Yahnus (yahnusok, ohnusok, yednus, ahnus) is an
uncommon name for dukach which has derived from the Polish language. From the
old Polish the word “ahnušek” is interpreted as:
- a waxy lamb, consecrated by The Pope, which protects
people from the evil;
- any image of the divine lamb;
- an image of a lamb, made of any material.
In the Old Church Slavonic language, the word
“lamb” sounds like “ahnets”. Jesus Christ is symbolically called the lamb (“ahnets”)
of God in Christianity - he sacrificed himself for the sake of rescuing the
human race from the reign of sin, just as the lambs had been sacrificed for the
sake of deliverance of the Jewish people from the Egyptian captivity.
I. H. Spassky assumes that at first Western
European religious medals which depicted the divine lamb (“ahnets”) were called
the “yahnus”. The image of the lamb began to be considered as a kind of amulet.
In Ukraine, such medals were often converted into dukaches, and respectively, dukaches
were called yahnuses. Later this name was also referred to dukaches, the medallions
of which had other images on them.
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Dukach-yahnusok,Voronezhchyna, the end of
ХІХ the beginning of XX century,
reproduction
|
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Dukach-yahnusok, Slobozhanshchyna,
the end of ХІХ century |
It is widely believed that the worship of the cult of the heart came to Ukraine, where the majority of the population were the Orthodox, from Western Europe. The image of the heart on Ukrainian hieratic and religious things, including various medallions has become very common. Thereafter, medallions in the form of hearts were used as a part of dukach. There could be a picture of The Crucifix of Jesus Christ or his monogram on the hearts of the dukaches-yahnuses. In the ХІХ-ХХ centuries, the most prevalent dukaches with medallions in the shape of a heart were found in Slobozhanshchyna - in Kharkivshchyna, Kurshchyna, Voronezhchyna.
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Dukach-yahnusok nuptial Kyiv,
the end of ХІХ - the beginning of XX century
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Why was it Slobozhanshchyna, where on one of the most remote areas from the Western borders of the Ukrainian settlement, the “Western cult” had been so well preserved?
This can be explained by the fact that the majority of back settlers,
who came to live on the territory of Slobozhanshchyna, arrived from the Central
left-bank area of Cherkasy region and the right-bank Ukraine. According to the researchers
of Eastern Slobozhanshchyna and foreign travellers, the kin relations between the
Russians and the Ukrainians on the Don could be hardly observed (E.D. Klarke,
A. Zhivotko), thus, the local goldsmiths, while manufacturing ornaments, adhered
to the old-fashioned forms with an extreme permanence. Particularly, it was
rather common when people made decorations of some definite forms strictly for
the Russian women and separately using other forms especially for the Ukrainian
women (M. Sumtsov). Thus, the Ukrainian women while passing on their jewellery
to their daughters and granddaughters unconsciously conveyed the history of their generation.
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Dukach-yahnusok, Chernihivshchyna,
the end of ХІХ century |
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Dukach-yahnusok, Slobozhanshchyna,
the end of ХІХ century
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At the same time, there's no point in attributing the origin of the
symbol and the image of the heart only to the Western world. The image of the
heart can be seen on jewellery and religious objects of the age of the Ancient
Rus, though there, they are depicted basically with the pointy tip up. In
Orthodoxy, the cleanup of the heart is one of the three main conditions of
confession and spiritual life. It is assumed that the stylistic image of the
heart came from the ancient world from the image of the ivy leaf. Due to the
property of the ivy to wrap round objects next to which it grows, the ancient
Greeks and Romans began to consider it as a symbol of deep love.
So dukaches have visually demonstrated the extensive geographic
migration of the Ukrainian people and its rich historical past. The name “Yahnys”
itself served as a significant primary source which confirms the following:
1. Close ties of the
Ukrainians, who were generally the Orthodox, with the Catholic world, at
different levels of everyday life. Such contacts hadn’t always had the nature
of opposition, which was denied by the Soviet and modern Russian
historiography;
2. A tolerant attitude of the Ukrainians to the spiritual values of
other cultures and their understanding. That is to say, the Ukrainian culture was
not Orthodox at the material and mental levels, having saved its peculiar
features, it was developing on the European area.
Yaroslava Kovalenko
PhD in History
Other publications:
- Award Medals in Dukach Adornments
- Dukach is a signet that symbolizes Ukrainian heritage
- The medallions among dukaches: the mental and the earthy
- Volyn Dukaches
- Earrings – Ukrainian folk adornments the second half of XIX-early XX century
- Biblical plots in dukaches
- Dukaches of South-Eastern Slobozhanshchina: Dnipropetrovsk Region
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