Chapter 6

All these passages contain, not an untruth, yet not the whole truth. That German heathenism was destitute of gods, they cannot possibly prove, for one thing, because they all date from periods when heathenism no longer had free and undisturbed sway, but had been hotly assailed by the new doctrine, and was wellnigh overmastered. The general exercise of it had ceased, isolated partizans cherished it timidly in usages kept up by stealth; at the same time there were christians who in simplicity or error continued to practise superstitious ceremonies by the side of christian ones. Such doings, not yet extinct here and there among the common people, but withdrawn from all regulating guidance by heathen priests, could not fail soon to become vulgarized, and to appear as the mere dregs of an older faith, which faith we have no right to measure by them. As we do not fail to recognise in the devils and witches of more modern times the higher purer fancies of antiquity disguised, just as little ought we to feel any scruple about tracing back the pagan practices in question to the untroubled fountainhead of the olden time. Prohibitions and preachings kept strictly to the practical side of the matter, and their very purpose was to put down these last hateful remnants of the false religion. A sentence in Cnut's AS. laws (Schmid 1, 50) shows, that fountain and tree worship does not exclude adoration of the gods themselves: Hæðenscipe bið, þæt man deofolgild weorðige, þæt is, þæt man weorðige hæðene godas, and sunnan oððe mônan, fýre oððe flôðwæter, wyllas oððe stânas oððe æniges cynnes wudutreowa [[['[It] is heathenship, that one celebrate devil-worship, that is, that one worship heathen gods, and sun or moon, fire or floodwater, wells or stones or any kind of wood-tree']]]; conf. Homil. 1, 366. Just so it is said of Olaf the Saint, Fornm sög. 5, 239, that he abolished the heathen sacrifices and gods: Ok mörg önnur (many other) blôtskapar skrîmsl, bæði hamra ok hörga, skôga, vötn ok trê ok öll önnur blôt, bæði meiri ok minni.

But we can conceive of another reason too, why on such occasions the heathen gods, perhaps still unforgotten, are passed over in silence: christian priests avoided uttering their names or describing their worship minutely. It was thought advisable to include them all under the general title of demons or devils, and utterly uproot their influence by laying an interdict on whatever yet remained of their worship. The Merseburg poems show how, by way of exception, the names of certain gods were still able to transmit themselves in formulas of conjuring.

Pictures of heathenism in its debasement and decay have no right to be placed on a level with the report of it given by Tacitus from five to eight centuries before, when it was yet in the fulness of its strength. If the adoration of trees and rivers still lingering in the habits of the people no longer bears witness to the existence of gods, is it not loudly enough proclaimed in those imperfect and defective sketches by a Roman stranger? When he expressly tells us a deus terra editus, of heroes and descendents of the god (plures deo ortos), of the god who rules in war (velut deo imperante), of the names of gods (deorum nominibus) which the people transferred to sacred groves, of the priest who cannot begin a divination without invoking the gods (precatus deos) and who regards himself as a servant of the gods (ministros deorum), of a regnator omnium deus, of the gods of Germany (Germaniae deos in aspectu, Hist. 5, 17), of the diis patriis to whom the captured signa Romana were hung up (Ann. 1, 59); when he distinguishes between penetrales Germaniae deos or dii penates (Ann. 2, 10. 11, 16), communes dii (Hist. 4, 64), and conjugales dii (Germ. 18); when he even distinguishes individual gods, and tries to suit them with Roman names, and actually names (interpretatione Romana) a Mars, Mercurius, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Isis, nay, has preserved the German appellations of the deus terra editus and of his son, and a goddess, the terra mater; how is it possible to deny that at that time the Germans worshipped veritable gods? How is it possible, when we take into account all the rest that we know of the language, the liberty, the manners, and virtues of the Germani, to maintain the notion that, sunk in a stolid fetishism, they cast themselves down before logs and puddles, and paid to them their simple adoration?

The opinion of Cæsar, (2) who knew the Germans more superficially than Tacitus a hundred and fifty years later, cannot be allowed to derogate from the truth. He wants to contrast our ancestors with the Gauls, with whom he had had more familiar converse; but the personifications of the sun, fire, and the moon, to which he limits the sum total of their gods, will hardly bear even a forced 'interpretatio Romana'. If in the place of sun and moon we put Apollo and Diana, they at once contradict that deeply rooted peculiarity of the Teutonic way of thinking, which conceives of the sun as a female, and of the moon as a male being, which could not have escaped the observation of the Roman, if it had penetrated deeper. And Vulcan, similar to the Norse Loki, but one of those divinities of whom there is least trace to be found in the rest of Teutondom, had certainly less foundation than the equally visible and helpful deities of the nourishing earth, and of the quickening, fish-teeming, ship-sustaining water. I can only look upon Cæsar's statements as a half-true and roughcast opinion, which, in the face of the more detailed testimony of Tacitus, hardly avails to cast a doubt on other gods, much less to prove a bare worship of elements among the Germans.

All the accounts that vouch for the early existence of individual gods, necessarily testify at the same time to their great number and their mutual relationship. When Procopius ascribes a poluj qewn omiloj to the Heruli, this 'great host' must also be good for the Goths, just those of whom we know the fewest particulars, and for all the Germans together. Jornandes would have us believe that Diceneus was the first to make the Goths acquainted with gods, cap. 11: Elegit ex eis tunc nobilissimos prudentiores viros, quos theologiam instruens numina quaedam et sacella venerari suasit; here evidently we see the ruler who promoted the service of particular gods. But that Jornandes himself credited his Goths with unmistakably native gods, is plain from cap. 10: Unde et sacerdotes Gothorum aliqui, illi qui pii vocabantur, subito patefactis portis cum citharis et vestibus candidis obviam sunt egressi paternis diis, ut sibi propitii Macedones repellerent voce supplici modulantes. The fact here mentioned may even have been totally alien to the real Goths, but anyhow we gather from it the opinion of Jornandes. And if we also want evidence about a race lying quite at the opposite extremity of Germany, one that clung with great fidelity to their old-established faith, we have it in the Lex Frisionum, addit. tit. 13, where the subject is the penalty on temple-breakers: Immolatur diis quorum templa violavit.  



ENDNOTES:

2. Deorum numero eos solos ducunt, quos cernunt, et quorum opibus aperte juvantur, Solem et Vulcanum et Lunam; reliquos ne fama quidem acceperunt B.G. 6, 21. Compare with this B.G. 4, 7 where the Usipetes and Tenchtheri say to Cæsar: Sese unis Suevis concedere, quibus ne dii quidem immortales pares esse possint.  (back)