Kněží, čarodějové a hadači: prvofunkční specialisté a jejich postavení ve společnosti archaických Slovanů

This article investigates the role and character of first-functional specialists (i.e. priests, wizards, seers, augurs etc.) and their position in the "archaic", that means pre-Christian medieval Slavic society. The main goal here is to specify and sort out our data based on various medieval sources – and to do so in a perspective of Dumézilian comparative mythology. Using Dumézil's trifunctional (or tripartite) hypothesis about archaic Indo-European ideological classification of structures of various universes of meaning, this paper tries to specify emplacement of firstfunctional specialists in the grid of this reconstructed ideological system: In the first place, their assumed position in the society of Western and Eastern Slavs respectively. One of the main goals of this article will be the implicit statement that Dumézilian perspective should not be taken as self-supporting explanation of religious phenomena, but primarily as a heuristic method of careful source reading.This article investigates the role and character of first-functional specialists (i.e. priests, wizards, seers, augurs etc.) and their position in the "archaic", that means pre-Christian medieval Slavic society. The main goal here is to specify and sort out our data based on various medieval sources – and to do so in a perspective of Dumézilian comparative mythology. Using Dumézil's trifunctional (or tripartite) hypothesis about archaic Indo-European ideological classification of structures of various universes of meaning, this paper tries to specify emplacement of firstfunctional specialists in the grid of this reconstructed ideological system: In the first place, their assumed position in the society of Western and Eastern Slavs respectively. One of the main goals of this article will be the implicit statement that Dumézilian perspective should not be taken as self-supporting explanation of religious phenomena, but primarily as a heuristic method of careful source reading