Chapter 4

Vita Ludgeri (beginning of the 9th cent.) 1, 8: (In Frisia) Paganos asperrimos...........mitigavit, ut sua iilum delubra destruere coram oculis paterentur. Inventum in fanis aurum et argentum plurimum Albricus in aerarium regis intulit, accipiens et ipse praecipiente Carlo portionem ex illo.---Conf. the passage cited p. 45 from the Lex Frisionum.

Folcuini gesta abb. Lobiensium (circ. 980), in Pertz 6, 55: Est locus intra termino pagi, quem veteres, a loco ubi superstitiosa gentilitas fanum marti sacraverat, Fanum Martinse dixeruut.----This is famars in Hainault, not far from Valenciennes.

In all probability the sanctuary of Tanfana which Germanicus demolished in A.D. 14 was not a mere grove, but a real building, otherwise Tacitus would hardly have called the destruction of it a 'levelling to the ground'. During the next three or four centuries we are without any notices of heathen temples in Germany. In the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, as I have shown, we come upon castra, templa, fana among Burgundians, Franks, Lombards, Alamanns, Anglo-Saxons, and Frisians. By fanum (whence fanaticus) seems often to have been understood a building of smaller extent, and by templum one of larger; the Indiculus supersit. xxxi. 4 has: 'de casulis (huts), i.e. fanis' (see Suppl.). I admit that some of the authorities cited leave it doubtful whether German heathen temples be intended, they might be Roman ones which had been left standing; in which case there is room for a twofold hypothesis: that the dominant German nation had allowed certain communities in their midst to keep up the Roman-Gallic cultus, or that they themselves had taken possession of Roman buildings for the exercise of their own religion (29) (see Suppl.) No thorough investigation has yet been made of the state of religion among the Gauls immediately before and after the irruption of the Germans; side by side with the converts there was still, no doubt, some heathen Gauls; it is difficult therefore to pronounce for either hypothesis, cases of both kinds may have co-existed. So much for the doubtful authorities; but it is not all of them that leave us in any doubt. If the Tanfana temple could be built by Germans, we can suppose the same of the Alamann, the Saxon and the Frisian temples; and what was done in the first century, is still more likely to have been done in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

Built Temples must in early times have been named in a variety of ways (see Suppl.): AS. OS. ON. hof [[court, temple, sanctuary]], aula, atrium; (30)---OGH. halla [[hall]], templum (Hymn. 24, 8), AS. heal [[hall]], ON. höll [[large house, hall]] (conf. hallr, lapis, Goth, hallus);---OHG. sal [[hall]], ON. salr [[room, hall]], AS. sele [[hall]], OS. seli [[hall]], aula;---AS. reced [[building, dwelling]], domus, basilica (Cædm. 145, 11. 150, 16. 219, 23), OS rakud [[dwelling]] (Hel. 114, 17. 130, 20. 144, 4. 155, 20), an obscure word not found in the other dialects;---OHG. pëtapûr [[bid-bower, praying-room]], delubrum (Diut. 1, 195) (31);---to which were afterwards added pëtahûs [[bid-house, prayer-house]], minores ecclesiae (Gl. sletst. 21, 32) and chirihhâ [[church]], AS. eyrice [[church]]. The MHG. poets like to use bëtehûs [[bid-house]] of a heathen temple as opposed to a christian church (En. 2695. Barl. 339, 11. 28. 342, 6. Athis D 93. Herb. 952. Wigal. 8308. Pass. 356, 73. Tit. 3329), so in M. Nethl. bedehûs [[bid-house]] (Maerl. 1, 326. 3, 125), much as the Catholics in their own countries do not allow to Protestants a church, but only a bathaus, praying-house (see Suppl.). O. iv. 33, 33 has the periphrase gotes hûs [[god's house]], and ii. 4, 52 druhtînes hûs [[drightin's house]]. Notker cap. 17 makes no scruple of translating the Lat. fanis by chîlechon [[churches]], just as bishop does duty for heathen priest as well. In the earliest times temple was retained, Is. 382. 395. T. 15, 4. 193, 2. 209, 1. Diut. 1, 195.

The hut which we are to picture to ourselves under the term fanum or pûr (A.S. bûr, bower) was most likely constructed of logs and twigs round the sacred tree; a wooden temple of the goddess Zisa will find a place in ch. XIII. With halla and some other names we are compelled to think rather of a stone building.

We see all the christian teachers eager to lay the axe to the sacred trees of the heathen, and fire under their temples. It would almost seem that the poor people's consent was never asked, and the rising smoke was the first thing that announced to them the broken power of their gods. But on a closer study of the details in the less high-flown narratives, it comes out that the heathen were not so tame and simple, nor the christians so reckless. Boniface resolved on hewing down the Thunder-oak after taking counsel with the already converted Hessians, and in their presence. So too the Thuringian princess might not have dared to sit so immovable on her palfrey and give the order to fire the Frankish temple, had not her escort been numerous enough to make head against the heathen. That these did make an armed resistance, appears from Radegund's request, after the fane was burnt down, ut inter se populi pacem firmarent.

In most of the cases it is expressly stated that a church was erected on the site of the heathen tree or temple. (32) In this way the people's habits of thinking were consulted, and they could believe that the old sacredness had not departed from the place, but henceforth flowed from the presence of the true God (see Suppl.).

At the same time we here perceive the reason of the almost entire absence of heathen monuments or their remains, not only in Germany proper, but in the North, where certainly such temples existed, and more plentifully; conf. in chaps. VI. X. XVI. the temple at Sigtûn, baer î Baldrshaga, and the Nornas' temple. Either these were levelled with the ground to make room for a christian church, or their walls and halls were worked into the new building. We may be slow to form any high opinion of the building art among the heathen Germans, yet they must have understood how to arrange considerable masses of stone, and bind them firmly together. We have evidence of this in the grave-mounds and places of sacrifice still preserved in Scandinavia, partly also in Friesland and Saxony, from which some important inferences might be drawn with regard to the old heathen services, but these I exclude from my present investigation.

The results are these: the earliest seat of heathen worship was in groves, whether on mountain or in pleasant mead; there the first temples were afterwards built, and there also were the tribunals of the nation.



ENDNOTES:

29. As the vulgar took Roman fortifications for devil's dikes, it was natural to associate with Roman castella the notion of idolitry. Rupertus Tuitiensis (d. 1135) in his account of the fire of 1128 that leveled such a castellum at Deuz, which had been adapted to christian worship, informs us that some thought it was built by Julius Caesar, others by Constantius and Constantine. In the emperor Otto's time, St. Mary appears by night to archbishop Heribert: 'surge, et Tuitiense castrum petens, locum in eodem mundari praecipe, ibique monasterium Deo mihique et omnibus sanctis constitue, ut, ubi quondam habitavit precatum et cultus daemonum, ibi justitia regnet et memoria sanctorum,' with more of the like, in the Vita Heriberti cap. 15. Conf. the fanum at Cologne above, p. 81.  (back)

30. The asylum that atrium and temple offered within their precincts is in ON. griðastaðr [[sanctury, asylum]], OHG. frîdhof, OS. vrîthob, Hel. 151, 2, 9. MHG. vrône vrîthof, Nib. 1795, 2; not at all our friedhof [but conn. with frei, free], conf. Goth. freidjan, OS. fridôn (parcere). That the constitution of the Old German sanctuaries was still for the most part heathenish, is discussed in RA. 886-92.  (back)

31. Actum in illo betapûre (the church at Fulda) publice, Trad. Fuld. ed. Schannat no. 193. in bedebur, Lacombl. no 412 (A.D. 1162). in bedebure, Erhard p. 148 (A.D. 1121). betbur, Meyer Zürch. ortsn. 917.  (back)

32. Sulp. Severus (ed. Amst. 1665), p. 458: Nam ubi fana destruxerat (Martinus), statim ibi aut ecclesias aut monasteria construebat. Dietmar of Merseb. 7, 52, p. 859 (speaking of Bishop Reinbern on Slav. territory, A.D. 1015): Fana idolorum destruens incendit, et mare daemonibus cultum immissis quatuor lapidibus sacro chrismate perunctis, et aqua purgans benedicta, novam Domino ..........plantationem eduxit.---On the conversion of the Pantheon into a church, see Massmann's Eradius 476.  (back)