Original scientific paper
VILENICA AND VILENJAK: BEARERS OF AN EXTINCT FAIRY CULT
Zoran Čiča
orcid.org/0000-0002-6251-3245
Abstract
This article traces a popular pre-Christian fairy cult in Croatia and
broader, with vilenica and vilenjak as its bearers and practitioners.
The sources analyzed are historical records, sixteenth-century
literary fragments, theological writings from the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century
ethnographic data. The author reconstructs and examines the
morphology of the cult, its influence on the learned culture
(Renaissance literary works), along with the theological endeavours
to alter the social reception of an apparently widespread cult and to
root it out. The Roman Catholic efforts to reform popular culture as
well as the historical phenomenon of witch-hunting and its
consequences contributed markedly to the disappearance of the
contemporary awareness of vilenicas (f) and vilenjaks (vileniks,
vilovnjaks) (m) as the central personages of a rich cosmological cult
similar to those practised elsewhere in Europe.
Keywords
vilenica; vilenjak (vilenik, vilovnjak); fairy cult; witch- -hunting; popular culture
Hrčak ID:
33230
URI
Publication date:
10.6.2002.
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