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committed a profanation, resulted on the one hand from the fear of Bole-slaus the Wrymouth’s revenge, and on the other from the impression of a harmless madman that Bernard had madę; both arguments are quoted by Ebo. Thus, Bernard did not die a martyr’s death, and his experience was taken into account by Otto, who gained morę influence over the Pom-eranians appearing to them with due ostentation and magnificence.

In 1124 in Wolin the bishop of Bamberg was initially eąually unsuccess-ful as Bernard two years earlier. The first successes in Pyrzyce and Kamień (where the prince resided, which madę the situation easier) were succeeded by a failure. Even an entourage provided by Vartislav did not help much. When Otto tried to deliver a sermon, the people hurled Stones and mud at him. Only staying in the prince’s house saved Otto from martyrdom “be-cause sińce time immemorial the pagans had observed the custom that as long as someone lived freely in the ruler’s home, even when accused of a worst crime, he was not molested by anybody without the ruler’s consent” {The life from Prufening, II, 5; cf. Ebo, II, 7). This seems to indicate that the prince’s house had some cult functions, as Helmold (I, 84) claims that asylum was given by Slavonic sanctuaries. Very soon did Otto abuse the patience of the Wolinians, trying to make a strange deal with this merchant town. According to The life from Prufening (II, 6), “until that time the Julinians (...) held in great esteem the spear of Julius Caesar. But it had been so deeply rusted that the iron itself was of no use. The bishop, however, wanted to buy it for fifty talents of silver, in order to free them of such a great error; (...) the pagans, impious and unfaithful, firmly refused, claim-ing that the spear had divine features and could not be compared with anything transient or trivial, therefore they would not get rid of it for any price, because it constitutes their shield and the rampart of the fatherland and a guarantee of victory. When the reverend bishop worth of God splen-didly addressed the people, some madman from the crowd, inflamed with ragę, attacked the holy priest and hit him with a freshly broken twig which he had in his hand, so strongly that he fell to the ground and seemed to have expired” (cf. Ebo, II, 8; Herbord, II, 24).

The bishop had no other choice but to follow the Wolinians’ advice and try his luck in Szczecin. When the Szczecinians were christened, Otto came back to Wolin and this time he was welcomed. The inhabitants - as The life from Prufening (II, 16) recorded - instantly “let the bishop use one contina, in which among other sacred objects was the sacrosanct spear of Julius Caesar. In this very place the Lord vouchsafed to cause a great miracle which glorified His name. Namely, as a result of river floods the place where the tempie stood had tumed into a morass, and it was possible to get to the tempie only through a bridge built over the morass. When the pagans turned to the Lord and the tempie was given to the bishop, the place (...) suddenly dried out.” The bishop “ordered to fili up the hollow that had resulted from freąuent floods and to build a dike, and soon after that he erected a chapel there, which had St Adalbert and St George as the patrons.” Ebo (II, 15) presents the same event in a slightly different way. He says that the church erected in place of the tempie had the invocation of St Adalbert and St Wenceslas and was situated in the town, whiie another one, which was later the bishop’s seat, was built outside the town. At another point Ebo (III, l) mentions only St Adalbert as the patron of the church. The gothic church of St Adalbert and St George, destroyed in 1945, stood in an elevated place within the town walls (Filipowiak, 1982, p. 118). The data are divergent at this point.

Ebo’s relation about the unsuccessful mission of bishop Bernard points to another important element of the religious topography of Wolin, namely the sacred pole which the Spanish ascetic tried to cut with an axe. Ebo (III, 1) comes back to this detail in the narration conceming StOtto’s mission: “Julin, founded and named by Julius Caesar, where his spear, stuck in a pole of amazing size, is esteemed as his remembrance.” T. Palm (1937, p. 83-88), who was too sceptical about the issue of Slavonic temples, on the basis of these passages rejected the information from The life from Prufening and claimed that there was only an open-air sanctuary in Wolin. Even H. Łowmiański (1979, p. 178) did not support his view. It is possible to argue in the reverse way. The life from Prufening mentions the Wolin tempie as the shelter of the spear, so we could also locate there the pole, which, according to Ebo, was connected with the spear. As we know from various relations, weapons were stored in the temples in Arcona, Rethra, Wolgast, Garz and Szczecin, while we lack any mentions about spears or swords kept in the open air. Thus, it would be possible to interpret the pole to which Ebo referred as a sacrosanct pillar supporting the tempie, but for the problem of its “amazing size” stressed by Ebo. Moreover, the fragment about bishop Bernard’s attack on it straightfor-wardly suggests that it stood in the open air.

The problem is solved if we study thoroughly the relevant passage from Ebo (III, 1), who after the description of the “column” and a mention about a festival organised in Wolin every summer to worship “a certain deity with great crowds participating and dancing” adds that “when the town had been purified with the word of God and the baptism (...), larger and smaller idols, which had stood in the open air, were bumt by the pious bishop.” So, along with the tempie, there was also an open-air sanctuary in Wolin. It was close to the tempie, which can be inferred from the fact that the sources are undedsive about the location of Caesar’s spear. The sanctuary was a high pole - a non-iconic idol representing the axis of the world and supporting the sky, similar to Saxon Irmisul, destroyed in 772 by Charlemagne (de Vries, 1956-1957, vol. 1, p. 387) - and wooden statues of gods, bumt by Otto, different from the smaller effigies, adomed with gold and silver, which had been concealed from the bishop. These were probably kept in the tempie together with “Caesar’s spear.” The spot where the pole and the idols had

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