Neither
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive.
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
After the German subjugation the seniores = eldesten = supani
of the Elbe Slavs, namely the Sorbs in the modern kingdom of Saxony,
were still the highest class of the Slav population, having their posses-
sions in fief, being under feudal law, dispensing justice, and only pledged
to serve their lord in war on horseback; thus they came nearer to the
German nobility than to the other Slav peasantry. In Mecklenburg,
the land of the Obodritzi, the feudal village magistrates—the former
zupans—were expressly reckoned among the vassals of the country.
It cannot therefore be doubted that the zupans of the Elbe Slavs
also were principes, dornini, landlords before their subjugation.
With zupan is connected zupa (Slav, zupa, Lat. suppa), that is the
district under a zupan, which among the Serbs was a principality, but
among the Slovenes of Lower Styria at the time of the German dominion
zupa denoted only a village district. Here the zupans finally dwindled
to village-chiefs, and then the word signified their office, officium suppae
or the zupan estate. The great Servian tribal-ifwpa and the little
## p. 445 (#477) ############################################
The Zupa. The Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) 445
Slovenish xillage-zupa formed in a certain sense an economic whole, in that
all dwellers in the zupa-district possessed right of pasture; consequently
the zupa was here an undivided grazing-district throughout which
the agricultural rotation proceeded as long as there were no permanent
fields, and as long as the cornfields opened by clearing or the burning of
a piece of forest and again abandoned after their exhaustion became
derelict and once more forest-land. In consequence of this general right
of use by the inhabitants the word zupa in Servia became personified,
and signified also the whole of the inhabitants entitled to the right of
pasture—and formally of clearing too—the compastores, conterranei, so
to speak. So long as the Avars were lords in the land, and so long as
they remained wandering herdsmen, the requirements of their pasturing
and their tyranny were decisive; the enslaved Slav peasantry could place
their fields only where it suited their masters, and there could be no idea
of a peasant right of clearing. In the Balkan peninsula the nomad
shepherds wintered with their herds on sunny snowless sea shores, and
for this reason in Dalmatia the word zupa denotes a sunny land where
snow does not fall or where it melts rapidly. Some such districts—
standing winter-quarters of the nomads—finally retained the word as
their name. Among the Carinthian, Bohemian, and Polish Slavs we
find no such zupans and no such zupan, for here peasant dynasties
arose through peasant revolutions and the zupans had to give way.
But the name itself remained, or was borrowed anew from neighbouring
Slavs, and htpan in Bohemia signified a high state official, and zupa on
the one hand is beneficium, and on the other the office connected
with it. The members of the highest Bohemian and Polish nobility
had the title pan (originally gupari). This word has no connexion
with zupan, but arose from a title kopan attested by a Bulgarian
inscription as before mentioned.
The Avars and Bulgars naturally tolerated no other dominus among
the directly dominated Slavs, they were themselves the zupans, and as
zupans remained as domini after the break-up of the Avar Empire,
and indeed among the Sorbs and Alpine Slavs, and here and there
were very numerous, so that they are to be considered as the Avar and
Bulgar dominating class Slavised by the lapse of time, and no longer
nationally different from the subject people.
From the conglomeration of Slavs planted by the Avars in the
Eastern Alps was formed the people of the Slovenes (Carantani). They
extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube, and from East Tyrol
deep into Hungary. As they had the Avar main horde at hand on the
Danube and the Theiss, they were most deeply enslaved. Alter the/
destruction of the Avar kingdom by Charles the Great their social)
organisation appears greatly changed. In Lower Styria south of Cilli
as late as the fifteenth century they were under an uncommonly numerous
hereditary zupan class, and even in the smallest hamlet there were one,
## p. 446 (#478) ############################################
446 Social History of the Slovenes
two, three, or four zupans. On the other hand, south of this in some
districts of Carniola and north of the Drave in Lower Styria (in the
dominium of Arnfels) there was no such zupan class at all. There (in
Carniola) the village-presidents (also called zupans) were chosen, but
only village-magistrates—likewise called zupans—appointed for a fixed
period of time, by the village peasantry, here (in the Arnfels dominium)
they were nominated for a certain time by the landlord. In what is
now Eastern Carinthia too there was no zupan class; the land was
ruled by a peasant duke.
In the various doomsday books (Urbar) we find all the villages
belonging to the landlord concerned with a definite statement of
the number of the peasant estates, and the enrolled zupans with all
the dues and services. These villages originated at various times, some
before and some after the German occupation, and we can determine
many which were Old Slavic. Those which were first established by the
Germans, even when they were colonised with Slav peasants, are for the
most part large and often very regularly and artistically laid out in
German fashion, and their dues too are purely German. They cover most
of the broad valleys and river plains. The carefully planned villages of
the plains are therefore new. In another area of the large districts
their origin is uncertain; their nucleus may be old, but they were
remodelled, and enlarged by the attachment of new clearings. Yet
other districts are so markedly non-German that they must be pre-
German. These are not really villages, but tiny hamlets. Large
villages were unknown to the early Slavs, and the districts of the Elbe
Slavs are thickly set with little villages; the Serbs likewise, for the
most part, live in hamlets and isolated farms; the Bohemian and Polish
large villages are later foundations after the German fashion, and the large
Russian villages were only formed from small villages in modern times.
At the head of almost every village in Lower Styria and Carniola
whether large or small, old or new, there is a zupan, and even the mayor
of Laibach (Slav. Lyublyana), the capital of Carniola, bears this title.
Thus, since the German occupation, the expression zupan covers various
meanings among the Slovenes to which the magistrate's office is common,
but with different rights and duties. In a Slovene village first established
by the Germans—usually large—the zupan is nothing more than an
ordinary magistrate^W&r, magister villae, living in a farm exempt from
taxes, as a rule two hides (praedia, mansi, hubae). But in tiny little hamlets
of the TufFer domain, the zupan—who here too has everywhere two hides
(praedia)—cannot be a judex, magister villae, as he pays tribute, and in
certain hamlets he is the only inhabitant, and therefore has no one to
preside over. Indeed, in the neighbouring domain, Rann-Lichtenwald,
in 1309 there were also villages with two, and in 1448 with even three
and four zupans; two magistrates in a village belonging to one and the
same landlord would be absurd. Here the zupans considerably increased
## p. 447 (#479) ############################################
V
The Zupans in Lower Styria 447
during the 1S9 years, and, where there was formerly one, three or four
occupied the paternal inheritance either undivided or in divided estates.
As they all bore the title, but only one of them could be magistrate of
the village, zupan here signified the member of an hereditary class and
not the holder of an office. These zupans paid far more tribute than
the peasants on estates of equal size, the higher taxation consisting in
swine, subsidiarily swine-pence—this proves that they had greater rights
of pasture than the peasants.
The old Slovene zupan is a village-magistrate only where there (
are peasants under him. What was he originally? What he was
among the Elbe Slavs (senior) and the Serbs (princeps, dominus), viz.
landlord, as descendant of the Avaro-Bulgar herdsman class. Under the
German dominion he lost his former seigniorial character; the Germans
seized a considerable part of the territory, especially what was unculti-
vated, including the wasted plains and valleys, and left what remained
to those whom they found there—up to that time nomad zupans and
their Slav peasants—reckoning two hides (praedia) for a zupan and one
for a peasant. In consequence the zupans were so huddled together
that they were forced to give up the wandering herdsman life, and as
they could no longer keep large herds, they had to adapt themselves to
husbandry, contenting themselves with a smaller flock of sheep, and
finding compensation in swine-breeding. Their former monopoly in
cattle-breeding was also abolished, as under the Germans the peasants
also were allowed to engage in cattle-breeding though not to the same
extent as the zupans. This is shewn by the taxation. The peasants
still remained subordinated to the zupans, but they were newly dis-
tributed among them, with the land, so that a precisely defined number
of peasants was allotted to a definite group of zupans. Thereupon each
group of zupans shared the peasantry allotted to them according to a
definite principle—evidently hereditary. This follows from the fact that
the percentage of zupans and peasant hides is repeated in several districts
remote from one another, although the individual zupans appear so very
unequally provided with peasants, some indeed having none at all.
Thus we can see how the German domination forced the former
wandering herdsman to become a settled cattle-breeder and little by
little a grower of grain, and how the cattle-breeding of these zupans
was preponderant up to late times. Their social position was in earlier
times by no means slight: in a list of witnesses (1322) a zupan was not
cited among the peasant witnesses but mentioned before the burghers
of Laibach1—thus he was at least equal to them in rank. In the
thirteenth century in the manorial estates of Tuffer and Lichtenwald
one of the village zupans acted as Schepho—chief official of a larger
administrative district—and this also points to the higher position of
a zupan.
1 Levee, in. p. 73, or Peisker, Beziehungen, 159 [345].
## p. 448 (#480) ############################################
448 The Carinthian Peasant-State
As has been already mentioned, in many districts of Camiola and
Styria there was no zupan class at all and no permanent zupans, but one
of the peasants was made village-magistrate—equally called zupan—
from time to time and enjoyed in return a certain remission of dues1.
But this has nothing to do with the hereditary zupan of Tuffer and
Lichtenwald, where there were settled zupans paying large taxes, even
four in one and the same village belonging to one and the same landlord.
It will have been seen that a change took place in the signification
of the word zupan, and at the same time a change in the position of the
peasant population in general, a change different according to place and
time, and further developed and differentiated by the unequal pressure
of their lords, by continual colonisation under new conditions, and by
the decay and resettlement of entire villages. The unpretending peasant
who was entrusted for a time with the office of village-magistrate had
as little in common with the old Slovene zupan as the Frankish horse-
boy (marescallus) with a great French or German marshal.
While thus the former Avaro-Bulgar herdsman nobility,even if divested
of overlordship and turned into a peasantry, maintained itself under
the German domination in the sixteenth century in a position distinct
from the remaining peasantry and in certain districts of Lower Styria as
a numerous hereditary class, it disappeared in the neighbouring province
of Carinthia long before the German occupation through revolts of the
enslaved peasantry. As we have already seen, these latter had heavy
burdens to bear in providing their tormentors with supplies of food and
fodder, and giving themselves up to be massacred as befulci in countless
wars, while the Avar harnessed their wives and daughters like beasts to
his wagon, violated them systematically, destroying their family life and
indeed reducing their whole existence to the level of brutes. Thus,
destitute of all social ties the peasantry revolted; though many risings
were stifled in blood before one was successful. And now after ages of
servitude a part of the great Slav world was cheered by the sun of a
golden freedom, not this time to fade into anarchy. From the midst of
the victorious peasantry a prince was chosen to be a just judge and to
guarantee the husbandry of the people, and especially the cattle-breeding
till then forbidden to them. And that things should ever remain so, a
wonderfully ingenious ritual was devised for the installation of each new
prince—always a peasant. And as there was as yet no fixed hereditary
succession, and a certain time always elapsed before a new prince was
installed, the interregnum was provided for by recognition of the
eldest member of a certain peasant family as eo ipso vicegerent. So
tenaciously did the people cling to this ritual that even the splendid
German dukes of Carinthia had to humble themselves to assume the
1 Milkowicz, in MitteUungen, u. pp. 23 ff. ; Peisker, Die Mere Sozial- und
Wirtschaflsverfassung der Alpenslaven, iv. pp. 32 f.
## p. 449 (#481) ############################################
Installation of the Prince in Carinthia 449
ducal throne as peasants. In the year 1286 the ritual—markedly
modernised and relaxed—was of the following nature:
For the installation of the duke the oldest member of a certain
peasant family, the so-called duke-peasant, had to sit on the "prince's
stone" which lies in the Zollfeld near Klagenfurt. The new duke, in a
coarse peasant's dress with a staff in his hand and leading a bull and a
mare, is conducted by four nobles before the carelessly seated peasant,
who has to question those nobles in the Slovene tongue and to find out
who the man is, whether he is a just judge, mindful of the country's
well-being, of free standing and full of zeal for the Christian faith.
This they must swear to. Thereupon the peasant says: "By what
right shall he remove me from this my seat? " They answer: "With
60 pfennigs, these two brindled beasts, and the peasant dress which he
is wearing; he will also make thy house tax-free. " Thereupon the peasant
gives the duke a light cuff on the cheek, bids him be a good judge,
vacates the seat for him, and takes the beasts. The duke takes his seat
upon the stonfe and swings his drawn sword in all directions. He also
takes a drinjfc of fresh water.
successful revolt of these Slovenes from the Avars took place, as
we shallWee presently, about 608. The first prince of the Carinthians
whose nawie is known was Walluc (after 641), dux in Marca Vinedorum,
independent of the Avars as well as of the Bavarians and I,ombards.
About th«e year 745 the Avars attempted to subjugate the Carinthians
afresh, ar*ld their duke, Borut, sought help from the Bavarians. These
indeed djjjove off the Avars but made the Carinthians dependent on the
FrankisMf king, under native princes, of whom the last mentioned is
WoinimMir in 796; and Arnulf (emperor 896), if not the first, was one
of the JiOfirst German princes who as duke of Carinthia submitted (in
880) toM the peasant ceremony.
The** peasant revolt was not limited to Carinthia, rather it
eaibracJHed a great part of the Avar Slavdom from the Alps to the
Erzjw'flfcirge and the Vistula, for the Bohemian dynasty of the Premyslids
and *Jjthe Polish dynasty of the Piasts were of peasant origin. The
Pivn^iyslids were always conscious of this, and Lutold (died 1112),
vaW ll prince of Znaim (Slav. Znoyem), had the chapel which he built
decorated with frescoes which still remain, among them the
of the election of his ancestor with the hazel-stick, the bast-bag,
bast-shoes. Pulkava, court-chronicler to the Emperor Charles IV,
; of Bohemia (1346-1378), states that Pfemysl's bast-shoes and bast-
were " to this day" carefully preserved. "And on the day of the
coronation of the Bohemian king, the canons and prelates in procession
receive the king that is to be and shew him the bast-shoes and lay the
bast-bag on his shoulders so that he may be mindful that he sprang
from poverty and may not be presumptuous. " This is a poor survival of
a more ample ritual which, unlike the Carinthian, had lost all its original
<:. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIV. 29
## p. 450 (#482) ############################################
450 Peasant-Princes in Bohemia and Poland
significance, for it did not originate in Prague but was transferred
there after the union of the State of the Lemusi with that of the
Chekhs of Central Bohemia. And it was disagreeable to the later
Pfemyslids. King Wenzel I (1230-1253), who was German in feeling,
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans. But he does not
seem to have touched the bast relics; the kinsmen appear to have
recovered their heritage, for in the year 1359 the Emperor Charles IV,
as king of Bohemia, declared to the sons of Radosta, co-heirs of Staditzi,
that they and their forefathers had always been free heirs of their
tax-free estates; but as these had not long since been illegally given
away and burdened with taxation by his father, the blind King John
(who fell at Crecy, 1346), Charles IV now restores their rights, but
retains as crown-land the field which Pfemysl had once tilled single-
handed (it is to this day called the "king's field") and charges the
petitioners with the care of Premysl's hazel stock, all the nuts from
which they have to present yearly at the royal table as a n>emorial of an
event so remarkable. \
The peasant origin of the Pfemyslids and the Piasts cannot bean
invention of the chroniclers. No high-born dynasty would believe such
a story, rather it would make short work of such blasphemy aagainst its
kingly majesty. The chroniclers merely decked the fact outfwith the
fruits of their reading in ancient classics, and the Church interpreted it
in the sense of Christian humility. w
The peasant prince, Premysl, was not prince of the whole of Bohemia—
which even much later consisted of several little States—but tJf^riguially
only of the little people of the Lemusi round Bilin in Norf*th-West
Bohemia, in immediate proximity to the Sorb clan Glomachi (\ German
Daleminzen) in the modern kingdom of Saxony. These Glomjx^hi like
the Lower Styrians remained under zupans, but their social organisation
was more complicated. Under German domination they fell iff lto the
three classes: (1) Supani (Lat. seniores, German eldesten), (2) H^Biiluwii
(Slav, x'icazi) in equis servientes (servants on horseback, esquires).
(3) the Smurdi, correctly smrdi, that is the "stinkers,"" the coi
peasant-folk. In addition, there were corresponding to the Gei'
occupation members of German nationality: (4) the Censuales (Ge:
lazze), and (5) the Proprii (heyeri). The three Slav classes were
the special jurisdiction of zupans with Slavonic as official langu!
The Daleminzian zupans and smurdi corresponded to the two Lo
Styrian classes, the zupans as former domini (seniores) of AvarO'
origin; they were likewise very numerous but their percentage cannot
now be ascertained. On the other hand, the Withasii were of Germanic \j
Norse origin. The Vikings somewhere in Russia must have subjected
the forefathers of the Glomachi, and been transplanted with them by the
Avars after the year 563 to serve as a barrier against the Franks on
-
## p. 451 (#483) ############################################
The Sorbs. Peasant Revolution in North Bavaria 451
the Saale and the Elbe. Had they been later conquerors, they must
have stood above the zupans, but here the zupans (Avars and Bulgars) were
the foremost rank, and therefore the latest conquerors, and at the time
of the German domination the vicazi took rank next beneath them as
feudal peasants liable to cavalry service and standing with the zupans
under feudal law. In West and South Europe too the Vikings on
stolen horses were, as is well known, as terrible horsemen on the land
as they were pirates by sea.
Thus we find both among the Alp-Slavs and the Slavs on the Elbe
a. peasant State in immediate proximity to hipan States. Either then
the peasant revolution was only successful in places, or the Avars having
rallied and enslaved the peasantry of Styria afresh remained there as
zupans, and then together with the peasantry fell under German
dominion. "Fredegar11 says: "At this time Samo, a Frank, joined himself
with several merchants, went to these Slavs to trade, and accompanied
their army against the Avars. He shewed remarkable bravery, an
enormous number of Avars fell, he was chosen king, ruled successfully
thirty-five years, and beat the Avars in all following wars. '"
The "Fredegar " compilation incorrectly puts this event under the year
623, for the author of this chapter wrote in 642 or 643, and at that
time Samo must have been already dead1. If the length of his reign is
correctly given, the revolt must have taken place in 605 at the latest.
In the year 601 the Avars were depopulated by a disease just as the
Khagan had driven Constantinople to such straits that the citizens were
making ready to migrate to Chalcedon in Asia Minor. Soon after he
was almost destroyed in five defeats at the hands of the Romans in
Hungary itself, the heart of Avardom. These plunderers were already
face to face with extinction when the Emperor Maurice was dethroned
in 602, and were only saved from destruction by the incapacity of his
successor Phocas. But their supremacy was now at an end. Samo's
revolt thus falls between 602 and 605, most probably in the year 603.
Then followed the revolt of the Croats and the Serbs, and finally the
Bulgar khan Kubrat on the lower Danube made himself free between
635 and 641.
Of Samo's State only this is certain, that it bordered on Thuringia*,
1 Schniirer, in Collectanea Jriburgensia, fasc. ix. pp. 113, 233.
2 Fredegar, pp. 74 f. [631] "it was told to the Frankish king Dagobert that an
army of the Wends (Slavs) had hroken into Thuringia. . . . Then appeared envoys of the
[then still free] Saxons before Dagobert. . . . They promised to oppose the Wends and
to protect the Frankish territory on the Wend border. . . . [632] Then the Wends at the
command of Samo. . . harried Thuringia and other provinces. . . . " This proves that Samo's
kingdom bordered on the Thnringian province and did not lie in Bohemia, which
lies too far from the Thuringian Gau (jpagus) for attacks from that quarter (v. map).
Older historians placed Wogastisburg, one of Samo's strongholds, at Tans (at the
foot of the Bohmerwald)—called in older sources Tugast—the point at which invaders
often entered Bohemia from Bavaria. The Burberg near Kaaden in North-West
ch. xiv. 29—2
## p. 452 (#484) ############################################
452 The Slav Kingdom of Samo
and embraced the Main and Kedantz (Regnitz) Slavs'. Thus it lay in
what had been Frankish territory, for Samo himself acknowledged:
"The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagoberfs, yet only
in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Before the irruption
of the Avars into the Frankish kingdom in 562, it extended over
the Saale to the Elbe. The Sorbs on the Saale and the Elbe as well
as the Slavs on the Main and Regnitz were not transplanted (by the
Avars) into this previously Frankish district till later. Thus from this
time to the founding of Samo's State scarcely forty-four years elapsed,
so that he could not have ceased to be conscious of the fact that his
land was really Frankish property. Here, in the country of the Regnitz
Slavs, the traces of the wintering of the Avars are to this day inefface-
able. On the lower Aisch, which flows from the south-west into the
Regnitz between Erlangen and Bamberg, broad visages with protruding
cheek-bones, deep-set eyes, and black hair are still to be met with.
But the Slavs were originally blue-eyed and fair, and were only
black-haired and mongoloid where their women were systematically
violated by the Altaian conquerors, and this "Fredegar'" attests expressly
of Samo's Slavs. The Avars (or Bulgars) must therefore have wintered
here also. The same is the case with the Bohemian Slavs, whose black
hair struck the traveller Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in 965 as peculiar. Whether,
or how far, Samo's kingdom extended into Bohemia is not known; it is,
indeed, improbable that it did so, for even in historic times no State
has ever existed on both sides of the Fichtelgebirge and the Bohmerwald.
As late as the ninth century several independent Slav clans existed in
Bohemia, and they assuredly took part in the Slav revolt against the Avars,
for there is as little trace of a zupan class in Bohemia as in Carinthia.
It is therefore to be presumed that the Slav tribes did not proceed singly
but in combination against the Avars, and that an ephemeral federation
was formed, with Samo at its head. But we have no right to speak of
'Samo's Empire, and the assumption that his kingdom embraced Caran-
Ijania, the country of the Alpine Slavs, rests only upon the Arumymuxix
COnvermme Bagariorum et Carantanorum—a party production of the
Salzburg Church directed against the Slav apostle St Methodius, and
employing for its own purposes Fredegar's notice of Samo—for the
association of Samo with the Carinthian Slavs would prove the latter
to be members of the Frankish kingdom, and therefore of the Salzburg
diocese.
Bohemia, Chekh: Uhoit, is now proposed. The first suggestion is based on the con-
jecture Togastitburg and is therefore to be rejected, the second overlooks the fact that
tlhoii was then pronounced Ongoii, so that we ought to find Ungastisburg or some-
thing similar in Fredegar.
1 Mention of them does not occur again before 846: "In the land of the Slavs
who dwell between Main and Redanz [Slav. Radnica] called Moinwinidi and
Ratanzwinidi. "
## p. 453 (#485) ############################################
Influence of Avar Slavery 453
The Slav revolts here described were successful only as far as the
Erzgebirge (which divides Bohemia from the kingdom of Saxony), for
immediately north of this we find the Sorb clans on the Saale and Elbe
dominated even after this time by zupans. In Samo's time the Sorb
prince Dervan was subject to the Frankish king. By the successful
revolt of the Bohemians, and especially of the Lemusi, the hipans who
dominated the Sorb people were cut off" from the main horde of the
Kbagan in Hungary, so they voluntarily submitted to the Frankish
king in order to escape the fate of their clansmen in Bohemia and on
the Main-Regnitz. But when Dagobert was defeated by Samo, Dervan
fell away from the Franks to Samo, who was well satisfied not to have
as enemies the dreaded Sorbs, and let alone their two dominating
classes, the Avar hipans and the Viking vicazi. This explains how a
hipan prince could still remain prince under Samo, the deliverer of
the peasants. We now see that the whole of Slavdom, with perhaps
the sole exception of the North-Russian peoples, was swept along in the
Avar tornado. This expansion of the Avar power from the Peloponnesus
to the Baltic is not inconceivable, for there were Altaian empires greater
still, that of the descendants of Chinghiz-Khan and the kingdom of the
Huns, the predecessors of the Avars, which stretched from the Don to
the lower Rhine.
The view often put forward, that the Slavs themselves became effective
warriors in the cruel Avar school, runs counter to the facts.
Neither
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive. The German migrations took place under the lead of remark-
able and heroic figures; at one time the Germans even gave the Roman
Empire its wisest statesmen and most powerful military commanders,
but among the millions of Slavs who flooded Germany and the East
Roman Empire we do not find the name of even one moderately
prominent warrior. Those mentioned by the Byzantine sources, like
Khilvud, Dabragezas, Mezamir, Ardagast, Piragast, Musok, cannot be
compared with the German army leaders, and also they were obviously
not real Slavs, but Slavic descendants of partly Germanic and partly
Altaian conquerors. The earliest prominent personality among the Slavs
is the Frankish Samo, and the most powerful Slav prince, the Russian
Svyatoslav (died 972), was in spite of his Slav name a pure-blooded
German, son of Ingvarr and Helga (Slav. Igor, Olga) and one of the
greatest German heroes in history.
"Mauritius11 and other writers describe the Slavs as they must
have been in their marshy cradle, without organisation, without
military discipline, and consequently quite unsuited for any serious
offensive movement. But on the defensive when well led they were
excellent in a style which was forced upon them by the continual man-
hunts of the pirates and the mounted nomads. Of a military schooling
## p. 454 (#486) ############################################
454 Elbe Slavs at war with the German Empire
from the Avars there is no trace except that they learned plundering
from their tormentors. On the offensive they could do nothing against
the Romans, though the Romans likewise could do nothing against the
defensive of the Slavs. For example, in 593-4, when the imperial army
advanced victoriously over the Danube, it was unwilling to winter in a land
where the cold was unbearable and the barbarians were invincible on
account of their great numbers. In the defensive power of the Slavs lay
also the strength of the Avar-Slav positions on the Baltic, Elbe, and
Saale against the Franks even after the fall of the Avar Empire. Only
after two and a half centuries of continual warfare did the Germans
remain victors.
Considerably more than thirty tiny Slav tribes in the former Old
Germania from the Danube to Mecklenburg are mentioned there in four
groups1. Not one of the groups forms a State, each is only seldom and
temporarily united when war threatens, otherwise it is divided into little
clans bitterly hostile to one another. Each little clan dwells huddled
close together in hamlets and little villages amidst marsh and a dense
forest zone through which go roads only passable for pack-horses in dry
seasons of the year, provided at the entrance to the forest zone with gates
and abattis'. And if the enemy forced his way in notwithstanding, the
people fled to their numerous earthworks, civitates. The Obodritzi in
Mecklenburg alone had 53 such civitates and the same number of duces,
and were actually regarded as invincible.
After the time of Charles the Great war with these Slavs was perma-
nent. Thanks to the protection of the mountain range and their peaceful
acceptance of Christianity, the Bohemian group maintained itself and
finally combined into a powerful Bohemian kingdom. On the other
hand the remaining three groups, really some dozen of Lilliputian clans,
succumbed to the Germans who always found allies among them, some-
times among the Obodritzi, sometimes among the Lyutitzi. Thus the
Elbe Slavs (save some small remnants) were exterminated or Germanised.
1 (1) The Bohemians: Doudlebi, Chekhove (Chekhs), Luchane, Lemusi, Pshovane,
Kharvati, Zlichane, etc. (2) The Sorbs east of the Saale and Elbe: Goleshintzi,
Nishane, "Selpoli," Lubushane, Lupoglavtzi, Zharovane, Trebovane, Milchane, Susli,
Glomachi, etc. (3) The Lyutitzi or Veletove, Wiltzi: Morichane, Sprevane, Brizhane,
Stoderane, or Havelane, Kyechane, Ukrane, "Redari," Dolenchane, "Kyzini,"
Chrezpyenyane, (Jznoim, Volini, Rani, etc. from the Sorbs to the Baltic. (4) The
Obodritzi: Reregi, Vagri, Polabi, Smolintzi, [GJinyane, Varnovi, Drevane, etc. in
Mecklenburg and its vicinity.
2 The Slav apostle, Otto of Bamberg, on his journey entered "a terrible
enormous forest which divides Pomerauia and Poland. . . . This wood had not been
traversed before by any mortal, except that the Duke [of Poland] in earlier years,
before he had conquered the whole of Pomerania,. . . had cut a way for himself and his
army by felling and marking the trees. Following this marking, with great difficulty
on account of the enormous snakes and wild beasts,. . . and on account of the marshes
that impeded the vehicles and heavy wagons, we traversed the forest in six days. "
Herbord, n. Chap. 10.
## p. 455 (#487) ############################################
Defensive Power of the Slavs 455
And in their despairing and incomparably brave defence they too
might have kept off the German colossus could they have reconciled
themselves to the Cross, which was made hateful to them by the oppres-
sion of the German Government1. At the same time it must be clearly
noted that they were not aggressors but a thoroughly industrious peasant
people. The Avar dominant class which had become Slavised in the
course of time was not numerous enough for offence against the German
power and the equally invincible Danish vikings; it became much reduced
in the continuous defensive wars, and also lost its former ferocity because
it was squeezed into narrow tribal bounds, so that it had at last to give
up the wandering herdsman life. The Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub
who made a journey in these parts in the year 965 says: "In general
the Slavs are intrepid and warlike and were they not at variance among
themselves, no people on earth could measure themselves against them.
The lands inhabited by them are the most fruitful and richest of all,
and they devote themselves zealously to agriculture and other kinds of
industry wherein they surpass all northern peoples. 11 According to
Herbord, Pomerania had an abundance of honey, wheat, hemp, poppy,
vegetables of all kinds, and fruit-trees. Yet the lands between the
Elbe and the Vistula are only made fertile by industrious cultivation.
The type of the Slav method of warfare is the powerful Polish leader
Boleslav Khrobry (992-1025), who created a kingdom that stretched from
the Dnieper to the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Danube and Theiss.
He carried on bloody wars with all his neighbours, especially with the
German king Henry II. But Boleslav did not confront the German
army in open battle; his strength lay in masterly manoeuvring and in
the heroic defence of strong positions. "Never—says his unfriendly
contemporary Thietmar—have I heard of besieged men who made
exertions to defend themselves with greater endurance and more clever
circumspection. 11 The sources of Boleslav's strength we know from
Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in the year 965: "The land of Meshko [Boleslav's
father] is rich in grain and meat and honey and fields—And he has
3000. . . warriors, a hundred of whom are a match for a thousand others.
And he gives these people clothes and horses and weapons and all that
they need. And when a child is born to one of them he at once orders
. . . a salary to be assigned to the same. . . and when he reaches full age he
1 Evidence in Schafarik, n. p. 542, Note 2. The heathen Slav looked down upon
the Christian as upon a barbarian. "We have nothing in common with you. The
laws which we inherited from our fathers we will not give up, we are content with
the religion which we have. Among the Christians there are thieves and robbers,
whose feet are cut off and eyes poked out; the Christian practises all kinds of crime
and punishments upon the Christian. Far from us be such a religion" answered
the Pomeranians to Otto of Bamberg. Among them there were no beggars, no
locks and keys; they were highly surprised at the fastened chests of the bishop.
Their table was always decked with food, and every stranger could enter and satisfy
himself. Herbord, n. Chaps. 10, 25, 40.
## p. 456 (#488) ############################################
456 The Elbe Slavs and the Vikings
procures him a wife and pays for him the marriage gift to the maiden's
father. . . . And the marriage takes place with the approbation of the king.
. . . And he is like a tender father to his subjects. " This standing army is
not native, for it is landless; it consists of foreign mercenaries, evidently
Norse vikings.
It is clear that the Polish Slavs, like the Russian, were from the
earliest times strongly influenced by the vikings and their plundering
raids and settlements. For the vikings who ravaged all the coasts of
Europe cannot have left alone the river-mouths of the Baltic. According
to Iomsvikinga-saga, in the vicinity of the Slav sea and commercial
town Volin (Slav), Winetha (Saxon), Iulin or Iumin (Danish), mentioned
by Ibrahim and the German chroniclers, the Iomsburg, a sea fort, was
built by Danish pirates [about 970], and according to Orderic Vitalis
(b. 1075) the German gods Wodan, Thor and Frigg were worshipped in
a district of the Lyutitzi at the mouth of the Oder. All three however
had also their worship in the Upsala temple among the Swedes.
This viking admixture is clearest among the Baltic Slavs—especially
those of the Island of Riigen—and gave them the appearance of a pirate
people. Helmold reports that the men of Riigen were [1168] tributary to
the Danes, but they revolted, and occupied the rich Danish islands, " and
the Danes cannot easily protect themselves from the sudden attacks of
the pirates, for there are creeks there in which the Slavs can keep well
hidden, and from which they can break out unperceived to attack and
plunder the unwary. For the Slavs are particularly strong in sudden
surprises. Hence even up to recent times this custom of robbing has
such possession of them that they are always ready for maritime enter-
prises to the entire disregard of the profits of agriculture, for their whole
hope and all their wealth depend on their ships. Indeed they do not
even trouble themselves much about house-building; rather they fashion
for themselves huts of wicker-work, as they only seek shelter at need from
storm and rain. As often as war threatens to break out, they thresh all
the grain and bury it in holes together with all gold and silver and what
precious things they possess; their women and children however they
take into their fortified places or at least into the forests, so that nothing
remains for the enemy to plunder but the huts, the loss of which they
very easily bear. They pay no regard to the attacks of the Danes,
indeed they consider it spoil to measure themselves against them. " We
see here a remarkable fusion of the viking pirates, Altaian herdsmen and
Slav peasants on the Island of Riigen. But could the most terrible of
all pirates, the Danes, who fill the gloomiest pages in British history,
here stand helpless before Slav pirates? It is more likely that Danish
vikings were here opposed by Slavised vikings. So too the Narentanian
pirates of Dalmatia, called Pagani, seem to be Norse vikings trans-
planted by the Avars, for here too we find a noble class of vitezi.
Giesebrecht excellently characterises the Baltic Slavs: "A mixed
## p. 457 (#489) ############################################
Political Impotence of the Slavs 457
race, not seldom fluctuating in sharp contradiction in their belief, law,
and customs, the Wends were already a fallen nation when they came
into contact with the Franks. Thus from them could proceed much
that was energetic as far as it could be carried out by individuals, families,
or associations, but nothing that presupposed national unity. "
More favourable conditions for a thriving development were obtained
by those Slav peoples among whom either the Altaian or the German
dominating class destroyed the other. The Russian Slavs with the
Varangians whom they absorbed finally reached a national and social
harmony, while the Bohemians and a part of the Alpine Slavs overcame
their Avar oppressors. But they found it a still harder task to build up
their rude freedom into an orderly State. This the Carinthians brilliantly
performed, remaining in true freedom without a nobility for a long time.
Even under German dominion, under far less favourable conditions, they
were an equal match for the Germans of Ditmarschen in Holstein.
As a people who for immemorial ages were deprived of justice and
politically broken the Slavs longed only for an ordered legal State. !
An early example of this is afforded with an objectivity extremely
rare among medieval chroniclers by the author of Chapters xlviii
and lxviii of the "Fredegar" Chronicle (Chronist B). In Samo's king-
dom Prankish merchants were robbed and killed and King Dagobert
demanded redress. Samo "only agreed on a reciprocal legal procedure
on this and similar disagreements which had arisen on both sides. Here-
upon Sycharius in the manner of an arrogant envoy let. . . fall threats to the
effect that Samo and his whole people had to be subject to Dagobert. "
Samo replied, "The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagobert's, j
yet only in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Sycharius: "It is
not possible for Christians, the servants of God, to stand in friendship
with dogs. " Samo: "If you are the servants of God, and we are God's
dogs, we are permitted to bite you when you ceaselessly act against his
will. " This led to Dagobert's crushing defeat at Wogastisburg.
The appeal to law and not to the sword is the basis of Old Slavonic f
thought and aspiration; the principal task of the Slav princes was to
secure a passable administration of justice—the Russian Slavs actually
appealed to Norse pirates. The chronicler Cosmas pictures the oldest
Bohemian princes as simple judges, and by their memorable ritual the
Carinthians hoped to secure the necessary foundation of justice, but this
was an ideal not always attainable among a people where no man was
willing to subordinate himself to another without an army capable of
breaking down resistance. And as the Slavs lacked everything in the
remotest way like this, they often became the prey of their warlike
neighbours and perished in impotent rebellions to gain the human
rights denied them. Mighty Slav States arose indeed, but without the
co-operation of the people themselves, whose endeavours were early
directed to social questions. This was a favourable soil for social
## p. 458 (#490) ############################################
458 Social Ideas
religious dreams of an evangelical way of life, and the Slav temperament
reached its greatest perfection in an offshoot of the Hussite movement
fanned into flame by the teaching of Wyclif—in the venerable Unity of
the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. This movement was democratic,
not communistic—a wonderful theoretic union of human perfection
with spiritual purity in the midst of a society saturated with selfishness.
Their chief representative, well known in England also, was the founder
of the new pedagogy, John Amos Comenius (Komensky), the teacher of
the peoples of Europe.
## p. 459 (#491) ############################################
459
CHAPTER XV.
(A)
KELTIC HEATHENISM IN GAUL.
The purpose of this chapter is to give a short account of the religion
of the Gauls, that is to say the inhabitants of the district bounded by
the Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
We have to gather our information about this religion from in-
complete and vague documents which do not belong to Gaul strictly
speaking: that is from the historians of Greece and Rome (Posidonius,
Caesar, Strabo, Diodorus, Mela, Lucan, etc. ). There are also monuments
(bas-reliefs, bronzes, and inscriptions) dating from the time when Gaul
already formed part of the Roman Empire, and had been influenced
by Rome. Both these sources of information shew us, not the pure
and true Gallic religion, but this religion either as it was more or
less correctly interpreted by strangers, or more or less transformed by
imported beliefs.
Another difficulty arises from the fact that under the term Gallic,
the ancients included both the original inhabitants of Gaul and other
peoples of quite a different character. There were Aquitanians south of
the Garonne, related to the Iberians or Cantabrians of Spain: Ligurians
in the Alpine districts, and Germans in the Moselle and Meuse valleys.
The rest really belonged to the so-called Gauls, and concerning them
two things must be said: first that they fall into two groups, the Kelts
between the Marne and the Garonne, who were the earlier settlers, and
the Belgae, between the Marne and the Ardennes forest, more recent
comers and less civilised. Secondly the Belgae and Kelts, or Gauls as
they are sometimes called, do not represent a homogeneous people; but
the name must be taken to cover both a very ancient race (usually
known as Ligurians) and a smaller group of conquerors or immigrants,
who were the Belgae or Kelts proper. This country of Gaul was then
composed of as various elements as the Francia of the time of Clovis,
and each of these groups of peoples doubtless possessed their own gods
and rites. Therefore when the Gallic religion is referred to, it must be
understood to imply the religion practised in a definite district, and
not by a definite race.
CH. XV. (a)
## p. 460 (#492) ############################################
460 The Gods
Concerning the gods; one type of divinity exists that was probably
common to all these peoples, Ligurians, Germans, Gauls and Aquitanians.
That is the gods of the soil, or, as the Romans said, genii loci, meaning
the gods who inhabited the visible and salient features of the earth;
such as springs, brooks, lakes, rocks, mountains, forests, trees and bogs.
These gods were the most popular, ancient, numerous and varied of all.
Each possessed a distinct name, which was at the same time applied to
the natural feature, whether it were stream or mountain, over which it
presided.
Amongst these divinities, so numerous in Gaul (specially among the
non-Gallic peoples on the frontier, such as the Aquitanians, Ligurians
and Germans), those that recur most frequently and that seem to have
received the greatest share of devotion and fame were connected with
springs, streams and rivers. This I believe to be due to the important
part played by springs in the economic life of families and villages.
They give assurance of life to man and his cattle, and therefore—to
quote Pliny the Naturalist—" They create towns and engender gods. "
Some of these stream-divinities, worshipped in spots destined to be-
come the sites of fair towns, have won a still greater celebrity, as for
instance Nemausus, the god-fountain or the god of the fountain of
the great spring at Nimes, whose temple was consecrated in later
times to Diana; Divona the spring of Burdigcda (Bordeaux) sung
by the poet Ausonius, to be discovered to-day in the stream of the
Deveze; and Bibracte, the spring on Mont Beuvray, the celebrated
Bibracte that was the capital city of the Aedui when Caesar fought them.
Other Keltic towns which also owe their name and origin to stream-god-
desses are Aventicum (Avenches in the territory of the Helvetii), and
Arausio (Orange). Side by side with these must be placed the gods and
goddesses of medicinal springs, which were worshipped so devoutly in
Roman times, and doubtless also in the time of Gallic independence;
such as Luxovnis at Luxeuil, Borbo at Bourbon, and others at Greoulx,
at Luchon, at Dax, at Mont-Dore, etc. In fact it would be necessary to
name all the mineral waters of France to complete the list of gods of
this description. There were also the deities of rivers, who had their
sanctuaries later, sanctuaries rich in every kind of votive offering; of
which the most famous in Roman times was that of the Seine springs.
Such were the Dea Sequana the Seine, Icaunis the Yonne, Mairona the
Marne; while the Classical authors shew that the Rhine was looked upon
as a supreme god. Closely related to these divinities, both as regards
origin and attributes, were those of lakes and marshes; such as the god
of the sacred lake of Toulouse, to whom thousands of ingots of gold
and silver, spoils of the Roman proconsuls, were consecrated.
The gods of mountains, or rather of isolated peaks, were perhaps
rather less numerous and popular, but were also very powerful. A few
of them, by virtue of the majesty of the summit they inhabited,
## p. 461 (#493) ############################################
Worship of the Dead 461
attained (like the Rhine) to the highest rank among the gods. The
col of the Puy-de-D6me, Dumias, was accounted one of the greatest
deities in Gaul, as were also Ventoux, Vintur in Provence, Donon in
the Vosges, not to mention lesser heights. Indeed it appears that the
true Gauls were more attracted by the worship of mountains than by
that of springs.
On the other hand, the Ligurians, Aquitanians and Germans seem
to have cared more for that of forests and trees, though this statement
must not be taken to refer to anything more definite than a preference
for one rather than the other, since all the Gallic peoples were ac-
quainted with the same gods. It is usually possible to distinguish
between the gods and goddesses of the whole forest, most plentiful in
the North, such as the Dea Arduenna of the Ardennes, and the Deus
Vosegus of the Vosges, and the particular divinities which inhabited
a single tree, or a clump of trees; such as the Deus Fagus "the god
. of the beech tree,'" or the Deus Sexarbores, which is the Roman version
of the divinity inhabiting a group of six trees. Such gods might be
found most frequently in the land of the Aquitanians north of the
Pyrenees.
It remains yet to shew in what manner these nature gods were re-
presented and grouped. Sometimes they dwelt in solitude; in which
case the stream or mountain only belonged to a single divinity, either
male (e. g. Deus Nemausus) or female (e. g. Dea Sequana). This seems
to have been the case specially in regions where Keltic or Iberian in-
fluence predominated. Sometimes the mystic properties of a spring
were attributed to an indivisible group of gods, most often composed
of three, but occasionally of five divinities; called by the Romans
"Mothers" or "Matronae" or "Nymphae"" of the spring: for instance
Matres Ubelnae "the Goddess-Mothers" of the Huveaune (a Provencal
spring), but it is clear that the word Matres is only the translation
of a native word, whose use must have been very ancient. This con-
ception of the gods of springs was general between the Pyrenees and the
Rhine, but appeared in a more fully developed form in Provence, the
Ligurian districts, and the forest lands bordering on Germany.
It is impossible to attribute to one tribe more than to another
the worship of the gods sprung from human life; by which is meant
the cult of the dead. We have no trustworthy documentary evidence
testifying to this cult before the Roman period. But monuments
dedicated to the manes of the departed are as common in every part of
Gaul as in Italy and Greece, they shew practically the same formulae,
and they bear witness to the same rites and beliefs. Therefore it is safe
to attribute to the Gauls or Ligurians that worship of the dead which
was an essential element in Greek or Roman life, as Fustel de Coulanges
has shewn in La Citi Antique.
OH. XV. (a)
## p. 462 (#494) ############################################
462 Star-gods
Above these local and human deities appear the great gods. In
this respect more marked individuality is discernible amongst the
different tribes, Kelts, Aquitanians or Ligurians. They gradually gave
distinctive characteristics to their superior gods, the more so since
these deities were regarded as the protectors and representatives—not
of places or men—as were those mentioned above, but of whole nations,
states and public societies. Naturally each of these societies, leading
its individual life, attributed to its national god or tutelary deities a
special character, corresponding to the chief characteristics of its own
life. At the same time, in spite of the obvious differences which they
display, these superior gods possess certain common features, which serve
to recall the existence of the great sovereign and universal deities, older
than the grouping of nations.
All the tribes mentioned, whatever their origin may have been, have
this in common; that they all believed in the existence of a superior
divinity, representing the virtue of the earth, which produces all and
reaps all. We find this same divine principle appearing under a multi-
tude of diverse forms in later times, such as the Earth, mother of the
god of the Germans, Dinpater, father of the Gauls, Earth again, from
whom the indigenous Britons sprang, Vesta or Herecura (Juno Regina)
known to us from the Roman inscriptions in Gaul and Germany; and
Minerva of the tribes of the South. And if we find later that the
Aquitanians of Lectoure and the Kelts of the Viennoise and the Three
Gauls accepted with enthusiasm the cult of the Magna Mater brought
to them from the Palatine at Rome and Pessinus in Asia, the explana-
tion lies in the fact that they were accustomed to adore a chthonian
divinity of the same nature.
Similarly Gauls, Ligurians and Gallo-Germans worshipped the sun,
moon, fire and the stars; and in the more human figures which repre-
sented their gods in later times it is possible to see clearly traces
of these ancient and primitive beliefs. Thus among the greatest of
the Keltic gods was Taranis (or Taranus) whom Caesar reasonably
considered as the equivalent of Jupiter, since his emblems were the
thunder-bolt, the S and the wheel of the chariot of the Sun.
of the Elbe Slavs, namely the Sorbs in the modern kingdom of Saxony,
were still the highest class of the Slav population, having their posses-
sions in fief, being under feudal law, dispensing justice, and only pledged
to serve their lord in war on horseback; thus they came nearer to the
German nobility than to the other Slav peasantry. In Mecklenburg,
the land of the Obodritzi, the feudal village magistrates—the former
zupans—were expressly reckoned among the vassals of the country.
It cannot therefore be doubted that the zupans of the Elbe Slavs
also were principes, dornini, landlords before their subjugation.
With zupan is connected zupa (Slav, zupa, Lat. suppa), that is the
district under a zupan, which among the Serbs was a principality, but
among the Slovenes of Lower Styria at the time of the German dominion
zupa denoted only a village district. Here the zupans finally dwindled
to village-chiefs, and then the word signified their office, officium suppae
or the zupan estate. The great Servian tribal-ifwpa and the little
## p. 445 (#477) ############################################
The Zupa. The Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) 445
Slovenish xillage-zupa formed in a certain sense an economic whole, in that
all dwellers in the zupa-district possessed right of pasture; consequently
the zupa was here an undivided grazing-district throughout which
the agricultural rotation proceeded as long as there were no permanent
fields, and as long as the cornfields opened by clearing or the burning of
a piece of forest and again abandoned after their exhaustion became
derelict and once more forest-land. In consequence of this general right
of use by the inhabitants the word zupa in Servia became personified,
and signified also the whole of the inhabitants entitled to the right of
pasture—and formally of clearing too—the compastores, conterranei, so
to speak. So long as the Avars were lords in the land, and so long as
they remained wandering herdsmen, the requirements of their pasturing
and their tyranny were decisive; the enslaved Slav peasantry could place
their fields only where it suited their masters, and there could be no idea
of a peasant right of clearing. In the Balkan peninsula the nomad
shepherds wintered with their herds on sunny snowless sea shores, and
for this reason in Dalmatia the word zupa denotes a sunny land where
snow does not fall or where it melts rapidly. Some such districts—
standing winter-quarters of the nomads—finally retained the word as
their name. Among the Carinthian, Bohemian, and Polish Slavs we
find no such zupans and no such zupan, for here peasant dynasties
arose through peasant revolutions and the zupans had to give way.
But the name itself remained, or was borrowed anew from neighbouring
Slavs, and htpan in Bohemia signified a high state official, and zupa on
the one hand is beneficium, and on the other the office connected
with it. The members of the highest Bohemian and Polish nobility
had the title pan (originally gupari). This word has no connexion
with zupan, but arose from a title kopan attested by a Bulgarian
inscription as before mentioned.
The Avars and Bulgars naturally tolerated no other dominus among
the directly dominated Slavs, they were themselves the zupans, and as
zupans remained as domini after the break-up of the Avar Empire,
and indeed among the Sorbs and Alpine Slavs, and here and there
were very numerous, so that they are to be considered as the Avar and
Bulgar dominating class Slavised by the lapse of time, and no longer
nationally different from the subject people.
From the conglomeration of Slavs planted by the Avars in the
Eastern Alps was formed the people of the Slovenes (Carantani). They
extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube, and from East Tyrol
deep into Hungary. As they had the Avar main horde at hand on the
Danube and the Theiss, they were most deeply enslaved. Alter the/
destruction of the Avar kingdom by Charles the Great their social)
organisation appears greatly changed. In Lower Styria south of Cilli
as late as the fifteenth century they were under an uncommonly numerous
hereditary zupan class, and even in the smallest hamlet there were one,
## p. 446 (#478) ############################################
446 Social History of the Slovenes
two, three, or four zupans. On the other hand, south of this in some
districts of Carniola and north of the Drave in Lower Styria (in the
dominium of Arnfels) there was no such zupan class at all. There (in
Carniola) the village-presidents (also called zupans) were chosen, but
only village-magistrates—likewise called zupans—appointed for a fixed
period of time, by the village peasantry, here (in the Arnfels dominium)
they were nominated for a certain time by the landlord. In what is
now Eastern Carinthia too there was no zupan class; the land was
ruled by a peasant duke.
In the various doomsday books (Urbar) we find all the villages
belonging to the landlord concerned with a definite statement of
the number of the peasant estates, and the enrolled zupans with all
the dues and services. These villages originated at various times, some
before and some after the German occupation, and we can determine
many which were Old Slavic. Those which were first established by the
Germans, even when they were colonised with Slav peasants, are for the
most part large and often very regularly and artistically laid out in
German fashion, and their dues too are purely German. They cover most
of the broad valleys and river plains. The carefully planned villages of
the plains are therefore new. In another area of the large districts
their origin is uncertain; their nucleus may be old, but they were
remodelled, and enlarged by the attachment of new clearings. Yet
other districts are so markedly non-German that they must be pre-
German. These are not really villages, but tiny hamlets. Large
villages were unknown to the early Slavs, and the districts of the Elbe
Slavs are thickly set with little villages; the Serbs likewise, for the
most part, live in hamlets and isolated farms; the Bohemian and Polish
large villages are later foundations after the German fashion, and the large
Russian villages were only formed from small villages in modern times.
At the head of almost every village in Lower Styria and Carniola
whether large or small, old or new, there is a zupan, and even the mayor
of Laibach (Slav. Lyublyana), the capital of Carniola, bears this title.
Thus, since the German occupation, the expression zupan covers various
meanings among the Slovenes to which the magistrate's office is common,
but with different rights and duties. In a Slovene village first established
by the Germans—usually large—the zupan is nothing more than an
ordinary magistrate^W&r, magister villae, living in a farm exempt from
taxes, as a rule two hides (praedia, mansi, hubae). But in tiny little hamlets
of the TufFer domain, the zupan—who here too has everywhere two hides
(praedia)—cannot be a judex, magister villae, as he pays tribute, and in
certain hamlets he is the only inhabitant, and therefore has no one to
preside over. Indeed, in the neighbouring domain, Rann-Lichtenwald,
in 1309 there were also villages with two, and in 1448 with even three
and four zupans; two magistrates in a village belonging to one and the
same landlord would be absurd. Here the zupans considerably increased
## p. 447 (#479) ############################################
V
The Zupans in Lower Styria 447
during the 1S9 years, and, where there was formerly one, three or four
occupied the paternal inheritance either undivided or in divided estates.
As they all bore the title, but only one of them could be magistrate of
the village, zupan here signified the member of an hereditary class and
not the holder of an office. These zupans paid far more tribute than
the peasants on estates of equal size, the higher taxation consisting in
swine, subsidiarily swine-pence—this proves that they had greater rights
of pasture than the peasants.
The old Slovene zupan is a village-magistrate only where there (
are peasants under him. What was he originally? What he was
among the Elbe Slavs (senior) and the Serbs (princeps, dominus), viz.
landlord, as descendant of the Avaro-Bulgar herdsman class. Under the
German dominion he lost his former seigniorial character; the Germans
seized a considerable part of the territory, especially what was unculti-
vated, including the wasted plains and valleys, and left what remained
to those whom they found there—up to that time nomad zupans and
their Slav peasants—reckoning two hides (praedia) for a zupan and one
for a peasant. In consequence the zupans were so huddled together
that they were forced to give up the wandering herdsman life, and as
they could no longer keep large herds, they had to adapt themselves to
husbandry, contenting themselves with a smaller flock of sheep, and
finding compensation in swine-breeding. Their former monopoly in
cattle-breeding was also abolished, as under the Germans the peasants
also were allowed to engage in cattle-breeding though not to the same
extent as the zupans. This is shewn by the taxation. The peasants
still remained subordinated to the zupans, but they were newly dis-
tributed among them, with the land, so that a precisely defined number
of peasants was allotted to a definite group of zupans. Thereupon each
group of zupans shared the peasantry allotted to them according to a
definite principle—evidently hereditary. This follows from the fact that
the percentage of zupans and peasant hides is repeated in several districts
remote from one another, although the individual zupans appear so very
unequally provided with peasants, some indeed having none at all.
Thus we can see how the German domination forced the former
wandering herdsman to become a settled cattle-breeder and little by
little a grower of grain, and how the cattle-breeding of these zupans
was preponderant up to late times. Their social position was in earlier
times by no means slight: in a list of witnesses (1322) a zupan was not
cited among the peasant witnesses but mentioned before the burghers
of Laibach1—thus he was at least equal to them in rank. In the
thirteenth century in the manorial estates of Tuffer and Lichtenwald
one of the village zupans acted as Schepho—chief official of a larger
administrative district—and this also points to the higher position of
a zupan.
1 Levee, in. p. 73, or Peisker, Beziehungen, 159 [345].
## p. 448 (#480) ############################################
448 The Carinthian Peasant-State
As has been already mentioned, in many districts of Camiola and
Styria there was no zupan class at all and no permanent zupans, but one
of the peasants was made village-magistrate—equally called zupan—
from time to time and enjoyed in return a certain remission of dues1.
But this has nothing to do with the hereditary zupan of Tuffer and
Lichtenwald, where there were settled zupans paying large taxes, even
four in one and the same village belonging to one and the same landlord.
It will have been seen that a change took place in the signification
of the word zupan, and at the same time a change in the position of the
peasant population in general, a change different according to place and
time, and further developed and differentiated by the unequal pressure
of their lords, by continual colonisation under new conditions, and by
the decay and resettlement of entire villages. The unpretending peasant
who was entrusted for a time with the office of village-magistrate had
as little in common with the old Slovene zupan as the Frankish horse-
boy (marescallus) with a great French or German marshal.
While thus the former Avaro-Bulgar herdsman nobility,even if divested
of overlordship and turned into a peasantry, maintained itself under
the German domination in the sixteenth century in a position distinct
from the remaining peasantry and in certain districts of Lower Styria as
a numerous hereditary class, it disappeared in the neighbouring province
of Carinthia long before the German occupation through revolts of the
enslaved peasantry. As we have already seen, these latter had heavy
burdens to bear in providing their tormentors with supplies of food and
fodder, and giving themselves up to be massacred as befulci in countless
wars, while the Avar harnessed their wives and daughters like beasts to
his wagon, violated them systematically, destroying their family life and
indeed reducing their whole existence to the level of brutes. Thus,
destitute of all social ties the peasantry revolted; though many risings
were stifled in blood before one was successful. And now after ages of
servitude a part of the great Slav world was cheered by the sun of a
golden freedom, not this time to fade into anarchy. From the midst of
the victorious peasantry a prince was chosen to be a just judge and to
guarantee the husbandry of the people, and especially the cattle-breeding
till then forbidden to them. And that things should ever remain so, a
wonderfully ingenious ritual was devised for the installation of each new
prince—always a peasant. And as there was as yet no fixed hereditary
succession, and a certain time always elapsed before a new prince was
installed, the interregnum was provided for by recognition of the
eldest member of a certain peasant family as eo ipso vicegerent. So
tenaciously did the people cling to this ritual that even the splendid
German dukes of Carinthia had to humble themselves to assume the
1 Milkowicz, in MitteUungen, u. pp. 23 ff. ; Peisker, Die Mere Sozial- und
Wirtschaflsverfassung der Alpenslaven, iv. pp. 32 f.
## p. 449 (#481) ############################################
Installation of the Prince in Carinthia 449
ducal throne as peasants. In the year 1286 the ritual—markedly
modernised and relaxed—was of the following nature:
For the installation of the duke the oldest member of a certain
peasant family, the so-called duke-peasant, had to sit on the "prince's
stone" which lies in the Zollfeld near Klagenfurt. The new duke, in a
coarse peasant's dress with a staff in his hand and leading a bull and a
mare, is conducted by four nobles before the carelessly seated peasant,
who has to question those nobles in the Slovene tongue and to find out
who the man is, whether he is a just judge, mindful of the country's
well-being, of free standing and full of zeal for the Christian faith.
This they must swear to. Thereupon the peasant says: "By what
right shall he remove me from this my seat? " They answer: "With
60 pfennigs, these two brindled beasts, and the peasant dress which he
is wearing; he will also make thy house tax-free. " Thereupon the peasant
gives the duke a light cuff on the cheek, bids him be a good judge,
vacates the seat for him, and takes the beasts. The duke takes his seat
upon the stonfe and swings his drawn sword in all directions. He also
takes a drinjfc of fresh water.
successful revolt of these Slovenes from the Avars took place, as
we shallWee presently, about 608. The first prince of the Carinthians
whose nawie is known was Walluc (after 641), dux in Marca Vinedorum,
independent of the Avars as well as of the Bavarians and I,ombards.
About th«e year 745 the Avars attempted to subjugate the Carinthians
afresh, ar*ld their duke, Borut, sought help from the Bavarians. These
indeed djjjove off the Avars but made the Carinthians dependent on the
FrankisMf king, under native princes, of whom the last mentioned is
WoinimMir in 796; and Arnulf (emperor 896), if not the first, was one
of the JiOfirst German princes who as duke of Carinthia submitted (in
880) toM the peasant ceremony.
The** peasant revolt was not limited to Carinthia, rather it
eaibracJHed a great part of the Avar Slavdom from the Alps to the
Erzjw'flfcirge and the Vistula, for the Bohemian dynasty of the Premyslids
and *Jjthe Polish dynasty of the Piasts were of peasant origin. The
Pivn^iyslids were always conscious of this, and Lutold (died 1112),
vaW ll prince of Znaim (Slav. Znoyem), had the chapel which he built
decorated with frescoes which still remain, among them the
of the election of his ancestor with the hazel-stick, the bast-bag,
bast-shoes. Pulkava, court-chronicler to the Emperor Charles IV,
; of Bohemia (1346-1378), states that Pfemysl's bast-shoes and bast-
were " to this day" carefully preserved. "And on the day of the
coronation of the Bohemian king, the canons and prelates in procession
receive the king that is to be and shew him the bast-shoes and lay the
bast-bag on his shoulders so that he may be mindful that he sprang
from poverty and may not be presumptuous. " This is a poor survival of
a more ample ritual which, unlike the Carinthian, had lost all its original
<:. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIV. 29
## p. 450 (#482) ############################################
450 Peasant-Princes in Bohemia and Poland
significance, for it did not originate in Prague but was transferred
there after the union of the State of the Lemusi with that of the
Chekhs of Central Bohemia. And it was disagreeable to the later
Pfemyslids. King Wenzel I (1230-1253), who was German in feeling,
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans. But he does not
seem to have touched the bast relics; the kinsmen appear to have
recovered their heritage, for in the year 1359 the Emperor Charles IV,
as king of Bohemia, declared to the sons of Radosta, co-heirs of Staditzi,
that they and their forefathers had always been free heirs of their
tax-free estates; but as these had not long since been illegally given
away and burdened with taxation by his father, the blind King John
(who fell at Crecy, 1346), Charles IV now restores their rights, but
retains as crown-land the field which Pfemysl had once tilled single-
handed (it is to this day called the "king's field") and charges the
petitioners with the care of Premysl's hazel stock, all the nuts from
which they have to present yearly at the royal table as a n>emorial of an
event so remarkable. \
The peasant origin of the Pfemyslids and the Piasts cannot bean
invention of the chroniclers. No high-born dynasty would believe such
a story, rather it would make short work of such blasphemy aagainst its
kingly majesty. The chroniclers merely decked the fact outfwith the
fruits of their reading in ancient classics, and the Church interpreted it
in the sense of Christian humility. w
The peasant prince, Premysl, was not prince of the whole of Bohemia—
which even much later consisted of several little States—but tJf^riguially
only of the little people of the Lemusi round Bilin in Norf*th-West
Bohemia, in immediate proximity to the Sorb clan Glomachi (\ German
Daleminzen) in the modern kingdom of Saxony. These Glomjx^hi like
the Lower Styrians remained under zupans, but their social organisation
was more complicated. Under German domination they fell iff lto the
three classes: (1) Supani (Lat. seniores, German eldesten), (2) H^Biiluwii
(Slav, x'icazi) in equis servientes (servants on horseback, esquires).
(3) the Smurdi, correctly smrdi, that is the "stinkers,"" the coi
peasant-folk. In addition, there were corresponding to the Gei'
occupation members of German nationality: (4) the Censuales (Ge:
lazze), and (5) the Proprii (heyeri). The three Slav classes were
the special jurisdiction of zupans with Slavonic as official langu!
The Daleminzian zupans and smurdi corresponded to the two Lo
Styrian classes, the zupans as former domini (seniores) of AvarO'
origin; they were likewise very numerous but their percentage cannot
now be ascertained. On the other hand, the Withasii were of Germanic \j
Norse origin. The Vikings somewhere in Russia must have subjected
the forefathers of the Glomachi, and been transplanted with them by the
Avars after the year 563 to serve as a barrier against the Franks on
-
## p. 451 (#483) ############################################
The Sorbs. Peasant Revolution in North Bavaria 451
the Saale and the Elbe. Had they been later conquerors, they must
have stood above the zupans, but here the zupans (Avars and Bulgars) were
the foremost rank, and therefore the latest conquerors, and at the time
of the German domination the vicazi took rank next beneath them as
feudal peasants liable to cavalry service and standing with the zupans
under feudal law. In West and South Europe too the Vikings on
stolen horses were, as is well known, as terrible horsemen on the land
as they were pirates by sea.
Thus we find both among the Alp-Slavs and the Slavs on the Elbe
a. peasant State in immediate proximity to hipan States. Either then
the peasant revolution was only successful in places, or the Avars having
rallied and enslaved the peasantry of Styria afresh remained there as
zupans, and then together with the peasantry fell under German
dominion. "Fredegar11 says: "At this time Samo, a Frank, joined himself
with several merchants, went to these Slavs to trade, and accompanied
their army against the Avars. He shewed remarkable bravery, an
enormous number of Avars fell, he was chosen king, ruled successfully
thirty-five years, and beat the Avars in all following wars. '"
The "Fredegar " compilation incorrectly puts this event under the year
623, for the author of this chapter wrote in 642 or 643, and at that
time Samo must have been already dead1. If the length of his reign is
correctly given, the revolt must have taken place in 605 at the latest.
In the year 601 the Avars were depopulated by a disease just as the
Khagan had driven Constantinople to such straits that the citizens were
making ready to migrate to Chalcedon in Asia Minor. Soon after he
was almost destroyed in five defeats at the hands of the Romans in
Hungary itself, the heart of Avardom. These plunderers were already
face to face with extinction when the Emperor Maurice was dethroned
in 602, and were only saved from destruction by the incapacity of his
successor Phocas. But their supremacy was now at an end. Samo's
revolt thus falls between 602 and 605, most probably in the year 603.
Then followed the revolt of the Croats and the Serbs, and finally the
Bulgar khan Kubrat on the lower Danube made himself free between
635 and 641.
Of Samo's State only this is certain, that it bordered on Thuringia*,
1 Schniirer, in Collectanea Jriburgensia, fasc. ix. pp. 113, 233.
2 Fredegar, pp. 74 f. [631] "it was told to the Frankish king Dagobert that an
army of the Wends (Slavs) had hroken into Thuringia. . . . Then appeared envoys of the
[then still free] Saxons before Dagobert. . . . They promised to oppose the Wends and
to protect the Frankish territory on the Wend border. . . . [632] Then the Wends at the
command of Samo. . . harried Thuringia and other provinces. . . . " This proves that Samo's
kingdom bordered on the Thnringian province and did not lie in Bohemia, which
lies too far from the Thuringian Gau (jpagus) for attacks from that quarter (v. map).
Older historians placed Wogastisburg, one of Samo's strongholds, at Tans (at the
foot of the Bohmerwald)—called in older sources Tugast—the point at which invaders
often entered Bohemia from Bavaria. The Burberg near Kaaden in North-West
ch. xiv. 29—2
## p. 452 (#484) ############################################
452 The Slav Kingdom of Samo
and embraced the Main and Kedantz (Regnitz) Slavs'. Thus it lay in
what had been Frankish territory, for Samo himself acknowledged:
"The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagoberfs, yet only
in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Before the irruption
of the Avars into the Frankish kingdom in 562, it extended over
the Saale to the Elbe. The Sorbs on the Saale and the Elbe as well
as the Slavs on the Main and Regnitz were not transplanted (by the
Avars) into this previously Frankish district till later. Thus from this
time to the founding of Samo's State scarcely forty-four years elapsed,
so that he could not have ceased to be conscious of the fact that his
land was really Frankish property. Here, in the country of the Regnitz
Slavs, the traces of the wintering of the Avars are to this day inefface-
able. On the lower Aisch, which flows from the south-west into the
Regnitz between Erlangen and Bamberg, broad visages with protruding
cheek-bones, deep-set eyes, and black hair are still to be met with.
But the Slavs were originally blue-eyed and fair, and were only
black-haired and mongoloid where their women were systematically
violated by the Altaian conquerors, and this "Fredegar'" attests expressly
of Samo's Slavs. The Avars (or Bulgars) must therefore have wintered
here also. The same is the case with the Bohemian Slavs, whose black
hair struck the traveller Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in 965 as peculiar. Whether,
or how far, Samo's kingdom extended into Bohemia is not known; it is,
indeed, improbable that it did so, for even in historic times no State
has ever existed on both sides of the Fichtelgebirge and the Bohmerwald.
As late as the ninth century several independent Slav clans existed in
Bohemia, and they assuredly took part in the Slav revolt against the Avars,
for there is as little trace of a zupan class in Bohemia as in Carinthia.
It is therefore to be presumed that the Slav tribes did not proceed singly
but in combination against the Avars, and that an ephemeral federation
was formed, with Samo at its head. But we have no right to speak of
'Samo's Empire, and the assumption that his kingdom embraced Caran-
Ijania, the country of the Alpine Slavs, rests only upon the Arumymuxix
COnvermme Bagariorum et Carantanorum—a party production of the
Salzburg Church directed against the Slav apostle St Methodius, and
employing for its own purposes Fredegar's notice of Samo—for the
association of Samo with the Carinthian Slavs would prove the latter
to be members of the Frankish kingdom, and therefore of the Salzburg
diocese.
Bohemia, Chekh: Uhoit, is now proposed. The first suggestion is based on the con-
jecture Togastitburg and is therefore to be rejected, the second overlooks the fact that
tlhoii was then pronounced Ongoii, so that we ought to find Ungastisburg or some-
thing similar in Fredegar.
1 Mention of them does not occur again before 846: "In the land of the Slavs
who dwell between Main and Redanz [Slav. Radnica] called Moinwinidi and
Ratanzwinidi. "
## p. 453 (#485) ############################################
Influence of Avar Slavery 453
The Slav revolts here described were successful only as far as the
Erzgebirge (which divides Bohemia from the kingdom of Saxony), for
immediately north of this we find the Sorb clans on the Saale and Elbe
dominated even after this time by zupans. In Samo's time the Sorb
prince Dervan was subject to the Frankish king. By the successful
revolt of the Bohemians, and especially of the Lemusi, the hipans who
dominated the Sorb people were cut off" from the main horde of the
Kbagan in Hungary, so they voluntarily submitted to the Frankish
king in order to escape the fate of their clansmen in Bohemia and on
the Main-Regnitz. But when Dagobert was defeated by Samo, Dervan
fell away from the Franks to Samo, who was well satisfied not to have
as enemies the dreaded Sorbs, and let alone their two dominating
classes, the Avar hipans and the Viking vicazi. This explains how a
hipan prince could still remain prince under Samo, the deliverer of
the peasants. We now see that the whole of Slavdom, with perhaps
the sole exception of the North-Russian peoples, was swept along in the
Avar tornado. This expansion of the Avar power from the Peloponnesus
to the Baltic is not inconceivable, for there were Altaian empires greater
still, that of the descendants of Chinghiz-Khan and the kingdom of the
Huns, the predecessors of the Avars, which stretched from the Don to
the lower Rhine.
The view often put forward, that the Slavs themselves became effective
warriors in the cruel Avar school, runs counter to the facts.
Neither
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive. The German migrations took place under the lead of remark-
able and heroic figures; at one time the Germans even gave the Roman
Empire its wisest statesmen and most powerful military commanders,
but among the millions of Slavs who flooded Germany and the East
Roman Empire we do not find the name of even one moderately
prominent warrior. Those mentioned by the Byzantine sources, like
Khilvud, Dabragezas, Mezamir, Ardagast, Piragast, Musok, cannot be
compared with the German army leaders, and also they were obviously
not real Slavs, but Slavic descendants of partly Germanic and partly
Altaian conquerors. The earliest prominent personality among the Slavs
is the Frankish Samo, and the most powerful Slav prince, the Russian
Svyatoslav (died 972), was in spite of his Slav name a pure-blooded
German, son of Ingvarr and Helga (Slav. Igor, Olga) and one of the
greatest German heroes in history.
"Mauritius11 and other writers describe the Slavs as they must
have been in their marshy cradle, without organisation, without
military discipline, and consequently quite unsuited for any serious
offensive movement. But on the defensive when well led they were
excellent in a style which was forced upon them by the continual man-
hunts of the pirates and the mounted nomads. Of a military schooling
## p. 454 (#486) ############################################
454 Elbe Slavs at war with the German Empire
from the Avars there is no trace except that they learned plundering
from their tormentors. On the offensive they could do nothing against
the Romans, though the Romans likewise could do nothing against the
defensive of the Slavs. For example, in 593-4, when the imperial army
advanced victoriously over the Danube, it was unwilling to winter in a land
where the cold was unbearable and the barbarians were invincible on
account of their great numbers. In the defensive power of the Slavs lay
also the strength of the Avar-Slav positions on the Baltic, Elbe, and
Saale against the Franks even after the fall of the Avar Empire. Only
after two and a half centuries of continual warfare did the Germans
remain victors.
Considerably more than thirty tiny Slav tribes in the former Old
Germania from the Danube to Mecklenburg are mentioned there in four
groups1. Not one of the groups forms a State, each is only seldom and
temporarily united when war threatens, otherwise it is divided into little
clans bitterly hostile to one another. Each little clan dwells huddled
close together in hamlets and little villages amidst marsh and a dense
forest zone through which go roads only passable for pack-horses in dry
seasons of the year, provided at the entrance to the forest zone with gates
and abattis'. And if the enemy forced his way in notwithstanding, the
people fled to their numerous earthworks, civitates. The Obodritzi in
Mecklenburg alone had 53 such civitates and the same number of duces,
and were actually regarded as invincible.
After the time of Charles the Great war with these Slavs was perma-
nent. Thanks to the protection of the mountain range and their peaceful
acceptance of Christianity, the Bohemian group maintained itself and
finally combined into a powerful Bohemian kingdom. On the other
hand the remaining three groups, really some dozen of Lilliputian clans,
succumbed to the Germans who always found allies among them, some-
times among the Obodritzi, sometimes among the Lyutitzi. Thus the
Elbe Slavs (save some small remnants) were exterminated or Germanised.
1 (1) The Bohemians: Doudlebi, Chekhove (Chekhs), Luchane, Lemusi, Pshovane,
Kharvati, Zlichane, etc. (2) The Sorbs east of the Saale and Elbe: Goleshintzi,
Nishane, "Selpoli," Lubushane, Lupoglavtzi, Zharovane, Trebovane, Milchane, Susli,
Glomachi, etc. (3) The Lyutitzi or Veletove, Wiltzi: Morichane, Sprevane, Brizhane,
Stoderane, or Havelane, Kyechane, Ukrane, "Redari," Dolenchane, "Kyzini,"
Chrezpyenyane, (Jznoim, Volini, Rani, etc. from the Sorbs to the Baltic. (4) The
Obodritzi: Reregi, Vagri, Polabi, Smolintzi, [GJinyane, Varnovi, Drevane, etc. in
Mecklenburg and its vicinity.
2 The Slav apostle, Otto of Bamberg, on his journey entered "a terrible
enormous forest which divides Pomerauia and Poland. . . . This wood had not been
traversed before by any mortal, except that the Duke [of Poland] in earlier years,
before he had conquered the whole of Pomerania,. . . had cut a way for himself and his
army by felling and marking the trees. Following this marking, with great difficulty
on account of the enormous snakes and wild beasts,. . . and on account of the marshes
that impeded the vehicles and heavy wagons, we traversed the forest in six days. "
Herbord, n. Chap. 10.
## p. 455 (#487) ############################################
Defensive Power of the Slavs 455
And in their despairing and incomparably brave defence they too
might have kept off the German colossus could they have reconciled
themselves to the Cross, which was made hateful to them by the oppres-
sion of the German Government1. At the same time it must be clearly
noted that they were not aggressors but a thoroughly industrious peasant
people. The Avar dominant class which had become Slavised in the
course of time was not numerous enough for offence against the German
power and the equally invincible Danish vikings; it became much reduced
in the continuous defensive wars, and also lost its former ferocity because
it was squeezed into narrow tribal bounds, so that it had at last to give
up the wandering herdsman life. The Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub
who made a journey in these parts in the year 965 says: "In general
the Slavs are intrepid and warlike and were they not at variance among
themselves, no people on earth could measure themselves against them.
The lands inhabited by them are the most fruitful and richest of all,
and they devote themselves zealously to agriculture and other kinds of
industry wherein they surpass all northern peoples. 11 According to
Herbord, Pomerania had an abundance of honey, wheat, hemp, poppy,
vegetables of all kinds, and fruit-trees. Yet the lands between the
Elbe and the Vistula are only made fertile by industrious cultivation.
The type of the Slav method of warfare is the powerful Polish leader
Boleslav Khrobry (992-1025), who created a kingdom that stretched from
the Dnieper to the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Danube and Theiss.
He carried on bloody wars with all his neighbours, especially with the
German king Henry II. But Boleslav did not confront the German
army in open battle; his strength lay in masterly manoeuvring and in
the heroic defence of strong positions. "Never—says his unfriendly
contemporary Thietmar—have I heard of besieged men who made
exertions to defend themselves with greater endurance and more clever
circumspection. 11 The sources of Boleslav's strength we know from
Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in the year 965: "The land of Meshko [Boleslav's
father] is rich in grain and meat and honey and fields—And he has
3000. . . warriors, a hundred of whom are a match for a thousand others.
And he gives these people clothes and horses and weapons and all that
they need. And when a child is born to one of them he at once orders
. . . a salary to be assigned to the same. . . and when he reaches full age he
1 Evidence in Schafarik, n. p. 542, Note 2. The heathen Slav looked down upon
the Christian as upon a barbarian. "We have nothing in common with you. The
laws which we inherited from our fathers we will not give up, we are content with
the religion which we have. Among the Christians there are thieves and robbers,
whose feet are cut off and eyes poked out; the Christian practises all kinds of crime
and punishments upon the Christian. Far from us be such a religion" answered
the Pomeranians to Otto of Bamberg. Among them there were no beggars, no
locks and keys; they were highly surprised at the fastened chests of the bishop.
Their table was always decked with food, and every stranger could enter and satisfy
himself. Herbord, n. Chaps. 10, 25, 40.
## p. 456 (#488) ############################################
456 The Elbe Slavs and the Vikings
procures him a wife and pays for him the marriage gift to the maiden's
father. . . . And the marriage takes place with the approbation of the king.
. . . And he is like a tender father to his subjects. " This standing army is
not native, for it is landless; it consists of foreign mercenaries, evidently
Norse vikings.
It is clear that the Polish Slavs, like the Russian, were from the
earliest times strongly influenced by the vikings and their plundering
raids and settlements. For the vikings who ravaged all the coasts of
Europe cannot have left alone the river-mouths of the Baltic. According
to Iomsvikinga-saga, in the vicinity of the Slav sea and commercial
town Volin (Slav), Winetha (Saxon), Iulin or Iumin (Danish), mentioned
by Ibrahim and the German chroniclers, the Iomsburg, a sea fort, was
built by Danish pirates [about 970], and according to Orderic Vitalis
(b. 1075) the German gods Wodan, Thor and Frigg were worshipped in
a district of the Lyutitzi at the mouth of the Oder. All three however
had also their worship in the Upsala temple among the Swedes.
This viking admixture is clearest among the Baltic Slavs—especially
those of the Island of Riigen—and gave them the appearance of a pirate
people. Helmold reports that the men of Riigen were [1168] tributary to
the Danes, but they revolted, and occupied the rich Danish islands, " and
the Danes cannot easily protect themselves from the sudden attacks of
the pirates, for there are creeks there in which the Slavs can keep well
hidden, and from which they can break out unperceived to attack and
plunder the unwary. For the Slavs are particularly strong in sudden
surprises. Hence even up to recent times this custom of robbing has
such possession of them that they are always ready for maritime enter-
prises to the entire disregard of the profits of agriculture, for their whole
hope and all their wealth depend on their ships. Indeed they do not
even trouble themselves much about house-building; rather they fashion
for themselves huts of wicker-work, as they only seek shelter at need from
storm and rain. As often as war threatens to break out, they thresh all
the grain and bury it in holes together with all gold and silver and what
precious things they possess; their women and children however they
take into their fortified places or at least into the forests, so that nothing
remains for the enemy to plunder but the huts, the loss of which they
very easily bear. They pay no regard to the attacks of the Danes,
indeed they consider it spoil to measure themselves against them. " We
see here a remarkable fusion of the viking pirates, Altaian herdsmen and
Slav peasants on the Island of Riigen. But could the most terrible of
all pirates, the Danes, who fill the gloomiest pages in British history,
here stand helpless before Slav pirates? It is more likely that Danish
vikings were here opposed by Slavised vikings. So too the Narentanian
pirates of Dalmatia, called Pagani, seem to be Norse vikings trans-
planted by the Avars, for here too we find a noble class of vitezi.
Giesebrecht excellently characterises the Baltic Slavs: "A mixed
## p. 457 (#489) ############################################
Political Impotence of the Slavs 457
race, not seldom fluctuating in sharp contradiction in their belief, law,
and customs, the Wends were already a fallen nation when they came
into contact with the Franks. Thus from them could proceed much
that was energetic as far as it could be carried out by individuals, families,
or associations, but nothing that presupposed national unity. "
More favourable conditions for a thriving development were obtained
by those Slav peoples among whom either the Altaian or the German
dominating class destroyed the other. The Russian Slavs with the
Varangians whom they absorbed finally reached a national and social
harmony, while the Bohemians and a part of the Alpine Slavs overcame
their Avar oppressors. But they found it a still harder task to build up
their rude freedom into an orderly State. This the Carinthians brilliantly
performed, remaining in true freedom without a nobility for a long time.
Even under German dominion, under far less favourable conditions, they
were an equal match for the Germans of Ditmarschen in Holstein.
As a people who for immemorial ages were deprived of justice and
politically broken the Slavs longed only for an ordered legal State. !
An early example of this is afforded with an objectivity extremely
rare among medieval chroniclers by the author of Chapters xlviii
and lxviii of the "Fredegar" Chronicle (Chronist B). In Samo's king-
dom Prankish merchants were robbed and killed and King Dagobert
demanded redress. Samo "only agreed on a reciprocal legal procedure
on this and similar disagreements which had arisen on both sides. Here-
upon Sycharius in the manner of an arrogant envoy let. . . fall threats to the
effect that Samo and his whole people had to be subject to Dagobert. "
Samo replied, "The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagobert's, j
yet only in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Sycharius: "It is
not possible for Christians, the servants of God, to stand in friendship
with dogs. " Samo: "If you are the servants of God, and we are God's
dogs, we are permitted to bite you when you ceaselessly act against his
will. " This led to Dagobert's crushing defeat at Wogastisburg.
The appeal to law and not to the sword is the basis of Old Slavonic f
thought and aspiration; the principal task of the Slav princes was to
secure a passable administration of justice—the Russian Slavs actually
appealed to Norse pirates. The chronicler Cosmas pictures the oldest
Bohemian princes as simple judges, and by their memorable ritual the
Carinthians hoped to secure the necessary foundation of justice, but this
was an ideal not always attainable among a people where no man was
willing to subordinate himself to another without an army capable of
breaking down resistance. And as the Slavs lacked everything in the
remotest way like this, they often became the prey of their warlike
neighbours and perished in impotent rebellions to gain the human
rights denied them. Mighty Slav States arose indeed, but without the
co-operation of the people themselves, whose endeavours were early
directed to social questions. This was a favourable soil for social
## p. 458 (#490) ############################################
458 Social Ideas
religious dreams of an evangelical way of life, and the Slav temperament
reached its greatest perfection in an offshoot of the Hussite movement
fanned into flame by the teaching of Wyclif—in the venerable Unity of
the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. This movement was democratic,
not communistic—a wonderful theoretic union of human perfection
with spiritual purity in the midst of a society saturated with selfishness.
Their chief representative, well known in England also, was the founder
of the new pedagogy, John Amos Comenius (Komensky), the teacher of
the peoples of Europe.
## p. 459 (#491) ############################################
459
CHAPTER XV.
(A)
KELTIC HEATHENISM IN GAUL.
The purpose of this chapter is to give a short account of the religion
of the Gauls, that is to say the inhabitants of the district bounded by
the Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
We have to gather our information about this religion from in-
complete and vague documents which do not belong to Gaul strictly
speaking: that is from the historians of Greece and Rome (Posidonius,
Caesar, Strabo, Diodorus, Mela, Lucan, etc. ). There are also monuments
(bas-reliefs, bronzes, and inscriptions) dating from the time when Gaul
already formed part of the Roman Empire, and had been influenced
by Rome. Both these sources of information shew us, not the pure
and true Gallic religion, but this religion either as it was more or
less correctly interpreted by strangers, or more or less transformed by
imported beliefs.
Another difficulty arises from the fact that under the term Gallic,
the ancients included both the original inhabitants of Gaul and other
peoples of quite a different character. There were Aquitanians south of
the Garonne, related to the Iberians or Cantabrians of Spain: Ligurians
in the Alpine districts, and Germans in the Moselle and Meuse valleys.
The rest really belonged to the so-called Gauls, and concerning them
two things must be said: first that they fall into two groups, the Kelts
between the Marne and the Garonne, who were the earlier settlers, and
the Belgae, between the Marne and the Ardennes forest, more recent
comers and less civilised. Secondly the Belgae and Kelts, or Gauls as
they are sometimes called, do not represent a homogeneous people; but
the name must be taken to cover both a very ancient race (usually
known as Ligurians) and a smaller group of conquerors or immigrants,
who were the Belgae or Kelts proper. This country of Gaul was then
composed of as various elements as the Francia of the time of Clovis,
and each of these groups of peoples doubtless possessed their own gods
and rites. Therefore when the Gallic religion is referred to, it must be
understood to imply the religion practised in a definite district, and
not by a definite race.
CH. XV. (a)
## p. 460 (#492) ############################################
460 The Gods
Concerning the gods; one type of divinity exists that was probably
common to all these peoples, Ligurians, Germans, Gauls and Aquitanians.
That is the gods of the soil, or, as the Romans said, genii loci, meaning
the gods who inhabited the visible and salient features of the earth;
such as springs, brooks, lakes, rocks, mountains, forests, trees and bogs.
These gods were the most popular, ancient, numerous and varied of all.
Each possessed a distinct name, which was at the same time applied to
the natural feature, whether it were stream or mountain, over which it
presided.
Amongst these divinities, so numerous in Gaul (specially among the
non-Gallic peoples on the frontier, such as the Aquitanians, Ligurians
and Germans), those that recur most frequently and that seem to have
received the greatest share of devotion and fame were connected with
springs, streams and rivers. This I believe to be due to the important
part played by springs in the economic life of families and villages.
They give assurance of life to man and his cattle, and therefore—to
quote Pliny the Naturalist—" They create towns and engender gods. "
Some of these stream-divinities, worshipped in spots destined to be-
come the sites of fair towns, have won a still greater celebrity, as for
instance Nemausus, the god-fountain or the god of the fountain of
the great spring at Nimes, whose temple was consecrated in later
times to Diana; Divona the spring of Burdigcda (Bordeaux) sung
by the poet Ausonius, to be discovered to-day in the stream of the
Deveze; and Bibracte, the spring on Mont Beuvray, the celebrated
Bibracte that was the capital city of the Aedui when Caesar fought them.
Other Keltic towns which also owe their name and origin to stream-god-
desses are Aventicum (Avenches in the territory of the Helvetii), and
Arausio (Orange). Side by side with these must be placed the gods and
goddesses of medicinal springs, which were worshipped so devoutly in
Roman times, and doubtless also in the time of Gallic independence;
such as Luxovnis at Luxeuil, Borbo at Bourbon, and others at Greoulx,
at Luchon, at Dax, at Mont-Dore, etc. In fact it would be necessary to
name all the mineral waters of France to complete the list of gods of
this description. There were also the deities of rivers, who had their
sanctuaries later, sanctuaries rich in every kind of votive offering; of
which the most famous in Roman times was that of the Seine springs.
Such were the Dea Sequana the Seine, Icaunis the Yonne, Mairona the
Marne; while the Classical authors shew that the Rhine was looked upon
as a supreme god. Closely related to these divinities, both as regards
origin and attributes, were those of lakes and marshes; such as the god
of the sacred lake of Toulouse, to whom thousands of ingots of gold
and silver, spoils of the Roman proconsuls, were consecrated.
The gods of mountains, or rather of isolated peaks, were perhaps
rather less numerous and popular, but were also very powerful. A few
of them, by virtue of the majesty of the summit they inhabited,
## p. 461 (#493) ############################################
Worship of the Dead 461
attained (like the Rhine) to the highest rank among the gods. The
col of the Puy-de-D6me, Dumias, was accounted one of the greatest
deities in Gaul, as were also Ventoux, Vintur in Provence, Donon in
the Vosges, not to mention lesser heights. Indeed it appears that the
true Gauls were more attracted by the worship of mountains than by
that of springs.
On the other hand, the Ligurians, Aquitanians and Germans seem
to have cared more for that of forests and trees, though this statement
must not be taken to refer to anything more definite than a preference
for one rather than the other, since all the Gallic peoples were ac-
quainted with the same gods. It is usually possible to distinguish
between the gods and goddesses of the whole forest, most plentiful in
the North, such as the Dea Arduenna of the Ardennes, and the Deus
Vosegus of the Vosges, and the particular divinities which inhabited
a single tree, or a clump of trees; such as the Deus Fagus "the god
. of the beech tree,'" or the Deus Sexarbores, which is the Roman version
of the divinity inhabiting a group of six trees. Such gods might be
found most frequently in the land of the Aquitanians north of the
Pyrenees.
It remains yet to shew in what manner these nature gods were re-
presented and grouped. Sometimes they dwelt in solitude; in which
case the stream or mountain only belonged to a single divinity, either
male (e. g. Deus Nemausus) or female (e. g. Dea Sequana). This seems
to have been the case specially in regions where Keltic or Iberian in-
fluence predominated. Sometimes the mystic properties of a spring
were attributed to an indivisible group of gods, most often composed
of three, but occasionally of five divinities; called by the Romans
"Mothers" or "Matronae" or "Nymphae"" of the spring: for instance
Matres Ubelnae "the Goddess-Mothers" of the Huveaune (a Provencal
spring), but it is clear that the word Matres is only the translation
of a native word, whose use must have been very ancient. This con-
ception of the gods of springs was general between the Pyrenees and the
Rhine, but appeared in a more fully developed form in Provence, the
Ligurian districts, and the forest lands bordering on Germany.
It is impossible to attribute to one tribe more than to another
the worship of the gods sprung from human life; by which is meant
the cult of the dead. We have no trustworthy documentary evidence
testifying to this cult before the Roman period. But monuments
dedicated to the manes of the departed are as common in every part of
Gaul as in Italy and Greece, they shew practically the same formulae,
and they bear witness to the same rites and beliefs. Therefore it is safe
to attribute to the Gauls or Ligurians that worship of the dead which
was an essential element in Greek or Roman life, as Fustel de Coulanges
has shewn in La Citi Antique.
OH. XV. (a)
## p. 462 (#494) ############################################
462 Star-gods
Above these local and human deities appear the great gods. In
this respect more marked individuality is discernible amongst the
different tribes, Kelts, Aquitanians or Ligurians. They gradually gave
distinctive characteristics to their superior gods, the more so since
these deities were regarded as the protectors and representatives—not
of places or men—as were those mentioned above, but of whole nations,
states and public societies. Naturally each of these societies, leading
its individual life, attributed to its national god or tutelary deities a
special character, corresponding to the chief characteristics of its own
life. At the same time, in spite of the obvious differences which they
display, these superior gods possess certain common features, which serve
to recall the existence of the great sovereign and universal deities, older
than the grouping of nations.
All the tribes mentioned, whatever their origin may have been, have
this in common; that they all believed in the existence of a superior
divinity, representing the virtue of the earth, which produces all and
reaps all. We find this same divine principle appearing under a multi-
tude of diverse forms in later times, such as the Earth, mother of the
god of the Germans, Dinpater, father of the Gauls, Earth again, from
whom the indigenous Britons sprang, Vesta or Herecura (Juno Regina)
known to us from the Roman inscriptions in Gaul and Germany; and
Minerva of the tribes of the South. And if we find later that the
Aquitanians of Lectoure and the Kelts of the Viennoise and the Three
Gauls accepted with enthusiasm the cult of the Magna Mater brought
to them from the Palatine at Rome and Pessinus in Asia, the explana-
tion lies in the fact that they were accustomed to adore a chthonian
divinity of the same nature.
Similarly Gauls, Ligurians and Gallo-Germans worshipped the sun,
moon, fire and the stars; and in the more human figures which repre-
sented their gods in later times it is possible to see clearly traces
of these ancient and primitive beliefs. Thus among the greatest of
the Keltic gods was Taranis (or Taranus) whom Caesar reasonably
considered as the equivalent of Jupiter, since his emblems were the
thunder-bolt, the S and the wheel of the chariot of the Sun.
