418 THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 



CREMATION PROSCRIBED BY CHRISTIANITY. 



In a pastoral letter, written in 1108 b}' Archbishop Adelgott, of 

 Magdeburg on the Elbe, in the northwest of modern Lusatia, is read : 



These cruel people, the Slavs, have risen against us. They have profaned, 

 by their idolatry, the churches of Christ. * * * They have invaded our 

 land. * * * They have cut off the heads of Christians and offered them as 

 .■sacrifices. Their fanatics — that is, their priests — say in their feastings : " It 

 is our Pripegala who wants these sacrifices. Let us rejoice." They say : 

 " Christ is vanquished. The victory belongs to Pripegala. the victorious." 



Pripegala, Prej)iekal, is the personification of the action of burn- 

 ing; pref^ekac^ a word still in use in the Pannonian Slavic dialect. 

 It is known that the Slavs before or after the burning of their dead 

 offered sacrifices and united in a funeral meal, Tryzna. This custom 

 was in vogue with the Slavs of the Dnieper, as well as with those of 

 the Oder. 



In the Chronique cle Nestor (p. 67, edition Leger) is read the 

 following account : 



Vladimir (who was about to be converted) went to Kiev to offer with his 

 people sacrifices to the idols. The old people and the idols said : " Let us draw 

 by lots a young man and a young maiden, and upon whom the lot shall fall 

 shall be sacrificed to the gods." The lot fell to the son of a Christian Variag. 

 The father refused to deliver his son and locked himself up with him in his 

 home. They were both slain. " In another case, Vladimir desiring to offer 

 sacrifices to Perun, Dazbog, etc., the people offered their sous and daughters. 



;:= * * »' 



From documents collected in 1868 b}' Kotliarevski it follows that 

 the pagan Slavs of the Dnieper, who j^racticed both burial and cre- 

 mation, not only held banquets in honor of the dead, Tryzna^ " meal 

 of the dead," but also offered sacrifices. The women in particular 

 alloAved themselves to be burned on the funeral pyre of their hus- 

 bands. According to a document relating to the destruction of 

 paganism in Novgorod (988), the most usual sacrifice consisted in 

 the killing of horses. As regards the cremating of the dead, the 

 Chronique cle Nestor is positive: 



When one of the Radimitches died they celebrated a tryzna around the corpse, 

 then they raised a great pyre, placed the dead on it and set it on fire. After- 

 wards they gathered the bones, put them in a small vase and placed the vase 

 upon a column on the edge of the road. The Yiatitches still follow this custom. 



Ibn Fozlan, who went as ambassador in the year 922 to the Bul- 

 garians on the Volga, relates that he assisted at the cremation of a 

 Russian. One of those present said to him : 



You Arabs are a foolish people; you place your dead in the ground where 

 they are devoured by animals and vermin. We burn them in an instant, that 

 they may tiy to paradise. 



