Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 49 



centre, had been restored after a temporary abolition, eflfected through tlie 

 zeal of Christian missionaries and princes. He wrote a chronicle of the 

 history of Henry the First, and the three Othos, and died before the year 

 1030. His work was published at Helrastadt, in 1667, and was included by 

 Leibnitz in his Collection of the Brunswick Historians. The second writer 

 is Adam of Bremen, who lived in the same century, had much intercourse 

 with the Wends, particularly the Wagrians or Wends of Holstein, and 

 wrote an ecclesiastical history, extending from the year 778 to 1072. A 

 third writer is Helmoldns, whose history of the Slavi, or Chronica Sclavo- 

 rum, was published by Henry Bangert, at Lubeck, in 1 702. These three 

 historians treat almost exclusively of the western branches of the Wends, 

 in Mecklenburg and Holstein. There are a few scattered notices to be 

 collected from other writers, respecting the superstitions of the more eastern 

 tribes of the same stock, as the Sorabians, the Moravians, Bohemians, 

 Poles, and Russians. Lastly, considerable light lias been thrown on the 

 same subject, by the remains of statues and figures of the Slavonic gods, 

 and the implements of superstitious rites which have been found in different 

 parts of the Wendish country, and particularly, as we shall have occasion 

 fully to observe, by some curious and unexpected discoveries of this de- 

 scription in Mecklenburg. 



Tbe following is a literal translation of the passage in which Procopius 

 suras up the result of his inquiries concerning the mythology of the Slavi 

 who inhabited Pannonia, and infested the northern provinces of the empire 

 in his time. 



" The S):Xa/3?>oi " says Procopius, " worship one God, the maker of 

 lightning — rov tTjq uerrpaTriiQ crmiovpyoy. They regard him as the sole ruler 

 of the universe, and sacrifice to him oxen and victims of all descriptions. 

 They know nothing of fatality — el^apfxivr}; nor do they allow it to have any 

 influence on human affairs ; but when they apprehend that death is near 

 at hand, either under the pressure of disease, or when incurring the dan- 

 gers of war, they utter vows that they will perform sacrifices to God for 

 their lives, if tiiey survive : after escaping, they fulfil their vows, and 

 believe that their safety has been purchased by the said sacrifice. They 

 likewise pay veneration to rivers and nymphs, and some other inferior 

 divinities. To all of these they perform offerings, and make divinations in 

 their sacrifices."* 



This account of Procopius coincides, in many respects, with the state- 

 ments given by the German historians above mentioned, relative to the 

 superstitions of tiic western Slavi. Tiie assertion that the Slavonic na- 

 tions, notwithstanding their apparent polytheism, and the worship paid by 

 tlicm to many inferior deities, believed in the existence of one supreme 

 God, under whom all the rest acted as subordinate agents, is repeated by 

 Hclmoldus in a passage which has been cited from him by Hofprcdiger 



• Pi-ocop. Caisar. dc Belle Gotth. lib. 3. cap. 4. 



