The main theme of this issue plunges us into the innermost depth of all the problems of the sacred and its ambivalent energy, where worship borders on damnation, delight with fear, greatness with laughter, and praise with blasphemy. Blasphemy-or in the old blasphemy, which goes back in meaning to the ancient and then Christian βλασφημηα, blasphemia - is a complex phenomenon that only seems universal and unchangeable: its content has varied infinitely in different cultures and at different times.

Blasphemy is a fundamentally borderline phenomenon, a crossroads of meanings and cultural forces, but these boundaries and meanings could be different. Medieval manuals for inquisitors discussed the line between blasphemy and heresy. In Modern times, blasphemy has increasingly shifted towards freethinking and unbelief. Current discussions about insulting the feelings of believers, about the reactions of religious radicals to works of modern art or cartoons are taking place within the framework of the opposition to blasphemy (blasphemy) and freedom of speech.

Disputes about blasphemy are disputes about the limits of what is permissible in statements about the sacred; about the boundaries of different physical and social spaces, or even role frameworks within which the same statements are acceptable or unacceptable. What is considered blasphemy in one context is not only permissible in another, but also" canonized " - as a way of affirming the sacred, a reminder of its immutable power, or even a way of renewing it. Such, for example, is the renewing power of pious transgression, virtuous provocation, when the" teasing " of the norm serves to affirm true holiness as opposed to hypocritical piety - as, say, in medieval Byzantine foolishness -

page 7
"madness for Christ's sake"1. Similar examples of subversive, denouncing "anti-behavior" are also found in Russian religious history2. If you think about it, was not the behavior of Jesus himself a challenge and provocation, deliberate, "blasphemous" - in the conditions of Roman Judea of the first century-a rebuke of what he considered religious hypocrisy? And was not the preaching of the crucified Christ "a temptation to the Jews, but madness to the Greeks"?

Disputes about blasphemy are disputes about norm, authority, and authority: about which communities, institutions, and individuals have the right to determine the boundaries of the sacred and speech norms in relation to it, as well as to punish their violation. Therefore, blasphemy is also, potentially, a "hidden discourse" of resistance or protest: the desecration of shrines by the belittled and rejected can be understood as a symbolic challenge to the power whose legitimacy is based on the sacred energy of these shrines. Isn't this the meaning of a "routine" people's carnival, mass iconoclastic violence, and anti-religious/ anti-clerical revolutions?

Finally, at the most fundamental level, the phenomenon of blasphemy raises the theoretical question of the boundaries between the sacred and the secular (profane). This is how Barbara Newman views the phenomenon of medieval blasphemy (see Galina Zelenina's review of her book Medieval Crosses); in particular, she takes the parodia sacra genre as a basis. Newman suggests the concept of "crossroads" and emphasizes that the sacred and the secular overlap or even merge to the point of indistinguishability. Consequently, " sacred parody "(like all blasphemy) cannot be unambiguously attributed to either religious or secular semantics.

The fact that blasphemy can be a manifestation of religious zeal is shown by Mikhail Maizuls in his article based on the material of the Middle Ages and early Modern times. Violence against shrines (images) is, as he writes, a "radical form of prayer": saints (including the Virgin Mary) receive punishment for inaction from those who unconditionally continue in them

1. Ivanov S. A. Blazhennye pokhaby [Blessed pokhabs]. Kul'turnaya istoriya yurodstva [Cultural History of Foolishness], Moscow, 2005; Likhachev D. S., Panchenko A.M., Ponyrko N. V. "Smekhovoi mir " drevnoi Rus', L., 1984.

2. See also: Uspenskiy B. A. Antipovedenie v kul'tury Drevnoi Rus ' [Antipovedience in the Culture of Ancient Russia]. Moscow, 1984. pp. 326-336. An extensive bibliography of blasphemy studies can be found in the articles by M. Maisuls, F. Barbierato and P. Johnson in this issue.

page 8
he believes and feels entitled to expect help from them in return. This "respectful compulsion" of saints (shrines) to act was balanced on the edge of piety and blasphemy, and sometimes, perhaps, was combined with religious skepticism or even with real disbelief. In any case, this categorical node caused a lot of trouble for theologians and inquisitors.

When it comes to faith and unbelief in European history, this issue is one of the most widely discussed, as it is firmly intertwined with the theme of blasphemy.3 Federico Barbierato writes about the border of faith and unbelief on the material of Venice of the XVII-XVIII centuries. He believes that blasphemy is "a kind of language, on the basis of which, paradoxically, it is possible to build a religious anthropology of the early Modern period." How is this possible? First, blasphemy during this period of European history served as an important space for dissent; a cognitive and cultural "channel" through which a person could express their beliefs about a belief: its truth or distortions. Secondly, blasphemy, which at that time was the focus of ideological and political control, is important for understanding how the repressive state mechanism developed and how gradually political control over subjects / citizens differentiated from religious control. By engaging not only words, but also gestures, postures, taste preferences, and behavioral styles, Barbierato demonstrates how complex and evasive the semantics of blasphemy were (and often remain).

Maria Neklyudova shows how difficult it was for French theologians and royal jurists of the seventeenth century to apply the strict decisions of the Council of Trent to the sea of real cases of blasphemy, and how difficult it was to separate them from the rest of the world.-

3. Research in recent decades has generally refuted (or at least significantly corrected) Lucien Fevre's classic thesis that in the sixteenth century (and, consequently, in the Middle Ages)the world's most important economic phenomenon was the development of the world's largest economy. In Europe, disbelief was an extremely rare phenomenon, without any cultural and ideological support. See: Dinzelbacher P. Disbelief in the "era of faith" / / Images of the past. Collection in memory of A. Y. Gurevich. СПб., 2011; Wootton, D. (1988) "Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period", The Journal of Modern History 60(4); Reynolds, S. (1991) "Social Mentalities and the Cases of Medieval Scepticism", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series 1; Cavaillé, J.-P. (2007) "Libertinage, irréligion, incroyance, athéisme dans l'Europe de la première modernité (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). Une approche critique des tendances actuelles de la recherche (1998-2002)", Les Dossiers du Grihl [En ligne] 2 (http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/279); Barbierato, F. (2012) The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop. Inquisition, Forbidden Books and Unbelief in Early Modern Venice. Farnham.

page 9
pour emotional rhetoric (like " get the hell out of here!") from what was perceived (or denoted) like heresy or freethinking. Once again, we find ourselves at the border, in the "gray zone" of semantic uncertainty. And in this "gray zone", hidden tensions between central and local structures, between the royal power, the church and society shine through. The language of blasphemy, which is inextricably linked to the conflict of interpretation, reflects the conflicts of power - and this point is very important in an era when power and religious discourses were not yet clearly separated, constantly mixed.

Much more forcefully, the strict Tridentine norms were being implemented in Malta, the stronghold of Catholicism; the local inquisition materials, based on an article by Liam Gauci and Mitya Frumin, reveal blasphemers among the Maltese pirates who are loyal to the Order in its eternal opposition to the Ottoman Empire. Thus, at the end of the 18th century, the Corsair captain Pietro Zelacic could not only publicly accuse the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Even in bad weather, but also repeatedly declare the advantages of Islam over Christianity.

The Russian material in our issue is presented in two texts-an article by Karlygash Sergazina and her review of the second edition of Elena Smilyanskaya's book " Magicians, Blasphemers, Heretics...". In both texts, as in most studies from European history, the main source is investigative cases that reflect the (not always smooth) coordination between the secular part of the world. and the ecclesiastical logic of mind control. Sergazina shows how investigators, motivated by the desire to stop religious imposture that is dangerous for the imperial order - in fact, the too sincere and too independent religious zeal of the Christists - actually construct Christism as a dangerous parody, as false or anti-Christianity, with all the attributes of an alternative - and therefore unacceptable - religion. However, the variety of accusatory language applied to the Christian believers shows the uncertainty of the accusers and the ambiguity of the phenomenon. Trying to delineate the entire bright and multicolored palette of Russian popular religiosity of the XVIII century, Smilyanskaya enters into a theoretical discussion about the nature of blasphemy and refutes the old postulates about "popular atheism" as its driving force. At the same time, it shows how gradually, over the course of a century, and not without the influence of an upper-level Enlightenment, blasphemy against God and sacred objects gradually shifts from the semantic field of "heresies" to the category of "superstitions", and how

page 10
Gradually, the physical and linguistic spaces of the sacred and profane are distinguished, where irreverence is qualified in different ways. How important the issue of spatial localization can be is clearly seen in the recent history of the "punk prayer" in the main Russian church.

In Paul Johnson's article, we are transported to modern Brazil and discover a different facet of our problems, however, well-known to previous eras. Blasphemy, which he writes about, fits into the classic frame of controversy around religious aniconism-the ban on images of the divine. We know that the gods worshipped by some are often idols to others, and that holy wars of this type continue even now, as these lines are being read. The harsh, insulting attacks of the preacher of the neo-Pentecostal Church against the national Catholic shrine, the patron saint of Brazil - Nossa Senhora Aparecida-look like echoes of Protestant iconoclasm. However, the reaction to these attacks leads to the fact that the Catholic Madonna, on the contrary, acquires even more magic, ritualism and materiality. Moreover, we are not talking about" average " Catholics, but about the masses of Afro-Brazilians: the image of the Madonna "blackens" and is orchestrated by motley elements of Candomble and other syncretic cults of African origin. Isn't itis this really blasphemy from the point of view of a Protestant pastor who defiantly humiliates a shrine to show everyone that it is just a powerless idol?

Blasphemy has been and remains one of the key crimes in religious systems of law (such as Halakha, sharia, or Christian canon law), from which it has in many countries migrated to secular codes. The Russian Council Code of 1649, which was in force until 1832, opened with the chapter "On Blasphemers and Church rebels", but the norm was preserved in a modified form and in new legislation. However, in the course of European modernization, the norms on blasphemy gradually lost their meaning. Where they remained part of legislation (primarily criminal law), the general trend was to shift the focus from insulting God, other religious images or concepts to protecting specific individuals (or groups of individuals) who might be offended. The French Law of 1881 on the freedom of the press (in fact, on the freedom of speech and expression), which is still in force, makes absolutely no difference.

page 11
sanctions against blasphemy are impossible, although it provides for restrictions on freedoms related to defamation, insulting (specific individuals), and calls for hatred and violence. In the United States, the First Amendment makes any charge of blasphemy / blasphemy virtually unconstitutional, although the norm is nominally preserved in individual state laws and was last applied in 1928, when an active atheist in Arkansas was forced to pay a small fine for publicly displaying slogans about the falsity of the Bible and God as a "ghost" (ghost). In Britain, the last sentence under the old blasphemy law was handed down in 1921, when someone was convicted for a pamphlet depicting Jesus entering Jerusalem as a circus clown. The conviction caused widespread outrage, and the law was no longer applied, and in 2008 it was completely repealed. In those countries where, as in Italy and Ireland, such norms still exist, due to tradition, they have not been applied for a long time.

In Germany, as Vladimir Hulap's article describes, the Gotteslästerung (blasphemy rule) finally disappeared during the criminal law reform in 1969; the norm today is "insulting faiths, religious societies and ideological associations". In the German case, as in other systems of modern law, the protection of sacred objects is conceived in terms of secular ones. However, several different and sometimes competing paradigms collide here, none of which dominates: "protecting religion"; protecting "public peace"; and finally, "protecting the feelings of believers" (which is consonant with the current Russian legal discourse).

It is obvious that in this issue of the journal we have made only a modest attempt to cover different facets of the phenomenon of blasphemy and describe the cultural and social meanings associated with it. At the same time, there are three most important subjects that were left out of the field of consideration by our authors, or were on its periphery, but which in this context cannot be ignored.

The first is the growing reaction to blasphemy in modern Islam. In Muslim countries, the penalty for blasphemy remains an actively applied norm4. Moreover, it is often used to punish blasphemy.

4. Turkish law does not use the terms "blasphemy" or "blasphemy", but it punishes "public humiliation of religious values" if it was carried out intentionally and threatens public peace.

page 12
the meaning is understood within the framework of a tough confrontation with the secular West, where such norms do not exist now. Moreover, in recent years, conflicts based on the opposition "freedom vs blasphemy" have repeatedly led to outbreaks of violence. Talal Asad, commenting on the scandal with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, called blasphemy "a sign of civilizational identity"5. Are we talking about "different levels of modernity" or, as "postcolonial" authors believe, about deep and irrecoverable differences in the design of religiosity and the "semiotics of iconography and representation", which contrast the "Protestant" version of the secular, liberal (post)Christianity and traditional Muslim piety?6

The second story that should be mentioned is "offensive art". Here the classical opposition of freedom and religious feelings takes on an aesthetic dimension, turning into an opposition not only of "two rights", but also of "two types of feelings"7. The taste dimension is interwoven into the complex structure of modern society, with its multidirectional secular and post-secular trends, and is reflected not only in emotional disputes, but also in legal norms and judicial precedents. If we limit ourselves only to examples from Russian reality, then it is not easy for society to digest the public cutting of icons, the parody substitution of Coca-Cola for the Eucharistic blood, the non-standard image of Christ in the play, and the canonized tsar in the cinema. The phenomenon of blasphemy, as always in the past, reappears in all its complexity, on the verge of temptation and risk, transgression and control, freedom and repression.

And finally, the third subject that is closely related to our topic, which is heard from time to time in the articles of this issue and was outlined by us in dotted lines above in this introduction, is ne-

5. Asad, T. (2009) "Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism", in T. Asad et al. Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, p. 21. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press.

6. In addition to the article just mentioned by T. Asad, where he discusses the disparity between Euro-Atlantic and Muslim attitudes to freedom of speech, see Saba Mahmoud's work on the incommensurable divergence of the "semiotics of representation": Mahmood, S." Religious Reason and Secular Affect: Incommensurable Divide? " pp. 64-100.

7. See David Friedberg's classic work on the provocative power of the image and various methods of "neutralizing" it: Freedberg D. (1989) The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, pp. 345-428. London, Chicago, 1989.

page 13
the transition from blasphemy against God to blasphemy against authority. We know that blasphemy against symbols of secular power was subjected to no less or even greater repression than blasphemy - both when these phenomena were intertwined, and later, when the state of modern and modern times produced a whole system of its own sacred symbols and rituals, cemented by national and/ or ideological myths. Defiance, provocation, parody, and laughter directed against the symbols of power and its specific bearers, as well as, if we go even further, against established social conventions and norms ("slap in the face to public taste!") - all these phenomena are related to political protest and the dialectic of freedom. But do they not refer us to some primordial, deep, perhaps even cognitive path - the dialectic of tabooing and overcoming taboos, to the motif of forbidden fruit? In this context, the subject of blasphemy takes on even more significance.

* * *

In addition to articles related to the main topic, we publish five more articles in this issue. Two of them are dedicated to confessional minorities of the Russian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The text of the Moscow historian Vadim Trepavlov analyzes the image of the Russian tsar among foreigners and gentiles of the empire, and the article by historians Darima Amogolonova and Marina Sodnompilova from Ulan-Ude reveals the complex relationship between the imperial government and Trans-Baikal Buddhists. Two more articles - on American stories. Elena Stepanova, a religious scholar from Yekaterinburg, examines the experiments with the New Testament undertaken by Thomas Jefferson, one of the main architects of the American system of religious-state relations. Vladimir historian Alexey Borzov illustrates how this system worked in the field of school education in the mid-20th century using the example of three key court cases that sparked heated discussions about secularism8. Finally, the issue concludes with an article by the Moscow philosopher Alexey Pleshkov on the shift to "temporalism" in understanding the existence of God in modern analytical philosophy.

8. It is worth recalling that our magazine devoted an entire issue No. 2 (31), 2013 to the topic "Religion in the courts".

page 14

Permanent link to this publication: