Semnificația purtării crucilor pectorale descoperite la nord de Dunăre în secolele VI-VII

Abstract

The Significance of 6th-7th Pectoral Crosses Discovered North of the Danube

The step by step conversion fulfilled after the 4th century led to uniform spreading of the Christian relics in the area of the former Roman province of Dacia, but also to their extension outside this territory, in Walachia and Moldavia. The liturgical objects were concentrated mainly in Transylvania, Banat and Oltenia, while the pectoral crosses and the moulds used for their production, as well as other objects with cross decoration (medallions and finger-rings) were discovered especially in Moldavia and Walachia, the regions invaded by the Slavs in the 6th century. This difference between the former territory of Roman Dacia and the outside regions illustrates, on the one hand, the existence of a cluster of Christian communities centered especially in the former cities in Transylvania, preserving relationships with the empire until the first decades of the 7th century, and, on the other hand, a connection between the Romance-Slavic coexistence and the wearing of the pectoral crosses and of the similar object . In our opinion, the function of these objects was to express the religious identity of the inhabitants who lived among the pagan Slavs. They needed to display their own religious identity because this meant in fact to express their ethnic identity in front of the others. Unlike in the 4th century Gothia, no anti-Christian persecutions initiated by the pagan Slavs are attested in the area, and we also know that the prisoners taken from the empire were quite well treated by the Slavs who mastered the North-Danubian territory. In such circumstances, displaying the Christian faith was not dangerous for the believers who lived among the Slavs. In that period, Christian meant Roman, regardless the genuine race of the believers. The wearing of the pectoral crosses was a kind of “emblemic style”, according to the definition put forward by Florin Curta for the early Slavs. If we try to apply the same notion of emblemic style to the Romance population living in contact with the Slavs, we can postulate that the Christ an emblems, namely the pectoral crosses, were the single way to define them in contrast with the pagan Slavs. This explains why such finds are very few in the territory of the former Roman province. The same function of identification could be supposed for the crosses drawn on pottery, discovered in many 6th and 7th century settlements, but in this case we should take into account that the Christian meaning of the signs is not always sure.