TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

IMAGES. 109
advenisse. . . . Jussu venerandi abbatis (Columbani) Gallus
coepit viam veritatis ostendere populo. . . . et in conspectu
omnium arripiens simulacra, et lapidibus in frusta comminuens projecit
in locum. His visis nonnulli conversi sunt ad dominum. Here
is a strange jumble of heathen and Christian worship. In an
oratory built in honour of St. Aurelia, three heathen statues still
stand against the wall, to which the people continue to sacrifice,
without going near the Christian altar: to them, these are still their
old tutelary deities. After the evangelist has knocked the images
to pieces and thrown them into Lake Constance, a part of these
heathen turn to Christianity. Probably in more places than one
the earliest Christian communities degenerated in like manner,
owing to the preponderance of the heathen multitude and the
supineness of the clergy. A doubt may be raised, however, as to
whether by these heathen gods are to be understood Alamannish, or
possibly Roman gods ? Roman paganism in a district of the old
Helvetia is quite conceivable, and dii tutores loci sounds almost like
the very thing. On the other hand it must be remembered, that
Alamanns had been settled here for three centuries, and any other
worship than theirs could hardly be at that time the popular one. That
sacrifice to Woden on the neighbouring Lake of Zurich1 (supra, p. 56)
mentioned by Jonas in his older biography of the two saints,
was altogether German. Lastly, the association of three di
vinities to be jointly worshipped stands out a prominent feature in
when the Romans dedicated a temple to
our domestic heathenism ;
several deities, their images were not placed side by side, but in
separate cellae (chapels). Ratpert (Casus S. Galli, .Pertz 2, 61)
seems to have confounded the two events, that on L. Zurich, and
the subsequent one at Bregenz: Tucconiam (to Tuggen) advenerunt,
quae est ad caput lacus Turicini, ubi cum consistere vellent, popu-
lumque ab errore demonum revocare (nam adhuc idolis immoldbant\
Gallo idola vana confringente et in lacum mcinum demergente, populus
in iram conversus. . . . sanctos exinde pepulerunt. Inde iter
agentes pervenerunt ad castrum quod Arbona nuncupatur, juxta
1
Curiously, Mone (Gesch. des heid. 1, 171-5) tries to put this Wodenworship
cat Tuggen upon the Heruli, who had never been heard of there, instead
of the Alamanns, because Jonas : says Sunt inibi wcinae nationes Suevorum.
But this means simply those settled thereabouts ;
there was no occasion to speak
ol distant ones. Columban was staying in a place not agreeable to himself, in
order to convert the heathen inhabitants ; and by Walafrid s description too,
the district lies infra partes Alamanniae, where intra would do just as well.