Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zubrzycki, Geneviève
• Yurchuk, Yuliya
• Bogumił, Zuzanna

Titel

Sacred religio-secular symbols, national myths and collective memory

Ist Teil von

• Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective, 2022, p.49-65

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter questions the validity of two false associations, 'sacred = religious' and 'profane = secular', by focusing on the cross in Poland, which I argue is a sacred religio-secular symbol. It does so by analyzing how and why Christian rituals and symbols acquired a political dimension in nineteenth-century Poland and how they came to embody and carry historical narratives, national myths and collective memory that have continued to shape national identity and inform political debates to this day. This chapter questions the validity of two false associations, 'sacred = religious' and 'profane = secular', by focusing on the cross in Poland, which the author argue is a sacred religio-secular symbol. Polish romanticism was articulated in the nineteenth century, when Poland had disappeared from the European map after being partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria. Messianic martyrology gave meaning to events and social relationships by offering an interpretive frame through which to make sense of them. The cross's force in mobilizing support to specific causes in Poland derives from the historical narratives, collective memories and national aesthetics that have accrued around it, notably Poland as the Christ of nations, or the cross as it was used in Solidarity's resistance to communism, or the cross as a protective weapon against others.