“God and the Devil are brothers…'”The Disconcerting World of Bogomil folklore’
We are familiar with biblical creation stories and their pagan predecessors, but from south-eastern Europe come tales with a running theme of God and the Devil as rivals, but collaborators, even brothers, creating a world with an inherent capacity for both Good and Evil. The stories of bargaining, misunderstanding, betrayal, but also hope and survival against the odds clearly illustrate and reflect human existence, particularly in a harsh Balkan landscape, forming a unique and distinctive world view. Some have argued that these stories, still predominantly untranslated into English, are the legacy of the medieval Bogomil heresy, others that they are even older and influenced Bogomil teaching. Whatever their origins they combine ancient wisdom and misconceptions and in their unflinching view of human existence often sound surprisingly modern..
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Andrew Roach is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow with a particular interest in medieval heresy and popular religion
Hosted & Curated By:
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience
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