Veneration of Virgin Mary among the Roma – global challenges and local diversities

Abstract (English)

The panel is devoted to the study of the manifestations of church and non-church religiosity among the Roma (formerly known as ‘Gypsies’) on example of the cult of Virgin Maria, including manifestations of modern and postmodern spirituality and hitherto unexplored phenomena of religious experimenting, conversion and de-conversion, and above all of the syncretism which is characteristic for the Roma (see Marushiakova and Popov 1999; Marushiakova and Popov (Eds.) 2015, 2021; Zachar Podolinská 2021b; Zachar Podolinská and Hrustič 2021; Slavkova 2025etc.)

Since the rise of modern society, religion has been told to disappear (‘disenchanted word’, Weber 1978). It is only in the last decades that secularisation itself is unveiled as a ‘modern myth’ (Berger 1999). ‘Re-enchantment’ is currently placed at the very heart of modernity. Some authors not only observe a ‘return of the sacred’ but even ‘desecularisation’ (decrease in the secular aspects of modern culture, Bell 1977, Berger 1999). As mentioned by H. Knoblauch (2019), religion is not just ‘returning’, it is undergoing a fundamental transformation, and only those forms of religion are booming that have undergone such transformation. These transformations may not only be related to the ‘returning’ of religion but also to its application to achieve communal and utilitarian goals.

The aim of the panel is to reevaluate the role of the cult of Virgin Maria among Roma communities as a vehicle of social, cultural and ethnic innovation, its role in the construction and reconstruction of identity, the role of the cult in social inclusion/exclusion and in social mobility and in migration, the role of the cult in social cohesion and social networking and non-traditional forms. Marian devotion (including pilgrimages and apparitions) is not a static remnant of earlier periods (Christian 1984). In addition, it is a brilliant example of post-modern religiosity, exhibiting the essential features of both spirituality and popular religion (Knoblauch 2019). Fuelled by the power of ‘living faith’, emotions and miracles, it is not only a response to modern rationality and secularisation but also a vehicle for the rise of spontaneous grassroots and bottom-up Christianity, as opposed to ‘normative religion’ represented by the official Catholic, Orthodox Church and even Evangelic denominations and Islam.

Based on the study of the local social field, the panel will trace how different Roma communities respond to the global challenges of modernity related to migration, mobility, social stratification and geopolitical challenges (see Zachar Podolinská 2019). The panel will contextualize religiosity in the form practiced among Roma at the beginning of the twenty-first century within the general framework-picture of postmodern religiosity (see also Zachar Podolinská 2021a). The individual papers included in the panel will present these processes based on examples from different Roma communities living in different parts of the world.