St. Vitus's Day
The Saint Vitus' Day or [ St. ] Vitustag on June 15 is in the church year the Memorial of St. Veit . In parts of the Eastern Church where the Julian calendar is used, it corresponds to Gregorian June 28 in the 20th and 21st centuries .
regional customs
In addition to St. John , only Veit was permanently the patron saint of the summer solstice . Since the late Middle Ages , St. Vitus's Day has often been celebrated as the actual beginning of summer instead of St. John's Day, as it has marked the astronomical summer solstice for a good 100 years since the middle of the 13th century . Veit established himself as the saint of the beginning of summer, especially in rural and agricultural areas , so that on St. Vitus's Day the hay harvest began, certain plants were planted and sown , and medicinal herbs were collected .
With the Serbs
St. Vitus's Day ( Serbian Видовдан Vidovdan ) is of particular importance as a memorial and holiday for the Serbs . The veneration of saints by Vitus was more widespread among the Western Catholic population in south-eastern Europe than among the Orthodox Serbs. Apart from important exceptions, references to a relatively late modern adoption of the St. Vitus cult of the Catholic Slavs into the culture of remembrance of the Serbs dominate. The Serbian Orthodox clergyman Jovan Vučković wrote in 1889:
"Search we are not in the Serbian Orthodox Church the sacred give Vit, it can him nowhere us. If we want a holy Vit, we can find him in Russian saints ' lives , in Russian prologues , in Russian calendars . His name is there. His vita is also there. A Holy Office does not exist. It is not the truth that the Orthodox Church ever venerated him greatly . But we want something that reminds us of the Amselfeld . "
Because in the course of the nation-building and the Pan-Slavic movements of the 19th century, the Serbian memory of the lost battle on the Amselfeld on June 15, 1389 (St. Vitus's Day) gained a special national significance. In this battle between a Serbian army from Raszien , Bosnia , Zahumlje , Zeta and Travunien and an Ottoman army, the two opposing military leaders Knez Lazar Hrebeljanović and Sultan Murad I perished. This battle went down in Serbian history and mythology as a symbol of sacrifice for Christian values and the struggle against foreign Ottoman rule. The 500th anniversary celebration in 1889 coincided with the nationalization of the young Serbian state and is considered the first major staging of the Serbian nation. The day was officially included in the holiday calendar of the Serbian Orthodox Church only in 1892. The anniversary of the battle in Serbia will be on June 15th . / June 28th greg. celebrated.
On June 28, 1914 , the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip, as a member of the Serbian nationalist association Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), shot the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo , which in the further course of events led to the First World War . After the end of this war, the so-called "Vidovdan Constitution" of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , with which a centralized and monarchical state order was established, was solemnly set for June 28, 1921.
In 1948 the Cominform cautiously put the condemnation of the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in a "Resolution on the State of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia" on June 28th. The resolution stated that the Yugoslav Communist Party, independent of Stalin, had deviated from Marxism-Leninism in basic foreign and domestic policy and was conducting a hostile policy towards the Soviet Union. The date marks the final break between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
The well-known Blackbird Field Speech by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević on the 600th anniversary of the Blackbird Field Battle was held on Vidovdan in 1989 and is seen as a harbinger of the approaching collapse of Yugoslavia . In addition, Milošević was extradited on Vidovdan 2001 by the Serbian authorities to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague .
On Vidovdan (June 28th) 2008, Serbs established their own parliament in northern Kosovo , parallel to the Kosovar parliament .
Farmer rules
- "After St. Veit time turns, everything goes the other way."
- "Here the sun doesn't like higher!"
literature
- Heinrich Königs: Saint Vitus and his adoration (= Munster contributions to historical research . Volume III, No. 28/29 ). Munster 1939.
- Stefan Rohdewald: Gods of Nations. Religious memorial figures in Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia until 1944 (= visual history culture, vol. 14). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne and Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22244-4 , in it the chapter The controversial national myth - the battle on the Blackbird field and St. Vitus Day as a national network of myths , p. 375 ff. (On the significance of the Serbs) .
Individual evidence
- ^ Gregor Rohmann: Tanzwut: Cosmos, Church and Man in the History of Significance of a Medieval Concept of Disease (= Historical Semantics . Volume 19 ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012, ISBN 978-3-647-36721-7 , VII.3.2 Veit and the summer solstice, p. 538 ff .
- ↑ Stefan Rohdewald: Gods of Nations: Religious memory figures in Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia until 1944 (= visual history culture . Volume 14 ). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22244-4 , C 5 The controversial national myth - the battle on the Amselfeld and St. Vitus Day as a national network of myths, p. 384 f .
- ↑ Vučković 1889, p. 35. Quoted from Rohdewald 2014, p. 384.
- ^ Holm Sundhaussen: History of Serbia . Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2007, pp. 189 .
- ^ Carl Gustaf Ströhm : Tito . Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1980, ISBN 3-404-60028-2 , p. 82 f .
- ↑ Zeit online: Secession: Serbs establish parliament in Kosovo. Retrieved January 31, 2017 .
- ↑ Helene Kostenzer, Otto Kostenzer: Old farmer wisdom: From weather rules and lost days, moon influences and planting times, medicinal and aromatic herbs, sauerkraut and bacon . Rosenheimer (Publishing House Förg), 1975, p. 30 .