TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

92 PEIESTS.
life, would seem to have been quite admissible. I shall try else
where to show in detail, how a good deal in the gestures and atti
tudes prescribed for certain legal transactions savours of priestly
ceremony at sacrifice and prayer (see Suppl.). It is not unlikely,
as heathen sacred places were turned into Christian ones, that it
was also thought desirable amongst a newly converted people to
attract their former priests to the service of the new religion.
the most
They were the most cultivated portion of the people,
capable of comprehending the Christian doctrine and recommending
it to their countrymen. Prom the ranks of the heathen priesthood
would therefore proceed both the bitterest foes and the warmest
partizans of innovation.1 The collection of the Letters of Boniface
has a passage lamenting the confusion of Christian and heathen
rites, into which foolish or reckless and guilty priests had suffered
themselves to fall. 2
This might have been done in blameless ignor
ance or from deliberate purpose, but scarcely by any men except
such as were previously familiar with heathenism.
Even the Norse priesthood is but very imperfectly delineated in
the Eddas and sagas.
A noteworthy passage in the Ynglingasaga
cap. 2 which regards the Ases altogether as colonists from Asia,
and their residence Asgard as a great place of sacrifice, makes the
twelve principal Ases sacrificial priests (hofgoSar) : skyldu J?eir rafta
fyrir blotum ok domum manna i milli (they had to advise about
sacrifices and dooms) ; and it adds, that they had been named diar
(divi) and drottnar (domini). This it representation, though be but
a conjecture of Snorri s, shows the high estimation in which the
priestly order stood, so that gods themselves were placed at the
head of sacrifices and judgments. But we need not therefore con
found diar and drottnar with real human priests.
1 Just as the Catholic clergy furnished as well the props as the opponents of
the Reformation. The notable example of a heathen priest abjuring his ancient
faith, and even putting forth his hand to destroy the temple he had once held
sacred, has been quoted from Beda on p. 82. This priest was an English, not
a British one, though Beda, evidently for the mere purpose of more exactly
marking his station, designates him by a Gaefic word Coin (choibi, choibhidh,
cuimhi, see Jamieson, supplement sub. v. coivie, archdruid). Coifi is not a
proper name, even in Gaelic ; and it is incredible that Eadwine king of Northumbria
should have adopted the British religion, and maintained a British
priest.
2 Ed. Wiirdtw. 82. Serr. 140 : Pro sacrilegis itaque presbyteris, ut scripsisti,
qui tauros et hircos diis paganorum immolabant, manducantes sacrificia mortuorum.
. . . modo vero incognitum esse, utruni baptizantes trinitatem
dixissent an non, &c. Connect with this the presbyter Jovi mactans, Ep. 25.