Slavs

SLAVS. - Collective name of a large Indo-European family. The prehistoric homeland of the Slavs was probably located between the Baltic and the Carpathians.

The Slavic populations moved from their primitive seats in various directions, forming three great groups: the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and White Russians), the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Sorbs, also called Lusatian Serbs or Wends), and the Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bulgarians and Macedonians). In the early Middle Ages the Western Slavs occupied a whole vast part of the present-day German plain, pushing to within a short distance of Hamburg and beyond the Saale river; the reconquest of these territories by the Germanic population (which pre-existed the Slavs but was numerically very sparse) is largely identified with the Christianization of those regions, begun in the 9th century. The territory occupied by the Slavs in Central Europe was very vast in the early Middle Ages; on the territory of present-day Austria there existed an ethnic continuity between Czechs and Slovenes.

I. RELIGION OF THE SLAVS

The principal sources for knowledge of Russian paganism are: the Chronicle of Nestor (12th century); the Hypatian Chronicle (14th century), so called from the monk Hypatios of the monastery of Kostroma, an expansion of Nestor's; the Chronography of the Byzantine John Malalas (6th century) in the Russian version.

Perun is the god most venerated among the Russians. He presides over the treaties between Byzantium and the pagan Russians as guarantor for his followers, while the Christian Russians appeal to St. Elijah, who has taken his place in Christian Russia. For Perun is, like the classical Zeus, the god of lightning and thunder, who strikes with the thunderbolt and sends the rains and fair weather; just as St. Elijah, who commands the elements water and fire, and ascended to heaven on a chariot of flame, is among all Christian Slavs the patron of atmospheric phenomena. Beside him must be mentioned Volos, god of the herds and guarantor of the oath together with Perun. Among the Balto-Slavs of Lithuania (v.) he is called Perkunas, with the same meaning.

The Slavs of the Baltic group can be divided according to their settlement into: Slavs settled between the Elbe and the Oder; Slavs settled in Pomerania; and Slavs of the island of Rügen. Thietmar of Merseburg, author of a Chronicon (beginning of the 11th century); Adam of Bremen, author of the Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae (end of the 11th century); Helmold of Lübeck, author of a Chronica Slavorum (mid-12th century), are the most notable sources for the Baltic group settled between the Elbe and the Oder, a group that was the most resistant to the penetration of Christianity.

The most notable divinity of this group is Zuarasic, venerated in the city of Riedegost (Rethra), whose temple, described in detail by Thietmar, was entirely of wood, supported at the base by animals' horns, carved on the outside with images of the gods and containing idols within. Triglav, represented with three faces and venerated at Stettin (Pomerania), was worshipped in one of the four temples of the city. His temple was adorned with sculptures of men and animals and served as a depository for tithes and booty. As a means of divination a black horse was used, which gave a favorable prognostication if it crossed three times back and forth, without striking them, nine lances placed a short distance apart on the ground. It is to the biographers of Otto, missionary bishop of Bamberg, that we owe the information concerning the Slavs of Pomerania. Svantovit, venerated at Arkona on the island of Rügen, the last bulwark of Slavic paganism, was represented by an idol larger than life, with four heads, a horn in his right hand which was filled with mead and was a presage of abundance or famine for the whole following year; he held a bow in his left hand and was clad in a tunic down to his legs. The priest had to hold his breath while he was in the temple, where he alone could enter. The annual festival was held after the harvest: the supply of mead in the horn was renewed after drawing the omens from the remnant of the old one, which was poured at the feet of the idol. The whole concluded with a pantagruelian feast. Attached to the temple was a sacred horse of white color, used for divination: it was a good omen if the horse moved its right foot first, preparing to leap over a triple row of lances placed before the temple; the ritual is described by Saxo Grammaticus in the Gesta Danorum. The characteristic polycephaly of this and other Baltic divinities is meant to signify the god's all-seeing nature, whether it be of a celestial or solar character.

The temples of the Baltic Slavs were at once places of sacrifice and of assembly, and the major ones also represented an ethnic center. The Russians preferred open-air places of worship, especially heights, woods and mountains. All the Slavs had persons dedicated to the cult. The priests of the Baltic Slavs were well organized and offered lively resistance to Christianity. They were above all the ministers of sacrifice, whereas among the Russians they were especially practitioners of divination and magic. The central rite of Slavic paganism was the sacrifice (treby) of oxen, rams, first-fruits, and even human sacrifice, especially of Christians, very pleasing to the gods. Mountains, woods and springs were a peculiar place of sacrifice.

The Slavs believed in the afterlife and had the root nav to indicate the kingdom of the dead and raf to indicate a happy region for departed souls. Texts in confirmation are entirely lacking; folklore, however, makes up for this. The dead were buried near trees, in woods or in fields, and had a festival of their own. Forty days after death a ceremony was held in honor of the ancestors, inviting them around a set table, where the family was already gathered. Its head drank, letting a little of the liquid fall for the ancestors, and the others did the same. The sounds of the wind, of leaves, of animals, in the silence of the night, by the ritual light of a candle, were a certain sign of the presence of the ancestors at the family meal. At the end they were invited to return to their dwelling.

Literature: A. Bruckner, Mitologia slava, Bologna 1923, trans. from the Polish; K. Meyer, Die slavische Religion, in K. Clemen, Die Religionen der Erde, Munich 1927; R. Pettazzoni, Il paganesimo degli antichi popoli europei, Rome 1946; B. O. Unbegsau, Les religions des anciens Slaves, Paris 1948; V. Pisani, La religione dei Balto-S., in Tacchi Venturi, Storia delle religioni, II, 3rd ed., Turin 1949.

II. EVANGELIZATION

Christianity was already widespread among the S. by around the 10th century, and their conversion is due to Rome and to Byzantium. The western S. came under the influence of the Church of Rome, while the eastern ones and part of the southern ones came under that of the Byzantine Church. Thus the S., besides being politically divided, found themselves divided religiously as well, and this age-old division had profound repercussions on their religious, political-social and cultural life and on their mutual relations, since the western S. entered the sphere of European civilization, integrating themselves into it completely, while the S. faithful to Byzantium became part of eastern civilization, in which the Church was bound and subject to the State. The spread of Christianity among the Western Slavs began under Charlemagne and continued under his successors, especially Otto I. The German emperors regarded missionary activity as a state task, and therefore their colonizing and conquering policy went hand in hand with the spread of the faith, creating confusion between the tasks of the conqueror and those of the missionary. Generally Christianity established itself sooner where there was already a state organization (Moravia, Croatia). Centers of diffusion were Salzburg and Passau in the 8th century among the Wends, the Croats of Carantania and the Slovenes of Carniola and Carinthia. Among the Croats south of the Drava and in Dalmatia, Christianity had already spread between 640 and 680 through missionaries sent by the Pope. Under the successors of Charlemagne the evangelization of Moravia began, which then also included Slovakia, part of Bohemia and north-western Hungary. But the Moravian grand duke Rastislav, in order to escape the strong German influence, turned to Byzantium (862), from where Cyril and Methodius were sent to him; after the dissolution of the Moravian State (end of the 9th century) the influence of Rome definitively prevailed. At the same time the penetration also began in Bohemia, and the first Czech duke converted was Borivoj together with his wife St. Ludmilla, while the diocese of Prague was founded in 973. From Bohemia Christianity penetrated into Poland, whose first duke, Mieszko (960-92), was a great propagator of it. However, the majority of the S. were converted by the Greek Church, whose two greatest missionaries are Constantine-Cyril and his brother Methodius (v. CIRILLO e METODIO). It is their supreme merit and the reason for their great success to have translated the Holy Scripture into Slavonic and to have adopted that language in the liturgy. It is still used today by the eastern Slavic Churches, while in the Roman liturgy it has been preserved only in the Croatian dioceses of Istria, Quarnaro and Dalmatia (v. GLAGOLITICO), a privilege confirmed by Innocent IV (1248 and 1252). The Serbs accepted Christianity under the emperor Heraclius I, but definitively only when Basil I defeated and subjugated them (867-86).

The Bulgarians (v.) were evangelized under prince Boris (864) through Greek missionaries, but afterward, for political reasons, Boris turned to Rome and Pope Nicholas I

(866) sent other missionaries who converted the whole people to the faith of Rome. Byzantium, however, intrigued until it brought Boris and the Bulgarians back to obedience to the Greek Church (870). The Russians received the faith from Constantinople: the total conversion of the people occurred only under Duke Vladimir (d. 1015). At the beginning of the 11th century there already existed 8 dioceses with the metropolitan residing in Kiev (v.).

BIBL., v. the individual entries: BULGARIA; CROATIA; DALMATIA, etc.

Filippo Lukas

III. SLAVIC VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE

The Chronicle of Nestor, of 898, relates: "Methodius and Constantine (Cyril) translated the Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, the Psalter. Methodius chose two learned priests, shorthand writers, and dictated the version of all the books of Holy Scripture from Greek into Slavic." The version of the Gospel, of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Psalter is attributed to Cyril, the version of the other books to Methodius. The oldest manuscripts date back to the 11th century, some to the 10th. These first translation works were written in Glagolitic characters, deriving from the Greek cursive of the period, and only later were they transcribed in Cyrillic characters, almost identical to the Greek capital letters. The version was made according to the recension of Lucian, or, as others think, according to the Alexandrian.

The complete collection of the biblical books in Slavic was made by Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod in the 15th century. Some books, still missing in Old Slavic, were translated from the Latin Vulgate, such as Paralipomena, Ezra, Tobit, Judith. The fact that at the time of Gennadius not all the sacred books were available in the Slavic language leads to the inference that a part of the versions made by Cyril and Methodius had been lost, or that the holy Slavic apostles had only translated pericopes for divine worship.

A new critical work was carried out in the Bible of Prince Constantine of Ostrog (1581), reprinted in Moscow (1663) with few changes. Definitive corrections were carried out under Empress Elizabeth II (1751-56). This work remains even today the typical edition for the biblical texts of worship, in use among the Russians, Albo-Ruthenians, Serbs, Bulgarians. The grammar of the Church Slavonic language of the new style, used in the sacred books (biblical and liturgical) from the 18th century up to today, is also based on the Bible of Elizabeth.

The aforementioned period is preceded by the Old Slavic one of the northern and southern (local and national) recensions that go from the 12th century up to the 18th, while the language of Cyril and Methodius flourishes from the 9th to the 12th century.

The versions of Holy Scripture in the spoken Slavic languages present themselves in different ways. In recent centuries the number of Slavic nations has doubled. The condition of the nations of the Byzantine rite is one thing, that of the peoples of the Latin rite another. The Eastern faithful (Russians, Ukrainians, Albo-Ruthenians, Serbs, Bulgarians) learn and know the Church Slavonic language to such a degree that they can follow the reading of the Paremias (pericopes from the Old Testament), of the Epistles, and of the Gospel. And therefore the Bible was translated into the spoken languages only in recent centuries. The first versions in the spoken languages are almost always parts of Holy Scripture, pericopes for worship, and made by the Catholic Church. Today all the Slavic nations (Albo-Ruthenians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Croats, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ukrainians, Wends) have the Bible in their own language, a complete edition, but not always made by Catholics.

The ancient versions deserve special mention. In Czech there is the Bible called Leskovska (between 1395 and 1410). In Albo-Ruthenian that of Fr. Skorina (1517-19). In Polish that of J. Wujek (1593). In Croatian those of Stefano Konzul Istranin (1521-80) and Giorgio Dalmatino (1550-89), Protestants; the editions of Giorgio Danačić and Vuk Karadžić are well known. In Wendish, the Catholic version of Svetlik (1650).

Giuseppe M. Schweigl