Slavic paganism
Slavic paganism, Slavic mythology, or Slavic religion refer to the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century.
The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Balkans during the 6th–7th centuries AD, bordering with the Byzantine Empire to the south, came under the sphere of influence of Eastern Christianity relatively early, beginning with the creation of writing systems for Slavic languages in 855 by the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius and the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 864 and 863 in Great Moravia. The East Slavs followed with the official adoption in 988 by Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus'.
The process of Christianising the West Slavs was more gradual and complicated compared to their eastern counterparts. The Moravians accepted Christianity as early as 831, the Bohemian dukes followed in 845, and the Slovaks accepted Christianity somewhere between the years 828 and 863, but the first historical Polish ruler, Mieszko I, accepted it much later, in 966, around the same time as the Sorbs, while the Polabian Slavs only came under the significant influence of the Catholic Church from the 12th century onwards. For the Polabian Slavs and the Sorbs, Christianisation went hand in hand with full or partial Germanisation.
The Christianisation of the Slavic peoples was, however, a slow and—in many cases—superficial phenomenon, especially in what is today Russia. It was vigorous in western and central parts of what is today Ukraine, since they were closer to Kiev, the capital of Kievan Rus'. Even there, however, popular resistance led by volkhvs, pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for centuries. Popular resistance to Christianity was also widespread in early Poland, culminating in the pagan reaction.
The West Slavs of the Baltic tenaciously withstood Christianity until it was violently imposed on them through the Northern Crusades. Among Poles and East Slavs, rebellions broke out throughout the 11th century. Christian chroniclers reported that the Slavs regularly re-embraced their original religion.
Many elements of the Slavic indigenous religion were officially incorporated into Slavic Christianity, and the worship of Slavic gods has persisted in unofficial folk religion into modern times. The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism", which was called dvoeverie, "double faith", in Old Church Slavonic. Since the early 20th century, Slavic folk religion has undergone an organised reinvention and reincorporation in the movement of Slavic Native Faith.
Foreign sources
One of the first written sources on the religion of the ancient Slavs is the description of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who mentioned sacrifices to the supreme god-the thunderer of the Slavs, river spirits and others:Al-Masudi, an Arab historian, geographer and traveler, equates the paganism of the Slavs and the Rus' with reason:
Western European authors of the 11th and 12th centuries gave detailed descriptions of the sanctuaries and cults of Redigost in Rethra, Svyatovit in Arkon, Triglav in Szczecin, Chernobog, the sanctuary in Volyně, etc. The identification of a number of Eastern European monuments with Slavic sanctuaries is a matter of dispute.
Slavic sources
The main idea of paganism and mythology of the Slavs is given primarily by historical and documentary sources. The Tale of Bygone Years under the year 980 contains a story about the sanctuary in Kiev, built by Vladimir Svyatoslavich, and the idols of pagan gods installed there are mentioned:The text mentions the deities Svarog, Yarilo and Veles. It is known that the idol of Veles stood in Kiev "under the mountain", probably on the Kiev Podol, in the lower part of the city, that is, in the trade and craft part of Kiev at the pier on the Pochain River. In the "Life of Vladimir" it is said that this idol was overthrown during the baptism of Kievan Rus in 988: "And Veles idol... ordered to throw off the river in Pochaina".
Ancient Russian teachings against paganism can also serve as sources. In this genre, three of the most famous monuments are known: The Word of St. Gregory about idols, The word of a certain Christ-lover and the punishment of the spiritual father and The Walking of the Virgin in torment.
Modern sources
In the absence of original mythological texts, Slavic paganism can only be understood through secondary sources, such as archaeological findings and non-Slavic historical texts, which then have to be analyzed via the comparative method and subsequent reconstruction, a means used by many historians, including Evgeny Anichkov, Dmitry Zelenin, Lubor Niederle, Henryk Łowmiański, Aleksander Gieysztor, Stanisław Urbańczyk and others.Reconstruction, however, only gained momentum at the beginning of the 20th century, with Slavic sources being compared to sources on other Indo-European cultural traditions, where the works of Vechaslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov are among the most prominent.
The richest sources for the study of Slavic paganism as a cultural model and the reconstruction of Ancient Slavic ideas remain the linguistic, ethnographic and folklore studies of Slavic traditions from the 19th and 20th century, although some of these studies are contested due to historical inaccuracies. Many traces of Slavic paganism are thought to be left in European toponymy, including the names of settlements, rivers, mountains, and villages, but ethnologists such as Vitomir Belaj warn against hasty assumptions that the toponyms truly originate in pre-Christian mythological beliefs, with some potentially being derived from common vocabulary instead.
Twentieth-century scholars who pursued the study of ancient Slavic religion include Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Marija Gimbutas, Boris Rybakov, and Roman Jakobson, among others. Rybakov is noted for his effort to re-examine medieval ecclesiastical texts, synthesizing his findings with archaeological data, comparative mythology, ethnography, and nineteenth-century folk practices. He also elaborated one of the most coherent pictures of ancient Slavic religion in his Paganism of the Ancient Slavs and other works. Among earlier, nineteenth-century scholars there was Bernhard Severin Ingemann, known for his study of Fundamentals of a North Slavic and Wendish mythology.
Historical documents about Slavic religion include the Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev around 1111, and the Novgorod First Chronicle compiled in the Novgorod Republic. They contain detailed reports of the annihilation of the official Slavic religion of Kiev and Novgorod, and the subsequent "double faith". The Primary Chronicle also contains the authentic text of Rus'-Greek treatises with native pre-Christian oaths. From the eleventh century onwards, various Rus' writings were produced against the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as the Malalas Chronicle and the Alexandreis.
The West Slavs who dwelt in the area between the Vistula and the Elbe stubbornly resisted the Northern Crusades, and the history of their resistance is written down in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin Chronicles by Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, and Helmold, three German clergymen, as well as in the twelfth-century biographies of Otto of Bamberg, and in Saxo Grammaticus' thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum. These documents, together with minor German writings and the Icelandic Knýtlinga saga, provide a detailed description of northwestern Slavic religion.
The religions of other Slavic populations are less well-documented as texts about them, such as the fifteenth-century Polish Chronicle, were only produced later, after Christianisation, and contain a lot of sheer inventions. In the times preceding Christianisation, however, some Greek and Roman chroniclers, such as Procopius and Jordanes in the sixth century, sparsely documented some Slavic concepts and practices.
Overview and common features
Origins and other influences
The Early Slavs inhabited extensive lands across central, eastern and southeastern Europe. They spoke closely-related languages that split from proto-Slavic in the 6th century, with only minor differences in dialect. The words for religious concepts in the pre-Christian Slavic languages are almost identical, which implies a uniform religion among the Slavs. It has been argued that Slavic identity was originally ethno-religious: whether a person was a Slav was chiefly determined by their religious beliefs and practices, not their racial ancestry or birthplace. Ivanov and Toporov identified the Slavic religion as an outgrowth of a purported common Proto-Indo-European religion, sharing strong similarities with other neighbouring belief systems such as those of the Balts, Thracians and Phrygians.Local development of the ancient Slavic religion, especially in Russia, was likely influenced by the neighbouring Finnic peoples, contributing to local ethnogenesis. Historians consider Slavic religion and mythology to be more conservative than other Indo-European derived traditions, because Slavic religion remained widely practised for centuries. In contrast, other Indo-European derived religions were modified by intellectual elites. Therefore studies of Slavic religion provide information on the evolution of other Indo-European beliefs.
The affinity to Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is evident in shared developments, including the elimination of the term for the supreme God of Heaven, *Dyeus, and its substitution by the term for "sky", the shift of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities to the designation of evil entities, and the parallel designation of gods by the term meaning both "wealth" and its "giver". Much of the religious vocabulary of the Slavs, including vera, svet, mir and rai, is shared with Iranian.
According to Adrian Ivakhiv, the Indo-European element of Slavic religion may have included what Georges Dumézil studied as the "trifunctional hypothesis", that is to say a threefold conception of the social order, represented by the three castes of priests, warriors and farmers. According to Marija Gimbutas, Slavic religion represented an unmistakable overlap of any purported Indo-European-originated themes with ancient religious themes dating back to time immemorial. The latter were particularly hardwearing in Slavic religion, represented by the widespread devotion to Mat Syra Zemlya, the "Damp Mother Earth". Rybakov said the continuity and gradual complexification of Slavic religion started from devotion to life-giving forces, ancestors and the supreme God, Rod, and developed into the "high mythology" of the official religion of the early Kievan Rus'.