62. Day, May 30, 2018
The last detail, the carrying rod of my church banner is now the turn!
I make this out of a brass tube, for later stability.
When choosing the diameter, I oriented myself to real templates - these rods were not filigree walking sticks, but rather thick!
Such an embroidered or painted double silk banner weighed a lot ...
Incidentally, a few of those rods can be seen in the background of Ilja Repin's painting ...:
The diameter also meets today's templates...:
At the top of the pole, I first make a "brass fitting" for the two eyelets, into which later the ropes (or the cords) are threaded, which hold the actual banner.
Above that there comes as with the templates...
... again a "brass ball", but a little more voluminous than the one on the crossbar.
And then the whole is crowned by a Christian cross.
But: which cross?
We have to talk about religion!
The "wild field", where the Zaporozhian Cossacks lived, was wedged between three different religions, all claiming an absoluteness claim for themselves:
In the west and northwest was the "Reszposzpolita", the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There they belonged to the "uniate" (then Roman-Greek) church.
In the south and southeast were Tatar khanates, the Ottoman Empire - and beyond Persia.
There lived Muslims.
And in the east was Moscovia (later Russia) - there was the Russian Orthodoxy, which had developed from the Byzantine religion - why Russia also understood as "the third Rome".
All three religions understood themselves first of all to define their own group ("We believe in XYZ and therefore are the good guys!") And to differentiate themselves from other groups ("The others believe in ABC and therefore are the bad guys!") And were each other hostile!
And the Cossacks were ...: Russian Orthodox!
We know exactly when they were that, because a Zaporozhian Ataman named Petro Konashewitsch-Sagaidashnij ...
... submitted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1598 during a public ceremony!
Of course, at the place where this happened (a hill near the town of Khotyn on the Djnestr in today's Ukraine) stands a monument today...:
Ataman Sagaidshnij did this not only for himself but also for the entire Zaporozhye Cossack host!
However, the Cossacks largely took over only the formal rites of this belief (including the church banners). The religion itself lived them out in "Cossack style":
"Charity" for example, they practiced so that they were themselves the next ...
So flags and banners of the Cossacks wore a cross on the top - and as usual with Russian orthodoxy this cross could look quite "normal", as we know it, or the more complex shape with the additional small crossbar above and also the little bit crooked ("Left is up and right is down!") have crossbeams below.
Here is a selection of such crosses that once adorned Cossack standards and banners, in the museum on the island of Chortyza ...:
I chose the complex cross because it will do more on my banner - even though it was extremely difficult to model the thing in one piece ...:
So much for today.
Cheers