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p. 35). We could tite here Adam of Bremen’s relation (II, 22/19/) about Vineta, around which “three currents flow, one of them is all green, another whitish, while the third rages etemally in violent movement of wild waves.”

The only deity connected with Wolin mentioned by name by the written sources is Julius Caesar, after whom the town was allegedly named. More-over, according to Herbord (III, 26), St Otto openly admonished the Wolinians after their apostasy not to “worship in any way Julius or his spear, or the statuettes of idols, or statues [any morę].” It is very difficult indeed to guess what deity is diguised as Julius. The spear attributed to him suggests associations with war gods, such as Sventovit, whose symbol was the divine standard, or Svarożic, to whom human heads impaled on spears were sacrificed. From the find of three smali, one-faced figurines W. Filipowiak (1979, p. 115) concludes that the Wolinians pictured their deity as a bearded man. The four-headed wooden statuette may be a tracę of the cult of Sventovit from Rugen, while close connections with Szczecin allow to hypothesise about the cult of Triglav.

Otto’s expedition in 1124 omitted the area subject to Vartislav situated west of Szczecin, but the second mission in 1128 began right there. On Whitsunday the łOth of June 1128 an assembly of the nobles and the elders from Vartislav’s land on the left bank of the Oder was summoned to Uznam (Usedom), one of the main residences of the ruler. After Otto’s address the assembly resolved to adopt the new faith, and its participants were baptized. Along with Vartislav, who was obviously present at the occasion, the sources name the prince of Gutzkow, Myslav (Ebo, III, 5-6; Herbord, III, 2-3,9). Kantzow’s (Pomerania, III, p. 117-118) and Bugenhagen’s (II, 21) accounts mention that pagan priests were present at the assembly and only they opposed St Otto. Otto’s Liyes, however, do not include this information.

According to Ebo and Herbord (III, 4), the priests undermined the resolutions from Uznam in a very cunning way. When the news spread over the neighbourhood, they tried to use visions and threats in favour of the old religion. In Wolgast one of the priests went at night to a forest, where “he stood in priesfs robes and, er.actly at dawn, spoke to a villager who was going to the market: ‘Listen, good man!’ When the man looked in the direction from which the voice came, he saw in the dim light a person dressed in white among bushes, and he felt fear. And the priest says: ‘Wait and listen to my words. I am your god, I am the one who covers meadows with grass and forests with leaves, raises crops in fields and trees, [gives] fertility to cattle. Everything that people use comes from my power. I give it all to my worshipers, but I take it back from those who renounce me. So tell those who live in Wolgast not to accept another god who cannot help them, admonish them to kill the heralds of the new religion, whose coming I fore-cast.’” Having said that the priest hid in the deep forest. “The villager astounded at the oracie fell fiat to the ground. Then he set out to the town in order to announce his vision. What else can we say? The people believed him...” The priest, who came back to the town, first pretended that he did not believe, but was easily persuaded. It was decided that the missionaries would be killed. The same story appears in Ebo’s text (III, 8), but it contains an important variation: the priest who went to perform this alleged miracle was wearing “a cape and remnants of some deity’s dress” so the villager saw him “disguised in idol’s clothes.” In the speech of the “deity** the assembly in Uznam is straightforwardly mentioned. H. Łowmiański (1979, p. 180) supposed that the mystification was organised not by a priest pretending a god, but by the authors of Otto’s Lives, who tried to ridicule their pagan rivals. Certainly, the relation from christening of Wolgast is the most Górnica! fragment of all Otto’s Lives.

Let us now have a look at the tempie of the god that had so inventive priests. After the assembly in Uznam Otto’s two companions, Udalric and Albwinus, went to Wolgast, where they leamt that the inhabitants of this town resolved to kill all missionaries. They survived thanks to the friendli-ness of the town leader’s wife, who hid them in the attic of her house. They were saved from oppression by the arrival of the bishop with a large troop of Vartislav’s warriors. When Otto, backed by the prince’s armed force, was preaching the Gospel, one of his clerics “wished to see the tempie that stood in this town, he was not sufficiently cautious. Some of the inhabitants noticed him and thought that he wanted to set fire to the tempie.” A hostile crowd of determined people gathered. The tension was relieved by a farcical event. “The cleric, called Dietrich, who had already approached the door of the shrine, did not know where to turn, and finally boldly entered the tempie. Seeing a gold shield which it was forbidden to touch, devoted to Gerovit, who was their god of war, hanging on the wali, seized this shield and went outside hiding behind it. And they - how great the stupidity of simpletons is - stepped back and fell to the ground in amazement, imagining that Gerovit appeared to them. In view of their madness Dietrich threw the shield away and escaped, blessing the Lord...” This is what Ebo recorded (III, 8). Herbord (III, 6) described the situation in a similar way, adding some details about the shield. It was “of great size, skillfully and artistically covered with gold sheets. No mortal was allowed to touch it and it was considered a source of power of which I know nothing, but which is the greatest in their pagan beliefs, so it was forbidden to move it if it was not wartime. As we later leamt, it was devoted to their god Gerovit, who is called Mars in Latin and [during] each war they believed it to be the sign of victory.” Otto stayed in Wolgast until its inhabitants were baptized, de-stroyed their tempie and erected a church.

Thus, Wolgast had a tempie devoted to Gerovit. It was subject to a taboo, as the incident with the shield shows. In the tempie there was a statuę, probably dressed in human-like clothes if the priest used them to perform a “miracle.** The clothes were white, which suggests a sovereign deity, also priests’ robes were white, in aocordance with the Indo-Europeans’

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