Download PDF | Stanisław Rosik - The Slavic Religion in the Light of 11th- and 12th-Century German Chronicles (Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau) Studies on the Christian Interpretation of pre-Christian Cults and Beliefs in the Middle Ages.
453 Pages
Introduction
Questioning Christian interpretation of the religion of the Slavs in the historiography of the Middle Ages has so far been treated in historical studies as a marginal issue, usually considered in the context of reflections on the credibility of the authors of the extant sources. The most extensive opinion on this matter was presented by Erwin von Wienecke,! who used the argument ex interpretatione for the purpose of proving that the literary images of Slavic beliefs and cults cannot be trusted in the reconstruction of the old religion, due to the fact that they were created according to a biblical model. In this way he tried to show that Slavdom did not actually reach the stage of polytheism and idolatry in its religious development. These theses were methodologically inspired by Herbert Achterberg’s dissertation? analyzing interpretatio Christiana of the Germanic religion.
Achterberg deserves credit for making interpretations of pre-Christian native religions a valued research topic in and of itself. However, using his findings (a seemingly perfect comparative perspective) encounters major difficulties in the case of this work. The methodological basis for all of his reasoning is rather obsolete today. Nevertheless it should be emphasized that this scholar had influence on von Wienecke’s concept, whose characterization was closely related to interpretations of the Slavic cults and beliefs constructed by the authors associated with the church, and thereafter became a reference point for other scholars’ positions on this matter.
Despite the negation of this German scholar’s hypercriticism in the matter of the development of Slavic beliefs and cults, the methodological aspect of his concept was in fact accepted, which suggests that the descriptions known from medieval historiography are just figments of their authors’ imaginations, inspired by images drawn from the Christian tradition and the antique literary heritage. With such an assumption, the basic question was about the degree of distortion of the image of the old religion, due to the infiltration of this image by culturally unfamiliar elements. The discussion was dominated by an approach based in source-analysis, which was narrowed down substantially to the evaluation of the usefulness of the sources in studying pre-Christian Slavic religious systems.
Furthermore, the overall evaluation of the consequences of the influence of interpretatio Christana on the substance of the historiographical image of preChristian cults and beliefs, determined a priori, accepted the scholar’s assumptions regarding the development of a vernacular religion. However, this failed to include a comprehensive study of the cultural context in which the description of the elements of this religion under investigation came to being. It is still difficult not to notice that some of chroniclers’ sources, respected for the value of the information provided, were often ranked as being distinguished as the interpretation of Slavic religions in terms of Christian theology, as well as in terms of a sophisticated literary convention. Those observations became a premise to propose? a postulate, to treat the issue of interpretatio Christiana as a separate matter entirely. The concept of interpretatio Christiana should be developed in research on the culture and intellectual life of the circles that created the basic written sources for studies of the Slavic religion. This is explored in the present book.
A methodological approach for this type of study was in fact first prepared in the field of social history, developed in the twentieth century, mainly by the subsequent generations of historians representing the Annales School. Scholars committed to reflecting on mentality (mentalité) posed a critical question — which directly concerned interpretatio Christiana — regarding the ways of thinking about and experiencing individualities, which were conditioned by being embedded in a particular epoch and a socio-cultural environment. This wide area of investigation corresponds perfectly with research concentrated more rigorously on the categories of culture, in which the then-vision of the world was expressed.* Taking into consideration the value system which shaped the world views of Christian authors writing about non-Christian religions, it is important to mention the phenomenologically-inspired studies of the culture of the European civilization that was formed in the Middle Ages.5
The aforementioned areas of investigation set the basic context of thought, which the issue of Christian interpretation of pre-Christian beliefs and cults is an integral part. It includes the ways of understanding, explaining, and representing those beliefs, as well as the topic of reading such religious phenomena in the terms of a foreign culture, evaluating them from the perspective of church doctrine, and finally acknowledging and appreciating their place and importance in the scene of presented history. The objects of analysis in the following study are particular historiographic pictures that constitute a shape of interpretation of Slavic religion, embedded in the “world of the text”. The goal of this study, therefore, is to determine the social and cultural facts, as well as the work routines of the chronicler, all of which contributed to the creation of these pictures in a particular “here and now.’
Substantial support for the investigation is provided by studies on medieval historiography and finally by studies on socio-cultural memory (memoria) in the Middle Ages. It was created and cultivated with regards to the historiographical works, which at the same time promoted a particular set of values by referring to specific events, often legendary, and the scenery in which they took place. An integral part of this investigation is a traditional element of studies on interpretatio Christiana — confronting medieval literary visions of Slavic beliefs and cults with the results of studies on the history of religion.
Anthropological approaches are also significant in the context of this study. On one hand, it is crucial to take into consideration the meaning of the specificity of present-day ways of discovering the world of medieval thought. This involves dealing with a problem of the so-called “cultural imputation” with regard to studying texts from several centuries ago. On the other hand, reaching beyond the strictly methodological reflection, it is vital to appreciate the historical research on perception of “the other,” which has been developing rapidly over the past decades. In the cultural circle in which the chroniclers’ descriptions of the cults and beliefs of the Slavs were created, the act of defining a religion as pagan set a perspective of its perception in terms of otherness or even hostility.
This may cause doubts about whether today’s categorization of something as “pagan”, and so forth, does not evoke an automatic prejudice against the religion under investigation. That includes not only its pejorative evaluation conditioned by church doctrine, but also its perception from outside, from the Christian point of view, or even from the standpoint of European civilization that was shaped a millennium ago.° Elements propagating this point of view also condition — as a result of cultural imputation — the present-day researchers’ reflections on the religion of the old Slavs. In order to reduce this phenomenon, especially with regard to pejorative evaluations, it is advised to use terminology alternative to the word “pagan.”” Such examples include the phrases and words “pre-Christian,” “native,” or “primary.” However, these terms are not flawless either. For these many reasons, especially in research on the Barbaricum peoples’ religions, maintaining diligence in using the aforementioned terminology, so as to reduce the scale of unintentional imputations and associations, is of key importance.
The image of “pagans” and “paganism” in Christian circles during the Christianization of Europe has become the subject of separate studies on culture, especially ones inspired by phenomenology’ and later also by anthropology." The reception of these findings in the fields of research on the religion of the Slavs and its interpretation is one of the more important goals pursued in this work. It is worth emphasizing that the present study focuses primarily on historiography, with respect to the distinctiveness of references made by particular authors to Old Slavic religion. The most essential elements in this research are a consideration of the writer’s individual experience, the genesis of a given work, the environment in which it was created, and finally the goals pursued with such work (causa scribendi). Only this approach can reveal characteristics of motifs and the procedures that influenced the interpretation of the pre-Christian Slavic religion, culturally and theologically.
A decrease of interest in interpretatio Christiana in research on spiritual culture of the old Slavs, which could be observed in the last decades of the twentieth century, resulted from the resignation of a substantial group of scholars from a thesis about the late formation of Slavic polytheism. The ex interpretatione argument, which has so far been used to undermine the credibility of chroniclers writing about Slavic gods and idols, became less important in this area of study. The key role in this process was played by ethno-religious comparative studies, mainly in relation to Indo-European peoples (Georges Dumézil), supported by achievements of religious studies inspired by archaeology and phenomenology (Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade).!2 The core of the debate at the time was a conviction about the existence of some primordial, highly-unified religious system which would constitute the heritage of the preSlavic era, which would undergo progressive disintegration during and after the human migration at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
This explains the predilection of researchers on both sides of the argument about the genesis of Slavic polytheism to search for some elements of a community of beliefs (for example a hypothetical general Slavic god-sovereign of the heavens). The genesis of the occurrence of some of the common elements in mythologies and cults of remote groups of Slavs might be sought not only in the area of the presumed unity of pre-Slavic religion, but also in the intensification of contacts between communities belonging to this ethnicity. The latter of the two directions of research gained importance at the turn of the 2ist century. This can be attributed primarily to the stage of discussion on the ethno-genesis of Slavs, in which it is taken into consideration that they might have formed an ethnic community no earlier than during the period of migrations between the 4th and 6th centuries ap.
Whatever the result of this discussion will be, it is important to highlight that even if one supports the argument for the existence of an earlier protoSlavonic community, one should not accept as an axiom the idea of the existence within its boundaries of some monolithic religious model that would prevent its particular component groups from participation in a wider circle of the Indo-European culture for over a thousand years (since the hypothetical disintegration of the Balto-Slavic community). Written sources, which are dated to a later period, reveal only the plurality of religious systems of Slavs connected with particular tribal organisms that exemplify certain analogies, as well as differences resulting from participation in multiethnic cultural circles. This is why it is important to take into account the possibility of the existence of such a situation before the aforementioned period of migration, which might have been the reason for the collapse of the alleged pre-Slavic unity.
Thus, the term “religion” featured in this work’s title does not imply one regionally diversified religion for the whole of the Slavs. Rather, it merely points to a particular sphere of their social life., embracing a wide variety of phenomena that exemplify the attitude of those communities towards the sphere of sacrum. These include beliefs and cult practices in strict connection with magic.
An important role is also played here by a reference to the sphere of laws and customs of the barbarians, with whom it constituted an integral unity.
In the corpus of sources available for studying the religion of Slavs, each of the three chronicles selected for this particular research — those of Thietmar of Merseburg (d. 1018), Adam of Bremen (d. after 1081) and Helmold of Bosau (d. after 1177) — is of the same, primary importance as the lives of St. Otto of Bamberg, the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, the Primary Chronicle by Nestor the Chronicler, and possibly the Chronicle of Bohemians by Cosmas of Prague. Each of the works listed above constitutes a comprehensive source material for the issue of interpreting primary Slavic religion, and each of them could serve as the basis for a separate monograph. The method of analysis chosen for this study requires an analytical core comprising three monographic studies of particular chronicles (Chapters 2-4). The juxtaposition of the results of those analyses enables the formulation of general remarks summarizing their contribution to the studies on medieval interpretation of pre-Christian Slavic religion.
The first chapter lays a crucial groundwork by investigating the history of research on this topic, namely characterizing the scope and aspects of the selected problem, and formulating postulates that will enable verification of the previous findings and demarcation of a wider perspective of analysis. In this case the key role is played by empiricism, ie. by the analysis of sources touching upon particular examples of the interpretation of primary religions, and taking into account the originality of the views of the medieval authors.
On this basis alone has an attempt been made to draw conclusions. The comparative framework, important for this research procedure, emerges from the juxtaposition of works representing the same historiographical genre (gesta) and — perhaps even more importantly — written by representatives of the Saxon church milieu at the stage of its engagement with the conversion of Polabian Slavs.
Those narratives were written over the course of almost two centuries, which allows for identifying some of the more durable tendencies of their authors and their environment in approaching primary religions with a specific ethnic character. Interpretations of native Slavic beliefs are thus considered as socio-cultural facts, rooted in the historic hic et nunc existence of the chroniclers, demonstrating certain attitudes and judgements conditioned by ideas functioning within a culture, including the doctrinal element of Christianity. Its specific dimension is manifested in distinct textual images, petrified and unrepeatable owing to their authors’ individual intentions (in addition to those of later copyists’).
This book is an updated version of a doctoral dissertation published in 2000,!6 which in the succeeding few years gained an important context through the synthesis of Barbarian Europe by Karol Modzelewski,!” and also through further research on the perception of “others” in German historiography on the uth-12th centuries,!* in addition to the contacts between Germany and Slavdom itself in the Middle Ages.!9 “Stepping into the same river” after nearly fifteen years has allowed me to develop some analyses further and verify certain partial findings (at the level of subchapters).2°
Results of the studies from the first edition of this dissertation have already been made available for a non-Polish audience in its German summary and several later publications.2! However, the scope of those publications was rather limited. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Florin Curta (University of Florida) for encouraging me to prepare a full, updated version of the work in English and for the invitation to publish it as a part of a series at the Brill Publishing House. I would also like to thank to Brill Publishing House for the kind and exemplary coordination of editorial works. Similarly, Iam very grateful to Dr Bryan Kozik and Dr Gregory Leighton for the editing of the manuscript of this book. Translation into English was financed as a part of the National Programme for the Development of Humanities (project by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland).
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