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Popular belief and rituals about the Virgin Mary and the saints in Boeotia (Doctoral thesis)

Στούκης, Γεώργιος/ Stoukis, Georgios

This dissertation is a folklore study, which belongs to the field of religious folklore. It combines archival and bibliographical research with fieldwork, and studies the popular religious rituals that refer to the Virgin Mary and the saints, both local and ecumenically honoured, in modern Boeotia, with references to their development over time. It also fills a bibliographical gap because so far the research that has been done has identified many publications on individual issues concerning popular religious faith and worship in Boeotia, but there has been no synthesis of this scattered material. Issues concerning priests and their position, the cycle of time, religious traditions, the local church, devotional practices, acts of direct contact between man and the divine, festivals, and devotional-functional acts are examined. The study concludes with the conclusions, which summarize the new data that the thesis has brought to light, and the new interpretative data that it presents on the popular devotional tradition and the faith of the Boeotians in the Virgin Mary and the saints, as a contribution to the study of their traditional and contemporary popular religious behaviour.