Edinost in Dialog (Dec 2020)
Images of Jews in the Tradition of Slovenian Folk Prayers »Mary’s Dreams«
Abstract
The article is a partial presentation of a more comprehensive study of the images of Jews in Slovenian folk prayers, which have emerged over the centuries in similar, mostly poetic forms in all Slovenian regions. It is based on the observation that the motif of the Jews as Jesus’ tormentors appears in most folk prayers based on the Gospel story of Jesus’ passion, so that in this genre of prayers we can talk about their negative stereotypes. The most characteristic and most common »passion genre« of Slovene folk songs-prayers is described as »The Golden Lord’s Prayer«. This sometimes also includes the motif of »Mary’s dreams,« that is, Mary’s dream vision of the terrible suffering that awaits her son Jesus; but some prayers of the »Mary’s Dreams« genre also consist of independent units. Since no one in previous research has noticed the extremely frequent occurrence of the stereotypical motif of the Jews as tormentors of Jesus in Slovenian folk prayers, the article breaks new ground in this area. In the search for reasons for such frequent anti-Jewish depictions in Slovenia, it relies on the broader context of anti-Judaism in Europe in the centuries from the High Middle Ages onwards. It is particularly related to similar negative stereotypical representations of Jews in the Poljanski manuscript from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century which develops a thoughtful narrative of the life of Jesus based on the Gospels, the works of some Church Fathers and a medieval mystical tradition. As a comparative analysis has shown, Poljanski manuscript, which comprises more than 700 large-format pages, is a more or less literal translation of one of the Baroque editions of the monumental meditation on the life of Jesus Das grosse Leben Christi by the German Capuchin Father Martin von Cochem (1634–1712). This meditation had more than 300 editions and was also a source of translations in Slovenia.
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