Folk proverbs and sayings about religion

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Popular wisdom and the church did not pass by: among the sayings and proverbs you can find a huge number of sayings about religion, the church and priests.

When the government and the church, century after century, introduces religious rituals and concepts into the life of ordinary people, this could not go unnoticed and left its mark on the way of thinking.

Now the church is actively promoting the idea that in pre-revolutionary Russia the people were deeply pious and religious, there is even such a beautiful definition of the Russian people as a God-bearing people. The clergy tried to introduce into the popular consciousness a number of proverbs and sayings to support this idea:

- One salvation is fasting and prayer.

- Pray to the icon and be at ease.

- Fasting and prayer open heaven.

- Pray to God - it will come in handy ahead.

But genuine folk proverbs and sayings are strikingly different from such instructive word-creation. Take, for example, the previously widely used proverb "Weight and measure is the faith of Christ." Since for ordinary people weight and measure are real values, the comparison of real values with God and faith was clearly not in favor of the latter. There is also this: "Weight is not a priest's soul." Now think: how can deep faith and religiosity be combined with such a disdainful attitude towards the clergy?

It is worth noting the fact that such a decrease in the divine image through comparisons is a frequent phenomenon in folklore genres. In proverbs and sayings about God, in the minds of ordinary people, monetary power is always higher than the power of God:

- Money is not God, but there is half a God.

- The priest will buy money and deceive God.

The greatness of God, his mercy, which the churchmen preached, aroused an ironic attitude among the common people:

- God kept both up and down.

- Oh, God knows what caused the stomach to dry up.

- Whoever guards himself, God also protects.

It is curious that some proverbs and sayings keep memories of the period of the Baptism of Rus. In memory of the bloody and forcible compulsion to a new faith, the Novgorodians put down the proverb "Do baptize with a sword, Putyata with fire" (Nevzorov recently spoke about Putyata). In Russian proverbs and sayings about religion, you can find a lot of evidence that the new faith took a very long and hard time in Russia:

- Change Vera - not change your shirt.

- To change faith - to change conscience.

The people were skeptical about the tenets of the Christian faith: "Your nativity scene is better than Mount Sinai." In other words, the native tavern for the Russian peasant was more valuable than the mountain where Moses talked with the Lord Himself! Or here's another, irony about a poor life: "Our room is not in dispute with God: what it is in the yard, so it is in it."

In order to evoke a feeling of religious repentance in the Russian people, the churchmen inspired him with the idea of his sinfulness, launching such sayings as:

- There is only one God without sin.

- God alone is sinless.

- Guilty but guilty - not disgusting to God.

But the servants of the Church did not achieve humility. And the Russian people spoke about their sinfulness with the same irony as about God:

- We see those who sin, God knows about those who repent.

- Blessing is not a sin.

- What is sinful is funny.

“You won’t say: amen, we won’t give you a drink.”

Everyone, perhaps, has heard this proverb: "And I would be glad to heaven, but they do not let sins." On the one hand, we see humility in the proverb, and on the other, it is clearly felt that the people do not believe in the reality of a Christian paradise.

The reaction of ordinary people to the calls of the priests to pray in the church was such witty proverbs and sayings as:

- The wonderworkers also know that we are not pilgrims.

- Not until mass, if there is a lot of nonsense (that is, household chores).

- Need is a praying mantis.

The Russian people were well aware of the futility of prayers, which was reflected in the proverbs: "It is no harder: to pray to God and to pay debts", "A good thief will not steal without prayer", "He entered someone else's cage to sing prayers", "The thief is tearful, but the rogue is pious.", "Some listens for two services and eats for two souls."

The proverb “Make the fool pray to God, he will break his forehead” is probably known to everyone. She is an excellent illustration of the popular, ironic attitude towards the mental abilities of earnest worshipers.

The people also looked at church posts through the prism of irony and skepticism:

- Fast in spirit, not belly.

- Don't be in hell for food.

- The demon does not eat bread, but is not holy

- Wednesday and Friday in the house is not a pointer.

- I began to fast, but my belly began to ache.

- The soul would be glad to fast, so the body revolts.

- The post is not a bridge, you can bypass it.

- I have sinned, I have crumbled and drank.

- To whom soon, but to our health.

The compiler of the explanatory dictionary, Vladimir Dal, accompanied the word "church" with such an openly atheistic and anti-church proverb: "Close to the church, but far from God." And there are a lot of similar proverbs in Dahl's dictionary:

- Frying pan ringing is better than bell ringing.

- Don't build seven churches, add seven children.

- The priest, sitting, serves mass, and the laymen, lying down, pray to God.

- Hungry and caring duty of mass.

- It smokes a censer on the poor man.

The church tried to instill in the people conflicting concepts. On the one hand, she spoke of the fact that man is an insignificant being, completely dependent on God's power. On the other hand, there is the Christian idea that man is created in the image and likeness of God. It is not surprising that the people in proverbs and sayings began to endow the Lord God with human features:

Your words to God in the ears.

- He lives like Christ's in the bosom.

- He grabbed God by the beard (about a lucky man).

In the Explanatory Dictionary of V. Dahl, we find many proverbs demonstrating the critical attitude of the people towards the clergy, towards monasteries and monastic life, towards those who have decided to take monastic tonsure:

- Pop the bell, and we are for the ladle.

- Priests for books, and we for donuts.

- I went to church, and ended up in a tavern, well, that's it.

“Although the church is close, it’s slimy to walk.

- Three priests, but the path to the church is overgrown.

- The old man Sergeiushka dressed all the brethren in silk velvet (the proverb speaks of the Trinity - Sergius Lavra).

- It is not the land that feeds the monastery, but the peasant.

- Monasticism is like corvee.

- The world is wicked, and the monastery is pious with it.

- Grace is not from God to Lavra, but from the pilgrims.

- From trouble to blacks.

- The head has lived up to the black hood.

- Trimmed - that inveterate.

- Cell coffin - and the door slammed.

- Yesterday with a brush, today with a rosary (there were also criminals among the monks).

- A monk - he is not a mind ah.

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Painting "Tea drinking in Mytishchi, near Moscow".

Artist: Perov Vasily Grigorievich (1833-1882).

He also painted pictures "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane", "The First Christians in Kiev", "Sermon in the Village", "Rural Procession at Easter", "Monastic Trapeza" and others that tell about the everyday life of the Russian people and the Orthodox clergy in the royal Russia.

In the Russian language, there is still a stable phrase "bring under the monastery" in the meaning of "expose someone to trouble."

The Russian folk proverbs and sayings about religion and priests cited in the article are just a small fraction of them. The format of the article does not allow to cite them in full. But even such a small part convincingly proves that the Russian people, forcibly converted to the Christian faith, treated it rather derisively, read little prayers and foundations, because they saw that the church was inextricably linked with state power, supported it.

Of course, there were those who were under the influence of the church, were pious, religious. They are still there. But young people who are beginning to enter an adult, independent life should seriously reflect on the role of religion and the church in the history of the Russian people and at the present time. And Russian folklore, including Russian folk proverbs and sayings about God, faith and the church, will become an excellent assistant in this matter.