Original scientific paper
MARTINŠĆAK, MARTINŠĆINA, SAINT MARTIN'S DAY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ST. MARTIN'S CULT IN NORTHWESTERN CROATIA
Antonija Zaradija Kiš
orcid.org/0000-0002-2013-9398
; Intitute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
When researching diverse characteristics of saints' cults, the main starting points of the
studies, were first of all, liturgical reverences which, on a certain day, through Mass
readings, evoke in more detail the most memorable parts of the saint's life, pointing out
his or her moral, educational and religious values. The reverence of the saint is an
a p o t h e o s i s of his or her personality, which is deeply emotionally expressed in the
sanctuary which he or she is the titular of. Toponyms with the name of a saint exude more
widely the saint’s deeply rooted cult, whose beginnings are sometimes hard to reach, and
which are shown on a certain day through various customs and events, which sometimes
completely lose the apologetic characteristics of the traditional feast. The reasons for such
contradictions were researched on the example of the tradition of Saint Martin in
northwestern Croatia.
After the submitted "Martin vocabulary" which is a component of everyday life, in
this article we concentrate in more detail on three specific terms: martinšćak, martinšćina
and Martinje (Saint Martin's Day). They developed through generations of folk insights
and life experience sedimentation, which directly relate to the civilizational time frontier
between the winter and summer period, which falls exactly on St. Martin's day —
— November 11.
Keywords
Martin; St. Martin's Day; blessing; ritual; martinšćina; frontier guard; martinšćak; November; Hrvatsko Zagorje
Hrčak ID:
33146
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2002.
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