d.).

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Examples of weeping images of the Virgin Mary among Roman Catholics include the blood-weeping paintings of the Virgin Mary in Trnava (1663, 1708) and Báč (1715) in Slovakia. Among other illustrative examples of weeping sculptures on a global scale in the modern era, the weeping statue in Pavia (1980) or the statuettes that wept tears of blood in Sardinia (1995) can be listed, or the case of a statue of the Virgin in Quebec (1985) and the oil-dripping figurines and images in a Catholic family’s home in Massachusetts in the 1990s. The statue of the Virgin Mary in Akita in Northern Japan reportedly bled and wept from 1973 to 1981. A moving statue of the Virgin Mary was reported in Ballinspittle (Ireland, 1985) (Nickell 2013, pp. 224–227). Recent alleged cases of blood-weeping statues of the Virgin Mary include the Little Madonna of Civitavecchia (1995, Italy); a marble statue of the Madonna in Mura (1998, Spain); and two statues of Our Lady in Phoenix (the late 1990s, Arizona), related to the apparition of the Virgin Mary; and so on. In Greek Catholic and Russian/Greek Orthodox traditions, the icons tend to bleed or exude myrrh or myrrh-scented oil. This tradition dates back to the Middle Ages. A famous miracle-performing icon of the Greek Catholic tradition is the weeping icon of Theotokos from Máriapócs in Hungary. The icon began to bleed in 1696. The miraculous bleeding repeated in 1715 and 1905. Máriapócs is now designated a ‘National Place of Worship’, and the church housing the miraculous icon is visited by approximately 600,000–800,000 pilgrims and tourists each year (History, n.d.). In Slovakia, the salt-tear weeping icon of the Mother of God in Klokočovo (1670) and Litmanová (1991) are reported, both of Greek Catholic tradition. From recent cases, a copy of a wonder-working icon that streams myrrh [myro] in the Ukrainian Lviv Diocese can be listed, as well as a Kazan icon of the Mother of God in the Church of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in central Moscow, which has been streaming myrrh since 2016. In 1996, an icon of Our Lady of Kazan at a Greek Orthodox church wept oil in the East York district of Toronto (Nickell 2004, p. 325). In 1985, an icon in Blanco, Texas, wept myrrh. Tears from this icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary were reported to cause miracle healings, including a cure for cancer, leukaemia, blindness, and mental illness (Nickell 2013, p.  227). In 2010, in the Chapel of Saint Nicholas and Ambrose of our Cathedral See in Milan, an Icon of the Theotokos of Bulgarian provenance

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in the Church began to weep for the second time in two years, in the presence of numerous witnesses. Another weeping Icon of The Virgin Mary and the Child Christ is located in Ramallah, West Bank. The shedding of tears of oil began in 1998, and the oil was collected over the years to heal many people. In the United States, thanks to the spread of Orthodoxy, the phenomena of weeping icons became more and more common—the tear-weeping and myrrh-flowing icon The Guiding Mother of God (1986) in Chicago; the myrrh-weeping icon of Our Lady of New Sarov (1985) in Texas; six weeping icons in Tampa Bay (1989); the weeping icon of the Miraculous Lady of Cicero (1994), a weeping icon of Our Lady in Conyers (1990–1998) in Georgia, and an oil-seeping icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Troy (1997) can be listed. There is also a weeping painting of Our Lady of Kenner (1995). The print copy of the wonder-working Hawaiian Iveron Icon of the Mother of God began to stream myrrh in Tullytown (2011, Pennsylvania). Recently, in 2019, a tear-weeping icon of the Virgin Mary appeared in the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago. Miraculous phenomena of weeping icons are reported worldwide, just to mention the oil weeping icon of Our Lady of Soufanieh (Damascus, Syria, 1982) or the oil weeping icon of Panagia-Theotokos-Paranythia (Monastery of Eliakon, near Kykkos, Cyprus, 1997). To add to the context, holy images of the Mother of God—besides healing miracles and miraculous weeping, tearing, and bleeding—also cause other kinds of miracles. They are considered protection for cities besieged by enemies—examples include the Blessed Mother Tirnaviensis, whose merciful painting that wept blood in 1663 protected the City of Trnava in Slovakia against Turkish plundering (Radváni and Kubinec 2012); or the Image of Madonna displayed in the Austrian village of Mariazell to commemorate the miraculous war-victory of Luis I over the Turks in 1365 (Letz 2014, p.  22). Out of numerous wonder-working icons from the Orthodox world, the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, which was revealed in 1579, should be mentioned. The holy icon achieved recognition as the Holy Protectress of Russia, credited for protecting Russia against the Polish (1612), the Swedish (1709), and against Napoleon’s (1812) invasions. The Russian military commanders D. Pozharsky (seventeenth century), Peter I (eighteenth century), M.  Kutuzov (nineteenth century), and marshal G. K. Zhukov (twentieth century) are said to have credited the invocation of the Virgin Mary through the Kazan icon, which

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was also prayed to by hopeless and starving people in besieged Leningrad during World War II (WW II) (Kazanskaya ikona…, 2019). Mary as a Nation-Building Pillar Throughout history, Mary and her images served as important national symbols, centred around her people, supporting and charging them with her holy power and energy. Mary thus played an important role in the nation-state building process in many countries, raising her voice in the name of oppressed nations and ethnic groups, fighting for their rights and recognition—the image of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, the miraculous icon of the Greek Mary in the Island of Tinos, the miraculous icon of the Polish Black Madonna of Częstochowa (Ventura 2011), Our Lady of Medjugorje (e.g. Skrbis 2005), or the image of the Vietnamese Lady of La Vang (Ninh 2017) are just a few to mention. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa has become a national symbol and the Polish Patroness who defended the country against heathens and enemies. The Black Madonna stood against the Swedish conquest’s attempts during the seventeenth century and also became the national symbol of the Polish independence movement in the 1980s in the struggle against atheist and Communist doctrines (Niedźwiedź 2008). The apparitions of the Virgin Mary of Medjugorje were used in convergence with Croatian nationalism (Skrbis 2005), but also in connection with the reconciliation and calming of the conflict (Jurkovich and Gesler 1997). The same was true for the holy icons of Bogorodica [Srb., ‘The Mother of God’], which intervened through her holy images at the end of the second millennium as the protector, advocate, and ‘Pointer of the Way’ [Srb., Putevoditeljica] of the Serbian nation (Pavićević 2019). The Voice from the Periphery: Ethnicised and Enculturated Mary The fascinating, centuries-lasting process of cultural appropriation of the Virgin Mary is documented in connection with her first officially approved apparition, in the form of La Virgen de Guadalupe [Sp., ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’] in Mexico. She appeared in what is now Mexico City, on the holy hill of Tepeyac, dedicated to Tonantzin, the Mother Earth Goddess of the Aztecs in 1531. According to earlier accounts, the young woman in

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the apparition, who spoke to the peasant Juan Diego in his native Nahuatl language, identified herself as: ‘I am the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God’. At that time, the seer, Juan Diego, was having a tough time negotiating and accommodating the vision into both the Colonial Hispanic Christian and native Aztec contexts (Mong 2018). As a consequence, in 1531, nine million indigenous Aztecs converted to Christianity and embraced Catholicism, invoking Mary as the Tonantzin Virgin of Guadalupe (Horsfall 2000). By appearing to an indigenous countryman as one of his own people, Mary clearly asserted that She stands with those who are on the margins of society. This vision took on a prophetic quality for those who had been marginalised and oppressed under the Spanish occupation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To this day, Mexicans devote Our Lady of Guadalupe as a mysterious communion of both Spaniards and indigenous populations. La Morenita [Sp., ‘Dark-Skinned Woman’] thus represents all shades of brown, visually promoting the very essence of the Mexican nation, consisting of many ethnic groups and communities. Being a multi-­ cultural symbol and the ‘Mother of All Nations’, the Virgin of Guadalupe is considered at the same time to be the one who ‘comforts those on the margins of society even as she equips them for action’ (Our lady, drowned in the river…, 2019). The millennial Pope, John Paul II, declared Our Lady of Guadalupe as the ‘Patroness of the Americas’ in 2012. She is believed by many to be the ideal intercessor for an increasingly ‘global community of believers who heed the call to create more just systems and societies that include the voices of all’ (The Virgin for our times…, 2012). However, even though there are many ethnicised and enculturated versions of the Virgin Mary that have been appropriated by marginalised people and communities in order to achieve visibility and gain voice, there is also a strong tendency among mainstream societies to treat those Marys similarly to the people they represent—that is, to expropriate and silence them. The case of Our Lady of the Amazon can be mentioned as one very recent example. At the beginning of October 2019, on the occasion of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon in Rome, a wooden statue of a kneeling pregnant indigenous woman who was said to represent Our Lady of the Amazon, was presented to Pope Francis during a tree-planting ceremony in the Vatican Gardens. Almost immediately, outrage and consternation over the possibility of identifying this statue as Mary erupted in Catholic circles (Our lady, drowned in the river…, 2019), insisting that the statue is

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merely Pachamama, the Peruvian Mother Goddess of life and fertility (The dishonest cruelty…, 2019). Some weeks later, two Catholic men broke into the Church of Saint Mary in Traspontina in Rome—where the statue of Our Lady of the Amazon was displayed as part of an exhibition of the Amazon region—stole the exhibited statues, and threw them into the Tiber River, ‘filming their crime as if it was a heroic act of piety’ (Our lady, drowned in the river…, 2019). Another recent case of a wave of majoritarian resistance to the enculturated Mary refers to the ‘tribal Mary’ from the Indian state of Jharkhand. In 2013, a new statue showing the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus as tribals was installed in the local church in Singhpur village, a few kilometres away from the state capital, Ranchi. The tribal Mary wears a red-bordered white sari, a red blouse, a necklace and bangles, and holds baby Jesus in a cloth sling. However, since its installation, the statue has caused tensions, and some non-Christian tribal groups organised a protest march demanding its immediate removal. The head priest of Sarna Society, B. Tigga, who represents the tribal society of non-Christian, proclaimed the ethnicised Mary to be a serious threat to mainstream society, pointing out that the depiction of the Mother Mary as ‘tribal’ may confuse and lead the tribal population to believe that Mary was from their community: ‘A 100 years from now, people here would start believing that Mother Mary was actually our tribal goddess’ (India protests over ‘tribal’ Virgin Mary…, 2013). Though both reported cases represent different forms of majoritarian resistance to the enculturated images of Mary and Mary with Jesus, they can be interpreted in terms of underlying racism and ethnocentrism. This kind of resistance can also be understood as a proxy for resistance to encountering other nations and ethnic groups, ignoring the right to approach Mary, Jesus, and God with the eyes, tongues, and hearts of different cultures. Although Pope Francis reminds all Christians that ‘beauty unites us… and invites us to live in human brotherhood, countering the culture of resentment, racism and nationalism which is always lurking’ (Our lady, drowned in the river…, 2019), it seems, at the same time, that there is an urgent need for ethnicised and enculturated Marys. Marginalised communities tend to invite the transcendent and transethnic Queen of Heaven to become culturally and visually ‘one of them’. By showing her attention and respect to particular ethnic groups and peripheral communities, She is believed to help them on their way ‘from the periphery to the centre’.

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Modern Mary The Virgin Mary is perfectly accommodated in the modern era. The modern Virgin Mary—enjoying a glossing glance of modernity—continues to be traditional, preserving and further evolving her pre-modern associations with celestial objects, healing flowers, and miraculous springs. Her statutes and images continue weeping and bleeding. She continues to appear to local people, causing miraculous healings and sun-miracles. As such, She is perceived to be a vivid ‘fountain’ of miracles in modern and secular societies as well, offering her help and solution in cases where modern medicine and science have failed. Since the latter half of the nineteenth century, apparitions of the Virgin Mary have proliferated at an unprecedented rate, as if the world urgently needed Mary’s voice and assistance. In the first half of the twentieth century, the world was devastated by two world wars and the world economic crisis, and disbalanced by the mass spread of Communist ideas. In the latter half of the century, the world was deeply impacted by the Cold War and the crash of old colonial empires, both connected with the change in the global distribution of symbolic power, reconfiguration of the economic market, and a national fight for human rights and democracy. The fight for symbolic and economic dominance between Communism and capitalism caused the ‘East’–‘West’ division of the world and the subsequent race in nuclear armament. The beginning of the twenty-first century was affected by globalisation and the influx of new technologies that enormously speeded up the previous forms of mobility and communication. With the new, post-modern era, new global challenges appeared—ethnic and religious conflicts, terrorism, world climate catastrophes, and the refugees-crisis—resulting in the new ‘South’–‘North’ symbolic world divide. The ultra-modern societies we live in are characterised by growing inequalities and a global share of fear—as such, they are sometimes called risk societies (Beck 1992). The modern Virgin Mary flexibly responds to these new challenges. In the modern era, She adopted the active role of a global Peace-Maker. As such, She appears directly in the middle of turbulent times, in the era of war and conflict (Blackbourn 1994), coming with an unbeatable offer of divine protection and the ultimate calming hug of the All-Mother. She speaks in the tongues of people She addresses and appears to be perfectly informed and familiar with the current geopolitical situation. Her modern era predictions aim to prevent global and local catastrophes

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(e.g. Our Lady of Fatima, 1917). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, She is still perceived to be the one who predicts and names global threats and catastrophes and helps to defeat the ‘Evil’. At present, with the global pandemics of the novel coronavirus disease, the Virgin Mary was called to service and asked for help and protection of her children all over the world. The Virgin Mary became not just a herald of the modern history of the Catholic Church, but also of Europe and the Catholic world in terms of being a messenger of God’s will and words on a global scale and speaking for all nations (e.g. The Lady of all Nations, Amsterdam, 1945–1959). She speaks in the name of those who are weak and live on the periphery (Turner 1975), those who are overlooked, discriminated, and marginalised (e.g. Our Lady of the Poor, Banneux, 1933). The modern Virgin Mary has also contributed to the strengthening of the feminine aspect of normative Catholic discourse, which corresponds both to the popular religion with a traditionally strong feminine accent, as well as to the evolution of the general discourse, reflecting the emancipation and feminisation of modern societies. From a certain point of view, She is also a Trouble-Maker and a Rebel, because She is the vehicle for the rise of spontaneous grassroots and fresh bottom-up streams and varieties of popular Christianity, as opposed to ‘normative religion’ represented and controlled by the official Church. Her approach is addressed, sensitive, and intimate, touching the private lives of real people. For individual believers, the Virgin Mary represents the prototype of the Ideal Mother, offering them private and unconditional love, understanding and perpetual help, thus substituting non-­ functional social networks within the family or a broader community. In this way, She is the 24-hours available Mentor and Tutor, ready to listen and give advice. And She is constantly online, instantly and easily reachable via prayer or simple thought. Every connection with her is unique, personal, and non-repeatable, yet transferrable, comparable and reaffirmed by collective consensus of people and nations adoring her all over the world. Marian Century The twentieth century is also called the ‘Marian century’. Out of approximately 918 apparitions documented since 41  A.D. (Hierzenberger and Nedomansky 1993, p.  553), as many as 210 apparitions were reported between 1928 and 1971 (Scheer 2006). According to O’Sullivan, Western

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European congregations reported thirteen to fourteen apparitions a year to Church officials between 1945 and 1954, displaying the enchantment of modern Europe with mysticism and the supernatural (O’Sullivan 2018, pp. 174–210). When it comes to Marian apparitions in Europe, the Virgin’s favourite destinations appear to be France (Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Paris, Our Lady of La Salette 1846, Our Lady of Lourdes, 1858, and Our Lady of Pontmain, 1871), Poland (Our Lady of Gietrzwałd, 1877), Ireland (Our Lady of Knock, 1879), Portugal (Our Lady of Fatima, 1917), Belgium (Our Lady of Beauraing, 1932–1933, and Our Lady of Banneux, 1933). In the latter half of the twentieth century, there have been apparitions in western Ukraine (Halemba 2016), Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia as well as the Balkans (Medjugorje being the most notable example). It should be mentioned that there have been three apparitions approved by the Coptic Orthodox Church (Our Lady of Zeitoun, Our Lady of Warraq, and Our Lady of Assiut) and three apparitions approved by the Anglican Communion (Our Lady of Lourdes, Lady of Walsingham, and Our Lady of Yankalilla) (for a complete collection of all thirty-four accredited apparitions, see Varghese 2011). Altogether, there were 386 cases of Marian apparitions during the twentieth century. Out of all modern apparitions, the Church has approved the supernatural character only in eight cases: Fatima (Portugal), Beauraing (Belgium), Banneux (Belgium), Akita (Japan), Syracuse (Italy), Zeitoun (Egypt), Manila (Philippines), and Betania (Venezuela) (Hierzenberger and Nedomansky 1993). Mary on the Move Modern Mary is global and transnational. Rather than addressing herself to local veneration, as in pre-modern Marian apparitions, She delivers a general call to all humankind. Our Lady of Fatima, originally featured in a local Portuguese setting, was relocated to the United States and appropriated by American devotees. Subsequently, Fatima travelled to countries such as Papua New Guinea, where She was appropriated by, among others, an independence movement (Hermkens et  al. 2009, p.  7). In the twentieth century, the Virgin Mary literally conquered and colonised the entire globe by reaching all continents. In the twenty-first century, She began colonising the universe via the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, which was sent to the Russian space station in 2011 on the occasion of the

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fiftieth anniversary of the first space flight with a human crew (Yubileynaya kosmicheskaya ekspeditsiya…, 2011). Modern Marian apparitions were documented in Israel, Syria, Russia, China, India, Vietnam (Our Lady of La Vang; Ninh 2017), the Philippines, Australia, Madagascar, Japan (Our Lady of Akita, 1973), and Africa (Our Lady of Zeitoun in Cairo, Coptic Orthodox Church, and Mother of the Word, Kibeho, Rwanda). There are apparitions in Ecuador (Our Lady of the Good Event, Quito, 1594), Nicaragua (Our Lady of Cuapa, 1980), Venezuela (Our Lady of Los Tepes, 1984), Srí Lanka (Our Lady of Lanka, Ragama), and in many other countries. The United States leads the rest of the world in the number of apparitions, although most of them are unrecognised to date (e.g. Rainbow Madonna at the Seminole Finance Corporation of Clearwater, 1996, Florida). (For a more detailed global map of Marian apparitions distribution, see 500 Years of Virgin Mary Sightings in One Map, n.d.) The Virgin Mary is worshipped as the Patroness of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, and other European countries. On a regional level, She is considered the Patroness of Bavaria, Upper Swabia and a large number of Italian regions as well. Along with the global spread of Catholicism, the Virgin Mary has also become the patroness of non-European countries—the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and many countries of the American continent. On the African continent, She is venerated by Catholics in Zimbabwe, Zaire, Angola, and South Africa. She is the Patroness of Palestine, India, and South Korea. She is considered the Patroness of Australia and New Zealand as well (Letz 2014, p. 7). Likewise, Our Lady of Guadalupe became not only the Patroness of Mexico but also the Empress of the Americas, from Chile to Canada. She thus reigns over two continents (Hall 2004). Following the conversion of many indigenous nations, Mary became not only a symbol of socio-­ religious occupation but also a Pan-American symbol enabling social mobility (Fawrot Peterson 1991). It can also be stated that Our Lady of Guadalupe touches the European continent as well since her veneration began a common issue also in Europe. For instance, in Slovakia, a modern sculpture of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Don Juan can be found in the garden of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Church in Petržalka (Bratislava). Through the transnational use of Marian images, sculptures, and other devotional objects, people have become interconnected. In this way, She is ‘on the move’ and touches devotees not only at the original places of

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apparitions but also at revitalised traditional places of Marian devotion, as well as at modern national and regional ‘copies’ of the modern places of Marian apparitions. She also meets her devotees directly in the privacy of their homes. As a continuation of old forms of piety, new Marian chapels are erected in completely modern places, urban areas, hospitals, market places and bio-farms, gas stations, new residential areas of developer projects, and so on. Mary Moves People and the Economic Market Modern Mary moves people on a large scale. In Fatima, over 300,000 people gathered at the jubilee in 1928, and over 4.5 million pilgrims visit Lourdes annually (Petri and Beinert 1996, pp. 599–600). In Medjugorje, over one million communions are given (Vokunic 1992). Of the 6150 pilgrimage shrines operative in Europe today, 830 draw 10,000 or more pilgrims each year, and 139 of these are shrines of international importance that attract over 100,000 a year. Nineteen shrines receive between one and four million pilgrims (Brockman 2000, p. 96). By moving people, the Modern Mary moves the economic market, as well. Marian devotion is described also in terms of the economy of the sacred. According to the author of this concept, D. Morgan, one of the most significant elements within Marian devotion is direct reciprocity (2009, p.  9). The pilgrims come to ‘feel’ Mary, investing their finances and time in order to be physically present at the place of Marian apparition. The walls of gratitude with small marble commemorative tables located at Marian shrines are also a material manifestation of reciprocating relations with Mary. Many pilgrims bring small votive objects as a kind of offering or gift to the Virgin Mary. However, as an act of reciprocity, something must be taken home with them as well. The tourist market, as well as the market with religious devotional pieces, are nourished by the hunger of pilgrims for taking home at least a small piece of the ‘local sacrum’, generated by the presence of the Virgin Mary in situ, in the means of material commemorative objects. In this way, the places of former small local Marian shrines have been profoundly transformed, capitalising on their increasing religious meaning both economically and socially. The potential of Marian shrines to produce financial profit has already been recognised and appreciated by European secular state officials and representatives.

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The Marian shrine of Lourdes in southern France is probably the best-­ known modern Marian site in the world. Since 1858, the small village of Lourdes has developed into an international religious tourist centre, receiving an estimated six million visitors each year (Notermans and Jansen 2015). The sanctuary is surrounded by blocks of hotels and souvenir shops that have for decades targeted a flux of tourists who arrive as part of large, organised pilgrimages. According to estimations, travellers to Lourdes spend up to 280 million euros a year in accommodations and souvenirs. In 2009, the town’s hotels reported 3,260,022 nuitées [overnights]. By 2017, the number of ‘overnights’ had fallen to 2,005,732, according to the French government’s official statistics agency (A rebirth for Lourdes…, n.d.). The tourism board developed a turnaround strategy to stop this decline, beginning by presenting Lourdes as a gateway to the Pyrenees with its spectacular scenery, year-round outdoor activities, and local culture ideal for families and even food lovers. Hotels began offering packages with bike rentals and other amenities (Home, n.d.). The town struck deals for more direct flights with a budget airline, and the city of Bourdeaux embarked on an international promotional tour. In 2018, there were signs of progress. The number of ‘nights’ increased by 9% to 2,191,171, including more visitors from within France. But both the tourism board and officials are very well aware that the recovery remained fragile and that Lourdes needed investment not only in marketing and promotion, but also in positive discursive support from higher political representatives of the (secular) state. Cova da Iria near Fatima, originally a peripheric place in the middle of nowhere, has also developed into a tourist destination with a gigantic cathedral, neon crosses, plastic Virgin statuettes, as well as plenty of hotels served by local buses. Fatima as a special strategic place of interest of religious tourism became a part of the revised National Strategic Plan for Tourism in 2010. When it comes to tourism products, there was an intention to develop strategic products; some were readjusted, such as cultural and landscape tours, with the emergence of tourist, religious, and cultural routes. Religious tourism was singled out due to the importance of the Portuguese Central Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago) and the Marian cult pilgrimages, with Fátima’s Sanctuary pinpointed as particularly significant. To these were added the bolstering of access by air and distinct strategies for the sending countries, along with better online promotion and distribution (Moreira 2018). Since 2010, religious tourism in

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Portugal has not only been included in the governmental budget for tourism, but also promoted as one of the country’s ten products in the National Strategic Plan for Tourism. The Strategic Plan of capitalising Fatima now focuses on tourists from Eastern Europe, Canada, the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. In Russia today, we face the phenomena of so-called palomnichestvo [Rus., ‘peregrination’, or ‘spiritual travelling’], which could be translated as ‘religious tourism’. Churches and church associations organise spiritual tours for believers around holy places both within Russia and abroad in order to see churches, monasteries, and other famous holy places. Within Russia, the famous wonder-working icons of the Mother of God are among the major attractions to see (Palomnicheskiye poyezdki, 2020). In post-communist, Orthodox countries, the icons ‘themselves travel’ in order to reach their devotees. In this respect, visits of icons are organised, with mass attendance of believers—to mention a couple among many others: the visit of the wonder-working icon of Presveta Bogoroditsa [Bg., ‘The Most Holy Mother of God’] from Mount Athos, which was displayed in the cathedral in Sofia in 2012 (Chudotvorna ikona…, 2012), or, in 2016, the visit of the wonder-working icon of Our Lady of Kazan in Astana, Kazakhstan (Kazanskaya chudotvornaya ikona…, 2016), and so on. Following and Echoing the Our Lady of Fatima The Catholic Church followed and echoed the messages of the Virgin Mary as revealed in Lourdes (1858) and especially in Fatima (1917). Our Lady of Fatima turned to be the most prominent Marian apparition of the twentieth century, which substantially framed the shaping of Marian theology and the Catholic Church in Europe. When looking back at twentieth-­century Catholic Mariology as well as papal acts and documents, it can be stated that her ‘commands’ were followed, and her predictions were fulfilled. In the twentieth century, Mary has successfully adopted the role as Predictor of catastrophes and Commentator of the current political and social order on a global scale. At the same time, She has become a figure who formulates, shapes, and spreads global fear, enchanting the globe through her apocalyptic and mysterious messages. The first part of the secret of Our Lady of Fatima referred particularly to the frightening vision of hell: ‘a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the Earth’, which horrified the seers and made them ‘tremble with fear’. In the second part of the secret, WW II was predicted:

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‘The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated’—if Russia is not consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (13-VII-1917; Congregation for the Doctrine…, n.d.).

The catastrophic language of Fatima messages has been echoed in many papal documents of the twentieth century. In 1917, the Mary of Fatima determined Russia to be the main threat for the coming century, and ‘her errors’ spread throughout the world. Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Divini Redemptoris (1937), gave an urgent warning against Russian Bolshevism and Communist atheism. Fatima’s command to convert Russia was accomplished by the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart by Pope Pius XII (1942), Pope John Paul II (1984), Pope Benedict XVI (2010), and Pope Francis (2013)—with Pius XII also specifically consecrating the peoples of Russia in 1952—sometimes worded as papal ‘acts of entrustment’. Pope John Paul II exhibited his approval of Fatima many times. He visited Fatima three times—in 1982, 1991, and 2000. During his homily at the mass in Fatima on May 13, 1982, Pope John Paul II adopted the catastrophic language of the original messages and reiterated Our Lady of Fatima’s appeal as still urgent and current: ‘The Message is addressed to every human being… Because of the continuing increase of sin and dangers such as nuclear war, which now threatens humanity, the Message of Fatima is more urgent and relevant in our time than it was when Our Lady appeared sixty-five years ago’ (Approvals by the Popes, n.d.).

The text of the final, third part of Fatima’s secret—as it was finally released on June 26, 2000—is essentially depressive and apocalyptic: ‘…the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions’ (Congregation for the Doctrine…, n.d.).

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The desperately pessimistic end of the final prophecy needed to be amended by contextual interpretation by the Head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, himself being one of the main figures of the respective prophecy. During his speech in Fatima in 2000, Pope John Paul II turned the attention of believers to the great success of the Virgin Mary in her combating Communism, allocating the apocalypse predicted in the third secret to the previously passed twentieth century: ‘The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of Eastern Europe, to the fall of the communist regimes which promoted atheism. For this, too, His Holiness offers heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In other parts of the world, however, attacks against the Church and against Christians, with the burden of suffering they bring, tragically continue. Even if the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers to now seem part of the past, Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today’ (Congregation for the Doctrine…, n.d).

He continued, however, appealing to believers that the threat, as formulated by Our Lady of Fatima, is still valid. Pope Benedict XVI further softened the apocalyptic language of the third part of the secret, interpreting it as a metaphorically dressed threat to persuade people to do penance. Just like John Paul II, he turned the attention of all Christians to the second, more optimistically tuned part of the secret, using the victorious language and predicting the final triumph: ‘In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world’ (Congregation for the Doctrine, n.d.).

Today, two decades after the Vatican’s release of the much-heralded ‘third part’ of the secret of Fatima, some of the mystery and apocalyptic dread that has long been associated with the Portuguese visions, has waned. However, according to the World Apostolate of Fatima, more than twenty million people currently participate in the apparition cult. Every year, several million of these adherents travel to Portugal from places as far away as the Philippines, South Africa, and Argentina to visit the site where the Virgin appeared more than a century ago (Bennett 2012, pp. 1–22). In the twenty-first century, Pope Benedict XVI continued his apostolic journeys to Marian shrines such as Lourdes and Fatima to support their

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messages. On May 12, 2019, a papal spokesman stated that Pope Francis had given the green light to Catholics to organise pilgrimages to ̵ Medjugorje [Bosn., Medugorje, ‘In Between the Mountains’]—a modern and popular European place of alleged Marian apparitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within the area of the Crnica Hill known as Podbrdo, six local children saw a beautiful young woman with a little child in her arms. For many years now, these six witnesses have testified firmly under oath that since June 24, 1981, the Blessed Virgin Mary—or the Gospa, as She is affectionately known here—has been appearing to them every day up to the present (Zimdars-Schwarz 1991). The Church has not yet given its verdict on the apparition’s authenticity. Even though the Pope’s authorisation of pilgrimages to the site was not to be understood as an ‘authentication’ of the alleged apparitions, this papal statement would definitively increase the popularity of the new star rising in the sky of places of Marian pilgrimages in Europe in the twenty-first century—Medjugorje.

Post-modern Mary as a Great Enchantress Modernity has been defined as the search for new forms of social and cultural order in the era of collapsing pre-modern societal structures. In the sociology of religion, this concept was operationalised into the theory of secularisation (see e.g. Bruce 2002), which predicted not only a constant diminishing of the role of the Church but also that of God in modern society. According to B. Wilson’s first and convincing definition, secularisation is ‘the process whereby religious institutions, actions, and consciousness lose their social significance’ (Wilson 1966). In his book The Sacred Canopy (1967), P. Berger defines secularisation as (a) the secularisation of society (e.g. separation between church and state, the emancipation of education from church authority); (b) the secularisation of culture (e.g. religious contents disappear from art, philosophy, and literature, whereas science gets an autonomous, thoroughly secular world outlook); and (c) subjective secularisation (e.g. a steadily growing number of persons can live without religion). Since the rise of modern society, religion has been told to disappear together with the magic and belief in the supernatural and mystery. The modern world should be de-sacralised and disenchanted (Weber 1978), and mystery replaced with cultural rationale. The modern world thus should lose its external authorities, either in the form of God or the

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Church. They should be fully replaced by secular and rational thought, embodied in the State, implemented in the system of Law, supervised by Police, and spread by the Media and Education system. Religion should be replaced with science; secrets and mystery with practical and logical reasoning; belief with practical wisdom; faith with worldview; doctrine with knowledge; Biblical moral imperatives with civic order and a moral codex; and religious rituals with secular festivals and public events. Modernity should be the reason for de-traditionalisation as well, or at least the inertia of tradition in modern societies (Heelas et al. 1996). When looking back at the twentieth century, it is clear that the world underwent profound transformation. Modernity left its serious imprints on the shape and condition of religion. The radical transformation of religiosity and the trend of secularisation (societal, organisational, or subjective) are clearly visible. Nevertheless, the world learnt important lessons in the twentieth century, facing serious economic uncertainties (economic crises and transformations), as well as two world wars, during which the boundaries for defining morale and humanity were profoundly challenged. The inability of modern society to offer other, solid (i.e. transcendentally embedded) values resulted in intense feelings of insecurity. Thanks to mass media and the global fast spread of information via the Internet, people feel that they live in catastrophic or risk societies (Beck 1992). In the twenty-first century, the world has learnt a big lesson from the ‘corona crisis’—even a smallest local ‘one-town risk’ has the potential to turn into a global threat that will shake the whole world. According to some theorists of religion, disenchantment, growing secularisation, and the feeling of insecurity in modern societies produced—as a logical response—re-sacralisation (Davie 2010) accompanied by religious revivalism, de-privatisation of religion (Casanova 1994), and the growth of non-traditional forms of religiousness and spirituality. Many authors point out the significant increase in non-church or extra-church religiousness when speaking about alternative re-sacralisation (Knoblauch 2003). Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are living in a post-modern and post-secular world which is still in love with magic and is fascinated by mystery; which seeks continuity and valuates tradition. God, the Church, and religion(s) still play an important role in present-­ day societies and in human lives as well. Secularisation itself was thus unveiled as a ‘modern myth’ (Luckmann 1967). Re-enchantment is currently placed at the very heart of modernity (Jenkins 2000). Some authors

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not only observe a ‘return of the sacred’, but even ‘de-secularisation’, that is, a decrease in the secular aspects of modern culture (Bell 1977; Berger 1999). Some comment on Marian devotion as being anti-modern or resistant to modernity (Hermkens et al. 2009, p. 2). Others think about Marian devotion in terms of alternative modernity (Orsi 2009), resulting in not only the sacralisation of Europe but also the modernisation of the Catholic Church. They argue that after the Second Vatican Council, Marian apparitions and piety challenged the modernisation of the Church and authorised the resistance of Catholics who objected to the changes (Orsi 2009, p. 217). As mentioned by H. Knoblauch (Knoblauch and Petschke 2019), post-­ modern religion is not just ‘returning’; however, it is undergoing a fundamental transformation, and only those forms of religion are booming that have undergone such a transformation. Post-modern Marian devotion (including pilgrimages and apparitions) is definitively not a static remnant of earlier periods (Christian 1984). It is rather a brilliant example of post-­ modern religiosity, exhibiting the essential features of both spirituality and popular religion (Knoblauch and Petschke 2019), being a source of bottom-­up Christianity, as opposed to ‘normative religion’ represented by the official Catholic Church. D. Blackbourn (1994) convincingly ties modern Marian devotion and visions to popular fears, not just of war and scarcity, but also of a tangible loss of traditional systems of social organisation, particularly the authority of the Church. Blackbourn supports his position by calling on examples of Marian apparitions in Lourdes, Pontmain, La Salette, and Tuscany, as well as other locations that experienced similar threats to tradition. The same seems to be true for the post-modern Mary, who is firmly accommodated into this world, and opens up almost unlimited technical possibilities of the modern world that She admirably quickly learnt to employ and benefit from. However, at the same time, She remains equally admirably resistant and unchanged, representing the stability and continuity of local and national traditions in an unstable, fluid, and risky post-­ modern world. From a certain point of view, Mary profited from the failure of the Catholic Church to subdue popular religious movements and make room for new forms of religiosity and spirituality. The same concerns the inability of European nation-states to repress both non-traditional religious movements and popular forms of religiosity connected with the overall

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transformation of religiosity in the modern era (Zachar Podolinská 2019b, p. 29). The twentieth century was indeed a ‘Marian century’. Older Marian devotion and apparitions were translated and reshaped, ‘fitted into modernity’s ontological singular’ (Orsi 2009, p. 217). Marian devotion was the core and most booming phenomenon, a spiritual and emotional engine of Catholic religiosity, permanently nourished by new apparitions and fresh miracles. Obviously, modernity did not harm Mary’s popularity and She was never disenchanted. As such, She became a pivotal feminine figure of the twentieth century, being definitively one of the Greatest Enchantresses of the modern world that contributed to the post-modern reshaping of the world. Fuelled by the power of ‘living faith’, emotions, and miracles, She offers an assertive religious and spiritual response to the secularism, consumerism, and rationalism of modern societies.

Post-communist Mary The so-called Cold War (1946–1991) was a period of tensions between the Soviet Union with its satellite states (the Eastern Bloc) and the United States with its allies (the Western Bloc) after WW II. Thus, the political negotiations connected with the end of WW  II implicitly caused the ­division of Europe into the ‘East’ and ‘West’ and accelerated the spread of Communism in the Eastern, Central, and Southern parts of Europe. The fall of Communism within the communist bloc in the 1990s affected not only ‘socialist countries’, but Europe as a whole, especially their neighbours, who had to deal with a sudden influx of economic and ‘religious’ tourists and later, after the opening of the borders, of migrants and mobile workers from former post-communist countries. All of Europe faced a broader and deeper transformation caused by the process of European unification. The enlarged, modern Europe now connected countries with completely divergent track-records in terms of economic power, national histories, cultures, religious traditions, and systems of values. The newly constituted Europe provided fertile ground not only for tensions between liberalism and conservatism but also faced growing nationalism. Both nationalism and conservatism found shelter in the frame of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, which are considered to be guardians of traditional values. Both churches undoubtedly nourished the fall of Communism and contributed to the reconfiguration of the symbolic map

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of the post-communist world. The Virgin Mary and Marian devotion also profited from the general religious revival. In the 1990s, there was a boom in the revitalisation of older sites of cult accompanied by new places of apparitions which began attracting modern pilgrims. Post-communist Modernity and the ‘Reinvented Tradition’ R. Inglehart was among the first ones who noted that the effects of identical economic processes can cause different changes in trajectories of many countries. R. Inglehart speaks about path-dependent modernity (Inglehart and Baker 2000), whereas N. Eisenstadt coined the term multiple modernities in this respect (Eisenstadt 2000). P.  Blokker describes post-­ communist modernity in Central and Eastern Europe as ‘pluralist, creative, extremely diverse and institutionally differently manifested processes’ (Blokker 2005). M. Kennedy pointed out that the change was not that sudden, and had more the character of a transformation that took years and decades during which the transit culture phenomenon merged (Kennedy 2002). It should be noted that some modernisation processes in post-­ communist countries are in essence contrary to the modernisation processes in Western Europe—Western modernity negated traditional authorities and the religiously legitimated political order, whereas post-­ communist Europe mostly sought ways of how to re-evaluate and re-­ establish the religious tradition and legitimate the language of national and traditional cultural values in public discourse (Podolinská et al. 2013, pp. 190–191). The legitimacy of these processes was fostered through the projection of this phenomenon into the pre-communist past. The phenomenon of the interrupted and reinvented tradition seemed to be fundamental in that moment. The fall of Communism did not mean a start from a ‘zero point’. Thus, post-communist modernity was not a negation of tradition, but more accurately the reformulation of traditional national paradigms in the framework of the new geopolitical structures of post-modern Europe (Podolinská et al. 2013, pp. 190–191). In post-communist regions, we could speak about the special phenomena of demonstrative re-sacralisation—a period of compulsory or expected positive relations with religion, which followed a period of compulsory

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atheism during the socialistic era. Declarative positive attitudes towards religion have been anchored in the legislation of newly formed democratic states and manifested in various strata of society (education, healthcare, and military system, NGO-sector, etc.). The post-communist era also faced the establishment of political parties with a religious background, promoting nationalistic and conservative vocabulary. In order to suit the general expectations and capitalise the positive recognition of religious values, post-communist political leaders took advantage of the opportunities to publicly demonstrate their religious turn—for example, the visit of A. Putin to the Greek Athos in order to give tribute and pay respect to the local icon of the Presveta Bogoroditsa in 2005 (see https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/607578 and https://ria.ru/20150216/1047971521.html). However, the ‘rupture of the tradition’ in some communist countries was so radical that the post-communist period did not face a resentment of the tradition, which resulted in an extraordinary acceleration of secularisation tendencies. Depending on the particular country and its pre-­ communist past, we face quite divergent trajectories of post-communist religious transformations (see Borowik 1999; Demerath 2000; Tomka 1995; Pollack 2003; Agadjanian 2006; Müller 2008; Marinović and Zrinščak 2006; Nešpor 2004; Václavík et al. 2018; Podolinská 2010; Tížik 2011; etc.). Another specific feature of post-communist modernity is the heritage of communist socialisation and the atheist education of several successor generations. Despite the declarations on radical dealing with the ‘communist past’, it is still implicitly present in post-communist people’s mindset, causing some similarities and common features of the religious transformation in the post-communist countries bloc. The post-communist period is characterised not only by the restoration of the democratic state, but also by the restoration of the Church. The post-communist Church has had to begin its restoration in societies where religious culture was profoundly impacted by the interruption of religious transmission and the atomisation of collective memory (chain of memory, Hervieu-Léger 1999, pp. 62–66). The successful restoration of the religious and public authority of the Church was threatened by the previously unknown competitive position within the legal and open ‘market with confessions’, which was also accompanied by an influx of non-traditional and alternative forms of spirituality. The Church in post-communist countries has therefore had to negotiate its new position not only in confrontation with the (secular) state but also to confirm its primacy in competition

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with other churches and new religious movements. An even stronger enemy waited inside the Church, and the post-communist Church—for decades cut off from the progressive streams of Western Christianity—had to also respond to the voices calling for modernisation and de-­ traditionalisation of the Church ‘from within’ (Podolinská 2010, pp. 95–101). In many post-communist countries, especially in the first decade after the fall of communism, we face the return of religion and re-invention of religious tradition connected with the successful restoration of the Church (Podolinská et al. 2013). This post-communist religious (re)turn can be generally interpreted as a direct response to the previous state-imposed indoctrination, aggressive secularism, and mandatory atheism. Along with the communist regime, a plethora of securities disappeared as well (social housing, health care, education, etc.). Civil society was in an ‘embryonic’ state with the virtual absence of an intermediary NGO layer. National economies were now facing a deep crisis regarding the dismantling of the formerly planned exchange of goods and services within the economic markets of these once socialist countries. By going through these turbulent times, people missed their sense of security and began to search for a new ‘protective umbrella’. Under these conditions, the historically attested tradition of religion and the confidential institutional representative in the form of the traditional Church became the ‘major option’ (Podolinská 2010, pp. 95–101). In many post-communist countries, traditional churches adopted the position of a ‘communist martyr’ and were able to capitalise this position at least for a certain period of time (except for the Czech Republic; Podolinská 2019b, pp.  43–44). In many instances, traditional post-­ communist churches also privatised the position of the ‘housekeeper’ of national traditions. The language of tradition and national language (sometimes flavoured with nationalistic and ethno-centric discourses) have become their dominant symbolic resource. The concept of ‘traditional’ religion with its historical merits and privileges became a common device for structuring religious policy and a legal debate in the post-communist era (Podolinská 2010, pp. 95–101). Soon after the fall of Communism, a general threat and new ‘enemies’ were identified by traditionalist and conservative Catholic wings in many predominantly Catholic countries within the post-communist region: in addition to liberal values, a threat to the traditional family was mentioned (oriented against the emergence of LGBTQ movements and the Istanbul

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Convention), as well as to the EU and NATO. Overall globalisation and modernisation were also perceived with concerns and veiled with fear. In the background of this general picture, it is necessary to understand the religious revival among both the Catholics and the Orthodox, which increasingly elevated Marian devotion and transformed it into a ‘large-­ scale religious revival’ within the entire post-communist world. Post-communist Marys It is perhaps due to the interrupted tradition in post-communist Europe or the lack of officially approved Marian apparitions in the region (of Lourdes or Fatima type), or the overly complicated and intricate situation in the region undergoing a profound multi-spectral transformation that there is a gap in systematic scholar knowledge on Marian devotion in this particular region. A general volume documenting and presenting the national trajectories of contemporary Marian devotion in selected post-communist countries has recently been produced (Zachar Podolinská 2019a). In the background of particular stories, national stories are told as part of the general history of the entire post-communist region’s transformation, which focus on Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. In summary, the following general patterns were collected as being characteristic of the studied countries of the post-communist region: (a) the large-scale religious revival as a direct response to the former period of forced atheisation, (b) the return to the reinvented tradition as a religious response to westernisation, globalisation, and the liberal values system, (c) the post-modern response to secularisation and modernisation, feeding the hunger for spirituality and authentic religiosity of both elites as folk masses, and (d) the search of the role of the Virgin Mary in reformulating the national and ethnically-rooted formulas in the process of reconstruction of national states in the post-communist region (Zachar Podolinská 2019b, p. 37). The release of mobility and reconciliation of the position of the traditional Church as well as the general revitalisation of religion also caused great revitalisation of the Marian devotion in the post-communist region. Religious tourism to Western European countries significantly nourished old Marian places of pilgrimage and traditional popular Marian religiosity.

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The Virgin Mary played a central role in post-communist and post-­ modern religious transformation. In many instances, She is worshipped as the Mother of the Nation. The post-communist Mary speaks to her people in the ‘national(istic)’ and ‘traditionalistic’ language, mobilising traditional, national, and conservative values against globalisation, westernisation, and liberal values. She thus represents the continuity of the violently interrupted tradition by reinventing and protecting these newly restored traditions. However, the traditional post-communist Mary is also perfectly post-­ modern, fitting into recent world spirituality and Christianity. Similarly to Western countries’ context and global post-Christianity, the post-­ communist Mary has proved to possess the ability to absorb and reshape old pre-Christian pagan female goddesses, as well as the ultra-modern millennial and spiritual concepts of the Mother of Earth and the Mother of Universe (Kis-Halas 2019). Post-communist Marys can thus be found playing somewhat contradictory roles—within both the normative Church and popular religion; She is able to play the role of a herald of the tradition speaking in the name of ultra-conservative values and, at the same time, She is able to be a leading figure of absolutely non-traditional and ultra-modern alternative religious movements, charismatic, millennial or New-Age type spiritualities, using apocalyptic or ethno-pagan esoteric vocabulary, practising spiritual healing, and predicting online.

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Baeva, V., & Georgieva, A. (2019). The Worship of Mary in the Region of Asenovgrad (Central Southern Bulgaria): Sites, Ritual and Narratives. In T.  Zachar Podolinská (Ed.), Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe (pp.  250–282). Bratislava: VEDA, IESA SAS. https://doi. org/10.31577/2019.9788022417822.250-282. Barnes, P. (2017). Streams in Healing Grace. Guild News, pp.  14–17. https:// gohealth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Guild-News-July-2017.pdf. Accessed 17 Feb 2020. Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Bell, D. (1977). The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on the Future of Religion. British Journal of Sociology, 28(4), 419–449. Bennett, J.  S. (2012). When the Sun Danced: Myth, Miracles, and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Portugal. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Berger, P. (1967). Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City: Doubleday. Berger, P. L. (1999). The Desecularization of the World. In P. L. Berger (Ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (pp. 1–18). Washington, DC: Eerdmans. Blackbourn, D. (1994). Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-­ Century Germany. New York: Knopf. Blokker, P. (2005). Post-Communist Modernization, Transition Studies, and Diversity in Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 8(4), 503–525. Borowik, I. (Ed.). (1999). Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe. Kraków: Nomos. Brockman, N.  D. (2000). Marian Pilgrimage and Shrines. Marian Studies, 51, Article 8. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol51/iss1/8. Accessed 23 Feb 2020. Bruce, S. (2002). God Is Dead. Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell. Casanova, J. M. (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Chapman, J. (2000). Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places, and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe. London: Routledge. Christian, W. A., Jr. (1984). Religious Apparitions and the Cold War in Southern Europe. In E. R. Wolf (Ed.), Religion, Power and Protest in Local Communities: The Northern Shore of the Mediterranean (pp. 239–266). Berlin: Mounton. Chudotvorna ikona idva u nas ot Aton (2012). https://www.dnes.bg/ sofia/2012/10/27/chudotvorna-ikona-idva-u-nas-ot-aton.171582. Accessed 22 June 2020. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (n.d.). https://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html. Accessed 22 June 2020.

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CHAPTER 2

Romani Christianity in Slovakia: Religiosity of Those on the Periphery

Abstract  The Virgin Mary often appears on the periphery, not only from a geographical point of view, but also on the peripheries of society. The Virgin Mary, in her specific form as the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows, has successfully fulfilled her active role in the fight for the rights of Slovaks by helping the marginalised Slovak nation on its way ‘from the periphery to the centre’. Will Mary offer her protective shelter and miraculous support also to another ethnic minority that has been living on the margins of the mainstream society in Slovakia for centuries—the Roma people? To illuminate the contextual field, we will focus in this chapter on introducing the Roma in Slovakia as a silent and invisible minority, living on the margins of mainstream society. The core of the chapter is devoted to the exploration of Romani Christianity in Slovakia as a cultural translation of mainstream Christianity. Finally, two potential paths out of marginality for the Roma in Slovakia are discussed: the Mary-centric one—under the flag of the ethnicised and enculturated Virgin Mary within traditional Romani Christianity (Catholicism); and the Mary-peripheric one—within non-­ traditional Romani Christianity, represented by Neo-Protestant and Romani Pentecostal churches and movements in Slovakia. Keywords  Roma in Slovakia • Romani Christianity • Romani Pentecostalism • Traditional Romani Catholicism

© The Author(s) 2021 T. Zachar Podolinská, Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6_2

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Historically, Slovakia is a country with deeply rooted Marian devotion, dating back to the times of the mission of Cyril and Methodius at the end of the ninth century A.D. From the manuscript A Short History of the Life of Constantine and Methodius we learned that, in 885  A.D., Methodius was buried in the main temple of Great Moravia, or more precisely, ‘on the left side of the altar of the Holy Theotocos’ [author’s italics] (Letz 2014, p.  15). Information on the ‘altar of the Mother of God’ located in the main temple indicates the great importance of the cult of the Theotocos, which was imported to Great Moravia from the Byzantine Empire alongside with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. One important milestone in the strengthening of Marian devotion in present-day Slovakia was the construction of the Marian pilgrimage t­ emple in Marianka, Western Slovakia. The cornerstone was laid by King Louis I who, after the apparition of the Virgin Mary, donated a gracious image of the Virgin Mary to the pilgrimage chapel in Mariazell (Austria), as a gesture of gratitude for the victory over the Turks in 1365. Upon returning from a votive pilgrimage from Mariazell in 1377, he stopped by another nearby Marian site—Mariatál (today’s Marianka)—in Western Slovakia, where he chose to erect a temple devoted to the Virgin Mary. Thanks to the local healing water spring and many miraculous healings, Marianka also became an important place of pilgrimage and the centre of Marian devotion not only in Slovakia, but in the whole of Central Europe (Letz 2014, p. 22). The establishment of the place of pilgrimage in Šaštín in 1564 and the subsequent erection of a pilgrimage temple consecrated on this site in 1762 are both representatives of a milestone in the spread of the veneration of the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows in present-day Slovakia. Šaštín was associated with a number of miraculous healings—as many as 584 healings were documented between 1751 and 1794 (Letz 2014, p. 54)— as well as several miracles, such as the disappearance of a crack and the changing viewing angle of a statue of the Virgin Mary, the appearance of three brightly shining stars above the Chapel of the Virgin Mary at high noon, and so on (Letz 2014, pp.  44–46). The Basilica of Šaštín thus became the largest of its kind within the entire Habsburg Monarchy, and today is acknowledged as Slovak National Basilica (Basilica Minor, http:// www.bazilika.sk/). Since the times of its first king, Saint Stephen, the Hungarian Kingdom was known as Regnum Marianum [Lat., ‘The Kingdom of Mary’] (Letz 2014, p. 19). In 1896, in connection with the millennial anniversary of

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the arrival of the Hungarian tribe union to the Carpathian Basin, Pope Leo XIII permitted the celebration in Hungary of a special holiday of Magna Domina Hungarorum [Lat., ‘Great Lady of the Hungarians’] on the second Sunday of October (Letz 2014, p. 63). At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, as a reaction to growing Magyarisation in Slovakia along with the national liberation movement, the image of Slovaks who had suffered for centuries was projected into the Mother Mary who, through her suffering and pain, took part in Christ’s suffering on the cross. It is remarkable in this context how Slovaks successfully colonised and privatised the central character of Hungarian history, the national patroness of Hungarians—Magyarok Nagyasszonya [Hun., ‘Our Lady of Hungary’]. In their struggle for the recognition of their national rights, as well as for an independent Slovak state, Slovaks also fought for the recognition of the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows as the patroness of the Slovak nation, wishing to continue the strongly rooted national tradition of Marian devotion and radically distinguish their, that is, Slovak Virgin Mary from Our Lady of Hungary. The Virgin Mary, in her specific form of the Mother of Seven Sorrows, is thus an excellent example of the Slovak ethnic transcription and cultural translation of the (Hungarian) Virgin Mary. The ethnicised and enculturated Mary—the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows—is thus called to work for and act particularly on behalf of the ‘oppressed Slovak nation, which had been suffering for hundreds of years’. The essence of the projection of the Slovak national narrative into the figure of the Virgin Mary can be found in the article written by the Catholic priest F. Juriga in the Slovak National Newspaper from 1911. F. Juriga—one of the main proponents of the idea of the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows as the Patroness of the Slovak Nation— in his article Matička Sedmibolestná, Patrónka slovenského národa [Slov., ‘Our Mother of Seven Sorrows, Patroness of the Slovak Nation’]—described Mary as our mother [i.e. mother of the Slovak nation] and as a sufferer, presenting Mary dressed in the colours of the Slovak tricolour: ‘A Slovak who is suffering loves his mother most and adores worshipping the Virgin Mary as the Mother of Seven Sorrows, and so even her garments have Slovak colours: a white shawl, a blue gown, and a red dress’ (Juriga 1911, p. 1). From the point of view of the Church, the struggle of Slovaks for their own national form of the Virgin Mary officially culminated in 1927—ten years after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and establishment of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. With his decree Celebre

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apud Slovaccham gentem [Lat., ‘Famous among the Slovak Nation’], Pope Pius XI confirmed the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows as the national Patroness of Slovakia. Slovakia is unique in this regard because, in this form, the Virgin Mary is the patroness of no other independent country or nation (Letz 2014, p.  7). The perception of the links between the Slovak nation’s fate and direct agency of the Virgin Mary is also reflected in the plaque of gratitude, which was exhibited in the Mariological Museum of the Slovak National Sanctuary in 1993, with the following text: ‘We thank the Virgin Mary for her centuries-long protection of the Slovak nation and for the birth of the independent Slovak Republic’. The Virgin Mary often appears on the periphery, not only from a geographical point of view (peripheries of cities, rural areas), but also on the peripheries of society. According to Victor W. and E.  Turners, in such cases, the periphery represents the liminal and the communities against the socio-cultural structure (Turner and Turner 1978, p. 241). The Virgin Mary appears to be connected with the laity, the poor, and the colonised, stressing the importance of communities and people on the margins of society (Turner and Turner 1978, p. 213). The Virgin Mary, in her specific form of the Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows, thus successfully fulfilled her active role in the fight for the rights of Slovaks, raising her voice to help the marginalised Slovak nation on its way ‘from the periphery to the centre’. However, several questions may still be asked: Will Mary offer her protective shelter and miraculous support also to another ethnic minority that has been living on the margins of the mainstream society in Slovakia for centuries—the Roma people? Will She lend her voice on behalf of the Roma, becoming the pivotal figure of Romani emancipation (Marushiakova and Popov 2020) in the twenty-first century, helping to shape the meta-­ ethnic group narrative of the Slovak Roma in a religious, that is, Catholic way? Before answering these questions and disclosing the sophisticated forms of Romani transcription and translation of the most important symbol of Slovak Catholicism—the Virgin Mary—let us briefly introduce the Roma in Slovakia and their religiousness first, since it is important to understand the people who are central to this publication and illuminate the contextual field within which Mary is devoted, prayed, and loved.

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Roma in Slovakia: The Silent and Invisible Minority The Slovak Republic is a multi-ethnic country with thirteen minorities that make up approximately 14% of the population. According to the Census of 2011, based on self-declaration, the most visible is the Hungarian nationality (458,467, i.e. 8.5%), followed by the Roma (105,738, i.e. 2%) (Census, 2011). According to the latest statistical survey and extensive mapping research that used ‘ascribed ethnicity’ methodology (Mušinka et  al. 2014), in 2013, 402,810 persons in Slovakia declared themselves from the entire population as Roma. According to the data of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, in 2012, Slovakia had 5,410,836 inhabitants. In the context of the total population of Slovakia as of December 31, 2012, the estimated share of Roma inhabitants was 7.44% (Mušinka and Matlovičová 2015, p. 232). What is noteworthy about this number is the fact that, in the last census, only a quarter of the estimated number of Roma declared themselves as having Roma nationality. The Government of the Slovak Republic, in its Resolution No. 153 of 1991 on the Recognition of Roma as a National Minority, adopted the ethnonym ‘Roma’ and guaranteed universal cultural and ethnic development of the Roma community in Slovakia. In 1991, Roma could declare their nationality freely for the first time. The Roma language is explicitly mentioned among regional and minority languages recognised by Slovakia for the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Thus, the Roma are granted the same rights as all national minorities living in Slovakia. The Roma in Slovakia view Slovakia as their homeland; they live sedentarily, speak Romani, Slovak or Hungarian as their first or second language, and hold Slovak nationality. However, in comparison to the majority population, most Roma in Slovakia face discrimination. According to the surveys of the Fundamental Rights Agency in 2017, 41% of Slovak Roma respondents declared having been discriminated in the course of the last five years and 82% of them did not know of any institution to turn to in emergency cases or ask for protection (http://fra.europa.eu/sk). Even though Slovak state policies declare the right to self-­determination and equal opportunities regardless of the origin and affiliation to an ethnic or religious group, most Roma perceive declaration of their ethnicity as ‘Rom/Roma’ as a disadvantage.

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The most common mainstream image of Roma is rich of ethnical stereotypes, including the alleged a priori negative attitudes of Roma to work, their misuse of the social system and (voluntary) life strategy of living from the social benefits, high fertility rate, inappropriate sexual behaviour (including family incest), poor hygiene, low education, reduced intelligence skills, and high crime rate (Mann 2015, pp. 438–479). The essentialised ethnic label Róm/Rómovia [Slov., ‘Rom/Roma’]—in the same extent as the previously used designation Cigán/Cigáni [Slov., ‘Gypsy/Gypsies’]—is thus becoming not only unattractive but also potentially stigmatising. The media in Slovakia commonly contribute to the reproduction of the negative picture of the Roma community as such, bringing a ‘black chronicle’ style of news coverage. According to the latest mapping results, the majority of Roma live an inclusive way of life within urban or municipal environments. Nevertheless, the media image is nurtured almost exclusively by information about Roma living in segregated and socially excluded rural settlements with limited or no infrastructure. This type of settlement in Slovakia is called osada [Slov., sg., ‘settlement’] and is stereotypically connected with ‘problematic’ Roma, who are often denoted as ‘maladjusted people’. Most policies in Slovakia view the Roma almost exclusively as ‘subjects in need of governmental care’ and their cultural ‘otherness’ is considered a threat: a negative deviation from the proper and desirable mode of behaviour. In this situation, the Roma themselves have chosen the strategy of social invisibility (Podolinská 2017a, p. 141). Despite being the second most numerous minority in Slovakia, the Roma do not have a proportional number of political representatives elected on the candidate lists of mainstream political parties, nor are they able to unite and support ethnic political parties of their own (Hrustič 2015). Thus, so far, we may consider the Roma in Slovakia to be the silent minority (‘without voice’). Non-participation in the distribution of power, benefits, protection and security is directly connected with immanent exclusion (Podolinská 2017a, p. 143). Invisibility and silence as a minority group strategy and as a tool of survival within the surrounding mainstream society can hardly overcome negative stereotyping and prejudicing. This is especially true in the case of the Roma in Slovakia, a minority with an ascribed, historically rooted negative track record (Podolinská 2017a, p. 143).

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Terminology: Endonym Versus Exonym In Slovakia, there are three more-or-less obvious Roma sub-ethnic groups. The most numerous are Rumungro Roma—settled Roma—who have been living on the territory of Slovakia for at least three centuries. Even though this designation originally referred to Hungarian Roma, it has since been extended to all settled Roma, that is, Slovačike [Rom., ‘Slovak’] and Ungrike [Rom., ‘Hungarian’] Roma. The group of Roma who came to the present-day territory of Slovakia in the nineteenth century from the lands of today’s Romania, are called Vlachika Roma, that is, ‘Wallachian’ or ‘Vlax’ Roma. There are also small remains of German groups—Sinti (Mušinka and Matlovičová 2015, p. 246). Act (No. 74/1958 Coll.) ‘on Permanent Settlement of Nomadic People’ of 1958 ordered the settlement of all nomadic Roma within Czechoslovakia (https://www.slov-lex.sk/pravne-predpisy/SK/ZZ/ 1958/74/19590301.html). This act, which came into force in 1959 and was preceded by a census of itinerant Roma, affected the Vlax Roma almost exclusively; other Roma in Czechia and Slovakia had lived a settled life long beforehand. At the end of the twentieth century, the Roma made a strict hierarchical differentiation not only in terms of individual ‘Gypsy groups’ (Vlachika Roma, Rumungro Roma, Sinti) and sub-groups (Lovári and Bougešti in the case of Vlax Roma or Ungrike and Slovačike in the case of Rumungro Roma), but also in terms of locality (Marušiaková 1988a, pp.  72–73). Such locality partialisation with strict emic hierarchical differentiation of the Roma exists even today, whereas social distance is linked to the differentiation of the colour of skin (the darker the skin tone, the lower the sub-ethnic status; see also Marušiaková 1988a; Podolinská 2003) and to the concept of ritual purity [Rom., mageripen, mageripe, mahrime], related to symbolic pollution, mainly as a consequence of a violation of the alimentary taboos, as well as other custom rules. In Slovakia, official and politically correct documents from the 1990s use the ethnic appellation ‘Rom/Roma’ as a contextually neutral ethnic label, as well as an umbrella term for all sub-ethnic groups of Roma living in Slovakia. The former historical ethnonym Cigán/Cigáni, which was used both in political and common language until the latter half of the previous century, is now considered politically incorrect, since the term Cigán/Cigáni is connected with the Slovak verb cigánit,̌ which means to ‘lie’ or ‘deceive’. Nevertheless, the ethnonym Cigáni has not been

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abandoned for good, since it is still in use in both official and unofficial vocabulary. The appellative Cigán/Cigáni is also frequently used as an endo-ethnonym among the Roma themselves within endo-discourse, both in a positive and negative semantic context. In this publication, with respect to the promotion of the newly coined Slovak appellation Róm/Rómovia as a neutral term, I shall use the term ‘Rom/Roma’ within my narrative discourse (I-voice). Nevertheless, in my academic discourse, I would also like to reflect on the authentic vocabulary of my field research. Therefore, I shall keep the ethnonym Cigán/ Cigáni, that is, ‘Gypsy/Gypsies’, in quotations from historical sources and as an emic ethnonym in the current narratives of my interlocutors. Confessionality of the Roma in Slovakia Slovakia is a country with a traditionally strong dominance of Roman Catholicism. According to the last Slovak Census results of 2011, 68.9% of the Slovak population identified themselves with the Roman Catholic faith. Out of 89,920 persons who declared the Roma ethnicity, up to 76% claimed affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church (www.rokovania.sk/ appl/material/nsf). In addition to the traditional dominancy of the Roman Catholic Church within the Slovak religious landscape, there are four other traditional and locally prevailing churches: the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran), the Greek Catholic Church, the Reformed Christian Church, and the Orthodox Church (in descending order; Podolinská et al. 2019). As a result of the political changes in Slovakia after 1989, the churches increased their interest in the Roma. In 1990, the Board for the Pastoration of Roma was created at the Slovak Bishops’ Conference as part of its pastoral mission (currently the Board for the Roma and Minorities) (Mann 2009, p. 40). After 1989, religious missions among the Roma saw major general activism. According to mapping research, in 2010, there were nineteen active missions among the Roma in Slovakia: fourteen of which were ‘registered’, that is, with the status of state official recognition, assuring them state financial support and the right to provide schooling and administer officially recognised rites of marriages and funerals—the Roman Catholic Church, the Religious Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Greek Catholic Church, the Apostolic Church (Assemblies of God), the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran), the Reformed

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Christian Church, the Brethren Church, Seven Day Adventists, the Evangelical Methodist Church (United Methodist Church), the Brethren Unity of Baptists, the Old Catholic Church, Bahai, the Orthodox Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (in descending order)—and five with ‘non-registered’ status—Maranata Christian Mission (Pentecostals), Word of Life, Devleskero kher (Pentecostals), Romani Archa Christian Community (Pentecostals), and the Joyful Heart Christian Community (Pentecostals) (in descending order; Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, p.  46). From Charismatic movements, the work of Saint Paul’s Community within the Greek Catholic Church should be mentioned. With regard to the number of Roma affected by various missions, the most important churches and religious groups working among the Roma in Slovakia are as follows: the Roman Catholic Church, the Religious Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Greek Catholic Church, the Maranata Christian Mission, and the Apostolic Church (Assemblies of God) (in descending order; Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, p. 151). In statistical data, despite the fact that the Roma population follows the mainstream population’s pattern of professing church membership, researchers, experts, and the public usually hesitate to agree on whether the Roma are Christians in the same way as the majority of Slovaks, that is, the non-Roma. Such rejection or sceptical attitudes of the majority are inherited from the past; it is a dynamic stereotype of condemning otherness, in this case—a different-culture translation and ethnicisation of mainstream Christianity and local religious cultures. Any shift in the spectrum of experiencing or practising Christianity continues to be regarded not only in the neutral sense as ‘other’, but also negatively as a ‘deviation’. In the past and even to a large extent today, Slovak Catholicism has primarily been the religion of the ethnic majority of non-Roma Slovaks. Majoritarian Stereotypes Based on multi-sited research in fifteen localities in Slovakia (Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, 2011), the most common recent mainstream stereotypes on Roma religiousness in Slovakia can be summarised as follows: (1) Roma faith is not stable; they easily convert to a new confession/religion, but soon after they lose their religious drive and enthusiasm; (2) Roma people voluntarily prefer extra-church religiosity, that is, religion at home and private spirituality, and the same is true for their voluntary preference

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of individual forms of religiosity over collective ones; (3) Roma people only formally declare religious affiliation based on the locally dominant confession; (4) Roma people declare religious affiliation or convert only because they expect some kind of profit (real or symbolic); (5) Roma do not feel bound and do not follow the Ten Commandments—the Decalogue (Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, p. 17). However, many of the ‘specifics’ and ‘unorthodox’ features of Roma religiousness can be considered a direct result of their exclusion from participation in the mainstream congregation church life. In some localities, we can even speak about direct or indirect religious discrimination of Roma by the mainstream population and local churches (Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, 2011). As far as the majority of Roma in Slovakia and the traditionally predominant Catholic Church are concerned, it could be stated that the Roma in Slovakia, especially those living in osada-type communities, are living on the periphery of mainstream Christianity. Despite the majoritarian stereotypes, the vast majority of Roma in Slovakia are devout Christians, practising their religion at home on a daily basis. Although they are invisible and overlooked by the official church, many Roma in Slovakia live an intense private, family, and community spiritual life. Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, socially and spatially excluded Roma communities in Slovakia, that is, those on the very margins of society, being outcast and stigmatised multiple times, have produced and reproduced a unique system of unwritten rules and values that are fundamentally based on Christian faith in God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. Scholarly Views and Stereotypes In essence, when trying to differentiate among the main academic interpretative streams which comment on religiosity/spirituality of the Roma in Slovakia, four main concepts can be distinguished: (1) religious exoticism, anticipating authentic Roma layer/core of religiosity as non-­ European and non-Christian heritage; (2) religious camouflaging, characterised by imitation; (3) religious adaptability, characterised by loans and syncretism; and (4) religious conservativism, characterised by adherence to pre-modern elements of the mainstream population’s folk beliefs and local popular Christianity.

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1. Religious exoticism. A prominent scholar specialised in Romani Studies in Czechoslovakia in the latter half of the twentieth century, M.  Hübschmannová, believed that the roots of Roma spirituality should be sought in Hinduism (see the interview in Hudáková and Vojtíšek 2004). Other prominent scholars, E.  Davidová and E. Č ajánková-­ Horváthová, interpreted some elements of Roma beliefs and practices as relicts of pre-Christian animism (Davidová 1988; Horváthová 1964) and polydemonism (Horváthová 1995, p.  82). The thesis of Roma religious exotism, which is based, for example, on their concept of ritual purity, alimentary taboos, and special recognition of fire, assumed the existence of a Roma religious hardcore tradition, anchored outside the European religious tradition and Christianity, something that is supposed to remain unchanged and typical for ‘all Roma’. 2. Religious camouflaging. Christianity among the Roma is often considered mere cover-religiosity; described as if its ‘outer’ features were similar or identical to those of the majority, while its ‘inner’ substance is completely different (e.g. Davidová 1988; Palubová 2003, etc.). Some authors went even further and accused the Roma of ‘grandiose trickery’ (Jakoubek 2004, p.  180), claiming that, in the case of the Roma, Christianity serves only as a ‘façade to cover the non-Christian or pre-­ Christian core of Roma religiosity’ (Jakoubek and Budilová 2014, p. 72). Here we face a modern derivation of the historical claim on Roma religious camouflage (‘mimicry’), which dates back to the eighteenth (Augustini ab Hortis 1995, p. 51 [1777/63]; Grellmann 1783, pp. 107–111) and nineteenth centuries (A Magyarországban 1893, p.  51), accusing the Roma of merely imitating the mainstream religion, camouflaging and having no religion, or practising pagan customs, rituals and beliefs. 3. Religious adaptability and syncretism. To eliminate this methodologically improper claim and unacceptable accusation, many authors have argued that the Roma have adopted and adapted the religion of the majority population (Kováč and Mann 2003; Mann 2003; Raichová 1999, p. 66; Robertson 2009, etc.). Scholars also pointed out syncretism as a constitutive part of Roma religiousness— that is, the tendency to mix orthodox and unorthodox, Christian and non-Christian, normative and folk, as well as Roma and nonRoma elements of faith, beliefs, and practices (Davidová 1988,

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p. 94; Kováč and Mann 2003, p. 11; Raichová 1999, p. 66, etc.). The concept of a syncretistic lifestyle (Robertson 2009, p.  105) accommodates religion and spirituality of the Roma in Slovakia into European Christianity and local popular cultures. At the same time, it works with the assumption of non-­Christian/pre-Christian elements present in traditional Roma religious culture. In the adaptability and syncretism concepts, the abilities of the Roma to adopt and flexibly translate foreign/new religious traditions or its elements (selective adaptation, Marushiakova and Popov 1999) and their ability to creatively mix various religious traditions are usually highlighted. 4. Religious conservatism. According to some authors, the characteristic feature of traditional Roma religiosity in Slovakia is conservatism. They implicitly speak of certain religious retardation, caused by isolation and socio-spatial segregation of many Roma osada-communities in Slovakia (Mann 2003, p. 96; Kováč and Mann 2003, p. 11; Palubová 2003, pp.  33–34; etc.). This concept regards modern Roma religiosity as a slowed down or frozen-in-time copy of the nineteenth-century folk Christianity that was practised in the Slovak countryside. However, in addition to the wrongly postulated claim of modern Roma living in an informational vacuum and having no contact with the Slovak mainstream and global culture (via TV, Internet, ability to travel, as well as through migration), we have not found any support for this claim in the existing field research.

Romani Christianity: A Definition When speaking of the religiousness of the Roma in Slovakia, I often employ the term Romani Christianity in order to denote a religious culture that has been produced and reproduced within the particular ecosystem of Roma communities in Slovakia in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century (see also Podolinská 2007a, 2014, etc.). In this regard, I do not focus on distinguishing the Roma, non-Roma, or Christian and non-Christian elements. I acknowledge all beliefs, rituals, and practices believed and practised among the Roma, including those appropriated, enculturated, ethnicised, and selectively adopted, among

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others, the right to be acknowledged as ‘Romani’. Roma themselves recognise the variability of Roma religious traditions, from locality to locality, and even from family to family. Nevertheless, they also acknowledge many common features shared by the Slovak Roma, and this meta-group religious awareness and belonging to the world directed by Roma ethnic and cultural unwritten rules [Rom., Romipen, Romanipen, i.e. ‘Romahood’] is considerably strong (for a broader definition of ‘Romani’, see Marsh and Thurfjell 2014, p. 8). The core traditional Roma religious culture, as reproduced within the rural environments of Roma osada-type communities in Slovakia, is rooted in mainstream Catholicism and traditional majoritarian local religious culture and could be denoted as traditional Romani Christianity. With regard to the adjective ‘traditional’, we definitively do not have in mind something static in the primordialist sense (Podolinská 2017b). The core of this religious tradition is anchored in enculturated rural Romani Catholicism of the first half of the twentieth century, with an important notion that this ‘tradition’ is being constantly modernised and innovated, both in terms of forms, content or functions. The term ‘traditional Romani Christianity’ is particularly meant to indicate Romani extra-church religiousness, before the intensive exposure to the preaching of both the Roman Catholic Church (in the Slovak context dominant and traditional) and the so-called non-traditional churches (Neo-Protestant, Pentecostal and Charismatic, etc.)—both currents aiming at the intensification of churchliness and cleansing of all ‘unorthodox’ beliefs, customs, and practices, that is, traditional Romahood. However far predominant the Catholic pattern of religiosity among the Roma in Slovakia is, we should consider that since the fall of Communism, the religious landscape of Roma communities has dramatically changed. In particular, especially in the Slovak context, new emerging churches, which are perceived as non-traditional—with the leading position of Neo-­ Protestant and Pentecostal churches and movements—have affected and changed many Roma communities from the ground up (Podolinská 2003; Plachá 2007; Švecová 2008; Podolinská and Hrustič 2011, 2014; and Podolinská 2009, 2015, 2017b). In 2010, there were thirty-five active spots of Pentecostal missions among the Roma in Slovakia (Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, pp. 41–46), and this number has been constantly growing. In this respect, we can speak of non-traditional Romani Christianity in the context of Slovakia.

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In the Slovak context, the new and non-traditional missions of Neo-­ Protestant, Pentecostal, and Charismatic movements offer Roma converts a new concept of ethnic and cultural translation of Christianity. Despite their transethnic pastoral discourse and claims that their missionary outreach is not primarily focused on Roma communities, it does appear that the greatest response towards their mission is particularly among Roma. In Slovakia, we have witnessed the first generation of Roma converts and assemblies founded on the ethnic principle. Roma congregations, which are led by pastors of Roma origin, formulate an ethnically based pastoral discourse aiming at the reformulation and reshaping of the identity of the ‘New Roma’ (Podolinská 2009, 2015, 2017b). In this regard, we face the same trend of Romani colonisation and privatisation of Christianity in Slovakia in the form of Romani Pentecostalism (Marsh and Thurfjell 2014, pp. 7–9) as elsewhere in the world (Thurfjell and Marsh 2014). Finally, when talking about Romani Christianity in Slovakia, we should bear in mind that many Roma in Slovakia live in urban environments where they are in close, daily contact with both mainstream, post-modern types of religiosity/spirituality and secular and globalised culture. Among the Roma living in urban (Kvízová 1999; Hrdličková 2008a, b) and rural environments as well, a variety of phenomena of experimental religiosity has been documented—for example, multi-levelled religiosity (Podolinská 2003; Kováč and Mann 2003) or transitional faith (Robertson 2009). In this context, the Roma should be treated in the same manner as members of mainstream society, where we acknowledge experimental, multi-­levelled, parallel, and migratory religiosity, as well as composite (bricolage) and indistinct faith (belief in ‘something’) to be only one of the many faces of multi-coloured post-modern religiosities and spiritualities (Podolinská 2008). Taking into account all these post-modern changes and impacts of non-­ traditional churches on the religiousness of the Roma in Slovakia, Romani Christianity is used as a general umbrella term to denote any kind of religiosity and spirituality practised among the Roma in Slovakia that is rooted in any form of Christianity (Catholic, Evangelical, ‘traditional’, ‘non-­ traditional’, etc.). Thus, on the one hand, we approach Roma religiousness using their internal, emic optics. At the same time, while we avoid artificial distinguishing of confession in a strict sense, including Roma who also have a fluidly post-modern type of religiosity/spirituality, we also avoid artificial and normative judging of Christian, pre-Christian, or non-­ Christian elements.

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In this respect, the Roma’s right to ethnic and cultural appropriation of any type of religion or religious culture/tradition is respected, without consideration of any otherness produced in the process of enculturation or ethnicisation as an improper deviation, misunderstanding or false religious camouflaging. By using emic taxonomies in the scientific discourse, the Roma’s right to ethnic and religious self-declaration and self-identification within the official ethical and religious vocabulary available to all citizens of Slovakia is acknowledged, too. The term ‘Romani Christianity’ is also introduced to substitute implicitly negative and ascriptive adjectives, such as ‘formal’, ‘passive’, ‘tepid’, ‘indifferent’, ‘paper’ (Raichová 1999, p.  66) Christianity or ‘native’ Catholicism (Hajská 2009), to list only a few descriptions that are frequently used in this connection in Slovak settings. In this regard, we should also note that not all Roma are believers. The range of religiosity among the Roma is diverse; we may encounter strongly devout Catholics who go to church, know the official doctrine and, in their practice, seek to eliminate the traditional Roma notions that are unorthodox from the point of view of the Catholic Church (i.e. taking an oath, cursing, magical practices, praying or pleas in situations that are incompatible with the Ten Commandments, etc.). We can also encounter families or individuals who converted to a new or locally non-traditional religious movement or church, and whose faith and religious practice underwent radical changes (e.g. Hrustič 2011). We may also encounter those who de-converted (Hrustič 2014), or people with multi-levelled religiosity (Kováč and Jurík 2002; Podolinská 2003), or believers who have inherited faith but do not conduct any religious practices in their daily life and whose faith is in stand-by mode, that is, they communicate with the sacrum only at moments of imminent threat and fear under the influence of a particular life situation. We can also encounter secular cultural Christians, who are completely indifferent to the Christian faith in God, still allowing their children to be baptised by a local priest and permitting their deceased to receive the last rites or a church funeral, not because they are believers, but in order to make peace with devout family members (Robertson 2009, pp. 118–119). Finally, following the overall trend of secularisation, the number of atheists is also growing among the Roma (for Romani atheism, see Kováč and Jurík 2002, pp.  132–133; Robertson 2009, pp.  118–121), especially among the scattered Roma population in larger towns.

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The concept of Romani Christianity in Slovakia is an imagined, scholarly projection, which was intentionally constructed to capture the nature of the variable and intricate process of appropriation of mainstream religiosity by the Roma. Thus, with the contextual field of Marian devotion in mind, the next part of the chapter will particularly focus on the illumination of traditional Romani Christianity (i.e. Catholicism) of the Roma who live in ethnically defined osada-communities on the margins of mainstream society. Some elements and features are valid only locally and temporally; others show interesting spatial and temporal transferability and coherence. In order to offer a complex, yet accurately legible and contextually embedded picture, the locality and year are indicated in parentheses with the respective quotation.

Romani Christianity The core of the below-offered frame-picture of Romani Christianity is based on my long-term and repetitive fieldwork research in Slovakia among Slovačike Rumungro Roma (2003–2019), which is supported by quotations from a selection of research done by other scholars. My first research was carried out in Plavecký Štvrtok (Western Slovakia) in 2002, mapping the missionary activities of the Word of Life within the Romani community (Kolónia) of Roman Catholics. The next series of my fieldwork, on which the core of the analysis is based, was carried out in 2006 in ten Romani osada-type communities of Rumungro Roma in Eastern Slovakia: Jarovnice, Svinia, Hermanovce, Abranovce, Žehň a, Uzovské ̌ Peklany, Rokycany, Terň a, Malý Slivník–Furmanec, Raslavice, and among Rumungro Roma living in the urban part of Prešov, called Tehelň a. My next fieldwork activity was carried out in 2007  in three neighbouring ̌ Žehra–Dreveník, Romani osada-type communities: Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, and Bystrany in Eastern Slovakia. All research communities were of Roman Catholic background, except for Rokycany, where the Apostolic Church (Assemblies of God) is active, and Žehra and Bystrany, which was reached by the locally active Pentecostal missions. Some of my research focused primarily on non-traditional Romani Christianity—the Word of Life (Plavecký Štvrtok, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2019); Maranata (Rudň any, Spišská Nová Ves, 2009 and 2010), and Saint Paul’s Community (Č ičava, 2013). In 2019, I conducted short-term research among Slovak Roma in Govanhill in Glasgow

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(Scotland) in connection with the activities of the Free Church of Scotland, the Brethren Church of Slovakia, and local NGO activists. Traditional Romani Christianity In most Roma osada-type communities in Slovakia (for the list, see Mušinka et  al. 2014), which are said to reproduce the most traditional patterns of Roma religious culture, the universal Christian religion (‘based on sacraments, liturgy, and the calendar’) and mainstream local religion (‘based on particular sacred places, images and relics, idiosyncratic ceremonies and a unique calendar built up from the local sacred history’, Christian 1989, p. 3) are translated and accommodated into the ecosystems of local Romani religious cultures. This accommodation is happening via the permanent translation of continually innovated and modernised religious traditions and is considered Romani by the Roma. In this sense, a Roma osada-settlement is an ethnically constituted neighbourhood that develops the feeling of belonging and self-­ identification based on ethnicity in the form of umbrella-group consciousness, which is connected with a particular locality. Every osada, however, consists of several family groups [Rom., fajta, famélija; Vlax., nipos, čoládo] of various sizes, occupying different social statuses within the internal hierarchy of the given community. Nurtured by strong local family cohesion and community lifestyle, a family pattern of religiosity that follows the collectively respected model of behaviour within the osada is formed. In this context, we can speak about traditional Romani Christianity as group-oriented, preferring collective decision and corporate thinking (Robertson 2009, p. 104). Traditional Romani Christianity is profoundly rooted in the Roman Catholic faith, centred around the Christian transcendent figures of God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. These are believed to have direct agencies in the mundane world, overseeing everything that is done or spoken in the community or family. God, Jesus, and Mary are unified in the concept of the Holy Family. This concept tends to be culturally conflated with the concept of the Holy Trinity (Kovács 2003; Kováč and Jurík 2002; etc.). The dogma of the Holy Trinity as well as the dogma of Resurrection and the Second Coming of Christ are usually not accepted by the Roma (Postolle 1998; Raichová 1999; Brychtová 2005; etc.).

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The mystery of the Holy Trinity and the position of the Holy Spirit are relatively alien and vague to the Roma. Here, the Holy Spirit competes with the Virgin Mary, represented not only as the powerful Mother of God, but also Goddess (Podolinská 2007a, 2009; etc.). The concept of Resurrection is in cultural contraposition with the firm belief in revenants that can harm living persons. Thus, the idea of resurrected Jesus is conflated with the scary concept of Jesus as the living dead. From a normative point of view, Romani Christianity could be considered adogmatic at this point (Podolinská 2007a, 2014); from a neutrally descriptive perspective, a cultural transcription is readable instead. God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary are believed to be active here and now. Religiosity is practised every day (any time needed) and at home. There is no privileged time or place (church) or mediator (priest) necessary to communicate with great transcendences (Davidová 1988; Podolinská 2003, 2007a). The figure of the priest [Rom., rašaj] is an authority for the Roma (e.g. Mann 1993; Hajská 2004); however, it is largely based on fear and respect: ‘The priest is important during baptism, marriage and funerals’ (Levoča—Palubová 2001, p.  94). Thus, many Roma attend church only in liminal situations (Turner 1975). The Christian sacraments are culturally reinterpreted mostly as ritual purification and serve for apotropaic protection (Rožkovany—Č ajánková 1954b; Trebišov—Davidová 1988; Rimavská Sobota—Marušiaková 1988b; Lemešany—Hajská 2004; etc.). The funeral ritual is also interpreted in terms of important apotropaic protection against the returning dead—mulo (e.g. Bystrany— Dobruská 2008). From the normative point of view, we could speak of extra-church religiosity or liminal Christianity. Nevertheless, Roma do participate in the mainstream religious culture; for instance, in the twentieth century, there was a vivid custom of Gypsy carolling in many parts of Slovakia (e.g. Rožkovany—Č ajánková 1954a; Kšinná—Horváthová 1972). Just like Slovak Catholics, Romani Catholics also celebrate Christmas [Rom., Karačoň a], the New Year [Rom., Nevo berš]; and Easter [Rom., Patrad ’i] (e.g. Medzevo—Brychtová 2005). They also participate in pilgrimages to national places in Gaboltov, Litmanová, Levoča, and so forth (e.g. Djurišičová 2003; Kováč and Jurík 2002) as well as European sites (e.g. Postolle 1998, Stojka 1998; Dvořáková 2004). In Slovakia, the devotion of the Roma Saint Ceferino Jimenéz, ‘El Pelé’, was documented (e.g. Hudáková and Vojtíšek 2004; Jarovnice, Abranovce—Podolinská research 2006), as well as the

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recognition of Saints Joseph, Anthony, Francis, Thaddeus (Levoča— Palubová 2001), and Peter (Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007). Life-cycle rituals and taboos are firmly rooted in traditional Romani religious culture. Most of them are connected with both the concept of ritual pollution and the concept of the threat of malevolent beings/powers in liminal situations. Many taboos are directly connected with life-cycle rituals (the rites of passage, Gennep 2004)—pregnancy, child-delivering, first bath, funeral, and so on—but these are only part of a more complex system of taboos, counting also alimentary taboos, dress codes and other taboos that prevent contact with ritually polluted persons and objects (including the menstrual blood, etc.). It should be noted that Roma often construct a social distance based on the concept of dirtiness and ritual pollution, perceiving the Roma at a lower social position as ‘dirty’, using other emic derogatory terms as well, such as degeši or dupkári, saying disrespectfully that these špinaví Cigáni [Slov., ‘dirty Gypsies’] are eating dogs [Slov., psíčkari=‘dog-eaters’] (Marušiaková 1988a), horses or the meat of dead animals (Podolinská research 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010). For the concept of ritual purity [Rom., mageripen], see, for example, Abranovce—Platko 1987; Rimavská Sobota—Marušiaková 1985, 1988a; Turiec—Bílková 1988; Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003; Medzevo—Brychtová 2005, etc. Presentism.  Roma focus on life on Earth, living ‘here and now’. Neither the distant past nor the distant future is of greater relevance, and only present and present-related events matter. As a consequence, religious sanctions, as well as religious rewards, are expected to come immediately or in the near future (Kováč and Mann 2003; Podolinská 2007a, 2009; etc.). The present-oriented nature of Romani Christianity in Slovakia is also manifested in the relatively vague ideas about the afterlife, as well as in the lack of focus on eschatology. Eschatology.  The Roma in various localities in Slovakia declare that after death, the body is buried, and the soul goes directly to heaven (Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003). The idea that ‘Gypsies go to heaven’ is supported also by the concept that since God punishes sins during life on Earth, it is therefore unnecessary to be punished in the afterlife (Telgárt— Kováč 2003).

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Religious Decorativism.  God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary are believed to reside in their images (so-called holy pictures) or statues (Rožkovany— Č ajánková 1954a; Telgárt—Kováč 2003; Lemešany—Hajská 2004; etc.). The images and statutes are considered to have the potential for producing miracles (Dvořáková 2004; Bôrka—Kovács 2003, etc.). Thus, for a traditional Catholic Roma dwelling, religious decorativism is typical—the house is decorated with paintings, tapestries, statues, and even frescoes and home-made pictures of Jesus, the Holy Family, and the Virgin Mary. The statues and smaller pictures are usually concentrated around domestic altars and in ‘holy corners’. Mulo, gul ǐ daj, and ‘čocháň a’.  In addition to Christian transcendences, the Roma believe in direct agency of deceased persons, mostly relatives, who are believed to visit and act in a mundane world. They can harm, but also help and heal their family and relatives. The mulo [sg., Rom., ‘dead’, ̌ is the spirit of a deceased person, visiting the world of the livfem. muli] ing. The modern forms of belief in mulos [pl.] among the Roma in Slovakia have been widely explored in the framework of ethnographic research (e.g. Mann 1988, 1993; Hübschmannová 2005; Žehra–Dreveník— Podolinská 2007b; etc.; the belief in mulo, rižbaba and poslancos, Bystrany—Dobruská 2008); and among (Slovak) Roma in Prague (the Czech Republic) (Kvízová 1999). The ‘narratives on mulos’ [Rom., va­keriben par o mule] play an important social function within the community (Hübschmannová 2005; Dobruská 2008). From the emic perspective, they are also believed to constitute part of Romahood: ‘Only we [the Roma] are afraid; gadje, they do not believe in mulos’ (Žehra–Dobrá Vôlǎ and Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007). In many localities, the Roma believe in the malevolent spirit of gulǐ daj [Rom., ‘sweet mother’] (e.g. Mann 2003; Bystrany, Žehra–Dobrá Vôlǎ and Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007) who wishes to exchange new-­ born babies for her own ugly, ill, or damaged one (Č ajánková 1954a; Horváthová 1964; Mann 2003; etc.). In some localities, the concept of a female deceased person—gulǐ daj— is conflated with the concept of a living person—a witch [Slov., bosorka, striga, ježibaba, čarodejnica; Rom., vižbaba, čocháňa, čovecháň i, čocháň i] (Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003; Rimavská Sobota—Marušiaková

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1988b; Lemešany—Hajská 2004, etc.) who wants to do harm to both the new-borns and mothers as well. Babies thus need to be magically protected against mulos (Abranovce, Platko 1987), gulǐ daj, and witches until they are baptised. For magical ̌ protection of new-borns, the red ribbon [Rom., indralori, lolo pantlika] ̌ (Rožkovany—Cajánková 1954b; Medzevo—Brychtová 2005, etc.) or red ̌ beads [Rom., lolo miriklore] are used (Trebišov—Davidová 1988). As a form of magic protection against gulǐ daj and mulos, there is a tradition of placing a comb, needle, knife/scissors under the pillow (e.g. Mann 2003; Dubová 2003), or of a knife/fork (Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003), alternatively a broom into the entrance door (Rimavská Sobota— Marušiaková 1988b). The tying of a black ribbon to one’s wrist for protection against the evil eye was documented in Medzevo (Brychtová 2005); a yellow ribbon has been used against jaundice in Žehra (Podolinská research 2007). Magicians.  Traditional Romani Christianity is characterised by a belief in the special potential of particular people to direct good or bad powers to other people in order to attack, harm, manipulate or protect them. For instance, one local term for such kind of female specialist čovaň a/čochaň a [Rom., ‘witch’] (Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003) indicates the association with negative power, whereas another local term phuri mama [Rom., ‘old mom’], used for three old women in Rudň any (Podolinská research 2009), refers to the positive and gentle power. For the purpose of magical healing, the Roma in Rožkovany visited grabovica (Č ajánková 1954b), the Roma in Trebišov breterkyň a (Davidová 1988), and the Roma in Rožkovany, Kendice, and Petrovany vražkyň a (Slov., ‘folk healer’; Lacková 1988). Harming and Love Magic. Near Trebišov, E.  Davidová recorded the Roma term te pokerel for a magical practice, as well as the Roma term te odkerel for breaking it (Davidová 1988). She also recorded a descriptive Roma term for black magic te keren avrekaske namištec [Rom., to ‘harm somebody’]. Te pokerel includes love magic as well as black magic. In most cases, items representing the bewitched person—that is, a lock of hair or hair from the private parts, a part of the clothing, or photos—are magically manipulated with the help of candles, pins, nails, and earth from (nine) fresh graves. In many domestic love magic practices, menstrual blood is

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added to the beverages of the bewitched person (Abranovce—Platko 1987; Bystrany, Markušovce—Mann 1988; Hrustič 2006; Svinia— Podolinská research 2006; Žehra–Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007, etc.). Healing and Protection.  God, Jesus, and Mary are expected to perform miraculous healing and protect against malevolent beings and diseases. In addition to magic protection of Christian transcendences that reside in holy pictures, statues, rosaries, small crosses, and medallions with pictures of saints, the Roma also believe in the protective and healing effects of holy water, (blessed) candles, and consecrated lambs’ tails (e.g. Pivoň 2003). Magic healing  based on the principles of contagious and similar magic was documented among the Roma across Slovakia (e.g. Rožkovany— ̌ Cajánková 1954b; Prešov—Lacková 1988; Dubová 2003; Bystrany— Znamenáčková 2006; etc.). The Roma, as well as the mainstream population of Slovakia, still believe in the potential of some people harming others through the evil eye [Slov., urieknutie/uhranutie, zoči; Rom., ̌ ̌ leske/lake jakhendar te kerel’=‘it happened jakhaliben, ‘khamň ipen, ačhilas to her/him from the eyes’], against which the practice of making charcoal water [Rom., jakhelo paň i] is used (e.g. Lacková 1988; Hajská 2003, 2018; Spiš region—Mann 2003; among the Slovak Roma in Govanhill, Scotland—Podolinská research 2019). Traditional Fortune-telling: (a) for the mainstream population (palm reading or cards) has been mentioned, for example, among the Roma in Hungary (Augustini ab Hortis 1995), in Slovakia (Rožkovany— Č ajánková 1954a; Rimavská Sobota—Marušiaková 1986); (b) within the Roma community for Roma, on the occasion of childbirth in Slovakia (Abranovce—Platko 1987, 1988; Rimavská Sobota—Marušiaková 1988b; Medzevo—Brychtová 2005); and among (Slovak) Roma in Prague (the Czech Republic, Hrdličková 2004). Word Magic: Cursing and Overpraying.  Roma believe in the power of the words. During common conversation, the Roma often use conjuration in their statements to confirm their credibility (e.g. Trebišov—Davidová 1988; Prešov—Lacková 1988; Lomnička—Botošová 2003). Conjuration

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can have the form of cursing [Slov., zaklnutie, Pivoň 2003; preklnutie, Podolinská 2003]. Harmful magic includes overpraying [Slov., premodlievanie]. Verbal activity in this case is accompanied by the manipulation of holy objects and the lighting of candles in front of the pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary (Podolinská 2003). Word Magic: Oaths.  The world of the Roma community is fundamentally ruled by oaths and vows representing the highest social regulative and moral imperative. The taking of oaths varies from locality to locality, but usually takes place in front of holy pictures or in front of the cross or other holy objects at home, at the cemetery or in front of or at the church (Marušiaková and Popov 2011). Several types of oaths were documented among the Roma in Slovakia: (a) common oath of assertoric nature, which serves for verifying the truthfulness of the statement—this can be broken or disrupted only with minor consequences; (b) sanction oath, accompanied by punishment (cursing)— which can also be broken by praying, lighting of a candle at the cemetery, and so on; (c) ceremonial oath, which has a ritual nature, is attended by the family and sometimes by a Roma ceremonialist, and during which death and heavy diseases are summoned. An oath of faithfulness usually contains a formulation preventing its potential annulation, and therefore, it is virtually irrevocable (Kováč 2003, pp.  138–140). A special case of ceremonial oath is (d) the oath of faithfulness [te solacharen, Rom., ‘to swear’], which is most commonly used as a prevention of infidelity or in cases of suspicion of infidelity (Turiec—Bílková 1988; Lomnička— Botošová 2003; Telgárt—Kováč 2003; Podolinská 2009; etc.), but also in the case of committed infidelity as a form of ritual purification (Jakoubek and Budilová 2004). This oath has the nature of God’s judgement. In the event of perjury, it is believed that the person begins shivering or dies on ̌ the spot (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). (For taking oath as part of the traditional Vlax court—krís, see Marušiaková and Popov 2011.)

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Conceptual Framing of Traditional Romani Christianity For further characteristics, let us briefly pinpoint and illuminate more broadly some significant features and principles that are valid within traditional Romani Christianity (i.e. Catholicism) among the Roma in Slovakia. • The concept of miracle. The Roma believe in the active agency of transcendent beings in our mundane world, both of a Christian character—God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary—and of spirits of deceased persons—mulos. Roma explicitly expect direct agency of transcendences in this world through signs, miracles, apparitions, and healings. Thus, a ‘miracle’ is considered part of the normal world order; it is not something extraordinary that happens only very rarely, on special occasions, and only to special, ‘holy’ people (saints). • Architecture of fear. Romani Christianity represents a complex normative world based mainly on fear from a transcendental sanction: ‘Man is afraid when he believes’ (Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007). Many Roma are prone to believe that negative events or diseases in their lives are either the manifestation of God’s anger or the effect of a magical attack (bewitching, cursing) by other people (Kovács 2003; Pivoň 2003; etc.). A. Belák, who studied the concept of health and the aetiology of diseases in a Roma settlement in the Krupina district in the southern part of Central Slovakia, proved the existence of the idea that a person could bewitch [Rom., te dokerel] another person through a disease, or, when someone (often) committed perjury, they literally said that ‘he/she had been caught by his/her oath’ [Rom., víra le/la astard’a] (Belák 2015, pp. 62–63). Simply put, one vector of fear is a vertically oriented fear of Christian transcendences. It is a fear of sanction from God’s punishment that comes in the event of breaking a ceremonial or sanction oath, or in the case of false oath or non-fulfilment of a vow: ‘When something bad happens, they curse God. However, God does not bring diseases upon us just for no reason!’ (Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007). Another very active component of fear is vertically oriented fear of other transcendental beings, that is, of revenants—mulos, who are usually attributed malevolent agency in the world of living: ‘ We are

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afraid of the dead and witches’ (Mátraverebélye, Hungary— Bodnárová 2012, p. 101). Another kind of fear is oriented horizontally, as the members of the community believe in the possibility of magical manipulation with people and life events through other persons and special practices (e.g. Podolinská 2003; Pivoň 2003; etc.), including by engaging Christian transcendences: ‘ We are very afraid of “gulo Dél” [Rom., “sweet God”], but we are equally afraid of witches’ (Mátraverebélye, Hungary—Bodnárová 2012, p. 103). • Magical thinking. According to the Roma, there is direct causality between rituals, prayers, sacrifices, and an expected benefit or recompense. Words and sounds can also affect the world directly. This belief in the efficacy of magical acting with the aim of manipulating the curse of people’s lives in a desirable way seems to fully fit into the classical definitions of magical thinking (Frazer 1959 [1890]; Lévy-­ Bruhl 1923; Evans-Pritchard 1937, Malinowski 1954, Lévi-Strauss 1966; etc.). Starting with V.  Lévi Strauss, magical thinking was attributed not only to ‘primitive communities’ characterised by pre-­ logical reasoning, but it was claimed as characteristic also for our modern (Western) mundane intellectual activities. Later, R. A. Schweder (1977) claimed that, in everyday practice, we are as magical as anyone else. Magical thinking in the studied Roma communities is based on associative thinking, as well as the temporal and causal contiguity of two events. Roma tend to read their lives as a permanent emanation of God’s will. Every negative event, accident, and illness is interpreted as God’s punishment (e.g. Palubová 2001) or a magical attack by a magician (witch) or other alien or person of envy or family within the Roma community (e.g. Pivoň 2003; Podolinská research 2006–2007). • Pragmatic contracts with God. Romani negotiations with God often have a pragmatic or practical character. The speaker’s faith is perceived as an item which is offered in exchange for God’s protection. S. Coleman (2004) further developed a theory about different types of religious communities introduced by D.  G. Bromley and B. C. Busching (1988). According to Coleman, two distinctive types of relationship with God can be distinguished. Covenantal communities articulate the logic of moral involvement and stress long-term

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mutual obligations. Contractual communities, on the other hand, invoke a more pragmatic, short-term logic of calculative strategy and ­promotion of self-interest (Bromley and Busching 1988, pp. 16–18; Coleman 2004). Contractual relationships with God rather resemble exchange practices; they are a real ad hoc commercial contract with clearly defined conditions—‘something for something’. In contrast, covenantal relationships with God are a prolonged promise of the afterlife salvation as a reward. In these terms, Romani Christianity prefers the contractual ones. The pragmatic and often reciprocal character of Romani relations with God, with its present obligations and concrete implications, can be easily explained by this.

Religiosity on the Periphery and Romahood Most Roma understand traditional Christianity in Slovakia as ethnically and culturally conditioned. The Roma face direct or indirect religious segregation in several places: standing in the rearmost rows in churches or just in front of the church, special Roma masses (on Saturdays), special order in communion based on ethnicity, a pattern of the burial of Roma near fences or behind the cemetery wall (Brychtová 2005), disinterest or stereotypical approach of the local priest to Roma believers, and so on (Kováč and Mann 2003). According to the Roma, mainstream Christianity is reserved predominantly for the majority (Rudň any 2010—Podolinská 2014). However, the Roma are quite critical of traditional mainstream forms of religiosity and consider it wrong to ‘measure’ the intensity of faith by the number of church visits. In this context, they regard mainstream Christianity to be formal. Faith, according to the Roma, should be measured more by the intensity of the religious experience (‘faith in the heart’, ‘faith from the heart’). Therefore, the Roma often share the idea that they are in reality ‘…better Christians than the gadje who go to church!’ ̌ vá—Hajská 2004). (Ortuto Invisible to the eyes of the mainstream population and the church—on the margins of traditional churches—the Roma in Slovakia live an intensive spiritual and religious life within Romani Christianity. From the normative point of view, any cultural translation is considered a negative deviation. Thus, Roma religious culture, particularly its ‘unorthodox features’ (especially magical thinking, contractual type of relations with God, belief in revenants and direct active interventions of transcendent beings),

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further deepens the gap between the Roma and the majority. The Roma thus survive not only on the edge of mainstream society, but also on the edge of mainstream churches. Dominant local churches in Slovakia do not openly encourage a traditional Roma religious culture (Robertson 2009, p. 111) but, at the same time, they do not openly preach against it. Thus, Romahood can be more-or-less freely reproduced within Romani Christianity. However, the Roma are not closer to the achievement of majoritarian recognition; they continue to be religiously and culturally marginalised, as well as cast aside. According to some authors, the Roma desire acceptance by mainstream society and so, when they are shown concern and love by others, they usually gravitate towards acceptance (e.g. Robertson 2009). Their willingness to convert to non-traditional churches can be interpreted as a hunger for recognition, a change or substitution of their marginalised societal position, and stigmatisation as well. However, it is still questionable whether the ethnic emancipation that non-traditional churches and religious communities of a Neo-Protestant, Pentecostal, and Charismatic nature offer to the Roma (e.g. Plachá 2007; Švecová 2008, Podolinská 2014, 2015, 2017b) guarantees for them a straightforward path from ‘the periphery to the centre’. One should consider that Slovak society is to a large extent an extremely conservative religious space with a historically strong predominance of the Catholic Church. It has been defined by and privileges itself on a cultural and ethnical basis. Pentecostalism, in the eyes of the majority, is a dangerous sect or cult. Thus, Romani Pentecostalism in many cases only adds a new, religious stigma to the existing ethnic stigma. Producing double stigmas for Roma converts could be doubted as a productive strategy for emancipation (Podolinská 2014). Another important aspect is the radical Pentecostal reshaping of Romahood and its intentional outrooting from the traditional (Catholic) religious culture. As a certain type of compensation, it offers the Romani as a language of liturgy in church services and religious songs (Belišová 2013), the establishment of assemblies on the ethnical principle, which are led by pastors of Roma origin, and participation in the supra-locally defined Roma churches under the umbrella of international Roma religious organisations/assemblies. Which of these religious paths has the potential to lead the Roma from ‘the periphery to the centre’? Or do both rather lead to marginal centrality, to the building of centres of importance and focus points of dignity for the Roma, though still just on the edge of mainstream society?

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In this context, we seem to find ourselves in a vicious circle: traditional religiosity within Romani Catholicism does not appear to lead to Romani emancipation and cultural activism in Slovakia; on the other hand, non-­ traditional religiosity within Romani Pentecostalism offers the Roma the kind of emancipation that seeks to bring them as much as possible to the majoritarian culture by offering the concept of new, that is, non-­traditional Romahood. What path will the Roma in Slovakia choose for their way out of marginalisation? Will they prefer the Mary-centric path—under the flag of an ethnicised and enculturated Virgin Mary within the traditional Romani Christianity (i.e. Catholicism)—or the Mary-peripheric one—within non-­ traditional Romani Christianity, represented by Romani Pentecostal and Neo-Protestant Evangelic churches and movements? At this crucial crossroad, let us stay with Mary and follow her own path within traditional (Catholic) Romani Christianity. It has been noted many times that Mary pays special attention to those who are ethnically and religiously marginalised (Hermkens et al. 2009, p. 4). In these instances, the ethnically re-dressed and culturally reshaped Mary stands up for people living on the periphery, giving her love and miraculous support to marginalised communities, ethnic groups and nations. Will Mary be the (post-modern) response to religious and ethnic marginalisation of the Roma in Slovakia, protecting not only the Roma but also their cultural legacy and traditional Romahood?

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Kováč, M. (2003). Slnko pre spravodlivých. Posvätnost ̌ prísahy a Božia sankcia medzi horehronskými Rómami z obce Telgárt. In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp.  129–146). Bratislava: Chronos. Kováč, M., & Jurík, M. (2002). Religiozita Rómov a aktivity cirkví vo vztǎ hu k Rómom. In M. Vašečka (Ed.), Čačipen pal o Roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku (pp. 127–143). Bratislava: IVO. Kováč, M., & Mann, A. B. (Eds.). (2003). Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku. Bratislava: Chronos. Kovács, A. (2003). Bôrka: komunity, identity a náboženstvo v hornogemerskom pútnickom mieste. In M. Kováč & A. B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 55–70). Bratislava: Chronos. Kvízová, L. (1999). Mulové v tradici a víře romské elity. Lidé města, 1, 104–114. Lacková, E. (1988). Ľ udové liečenie olašských Rómov na východnom Slovensku v minulosti. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 203–209. Letz, R. (2014). Sedmibolestná Panna Mária v slovenských dejinách. Bratislava: Post Scriptum. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1923) [1922]. Primitive Mentality. New York: Macmillan. Malinowski, B. (1954). Magic, Science and Religion. Garden City: Doubleday. Mann, A. B. (1988). Obyčaje pri úmrtí Cigánov–Rómov v troch spišských obciach. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 192–202. Mann, A. B. (1993). Vartovanie pri mŕtvych u Rómov na Slovensku. In E. Krekovič & T. Podolinská (Eds.), Kultové a sociálne aspekty pohrebného rítu od najstarších čias po súčasnost ̌ (pp. 81–88). Bratislava: SAS, SNS. Mann, A. B. (2003). Magická ochrana novorodenca u Rómov na Slovensku. In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 85–102). Bratislava: Chronos. Mann, A. (2009). Vztǎ h Rómov k viere. In L. Grešková (Ed.), Pastorácia Rómov (Hlˇadanie rómskeho Boha) (pp. 18–47). Bratislava: ÚVŠC. Mann, A.  B. (2015). Etnické stereotypy ako zdroje vtipov o Rómoch. In T.  Podolinská & T.  Hrustič (Eds.), Čierno-biele svety. Rómovia v majoritnej spoločnosti (pp. 438–479). Bratislava: VEDA, IE SAS. Marsh, A., & Thurfjell, D. (2014). Introduction. In D.  Thurfjell & A.  Marsh (Eds.), Romani Pentecostalism: Gypsies and Charismatic Christianity (pp. 7–20). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang AR. Marushiakova, E., & Popov, V. (1999). The Relations of Ethnic and Confessional Consciousness of Gypsies in Bulgaria. Facta Universitatis (University of Niš), Series Philosophy and Sociology, 2(6), 81–90. Marushiakova, E., & Popov, V. (2020). Gypsy Policy and Roma Activism: From the Interwar Period to Current Policies and Challenges. Social Inclusion, 8(2), 260–264. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v8i2.3036.

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Marušiaková, J. (1985). Príbuzenské vztˇahy valašských Cigánov Lovárov z Rimavskej Soboty. Inv. No. 1061. Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS in Bratislava. Marušiaková, J. (1986). Rodinný život valašských Cigánov na Slovensku a jeho vývinové tendencie. Slovenský národopis, 34(4), 609–634. Marušiaková, J. (1988a). Vztǎ hy medzi skupinami Cigánov. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 58–79. Marušiaková, J. (1988b). Zvyky pri narodení dietǎ tǎ u valašských Cigánov. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 156–171. Marušiaková, E., & Popov, V. (2011). Skládání přísahy v kontexte romského soudu. Romano džaniben, 17(2), 45–64. Mušinka, A., & Matlovičová, K. (2015). Atlas rómskych komunít na Slovensku 2013 ako pramenná databáza pre analýzu situácie Rómov na Slovensku a jeho potenciál pre ďalšie výskumy. In T. Podolinská & T. Hrustič (Eds.), Čierno-biele svety. Rómovia v majoritnej spoločnosti (pp. 224–246). Bratislava: VEDA, IE SAS. Mušinka, A., Škobla, D., Hurle, J., Matlovičová, K., & Kling, J. (2014). Atlas rómskych komunít na Slovensku 2013. Bratislava: UNDP. Palubová, Z. (2001). Ľ udové náboženstvo Rómov z Levoče a okolia na prelome 20. a 21. storočia. Etnologické rozpravy, VIII(2), 80–95. ̌ Palubová, Z. (2003). Fenomén smrti v ludovom náboženstve Rómov z okolia Trnavy a Nitry (Obce Madunice, Lukáčovce, Č akajovce). In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 17–36). Bratislava: Chronos. Pivoň , R. (2003). Negatívne sily, niektoré ich podoby a pôsobenie v živote Rómov (Na príklade troch obcí v okolí Hlohovca). In M. Kováč & A. B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp.  116–127). Bratislava: Chronos. Plachá, Ľ . (2007). Dosah pôsobenia letničných a charizmatických hnutí u Rómov so zameraním na transformáciu emického vnímania rómskej etnickej identity. MA-Thesis. Bratislava: Comenius University. Platko, P. (1987). Rodinné obyčaje Cigánov žijúcich na Slovensku. Abranovce, okr. Prešov. Inv. No. 1169. Archive of the Institute of Ethnology SAS, Bratislava. Platko, P. (1988). Cigánska svadba v Abranovciach. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 177–182. Podolinská, T. (2003). Boh alebo satan? Úloha nového náboženského hnutia Slovo života v polarizácii rómskej kolónie v Plaveckom Štvrtku. Slovenský národopis, 51(1), 4–31. Podolinská, T. (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2019). Research. Corpus of data (recordings, photographs, field journals, and notes, etc.) from the corresponding fieldwork. Archive Depository of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS in Bratislava.

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Podolinská, T. (2007a). ‘Chocolate Mary’—Roma Christianity as Ethnic, and Cultural Approximation of Christianity among the Roma in Slovakia. Ethnologia Actualis Slovaca, 7(7), 60–75. Podolinská, T. (2007b). Trochu morbídny príbeh ako som stretla mula. Anthropos, 4(1), 29–32. Podolinská, T. (2008). Religiozita v dobe neskorej modernity. Sociální studia, 3–4, 51–84. Podolinská, T. (2009). ‘Nová’ rómska duchovná identita. Charizmatické hnutia medzi Rómami na Slovensku. In G. Kiliánová, E. Kowalská, & E. Krekovičová (Eds.), My a tí druhí. Konštrukcie a transformácie kolektívnych identít v mo­dernej spoločnosti (pp. 175–216). Bratislava: VEDA, HI SAS, IE SAS. Podolinská, T. (2014). Questioning the Theory of Deprivation: Pentecostal Roma in Slovakia. In D. Thurfjell & A. Marsh (Eds.), Romani Pentecostalism: Gypsies and Charismatic Christianity (pp. 89–107). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang AR. Podolinská, T. (2015). ‘Si Róm a môžeš byt ̌ kým chceš!’. Redefinícia romipen v pentekostálnom pastoračnom diskurze. In T. Podolinská & T. Hrustič (Eds.), Čierno-biele svety. Rómovia v majoritnej spoločnosti (pp. 480–522). Bratislava: VEDA, IE SAS. Podolinská, T. (2017a). Roma in Slovakia—Silent and Invisible Minority. Slovenský národopis/ Slovak Ethnology, 65(2), 135–175. Podolinská, T. (2017b). ‘Roma’ Label: The Deconstructed and Reconceptualized Category within the Pentecostal and Charismatic Pastoral Discourse in Contemporary Slovakia. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 11(2), 146–180. https://doi.org/10.1515/jnmlp-2017-0007. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2010). Boh medzi bariérami: sociálna inklúzia Rómov náboženskou cestou. Bratislava: IE SAS. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2011). Religion as a Path to Change. The Possibilities of Social Inclusion of the Roma in Slovakia. Bratislava: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, e. V., IE SAS. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2014). Religious Change and Its Effects on Social Change for Roma in Slovakia. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 59(1), 241–262. https://doi.org/10.1556/AEthn.59.2014.1.12. Podolinská, T., Tížik, M., & Majo, J. (2019). Religiosity in Slovakia: Structure, Dynamics and Spatial Diversification. Central European Journal of Contemporary Religion, 1, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.14712/25704893.2019.1. Postolle, A. (1998). Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (Francie). Kolébka romského křestǎ nství nebo uzurpace provensálské pouti? Romano džaniben, 5(1–2), 50–62. Raichová, I. (1999). Romové a náboženství. In Romové: Tradice a současnost (pp. 65–67). Brno: Moravsko zemské museum, Svan, Muzeum romské kultury. Robertson, G.  R. (2009). The Romani People and Selected Churches in Slovakia (1989–2007). PhD-Thesis. Utrecht: Utrecht University.

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Schweder, R. A. (1977). Likeness and Likelihood in Everyday Thought: Magical Thinking in Judgements about Personality. Current Anthropology, 18(4), 637–658. Stojka, P. (1998). Le svunti thana andej vlašika Rom taj o svunto patǎ no/ Sväté púte a viera u vlašských Rómov. Romano džaniben, 5(4), 4–11. Švecová, A. (2008). Rómsky pentekostální sbor Maranatha, Spišská Nová Ves. Romano džaniben, 15(3), 58–70. Thurfjell, D., & Marsh, A. (Eds.). (2014). Romani Pentecostalism: Gypsies and Charismatic Christianity. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang AR. Turner, V. W. (1975). Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. W., & Turner, E. (1978). Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Anthropological Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press. Znamenáčková, Z. (2006). Magické liečitelˇstvo bystranských Rómov. BA-Thesis. Prague: CUFA.

CHAPTER 3

Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia: Ethnicised and Enculturated Mary

Abstract  This chapter explores how Marian devotion is embedded in a particular ethnic context, as well as the unwritten system of rules and values of Roma communities in Slovakia. It elucidates the process of ‘appropriation’ of the Virgin Mary within traditional Romani Christianity (i.e. Catholicism), particularly the processes of ethnicisation and enculturation in which the ‘White’ Virgin Mary is ethnically ‘transcribed’ and culturally ‘translated’ in order to better fit the needs and hopes of people living on the ‘periphery’. The core of the chapter is devoted to the exploration of the roles and functions the Virgin Mary plays within Romani Christianity in Slovakia at the beginning of the twenty-first century, including the description of appeals, rituals, and practices She takes part in. Finally, the phenomena of the Chocolate Mary—the ethnicised and enculturated, Romani Virgin Mary—and her potential to be the post-modern religious response to the marginalisation of Roma people in Slovakia are discussed. Keywords  Chocolate Mary • Enculturation • Ethnicisation • Marian devotion • Romani Catholicism • Traditional Romani Christianity This chapter explores how Marian devotion is embedded in a particular ethnic context, as well as the unwritten system of rules and values of Roma communities in Slovakia. It elucidates the process of ‘appropriation’ of the Virgin Mary within traditional Romani Christianity (i.e. Catholicism), © The Author(s) 2021 T. Zachar Podolinská, Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6_3

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particularly the processes of enculturation and ethnicisation (Podolinská 2017) in which the ‘White’ Virgin Mary is culturally ‘translated’ and ethnically ‘transcribed’ in order to better fit the needs and hopes of people living on the ‘periphery’. Drawing mainly from my own research in the field, I shall try to elucidate how Roma in Slovakia assertively privatise and even colonise one of the most important symbols of Slovak Catholicism— the Virgin Mary. During my research, I witnessed a plenitude of local variants of the ethno-cultural accommodation of the Virgin Mary within Roma communities. The specific forms of transcription and translation were quite diverse, depending on a particular community locale and particular family tradition. Nevertheless, some patterns or elements of Marian devotion were ubiquitous and repeated across the spatially distant Roma communities as if being transmitted through an invisible mean of communication. In most cases, the Virgin Mary was described similarly to the commercially distributed images of her—as a white-skinned woman, with blond curly hair and blue eyes. Nevertheless, on a few isolated and individual occasions, I also documented an ethnicised version of the Virgin— Chocolate Mary—, described as a beautiful Romani woman who loves Roma people in particular. Towards the end of all my research among Slovak Roma, in which I focused predominantly on traditional Romani Christianity (particularly Catholicism), I eventually found myself asking the question: Why is the Virgin Mary so familiar and precious to the Roma in Slovakia? Does She necessarily have to be dark-skinned (i.e. ethnicised), or does her unconditional love and endless understanding for Roma and their culture (i.e. enculturation) matter more than the colour of her skin? My humble opinion and personal response are offered at the end of the chapter. In this respect, I would also like to continue my research, focusing specifically on the modern local variants of accommodations of the Virgin Mary among the Roma in Slovakia. It could be stated that traditional Romani Christianity is Mary-centric. The Virgin Mary among Catholic Roma in Slovakia worshipped under her Slovak local names as Panenka Mária, Panenko Maríjca, Panenka Maríja, etc.—is never doubted; She is deeply believed in. Her works are not considered miracles. Mary is an immanent holy component of everyday family and ordinary community life. She never questions and neither judges nor mentors. She understands her people with love, fulfils their expectations, and performs her daily duties meticulously.

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Her love is cordially reciprocated. When the Roma people speak of Mary, they often mention her as if She was living with them, alive in their hearts—offering her the most precious place for housing known on Earth.

The Traditional Virgin Mary In direct contradiction to the centrality of the Virgin Mary within the Catholic Roma religious and spiritual daily life, there is little research focused directly on documentation of the Virgin Mary among the Roma in Slovakia. As an exception, some unique excerpts from the research by J. Marušiaková in the late 1980s among the Vlax Roma groups of Lovári (in Rimavská Sobota) and Bougešti (in Nitra) can be mentioned (Marušiaková 1985, 1988a, b). Marušiaková documented the dress code rule for married women to cover their heads and hair with a headscarf; otherwise, the Virgin Mary ‘would get angry’. The Roma within the studied communities believed that violation of this dress code taboo would be severely punished—a woman entering the church without having a headscarf would be struck on the spot by lightning (Marušiaková 1985, p. 25). Another documented dress code taboo was connected with pregnant women who were ordered ‘to always wear a pinafore, as the Virgin Mary did’, again under the threat of being struck by lightning (Marušiaková 1985, p. 26). Marušiaková also reported the unique connection with the blood of the Virgin Mary and flowers. According to the research report, the Virgin Mary is simultaneously understood as being the celestial Divine Mother of God with the power to create things in the mundane world and—at the same time—as an ordinary woman that has her period like any other woman: ‘When a woman has her period [orig. “krámy”, Slovak slang world for menstruation], it is the same as when the Virgin Mary has her own [period], with the only difference that earthly flowers sprout from Her drops of blood after touching the ground. And our [Roma] women conjured with that blood—they put it in coffee to make men fall in love with a woman’ (Marušiaková 1985, p.  26). A similar notion that represents Mary as a common woman was documented by J. Belišová in her research focused on Karačoň a avel le Romenge [Rom., ‘Songs of Slovak Roma during Christmas Time’]: ‘Panna Marija [Slov., ‘The Virgin Mary’] had difficult childbirth. The same as us, a painful one. Every woman has to suffer a lot. Every woman! Without pain, how could She deliver a baby without a lot of pain?’ (Markušovce–Jareček 2003—Belišová 2006, p. 202).

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The pre-modern folk image of Mary as co-creator and the Mistress of Flowers, who cultivated all plants and nature, is also confirmed in old Marian Christmas songs sung by the Roma when carolling among the non-Roma. The variations of the song Ket Panna Marija po švece chodzila [Slov., ‘When the Virgin Mary was wandering the world’] were documented among the Roma in Bijacovce (Palubová 2001, p. 88) and in the Spiš and Bardejov regions: ‘ When Panna Marija [Slov., “The Virgin Mary”] was wandering around the world, She was leading her little son by the hand. She was leading, leading Him to a forest, where the wood and roots bowed down before Him. Wood and roots, as well as the Divine Creation, yellow wheat is born with you’ (Žehra–Dreveník, recorded by J.  Belišová in 2003—Belišová and Mojžišová 2014, p. 69). The song is inspired by the song-legend Chodila Mária po širokom svete [Slov., ‘Mary Going around the Big World’], with the central theme of the miraculous healing of a handless girl (Urbancová 2008, p. 406). The song L ̌ em jedna hvjezdička [Slov., ‘Just one little Star’] pertains to the same circle of Christmas phurikane gilǎ [Rom., ‘old-time songs’], inspired by Marian song-legends. In the first verse of the song, the childbirth of Christ is recalled. In the next two verses, Mary sings a lullaby for little Jesus to sleep better, and in return, he wants to bring her a duvet from heaven so that She can sleep well, too. The recording of the song was connected with the claim by the singer that the wish made while witnessing a falling star will be fulfilled (Petrová—Belišová 2006, pp. 205–206). Here, both astral symbolism, which is deeply rooted in traditional Marian devotion, and the image of Mary as an ordinary human woman (who herself needs care and sleep) are poetically intertwined. Among the Roma in Bijacovce, Z. Palubová also documented a transformed Marian legend in the form of narration on the Virgin Mary and the ‘lizards’: ‘Panenka Mária [Slov., “The Virgin Mary”] was going around the world and She was chased by lizards. As they were catching up with Her, She escaped from them up the hill and commanded that they become blind. And now the lizards are blind because the Virgin Mary transformed them. Because they were chasing Her!’ (Palubová 2001, p. 88). The Roma consider lizards and snakes as symbols of Evil. It has been documented, for example, that it is taboo for pregnant women to see snakes and lizards, since it may harm their unborn child (Hnilec—Žiga 1988, p. 172). The motif of Mary being persecuted by lizards, yet finally defeating and punishing them, can thus be understood as Mary symbolically combating the Devil on Earth. In Jarovnice, I recorded a

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semantically similar etiological legend on the Virgin Mary appropriated by the local Roma. Here, Mary fought Satan on the small local hill upon the village. When She finally defeated the Devil, ‘Mary fell on our [Roma] side of the village and Satan rolled down the other side of the hill, giving rise to ̌ Uzovské Peklany’ [Slov., ‘The Uzovce Hellhood’]. Instantly, at the very place where Mary finally rested and touched the ground, a small spring of freshwater erupted out of the earth, whereas, on the spot where the Devil emerged from the ground, a small, smelly swamp appeared’ (Jarovnice— Podolinská research 2006). As a cute snippet of old traditional imagination documented among the Roma in the twenty-first century, we can also introduce—without wider contextualisation or explanation—the idea of Mary having ‘little gloves sewn from the skin of a kitten, while Jesus had pants from the skin of a puppy’ (Žehra–Dreveník, Podolinská 2007). A variation of this idea can be found in the taboo for pregnant women to not harm cats, also called a ‘divine glove’ (Hnilec—Žiga 1988, p. 173). Traditional Marian songs and legends appropriated by and transmitted among the Roma in Slovakia in the latter half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries echo the pre-modern face of the Virgin Mary, which is deeply rooted in Medieval European folk Christian culture. On one hand, She is compared to ordinary Romani women, and her Motherhood, her feminine aspects, and human weaknesses are pinpointed. On the other hand, She is reflected as a powerful Mother of God, proudly occupying her Divine position, not only assertively combating the Devil and punishing his creatures, but also challenging God (as a Mistress of Nature taking part in the Creation) and Jesus (performing healing miracles instead of Christ).

The Virgin Mary in Traditional Romani Christianity In the traditionally Catholic regions of Slovakia, there is a strong tendency among the Roma to venerate Mary. She is the cornerstone of private devotion and religion at home. The Virgin Mary and her images are at the centre of daily spiritual life. The abundance and variety of reproductions, tapestries, wall frescoes, paintings, and drawings with a Marian theme in Roma households manifest her extreme popularity. It appears that Mary is not only welcomed into but also invited to become a permanent inhabitant of Roma households.

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At this point, many questions can be asked, such as: What roles and functions does She play within the unwritten system of beliefs and rules of Roma communities in Slovakia at the beginning of the twenty-first century? What rituals and practices does She take part in? What kind of requests and appeals is She addressed, and how does She respond to the needs of her devotees? The Virgin Mary at Home My fieldwork in 2006–2007 focused particularly on documenting family altars and religious decorations in Roma houses. The research was conducted in thirteen segregated rural Roma osada-communities in Eastern Slovakia: in 2006—Jarovnice, Hermanovce, Svinia, Abranovce, Žehň a, ̌ Uzovské Peklany, Rokycany, Terň a, Malý Slivník–Furmanec, and Raslavice; ̌ Žehra–Dreveník, and Bystrany. In 2006, I in 2007—Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, also visited a couple of Roma households, located in a block of flats within the urban district of Tehelň a in the city of Prešov. During my research, I noticed statues and pictures of Mary in almost every household. If I did not see one, this was—as I later found out during my qualitative interviews—because of conversion to Pentecostal or Evangelical (Neo-Protestant) denominations operating in the region since ̌ Žehra–Dreveník, Rokycany, Bystrany). the late 1990s (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, In the vast majority of Roma households within the studied communities, the statues of the Virgin Mary usually occupied the most prominent place in the house, either in the living room, in the bedroom or in the kitchen (Fig.  3.1), or were arranged into holy compositions—holy corners or altars—suited for Marian devotion at home (Figs. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5). In addition to these ‘holy places’ that had a higher concentration of sacral objects within the household, the pictures or statues of the Virgin Mary were dispersed almost everywhere, creating an integral part of kitchen units, or they decorated walls around the cooking place, living room furniture, shelves and showcases (Fig. 3.6). Depictions of the Virgin Mary were components of religious compositions of ‘holy pictures’ [Slov., sväté obrázky, term used also by the Roma], usually concentrated on one wall or in the corner of the household. I also documented decorative and functional compositions consisting of various combinations of religious and secular objects quite frequently. The composition of statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus on top of the TV was quite popular in their households, decorated with plastic flowers,

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Fig. 3.1  Fresco of the Holy Family above the stove in the kitchen. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

thus creating a modern domestic altar or holy corner (Fig.  3.7). I also observed cases where the TV corner was decorated with flowers in the manner of an altar, without any religious objects (Fig.  3.8). The other variations of domestic holy compositions consisted of holy pictures accompanied with photos of family members that were combined with a radio and a tape player (Fig. 3.9), wall-clocks, or a stove (Fig. 3.1). In this manner, the most important objects of the household were concentrated in one place, representing the semantic heart of the house. The statue of the Virgin Mary was typically the dominant figure of domestic altars (Fig.  3.2) or holy corners (Figs.  3.3, 3.4 and 3.5). The holy corner usually consists of a small corner-table or a corner-shelf where holy statuettes are arranged. It is often a place where the pictures of new-­ born babies and other members of the family are attached. New-born babies, upon arrival from hospital, are often left to sleep in the vicinity of, or in the holy corner—under the protective shelter of the Virgin Mary

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Fig. 3.2  Domestic altar in the living room decorated with plastic flowers. Svinia (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

(Fig.  3.5). In some cases, I also documented compositions of secular objects arranged in a manner of an altar or a holy corner as well (Figs. 3.10 and 3.11). The pictures of Mary varied according to the social status of the household. In most cases, I documented pictures or statues that were sold at the local market with religious objects. What prevailed among them were

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Fig. 3.3  Holy corner in the living room. Žehň a (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, or the Holy Family of older provenience, which were all more than fifty years old and an obvious part of the legacy of a particular family. The images were located in the bedroom (prevalence of the depiction of the Holy Family) or in the living room, kitchen, or entrance hall. The pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus were often arranged together, creating a symbolic decorative ‘Holy Couple’. In

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Fig. 3.4  Holy corner in the living room. Abranovce. (Photo: © T.  Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

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Fig. 3.5  Holy corner in the kitchen with a new-born sleeping under the protection of the Virgin Mary. Žehň a (Household 2). (Photo: © T.  Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

general, holy pictures were often wrapped in plastic flowers, underlining the holiness and overall impression of the wall composition as a unit. A frequent element in the Roma houses that I visited were the so-called nástenky [a Slovak term meaning ‘wall-posters’, also used by the Roma]— compositions of photos of family members arranged on a piece of

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Fig. 3.6  Various statuettes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary as part of the living room secretary. Abranovce. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

cardboard or in a picture or photo-frame, sometimes with a larger format photo serving as a background for the smaller photos (Fig. 3.12). These wall-posters are usually situated near the holy pictures in order to put the members of the family under the direct and continuous protection of the Mother Mary and Her Son. Sometimes, photos of specific family members, children, those currently away for various reasons, as well as deceased persons were placed in front of the image or statue or attached directly to the frame of the holy picture. In many Roma houses, the walls were decorated with tapestries, the majority of them having a religious content—the Virgin Mary, Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Jesus together, the Holy Family, Jesus as a Good Shepherd, and The Last Supper. I also documented a few cases of tapestries with secular motifs, hunting motifs (deer in pairing season) or

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Fig. 3.7  Holy corner/ altar arranged on top of the TV in the kitchen. Žehň a (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

running horses, a resting group of lions, as well as dogs playing billiard, and so on. During my research, I also noticed special phenomena, such as wall frescoes/murals with religious content, decorating living rooms or bedrooms painted on request by Roma painters (Figs. 3.13, 3.14, 3.15, and 3.16). In the vast majority of cases, the fresco in the household was a copy of another picture, tapestry, or small devotional picture according to the choice and aesthetic taste of the sponsor of the fresco. The Virgin Mary depicted on these frescoes was based on an aesthetic pattern of mainstream forefronts. Similarly as in the case of tapestries, I also noticed frescoes with a purely decorative, secular content. In a very few cases, I documented works of Roma art depicting the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family or Jesus in an artistically independent way (Figs. 3.16 and 3.17). During my research, I also visited households of Roma that did not have any extra money to buy holy pictures or statutes. In these instances,

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Fig. 3.8  Corner with a TV in the living room, decorated with plastic flowers in a manner of a holy corner. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

they used substitutions to decorate and protect their households, and painted religious pictures on a piece of paper or cardboard by themselves (Fig.  3.17), or they simply drew simple wax or pencil sketches of the Virgin Mary and Jesus directly on the most prominent wall in the house (Figs. 3.18 and 3.19). Mary Here and Now as Part of Everyday Religion Mary within traditional Romani Christianity is perceived to be present in this world (‘here and now’). Without doubting the significance of official

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Fig. 3.9  Wall fresco with the Virgin Mary and child in the bedroom. The adjacent corner contains family photos, a TV, and a tape-recorder with radio. Žehň a (Household 3). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

places of cult, the importance of Marian feasts, and the authority of the Catholic Church and the priests, according to the Roma, Mary does not necessarily need any special place (church) or special time (Sunday mass) to work; nor does She need any kind of specialist to mediate her voice (a priest). Among the Roma, She is believed to live among us now; not in the distant historical past, nor the distant future: ‘Little Jesus is living among us, and so is the Virgin Mary’ (Telgárt—Kováč 2003, p. 133). As such, Mary has plenty of daily duties: She watches and oversees everything that goes on in the household, including the process of preparation, cooking and serving of food, eating, watching TV, listening to music, sleeping, and making love. She witnesses common vows and oaths taken in the houses in front of her images or statues. She listens to personal petitions and fulfils every request addressed to her. It is believed that

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Fig. 3.10  ‘Holy corner’ arranged like an altar, richly decorated with plastic flowers. The statues of Mary and Jesus were moved out of composition after the householders’ conversion to the local Apostolic Church. Rokycany (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

She constantly protects the family members (especially new-born babies)— not only those present, but also those who are distant—through pictures attached to her images or statues. She can be addressed anytime during the day, at any place, and by anyone in need. Throughout the discussions we had, several Roma women

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Fig. 3.11  ‘Holy corner’ in the living room. Statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus were moved out after the conversion to the local Apostolic Church. The wall-­ poster [Slov., nástenka] with the photos of family members is still attached to the ‘holy place’. Rokycany (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

explained to me that they appeal to Mary for strength in dealing with a variety of common daily situations, such as cooking a good dinner; not arguing with their husbands, children, or neighbours; getting their neighbours to lend them soap for washing; getting social benefits from the local municipality; avoiding having the water and electricity shut off because

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Fig. 3.12  Wall-poster [Slov., nástenka] composed of family photos mixed with ̌ prayer cards and other religious pictures stuck on carton. Uzovské Peklany (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

they have not yet paid their bills; and managing to get food from the local store without paying (this usually occurs through a system of good-faith credit) (Podolinská 2014, p. 157). They also turn to Mary if they want their husbands to quit drinking, avoid car accidents, get paid for ‘under the table’ work at the building site, remain faithful while working abroad, or not be suspected of infidelity when their husbands return home. They also ask Mary to help their children find enough wood in the forest, as well as not get caught by anyone, and also for them to get good marks at school. Last but not least, they pray to Mary for the general good health of all members of the family (Podolinská 2014, p. 158).

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Fig. 3.13  Wall fresco of the Holy Family in the kitchen, painted by Author 1. Rokycany. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

Chatting with Mary The Roma people whom I interviewed do not acknowledge the privileged status of the clergy or other religious officials when it comes to communication with Mary: ‘Mary speaks not only to parish priests and missionaries’ (Podolinská 2014, p. 155); ‘Doesn’t She speak also to a simple Cigánka [a Gypsy woman] like me? She does!’ (Podolinská 2003, p. 173). The Roma perceive communication with Mary as something very personal and intimate. They do not distinguish between ‘orthodox’ and ‘unorthodox’ forms or content of communication with Mary; their communication is open and sincere, ‘from the heart’: ‘When I am thinking ̌ about the Virgin Mary, I am thinking with my heart!’ (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla— Podolinská research 2007). In many cases, the communication has a form of dialogue—that is, Mary responds to the people (Djurišičová 2003, p. 108; Podolinská 2003, p. 173). The Roma communicate with Mary by

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Fig. 3.14  Wall fresco of Madonna with a child in the living room, painted by Author 1. Svinia (Household 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

means of improvised prayers and appeals, but they also address her with vows, oaths, curses, and incantations (Podolinská 2003, p. 173). Holy and Miraculous: Images and Statutes The Roma at the studied communities had particular ideas about Mary. Their pictures of Mary usually conformed to the pictures and sculptures of Mary that are present in the region. Statues or pictures with a religious content are considered holy and are believed to possess the healing or protective power of Mary herself. Although all Roma believers interviewed acknowledged that the statues are made of plastic or plaster and the framed pictures are a reproduction, at the same time, they perceived these objects to be more than material personifications of the Mother of God: ‘We believe in that statue, and we believe in the Virgin Mary, and we also believe in those pictures!’ (Žehra– Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007). They worshipped them as if they

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Fig. 3.15  Wall fresco of the Virgin Mary, painted by an Author 1. Prešov-­ Tehelň a (Household 1, living room). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

were filled with the Lady’s presence and charged with her holy power, that is, as holy objects per se (Podolinská 2014). The belief in the power and holiness of the holy pictures was frequently presented as a religious marker and the sign of ‘true Christians’ (especially in the regions with active Pentecostal missions): ‘We are Christians. We don’t go to church, it’s true, but we do have holy pictures!’ (Plavecký

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Fig. 3.16  Wall fresco of the Holy Family in the kitchen, painted by Author 2. Terň a. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003, p. 162; Podolinská 2014). It should be noted that holy pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus play a central role in traditional Romani Christianity (Catholicism) as religiosity at home, since a major part of religious rituals and practices takes place in front of the holy pictures which are believed to ensure the personal presence of Mary and Jesus in situ (Podolinská 2003, pp. 154, 162, 167; Palubová 2001, 2003; Kováč 2003, p. 140, etc.). Among Roman Catholics in Žehra–Dreveník (Podolinská research 2007) and in Levoča region (Palubová 2001, p. 89), the Roma population developed a custom of touching and kissing holy pictures and the statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus before or during prayer. In Bystrany, they kiss the statues of the Virgin Mary on her lips before praying, in which the number of kisses is the same as the number of people residing in the household (Roman Catholics, Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007).

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Fig. 3.17  Painting of Madonna and child on a piece of carton. Author 3. ̌ Uzovské Pekl any (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

In Rudň any, it is prohibited to use bad language in the room where images or statues of the Virgin Mary are placed, since it is believed that through any kind of her depictions, She can see and hear (Podolinská research 2009). In Bystrany, I documented a story of a weeping and sobbing statue of the Virgin Mary. A deeply devoted Roma man heard ‘Mary weeping in the bedroom, as if She was softly crying’ during his personal prayer. The statue of the Virgin Mary enjoys the position of a prominent member of family and is believed to provide magical protection to all its members (Bystrany— Podolinská research 2007). In Levoča, Z. Palubová was told a story of a miraculous wax Mary who was formed from a melted candle that was lit during prayer in front of her image. The shape of the Virgin Mary formed from the wax instantly turned into an object of devotion: ‘It is a sign. (…) And then, all were coming to

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Fig. 3.18  Pencil drawing of the Saint Therese of Lisieux devoted as the Virgin Mary on the wall in the kitchen. Malý Slivník-­ Furmanec. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

see the Virgin Mary. I am praying to Her. She protects me!’ (Palubová 2001, p. 85). As an illustration, a story documented by R. Pivoň of the Roma population living in Žlkovce, Leopoldov, and Madunice can be mentioned. The story is about a passionate Roma card player who lost a large sum of money in a card game. In a wave of great anger, he struck an axe directly into the picture of the Virgin Mary. Right after attacking the Lady’s image, he began to feel pain in the hand that was used to attack the picture, which was interpreted by the Roma as a clear sign of instant punishment from the Mother of God for threatening her (Pivoň 2003, p. 117). In Abranovce, I documented broken statues of the Virgin Mary—former parts of domestic altars or holy corners—exhibited in the living room display case, as if they were holy remnants or still part of a holy object— which the inhabitants had simply hesitated to throw away. The same respect for religious symbols (statues, pictures, prayer cards) was shared by

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Fig. 3.19  Wax and pencil drawing of Jesus on the wall in the kitchen. Malý Slivník– Furmanec. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

̌ Žehra–Dreveník, and Bystrany the Catholic Roma in Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, (Podolinská research 2007). The Roma in Dobrá Vôlǎ demonstrated their great respect for the crucifixes and broken statues of the Virgin Mary, which had been thrown out of the houses of Romani Pentecostals as a public demonstration of their firm conversion. Roma non-converts collected the discarded broken statuettes and respectfully brought them to the local Catholic praying room. They also declared that small prayer-cards—in the case that they are too damaged to be used anymore—should be burned rather than thrown into the rubbish (Žehra–Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007). The belief in the personal presence of the Virgin Mary through her statues and pictures among the interviewed Roma seemed to be strongly rooted: ‘Holy pictures have manic [magic] power and eventually they will bring to us [to Roma] salvation’ (Telgárt—Kováč 2003, p. 135) or: ‘They [Pentecostal Roma] say that holy pictures are just pictures, that they have no

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power… but why do I witness so many attacks in front of holy pictures when people are taking an oath and swear falsely?’ (Roma woman/specialist admiň istering fidelity oaths in Žehra–Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). The Roma in the regions of Trnava and Nitra also believe that the Virgin Mary is embedded in personal amulets, lockets, and rosaries (Pivoň 2003; Palubová 2001, 2003, etc.). Their holders thus benefit from constant, twenty-four-hour personal protection by the Holy Mother. Contracting the Virgin Mary In addition to praying, the most frequent type of relationship with Mary is offering. The offering is given as an expression of gratitude for a provided service or as a kind of advance payment. By promising or making a sacrifice, a mutual commitment arises. In this respect, traditional Romani Christianity (Romani Catholicism) in Slovakia is close to popular mainstream Catholicism. The Virgin Mary, as the mediator of divine grace and direct performer of miracles, has been from the very beginning of Marian devotion accompanied by numerous ex-votos—wax or metal statuettes, flowers, candles, financial gifts, and with various commemorative plaques of believers expressing publicly thanksgiving for a specific family or private miracle caused by Mary (e.g. Letz 2014). According to the typology by S. Coleman (2004; see Chap. 2), it could be stated that Romani Catholics living in the studied communities prefer contractual relationships with the Virgin Mary (Podolinská 2007, 2014). They have reciprocal relationships with Mary based on pragmatic and mutually binding obligations. During begging and, even more frequently, during sacrificial thanksgiving, the Roma bring candles, flowers, and wreaths of flowers as well as money as a votive offering to the altars of the Virgin Mary or to chapels dedicated to her. Offerings for the fulfilment of petitions are usually promised to the Virgin Mary in advance. According to Z. Palubová, who was studying the Roma in several municipalities near Levoča, the local Roma believe that the Virgin Mary, Jesus, or God can be ‘bought’, ‘bribed’, or ‘lured’ with material sacrifice or a financial gift (Palubová 2001, p. 90). Since the cogent relations with Mary are based on reciprocity, individuals receive the favour of Mary by fulfilling the promise. According to the strict contractual logic, it is expected that by receiving the offering, the Virgin Mary is obliged to fulfil her part of the contract. I also documented

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some cases of rebuking and cursing of the Virgin Mary due to failure to fulfil the prepaid promise (Hermanovce—Podolinská research 2006; Žehra–Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007). In the documented cases, however, the wrongdoer was punished by either a stroke (in Dreveník) or serious illness (in Hermanovce) for such violence against the Virgin Mary. According to the contractual logic, the Virgin Mary is paid in advance (prepaid) for her favours and smaller (common) appeals with small coins dropped off at nearby chapels or either in front of or on top of her images in individual households (Jarovnice, Hermanovce, Abranovce, Žehň a, ̌ Žehra–Dreveník— Terň a—Podolinská research 2006; Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, Podolinská research 2007). In addition to financial and material offerings, the Roma sometimes make a vow (a promise) to bring Mary another kind of sacrifice. Women very often make a vow in front of a picture or statue of Mary at home that if their husband stops being with another woman or stops drinking, they will then give up food for several days. The vow can also contain a self-­ cursing formula (like in the case of a sanctional oath) in the event that the promise is not fulfilled. Some vows, however, are made in moments of emotional strain or anger, and thus it is very difficult to keep or fulfil them. In these cases, such as in the case of common financial contracts, it is possible to withdraw from the original agreement. Therefore, it is possible not only to take the vow (a promise) in front of the statuettes of the Virgin Mary at home, but also cancel it. Here again, we can see a contractual nature of the relationships—while a plea can be prepaid with the Virgin Mary, a recklessly taken vow can be paid out. A smaller plea and annulment of a vow can be paid in front of a ̌ picture at home or in front of a chapel in the village. In Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, the Roma emphasised that the Virgin Mary should be paid with coins rather than banknotes. No Roma would dare take such coins left near a cross or chapel because of the fear of assuming the burden of the plea or ̌ vow (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). For special pleas and vows, the Roma give larger sums of money to the Virgin Mary—either in money boxes placed in front of the statues of Mary in local churches or as a contribution ‘to the bell’ (voluntary financial contributions by churchgoers collected by altar boys at the end of a mass). Sometimes, the particular reason for attending a Sunday mass at a local Catholic church is to make an offering ‘to the bell’, that is, to pay out a vow or ask the Virgin Mary for a special favour (Jarovnice—Podolinská research 2006).

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I observed several cases of Roma who prepaid Mary’s services on different occasions; usually, it was asking for help in cases of suspicion of infidelity or in cases where they believed that some black magic was directed against their family. The amount of the financial reward corresponded to the importance and nature of the request and had less to do with the social status of the family member who asked for the favour or service. Mary as a Guarantor of Social Order Among the Roma people, God is perceived as occupier of the position of the Father (or Grandfather), and Mary occupies the position of the Mother (or Grandmother), which corresponds to the traditional concept of the larger Roma family and community. As such, they both have the ability to bless and punish their children, that is, Roma devotees, if they breach the unwritten traditional Roma moral code (Podolinská 2014, p.  156). In comparison to God, Mary blesses more than She punishes (Palubová 2001, p. 88; Belišová 2013, p. 307). Nowadays, just like in the past, most Roma couples in Slovakia, including the Roma in osada-settlements, arrange their weddings in a traditional Romani way, that is, independently from the Church or civil ceremony. The weddings can consist of only a simple private family ceremony during which a young couple kneels in front of the statue or image of Mary and takes the oath of fidelity [Rom., džal te solacharel=‘to take an oath’] with the assistance of their parents (Abranovce—Platko 1987, pp.  6–8; Lomnička—Botošová 2003, pp. 79–80; Telgárt—Kováč 2003, pp. 131, 140, 142–143; Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003, p. 154; Žehra–Dobrá ̌ Vôla—Podolinská research 2007; Rudň any—Podolinská research 2009). Cases where a man suspects his wife of infidelity and asks her to swear before a statue or picture of the Virgin Mary that She has not been unfaithful are quite frequent (for more details, see Chap. 2). The ceremony of oath at a public place in front of a fire, candles and holy pictures (Mary and Jesus), where a completely naked woman was forced to swear publicly in the case of disputed fatherhood under the threat of a knife was documented among the Roma in Telgárt (Kováč 2003, p. 142). In Svinia, such oaths are done at night, with the man holding a lighted candle wrapped in a red band in one hand (sometimes a lock of the woman’s hair can be attached to the band, too) and a knife (scissors or fork) in his other hand. In the meantime, the woman, with unbound hair and usually half-naked, kneels before holy pictures while the man

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recites an improvised text of the oath for the woman to repeat. The woman must declare that she has not had an affair with anyone else. During the oath, the man calls upon God, Mary, and Jesus several times to witness the oath and punish the woman immediately if she is lying (Podolinská research 2006). ̌ I spoke with a local Roma woman who adminisIn Žehra–Dobrá Vôla, ters the oath of fidelity in front of holy pictures in the privacy of her home. During the taking of the oath, she invokes the Virgin Mary, God, and Jesus to come and listen to the confessions of the people present. She does not use candles nor any other special arrangements (knife, scissors, etc.) during the session. In other documented cases, the oath of fidelity was done publicly; the woman had to crawl on her knees through the settlement to the closest Marian chapel in order to cleanse herself of any suspicion of infidelity in the eyes of the entire community (Malý Slivník–Furmanec—Podolinská research 2007). In the late 1980s, it was the custom among the Vlax Roma—Bougešti— in Nitra and Lovári in Rimavská Sobota to take an oath in front of a picture of the Virgin Mary, which was placed on a multi-coloured female headscarf. It was believed that through contact with her hair, the woman’s headscarf would be charged with female power and able to attract spirits of deceased persons (Marušiaková and Popov 2011, p. 56). Thus, both the Virgin Mary and the spirits of the deceased relatives were called to witness and guarantee the irrevocability of the oath taken. In general, the Roma believe that a woman or man who commits perjury will immediately faint or be struck by an attack of strong shivers ̌ (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). In such instances, Mary is usually an important part of the Divine Tribunal (God, Mary, and Jesus). As far as the system of oaths represents a core moral imperative that still rules modern Roma communities in Slovakia, the role of Mary as one of the key guarantors of social norms is crucial. Overpraying, Cursing, and Mary In several locations, I also observed specific cases of targeted practices, which were intended to harm other families as a form of settling scores. Black candles or white candles wrapped in a black band (sometimes candles stolen from graves), which were then lit in front of the pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, and the members of one family ‘overprayed’ [Slov., premodlievanie] for the enemy family—that is, they delivered their wishes

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that were supposed to cause quarrels, illnesses, death, or financial failure of their enemies. In the Záhorie region, I observed overpraying rituals with the lighting of candles in front of the pictures of Mary and Jesus and by reading the ‘charge’, while praying to bring divine punishment upon them. Hence, this ritual had the nature of home Divine Ordeals. The ‘overprayed’ family subsequently suffered an unfortunate traffic accident. The Roma expressed regret that an unintended person became the victim (a child); nevertheless, they believed that God showed them that they were right and that ‘He was on our side’ (Podolinská 2003, pp. 166–167). Alternatively, Roma speak about ‘lighting the candles on somebody’. In the same locality, the practice of cursing was used on a daily basis. Cursing [klnutie, Slovak term, used by Roma] consisted of two parts: one of them targeted the author of the curse, while the other was directed at the target of the curse, using Mary, God, or Jesus as witnesses. Cursing, which resulted in a deadly car accident, was also documented among the Roma in Kravany (Kozubík 2013). Mary as a Protector and Healer Besides situations where the power of the Virgin Mary is used as a weapon directed against the enemy or to gain the affection of a beloved person, it is also believed that the Virgin Mary has the power to protect her devotees. The Roma are most afraid of the returning ghosts of their dead relatives—mulos—who are believed to visit and harass family members. It is believed that the Virgin Mary can protect believers against mulos and a spontaneous prayer to Mary can scare away the ghosts of dead persons (Žehra–Dreveník—Podolinská research 2007). It is also believed that the Virgin Mary can protect a child and a new mother from evil forces and witches until the child is baptised. If possible, the new-born is left to sleep under Mary’s protection near the domestic altar or in the holy corner (Fig. 3.5), while placing prayer cards with the ̌ Virgin Mary in its duvet (Žehra–Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). Another favourite apotropaic practice among the Roma is the drinking of holy water, as well as water from Marian springs and wells. The drinking of holy water for protective and healing purposes was documented among the Roma in Telgárt (Kováč 2003, p. 133) or near Hlohovec (Pivoň 2003, p. 124). According to Z. Palubová, the Roma from the vicinity of Levoča apply holy water on their faces, make the sign of the cross several times, most often three times, and drink it in three sips. They use the water from

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the miraculous Marian well near Levoča in a similar way, believing in its protective and healing power (Palubová 2001, p. 93). In Bystrany, I documented a private apparition of the Virgin Mary, in which She ordered a seriously ill man to visit a healing stream in Turzovka, a famous Slovak Marian place of pilgrimage, connected with a non-official Marian apparition. By making a pilgrimage and drinking the water from the Marian well in Turzovka, the man later swore that he was completely cured from his illness (Podolinská research 2007). Public Marian Chapels and Places of Devotion Marian devotion among the Roma happens not only in the form of ‘religion at home’. Marian chapels in the village or in the field enjoy a great level of respect, as well as those situated at pilgrimage sites. Chapels often decorate the façades of Roma dwellings. Many of them are erected on

Fig. 3.20  Façade covered with holy pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Raslavice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

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Mary’s command, as a consequence of a dream or private apparition (Hermanovce, Malý Slivník–Furmanec, Žehň a, Abranovce—Podolinská research 2006, 2007). I also observed the phenomenon of holy pictures (of Jesus and Mary), which covered the entire front façade of a house (Raslavice—Podolinská research 2006; Fig. 3.20) or block of flats (Svinia— Podolinská research 2006). Roma families often visit Marian places as well—not only during pilgrimages. For example, entire Roma families from Bratislava’s surroundings often go for a Sunday walk to Marianka, the oldest place of pilgrimage in Western Slovakia, where they pray in front of the grotto of the Virgin Mary of Fatima and take water from the local healing spring (Podolinská research 2019). A similar phenomenon among the Roma from the vicinity of Levoča is mentioned by Z. Palubová. The local Roma visit Mariánska Hora [Marian Hill], where there is a miraculous well with a statue of the Virgin Mary, taking the water home every week (Palubová 2001, p. 88). I documented Roma from Hermanovce and Jarovnice, visiting regularly the popular pilgrimage places connected with Marian apparitions in Gaboltov and Litmanová (Zachar Podolinská 2019).

Chocolate Mary In general, many Roma and non-Roma alike do not perceive the Virgin Mary in terms of ethnicity. She is perceived to be the transcendent Mother of God, a personification of transethnic Love and Beauty. In the studied Roma osada-communities in Eastern Slovakia, which had only sporadic or no exposure to the official Catholic Church doctrine of the Virgin Mary, the Roma simply rely on Panenko Maríjca/Panenka Maríja, using a Slovak folk term for Mary which consists of the word panenko/panenka (diminutive of ‘virgin’, i.e. ‘Little Virgin’) and her name Mary—in Slovak ‘Mária’, pronounced in local Eastern Slovak dialects as ‘Maríjca’ or ‘Maríja’, with stress on the second syllable. In addition to meaning ‘virginity’ and ‘purity’, the word panenka has strong aesthetic connotations—that is, it denotes someone beautiful. Many Roma (as well as non-Roma) adopt the picture of the Virgin Mary that is represented in commercially widespread pictures, images, or statues in Slovakia. In traditional Roma imagination, the Virgin is a white-skinned Lady with blue eyes and long curly blond hair. She has a coat and a blue or white veil, and She is barefoot. In private prayers, She is addressed as ‘naša milostivá panenka’ [Slov., ‘Our Merciful Little Virgin’], ‘Matička božia’ [Slov.,

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‘God’s Mum’], ‘Matička moja zlatá’ [Slov., ‘My Dear Mom’] (Palubová 2001, p. 88). When I asked the Roma to describe the physical appearance of the Virgin Mary, they frequently used transethnic vocabulary to describe her in the aesthetic categories of beauty: ‘She is very nice!’ Only afterwards, when they were asked to be more specific, they answered: ‘She looks like She does in the pictures [i.e. holy pictures]’. In most cases, the Roma were not confused by this question—for them, the image of Mary in holy pictures did not represent the Madonna of the gadje. Her hairstyle, clothing (veil and archaic dress), and overall expression on her face were perceived to represent the Madonna of Jesus’ time, or ‘holy time’, lifted out of the present time and world. Her representations in holy pictures were thus reflected to be anchored in religious and aesthetic categories, herself residing in the transcendent world, that is, not in the particular world of the gadje. More than a picture or a statue itself, it was the holy transcendent entity behind that was important—the Virgin Mary—and the mutual personal relationship between Mary and the particular devotee (the communication, the situation, ritual, practice, etc.). In this regard, I noted some creative, visually expressed cultural translations of commercially distributed images of the white-skinned Madonna. For instance, the visual and contextual interpretation of the Virgin Mary as a part of the Holy Trinity can be mentioned. A small family altar in the form of a stone cave, situated on the top of a wall in the living room, consisted of three statues—two were identical statues of Jesus and one was a pietà, depicting Mary cradling the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. According to the interpretation of the author of the altar, the terms ‘Holy Trinity’ and ‘Holy Family’ were synonymous. He explained the visual logic expressed in the altar’s iconography as the figure of God (the Father) represented by the statue of Jesus in the middle; Mary (the Mother) represented by the pietà on the right side; and Jesus (the Child) represented by a similar statue of Jesus on the left side (Fig. 3.21, Žehň a—Podolinská research 2006). A similar notion of Mary as one of the divine persons and an integral part of the Holy Trinity was recorded by the Catholic priest, K.  Lysý, among Moravian Roma at the beginning of the twentieth century: ‘In the name of the Father, and Son and Miriam. Amen!’, where Miriam represented Mary (cited in Mann 2003, p. 28).

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Fig. 3.21  Roma domestic chapel of the ‘Holy Trinity’. Žehň a (Household 1). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

I documented another interesting, visually expressed enculturation of the Virgin Mary in the manner of a Holy Trinity composition, which consisted of three identical statues of the Virgin Mary (Fig.  3.22, Žehra– ̌ Dobrá Vôla—Podolinská research 2007). This ‘Triple Mary’ was believed to protect the local Roma family. At the same time, since the house was ‘besieged’ by the houses of the Pentecostal converts in the neighbourhood, it was also mentioned as a first-sight demonstration of the household of ‘true believers’, that is, of those who believe and worship the Virgin Mary most of all. Chocolate Mary from My Fieldwork Journal During my fieldwork research, which took place at the beginning of 2002, I also noticed some critical comments by a few Roma on the mainstream

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Fig. 3.22  ‘Triple Mary’. Three identical statues of the Virgin Mary, which should multiply her power in a hostile (Pentecostal) environment. Žehra– ̌ (Photo: © Dobrá Vôla. T. Zachar Podolinská, 2007)

interpretation of the Virgin Mary—a white-skinned Mary characterised by virginity, purity, obedience, and sacrificial motherhood. I recorded several cases where the Virgin Mary was described in terms of the Roma aesthetic of beauty as a beautiful Romani woman with dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes. In 2006 and 2007, while documenting religious iconography in the region of Eastern Slovakia  (Fig. 3.23), I frequently found ethnicised depictions of Mary with certain ethnic or racial markers that were different from the general iconography of the Virgin Mary popular in the region (Figs. 3.24 and 3.25). I also documented cases where the Roma consciously reflected on and stressed the difference between ‘Their Mary’ and the mainstream image of Mary, both verbally (‘She is not white’; ‘She looks different’, etc.) and non-­ verbally, when commercially distributed statues of Mary were copied and coloured brown at home (Figs. 3.26 and 3.27).

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Fig. 3.23  Iconography of the Virgin Mary and female Saints in Romani households. (Podolinská research 2006–2007)

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Fig. 3.24  Woodcut by Author 4 from Jarovnice. In addition to the dark skin colour, Mary and Jesus also have Romani facial features. Jarovnice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

I twice noticed tapestries of the (dark-skinned) Virgin of Guadalupe (Fig.  3.28). One of the tapestries had been bought in Hungary. The owner—a Roma woman—explained to me that she was captured by the image at the first sight: ‘When I first saw the face of this Mary, I told myself, “She [Mary] is so nice! This is Mary as She is!” You know, a genuine Mary! So lovely!’ (Podolinská 2014, p. 18). After talking with her for a while, I mentioned that it was a depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as She appeared in Mexico (Podolinská 2014, p. 149). My information about the distant origin of the image of Mary on the tapestry in the kitchen was taken as proof of its credibility as if to say, ‘People in Mexico also know that Mary has dark skin!’ The appeal of the dark skin of Mary in the tapestry was not expressed verbally in this case. Nevertheless, the attraction of this picture was based on the perception of ethnic familiarity. The dark-skinned Madonna—as an implicit counterpart to the white Madonna—was perceived to be the representative and protector of dark-skinned people in particular.

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Fig. 3.25  Detail of a wall fresco in the kitchen (See Fig. 3.16). The Virgin Mary is depicted with dark skin and with the face of a Roma-like woman. Terň a (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

The first time I encountered Mary as being explicitly verbally ethnicised (i.e. appropriated on the ethnic principle)—described as a Romani woman and speaking for her Roma people—was in Plavecký Štvrtok, Western Slovakia, in 2002. At that time, I was exploring the impact of a Pentecostal mission on traditional Romani culture within the local community. My first contact was Greta, a middle-aged Roma woman. At that time, I was conducting my participant observation research on the socially diverse and extremely polarised Roma community, the members of which lived in a segregated part of the village named Kolónia [Slov., ‘Colony’] (Podolinská 2017, p. 147). Kolónia is a settlement of sedentary Roma with no internal notion of belonging to any sub-ethnic group. The Roma living there declare themselves ‘Slovak Roma’ or ‘Cigáni’ and use the local western Slovak dialect as their mother tongue while keeping only a few Romani words in their vocabulary (used mostly in the verbal act of cursing).

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Fig. 3.26  Dark-­ skinned Madonna coloured at home. Svinia (Household 3). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

Greta was living as a guardian in the renovated part of the former kindergarten situated on the edge of the ‘White’ village and ‘Gypsy’ Colony. It was during the long spontaneous discussions with Greta that I first realised how her conversion to the local assembly of the Word of Life and becoming familiar with pastoral discourse caused her to not only radically emancipate her ‘Gypsiness’, but also to deconstruct the general categorisation of people, as well as rethink the hierarchic asymmetries based on ethnicity. She informed me, as a female representative of the local assembly—with a peculiar mix of conspiracy, confidence, and humour—that the Virgin Mary could not have been white like me. I was considered a representative of the white majority. Instead, she believed that the Virgin Mary must have been like her, with curly dark hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. When describing the colour of the skin of the Virgin Mary and of herself, she used a very interesting adjective—‘chocolate’ (Podolinská 2014, p. 149).

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Fig. 3.27  Dark-­ skinned Madonna and child. Jarovnice. (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

It was still a dualistic concept, a kind of a modification of the black/ brown and white categorisation; nevertheless, the association of ‘chocolate’ that she used in connection with Jesus, the Virgin Mary and herself was her own private and creative attempt to substitute the adjectives ‘black’ or ‘brown’—with an obvious racialist overtone—with a completely positive one, associated with the taste and flavour of chocolate. The adjective ‘chocolate’ that she used in connection with both the Virgin Mary and herself was simply irresistible. She argued that the Virgin Mary had lived in Jerusalem, and since it is a very hot place (with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius), She simply could not have been white. It was, of course, a kind of rationalisation employed to make the idea of a dark-skinned Mary more credible to the white gadji (i.e. me), using a type of argument that appealed to the ‘white logic’ [gadji is the feminine form, used to refer to non-Roma]. During the interview, she was very coherent in using this ‘chocolate’ association: ‘God had the idea that He would make

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Fig. 3.28  Tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the kitchen. Žehňa (House­ hold 2). (Photo: © T. Zachar Podolinská, 2006)

Tanya [i.e. the author] white, whereas Greta, He would make her chocolate’. Greta was very critical of ‘black’ and ‘white’ negative ethnic and racial stereotypes and stressed the value of cultural and ethnic differences: ‘We are equal, but not the same!’ she asserted. While she was talking about Chocolate Mary, I felt as if she was talking about somebody well-known and personal to her—her mother, sister or a very good friend. She also

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stressed that she ‘chats’ with Mary and can hear her voice (Podolinská 2017, p. 148). I was introduced to another Chocolate Mary in a completely different context in 2006 in Hermanovce (a small settlement on the edge of a gadje village in Eastern Slovakia). Kristína, a Roma woman about 45 years old, told me that she had seen the Mother Mary several times: inside her house (on the wall), as well as outside, in the village. She related thorough accounts of her visions to me and provided me with detailed descriptions of the Mother Mary. Kristína noted—addressing me in a certain conspiratorial overtone—that in her visions, Mary does not resemble the locally distributed statues and images. Instead, She is dressed in a coat of gold, has brown eyes, long black hair, and brown skin. She also told me that, in her visions, Mary is always willing to hear whatever is in her heart, and that she can tell Mary everything without any shame. She also noticed that at the very end of each vision, the two of them (she and Mary) kneel down and sing a song together. This song was her personal gift from Mary (Podolinská 2014, p. 150). During the interview that took several hours, Kristína also kneeled down on the floor of her cottage, which was made of crushed clay, and sang the song of the Virgin Mary for me. The song lasted more than five minutes. It was in Romani language and had the tonality of local Roma songs. In the middle of the song, I stopped recording and we both began to cry, overwhelmed by the situation. In the interior of Kristína’s house, there was a small private chapel devoted to Mary—at the very place where She had appeared—which was made of clay by Kristína. (For a detailed description, full transcript of the entire apparition and qualitative analysis, see Zachar Podolinská 2019.) When I looked at the statue of Mary placed on the altar, I saw that She was light-skinned. I made no comment, nor questioned it. When I was leaving Kristína, she asked me to come back again and bring her another statue of Mary with the note: ‘You know what She should look like!’ The context in which I met this Chocolate Mary was completely different from Greta’s case. Kristína was a member of the local Catholic Church. She was a deeply believing person, yet passive in terms of churchgoing. Some inhabitants of the Roma settlement regarded her as a ‘holy woman’ and visited her when various problems arose (physical and mental illnesses, thievery, the taking or cancellation of vows and oaths, etc.). For some local Roma, this woman was their religious specialist. For others, Kristína was a weirdo, a religious fanatic, and they did not accept her personal visions

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and apparitions of the Virgin Mary. According to Kristína, Mary’s message addressed to the local Roma was an appeal to become true Christians, that is, to become regular churchgoers, and to stop doing ‘unorthodox’ religious rituals and magic practices in front of holy pictures at home (taking oaths, vows, cursing, overpraying, practising of black and love magic, etc.). For the majority of local Roma, however, the message that Kristína had passed on to them was not received as a true appeal by the Virgin Mary, and they had big doubts in this respect: ‘Why would She [the Virgin Mary] ask us to behave like gadje?’ (Hermanovce—Podolinská research 2006). Both Kristína and Greta made me think a lot about their concept of the world and the Virgin Mary. Both were visited by Mary; both invested a lot of effort in order to offer their ethnicised versions of the Virgin Mary, trying to spread her messages to local Roma communities. In Kristína’s case, she was not able to culturally accommodate her private apparition of the ethnicised Virgin Mary. Neither the aesthetic affinity (Mary’s Roma-like appearance) nor the aura of the apparition has secured automatic acceptance of ‘her Virgin Mary’. Regardless of how much Roma-like Kristína’s Virgin Mary was, She was not fully culturally translated and contextually accommodated. The Mary that raises her voice against the unwritten Romani system of values and rules (i.e. Romahood) can hardly respond to the needs of the Roma people. In Greta’s case, we have to take into account her Neo-Protestant training, focused intentionally at raising ethnic awareness and group consciousness. Thus, Greta’s idea of a Chocolate Mary was explicitly connected with the protest against the lack of respect for the ethnic and cultural rights of the Roma in Slovakia, including the right of cultural diversity, which is based on a traditional system of unwritten rules, and the right to be treated as an ethnic and minority group with respect and dignity. From her point of view, the Chocolate Mary was not only ethnic and cultural appropriation of the ‘White Mary’ by the Roma people, but also an important active agent in the fight for the ethnic and cultural rights of the Roma themselves. Ironically, both ethnically transcribed dark-skinned Virgin Marys have not yet reached a collective consensus and acceptance by the wider local Roma communities. The Virgin Mary portrayed by Kristína had a Roma face, but She lacked the most important thing—a Roma heart. This ethnically transcribed Mary lacked cultural translation and, as such, was rejected by local Roma people.

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In Greta’s case, she declared being explicitly chosen to lead her people out of the misery: ‘You [Greta] will be the one to lead your nation. You have to stand up! I have chosen you!’ (Podolinská research 2004). Even though she was chosen by God, Greta failed to accomplish her mission. She was not able to transmit her religious enthusiasm and kindle the general spark of Romani emancipation (Marushiakova and Popov 2020) into the greater community. Within the deeply socially and religiously polarised community (Podolinská 2003), she herself soon renounced her faith and struggled with deep depression, forgetting not only about the Chocolate Mary, but about Mary altogether. At the end of our last discussion with Greta, she suddenly shifted her focus and addressed me as a representative of the white majority: ‘What do you want from us? What do you want to steal from us?’ (Podolinská 2014, p. 150), as if she understood that the will to knock on the door and enter is one thing, but at the same time, the door needed to be opened and entry would not be granted on the condition of becoming ‘white’.

References Belišová, J. (2006). ‘Karačoň a avel le Romenge’. Piesne slovenských Rómov v období Vianoc. In H. Urbancová, Piesň ová tradícia etnických menšín v období Vianoc (pp. 197–224). Bratislava: AEP. Belišová, J. (2013). Pastorácia Rómov a jej vplyv na piesň ový repertoár. Musicologica Slovaca 4, 30(2), 305–330. ̌ nské piesne Belišová, J., & Mojžišová, Z. (2014). O Del dživel. Boh žije. Kresta Rómov na Slovensku. Bratislava: ÚHV SAS, ŽUDRO. Botošová, A. (2003). Identita, sociálny a náboženský život v rómskej obci Lomnička. In M. Kováč & A. B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 71–84). Bratislava: Chronos. Coleman, S. (2004). The Charismatic Gift. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10, 421–442. Djurišičová, D. (2003). Cirkev ako iniciátorka zmien v rómskej spoločnosti (možnosti a obmedzenia). Prípad z Bardejova. In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp.  103–114). Bratislava: Chronos. Kováč, M. (2003). Slnko pre spravodlivých. Posvätnost ̌ prísahy a Božia sankcia medzi horehronskými Rómami z obce Telgárt. In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp.  129–146). Bratislava: Chronos. Kozubík, M. (2013). (Ne)vinní a dilino Gadžo. Nitra: IRŠ, UCF Nitra.

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Letz, R. (2014). Sedmibolestná Panna Mária v slovenských dejinách. Bratislava: Post Scriptum. Mann, A. B. (2003). Magická ochrana novorodenca u Rómov na Slovensku. In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 85–101). Bratislava: Chronos. Marushiakova, E., & Popov, V. (2020). Gypsy Policy and Roma Activism: From the Interwar Period to Current Policies and Challenges. Social Inclusion, 8(2), 260–264. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v8i2.3036. Marušiaková, J. (1985). Príbuzenské vztǎ hy valašských Cigánov Lovárov z Rimavskej Soboty. Inv. No. 1061. Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS in Bratislava. Marušiaková, J. (1988a). Vztǎ hy medzi skupinami Cigánov. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 58–79. Marušiaková, J. (1988b). Zvyky pri narodení dietǎ tǎ u valašských Cigánov. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 156–171. Marušiaková, E., & Popov, V. (2011). Skládání přísahy v kontexte romského soudu. Romano džaniben, 17(2), 45–64. Palubová, Z. (2001). Ľ udové náboženstvo Rómov z Levoče a okolia na prelome 20. a 21. storočia. Etnologické rozpravy, VIII(2), 80–95. ̌ Palubová, Z. (2003). Fenomén smrti v ludovom náboženstve Rómov z okolia Trnavy a Nitry (Obce Madunice, Lukáčovce, Č akajovce). In M.  Kováč & A.  B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 17–36). Bratislava: Chronos. Pivoň , R. (2003). Negatívne sily, niektoré ich podoby a pôsobenie v živote Rómov (Na príklade troch obcí v okolí Hlohovca). In M. Kováč & A. B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp.  116–127). Bratislava: Chronos. Platko, P. (1987). Rodinné obyčaje Cigánov žijúcich na Slovensku. Abranovce, okr. Prešov. Inv. No. 1169. Archive of the Institute of Ethnology SAS, Bratislava. Podolinská, T. (2003). Boh medzi vojnovými plotmi. Náboženská polarizácia v rómskej kolónii v Plaveckom Štvrtku. In M. Kováč & A. B. Mann (Eds.), Boh všetko vidí. Duchovný svet Rómov na Slovensku (pp. 147–175). Bratislava: Chronos. Podolinská, T. (2004, 2007, 2009). Research. Corpus of data (recordings, photographs, field journals, and notes, etc.) from the corresponding fieldwork. Archive Depository of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS in Bratislava. Podolinská, T. (2007). ‘Chocolate Mary’—Roma Christianity as Ethnic, and Cultural Approximation of Christianity among the Roma in Slovakia. Ethnologia Actualis Slovaca, 7(7), 60–75. Podolinská, T. (2014). Whose Mary? The Virgin Mary as an ethnic, cultural and religious marker among the Roma in Slovakia. In A. Ga ̨sior, A. Halemba, & S.  Troebst (Eds.), Gebrochene Kontinuitäten. Transnationalität in den

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Erinnerungskulturen Ostmitteleuropas im 20. Jahrhundert (pp.  146–165). Köln/Wien/Weimar: Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie. Podolinská, T. (2017). ‘Roma’ Label: The Deconstructed and Reconceptualized Category within the Pentecostal and Charismatic Pastoral Discourse in Contemporary Slovakia. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 11(2), 146–180. https://doi.org/10.1515/jnmlp-2017-0007. Urbancová, H. (2008). Mariánske motívy v tradičných žánroch: legendické piesne ̌ na skle. Slovenský národopis, 56(4), 399–417. a malba Zachar Podolinská, T. (2019). ‘From the Periphery to the Centre’: Private Apparition of the Virgin Mary (An In-depth Qualitative Analysis of the Apparition’s Narrative with Field Journal Notes. In T. Zachar Podolinská (Ed.), Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe. Bratislava: VEDA, IESA SAS. https://doi.org/10.31577/2019.9788022417822.284-326. Žiga, P. (1988). Rómske obyčaje pri narodení dietǎ tǎ v doline Hnilca. Slovenský národopis, 36(1), 172–176.

CHAPTER 4

Marian Apparitions Among the Roma: From the Periphery to the Centre

Abstract  We have portrayed Mary as a cornerstone of traditional Roma beliefs and practices in Slovakia. This chapter will contextualise religiosity in the form as practised among the Roma at the beginning of the twenty-­ first century within the general frame-picture of post-modern religiosity. The core of this chapter is dedicated to an analysis of Marian apparitions among the Roma to give voice directly to the people She appears to. It seems that both the Virgin Mary and Jesus adore visiting Roma communities in Slovakia, especially those on the very margins of mainstream society. Regardless of how much Mary-centric the Romani religious culture in Slovakia is, Mary’s centrality has been seriously threatened in recent decades. The Virgin Mary appears to have found herself in a competitive position with growing Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal movements operating in post-communist Slovakia, focusing their evangelical mission primarily on Roma communities. Will the Virgin Mary in Slovakia follow other ethnically enculturated Marys who care for particular peripheral communities worldwide? Will the Chocolate Mary someday help Slovak Roma find their way ‘from the periphery to the centre’? Or will She find herself marginalised too, and merely watch the Roma from the religious periphery? Keywords  Collective consensus • Marian apparitions • Peripheral groups • Post-modern religiosity • Romani Pentecostalism

© The Author(s) 2021 T. Zachar Podolinská, Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6_4

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The first chapter of the book explored how the post-modern Mary in post-communist Europe became a herald of reinvented religious traditions. She was able to continue pre-modern beliefs, behaviour, and practising, fluently including ultra-modern elements. The final chapter of this book will contextualise religiosity in the form as practised among the Roma in Slovakia at the beginning of the twenty-first century within the general frame-picture of post-modern religiosity. Special attention will also be paid to the potential of the Virgin Mary to create islands of safety within Roma communities, where their ethnic, cultural, and religious values may achieve recognition and become central. The previous chapter examined how Mary is ethnically and culturally translated in the ecosystem of selected Roma osada-communities in Slovakia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The core of this chapter is dedicated to an analysis of Marian apparitions among the Roma in order to give voice directly to the people She appears to. The abundance of apparitions among the Roma in Slovakia in recent decades seems to have proven the firm position and growing popularity of Marian devotion. Based on media analysis and field research done so far, it appears that both the Virgin Mary and Jesus adore visiting Roma communities in particular, especially those on the very margins of mainstream society, facing permanent poverty and exclusion. In this context, we will explore in what way the Virgin Mary communicates with the Roma in these communities, how they perceive and react to the apparitions, and how official representatives, that is, local priests, mayors, and the media, comment on the local apparitions among the Roma. We have portrayed Mary as a cornerstone of traditional Roma beliefs and practices in Slovakia. However, even though Mary firmly occupies the symbolical centre of spiritual life in Roma families and communities in the Mary-centric Roma religious culture, Mary’s centrality has been seriously threatened in recent decades. In this regard, the Virgin Mary appears to have found herself in a competitive position with growing Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal movements operating in post-communist Slovakia, focusing their evangelical mission primarily on Roma communities (e.g. Plachá 2007; Švecová 2008; Podolinská 2009b, 2015, 2017b). Will the Virgin Mary in Slovakia follow other ethnicised and enculturated Marys who care for particular peripherical communities worldwide? Will the Romani Chocolate Mary someday help Slovak Roma find their

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way from the periphery? Or will She find herself marginalised, too, watching the Roma from the religious periphery?

Post-modern Religiosity at the Periphery The socialist programme of ‘re-education and assimilation of Gypsy groups’ failed, just like the measures of enlightenment delivered by the Empress, Maria Theresa, and the Emperor, Joseph II.  The Roma in Slovakia demonstrated group inertia (in terms of passive or silent resistance) while preserving their ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, despite the assimilation and secularisation pressures of the socialist society. In the twenty-first century, Roma communities in Slovakia are characterised by firm group consciousness on the ethnical principle, internal organic solidarity based on close family ties, and the sharing of joint group value orientations. The lack of institutionalised religiosity is balanced with intense private and domestic religiosity, guaranteed, controlled, and practised within local primary networks and grounded in the community morale. In a certain sense, the community thus substitutes church institutions, which are for the Roma more difficult to access or which they consider the privilege of the majority, using their services only in liminal situations (church baptisms and funerals; see Chap. 2). Strong family ties, community-based thinking and group cohesion create a fertile environment for the development of religious behaviour patterns and are also the prerequisites for their successful transgenerational transmission. In addition to the high degree of inertia and strong community cohesion, another factor that has contributed to the preservation of the traditional Roma pattern of religiosity has been the social peripherality of Roma groups in relation to the core, mainstream society. Thanks to its eccentric position and a smaller degree of participation in power (as well as inertia and internal group cohesion) Roma communities in Slovakia display locally fully functional and vivid ethno-cultural-­religious organisms. In contrast to the core, mainstream post-communist society, Slovak Roma, after the fall of socialism, were not required to reinvent the interrupted tradition by making a complicated post-modern return of religiosity. Since the Roma world had never been ‘disenchanted’, the Roma were thus not required to re-explore or rehabilitate ‘magical thinking’ (Schweder 1977; see Chap. 2) through alternative movements and other

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non-traditional types of spiritualities. (For post-modern religiosity in postcommunist Slovakia, see Podolinská et al. 2013.) Religiosity among the Roma in Slovakia continues to play a role of the key-social regulator, representing the diffusive platform for constant formulation of both cultural similarities and differences, as well as offering fertile soil for the creative reproduction of traditions and introduction of completely modern innovations. Thus, traditional Romani Christianity is being constantly transformed and enriched by modern life elements; for instance, modern technologies are becoming an inherent part of the narratives on mulos who contact their living relatives via mobile telephones (Žehra—Podolinská 2007); or the Virgin Mary appears on the screens of TVs or glass doors of modern electric stoves (Zachar Podolinská 2019b). In this context, it is interesting to observe how, for example, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Roma elites in Prague still adhere to the customs of their predecessors who came to Prague several decades prior, in most cases from the regions of Eastern Slovakia. The research explored that not even education, better social and economic status, and life in an urban environment in a European metropolis have diminished the belief in the effects of magic among the local Roma (Hrdličková 2008, p. 33). For example, the practice of love magic is still very vivid and mainly used for the keeping or regaining of a partner. We can also encounter practices aimed at ending a relationship, which can have a character of black magic, or fortune-telling and the search for specialists for countering magical attacks, which are mostly looked for in Slovakia (Hrdličková 2008, p. 34). In some way, these practices represent the religious and spiritual heritage, ‘a family silver’ of individual families, transmitted from generation to generation as a functional ethno-cultural tradition—quite like family cooking recipes. The forms of modernisation and innovation of these urban elite spiritual traditions are particularly interesting—for example, in the given area of love magic, the replacement of embroidered initials with inscriptions using a durable pen or marker has been documented, or, in the area of black magic, the substitution of a dying animal—as an object of manipulation with the aim to harm the targeted person—with other objects, such as tomato (Hrdličková 2008, p. 35). Likewise, it is no longer necessary to use the water from which a dead person was washed for black magic; the water which was in contact with an ill person can serve for the same purpose (Hrdličková 2008, p.  35). According to the findings of the given research, educated Roma in Prague also had the tendency of explaining

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the efficacy of magical practice by using an ultra-modern spiritual language and knowledge from the discourse of esoteric movements and their alternative cosmologies (Hrdličková 2008, p.  35). They also kept the belief in the returning spirits of deceased relatives—mulos (Kvízová 1999). A lovely example of a post-modern type of fully secular faith intertwined with traditional ethno-culturally anchored beliefs can be illustrated by an excerpt from the essay report written by M. Hübschmannová, which focused on the collection of narratives on mulos during her decades-long research among the Roma in Czechoslovakia. A friend of hers, a doctor of historical sciences of Roma origin, commented on his belief in mulos as follows: ‘Even though I know thousands of pieces of evidence proving that mulos do not exist, I will never get rid of completely irrational fear every time I walk alone in the night. I was raised up in the belief in mulos, I was nurtured by those scary stories which are so beautiful, so exciting. It is art! It is culture! (…) I am a faithful non-believer with a firm and sincere belief in mulos’ (Hübschmannová 2005, p.  174). (For the post-modern types of religiousness among the Roma in Slovakia, see Chap. 2.) Despite its alleged traditionalism and conservatism, the traditional Romani Christianity is very close to current ultra-modern forms of religiosity. It verbalises private themes; it practices religiosity outside official structures; it is acephalous; it does not require a temple, special time, place, or mediator; it is tailor-made and personal, and believes in miracles and the possibility of direct transcendental interventions—that is, direct and frequent action by divine persons and other beings in our mundane world. At the same time, it represents a common platform for communication and social control based on practices and narratives spread in smaller communities, which are engaged in the creation and reproduction of group forms of identification and belonging. This type of religious realisation is fully entitled to be called post-­modern (Podolinská 2009c, p.  226); while it does not matter whether it takes place ‘on the periphery’ or not. The cultural reinterpretation and community accommodation of mainstream religious narratives, including prompt local transcription of transcendent stories, suggests not only internal silent resistance and inertia but also prompt openness and situational flexibility, constant negotiations and creative interaction with the outside global modern world and its immediate surroundings. If post-modern religiosity is meant to be ‘itinerant and spoofery’, emphasising ‘discontinuity, randomness and reflexivity’ (Featherstone 1991), lacking the ambition of systematic interpretation, preferring ‘figural

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aesthetics’ (Lash 1990), ‘beauty of a daily life, dividing time into a set of perpetual presents’ (Jameson 1991), then, I believe, it is directly destined for the hands of the Roma. Marginal Centrality The groups that are minor in terms of statistics, occupying a symbolically eccentric position with regard to the imaginary centre of the core mainstream society, could be termed peripheral (Podolinská 2009a, p. 141). In addition, if they are deprived of voice and are socially stigmatised, their members may experience intense feelings of frustration and existential threat. The peripheral minority group may reflect the very fact that it finds itself in an eccentric position as a moment of threat (Podolinská 2009c, p. 227). The eccentric position is often directly linked to marginalisation, penalisation, stigmatisation, or persecution in the name of the overriding interest of the homogenisation of society (Podolinská 2009a, p. 142). The endangered peripheral minority group either chooses the path of ‘adaptation mimicry’, that is, merge with the external environment (adaptation type of collective identity), or creates a ‘cultural/ethnic/religious spore’ and encloses itself inwards (sporulation type of collective identity) (Podolinská 2009c, p. 227). In the event of existential threat, both strategies can be combined—the community chooses silence and invisibility in order to disappear off the radar of the mainstream society (Podolinská 2017a). Peripheral groups tend to build their own identities in a centric manner. The people whom the majority considers marginal or peripheral often place themselves at the centre of their parallel enclosed world. This world favours its own members on blood, ethnic, cultural, and religious principles, validating diversity, uniqueness, and exclusivity. It is the world with its own unwritten rules and its own centre; to a large degree, it is an inverted world, looking out from the centre and viewing the mainstream society as peripheral (Podolinská 2009a, pp. 142–143). (On the creation of parallel worlds of Roma communities based on group consensus, see also Uherek 2010.) When attempting to approach Romani religious culture, we could effectively begin with the premise that due to the external circumstances, the feeling of threat and complicated possibilities of endogenous

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development, Roma groups in Slovakia construct their religious identities in the manner of a peripheral group. Since the mainstream population in Slovakia is primarily Christian and predominantly Catholic, Slovak Catholicism continues to serve in the twenty-first century as a platform on which the Roma, as a peripheral minority group, negotiate their position within the mainstream society. Additionally, it serves as a basis on which they continue their traditional religiousness within the community. The openness and dynamics regarding their choice of strategy for adaptation, mimicry, or cultural sporulation depend also on the degree of the internal perception of the external threat to the group. In this regard, Christianity continues to perform its function of both integration and segregation. At the same time, it is instrumental in the integration of various Romani communities as well as heterogeneous ethnic sub-groups into the meta-group community of the Roma (Marushiakova and Popov 1999, p. 87). The experience of marginality in the outer world is balanced within the experience of the world of community, offering the feeling of exceptionality, uniqueness, and exclusiveness, flavoured with a taste of a secret that can be experienced only by internal members of the group (Podolinská 2009a, p. 142). In communities which are an inherent part of local religious and cultural traditions, the Roma, in a very modern way, position themselves in the ‘centre’, with their unique, inherited, and transgenerationally transmitted system of values and rules, into which the traditional Christian transcendencies—God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary—are fluidly embedded as important pillars.

Apparitions Among the Roma At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Mary and the belief in her have greatly strengthened among the Roma in Slovakia. This trend corresponds to the general re-strengthening of Marian devotion among the non-Roma population of Slovakia in which Mary—as the patroness of Slovakia, known as Our Lady of Seven Sorrows—celebrates her big comeback (Zachar Podolinská 2019a, p. 48; see Chap. 2). The post-communist rehabilitation and top popularity of Marian devotion in Slovakia can be documented by the great revival of Marian places of pilgrimage—out of thirty-three places of pilgrimage in Slovakia, only two are not Marian (Fekete 1947). Since the fall of Communism, we have also witnessed an

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unprecedented boom of Marian dedications—as of 2009, there had been a 23% increase since the period between 1980 and 1984 (Majo 2019). While Marian piety within the non-Roma population—apart from Marian devotion at home—is demonstrated mostly through visits to national Marian places (Šaštín–Stráže, Levoča, Gaboltov, Marianka) associated with healing springs (Staré Hory, Litmanová, Turzovka, Mariánska hora near Levoča, Marianka, Nová Ves nad Žitavou, Kohútovo, Úhorná, Lehota near Nitra, etc.), places of miraculous statues and merciful pictures (Trnava, Gaboltov, Dunajská Lužná, etc.), as well as unofficial places of Marian apparitions (Litmanová, Turzovka–Živčáková, Dechtice, Lehota near Nitra, etc.), the Roma experience a proliferation of private apparitions directly in their homes, near chapels or crosses, or outdoors in nature. The Virgin Mary appears on TV screens, in wood carvings, on the walls of modest Roma dwellings, on the glass doors of stoves, or on furniture— simply said, directly in the middle of ordinary daily life. Apparitions According to Media Reports In recent years, thanks largely to increased media interest, information on private apparitions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus in various locations with a higher concentration of the Roma population in Slovakia have been made publicly known and available also on the Internet. As part of the wider context, a brief thematic search of media reports, including an outline of their typical or common thematic elements will be offered, mirroring the reactions of various actors that take part in production of the social representations of apparitions among the Roma. Below is a list in chronological order of apparitions recorded by Slovak media, which have taken place in Roma environments over the last decades: the apparition of Jesus’ silhouette on the plaster of the wall in a house in Hlinné (1997); the witnessing of Jesus’ silhouette for two nights during a full moon in Šarišské Jastrabie (2009); the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the rings of a cut tree trunk, as seen by the Roma living at Pod Laščíkom (2009); the recognition of Jesus’ silhouette in the rings of the tree trunk in Č aklov (2010); the apparition of the image of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and of an angel on the glass door of a fireplace in Hencovce (2011); the apparition of the Virgin Mary’s silhouette on a wall outside a house in Handlová (2011); the apparition of Jesus’ silhouette on the glass of an electric stove door in Batizovce (2016); the apparition of Jesus on the glass of a stove door in Petrová (2018); the apparition of Jesus on a wall

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of a house in a Roma colony near the village of Zemplínska Teplica (2018); the apparition of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary on a cupboard door in Turň a nad Bodvou (2018); and the apparition of Christ and Satan on a furniture door in Moldava nad Bodvou (2019). The most recent apparition reported by the media is that of the Virgin Mary on a TV screen in July 2019  in Zborov. The media reports include the ‘apparition of a demon’ in Vyšná Kamenica (2011) and the apparition of a ‘supernatural picture of mysterious eyes’ in Č irča (2017). Even though the media reports on apparitions presented only fragments of the testimonies of eyewitnesses, these often have a highly informative value, mirroring not only traditional Roma religious notions: ‘We believe that (…) all of us will go to heaven’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009), but also an implicit and declamatorily negated fear: ‘However, we’re not afraid of God, because He’s our love’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009). In the majority of documented cases, the Roma faced rejection by the local religious and secular authorities (Hlinné 1997, Pod Laščíkom 2009, ̌ Caklov 2010, Hencovce 2011, Batizovce 2016). Some news reports captured the feelings of frustration of the Roma from the non-acceptance by the local religious or secular authority: ‘We were not taken seriously, telling us that it was nonsense. I know that the priest doesn’t like us, the Roma, and that’s why he didn’t receive us’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009). Unlike the local authorities, the Roma usually inclined to come to an immediate collective consensus on the recognition of the questioned events as true apparitions (Batizovce 2016, Šarišské Jastrabie 2009). The places where apparitions occurred instantly turned into improvised places of spontaneous cult (Pod Laščíkom 2009, Handlová 2011, Batizovce 2016, Petrová 2018), and attracted even non-Roma believers: ‘The Roma from Hlinné, as well as hundreds of tourists, were coming to pray at the house for several weeks’ (Hlinné, 1997). The most recent apparition reported by the media is that of the Virgin Mary on a TV screen in Zborov near Bardejov in July 2019. Here is a shortened citation from the media report: ‘(…) The family was watching the MTV channel on a plasma television. The left half of the screen suddenly turned black and a strangely perfect female face appeared in the right half of the screen. The family and the people in the settlement considered it the apparition of the Virgin Mary (…). All of them discuss it excitedly, many of them cry or fall on their knees and pray ­earnestly.

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(…) Real apparition? (…) Warning for the settlement and the settlers to stop living as they do today, or the manifestation of the protective hand directly from heaven? Or just (…) a television failure?’ (Markíza 1, 2019).

In less than a week from the initial broadcast of the original report, the Slovak television station Markíza posted a report of ‘rational explanation’ on its Facebook profile, thus illustrating not only the overall dislike by the Slovak mainstream society of acknowledging Roma apparitions as such, but also the tendency of not respecting their religious code of interpretation of unusual phenomena, connected with deep Roma belief in the direct and everyday interventions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus in our lives. ‘(…) The settlers from Zborov near Bardejov thought that the face of Jesus’ mother appeared on their television screen. (…) The viewers on the social network … realised after the publishing of the report that it was no miracle, but just a paused music video from the Canadian singer…’ (Markíza 2, February 2019).

Even though each of these apparitions has a different context, what is common for most documented apparitions is that they occurred in the intimate environment of Roma private households (wall of a house, furniture door, door of a stove or fireplace, television screen) or in their immediate vicinity (wood logs in the house exterior). The objects where the apparitions appeared—despite their previous profane function—now became objects of worship and are no longer used for their original purpose. Media reports on the apparitions, despite being fragmentary with minimum qualitative statements, show certain common features or tendencies and common thematic elements: (a) The interpretation of (unusual) events within the religious code: ‘…they are convinced of having seen Christ in real life’ (Hlinné, 1997); ‘The Roma from Pod Lašcˇíkom are convinced…’ (Pod Lašcˇíkom, 2009); ‘The plaster created an image which the locals consider an apparition’ (Handlová, 2011); ‘The locals believe it was an apparition’ (Batizovce, 2016); (b) An ambivalent attitude to what the person has seen (joy and happiness, deep emotion, as well as confusion and fear): ‘We’re happy that God’s Son came to visit us!’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009); ‘I literally shuddered’ (Pod Laščíkom, 2009); ‘I think the Virgin Mary appeared to us, but I

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don’t know why it happened in our house’ (Handlová 2011); ‘It moved many of them to tears’ (Batizovce 2016); ‘Though they believe in miracles, they don’t want to have them at home’ (Moldava nad Bodvou, 2019); ‘…many of them cry’ (Zborov 2019; Markíza 1, 2019); ‘Ever since, the locals pray to avoid anything bad’, and ‘This image appeared suddenly, which scared the owners of the house a lot. (…) They think it was an apparition and that someone wanted to tell them something, yet they do not know whether to expect good news or bad news’ (Cˇircˇa, 2017); (c) Spontaneous internal acceptance of the apparition (within the local Roma community): ‘They immediately brought candles and made an altar on the electrical fuse box, to which they now come to pray’ (Handlová, 2011); ‘The people from the settlement trust in the apparition’ (Batizovce, 2016); (d) Collective reaction and sharing of the apparition (improvised altars, places for prayer): ‘The Roma from Hlinné and hundreds of tourists came to pray at the house for several weeks’ (Hlinné, 1997); ‘It is said that all people in the settlement began to pray firmly’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009); ‘[deacon]: The trunk was lying in the grass near the church, and since its discovery, it has been surrounded by praying Roma every day’ (Cˇ aklov, 2010); ‘Kneeling at the stove, the settlers recited prayers’, or ‘People were coming in crowds to the house in which the stove was situated’, or ‘…prayed at the stove until eight in the morning’, and ‘They placed statues of the Virgin Mary and a picture of Jesus on the stove, turning the kitchen into a prayer room’ (Batizovce 2016); ‘…the locals began to pray regularly’ (Zemplínska Teplica 2018); ‘All of them discuss it excitedly, many of them cry or fall on their knees and pray earnestly’ (Zborov 2019; Markíza 1, 2019); (e) Search for internal and external authorities to confirm authenticity (either of religious or non-religious nature—priest, mayor, and media): ‘When I found out what it was, I asked my friend who was helping me whether he saw anything’ (Pod Laščíkom, 2009); ‘The citizens of Handlová decided to call the priest’ (Handlová, 2011); ‘The inhabitants of the settlement spoke about the unusual situation to their mayor and their priest’ (Zemplínska Teplica, 2018); ‘The family of H. from Moldava nad Bodvou has asked the local priest for help’ (Moldava nad Bodvou, 2019);

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(f) (Usually) a reserved or negative attitude from external authorities: ‘The Church is reserved in such matters’ (Hlinné, 1997); ‘I know that the priest doesn’t like us, the Roma, and that’s why he didn’t receive us’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009); ‘[deacon]: In my opinion, however, these are no supernatural interventions or apparitions…’ (Pod Laščíkom, 2009); ‘The angry priest ordered them to go to church instead’ (Cˇaklov, 2010); ‘However, the mayor of Hencovce… wiped off the picture and told them to see him when it appeared again’ (Hencovce, 2011); ‘The deacon of Prievidza … did not wish to comment on the apparition on the wall of the house in the colony’ (Handlová, 2011); ‘However, the Orthodox priest calls for caution’ (Batizovce, 2016); ‘[parish administrator]: And so I told them… that we are, of course, reserved about such situations, and asked them to wait a week or so’ (Zemplínska Teplica, 2018); (g) Back search for the causes of apparition (the motif of collective ‘chosenness’, as well as the state of poverty or illness of a concrete person): ‘They were said to be blessed with this because they have a handicapped child’ (Hencovce, 2011); ‘…believed that Jesus appeared to them in order to relieve them from their misery’ (Batizovce 2016); ‘The apparition is said to be related to the disease of their mother’ (Moldava nad Bodvou, 2019); (h) Seeking the message of the apparition (protection of the people living in the village, healing of concrete persons): ‘We believe that He will come to see us again and that all of us will go to heaven’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009); ‘The people in the colony believe that the apparition would protect them from misfortune. M. hopes that it would scare all bad people away,—“those who steal here, drink alcohol and argue”—, her mother believes in the healing of her ill mother-in-law’ (Handlová 2011); ‘They believe that Jesus appeared to them in order to encourage them’ (Batizovce, 2016); (i) Feeling of duty (the tendency to set up an altar or a chapel at the place of the apparition or to search for a dignified place for the apparition medium): ‘The local Roma would like to exhibit the door of the stove in the church’ (Batizovce, 2016); ‘We want him [the priest] to come and see, consecrate this place and build a chapel for us to pray’ (Handlová, 2011); ‘I [deacon] found around fifty people there, standing at a makeshift altar with two logs of rounded wood on top of it’ (Pod Laščíkom, 2009); as well as feelings of duty as a need to ‘do better’

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collectively in the form of intensified faith and improved interpersonal relationships: ‘…they promised to do better’ and ‘…we promise that we shall forever be good believers and that we shall only do good…’ (Šarišské Jastrabie, 2009); (j) The main ‘apparition’ is sometimes accompanied by accompanying apparitions or signs or other ‘supernatural’ phenomena, which is perceived by the eyewitnesses as confirmation of the authenticity of the apparition. ‘Moreover, they say there were some more subsequent apparitions’ (Zemplínska Teplica, 2018). The media reports (in exceptional cases) also captured apparitions of demonic beings and of the Devil: ‘Some see the lines of the Devil in the bottom right-hand corner’ (Zborov 2019; Markíza 1, 2019); ‘The faces of Jesus Christ and Satan appeared on a cupboard in Eastern Slovakia’ (Moldava nad Bodvou 2019); ‘…the apparition of the Demon which scared the Roma in November 2011’ (Vyšná Kamenica, 2011). Private Apparitions: A Qualitative Perspective Since the Roma are prone to believing in direct interventions of God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary in our lives, they report on personal private apparitions quite frequently (Djurišičová 2003, p.  108; Kovács 2003, p. 61). A. Botošová even observed personal prayers for the apparition of Lord God among the Roma in Lomnička: ‘Deloro av ke mande, kamav tut te dikhel!’ [Rom., ‘Little God, come to me, I love you, please, appear to me!’] (Botošová 2003, p. 75). The phenomenon of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, God, and Jesus among the Roma in Slovakia has been documented by various researchers: Z.  Palubová (2001); A.  Kovács (2003); D.  Djurišičová (2003); and T. Zachar Podolinská (2019b). A.  Kovács (2003)  documented two apparitions of God among the Roma in Bôrka, which he paraphrased as follows: ‘A Roma man was hiding (in a cave or in a cottage) near the Roma settlement of Pod Kameň om [Slov., ‘Under the Rock’] because of debts; when he suddenly saw a big light approaching, and then he talked to God. But instead of praying to Him, he began to curse Him because He had not given him anything and he thus had a tough life, etc. Because of such behaviour and insults, as a punishment, his wife gave birth to a stillborn child. A big

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glare and light were also seen by the entire Roma street at Pod Kameň om’ (Kovács 2003, p. 61).

In another documented case, at an unspecified place in Bôrka, a Roma woman saw God approaching, accompanied by three stars. She was so frightened that she stood still, speechless. According to the general opinion, people should pray in such cases and beg God whatever they may wish (Kovács 2003, p. 61). D.  Djurišičová documented a private apparition of Jesus Christ in a Roma household in Poštárka near Bardejov. Jesus, through a Roma woman to whom he appeared, addressed a collective message to the Roma ‘to repent’. He subsequently talked to the woman and prophesied how many years she would live. As a reward, the woman brought flowers to Jesus and lit candles in front of his picture. Jesus appeared to her again and expressed his satisfaction with her behaviour: “I went to the picture, kneeled down, prayed. …Jesus appeared to me and talked to me, normally as you do. He told me to order the people in the neighbourhood to repent. (…) I asked Him how long I would live. He told me: ‘You shall live until you reach 65 years of age, and once you are 65, you shall die’. (…) …I told Jesus that I would buy candles and flowers and light them. …I bought candles and flowers, brought them home and lit them. …He talked to me again. Twice in the same day! He told me: ‘I am glad that you are righteous, I am satisfied; you did what you said, I owe you, purity’. And this is enough for me, I do not want anything else, not even money, nothing, just health and purity, I do not want anything else” (Poštárka—Djurišičová 2003, p. 108).

At a Roma location in the municipality of Zborov, D. Djurišičová also recorded a testimony about a collective apparition of Jesus Christ, accompanied by an appeal to intensify the church’s expression of faith also with collective punishment, which was directed against the ‘White’: ‘[We saw] Jesus, He was holding a cross, various things, a crown on His head; the whole Vatrisko [Slov., ‘Big Fire’] saw it. At that time, we began to believe, since the entire population of Vatrisko was sitting there. Nothing that would happen, that would help us, that we’d feel different. Nothing has happened ever since, nothing at all. For a year or half-year, we felt as if He was breathing on us. I feel thrilled even now. Because I myself was crying as I saw it. …It was around six o’clock in the afternoon. The entire population of Vatrisko. There was some film on TV—Funes—and nobody saw anything, just the boys that were

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playing here saw something, something happening in the sky; and then they began going around, telling each Gypsy—come and see! It did not take long. Maybe around 10–15 minutes. (…) And then hailstones began to rain down. They did not cause so much damage to us, Gypsies. But as for the White like you, they destroyed their roofs, and there was a debate going on that nothing happened to us [Roma] and that it caused damage to them [non-Roma] (…)’ (Djurišičová 2003, p. 111).

Among the Roma in Bijacovce, Z. Palubová documented the motif of religious interpretation of a natural disaster—flood and a devastating ice storm—as a result of the failure to give water to Jesus, who was wandering around as a shabbily dressed old man. ‘…And then water came on us, with balls of ice falling from the sky. The roof-­ tiles of all those living there flew away, it even took their houses. Nothing happened, however, to that woman who gave water to Jesus. And she came home and gazed, she even had money there, with glasses, and everything. Jesus arranged it in this way. This really happened!’ (Bijacovce— Palubová 2001, pp. 86–87).

An alternative story about punishment in the form of a flood/hailstorm as a result of refusing the wandering Christ circulated among the Roma in Levoča and Ordzovany as well (Palubová 2001, p. 87; see also a motif of a flood as a legend fairy-tale, Hübschmannová 1999, pp. 288–291). Similarly, the Roma in Hermanovce and Jarovnice connected the big flood, which claimed more than fifty human lives (especially children), with the motif of a monk who was said to be treated badly by some Roma in the village (Šebková 2001; Podolinská research 2006). The Roma interpreted their later misfortune as God’s punishment. On this occasion, as a certain form of penitence and apotropaic protection, an entire series of home-made frescos was created—in house interiors and on the façade of a house in one case—depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Holy Family (see also the Supplement of Figures in Kováč and Mann 2003). During my research, I encountered several private apparitions of the Virgin Mary among the Roma—eight stories altogether of various lengths—which usually resulted in the creation of private family chapels or small altars, either directly within the house (at the place where the Virgin Mary appeared) or on the house’s façade. They also encouraged the locals to paint a picture or build a chapel in the street in front of the house or in the garden around the house, or even erect a statue or cross.

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The encounters with the people who talked about the apparition of the Virgin Mary were also varied. However, one common feature for all of them was the ambivalent feelings of chosenness (‘It was me whom She appeared to!’), fear (‘How would my family and my greater surroundings receive it?’), and, at the same time, the compulsive urge to share the apparition with others by talking about it. The majority of the apparitions that I recorded resulted in the delegation of some kind of duties for the persons chosen for/affected by the apparition—they were requested by the Virgin Mary to do something special, that is, to erect a cross (Jarovnice, Svinia), build a chapel (Hermanovce, Abranovce, Žehň a, Malý Slivník–Furmanec), paint a holy picture (Jarovnice, Svinia, etc.), or commence missionary activities among the Roma (Hermanovce), and so on. Some of the seers explicitly complained that Mary ‘did not let them rest until they fulfilled her request’. Private Marian Apparition: From the Periphery to the Centre As for the Marian apparitions that I have had the opportunity to hear and document so far, the apparition in Hermanovce, in 2006, has been my strongest emotional encounter with the Romani Virgin Mary. (For the entire apparition, as well as for a discursive and thematic analysis, including my field journal notes, see Zachar Podolinská 2019b.) In 2006, I recorded a spontaneous narrative on a private Marian apparition with the seer Kristína, a middle-aged Roma woman, who shared her small two-­ room shack with three nuclear families (twelve people altogether). Our conversation took place in her shack and lasted approximately three hours, with one longer break due to my departure for the hospital with her daughter-in-law to see a new-born baby. When I informed Kristína about the topic of my research (documentation of religious iconography within the domestic devotion among the Roma), Kristína spontaneously approached a wall in her house—with a small, handmade clay chapel and a statue of the Virgin Mary decorated with artificial flowers—and began talking about the apparition she had witnessed. Kristína herself perceived the apparition as ‘something’ very individual and private, veiled by a secret that she herself had not fully understood (and still does not understand), and which was a source of ambivalent

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feelings—such as anxiety, fear, personal and discomfort, but also a source of great personal satisfaction, joy, feeling of chosenness and religious fulfilment. Instead of the term ‘apparition’, Kristína used the term ‘vision’ (Slov., videnie). She also distinguished the apparition itself (using the personal pronoun it) from the very being of the Virgin Mary herself (using the personal pronoun She). From a strictly chronological perspective, her visions began after the local flood in 1998 (which caused massive damage and loss of life), by the appearance of various signs, symbols, ‘numbers’, and ‘letters’ on different parts of the wall in Kristína’s dwelling. Kristína emphasised several times that at the beginning, she did not understand ‘what it was about’. The way the apparition occurred frightened her at first, causing her and her entire family emotional stress, as a result of which her husband destroyed the very first ‘apparition’, that is, shape of the Virgin Mary on the wall in the interior of their house. Besides the Virgin Mary, shapes of cross and rosary also appeared on another wall in their house. Here, Kristína later built a home chapel with her own hands. In her narration, the ‘apparition’ was not a matter of a single vision, but rather a process of recurrent apparitions or revelations during the daytime, in full consciousness. In addition, Kristína had two personal visions of the Virgin Mary in her dream. There was also an apparition of the Virgin Mary on the TV screen, which was seen and testified by other eyewitnesses as well. Kristína perceived these various phenomena also as symbolic messages that she sought to understand. Since she did not always manage to do so by herself, she first called the people from her internal environment (sister-­ in-­law, husband, friend), as well as religious and other authorities from the mainstream environment. She allowed the place of apparition of the Virgin Mary on the wall plaster in her dwelling to be consecrated by a local Catholic priest, as well as the chapel with the statue of the Virgin Mary on that wall (Zachar Podolinská 2019b, pp. 317–318). What I consider symptomatic in her narration about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary is that Kristína often applied the ethnic code. Based on a thematic analysis—eleven times altogether in the course of the interview. In this sense, she regarded all the ‘White’ (non-Roma) as a hierarchically superior authority for confirmation purposes vis-á-vis the persons from her ‘internal’ (Roma) environment.

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One of the messages sent through the apparition—which was interpreted to her by the ‘White’ and accepted by her—was an appeal for personal evangelisation of the local Roma (‘teach the local Roma to pray’). In this regard, her narration also suggested a certain disillusion, both because of the low intensity of the church involvement of the local Roma and the group non-acceptance of ‘her apparition’ (‘They [Roma] are laughing at me!’). As a proof of the authenticity of her apparition, Kristína emphasised that several ‘White’ believed in her apparition (‘They [non-Roma] came here to pray’). Another confirming element of her narration was a sequence of the accompanying apparitions in which God communicated with the members of her family, thus confirming the authenticity of her personal apparition of the Virgin Mary. She also felt relieved after the meeting with another collectively approved and, hence, not officially church-recognised seer—Iveta from Litmanová—who (indirectly) confirmed the authenticity of her apparition. Kristína’s detailed and ethnically tinged description of the appearance of the Virgin Mary and Jesus is also extremely interesting. According to her description, both the Virgin Mary and Jesus in her visions have a dark complexion, that is, differ from commonly available representations of the Virgin Mary and Jesus being ‘White’—which Kristína considers to be a kind of implicit verification of her visions. Interestingly enough, despite the Roma-like physical appearance, Kristína’s (Chocolate) Virgin Mary always addresses her in Slovak while Kristína replies in Romani (Zachar Podolinská 2019b, p. 318). In addition, Kristína’s testimony directly suggests that the apparition brought to her an extra skill of fortune-telling to other persons, and caused also her miraculous healing from severe pneumonia. Kristína also believes that, as a direct consequence of the apparition, she was able to stop by a simple prayer the torrential rain that threatened to bring another flood. The apparition itself resulted in the intensification of her religious faith and church involvement (participation at pilgrimages), as well as strengthening of her positive contacts with the majority. The key topic of Kristína’s narration was her effort to achieve group recognition of ‘her apparition’. Another topical moment was her emphasis placed on ethnicity. Kristína felt accepted more by ‘external’ authorities (the ‘White’ people) rather than by the internal members of her community (local Roma). The impact of the apparition on Kristína’s life in terms of change in her value system (intensification of her faith), but also the

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ability of fortune-telling, miraculous healing and ability of miraculous stopping of the flood were also important thematic pillars of her narrative. Emotions, surprisingly, were less present. However, the power and intensity of these emotions should be stressed, as they were still active and able to evoke strong emotions, not only by the narrator herself but also with the present audience. Kristína herself fits perfectly well into the general concept of Mary’s preference for appearing on the ‘periphery’ (Turner 1975). An illiterate woman from a socially deprived and ethnically stigmatised community of Cigáni with almost no income forced daily to improvise and make decisions on how to make a living out of nothing with twelve or more people depending upon her. The general definition of an ‘apparition’ claims that a vision includes several components: the seers, the authorities, those who interpret the visions, and those who admit them (Christian 1998, p. 107). Thus, visions are cultural products that strongly depend on a collective consensus (Christian 1998). The vast majority of apparitions is not ‘successful’. Only a minimum number of seers achieve public recognition and collective consensus, and only a very few apparitions have the power to move masses. In this context, Kristína’s case represents the fate of most apparitions in a very exemplary way. Since the visions began to appear, Kristína has launched her struggle for their collective and public recognition. The story of her apparition thus contains the well-known part of the path of other ‘successful visionaries’—‘from the periphery to the centre’—that is, from marginal private/individual apparition to central public/mass recognition. From the edge of the periphery, Kristína continues her daily struggle for survival and for the recognition, not only for herself but, first of all, for Mary. Here, another story of a modern Marian apparition among the Roma can be mentioned—this time, a successful one. During the first years of the millennium, the Romanian village of Seuca [Rom., ‘Szőkefalva’] became an internationally recognised place of pilgrimage because of the visions of a blind Roma woman. According to L. Peti’s fieldwork, in post-­ communist Seuca, which is historically a multi-confessional and multi-­ ethnic, culturally divergent village, the apparition to a simple Roma woman—Rószika Marian—in the first years of the new millennium, was successful thanks to the positive reaction and pro-active agency of local religious elite representatives, especially of the Roman Catholic Church (Peti 2019). Nevertheless, thanks to symbolic tensions between the

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ethnically and religiously divided local communities, each of them appropriates the apparition in a different way—that is, they do not accept the entire apparition as it is, but only certain elements of it (Peti 2019, p. 341). Thus, during the process of legitimisation of the apparition, the Virgin Mary of Seuca has undergone collective re-evaluation of the meanings and, nowadays, She possesses an individual name, rendering and symbolism (Peti 2019, p. 333). However multi-cultural and ethnically neutrally tuned messages of The Virgin Mary of Seuca are, She is continuously negotiated, appropriated, and expropriated, expressing the symbolic religious and ethnic rivalry of local communities and groups. The Virgin Mary of Seuca is thus a very nice, though so far rare example of how a Marian apparition to a seer of Roma origin can be successful. However, Seuca’s case also manifests that both the agency of the elites and collective consensus (manifested in, e.g., collective judgement and selective blindness) are crucial for the process of recognition and legitimisation of any apparition. Seuca’s Virgin Mary, however, is far from being ‘Chocolate’, either in the sense of her physical appearance or in the sense of her speaking for the Roma, protecting their cultural and ethnic rights in particular. In Kristína’s opinion, she was not successful on her private journey ‘from the periphery to the centre’. However, she does not blame herself for this failure. She somehow understands that the apparition is not just an ‘object-from-heaven’, but also an ‘object-in-the-world’. It exists and interacts in a mundane world as not only mediated and communicated through the personality of the seer, but also radically dependent on, transformed and reshaped through the ears and eyes of the audience. Kristína perfectly understands that the acceptance of the apparition primarily depends on the openness and willingness of the given community (or broader society) to listen to her and accept her story as a true apparition, and her as a true seer. What Kristína does not know is that the process of recognition of apparitions is connected also with the policy of a religious readymade event as it reappears instrumentally in time, which is also anchored in propagation, the liberal use of the event’s formatting and reformatting, as well as the strategical interests of the elites and their institutions (Zachar Podolinská 2019b, p. 326). The way ‘from the periphery to the centre’ is definitively not simple or linear. In Kristína’s periphery, Mary has at least achieved the position of ‘marginal centrality’. Kristína made Mary central within her single life. In

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her small shack full of children and flies, Kristína offered Mary the most precious place she had—her heart.

Marginal or Emancipated Mary? Even though the Virgin Mary often comes to voice the concerns of groups who feel threatened with respect to ethnic rights (Halemba 2016), the Roma in Slovakia have not yet achieved recognition within the mainstream society, either with or without the help of the Virgin Mary. Central Mary For a member of a peripheral group—experiencing existential forms of threat (poverty and social exclusion) and feelings of symbolic threat from the outside (stigmatisation and marginalisation by the majority), as well as through potential feelings of threat from the inside (magical attacks by conflicting families or harmful activities by their own deceased relatives), fuelled by constant private fear from a potential divine sanction in the event of individual breach of the ‘mutual contract’ with God—the possibility of effective protection is extremely important. In traditional Catholic Roma communities, Mary is the embodiment of such protection. She provides effective protection against the mulos, spells, and curses, as well as God’s punishment. She combats malevolent beings and harmful powers and protects new-borns as well as all members of the family. Mary protects against diseases and heals the sick ones, caring for the health and well-­ being of the family. As a member of the Holy Family, She, as the Holy Mother, represents the female divine principle. She binds the community with female love and tenderness, representing thus the counterbalance to the male community-­ binding principle—fear and punishment. In addition to offering protective shelter, She herself is a powerful enchantress, overseeing and supporting love magic and miraculous healings. Thus, in Slovakia, Mary is one of the important pillars of Roma group consciousness. At the same time, She represents the heart of Roma religious traditions in Slovakia, which are connected to stars, flowers, nature, healing springs, and miracles. Her statues miraculously weep (Bystrany— Podolinská research 2007), and her figure is miraculously imprinted into the melting wax of candles (Palubová 2001, p. 85). She performs healing miracles as do her healing springs (Bystrany—Podolinská research 2007;

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Palubová 2001). She is the Mistress of Flowers, Ruler of Nature; She defeats the Devil (see Chap. 3). Still, She appears vulnerable and human, very much like an ordinary Roma woman who brings her closer to the people devoted to her. Pentecostal Peripheralisation of Mary It is also for this reason that Mary becomes the first target of attack by Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal movements which, after the fall of Communism, began to operate among the Roma in Slovakia with great success (Plachá 2007; Švecová 2008; Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, 2011, 2014; Podolinská 2009b, 2015, 2017b). Until recently, a variety of Neo-­ Protestant, Baptist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic denominations have been active among the Roma in Slovakia (for numbers and localities, see Podolinská and Hrustič 2010, 2011) and their number is still growing. The new Evangelical denominations come with an attractive programme, promising the Roma people not only to get out of the vicious circle of poverty but offering them also ethnic emancipation on a religious principle. In this respect, particularly Pentecostals provide an alternative, that is, Biblical ethnogenesis, offering the Roma a substitution of their ethnic identity for a religious one, appealing on the breaking away from the old ‘Gypsy story’ with a negative track record (Podolinská 2009b, 2015, 2017b). In terms of religion, the new faith comes with radical rewriting and ‘correction’ of the religious architecture of traditional Romani Christianity: (a) it brings a different concept of miracles, which is newly interpreted as ‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’; (b) it also comes with a competitive offer of a health programme for Roma families (attaching hands, group prayers for miraculous healing through the Holy Spirit, etc.); (c) it offers as well an alternative type of protection against the mulos and magical attacks. Pastors also preach against the apotropaic interpretation of baptisms and funeral rites, appealing also to Roma couples to officialise their marital relationships. However, the main attack by Pentecostals is directed against the Virgin Mary. During my fieldwork in Eastern and Western Slovakia, I often heard several leaders of Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal Roma assemblies calling on Roma believers to eradicate the elements of ‘false belief’. When addressing their new converts and their pre-conversion spiritual life, leaders repeatedly attacked three pillars of traditional Romani Christianity: (a) the

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cult of the Virgin Mary; (b) anthropomorphism (‘idolatry’)—expressed in Roma household’s religious decorativism (holy corners, domestic altars, and devotion of holy pictures); and (c) strong belief in revenants—mulos (Podolinská 2014, p. 161). This can be illustrated by a quote from a meeting of the Romani Christian assembly Maranata in Spišská Nová Ves, in Eastern Slovakia: ‘We, the Roma, are prone to believe that pictures and statues are alive. It is a mistake! These are only pictures. Do you think that Mary looks like the one you have in the picture at home? But why then does she look differently in your neighbour’s picture? And if I visited you at home now and burned that picture and broke the statues, do you think Mary would die? Those who have done it, raise your hands! Excellent! And the rest of you who have not done it yet because you’re afraid, go home and do it! And you’ll see what will happen! I assure you that nothing will happen. Mary lived and Mary died, a long time ago!’ (Podolinská 2014, p. 161).

Another excerpt from a sermon of the Slovo života [Word of Life] movement in Plavecký Štvrtok (2011) illustrates the pastoral discourse aimed to outroot the fear of mulos among the local Roma: “Nobody will protect you against the mulos. Not even Mary, nor Jesus. Nobody, just you alone. There are no mulos, there are only Satan’s delusions. When you think on your own: ‘Step back Satan, you have no power over me!’, you’ll see that He will disappear!” (Podolinská 2014, p. 161).

Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal movements operating among the Roma in Slovakia thus come with an offer that strongly competes with the traditional competencies of the Virgin Mary (miracles, healing, and protection). By depriving Mary of her divine face, they remove her from the position of an unwritten, yet recognised member of the Holy Trinity, while rehabilitating the originally excluded member of the Holy Trinity— the Holy Spirit. Mary thus finds herself in religious isolation and is set aside to the periphery as a human figure of only marginal importance (Podolinská 2014, p. 162). Along with the statues and pictures of the Virgin Mary, the converted Roma are also said to get rid of many Catholic religious notions and practices that form the heart of local Roma religious cultures and community traditions. This may cause the disruption of community cohesion and social architecture of the whole community (Podolinská 2003), resulting

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in radical redefinition of social networks based on the introduction of a new religious narrative (Podolinská 2009b, 2015, 2017b). The peripheralisation of Mary as such, which is perceived in the communities with an on-going evangelical mission as an important religious marker, may thus be a source of tensions and cause significant polarisation within Roma ̌ communities (Plavecký Štvrtok—Podolinská 2003; Žehra–Dobrá Vôla— Podolinská research 2007; Rudň any—Podolinská research 2009; Podolinská 2014). Moreover, Mary, now merely one of several figures in the history of Christianity, loses not only her divine power, but also her ethnic and cultural colouring: ‘Do you want to be asked about the colour of your skin when seeking a job? No! Then do not ask what colour of skin Mary has. White, black, Slovak, Roma… the colour of skin makes no difference!’ (excerpt from a sermon by a Roma lay priest of the Maranata movement, Rudň any 2010—Podolinská 2014, p. 162).

The Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal movements thus unambiguously take over the initiative with respect to the internal ethnic emancipation of the Roma, raising their meta-group ethnic awareness. They thus become leaders of negotiation of the post-modern reformulation of the Roma meta-group identity on the religious, yet exclusively Neo-Protestant, Evangelical principle. The ethnicised and enculturated Romani Virgin Mary—the Chocolate Mary—is thus preventively deprived of this competence and is radically excluded from her potential role as a transcendent ethnic emancipator of the Roma people in the twenty-first century (at least those Roma whose group identity is built on the Christian principles). Ironically, the potential birth, formulation and successful development of the Chocolate Mary as the voice of internal Romani emancipation in Slovakia was seriously endangered by the great revival of religiosity and religious pluralism in Slovakia after the fall of Communism in the late decades of the twentieth century, related to the arrival of Neo-Protestant Evangelical movements.

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Mary’s Story in the Twenty-First Century What will Mary’s story in the Roma communities in Slovakia be like in the twenty-first century? Will Mary call on the Roma to become Christians in a ‘white-like’ way, increasing their church involvement and getting rid of ‘unorthodox’ notions and practices? Or, will She deplore the gadje to become ‘true Christians’, measuring religiosity not by the number of church attendances, but from ‘the heart’, offering their Roma neighbours the same love as themselves? Can we expect the forming of a Slovak Catholic wave of the Romani emancipation movement under the banner of the Virgin Mary, building the Roma meta-ethnic group narrative in a religious, that is, Catholic way? Will Mary raise her voice in order to protect the Roma and fight for their ethnic and cultural rights, including the right for otherness, equal approach, and recognition of human value and dignity? Shall we see in the twenty-first century a publicly recognised, ‘Chocolate’ version of the Virgin Mary which, in the sense of a broader acceptance of some Roma private apparitions, will help the Roma move away from their silence and invisible position on the periphery? Or can we rather expect that, along with the growing Neo-Protestant and Pentecostal mission among the Roma in Slovakia, the model of building ethnic identity on the Evangelical principle will prevail, which will significantly weaken Mary’s position, depriving her also of her traditional role of being a healer, protector, and miracle-maker? Observing the global success of Neo-Protestant, Pentecostal, and Charismatic mission and particularly the extreme success of Pentecostal, Neo-Pentecostal, and Charismatic movements among the Roma in Europe and in Latin America, we can assume that the latter scenario would be more likely. On the other hand, when observing the global victory of modern conquest of the European Mary (Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, etc.), which successfully takes root in ethnically and culturally divergent soils, as well as the path of the Dark-Skinned Queen of two continents—Our Lady of Guadalupe—we would potentially predict similar development to take place also in Slovakia. The need for an ethnically transcribed and culturally translated Chocolate Mary, which will protect traditions of the Roma and assertively promote their rights, is likely to increase proportionately to the growing

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emancipation efforts of at least the European Roma. I believe that the Roma cult of Saint Sara, which was likely born in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a result of the Roma colonisation of the local Marian cult in Provence (Postolle 1998; Dvořáková 2004), is very good evidence of the growth of such need. Since the official recognition of the Roma pilgrimage of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and Sara-la-Kali—the ‘Queen of Gitanos’—in 1935, it has become the best-known Roma pilgrimage in Europe. The organisation of participation in this Roma pilgrimage is not only an important part of Roma evangelisation in many countries, but has also become a functional meta-narrative into which a part of the Roma intellectual elites seek to project the identity and unity of the European Roma (Postolle 1998, p. 61). The cult of the ‘Miraculous Auntie Bibija’ [Tetkica Bibija; Srb., Tetkica=‘Auntie’; Rom., Bibija=‘Auntie’] among the Roma in Serbia is another lovely example of the Roma privatisation of the mainstream saint—associated, at the same time, with internal ethnic emancipation. Among the Roma in Belgrade and in Central Serbia, Tetkica Bibija is celebrated as an uncanonised Roma Saint who protects children from disease and ensures good health for Roma families. According to folklore tradition, Bibija saved Gypsy children during the plague epidemic. Her name, ‘Auntie’, was the diminutive for ‘cholera/plague’ (Marushiakova and Popov 2011). Bibija and the Day of Her Feast became an important part of inter-war emancipation activities among the Gypsies in Belgrade, centred around the humanitarian Association of Belgrade Gypsy Worshippers of Bibija, which was established in 1935 (Zahova in press). The organisation has been active until recently. Modern Bibija continues her miraculous protection over the physical health of the Serbian Roma and keeps her pro-Roma-oriented mission—that is, in 1998, she symbolically became the main figure representing the movement for the struggle of Roma women’s rights (http://www.bibija.org.rs/en)/. With respect to the Marian cult, another example of Romani appropriation of the mainstream Virgin Mary by means of religious differentiation can be found within the Greek Orthodox environment in Bulgaria, where the Roma celebrate the Feast of the Mother of God, much like the mainstream population, however, on a different day. August 28 thus became the day of special Roma pilgrimage to the Bachkovo Monastery near Plovdiv, attended by the Roma from all over Bulgaria (Horváthová 1998, p. 46).

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A similar pattern can be observed in Slovakia as well. In 2019, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Roma pilgrimage was organised in the village of Gaboltov in Eastern Slovakia. Gaboltov is an important Slovak Marian place with a merciful picture of Our Lady of the Scapular, holding the main pilgrimage on Saturday and Sunday after the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16). However, the Roma pilgrimage is traditionally held on the first Sunday of August, that is, two weeks after the non-Roma pilgrimage. It brings together Roma from all over Slovakia. In addition to the seeking and reinforcing of social contacts within Roma groups, they search for a common as well as their own distinct and parallel platform for how to approach the Virgin Mary and freely express and share their ethnically and culturally flavoured religious experiences. The path of differentiating themselves radically vis-à-vis the heteroculture can lead to even greater alienation. The Pentecostal Roma path ‘from the periphery to the centre’ in Slovakia has several pitfalls—in the traditional mainstream Catholic environment, it generates the sectarian label and, in the case of exclusive pastoral discourses, it can contribute to the deepening of the exclusion of Roma communities (Podolinská and Hrustič 2011, 2014). Despite the general Pentecostal transethnic discourse, in Slovakia (as well as in other countries), great emphasis is placed on ethnic themes which is manifested also in the trend of the establishment of Roma assemblies, led by Roma pastors. In the pastoral discourse within the religious metaphoric language, the New Romahood is compared to awakening or rebirth, thus calling for discontinuity with the previous life (Podolinská 2009b, 2015, 2017b). The Pentecostal discourse within the Roma communities in Slovakia is characterised by radical differentiation not only from individual pre-conversion life, but also from many Roma ethno-­ cultural religious traditions that have been pillars of the Roma European cultural heritage for more than half-millennium. In this context, the path towards emancipation under the flag of the Chocolate Mary in Slovakia could be designated as a path that would enable the Roma to continue and further develop their ethnic and cultural traditions. The Romani Virgin Mary would bring not only emancipation by seeking to reach an equal status with the heteroculture (‘White Christianity’), but also endogenous emancipation through the rehabilitation and valorisation of Romani Christianity as a distinctive ethnic transcription and cultural translation of Christianity, which can have, and in the world has, many faces and many colours.

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It is perhaps just a question of time when one of the Chocolate Marys will finally achieve collective recognition. It makes no difference whether She will have (only) a Roma face or (just) a Roma heart, or at best, both. What will matter the most will be Her sincere will to help marginal Roma stories achieve visibility and recognition on their path from the periphery to the centre.

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Podolinská, T. (2017a). Roma in Slovakia—Silent and Invisible Minority. Slovenský národopis/Slovak Ethnology, 65(2), 135–175. Podolinská, T. (2017b). ‘Roma’ Label: The Deconstructed and Reconceptualized Category within the Pentecostal and Charismatic Pastoral Discourse in Contemporary Slovakia. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 11(2), 146–180. https://doi.org/10.1515/jnmlp-2017-0007. Podolinská, T. (2006, 2007, 2009). Research. Corpus of data (recordings, photographs, field journals, and notes, etc.) from the corresponding fieldwork. Archive Depository of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS in Bratislava. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2010). Boh medzi bariérami: sociálna inklúzia Rómov náboženskou cestou. Bratislava: IE SAS. https://uesa.sav.sk/files/ socialna_inkluzia_romov_nabozenskou_cestou.pdf. Accessed 5 Apr 2020. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2011). Religion as a Path to Change. The Possibilities of Social Inclusion of the Roma in Slovakia. Bratislava: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, e. V., IE SAS. Podolinská, T., & Hrustič, T. (2014). Religious Change and Its Effects on Social Change for Roma in Slovakia. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 59(1), 241–262. https://doi.org/10.1556/AEthn.59.2014.1.12. Podolinská, T., Krivý, V., & Bahna, M. (2013). Religiozita: Slovensko a jeho susedia. In V.  Krivý (Ed.), Ako sa mení slovenská spoločnost ̌ (pp.  181–256). Bratislava: IS SAS. Postolle, A. (1998). Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (Francie). Kolébka romského křestǎ nství nebo uzurpace provensálské pouti? Romano džaniben, 5(1–2), 50–62. Šarišské Jastrabie (2009). https://www.cas.sk/clanok/137313/romovia-zosarisskeho-jastrabia-na-mesiaci-sme-videli-jezisa/ (November 4, 2009). Accessed 7 Aug 2019. Schweder, R. A. (1977). Likeness and Likelihood in Everyday Thought: Magical Thinking in Judgements about Personality. Current Anthropology, 18(4), 637–658. Šebková, H. (2001). Střípky romské tradice v osadě v Hermanovcích. Romano džaniben, 8(3), 42–77. Švecová, A. (2008). Rómsky pentekostální sbor Maranatha, Spišská Nová Ves. Romano džaniben, 15(3), 58–70. Turň a nad Bodvou (2018). https://www.mojevideo.sk/video/2d66f/modlia_ sa_k_starej_skrini_(neveril_som).html (June 30, 2018). Accessed 7 Aug 2019. Turner, V. W. (1975). Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Uherek, Z. (2010). Poznámky k tématu identity jejího vytváření u Romů v české republice. Romano džaniben, 16(1), 11–24. Vyšná Kamenica (2011). https://www.pluska.sk/plus-7-dni/domov/10/videojezis-rure-batizovciach-zjavenie-romskej-osade-robi-majitelom-sporaka-problemy.html (November 1, 2016). Accessed 7 Aug 2019.

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Zachar Podolinská, T. (2019a). Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe. In T.  Zachar Podolinská (Ed.), Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-­ Communist Europe  (pp. 16–55). Bratislava: VEDA, IE SAS. https://doi. org/10.31577/2019.9788022417822.16-55. Zachar Podolinská, T. (2019b). ‘From Periphery to the Centre’: Private Apparition of the Virgin Mary (An In-Depth Qualitative Analysis of the Apparition’s Narrative with Field Journal Notes). In T. Zachar Podolinská (Ed.), Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe (pp. 284–326). Bratislava: VEDA, IE SAS. https://doi.org/10.31577/2019.9788022417822.234-326. Zahova, S. (in press). Yugoslavia. In E. Marushiakova & V. Popov (Eds.), Roma Voices in History: A Source Book. Roma Emancipation in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from 19th Century Until the Second World War. London: Brill. Zborov (2019). https://www.tvnoviny.sk/zaujimavosti/1970539_udajne-­ zjavenie-­p anny-marie-tr valo-tri-hodiny-a-v-osade-sposobilo-poriadnyrozruch. Accessed 7 June 2020. Zemplínska Teplica (2018). https://magazin.panobcan.sk/osadnici-hovoria-odalsom-zjaveni-na-stene-domu-udajne-videli-jezisa-krista/. Accessed 7 Aug 2019.

Index

A Abranovce (SK), 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 80, 84, 86, 98, 101, 102, 106, 136 Acquaviva Platani (IT), 10 Africa, 20 African, 2, 20 Akita (Japan), 12, 19 Alchemilla, 5 All-Mother, 17 Amsterdam (NL), 18 Angola, 20 Animism, 51 Aphrodite, 10 Apocalypse, 25 Apocalyptic, 23–25, 34 prophecy, 9 Apocryphal medieval literature, 4 Apostolic Church (Assemblies of God), 48, 49, 56, 90, 91 Apotropaic, 104, 142 protection, 58, 135 Apparition(s) of the Virgin Mary in Acquaviva Platani, 10 Akita, 12, 19

Banneux, 6, 18, 19 Beauraing, 19 Betania, 6, 10, 19 Bonate, 10 Dechtice, 8, 128 Espis, 10 Fatima, 6, 10, 11, 19, 21–25, 33, 106, 145 Fehrbach, 10 Heroldsbach, 10 Kerezinen, 10 Kibeho, 10, 20 La Salette, 6, 28 La Vang, 5 Levoča, 8, 58, 59, 96, 97, 100, 104–106, 128, 135 Litmanová, 8, 10, 12, 58, 106, 128, 138 Manila, 19 Medjugorje, 10, 19, 21, 26, 145 Onkerzeele, 10 Pontmain, 28 San Damiano, 10 Seuca, 10, 139, 140 Syracuse, 19

© The Author(s) 2021 T. Zachar Podolinská, Marian Devotion Among the Roma in Slovakia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56364-6

153

154 

INDEX

Apparition(s) (cont.) Tilly-sur-Seulles, 10 Tre Fontane, 10 Turzovka–Živčáková, 8, 128 Tuscany, Seuca, 28 Walsingham, 8 Yankalilla, 6 Zeitoun, 19 Apparitions personal, 138 private, 11, 105, 106, 117, 128, 133–136, 145 public, 139 Appropriation, 56, 75, 146 cultural, 14, 55, 117 Argentina, 6, 20, 23, 25 Artemis, 3, 9 Asenovgrad (BG), 7 Asian, 2 Assimilation, 123 Assumption, 4, 52 of the Mary, 4 Astana (KZ), 23 Atheism mandatory, vi, 31, 32 obliged, 100 Atheist(s), 14, 31, 55 Auntie Bibija, 146 Australia, 6, 20 Austria, 8, 20, 42 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 43 Ave Maris Stella, 9 Ayazmo [Bg., ‘Holy Spring’], 7 Aztec(s), 14, 15 B Baba [Srb., ‘the Great Mother’], 3 Báč (SK), 12 Bachkovo Monastery, 7, 146 Bahai, 49 Balkan(s), 6, 19

Ballinspittle (IE), 12 Banneux (BE), 6, 19 Bardejov (SK), 78, 129, 130, 134 Batizovce (SK), 128–132 Beauraing (BE), 19 Belgium, 6, 10, 19 Belgrade (RS), 146 Belief(s), vi, 5, 7, 8, 26, 27, 50–54, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66, 80, 95, 99, 122, 124, 125, 127, 130, 143 pre-modern, vi, 50 Roma, 51, 122, 130 Bernadette, 6 Betania (VE), 6, 10, 19 Bijacovce (SK), 78, 135 Black Madonna of Częstochowa, 14 Blanco (Texas) (US), 12 Bogorodica [Srb., ‘The Mother of God’], 14 Bogorodicha rachichka, [Bg. ‘The Litle Hand of the Mother of God’], 6 Bogorodichka [Bg., ‘The Mother of God’], 5 Bogorodichna stapka [Bg., ‘Virgin Mary’s step’], 7 Bogorodichno cvete [Bg., ‘The flower of the Mother of God’], 5 Bogorodičina trava [Srb., ‘The grass/ plant of the Mother of God’], 5 Bogoroditsa [Bg., ‘The Bearer of God’], 7 Bogorodka [Rus., ‘The Mother of God’], 5 Bogorodnaya trava [Rus., ‘The grass/ plant of the Mother of God’], 5 Boldogasszony [Hung., ‘Blessed Woman’], 3 Bolivia, 20 Bonate (IT), 10 Book of Revelation, 9 Bôrka (SK), 60, 133, 134

 INDEX 

Bougešti (sub-group of Vlax Roma), 47, 77, 103 Bratislava (SK), vii, 20, 106 Brazil, 20, 23 Brethren Church, 49 Brethren Unity of Baptists, 49 Bricolage, 54 Bulgaria, 5–7, 33, 146 Bulgarian, 12 Bystrany (SK), 56, 58–60, 62, 64, 80, 96, 97, 99, 105, 141 Byzantine Empire, 42 C Č aklov (SK), 128, 129, 131, 132 Camino de Santiago, 22 Canada, 20, 23 Capitalism, 17 Catastrophes, 17, 18, 23 Catastrophic, 27 language, 24 Catholic Church Catholic pattern of religiosity, 53 Greek Catholic, 12, 48, 49 Roman Catholic, 10–12, 48, 49, 53, 56, 57, 96, 139 Catholicism, 53, 55 Colonial Spanish, 3 (traditional) Romani, 53, 68, 100 Slovak, 44, 48, 49, 76, 127 Chamomile, 5 Charcoal water [Rom., jakhelo paň i], 62 Charismatic churches, 34, 49, 53, 54, 67, 142, 145 movements, 145 Chicago (US), 13 Chicory, 5

155

Chile, 20 Chimayo (New Mexico) (US), 6 China, 20 Chocolate Mary, vi, 76, 106–118, 122, 144, 145, 147, 148 Christ, 9, 78, 79, 129, 130, 135 Christian Colonial Hispanic, culture, 15 colonisation, 5 non-Christian, 3, 16, 50–52, 54 pre-Christian, 3, 4, 34, 51, 52, 54 transcendences, 65 Christianity Catholic, vi, 54 Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 42 European, 52 Evangelical, 54 folk, 52, 79 liminal, 58 non-traditional, 54, 56, 68 popular, 18, 50 post-Christianity, 34 post-modern, vi privatisation of, 54 traditional, 54, 66, 127 translation of, 54, 147 Christmas, 58, 78 Christotokos [Gr., ‘The Christ-­ bearer’], 3 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 49 Č ičava (SK), 56 Cigán/Cigáni [Slov., ‘Gypsy/ Gypsies’], 46–48, 59, 93, 112, 139 Č irča (SK), 129, 131 Clearwater (Florida) (US), 20 Č ochánˇa/cˇochánˇi/cˇovanˇa/cˇovechánˇi [Rom., ‘witch’], 60, 61 Cold War, 17, 29

156 

INDEX

Collective ascribed identities, v consensus, 18, 117, 129, 139, 140 identity, 126 judgement, 140 memory, v, 31 Colonial empires, 17 Colonisation, 5, 54, 146 Communism, 17, 25, 29, 30, 32, 53, 127, 142, 144 Communist countries, vi post-communist, 23, 29–34, 122–124, 127, 139 pre-communist, 30, 31 Community-based thinking, 123 Confessionality, 48 Consecration of Russia, 24 of the world, 24 Conservatism, 29, 52, 125 Constantinople (Istanbul) (TR), 7 Contractual, 66, 100, 101 Conyers (Georgia) (US), 10 Councils the Second Vatican Council, 28 the Third Ecumenical Council, 3 Cova da Iria (Fatima) (PT), 22 Covenantal, 65 Crnica Hill (Podbrdo) (BA), 26 Cursing, 55, 62–64, 101, 103–104, 112, 117 Cyril and Methodius, 42 Czechoslovakia, 43, 47, 51, 125 Czech Republic, 8, 32, 33, 60, 62 D Damascus (SY), 13 Dead-nettles, 5 Decalogue, see Ten Commandments

Dechtice (SK), 8, 128 Democracy, 17 Denver (Colorado) (US), 10 De-privatisation, 27 Devil, 78, 79, 133, 142 Devleskero kher (Pentecostals), 49 De-secularisation, 28 Devotion, vi, 2, 11, 21, 28–30, 33, 42, 43, 56, 58, 75–118, 122, 127, 128, 136, 143 Diana, 9 Discrimination, 45, 50 Disenchanted, 26, 29, 123 Disenchantement, 27 Divine Tribunal, 103 Domestic altars, 60, 81, 82, 98, 104, 143 Dunajská Lužná (SK), 11, 128 E Economic market, 17, 21–23, 32 Ecuador, 20 Enculturated, vi, 52, 53 Mary, 14–16, 43, 68, 75–118, 122, 144 Enculturation, 2, 55, 76, 108 England, 8 Ephesus (Anatolia) (TR), 3, 6 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 8 Eschatology, 59 Espis (FR), 10 Ethnic group(s), vi, 14–16, 44, 47, 68, 145 Ethnicisation, 49, 55, 76 Ethnicised, 15, 52, 76, 109 Mary, vi, 14–16, 43, 68, 75–118, 122, 144 Ethnicity, v, 45, 48, 57, 66, 106, 113, 138 Ethnocentrism, v, 16 Ethno-cultural accommodation, 76

 INDEX 

Europe Central, 8, 42 Eastern, 23, 25, 29, 30 post-communist, 30, 33, 122 Southern, 29 Western, 18, 30, 33 European, 2, 4, 18, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 33, 51, 52, 58, 79, 124, 145–147 continent, 3, 20 Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran), 48 Evangelical Methodist Church (United Methodist Church), 49 Evil, 18, 78, 104 Evil eye, 61, 62 Exclusion, 46, 50, 122, 141, 147 F Faith indistinct, 54 inherited, 55 secular, 125 stand-by mode, 55 transitional, 54 Fatima (PT), 6, 10, 11, 19, 21–26, 33, 106, 145 Fear, v, 17, 23, 28, 33, 55, 58, 64, 65, 101, 125, 129, 130, 136, 137, 141, 143 Fehrbach (DE), 10 Forget-me-not ‘Our Lady’s Eyes,’ 5 Fortune-telling, 62, 124, 138, 139 France, 6, 10, 11, 19, 20, 22 G Gaboltov (SK), 58, 106, 128, 147 Gadje, 60, 66, 107, 116, 117, 145 Germany, 10, 33 Globalisation, 17, 33, 34

157

God, 2, 4, 16, 26, 27, 50, 55, 57–60, 62, 64–66, 79, 100, 102–104, 107, 114, 118, 127, 129, 133, 134, 138, 141, 146 Gospa, 26 Govanhill (Glasgow) (UK), 56, 62 Graeco-Roman antiquity, 3 concept, 3 Great Enchantress, 26–29 Great Moravia, 42 Great Mother Goddess, 3 Great mullein, 5 Greece, 11 Greek Catholic Church, 48, 49 Group, v Christianity (see Christianity) consensus, 126 consciousness, 57, 117, 123, 141 family, 57 inertia, 123 meta-group identity, 144 minority, 46 peripheral, 126, 127, 141 Virgin Mary, vi Gulǐ daj, 60, 61 Gypsy/Gypsies, 46–48, 58, 93, 113, 123, 135, 142, 146 H Handlová (SK), 128–132 Haskovo (BG), 7 Healer, 4, 61, 104–105, 145 Healing baths, 6 herbs, 4, 5 miracles, 2, 11–14, 79, 141 springs, 4, 6–8, 42, 106, 128, 141 waters, 4, 6, 62 wells, 4, 6–8 Health, 64, 92, 134, 141, 142, 146

158 

INDEX

Hellenistic, 9 post-Hellenistic, 3 Hencovce (SK), 128, 129, 132 Hermanovce (SK), 56, 80, 101, 106, 116, 117, 135, 136 Heroldsbach (DE), 10 Hinduism, 51 Hlinné (SK), 128–132 Hnilec (SK), 78, 79 Holy corner, 60, 80–85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 98, 104, 143 Holy Family, 57, 60, 81, 83, 86, 87, 93, 96, 107, 135, 141 Holy pictures, 60, 62, 63, 80, 81, 85–87, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105–107, 117, 136, 143 Holy Spirit, 58, 142, 143 Holy Trinity, 57, 58, 107, 108, 143 Hungarian, 3, 43, 45, 47 ancient, 3 Hungary, 3, 12, 19, 33, 43, 62, 65, 111 I Icon(s) holy, 13, 14 miracle-performing, 11 wonder-working, 11–14, 23 Images holy, 13, 14 weeping, 12 Immaculate: Heart of Mary, 2, 24 India, 6, 20 Indian, 2, 16 Integration, 127 Interrupted tradition, vi, 33, 34, 123 Invisible minority, 45–46 Ireland, 12 Isis, 9 Israel, 20 Istanbul (TR), 7 Istanbul convention, 32–33 Italy, 10–12, 19

J Japan, 19, 20 Jarovnice (SK), 56, 58, 78–80, 101, 106, 111, 114, 135, 136 Jesus, 2, 6, 16, 50, 57, 58, 60, 62–64, 78–80, 83, 86–88, 90, 91, 96, 99, 100, 102–107, 111, 114, 122, 127–135, 138 Joseph II, 123 Joyful Heart Christian Community (Pentecostals), 49 Juan Diego, 15 K Kazakhstan, 23 Kazan (RU), 12, 13 Kerezinen (FR), 10 Kibeho (RW), 10, 20 Klokočovo (SK), 12 Kravany (SK), 104 Krupina (SK), 64 Kutuzov, M., 13 Kykkos (CY), 13 L La Salette (FR), 6, 28 La Vang/Lavang (VN), 5 Lavender, 5 Lemešany (SK), 58, 60, 61 Leningrad (RU), 14 Levoča (SK), 8, 58, 59, 96, 97, 100, 104–106, 128, 135 LGBTQ movements, 32 ‘The Life-Giving Spring,’ 7 Lily, 4 the Assumption lily, 4 August lily, 4 of chastity, 4 Liminal, 44, 58, 59, 123 Litmanová (SK), 8, 10, 12, 58, 106, 128, 138

 INDEX 

Lizards, 78 Lomnička (SK), 6, 11, 21–23, 25, 28, 33, 62, 63, 102, 133, 145 Lovári (sub-group of Vlax Roma), 47, 77, 103 Lubbock (Texas) (US), 10 Luxembourg, 20 M Madagascar, 20 Magic attack(s), 64, 65, 124, 141, 142 black, 61, 102, 124 harming, 61–62 healing, 61 love, 61–62, 117, 124, 141 word, 62–63 Magical thinking, 63, 65, 66, 123 Magicians, 61, 65 Magna Domina Hungarorum [Lat., ‘Great Lady of the Hungarians’], 43 Magyarisation, 43 Magyarok Nagyasszonya [Hun., ‘Our Lady of Hungary’], 43 Majoritarian resistance, 16 stereotypes, 49–50 Malý Slivník–Furmanec (SK), 56, 80, 98, 99, 103, 106, 136 Manila (PH), 19 Maranata Christian Mission (Pentecostals), 49, 143 Marginal centrality, v, vi, 67, 126–128, 140 Marginalisation, v, 68, 126, 141 Marginalised communities, v, 15, 16, 68 groups, 68 Marian apparitions, 10 century, 18–19, 29

159

devotion, vi, 11, 21, 28–30, 33, 42, 43, 56, 75–118, 122, 127, 128 flowers, 4–6 legends, 5, 6, 78 piety, 128 springs, 6–8, 104 wells, 105 Marian Hill [Slov., Mariánska hora] (Levoča) (SK), 8, 106 Marianka (SK), 8, 11, 42, 106, 128 Mariánske Lázně (CZ), 8 Máriapócs (HU), 12 Mariazell (AT), 13, 42 Marigold, 4, 5 Markušovce (SK), 62, 77 Mary-centric, 68, 76, 122 Mary Gardens, 4, 5 Mátraverebélye (HU), 65 Maya, 3 Yucatecan Maya, 3 Medieval era, 4 ̵ Medjugorje [Bosn., Medugorje, ‘In Between the Mountains’] (BA), 10, 19, 21, 26, 145 Medzevo (SK), 58, 59, 61, 62 Menstruation/period, 6, 9, 77 Mexico, 11, 111 Milan (IT), 12 Mineral baths, 7 Minority(ies) invisible, 45–46 national, 45 silent, 46 Mint, 5 Miracle(s), 64 healing, 11–14, 79, 141 sun-miracles, 4, 10, 17 Miracle-performing icons, 4 images, 11 paintings, 11 statues, 11

160 

INDEX

Miraculous healings, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 17, 42, 62, 78, 138, 139, 141, 142 Mistress of Flowers, 78, 142 Mistress of Nature, 79 Modernisation, 28, 30, 32, 33, 124 Modernity(ies) alternative, 28 multiple, 30 path-dependent, 30 post-communist, 30–33 Western, 30 Modern Mary, 17–19, 21 Moldava nad Bodvou (SK), 129, 131 Moon, 9, 10, 128 Moon Goddess, 3 Morenita (La Morenita) [Sp., ‘Dark-­ Skinned One’], 15 Moscow (RU), 12 Mother of Earth, 34 Goddess, 3 of Universe, 34 Mount Athos (BG), 23, 31 Mulo(s), 58, 60, 61, 64, 104, 124, 125, 141–143 Myrrh, 12, 13 Myrtle, 4 N Nahuatl, 15 Napoleon, B., 13 Nation Mexican, 15 nation-building processes, vi nation-state building process, 14 Polish, 14 Serbian, 14 Slovak, 43, 44 National, 14, 17, 21, 28–30, 32–34, 43, 44, 58, 128 fight, 43 Nationalism, v, 16, 29 Croatian, 14

Neo-Protestant, 53, 54, 67, 68, 80, 117, 122, 142–145 Nestorius, 3 Networks, v secondary, v New Age, 34 New Mexico (US), 6 New World, 5 New Zealand, 20 Nicaragua, 20 Nitra (SK), 100 Non-Roma, 49 Non-traditional Church(es), 54, 67 Romani Christianity, 53, 56, 68 O Oath(s) assertoric, 63 ceremonial, 64 common, 63 false, 64 fidelity, 100, 102 Old Catholic Church, 49 Onkerzeele (BE), 10 Organic solidarity, 123 Orthodox, 11 Christianity, vi, 6 Coptic, 19, 20 Eastern, 7 Greek, 7 Orthodox world, 13 traditions, 12 Orthodox world, 13 traditions, 12 Orthodox Church, 29, 48, 49 Greek Orthodox Church, 12, 13 Osada [Slov., sg., ‘settlement’], 50, 53, 56, 57 community(ies), 56, 57, 80, 106, 122 settlement(s), 46, 52, 102 Otherness, 46, 49, 55, 145

 INDEX 

Our Lady of Akita, 20 of all Nations, 18 of the Amazon, 15, 16 of Assiut, 19 of Banneux, 18, 19 of Beauraing, 19 of Cicero, 13 of Conyers, 13 of Cuapa, 20 of Fatima, 18, 19, 23–26 of Gietrzwałd, 19 of the Good Event, 20 of Guadalupe, 11, 15, 20, 115, 145 of Kazan, 13 of Kenner, 13 of Knock, 19 of La Salette, 19 of La Vang, 20 of Lanka, 20 of Los Tepes, 20 of Lourdes, 19 of Miraculous Medal, 19 of Mount Carmel, 147 of New Sarov, 13 of Phoenix, 12 of Pontmain, 19 of Poor, 18 of the Rosary, 10 of Scapular, 147 of Seven Sorrows, 127 of Syracuse, 11 of Tinos, 11 of Walsingham, 8, 19 of Warraq, 19 of Zeitoun, 19, 20 Overpraying, 62–63, 103–104, 117 P Pachamama, 16 Pagan(s) ancient pagan deities, 4 beliefs, 51

161

customs, 51 rituals, 51 Palomnichestvo [Rus., ‘peregrination’, or ‘spiritual travelling’], 23 Panagia-Theotokos-Paranythia, 13 Panenka Mária/Panenko Maríjca/Panenka Maríja [Slov., ‘the Virgin Mary’], 76, 78, 106 Papua New Guinea, 19 Parana river, 6 Paris (FR), 10, 19 Patroness of the Americas, 15 of Angola, 20 of Argentina, 20 of Australia, 20 of Austria, 20 of Bolivia, 20 of Brazil, 20 of France, 20 of Hungary, 20, 43 of Luxembourg, 20 of Mexico, 20 of New Zealand, 20 of Poland, 20 of Portugal, 20 of Slovakia, 20, 44, 127 Slovak Nation, 43 of South Korea, 20 of Spain, 20 of United States, 20 of Zaire, 20 of Zimbabwe, 20 Pavia (IT), 12 Peace-Maker, 17 Pentecostal(ism), 49, 53, 54, 56, 67, 68, 80, 95, 108, 109, 112, 122, 142–145, 147 Romani, 54, 99, 142, 147 Peripheral communities, 16 groups, 126, 127, 141

162 

INDEX

Peripheralisation, v of Mary, 142–144 peripheralising groups (see Group) Peruvian, 16 Petrová (SK), 61, 78, 128, 129 Philippines, 19, 20, 25 Phuri mama [Rom., ‘old mom’], 61 Pilgrim(s), 6–8, 12, 21, 30 Pilgrimage, 7, 8, 21, 22, 26, 28, 33, 42, 58, 105, 106, 127, 138, 139, 146, 147 Plavecký Štvrtok (SK), 56, 59–61, 95, 102, 112, 143, 144 Plovdiv (BG), 146 Pod Laščíkom (SK), 128–132 ‘Pointer of the Way’ [Srb., Putevoditeljica], 14 Poland, 19 Polish, 13 Polydemonism, 51 Pope(s) Benedict XVI, 24, 25 Francis, 15, 16, 24, 26 John Paul II, 15, 24, 25 Leo XIII, 43 Pius XI, 24, 44 Pius XII, 11, 24 Portugal, 6, 10, 11, 19, 23, 25 Post-communist Europe, 30, 122 Mary(s), 29–30, 33–34 Post-modern Mary, vi, 26–29, 122 religiosity, 28, 54, 123–126 return, 123 societies, v spirituality, 54 Post-modern, v, vi, 17, 27–30, 33, 34, 54, 68, 122, 125, 144 Post-secular, 27 Prague (CZ), 60, 62, 124 Pre-communist, 30, 31

Pre-modern, vi, 19, 26, 50, 78, 79, 122 Presentism, 59 Prešov (SK), 56, 62, 80, 95 Presveta Bogoroditsa [Bg., ‘The Most Holy Mother of God’], 23, 31 Protector, 4, 14, 104–105, 111, 145 Holy Protectress of Russia, 13 Protestant countries, 5 Putin, A., 31 R Rainbow Madonna, 20 Racism, v Raslavice (SK), 56, 80, 105, 106 Re-enchantment, 27 Reformation, 5, 8 Reformed Christian Church, 48 Reinvented tradition(s), 30–33 Religion at home, 49, 50, 79, 105 local, 57 Religiosity at home, 96 collective, 50 domestic, 123 experimental, 54 extra-church, 49, 58 individual, 50 institutionalised, 123 migratory, 54 multi-levelled, 54, 55 parallel, 147 post-modern, 28, 54, 123–126 private, 123 Religious adaptability, 50, 51 affiliation, 45, 48, 50 awareness, 53 camouflaging, 50, 51, 55

 INDEX 

conservatism, 50, 52 culture, 4, 7, 31, 49, 52, 53, 55, 57–59, 66, 67, 122, 126, 143 decorativism, 60–61, 143 discrimination, 50 diversity, 123 exoticism, 51 exotism, 50, 51 group(s), 45, 49 heritage, 124 narratives, 125, 144 periphery, 42–68, 123 retardation, 52 return, 32, 123 revival, 30, 33, 144 syncretism, 50–52 tourism, 22, 23, 33 tradition(s), 29, 30, 32, 51–53, 57, 141, 147 transformation, 31, 34 transmission, 31 Religious Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 48, 49 Religiousness, 27, 44, 52 Roma, 49–51, 54, 125 Re-sacr alisation alternative, 27 demonstrative, 30 Revenant(s), 58, 64, 66, 143 Rights, vi, 14, 16, 43–45, 48, 53, 55, 98, 104, 107, 117, 129, 140, 141, 145, 146 human, 17 Rimavská Sobota (SK), 58–62, 77, 103 Risk-societies, 17, 27 Ritual(s) function, 3 life-cycle, 59 purification, 58, 63 purity, 47, 51, 59 sexuality, 3

163

Rokycany (SK), 56, 80, 81, 88, 90, 91, 93 Roma communities, v, 45, 46, 50, 52–54, 62, 63, 65, 75, 76, 80, 103, 112, 117, 122, 123, 126, 131, 144, 145, 147 people, 44, 49, 50, 76, 77, 93, 102, 112, 117, 142, 144 Roma woman, 2 Roman Catholic Church, 10, 48, 49, 53, 139 Romahood, 53, 60, 66–68, 117, 147 Romani, 45, 53, 54 emancipation, vi, 44, 68, 118, 144, 145 religious culture, 57, 59, 126 Romania, 10, 33, 47 Romani Archa Christian Community (Pentecostals), 49 Romani Catholicism, 53, 68, 100 Romani Christianity, 52, 54–56, 59 non-traditional, 56, 68 traditional, 53, 56–68, 75, 76, 79–106 Romani Studies, 51 Rome (IT), 15, 16 Róm/Rómovia [Slov., ‘Rom/ Roma’], 46, 48 Rose, 4, 5 of charity, 4 Rosemary, 5 Rožkovany (SK), 58, 60–62 Ruchka Bozhskoy Materi [Ukr., ‘The Little Hand of the Mother of God’], 6 Rudň any (SK), 56, 61, 66, 97, 102, 144 Rumungro Roma, 47, 56 Russia, 5, 6, 11, 13, 20, 23–25

164 

INDEX

S Sacrum, 2, 21, 55 Saint Ambrose, 4, 12 Bernard, 4 John, 5, 9, 12 Saint Catherine Labouré, 10 Therese of Lisieux, 98 Saint Paul’s Community (Charismatic Greek Orthodox community), 49, 56 Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, 146 San Damiano (IT), 10 San Nicolás de los Arroyos (AR), 6 Šarišské Jastrabie (SK), 128–133 Sarov (Texas) (US), 13 Šaštín/Šaštín–Stráže (SK), 42, 128 Satan, 79, 129, 133, 143 Secret, 23–25, 27, 127, 136 of Our Lady of Fatima, 23 Secular, 17, 21, 22, 26–28, 31, 54, 80, 82, 86, 87, 125, 129 cultural Christians, 55 Secularisation, vi of culture, 26 of society, 26 subjective, 26, 27 Seer(s), 15, 23, 136, 138–140 Segregation, 52, 66, 127 Selene, 9 Serbia, 3, 5, 33, 146 Serbian, 14 Seuca (RO), 10, 139, 140 Seven Day Adventists, 49 Shrines, 2, 8, 21, 22, 25 Silent minority, 46 resistance, 123, 125 Singhpur (IN), 16 Sinti, 47 Slavic, 5, 6 Slovačike [Rom., ‘Slovak’] Roma, 47

Slovakia/Slovak Republic, v, 12, 42, 44, 45, 75, 122 Slovak Roma, vi, 44, 45, 53, 56, 60, 62, 76, 77, 112, 123, 144 Slovaks, 43–45, 47, 48, 52–55, 67, 76, 77, 85, 104, 106, 112, 128, 130, 138 Slovenský Grob (SK), 11 Snakes, 78 Social invisibility, 46 Socialist, 31, 123 countries, 29, 32 Spain, 12 Spanish, 15 Spirits, 60 water, 4 Spiritual healing, 34 Spirituality (ies), 50 alternative, 31, 34, 123 post-modern, 28, 54 private, 49 Roma, 51 Spiš (SK), 62, 78 Spišská Nová Ves (SK), 56, 143 Srí Lanka, 20 Stara Zagora (BG), 7 Staré Hory (SK), 8, 128 Statues/statuettes, vi, 2, 11–16, 22, 42, 60, 62, 80–83, 86, 89–91, 94, 96–102, 106–109, 116, 128, 131, 135–137, 141, 143 miracle-performing (see Miracle(s)) Stella Maris, vii Stella Matutina, 9 Stereotypes, v, 46, 49 Stigma, 67 Stigmatisation, 46, 67, 126, 141 Sun, 9, 10 Sun-miracles Acquaviva Platani, 10 Betania, 6, 10, 19 Bonate, 10

 INDEX 

Conyers, 10 Denver, 10 Espis, 10 Fatima, 6, 10, 11, 19, 21–25, 33, 145 Fehrbach, 10 Heroldsbach, 10 Kerezinen, 10 Kibeho, 10, 20 Litmanová, 8, 10, 12, 58, 106, 128, 138 Lubbock, 10 Medjugorje, 10, 19, 21, 26, 145 Onkerzeele, 10 San Damiano, 10 Seuca, 10, 139, 140 Tilly-sur-Seulles, 10 Tre Fontane, 10 Svinia (SK), 56, 62, 80, 82, 94, 102, 106, 113, 136 Swedish conquest, 14 Symbolic capital, v Symbolism, 140 astral, 4, 9–10, 78 flower, 5 Syracuse (IT), 19 System(s) of values, 29, 117, 127 liberal, 33 T Taboos, 59, 77–79 alimentary, 47, 51, 59 Tampa Bay (US), 13 Telgárt (SK), 59, 60, 63, 89, 99, 102, 104 Ten Commandments, 55 Tepeyac (Mexico City) (MX), 14 Terň a (SK), 56, 80, 96, 101, 112 Theotokos [Gr., ‘The God-bearer’], 3, 6, 12 Theresa, Maria, 123 Thistle Mary’s Thistle, 6

165

the Milk Thistle, 5 Our Lady’s Milk Drops, 5 Tilly-sur-Seuilles (FR), 10 Tinos (GR), 14 Tonantzin, 14 Touch-me-not balsam, 5 Tradition interrupted, vi, 33, 34, 123 reinvented, 30–33 Traditional Mary, 4 Romani Christianity, 53, 56–68, 75, 76, 79–106, 124, 125 Traditionalism, 125 Transcendent being(s), 64, 66 entity(ies), 2 stories, 125 Transethnic, 16, 54, 106, 107, 147 Transformation, 27–31, 33, 34 Translation conceptual, 3 cultural, 43, 54, 66, 107, 117, 147 ethnic, 43, 54, 147 Transnational, 19, 20 Tre Fontane (IT), 10 Trebišov (SK), 58, 61, 62 Trnava (SK), 8, 12, 13, 100, 128 Tullytown (Pennsylvania) (US), 13 Turkey, 6, 7 Turkish plundering, 13 Turks, 13, 42 Turň a nad Bodvou (SK), 129 Turzovka (SK), 105, 128 Turzovka–Živčáková (SK), 8, 128 U Ukraine, 6, 19 Ultra-conservative values, 34 Ultra-modern, 34, 122, 125 societies, vi, 17

166 

INDEX

Ungrike [Rom., ‘Hungarian’] Roma, 47 Unorthodox, 50, 51, 53, 55, 66, 93, 117, 145 ̌ Uzovské Peklany (SK), 56, 79, 80, 92, 97 V Vailankanni (IN), 6 Valoukli (TR), 7 Vatican, 25 Venerable Bede, 4 Venezuela, 6, 10, 20 Venus, 9, 10 Vervain, 5 Vietnam, 20 Vietnamese, 5, 14 Violet of humility, 4 Virgin Ever-Virgin, 3 Unvirgin Virgin, 3 Virgin-Mother, 2–3 Virgin of Guadalupe, 14, 15, 111 Virgin Mary of Seven Sorrows, 42–44 Vision(s), 8, 10, 15, 23, 25, 28, 116, 137–139 Vlachika Roma [Rom., ‘Wallachian’ or ‘Vlax’ Roma], 47 Vlax Roma, 47, 63, 77, 103 See also Vlachika Roma [Rom., ‘Wallachian’ or ‘Vlax’ Roma] Vyšná Kamenica (SK), 129, 133

W Wall fresco(es), 79, 87, 89, 93–96, 112 Walsingham (UK), 8 Weeping icon(s), 11–13 image(s), 12 statue(s), 12 Westernisation, 33, 34 Wonder-working icon(s), 4–6, 23 Word of Life (Slov. Slovo života), 49, 56, 113, 143 WW II, 14, 17, 27 Y Yankalilla (AU), 6 Z Zaire, 20 Zborov (SK), 129–131, 133, 134 Žehň a (SK), 56, 80, 83, 85, 87, 89, 101, 106–108, 115, 136 Žehra–Dobrá Vôlǎ (SK), 56, 60, 63, 80, 93, 99–104, 108, 109, 144 Žehra–Dreveník (SK), 56, 60, 62, 78–80, 94, 96, 99, 101, 104 Zeitoun (EG), 19 Zemplínska Teplica (SK), 129, 131–133 Zhukov, G.K., 13 Zimbabwe, 20