TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

100 GODS.
Then the only question that can fairly be raised,
is : Whether
the gods of the North, no longer disputable, hold good for the rest
of Teutondom ? To say yea to the question as a whole, seems,
from the foregoing results of our inquiry, altogether reasonable
and almost necessary.
A negative answer, if it knew what it was about, would try to
maintain, that the circle of Norse gods, in substance, were formerly
common to all Germany, but by the earlier conversion were extin
guished and annihilated here. But a multitude of exceptions and
surviving vestiges would greatly limit the assertion, and materially
alter what might be made out of the remainder.
In the meanwhile a denial has been attempted of quite another
kind, and the opinion upheld, that those divinities have never
existed at all in Germany proper, and that its earliest inhabitants
knew nothing better than a gross worship of nature without gods.
This view, drawing a fundamental distinction between German
and Scandinavian heathenism, and misapprehending all the clues
which discover themselves to unprejudiced inquiry as infallible
evidence of the unity of two branches of a nation, lays special stress
upon a few statements on the nature of the heathen faith, dating
from about the sixth century and onwards. These for the most
part proceed from the lips of zealous Christians, who did not at all
concern themselves to understand or faithfully portray the paganism
they were assailing, whose purpose was rather to set up a warning
against the grosser manifestations of its cultus as a detestable abo
mination. It will be desirable to glance over the principal passages
in their uniformity and one-sidedness.
Agathias before ([" 582), himself a newly converted Greek, who
could only know from christianly coloured reports what he had
heard about the distant Alamanns, thus exhibits the Alamannic
worship as opposed to the Frankish : SevSpa re yap nva iXdaKovrai
KOI peWpa Trora/jiMV KOI \6(f)ov$ KOI (>dpayyas, KOL TOVTOLS axnrep
oVta Spares 28, 4. Then follow the words quoted on p. 47 about
their equine sacrifices.
But his contrast to the Franks breaks down at once, when
we hear almost exactly the same account of them from the lips of
their first historian Gregory : Sed haec generatio fanaticis semper
cultibus visa est obsequiurn praebuisse, nee prorsus agnovere Deuin,
sibique silvarum atque aquarum, avium bestiarumque et aliorum