Why the Church condemns "cross roof", known in Russia since ancient times

In the old cemeteries can still be found unusual to our eye crosses, covered with small roofs. Gradually they are less and less because the old are already two or three hundred years, and new for a long time already do not put. In ancient Rus such krovelki was on all the crosses, and before that they supplied the posts on the pagan graves. The name of this simple design is "cabbage" and the Church has long been discouraging its use.

Why the modern clergy is so disliked harmless old custom? Let's start from the beginning. "Explanatory dictionary" Dahl States that "the cabbage" or, more correctly, "golbez" is a structure adjacent to the Russian stove and looked like the steps to the loft. Another golbez closed the entrance to the cellar where the family kept supplies.

Linguist Max Vasmer says that the name is derived from the word "golf" came to the Slavic languages of the ancient Scandinavian. In the original, it meant "the pit" and "depth". The people believed that golbez is the place of residence of a brownie, and besides, many were sure that it somehow connects the real world with the afterlife.

In short it was called the grave and poles with a roof, the predecessors of the crosses. Golbez, except for the pit, represented the grave, so there is nothing strange in it was not. Lev Dal, a son of the famous Russian linguist, argued that these monuments came from the roadside pillars, which in ancient times put the container with the ashes of the dead.

Later gabzy, with roofs decorated with carvings, often brightly colored, began to establish first, on the graves of the dead are particularly revered, and then all the rest. Over time, the practice of making the roof of a small sign on the grave has passed to the Christians who began to establish a cemetery and crosses with two slopes.

Dahl, Jr., researched the issue and came to the conclusion that the pagan origin of holbrow forced the Church to take up arms. A tradition which had for centuries, was eradicated very hard and in some places these crosses were placed in the early XX century. In our day to meet golbez on the cemeteries of the Russian North — in Karelia, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions, in some regions of Siberia.

Orthodox priests don't want to see our cemeteries, the remnants of paganism. But in the cemetery of the Romanian city of Sapanta no one is outraged at the sight of unusual and not causing grief monuments.