Valerie Kivelson
580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
STUDY GROUP ON EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA
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Abstract
Spell so that your horse doesn't run away: Feed bread to your horse and say: 'As this stone doesn't move from its place, so may the horse not leave me, forever and ever.' Olonetskii sbornik (second quarter, 17th century) There is a sacred sea-ocean, and in that sacred sea-ocean is a stone, in the depths of the sea. Under that stone stands a pike-fish made of iron, and her teeth are iron. She eats up the sea foam, and just so may that pike eat up cunning women and witches, and sorcerers, both black and red. Olonetskii sbornik (second quarter, 17th century) And as the cuckoo bird grieves for her nestlings and cries for them, so may that female slave of god grieve and cry for me. ( And he told him to say the incantation while taking an eye from a live chicken. Then he should crush it and give it to women to drink. (1668/69) 1 The Volkhovnik, a book of divination condemned by the mid-sixteenth century Stoglav Church Council, described omens associated with cats. The seventeenth-century Zhitie of Sergei Nuromskii mentioned that devils had a habit of taking the form of cats. These nuggets, along with other feline-related beliefs and practices, we know thanks to a festschrift article that our current honouree, W. F. Ryan, offered to his friend and colleague John Simmons in 2005. A short piece, 'Russia and the Magic of Cats' is filled with the astonishing range, profound erudition, warmth and humour characteristic of Will Ryan in his 1
References (18)
- Horse Culture" in Early Modern Rus'', Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, 50, 1995, pp. 199-238; idem., 'Hunting for Dogs in Seventeenth-Century Rus', Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 3, 2010, pp. 467-88; idem., '"Ni pes ni vyzhlets ni gonchaia sobaka": Images of Dogs in Rus', in Brian Boeck, Russell E. Martin and Daniel Rowland (eds), Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski, Bloomington, IN, 2012, pp. 427-42, and Charles J. Halperin and Ann M. Kleimola, 'Beastly Humans and Humanly Beasts in Seventeenth-Century Russia', Vivliofika: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, 6, 2018, pp. 46-57.
- Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, p. 195.
- Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 115 no. 56, see also p. 101 no. 25, p. 116 no. 57.
- Valerie A. Kivelson and Christine D. Worobec (eds), Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine: A Sourcebook, 1000-1900, Ithaca, NY, 2020, p. 324; see also Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 336 no. 8.
- RGADA, f. 210, Prikaznyi stol, stlb. 595, ll. 599-626. Quotation on l. 605.
- Kivelson, Worobec, Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, p. 104.
- Ibid., pp. 322-33, 431-32; Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 335, no. 6, p. 321 no. 1, pp. 357-58 nos. 1-2, p. 427 no. 4. 19 RGADA f. 210, Prik. Stol., stlb. 268, ll. 209-228ob.; Prikaznyi stol, st. 564, ll. 197-209;
- Kivelson, Worobec, Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, pp. 213-20.
- Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 134 no. 111. See also ibid., p. 361.
- Ia. A. Kantorovich, Srednevekovye protsessy o ved'makh. Reprintnoe vosproizvedenie izdaniia 1899 goda, Moscow, 1990, pp. 173-74; Novombergskii, Koldovstvo, pp. 112-34, no. 33; Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, p. 199; L. N. Maikov, Velikorusskoe zaklinanie. Sbornik L. N. Maikova, 1869, reprint, St Petersburg, 1994, no. 326.
- Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 125 no. 87. See also ibid., pp. 125-26 no. 88, pp. 315-17 no. 1, p. 346 no. 5.
- RGADA, f. 210, Prikaznyi stol, op. 13, stlb. 734, ll. 115-203. See also stlb. 749, l. 189 (1677). On talismanic use of animal parts, see Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, pp. 183, 282, 284-85;
- A. V. Chernetsov, 'The Sorcerer's Stone: Magic of Water and Blood', in Witchcraft Casebook, pp. 519-31;
- V. L. Kliaus, 'Zagovory i magicheskie sredstva', in A. Toporkov (ed.), Russkii eroticheskii fol'klor, Moscow, 1995, pp. 344-61. 32 Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, pp. 101-02 no. 25.
- RGADA, f. 210, Razriadnyi prikaz, op. 14, Sevskii stol, ed. khr. 230, l. 2. 34 Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 325 no. 4. 35 Ibid., p. 91 no. 2.
- Shape-Shifters in Demonological Literature', in Willem de Blécourt (ed.), Werewolf Histories, Basingstoke, 2015, pp. 142-58. Evidence of belief in human transformation into animals is scant in Muscovite sources. See Kivelson, Worobec, Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, pp. 37, 40; Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, pp. 81, 91, 414;
- Maureen Perrie, The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 178-79.
- Marianna Muravyeva, 'Sex with Animals in Early Modern Russia: Legal Spaces of Negotiating the Boundaries of Humanity', Vivliofika: E-Journal of Eighteenth- Century Russian Studies, 7, 2019, pp. 108, 106; Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700, Ithaca, NY, 1989, pp. 205-07. 43 Toporkov (ed.), Russkie zagovory, p. 112 no. 49.