Can anyone tell me about my icon?

I bought this at an antique store in Kezmarok, Slovakia last year. It looks like Cyrillic writing to me, so I was thinking it might be Orthodox in origin.

It is carved out of a light, porous stone, with traces of black polychrome around the edges.

Can anyone help me determine where and when it was made, and for what purpose?

xristos.anesti said:

The text is Razpatie Hristovo.

Oblio is right in his guess.

The Crucifixion of Christ.

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Razpatie Hristovo?

Is that the name of the writer?

Oblio said:

No, it means 'Crucifixion of Christ' .

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Thanks Oblio. You are the only one who seemed to understand what I meant.

I don't think the language is church slovanic, also called Old High Slovanic, because OHS isn't usually written in Cyrillic. It's usually written in roman letterswith a wide array of accent marks, and it certainly is in Slovakia, where I got this piece. My Slovak cousins thought it looked old Russian to them.

I know it's a cricifixion scene, so although I appreciate the people who pointed that out, what I'm really hoping to find out is where and when it might have been made. I just thought people who have a lot of exposure to icons might have an idea from the style and materials.

Ioan cel Nou said:

Are you sure? I've never seen Church Slavonic written in Latin script (and certainly not on an icon). Admittedly, I'm only familiar with Church Slavonic from ethnically Ukrainian churches in Romania and Russian churches in Britain, so it may be different in Slovakia, but I'd be surprised, to be honest. Latin script being used for Slav languages such as Czech and Slovak is a much more recent development when compared to the age of Church Slavonic.

James

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I grew up in a church that used OHS, and it was written in roman letters, as I said, and my parents and grandparents also used prayer books with OHS written in roman letter with the accents. I have a very old OHS prayer book from Slovakia that belonged to my great grandmother, who was born and raised in Slovakia in the 1800s, and it's written in roman letters.

While we were in Slovakia last year, our cousins showed us the family tree written inside a very old OHS prayer book, and it was written in roman letters. The book didn't have a date (before 1830, books rarely had dates printed in them), but the cousins said it was very old, probably 200 years old or more.

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say recent.

As you probaly know, in the Byzantine Catholic tradition, religious materials are always written in the language of the people. Since Slovak is written with roman letters, it is natural that Slovak prayer books and religious items would be written with the Slovak alphabet. Which is why it seemed reasonable that this cyrillic icon originated somewhere where the cyrillic alphabet was used.

None of our Slovak cousins could read the words on the icon, although they studied Russian in school under the Communist regime. They said it was probably old Russian. If it had been Slovanic, they would have been able to read that, since they can read OHS.

But I'm not at all wanting to argue, and this is turning into a debate thread, so I'll ask the mod to close this thread as I believe it has run it's course anyway.

No, they are not serbian.

If I had a prayer book in front of me I would scan it and post it.

I hate it when people who have a little knowledge about something think they know everything and keep trying to force their knowledge onto something they don't know.

OHS may be written with cyrillic letters in cyrillic countries, but in countries that use the roman alphabet, it is written with roman letters. Slovakia is a country that uses roman letters.

It may be possible that this icon was created in the Ukraine, which is adjacent to Slovakia, or perhaps Russia. My cousins who are fluent in Russian and OHS could not read the text and suggested it might be old Russian. I would think that people who live those languages would know better than people who theorize about those languages.

It's okay that no one knows anything about this icon. It was a long shot.

I'm ready to be done with this thread now. Please close it again and leave it closed.