Cult
In Romania, the official way one refers to religions is to use the term “cult.” This, of course, brings forth some smugness from the native English speaker. It is a funny world we live in where the words we use are the same, including the denotative meaning if not the connotative meaning.
In Bucovina, the north east part of Romania, there are the famous painted churches dotted across the land in various small towns. With some effort, one can drive around to see one or more (though not all churches in the area are actually decorated with frescos).
While there were some interesting zodiac signs prominently displayed on more than one “painted church” as further evidence of how much Christianity has borrowed from other religions and cultures in order to spread its’ acceptance, the predominant themes among the paints were demons, death, and killing.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
What is the name of the saint killing the king? I think I can read it as “STÎ DITRÎE”. Is that Saint Demetrius?
July 27th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
What are those guys in the top picture doing? Hahhaah.
July 31st, 2007 at 12:53 am
Bogdan – It would appear to be Saint Dimitrios of Thessaloniki, former military commander credited with saving Christianity from “the pagans” of his day and later to become an inspirational patron saint of the violent Crusades against non-Christians. If we’re right, that is.
xamox – I’d say they could be looking for you to join the party, if you don’t watch out!
July 31st, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Upon further study, Bogdan, there are some strange and puzzling details, if you zoom in on the detail.
Notice that first “C” character has a cedilla, which I’ve read is only a feature of Turkic varieties of Cyrillic. Next, that “T” has some kind of mark above which I cannot find any information about. Now, both the 3rd and 8th ы characters appear commonly in Turkic varieties of Cyrillic… do we see a taboo pattern here? (Admittedly, they also appear in Rusyn which arguably should have been around at the time.)
I read it as тыдїтрыє. Or ты дїтрыє. Stu (Santu/Sfantu) Ditrue… which approximates Saint Dimitrios.
But then, what’s that little character on top? A reversed Ѩ? Impossible. Something else, then? And what does it mean?
General disclaimer: Cyrillic is not my forte…
July 31st, 2007 at 10:18 pm
It seems the tilda over a word means it’s an abbreviation, in this case probably of “Saint”.
And the sign over the second T is “MI”. It seems that guy wrote “DITRÎE” and then he read what he wrote and noticed he spelt it wrongly, so he added the “MI” above it, to spell “DIMITRÎE”. :-)
August 1st, 2007 at 10:51 am
Aha, a typo! I think you have indeed solved the mystery.