Between Orthodoxy and Catholicism

Rural Cemeteries at the Border of Poland and Belarus
By Justyna Straczuk
English

In this paper I analyze the cultural space of several rural cemeteries on the Catholic-Orthodox borderland in Belarus and Poland trying to show how religious differences, which are usually the crucial factor of group divisions among peasant communities, are being neutralized by close neighborhood and extended kinship ties. The spatial organization of the cemetery into family areas, the rules of burying spouses from religiously mixed marriages, the interferences of funeral rituals and the merging of two sacred alphabets on grave inscriptions testify that cultural diversity is incorporated into those communities’ existence and is an immanent feature of the borderland reality.

Keywords

  • cultural borderland
  • cemetery
  • peasant religiousness
  • social memory
  • Poland
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