The article shows, on the example of the accounts of the journey of John James Blunt and Auguste de Forbin, how the folk religiosity of Sicilians, especially patron saints, was perceived. The analysis of the texts showed that the newcomers who come into contact with the Sicilian culture notice that patron saints are a very characteristic phenomenon for this area and play an important role in social and political life.

Celebrating patron saints as an element of the Sicilian character: the foreign travelers point of view – This article will look at descriptions of some patronal festivals in Sicily drawn from the works of the most important foreign travelers and will try to show how such celebrations represent a fundamental aspect of Sicilianity.

A lot of beatifcations and canonizations have taken place in recent years. This has led to the publication of life histories, either scientifc or popular in character, of those elevated to the glory of the altars. After 1945 the frst important book was Hagiografa polska (The Polish Hagiography). Another important book was Twoje imię (Your Name) by H. Fros and F. Sowa, republished several times. In his article E. Walewander explains methodological requirements for a hagiographical text which is to be historical in nature, based on historical sources and using methods characteristic of Church history. A similar publication is Sancti. Miracula. Peregrinationes by A. Witkowska, which is a collection of essays on various hagiographical issues. The two-volume edition of Staropolskie piśmiennictwo hagiografczne (The Old Polish Hagiographical Writings) by A. Witkowska and J. Nastalska is a bio-bibliographical dictionary of hagiographers of the pre-partition Poland and a collection of old Polish hagiographical texts. Drogi rozwojowe hagiografi polskiej w wiekach średnich (The Developments of Polish Hagiography in the Middle Ages) by J. Starnawski is a study in the development of Polish writings in the Middle Ages. In the post-war Polish hagiography most publications have been biographical in nature, while there are still not enough methodological and research studies in hagiography of the 19th and 20th c.

The article is a presentation of the subject of a lawyer in the Russian literature of two eras – the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. The object of comparative analysis are two literary texts: the first is the story by Leo Tolstoy – “Father Sergius” (1911), the second is a novel by the modern Russian writer – Evgeny Vodolazkin, which entitled “Laurus” (2012). The author of the article concludes that the multifariousness of the life of lawyers in both writers underlines their life experience on the way to holiness. An important element of the characters’ description is their sinfulness, in particular the fi ght against their own pride and human passion. In the case of Leo Tolstoy, the image of his literary right-wing was influenced by the writer’s views on the essence of holiness and the complex human-God relationship. In their portraits of heroes striving for spiritual perfection, both Tolstoy and Vodolazkin show a connection with the genre of hagiography.

The situation of perception, its structure, types and their verbalization attract the attention of not only psychologists but also linguists. Hearing, like sight, is one of the main sensory channels in human life. In this study, carried out with the help of lexical-semantic analysis, semantic-stylistic analysis and contextual analysis, the role of the vocabulary describing sounds in defining the situation of a miracle is presented (“miracle-vision”, “miraclephenomenon”, “voices from heaven”, etc.) and its relation to miracle markers. Miracles were chosen from Житiя святыхъ на русском языке изложенные по руководству Четиӽ Миней святителя Димитрия Ростовского, in which miracles are manifestations of God’s omnipotence. The research focuses mainly on verbs that describe sound and verbs that describe auditory perception. The study found that in addition to verbs describing sound and verbs describing auditory perception, miracle markers are also verbs describing visual and tactile perception. The quantitative and qualitative analysis allowed us to conclude that the verb of intentional auditory perception слушать does not occur in the text as a marker of a miracle situation, which may indicate the hagiographer’s goal – to show the unpredictability of a miracle.

The significance of American expos in the history of world’s fairs, as well as in the history of planning, urban design, architecture and landscape architecture, is extraordinary. In the article, which constitutes a supplement to the first part of a report on the carrying out of the research project entitled “Urban and architectural heritage, as well as the impact of American world expos on city planning and development”, a retrospective outlook on American fairs has been presented on the examples of Philadelphia, Buffalo, Saint Louis and Cleveland, with a particular focus on traces of expos left in the cityscape and their long-term heritage, which affects the development of host-cities.

This article is devoted to the science of international law at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv, a major centre for the teaching and study of international law in Tsarist Russia. It examines the international legal views propounded by Vasilii Andreevich Nezabitovskii (1824–1883), Roman Ivanovich Baziner (1841–?), Nikolai Karlovich Rennenkampf (1832–1899), Otton Ottonovich Eikhel’man (1854–1943), and Petr Mikhailovich Bogayevskii (1866–1929). Scientists working at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University contributed considerably to the development of the science of international law, although their work is not widely known due to the fact they did not produce many works in “western” languages. The large majority of these scholars’ writings represent a perfect development of international legal theory. These works advanced the concepts of the legal nature of international law (Nezabitovskii, Eikhel’man); proposed a new spatial concept of territory that was further developed in international legal science (Nezabitovskii); and explored the laws and customs of war and the role of the Red Cross in the development of humanitarian norms in international law (Baziner, Rennenkampf, Bogayevskii).