TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

IMAGES. 107
(ert TWV fBapjBdptov e\\rjviK(o$ 6pr)a-tcev6vTa)v) e\\vjviic&s here
means in heathen fashion, and Opya/ceveiv (to worship) is presently
described more minutely, when the persecution of the Christians
by Athanaric is related Athanaric, having set the statue (evidently
of the Gothic deity) on a waggon (%oavov l(f> apjuLa/jLafys eoTw?),
ordered it to be carried round to the dwellings of those suspected
of Christianity ; if they refused to fall down and sacrifice (Trpocncvvelv
teal 6i>6iv\ their houses were to be fired over their heads. By
dpfidfia^a is understood a covered carriage ; is not this exactly the
vehiculum, veste contectum, in which the goddess, herself unseen, was
carried about (Tac. Germ. 40) ? Is it not the vagn in which Freyr
and his priestess sat, when in holy days he journeyed round among
the Swedish people (Fornm. sog. 2, 74-5) ? The people used to
carry about covered images of gods over the fields, by which fertility
was bestowed upon them. 1 Even the Jcarrdschen in our poems of
the Mid. Ages, with Saracen gods in them, and the carroccio of the
Lombard cities (RA. 263-5) seem to be nothing but a late reminis
cence of these primitive gods -waggons of heathenism. The Roman,
Greek and Indian gods too were not without such carriages.
What Gregory of Tours tells us (2, 29-31) of the baptism of
Chlodovich (Clovis) and the events that preceded it, is evidently
touched up, and the speeches of the queen especially I take to be
fictitious ; yet he would hardly have put them in her mouth,
if it
were generally known that the Franks had no gods or statues at all.
Chrothild (Clotilda) speaks thus to her husband, whom she is try
ing to prepossess in favour of baptism : Nihil sunt dii quos colitis,
qui neque sibi neque aliis poterunt subvenire ;
sunt enim aut ex
lapide aut ex ligno aut ex metallo aliquo sculpti, nomina vero, quae
eis indidistis, homines fuere, non dii. Here she brings up Saturnus
and Jupiter, with arguments drawn from classical mythology;
and then : Quid Mars Ifercttruaque potuere ? qui potius sunt
magicis artibus praediti quam divini numinis potentiam habuere.
Sed ille magis coli debet qui coelum et terrain, mare et omnia quae
in eis sunt, verbo ex non extantibus procreavit, &c. Sed cum haec
regina diceret, nullatenus ad credendum regis animus movebatur,
sed dicebat : Deorum nostrorum jussione cuncta creantur ac pro-
1 De simulacra quod per campos portant (Indie, superstit. cap. 28) ; one vita
S. Martini cap. 9 (Surras 6, 252) : Quia esset haec Gallorum rusticis consue
tude, simulacra daemonum, candido tecta velamine, misera per agros suos circumlerre
dementia.