Chapter 13

Lovaniensis autem dominus precum suarum et mandatorum contemptum nolens esse inultum, diem constituit comitibus tanquam suis hominibus, qui neque ad primum, neque ad secundum, sed nec ad tertium venire voluerunt. Eduxit ergo contra eos et contra nos multorum multitundinis exercitum armatorum tam peditum quam militum. Nostro igitur oppido seposito, tanquam firmius munito et bellicosorum hominum pleno, primum impetum in Durachienses fecit, quibus viriliter resistentibus castellum, nescio quare, cum posset non obsedit, sed inter Leugues et Durachium pernoctavit. Cumque sequenti die exercitum applicare disponeret et ex quatuor partibus assultum faceret, habebat enim ingentem multitudinem, supervenit AdelberoMetensium primicerius filiorum Lovaniensis domini avunculus, cujus interventu, quia comitissa Durachiensis erat soror ejus, et Durachiense erat castellum sancti Lamberti, Lovaniensis dominus ab impugnatione cessavit et ab obsidione se amovit, promisso ei quod Durachienses paulo post ei ad justitiam suam educerentur. Et cum ista et alia de dominis et inter dominos tractarentur, pedites et milites per omnia nostra circumjacentia se diffuderunt, villas nostras, ecclesians, molendina et quaecumque occurrebant combustioni et perditioni tradentes, recedentes vero quae longe a nobis fuerant prout cuique adjacebant inter se diviserunt.

Obviously, throughout the narrative everything is put in an odious light; but the proceeding derives its full significance from this very fact, that it was so utterly repugnant to the clergy, and that they tried in every way to suppress it as a sinful and heathenish piece of work. On the other hand, the secular power had authorized the procession, and was protecting it; it rested with the several townships, whether to grant admission to the approaching ship, and the popular feeling seems to have ruled that it would be shabby not to forward it on its way.

Mere dancing and singing, common as they must have been on all sorts of occasions with the people of that time, could not have so exasperated the clergy. They call the ship 'malignorum spirituum simulacrum' and 'diaboli ludibrium,' take for granted it was knocked together 'infausto omine' and 'gentilitatis studio,' that 'maligni spiritus' travel inside it, nay, that it may well be called a ship of Neptune or Mars, of Bacchus or Venus; they must burn it, or make away with it somehow.

Probably among the common people of that region there still survived some recollections of an ancient heathen worship, which, though checked and circumscribed for centuries, had never yet been entirely uprooted. I consider this ship, travelling about the country, welcomed by streaming multitudes, and honoured with festive song and dance, to be the car of the god, or rather of that goddess whom Tacitus identifies with Isis, and who (like Nerthus) brought peace and fertility to motals. As the car was covered up, so entrance to the interior of the ship seems to have been denied to men; there need not have been an image of the divinity inside. Her name the people had long ago forgotten, it was only the learned monks that still fancied something about Neptune or Mars, Bacchus or Venus: but to the externals of the old festivity the people's appetite kept returning from time to time. How should that 'pauper rusticus' in the wood at Inden have lighted on the thought of building a ship, had there not been floating in his mind recollections of former processions, perhaps of some in neighbouring districts?

It is worthy of note, that the weavers, a numerous and arrogant craft in the Netherlands, but hateful to the common herd, were compelled to draw the ship by ropes tied to their shoulders, and to guard it; in return, they could keep the rest of the people from coming too near it, and fine or take pledges from those who did so. (23)

Rodulf does not say what became at last of the 'terrea navis,' after it had made that circuit; it is enough for him to relate, how, on a reception being demanded for it and refused, heats and quarrels arose, which could only be cooled in open war. This proves the warm interest taken by contemporaries, fanned as it was to a flame for or against the festival by the secular and the clerical party.

There are traces to be found of similar ship-processions at the beginning of spring in other parts of Germany, especially in Swabia, which had then became the seat of those very Suevi of Tacitus (see Suppl.). A minute of the town-council of Ulm, dated St. Nicholas' eve 1530, contains this prohibition: 'Item, there shall none, by day nor night, trick or disguise him, nor put on any carnival raiment, moreover shall keep him from the going about of the plough and with ships on pain of 1 gulden'. (24) The custom of drawing the plough about seems to have been the more widely spread, having originally no doubt been performed in honour of the divinity from whom a fruitful year and the thriving of crops was looked for. Like the ship-procession, it was accompanied by dances and bonfires. Sebast. Frank, p. 51ª of his Weltbuch: 'On the Rhine, Franconia and divers other places, the young men do gather all the dance-maidens and put them in a plough, and draw their piper, who sitteth on the plough, piping, into the water; inother parts they draw a fiery plough kindled with a fire very artificial made thereon, until it fall to wrack.' Enoch Wiedemann's chronik von Hof tells how 'On Shrove-Tuesday evil-minded lads drove a plough about, yoking to it such damsels as did not pay ransom; others went behind them sprinkling chopped straw and sawdust.' (Sächs. provinz. bl. 8, 347.) Pfeiffer, chron. lib. 2, § 53: 'Mos erat antiquitus Lipsiae, ut liberalibus (feast of Liber or Bacchus, i.e., carnival) personati juvenes per vicos oppidi aratrum circum ducerent, puellas obvias per lasciviam ad illius jugum accedere etiam repugnantes cogerent, hoc veluti ludicro poenam expetentes ab iis quae innuptae ad eum usque diem mansissent'. (25) On these and similar processions, more details will be given hereafter; I only wish at present to shew that the driving of the plough and that of the ship over the country seem both to rest on the same old heathen idea, which after the dislodgement of the gods by christianity could only maintain itself in unintelligible customs of the people, and so by degrees evaporate: namely, on the visible manifestation of a beneficent benign divinity among men, who everywhere approached it with demonstrations of joy, when in springtime the soil was loose again and the rivers released from ice, so that agriculture and navigation could begin anew. (26) In this way the Sueves of Tacitus's time must have done honour to their goddess by carrying her ship about. The forcing of unmarried young women to take part in the festival is like the constraint put upon the weavers in Rupuaria, and seems to indicate that the divine mother in her progress at once looked kindly on the bond of love and wedlock, and punished the backward; in this sense she might fairly stand for Dame Venus, Holda and Frecke.

The Greeks dedicated a ship not only to Isis, but to Athene. At the Panathenæa her sacred peplos was conveyed by ship to the Acropolis: the ship, to whose mast it was suspended as a sail, was built on the Kerameikos, and moved on dry land by an underground mechanism, first to the temple of Demeter and all round it, past the Pelasgian to the Pythian, and lastly to the citadel. The people followed in solemnly ordered procession. (27)

We must not omit to mention, that Aventin, after transforming the Tacitean Isis into a frau Eisen, and making iron (eisen) take its name from her, expands the account of her worship, and in addition to the little ship, states further, that on the death of her father (Hercules) she travelled through all countries, came to the German king Schwab, and staid for a time with him; that she taught him the forging of iron, the sowing of seed, reaping, grinding, kneading and baking, the cultivation of flax and hemp, spinning, weaving and needlework, and that the people esteemed her a holy woman. (28) We shall in due time investigate a goddess Zisa, and her claims to a connexion with Isis.



ENDNOTES:

23. Does the author imply that the favour of the peasantry, as opposed to artizans, makes it likely that this was a relic of the worship of Earth? Supposing even that the procession was that of the German Isis; Tacitus nowhere tells us what the functions of this Isis were, or that she 'brought peace and fertility'. ---Trans. Back

24. Carl Jäger, Schwäb. städtewesen des MA. (Mid. Ages), 1, 525 Back

25. Scheffer's Haltaus, 202. Hans Sachs also relates I. 5, 508ª, how the maids who had not taken men, were forced into the plough (see Suppl.). Back

26. To this day, in the churches of some villages of Holstein, largely inhabited by seamen, there hang little ships, which in springtime, when navigation re-opens, are decorated with ribbons and flowers: quite the Roman custom in the case of Isis (p. 258). We also find at times silver ships hung up in churches, which voyagers in stress of weather have vowed in case of a safe arrival home; an old instance of this I will borrow from the Vita Godehardi Hildesiensis: Fuit tunc temporis in Trajectensi episcopatu vir quidam arti mercateriae deditus, qui frequenter mare transiret; hic quodam tempore maxima tempestate in medio mari deprehenditur, ab omnibus conclamatur, et nil nisi ultimus vitae terminus timetur. Tandem finito aliquanto tempore auxilium beati Godehardi implorabant, et argenteam navim delaturos, si evaderent, devoverunt. Hos in ecclesia nostra navim argenteam deferentes postea vidimus (in King Lothair's time). In a storm at sea, sailors take vows: E chi dice, una nave vo far fare, e poi portarla in Vienna al gran barone; Buovo d'Antona 5, 32. The Lapps at yule-tide offer to their jauloherra small ships smeared with reindeer's blood, and hang them on trees; Högström, efterrentninger om Lapland, p. 511. These votive gifts to saints fill the place of older ones of the heathen time to gods, as the voyagers to Helgoland continued long to respect Fosete's sanctuary (p. 231). Now, as silver ploughs too were placed inchurches, and later in the Mid. Ages were even demanded as dues, these ships and ploughs together lend a welcome support to the ancient worship of a maternal deity (see Suppl.). Back

27. Philostr. de vitis sophist. lib. 2 cap. 1, ed. Paris. 1608, p. 549. Back

28. So Jean le Maire de Belges in his Illustrations de Gaulle, Paris, 1548, bk. 3 p. xxviii: 'Au temps duquel (Hercules Allemannus) la deesse Isis, royne d'Egypte, veint en Allemaigne et montra au rude peuple Fusaige de mouldre la farine et faire du pain.' [[At this time (Hercules Allemannus) the goddess Isis, queen of Egypt, came in Germany and has shown to the crude Fusaige people how to grind wheat and do bread.]] J. le Maire finished his work in 1512, Aventin not till 1522; did they both borrow from the spurious Berosus that came out in the 15^th century? Hunibald makes a queen Cambra, who may be compared with the Langobardic Gambara, introduce the arts of building, sowing and weaving (see Suppl.). Back