Baltic Region,
Baltic states,
karelia,
Novgorod and Pskov lands,
sanctity,
saints,
confessionalization,
local cults
Abstract
Holiness and saints are key concepts of the history of the Christian Church. There are a few areas in this academic field: the very concept of holiness; the so-called concept of “aristocratic cults”; regional and local forms of cults and worship of the saints from the Middle Ages and until today. As particular issues, we can also consider the process of evolution of these cults in the context of confessionalization during the era of Reformation; the problem of the transformation of saints into national heroes; their role in the formation of national ideals and nationalist ideologies in the modern times. In this introduction, the author presents a block of articles dealing with the Baltic Sea region that was an extensive contact zone, in which the transfer of holiness was of great importance in the formation of local identities.
