Summary:
The subject of this thesis is the study of modern folk religious behavior in the communities of Marathonas. It was based on field research that lasted, with certain breaks, from 2013 to 2017, in a total of forty five places of worship, in other words the parishes and chapels during the period of their feasts, in six settlements of the area (Kalentzi, Marathonas, Ano Souli, Kato Souli, Vranas, and Tymvos - Marathonas beach) and over an area of twenty eight square kilometers which covers a large part of the unified municipality. Therefore, this thesis differs from a small scale study (case study) due to the large geographic area that it covers and the number of cases and parameters that it examines. From a research point of view, this thesis follows the conclusions, theories and methods of the particular branch of folklore studies that examines religious behavior, as developed by Greek (see the work of M. G. Varvounis and others, as detailed in the main part of the thesis) and foreign folklorists (see the work of Honko and others), while adopting elements of Greek and international folklore theory.
Religious behavior is a complex cultural creation that is connected with the everyday world and has religious, social, financial and material aspects. It is an amalgamation of activities that are performed at the same time by many people, as well as a great number of symbolically codified behaviors expressed through these activities. The feasts of a community’s saints, characterized by universality according to Dorson, are important as they celebrate the community’s patron saint and form the link between the people at the local level.
The study of religious behavior is laid out on two axes: a) we attempted to study the religious festivals and customs in the yearly cycle in the churches of Marathonas and its settlements. Mainly, we tried to describe the religious processes with regard to their official (ecclesiastic) and unofficial (lay) aspects, but also to examine the ways in which contemporary lay people associate them with their experiences, derive meaning through them, and express their individuality through collective participation. In this framework we focused on ceremonial - customary practice, which includes celebrations in the area’s churches, in other words those expressions that have a ceremonial dimension and take place at a specific place and time, on a circularly repeating and communal basis, and on a large or small scale.
b) we also attempted to lay down the basic parameters for the study of the narrative expression of religious belief and behavior also within the framework of international scientific tendencies (see Belief Narrative Network). People do not simply act, they also express their beliefs and emotions through the performance of narrative. Thus a form of personal and artistic-poetic communication is constructed, which is more personal and less organized, and which focuses on the level of narrative expression, particularly legends (paradosis) or personal experience narratives that directly or symbolically denote beliefs and moral stances related to religious sentiment and the aspects of social reality. In the ceremonial as well as the narrative part, the folklore paradigm is used, that is the words of simple people.
We approached a large number of interlocutors of different sex, age, and social background, and we studied religious behavior as a process of communication that is connected to a specific social and historical environment. Within the framework of the sociohistorical approach, we used qualitative and quantitative methods. We combined field research with participant observation and interviews with a total of ninety seven informants on the one hand, and bibliographic and archival research on the other. This combined study of the past and present provided an opportunity to trace the changes of the folklore phenomena under study. Besides the qualitative field research with participant observation, we also took into consideration quantitative data (the area’s demographic data, the number of churches, sizes and their spread over the area). The organization of the material from the interviews, which were based on semi-structured questionnaires, was done thematically and the explanatory approach followed the sociohistorical method, as developed mainly by Meraklis and others. Thirty five of the informants also narrated more extensive stories (one hundred and five accounts), which were organized based on folklore theories of narrative types. In this framework, the material was categorized using the element of belief as a criterion and in accordance with the scientific terminology found in Northern European folklorists. During the analysis of the accounts we used the discourse analysis method.
Based on the studies of M. G. Meraklis and others that make reference to the particularity of Greek society, adulterated urbanization, the rise of the world of the petit-bourgeoisie, concepts that help understand the social makeup of popular groups in the agrarian and urban space of Greece, we were particularly preoccupied with the dimension and particularity of social space. As a periurban space that features both urban and agrarian characteristics, the area of Marathonas affects social structure within the framework of modernity. But the location and space of the churches (internal and external) also has a profound effect on the configuration and dynamics of folk culture in the local society. More specifically, we examined whether the borderline nature of Marathonas (between village and city) as a social context has affected religious behavior. Ferdinand Tönnies’ concepts of Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society), regarding the nature of social organization, have been important terms for our approach; so have the terms ‘peri-urban space’, ‘agro-urban continuum’, deterritorialization, and globalization.
Besides the spatial dimension, we also set parameters such as: the participants’ features (age groups, sex), other criteria that differentiate the process of perception and participation in the feast; the distinct roles of official and unofficial entities and expressions that participate or in other words top-down culture and bottom-up culture; customary practices, with an emphasis on the combination of the spiritual part with the lay element and a number of individual parameters (saints venerated, decoration, worshiping of icons, ritual, processions, fair, expressions of philanthropy etc); votive offerings and the general procedure of offering (metal oblations, signed depictions, offering of ritual bread); practices for the management of the past, such as those expressed through private and public initiatives for the renovation of churches; the comparison between past and present, the continuity, discontinuity and breaks in the celebratory process; the relationship between individual and collectivity.
With regard to the study of folk religious behavior in Marathonas as a ritual-customary practice and as a process of communication within a specific historical and social environment, approaches from the sociology of religion are used, such as those by Émile Durkheim concerning religion as a social event and the ritual behavior (periodic repetition of rituals, the transcendent character of the psyche, the contrast between sacred and profane, the union of people during rituals, the relationship between religion and magic). But also opinions that are opposed to this, for instance regarding the importance of rituals not only for the individual, but also for the community.
From a comparative perspective, the study of the saints’ feasts at these particular parishes and chapels of Marathonas refers to past ways of celebrating, in search of continuity and discontinuity based on the relationship between substructure and superstructure. The historicity of the folklore phenomena is the framework within which repeated and dynamic or modern elements of the celebratory rituals in the churches are examined, as well as the transformations and revivals, such as the folklorism that can be found in the case of the fairs. Behaviors that are not logically interpreted are not overlooked, like those that reveal the poetic function of the ritual, but also express its social signification and organization, connected to metaphysical views.
Generally, the study of contemporary religious behavior is attempted in a holistic way. It may include various manifestations, such as the relationship between the believers and their parish; financial issues and organisation of the fairs, particularly in view of the past few years’ crisis in Greece; the pronounced social dimension of the celebrations, up to newer forms of customs such as the veneration of new saints as a private or collective veneration.
Within the repeating and established character of these rituals of the celebrations at the churches of Marathonas, we also recognise variety, variations as a part of folk culture, in the interconnection between the collective (communal) and the individual. Here it would seem that modern living conditions, with the penetration of technology into our lives, have not supplanted the sense of community.
Furthermore, we have used international trends in folklore studies (Tübingen School, New Perspectives in American Folklore) as a basis for understanding phenomena of traditionality in the world of modernity and postmodernity: how the unity of space and time changes; the presence of the exotic element; the communicative dimension of rituals as means of introduction into the community; the importance of collective experience in the celebrations at churches and the fairs. The study of sentiments as a part of social interaction is also included in this study of religious behavior, but also in the way that personal sentiment is shaped into collective sentiment.
As for the second axis of the thesis, which concerns folk narratives, during the interview with the informants, as expressions of religious sentiment, we are concerned with: the type of folk narrative (paradosis) that is related to religious sentiment; the narrators and their features; the main themes, their shape and function; the way in which they assimilate or absorb and express historical experience; the place of the element of belief within them. The material from the folk narratives underlines the conjunction of poetics and rhetoric-politics in manifestations of folk culture and also the importance of oral narration to contemporary folk research, as people’s expression for the interpretation of the world and themselves. The folk narrative material that we have collected also belongs to this frame of reference.
In order to investigate the above questions, we relied on the folk narrative and narrative types theory within folklore studies. The narrative is given a dual examination, with regard to its dissemination under conditions of orality, and with regard to the new forms that it takes through its contact with modern technology: as a communicative process-performative expression it is distinguished by the creation of variants, while the conditions and context of its dissemination are important.
Within the context of the study of folk narratives, we point out: the terms “paradosi” and “legend” in the terminology of Greek folklore studies and classification systems and the terminology of the analytical categories and criteria for the definition of legends in the international folklore studies bibliography is presented; faith as the ideological basis of legend and the dominant element of the narratives that we collected; the elements of the legend’s form and its essential characteristics, the categories of belief legends and the structure and function of legends.
Keeping in mind that not only has mythical thought not been suspended in the modern era of technology, but it continues being recorded in oral and written form, new terms are mentioned such as ‘ostension’ and ‘cinematic ostension’; ‘disenchantment’ and ‘reenchantment’ which characterize the world of modernity and are related to folk culture, the study and poetics of genres, narrative types, even the culture of the internet and the image.
The narratives, which as a reflection of a personal worldview as well as symbols that are established in the collective consciousness, have a direct relationship with religious sentiment, express people’s way of thinking regarding the role of the supernatural element in their life, the presence of the irrational element in a rational world and also the element of belief, which is the ideological basis of legends.
Based on the theoretical approaches of Lauri Honko and Bengt af Klintberg, we have placed the narratives that we have collected in four categories: a) legends or fabulates, b) memorates, c) belief accounts, and d) historic events and historic legends, while at the same time a connection is attempted between this international terminology and the terminology of Greek folklore studies, and particularly with the classification systems of Kyriakidis, Megas, Meraklis, and Papachristoforou. More specifically, the first category includes three narratives of the same event -variants-); the second also with reference to conflations between individual categories of legends (memorate-fabulate, memorate-belief account), while eleven thematic categories of the memorate material are provided and nine criteria for determining them, as well as details regarding dreams as narrative material; the third one includes eighteen stories, it presents an element with nine themes and eight criteria for determining legends (fabulates); and the fourth one includes fourteen belief accounts and the themes, determination criteria, their aims, and the narrator’s point of view are provided. Each narrative is studied on the basis of three parameters, its content, form, and function, while at the end the narrator’s point of view is also provided (ethnic genre).
In conclusion, Marathonas is the plane where two different ways of life and work coexist, highlighting the hybrid character of today’s agricultural space in Greece, with its increasing urban activity. Through the constitution of Marathonas’ communities, folk religious behaviour is integrated into the development of specific forms of collective life, in which individuals actively and fervently participate. Contrary to the ‘de-sanctified’ city, as Meraklis calls it, the plethora and sizes of the dispersed churches of Marathonas (parishes and chapels) highlight the fragmentation and spread of the phenomenon of folk religiousness, activate the relationship between man and the natural and built environment, while at the same time discoursing with the peculiar ‘urbanization’ of local society, in its historical trajectory. Thus, the many references to saints create sections in space and time, while the circular organisation of celebrations and the folk calendar of holidays confirms the coexistence of circular and linear time.
Churches’ and chapels’ spaces for reception for emotions, performance and speech, the variety of saints, the multitude of ceremonies and services constitute a cultural phenomenon that in an interactive communicative context combines repetitiveness and change, the sacred and the profane element, the material and spiritual, the official and the casual, the personal and the collective. Here, social roles are included in the rules and principles of the rituals, but, as shown by the field research, they are not entrenched, allowing for the highlighting of personal elements.
These complex phenomena are related to questions of continuity in the historical space and time, but at the same time they also show a tendency of reversion to religiousness, which is related to ‘retraditionalization’, within the context of processes that can also be interpreted as a form of re-enchantment of the modern world. In this framework, legends or individuals’ personal experience accounts, as expressions of religious sentiment, reflect their way of thinking regarding the understanding and appropriation of the supernatural and its artistic poetic transfiguration.
