A Graveyard as a Home to Ghosts or a Subject of Scholarly Research? The Czech National Cemetery at Vyšehrad

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2020.4.2.094

Abstract

Confirmed by a variety of sociological research, modern Czech society is considered deeply secular, non-believing, rejecting religious institutions and traditional forms of religion. This paper focuses on a field study of religiosity, namely on funeral artifacts in Vyšehrad, the Czech national cemetery in Prague, the Czech Republic’s capital. Based on the findings of ethnographer Wilbur Zelinsky, the paper assumes that gravestones in particular record very private, innermost feelings, messages, tidings, and personal values, which can provide us with important knowledge about (especially) the bereaved persons’ attitudes to human ultimate things including religious issues in the moments of a great loss of a loved one, i.e. in the situation of so-called existential crisis. The aim of the paper is to answer two key questions: firstly, how religion (or non-belief) is presented in the Czech national cemetery and secondly, to what degree is the gravestones’ character influenced by significant historical events of modern Czech history. In other words, how much the image of religion in this nationally important cemetery corresponds with the degree of religiosity researched by standard sociological means.

Author Biography

Tomáš Bubík, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Tomáš Bubík is an Associate Professor at the Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic, the Head of the Unit for the Study of Religion at the Faculty of Arts. His research interests embrace history, theory and methodology of religious studies, research into modern forms of atheism and non-religion, as well as the cognitive science of religions. Tomáš is currently responsible for two research projects, one of which is focused on building a cognitive team and laboratory, while another is devoted to the study of Freethought, Atheism and Nonreligion in CEE. His most recent publications include: one coauthored with Henryk Hoffmann (Eds.) ‘Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Open. The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe’ (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and another coauthored with Atko Remmel and David Václavík (Eds.) ‘Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Development of Secularity and Non-Religion’ (Routledge, 2020). Tomáš Bubík has been the president of the Czech Society for the Study of Religions since 2015 and 2018.

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Published
2020-07-09
How to Cite
Bubík, T. (2020). A Graveyard as a Home to Ghosts or a Subject of Scholarly Research? The Czech National Cemetery at Vyšehrad. Changing Societies & Personalities, 4(2), 136–157. doi:10.15826/csp.2020.4.2.094
Citation Formats
Issue
Vol. 4, No. 2 (2020)
Section
Articles