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Authors: Eric Christiansen
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by the high priest of Arkona.
For the paganism of the Wends was bound up with their civil organization. Their whole country was studded with holy places – groves, oaks, springs and rocks – where the peasants made offerings and held rites of propitiation and festivity; and they envisaged the world as peopled by a numerous holy family of gods, subordinate to a divine patriarchal spirit in the sky. Such rural shrines were also to be found among the Danes, Swedes and Saxons, in out-of-the-way districts, and were able to co-exist for centuries with the official Christianity of the parish church; it was too deep-rooted to erase completely. What gave a different dimension to Slav paganism was the existence of a priesthood able to elaborate and intensify worship by constructing images, cult objects and temples, and the development of master cults within the cities, where special skills in augury and ritual made the priests leaders of the community. Out in the woods, they cannot have done too well; Otto of Bamberg found one of them living almost entirely on the fruit of his single sacred nut-tree. 15 But in the city temples it was a good life. The men of Gützkow had spent 300 marks on putting up a temple to their god, and regarded it as so beautiful that they could not bear to pull it down, even after they had accepted baptism. At Stettin there were four temples, and sacred houses where the nobles met to feast off gold and silver. And at Arkona the shrine of the four-headed idol Svantovit was enriched by a tax levied on all the Rugians, and by voluntary contributions from overseas, from worshippers seeking luck or advice. The whole nation was said to attend the harvest festival in front of his temple, bringing cattle to sacrifice; and the high-priest – the only Slav allowed to grow his hair long – decided whether they were to have war or peace. He had his own war-band of 300 horsemen, all the bullion taken in war, and his own estates. 16
This rampant idolatry was to receive a setback when the Pomeranian princes accepted baptism and authorized German missionaries to destroy the temples and build churches; the missions of 1124 and 1127 administered a shock from which the temple organizations of the Oderine cities never recovered. And in the same period, knes Henry of the Abotrites was allowing Saxon priests to attack some of his people’s shrines with axe and fire. But, after Henry’s death, the rising war-leader Nyklot fully identified himself with the old faith, and remained heathen until hisdeath in 1160; and the Rugians, strong and independent, kept up their cults, temples and sacrifices till 1168. In no case did a city abandon its gods without pressure from the prince, and even with this pressure the reaction was sometimes fierce and bloody.
Why then should some princes have attacked paganism, and others favoured it? They all wished to increase their power; and substituting a princely church, and priests who were in their service, for city-run temples and local priesthoods would be an obvious advantage to them. Nevertheless, as they said in Stettin, the new god was a German god, and a prince who was holding the frontier against the Germans might well object to letting him through; the Wagrians and Abotrites probably remembered the dark days of the tenth century, when they had been made tributary to Saxon bishoprics and forced to pay ‘Slav tithe’. Behind the somewhat unassuming Saxon missionary Vizelin (active among the Abotrites c. 1125–54) there was a land-hungry crew of Saxon frontiersmen, who were now trying not merely to tax the country of the Slavs, but, further, to steal it. The old gods who had inhabited it for so long might prove better allies than enemies to a knes who had determined to fight for his independence. The military situation made paganism attractive to Nyklot; on Rügen the prince appears not to have been important enough to interfere with the religion of his people. Not until the Danes had
For the paganism of the Wends was bound up with their civil organization. Their whole country was studded with holy places – groves, oaks, springs and rocks – where the peasants made offerings and held rites of propitiation and festivity; and they envisaged the world as peopled by a numerous holy family of gods, subordinate to a divine patriarchal spirit in the sky. Such rural shrines were also to be found among the Danes, Swedes and Saxons, in out-of-the-way districts, and were able to co-exist for centuries with the official Christianity of the parish church; it was too deep-rooted to erase completely. What gave a different dimension to Slav paganism was the existence of a priesthood able to elaborate and intensify worship by constructing images, cult objects and temples, and the development of master cults within the cities, where special skills in augury and ritual made the priests leaders of the community. Out in the woods, they cannot have done too well; Otto of Bamberg found one of them living almost entirely on the fruit of his single sacred nut-tree. 15 But in the city temples it was a good life. The men of Gützkow had spent 300 marks on putting up a temple to their god, and regarded it as so beautiful that they could not bear to pull it down, even after they had accepted baptism. At Stettin there were four temples, and sacred houses where the nobles met to feast off gold and silver. And at Arkona the shrine of the four-headed idol Svantovit was enriched by a tax levied on all the Rugians, and by voluntary contributions from overseas, from worshippers seeking luck or advice. The whole nation was said to attend the harvest festival in front of his temple, bringing cattle to sacrifice; and the high-priest – the only Slav allowed to grow his hair long – decided whether they were to have war or peace. He had his own war-band of 300 horsemen, all the bullion taken in war, and his own estates. 16
This rampant idolatry was to receive a setback when the Pomeranian princes accepted baptism and authorized German missionaries to destroy the temples and build churches; the missions of 1124 and 1127 administered a shock from which the temple organizations of the Oderine cities never recovered. And in the same period, knes Henry of the Abotrites was allowing Saxon priests to attack some of his people’s shrines with axe and fire. But, after Henry’s death, the rising war-leader Nyklot fully identified himself with the old faith, and remained heathen until hisdeath in 1160; and the Rugians, strong and independent, kept up their cults, temples and sacrifices till 1168. In no case did a city abandon its gods without pressure from the prince, and even with this pressure the reaction was sometimes fierce and bloody.
Why then should some princes have attacked paganism, and others favoured it? They all wished to increase their power; and substituting a princely church, and priests who were in their service, for city-run temples and local priesthoods would be an obvious advantage to them. Nevertheless, as they said in Stettin, the new god was a German god, and a prince who was holding the frontier against the Germans might well object to letting him through; the Wagrians and Abotrites probably remembered the dark days of the tenth century, when they had been made tributary to Saxon bishoprics and forced to pay ‘Slav tithe’. Behind the somewhat unassuming Saxon missionary Vizelin (active among the Abotrites c. 1125–54) there was a land-hungry crew of Saxon frontiersmen, who were now trying not merely to tax the country of the Slavs, but, further, to steal it. The old gods who had inhabited it for so long might prove better allies than enemies to a knes who had determined to fight for his independence. The military situation made paganism attractive to Nyklot; on Rügen the prince appears not to have been important enough to interfere with the religion of his people. Not until the Danes had
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