History of Religion Part 14

[Footnote 5: See also Mr. Muller's _Hibbert Lectures_, and his _Biographies of Words_.]

In this instance etymology admittedly points out one of the princ.i.p.al features of the common Aryan religions. But if we hope that etymology will reveal to us many further instances of the same kind, and introduce us to the whole Pantheon of the Aryans, we shall be disappointed. There are one or two more cases of etymological agreement between the G.o.ds of India and those of Europe,[6] but the agreement is in some of these cases no more than etymological. The Tiw or Tyr of the Teutonic mythology does not correspond in office or character with Zeus or Jupiter, though the names are etymologically akin. The agreement does not extend to all the religions in question, nor does it extend in any two religions to all their G.o.ds; most of the G.o.ds of Europe have no parallels in India. The evidence of etymology, therefore, tells us but little of that early religion of which we are in search. But if we consider the views and habits of the barbarous shepherd-huntsman, who is now seen to be the typical figure of common Aryanism, we need not seek long before we find something that was common to all the Aryan faiths. The patriarchal household has a religion which belongs to itself, and which is the working bond of union of its members. The hearth is its altar, because the forefathers of the house lie buried under it, or for another reason. These forefathers certainly are its G.o.ds. This hearth-cult has for its priest the father of the family; he in his turn will be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son to do the last rites for him. No one but members of the family can partake in the domestic worship, all unconnected with the family by blood must be kept at a distance from these rites. This is not a religion in which the individual counts anything for his own sake, any more than totemistic religion is; in both it is the community alone that serves the deity, in the one case, those acknowledging the same totem, in the second, those united by blood in the same family. In totemism the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe; here he is nothing apart from his family. Aryan piety is family religion pure and simple. It fosters sentiments which have been the strength of Aryan society in all lands. It makes family life a sacred thing, lends to all domestic ties the highest sanction, and causes the mere mention of "hearth and home" to be the strongest incentive to valour and self-denial. Even in the wild-beast ferocity with which early men defend their homes against the intrusion of strangers, the germs of lofty domestic and patriotic virtues may be seen. Thus ancestor-worship, which is a part of the very beginnings of human religion, is a more effective force among the Aryans than anywhere else. In Egypt and China that worship is a highly artificial thing, and has lost much of its original force. In Egypt it is the fortunes of the dead that are most thought of; in China the cult has been smoothed down and deprived, according to the character of the people, of its intenser motives. Among the Aryans it combines actively with strong family feeling, causing them to cling with an extreme tenacity to their own G.o.ds and their own worship.[7]

[Footnote 6: The princ.i.p.al are the following:--

1. Dyaus, G.o.d of the sky, see above.

2. Sans. Ushas, G.o.ddess of dawn; Gr. [Greek: heos]; Lat. aurora; Lith. auszra; A.-S. eostra.

3. Sans. Agni, fire, G.o.d of fire; Lat. ignis; Lith. ugnis; O.-S.

ogni.

4. Sans. Surya, sun; Lat. sol; Gr. [Greek: helios], also [Greek: Seirios]; Cymr. seul.

5. Sans. Mas, moon; Gr. [Greek: mene]; Lat. mena; Lith. menu.

Mars=Maruts, Manu=Minos=Mannus, Varuna=Ouranos, and other equations formerly brought forward, are not now relied on by etymologists.]

[Footnote 7: The comparative absence of ancestor-worship among the Greeks leads Dr. Schrader to doubt whether their religion is Aryan.

The Semites and the Greeks occupy the same position in this respect (see chapter x., chapter xvi.).]

But those of whom we are speaking worshipped other G.o.ds besides those of the household. The second great characteristic of Aryan religion is its adoration of G.o.ds who are neither local nor tribal, but universal. Dyaus, the sky, the heaven-G.o.d, can be worshipped anywhere; so can the earth, so can the heavenly twins, who were objects of early Aryan religion, so can the sun and moon. Not that the Aryans always remembered that these beings were not local or tribal. The G.o.d of heaven could be the G.o.d of a particular place too, having a special name there; or he could be appropriated by a tribe who gave him a t.i.tle as their own particular patron. Each family could have its own heaven-G.o.d as well as its own hearth-G.o.d. Nor are we to think that when they worshipped beings who could be found in every place, the Aryans overlooked the sacred places, and the sacred objects worshipped formerly. They had themselves risen out of savagery, and still held many of the ideas of savages. Though they had a few great G.o.ds they could still believe in a large number of smaller ones. The tree, the stream, still had its spirit for them, the cave or the dark fissure its bad demon. And many a piece of magic did they practise, such as the rain-charm which would cause even the highest G.o.d to send what was needed. The world was well peopled with G.o.ds, and to keep on good terms with them all was, no doubt, a matter that required much attention and skill.

Other features which have been stated to be characteristic of Aryan religion are its non-priestly character, and the fact that its G.o.ds are generally arranged in a monarchical pantheon. But neither of these const.i.tutes a specific difference of the kind we are in search of. All primitive religions are non-priestly; a religion becomes priestly at a certain stage of its growth, when it is organised separately from the state. The monarchical pantheon, too, such as that of Homer and of the Eddas, is an indication, not of the genius of a religion, but of its having reached the systematising stage, and of the political ideas according to which the system is drawn up. The Aryan religions, it is true, arrange their G.o.ds when the time comes to do so, after the pattern of an Aryan patriarchal establishment, the father at the head, his sons and daughters near him, the servants in attendance, the unorganised host of spirits, nymphs and elves, outside. But to know the original character of the religion it is less important to ask how the pantheon is arranged, than what G.o.ds are worshipped, and how they are related to man. And the point which stands out clearly is that while Semitic religion is purely tribal and local, there is an element in Aryan religion which naturally transcends these limits. On Semitic ground the body with whom the G.o.d transacts is the tribe, the link is that of blood which connects all the members of the tribe with their divine head or ancestor. In Aryan religion also blood counts for much. The family altar is the seat of worship, and he who has been cast out of his own family cannot worship anywhere. The family G.o.ds are most thought of, no doubt, and exercise immense power in the ways we have mentioned. But the worship of which blood is the tie is not to the Aryan, as to the Semite, the whole of religion. There are beings aloft as well as beings on the earth and under the earth, and the worship of these beings is wider than the family. The family may address Heaven by a special private name, or at a particular spot, but Heaven itself was above all these t.i.tles and places. The spirits of the household made, as all the Semitic G.o.ds do, for separation, but the G.o.ds above made for union, and as any community grew, the upper G.o.ds, who were worshipped by all its members alike, became more lofty and more important. Thus we may agree with Mr. Gomme when he speaks (_Ethnology of Folklore_, p. 68) of the emanc.i.p.ation of the Aryans from the principle of local worship, and says that the rise of the conception of G.o.ds who could and did accompany the tribes wheresoever they travelled, was "the greatest triumph of the Aryan race."

Farther than this it may be dangerous to go in a field so full of uncertainty. In all Aryan worships there are sacrifices of various kinds and degrees of importance. The horse sacrifice appears in several of the nations as one of distinction, but human sacrifice was most important of all, though in each of the Aryan lands commutations are made for it at a very early stage. The strife of Aryan with non-Aryan religions gave rise to many superst.i.tions; after the conquest the G.o.ds of the latter often became the bad G.o.ds or demons of the former, the ministers of the defeated cult were regarded as sorcerers or witches, the dethroned G.o.ds made many an attempt to come back to their seats, and to revive disused practices. But a religion based, as we have seen the Aryan to be, in the family affections is destined to rise as civilisation advances. It will be found that the Aryan draws a less absolute distinction than the Semite between the human and the divine. To the Semite G.o.d is, broadly speaking, a master, or Lord, whose word is a command, in regard to whom man is a subject, a slave. To the Aryan the relation is a freer one. His G.o.d is more human, and art and imagination can do more in his service.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

E. Siecke, _Die religion d. Indogermanen_, 1897.

C. F. Keary, _Outlines of Primitive Belief among the Indo-European Races_, 1882.

CHAPTER XV THE TEUTONS

The Aryans in Europe.--There is more than one European people which before it was touched by Roman civilisation had remained for an indefinite period--a period to be measured probably rather by millenniums than by centuries--in the state of society described in last chapter (see above) as occurring when the Aryans dwelt among those whom they had conquered. In various lands alike we meet with the combination of the patriarchal household with the village, the combination of agricultural with pastoral life, to which the Aryans early settled down among non-Aryan populations. This type of society, which is the basis of feudalism, is recognised alike in India and in Germany. It stretches far back into the past, and may even be recognised in some quarters at the present day.

As with civilisation so with religion. The early faith of the Slavs, the Celts, and the Teutons is now generally regarded as best representing that of the Aryans. It was a religion in which rite and belief were indefinite and variable compared with those of the later Aryan faiths of India and of Southern Europe, there being neither a regular priesthood nor the use of writing to impart fixity to religious forms. The river, the fountain, and the aged oak, each had its legend and its observance of unknown antiquity. The pre-Aryan and the Aryan elements of religion acted and reacted on each other, the Aryan, no doubt, being the element of progress, but blending with the other in indistinguishable mixture. The spirits of ancestors lived in the belief and the practice of posterity; a thousand unseen agents in the sky, and in the earth, and under the earth were believed in and treated according to tradition, fed or flouted, bribed or exorcised, as occasion suggested. New G.o.ds appeared, or old ones were combined into new, or a G.o.d migrated from one province to another. Here also myths and rituals were formed by various processes. But a more constant growth of belief took place in connection with some G.o.ds as larger social organisms came into existence, village communities combining into tribes, tribes into nations. The great G.o.ds of heaven, whatever the history of their early growth, proved specially fitted to unite together clans and peoples. These beings received different names in different countries. Their early history, no doubt, was not the same in all, yet in each mythology there were figures and stories which occurred also in others, whether in consequence of parallel growth out of similar circ.u.mstances in each land, or from a process of borrowing at a later time, or from both, we need not try to decide.

We give a short account of the religion of the Germans. That of the Celts, which may be studied in the Hibbert Lectures of Professor Rhys,[1] or that of the Slavs (of which there is an excellent short summary by Mr. W. R. Morfill in _Religious Systems of the World_), would have equally well served the purpose of exhibiting an Aryan religion at a low stage of development, and held by a people not thoroughly compacted into a nation. The religion of the Teutons has the advantage for our study over these others, that it remained longer unsuppressed by Christianity, and in its Scandinavian branch put forth a vigorous original growth in comparatively recent times.

The latest paganism which flourished in Europe, it is also the religion of our ancestors, on which the Christianity of the Northern lands was grafted, and many a survival of which may still be recognised in our own land. It therefore possesses for us even in itself considerable interest.

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as ill.u.s.trated by Celtic Heathendom_, 1886.]

Of the ancient Germans, of the dwellers in the basins of the Rhine and the Danube, we have accounts by Caesar and by Tacitus.[2] After this there is a dearth of information; the Christian missionaries to the Germans thought it their duty to cover the former beliefs and rites of their converts in oblivion, and abstained from giving information about them. What we know is drawn from Church writers.

The Eddas belong to a much more developed stage of Teutonic life; they tell their own tale, which will be noticed in its turn.

[Footnote 2: Caesar, _B. Gall._ vi. 21. Tacitus, _Germania_.]

The early Germans dwelt in scattered settlements surrounded by the great forests and marshes which then covered Central Europe. Every one has read the description of the brave and warlike people of whom the Romans justly stood so much in awe, and knows about their fierce blue eyes and their fair hair, their tall stature, their battle-cries and charges, their hardy habits and strict morals. As the Roman writers describe them, they are by no means savages. They do not live in towns, but migrate from one spot to another, the community cultivating the land it takes possession of, on a system of common ownership with rotation of occupants. The women did the hard work, Tacitus says; the men spent their time in the chase and in fighting.

They had an organisation beyond that of the village, being arranged in what we may call hundreds and shires, each district having to furnish so many men for war, electing its own heads and holding meetings for various purposes. Amidst these local and tribal divisions they did not forget that they were a nation different from other nations, and invasion found them a united people. The religious expression of this is to be found in the legend which represents the three great divisions of the nation as descended alike from the G.o.d Mannus, son of the earth-born Tuisco; hymns were sung to the latter as the father of the German race. It was by hymns that this people remembered things which were important.

The Early German G.o.ds.--There is a national G.o.d, then; and other G.o.ds of whom Tacitus tells us are national too, not local or tribal. The tribes to the south of the Baltic worship Herthus, which, Tacitus says, is their name for Terra Mater, Mother Earth. The other G.o.ds he mentions are called by Roman names. They worship Mercury, he says, as their princ.i.p.al G.o.d; on certain days they worship him with human sacrifices. They also worship Mars and Hercules with animal victims; and a particular tribe, the Suevi, worship Isis. Caesar says the Germans worship the sun, and Vulcan, and the moon. Tacitus mentions other German G.o.ds; the two statements are both true. Tacitus gives the German G.o.ds Roman names according to a common practice of antiquity, which has been the source of much confusion; we shall see afterwards how the Romans identified the G.o.ds of Greece also with those of Rome.

The equation which Tacitus gives of the German G.o.ds with Latin ones is still in daily use in the names of the days of the week. The Romans applied the names of the planets, which were the names of their own G.o.ds, to the days of the week as early as the first Christian century; and in Germany the days were called after the German G.o.ds supposed to answer to the Roman G.o.ds in question. Half Europe to this day calls the days of the week after the Roman, and the other half after the German G.o.ds. We give the Latin names with the modern French and over against them the English, in which the names of the German G.o.ds appear more clearly than in modern German:--

Dies Solis, the Sun's day=Sunday. (The French _Dimanche_ is from _Dominicus_, the Lord's Day.)

Dies Lunae (Lundi)=Monday or Moon's day.

Dies Martis (Mardi)=Tuesday, the day of Tiw or Ziu.

Dies Mercurii (Mercredi)=Wednesday, the day of Wodan.

Dies Jovis (Jeudi)=Thursday, the day of Thor. In German this is _Donnerstag_, the day of Donar=Thor.

Dies Veneris (Vendredi)=Friday, the day of Freya.

Dies Saturni retains the Latin G.o.d's name in our Sat.u.r.day. (The French _Samedi_ is derived from Sabbath.)

These Teutonic names for the days of the week are common to all the branches of Teutonic speech, and must have a high antiquity. They tell us what G.o.ds the Germans had in early times, and to what Roman G.o.ds these were believed to correspond; but it would be a vain endeavour to attempt to deduce from this, or indeed from any early information we possess on the subject, the origin and nature of these G.o.ds. From Grimm's laborious study of the question (_German Mythology_, vol. i.) we gather that it is a matter mainly of speculation what it was in Wodan that led the Romans to identify him with their Mercury. Thor, who is identified with Jupiter, was probably a sky-G.o.d, while Tiw or Ziu (whom etymology identifies with Zeus, not Mars) was a G.o.d of war, and Freya, like Venus, had to do with female beauty. We come to know more of these G.o.ds when we find them in the Eddas, but it is scarcely legitimate to fill in the South German G.o.ds of the first century from the North German G.o.ds of the same names of the eleventh or twelfth. We reserve, therefore, our description of the German G.o.ds till we come to the Northern mythology.

The Roman writers do not furnish any accurate idea of the working religion of the Germans of their day. Caesar says they were not so much under the guidance of priests as the Gauls were, and that they were not greatly addicted to sacrifice; neither statement can be received without scrutiny. Tacitus idealises the untutored savage as Rousseau does, in order to rebuke the vices of a luxurious civilisation; but his statements of actual facts may be trusted.

Knowledge recently acquired of early forest-cults disposes us to trust him when he speaks, as he does more than once, of the peculiar sacredness the Germans attached to woods and groves. He is idealising when he says, "They did not confine their G.o.ds in walls nor represent them under the likeness of men, being led thereto by considering the greatness of the heavenly beings." A few centuries later at least we find Christian bishops busy destroying temples of German heathenism and burning images found in them. Undoubtedly, however, the great sanctuary of a district was frequently, as he represents, in the recesses of a wood. Under a mighty tree a tribe would hold its meetings and sit in judgment and in council; and there were sacred groves in which no human foot might stray, where the G.o.d was supposed to dwell, where great sacrifices both of animal and of human victims took place, where the boughs were hung with the bones of former sacrifices which in war were carried forth at the head of the tribe as its sacred standards. This was done by the priests, who accompanied the host to battle, and were charged at such a time with the infliction of all necessary punishments, since they represented the G.o.d who was supposed to be personally present as commander. The priests had to work the auguries when consulted on matters of state; on private matters the paterfamilias might do this himself. The priests also had charge of the sacred white horses, by whose neighing the will of the deity became known. Several women are also mentioned as having enjoyed the reputation of sacred personages; and "even in their wives they considered that there was a certain holiness and inspiration."

To judge from Tacitus and from other writers of the first Christian centuries, there was little system in the religion of Germany in those days; the G.o.ds were not organised in a divine family, the priests were not a caste like the Druids of France and Britain, and religious practice was loose and variable. It must also be remembered that what foreign writers reported on the subject was connected rather with national and official cults than with popular local observances. Of the latter there was an abundant growth; a distinguished foreign writer might not know about it, but the evidence of it survives in various forms which are only now being seriously studied. To know the practical religion of early Germany we have to consult the village festival and legend (as has been done by Mannhardt in his _Wald- und Feld-kulte_ and Mr. Frazer in _The Golden Bough_, and many a student of folklore), which, though now apparently meaningless, were once the serious religious observance and doctrine of the peasantry. The peasant carried his wishes and prayers to the familiar wishing-well, and presented offerings to the spirit of the well by throwing them into the water or hanging them on the surrounding trees. The fairy rather than far-off Wodan was looked to for good fortune; the rite of the fabulous village hero, with its quaint immemorial usages, roused more enthusiasm than the stately public ceremonial. Another side of the mind of early Germany is to be gathered from the heroic legends and the fairy tales, many of the elements of which, we are a.s.sured, were even then in existence. Were these legends formed by a process of degradation; did they begin with telling about the G.o.ds, and were they afterwards applied to heroes and princes and common men? Or was the process in the opposite direction from this; were the stories, first of all, those of human warriors, their wars and loves, and did they then become mixed up with solar and celestial ideas? Were the fairy tales originally stories of the G.o.ds, and did they by popular and familiar treatment fall below the dignity of their original themes till they came to be a debased and broken-down mythology? or were they at first stories about beasts and about clever tricks, such as savages love to tell, and did they rise to something more dignified, till in some of them we may trace the stories of the G.o.ds? It is not necessary that we should answer these questions, which carry us back to an earlier time than that with which we are concerned; but any one who knows the tales, and will try to realise the state of mind of those who received them not as fancy but as serious fact, will know something of the religion of early Germany; of the strange beings, fairies, dwarfs, magicians, talking animals, animated sun and moon and winds, by which the German believed himself to be surrounded.

Later German Religion.--In Southern Germany the introduction of Christianity early put an end to any development of Teutonic religion which might have taken place there. The old faith, however, still maintained itself in more Northern lat.i.tudes. It was brought to Britain by the German invaders, continued there till the seventh century, and was brought in again in a more Northern form by the Nors.e.m.e.n, who in their turn "gradually deserted Thor and Odin for the white Christ."[3] Bede tells hardly anything of the paganism which had been the religion of England a century before he wrote; in this he is like other Christian teachers who might have told but did not.

But though it came to an end in England, Teutonic religion continued to prevail in the countries from which the invaders had come. In Frisia in the eighth century we hear of a G.o.ddess Hulda, a kind G.o.ddess, as her name implies, who sends increase to plants and is a patroness of fishing. A G.o.d called Fosete, or Forsete (Forseti in modern Icelandic=chairman), identified both with Odin and with Balder, was worshipped in Heligoland; he had a sacred well there, from which water had to be drawn in silence. There are temples, often in the middle of a wood, with priestly inc.u.mbents, and rich endowments, both of lands and treasure; and human sacrifice in various forms is said to have been in use. Idols are mentioned, even (at Upsala in Sweden) a trinity of idols; but this is what Church writers would naturally impute to heathens, and the statement is discredited. No Teutonic idol has survived; the loss to art may not be great, but such a relic would have settled the controversy.

[Footnote 3: Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_.]

Iceland.--Teutonic paganism reached its highest development in Iceland. Of this branch of it alone is there a literature, for many of the sagas are the fruit of a literary movement in Iceland anterior to the establishment of Christianity; and the historian Ari, who wrote within a century after that event, gives careful information of the earlier state of affairs. The reader of _Burnt Njal_ sees that among the Icelanders life was short and precarious. With the spirit of adventure, which led them to be constantly setting out on warlike and piratical expeditions, they combined a strong tendency to local quarrels, which filled up their life at home with a constant series of blood-feuds. These latter are gone about in a methodical and business-like way; custom sanctions them, the meetings of the popular a.s.sembly do not seek to suppress or punish them if only they are conducted according to the rules. No public authority had as yet arisen to carry out the law between one household and another; the avenger has his recognised place and duty. Society is patriarchal as in other Aryan communities; each family is a community of blood-kindred for mutual defence and also for worship. The leading cult of Icelandic religion was the domestic worship of ancestors, conducted by the head of the household. The dead were buried in knolls or burrows near the dwelling, and their spirits were thought to inhabit these places; they are said to "die into the hill." Altars are erected and sacrifices offered there; the blood of the victim poured out upon the ground is supposed to be enjoyed by them. These knolls became the sacred places of their district, and many a belief existed about these quiet neighbours and the help they afforded to the living. "Elves" they were called, and they were thought of as a cleanly and kindly race. The spirits of bad men, on the contrary, lived an uneasy life, as demons, and were the workers of mischief.

Along with this belief in the spirits of the dead as inhabiting the burial hill of the household, there is another conception, namely, that the dead go to a distant region of the unseen world. In Homer also these two conceptions are combined. The Icelandic burial rites are founded on the latter view. The "departed" is going on a long journey, and his friends escort him as far as they can; shoes are bound on his feet, the Hel-shoes, for Hel is the name of the region of the dead. Gifts are given to him; horses, male and female attendants, hawks and hounds, are burned with him on the pyre, and his wife voluntarily accompanies him; all these he is to have with him in the country beyond.

In addition to the domestic cult we have that of local objects; holy wells, waterfalls, groves, stones are worshipped. Mother Earth is called on, so is Thunder, so is Heaven. But besides these minor worships there is the public one, connected with a large tribe or with a king's court. A temple on the same plan as a large dwelling-house forms a place of meeting and of sacrifice, an asylum, and a place of oaths and covenants. On a table in front of the high seat stands the bowl which, filled with blood and along with certain sticks, forms a means of divination. A gold ring also lies there, which a man puts on when he is about to swear an oath, and which the priest puts on at meetings.

The priest has the duty of keeping up the building and property of the temple and of maintaining the sacrifices. At the latter various rites are done with the blood of victims, and those present feast on the flesh and drink toasts. The first cup is for Wodan, various other G.o.ds are celebrated, and there is a cup of remembrance for the departed. Sacrifices are offered for the crops, for victory, for any great object on which the community is bent. In this ritual there is no evidence of any idols. Though the Icelanders are not without art, the great G.o.ds have not yet perhaps a.s.sumed to their minds such definite figures as to be thus set forth: no Homer has placed them clear before the inward eye. The rites are b.l.o.o.d.y, the altar has ever anew to be made to shine with the blood of victims. Human sacrifices are only resorted to in times of great common danger, as a terrible last resort; the G.o.d to whom the human victim is devoted is moved by the bloodshed to avert his anger, or to make greater exertions for his people. Bloodshed forms the strongest of all bonds. To link themselves together in an indissoluble brotherhood, two friends mingle their blood on the ground and then each of them treads on it.

The shedding of human blood at the launching of a ship or at the laying of the foundation of a building is also known. Savage and cruel as this religion is, there are signs that it is softening, and that some of its darker rites are beginning to admit of commutation.

When Christianity approaches, the Icelanders feel that it must make a great change, and that some of the cruelties which they regard as the good old customs, will have to be laid aside. We hear of the stipulation being made that if they receive baptism they shall not be required to give up the removal of unpromising children nor the eating of horseflesh.

The Eddas, in which Scandinavian mythology reaches its ultimate form, seem to belong to a higher plane of human life than the religion we have described, and it has appeared to many scholars of late years that they cannot be regarded as a pure product of paganism, but are in great part influenced by Christianity both in matter and in sentiment. The older Edda, written in verse, is said to have been collected by Saemund Sigfusson the learned, one of the early Christian priests of Iceland, who lived about the eleventh century. The other Edda is in prose; it is a collection made about two centuries later.

The form given to the myths in these collections is due to the Skalds, who flourished in Iceland in the early Middle Ages; but the legends themselves are older. Nothing is known precisely about their origin or early diffusion.