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    STUDIA PHILOLOGIA - Issue no. 2 / 2009  
         
  Article:   THE JUDGMENT OF THE SOUL IN THE IMAGINARY OF THE ROMANIAN POPULAR CULTURE.

Authors:  COSMINA BERINDEI.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  The present study intends to bring into discussion a few aspects related to the judgment of the soul, as it is outlined in the Romanian popular beliefs, with the purpose of pointing out some of the essential characteristics of the articulated eschatological conception in this cultural space, in comparison with the Christian eschatology. According to the Romanian popular beliefs, the soul starts his journey to the other world, immediately after he leaves the body, a journey that is spread with a series of probations: the flow of the waters, the flow of the bridges very narrow, the flow of the paradise’s bridge, which if he passes, he will be sent to heaven, and if not, he will burn in the flames of hell, which actually substitutes the judgment. So, before he participates in the actual judgment, the soul could be punished. Further we have referred to the rituals which suggests the concern in order to ensure the soul’s security for the moments after he leaves this world and passes into the other world. In the Romanian cultural space, the idea of this moral judgment has entered more on a morphological level and less on a functional level. In other words, the idea of the trial was taken over, but the old prototypes to that human relationship to the world beyond was articulated, have proven more powerful, they are responsible for the unlimited confidence in the posthumous salvation of the soul, equivalent to a devaluation at a functional level, a moral trial.

Keywords: the eschatology, the individual judgment, the Last Judgement, the soul, the bridge
 
         
     
         
         
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