50 Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 



Masch : " Among the various deities whom they suppose to preside over 

 fields and forests, pain and pleasure, they nevertheless confess one more 

 powerful God in heaven, who rules the rest, and employs himself merely in 

 heavenly affairs. The other gods they believe to follow separate duties, 

 and to be bis offspring : and the nearer each is to that God of gods, the 

 better they consider him." Karamsin, the learned historian of the Russian 

 empire, is persuaded, by the authority, as I suppose, of these writers, 

 that "the Slavi, in the midst of their foolish superstitions, believed in 

 the existence of one all-powerful Divinity, to whom the immensity of the 

 skies, embellished with the sparkling light of the stars, formed a temple 

 worthy of his supreme greatness ; who, while his attention was occupied 

 with higher matters, confided to his offspring the government of the earth. 

 To him, as Karamsin supposes, the Slavi erected no temple, being per- 

 suaded that mortals can hold no communication with him ; and that in 

 their necessities they must have recourse to gods of a second order, whose 

 office it is to give timely aid to brave and virtuous men." The writer last 

 cited is of opinion, that this deity of the universe was the god whom the 

 Slavi termed Velibogc, or the white or beneficent god.* It was, how- 

 ever, supposed by Masch, to whose work wc shall have frequent occasion 

 to refer, that Velibogc was the epithet, not of one divinity, but of all the 

 benevolent genii worshipped by the Slavi. It seems, from Helmoldus, that 

 the name had this meaning ; and that while the benevolent genii were 

 termed white, or veli, in the Slavonian language, the devils or malevolent 

 genii, were termed Tschernebogc, or black divinities. 



Helmoldus likewise distinguishes the divinities of the Slavi into two 

 orders ; namely, the gods who resided in temples, and those who were 

 supposed to dwell in woods and forests. The images of these, however, 

 were also occasionally found in temples. In the first class he reckons 

 Podaga, as well as Radegast : to the latter, Prowe and Purcunust, the god 

 of thunder. Purcunust stood in an oak tree in Romore, in Prussia ; he had 

 also his statue at Rhetra, in the temple of Radegast. The temple at Rhetra 

 was the most celebrated seat of Slavonic superstition. It lasted until the 

 time of the three historians above mentioned. In the isle of Rugen, in 

 Arcona, were the temple and statue of Zwantewith, as Helmoldus terms 

 him, who was the most celebrated among the benevolent genii of many 

 Slavonian tribes, and even received presents from the christian kings of 

 Denmark. The name of this god is supposed by many writers to have 

 been more correctly, Svvetovid, or the Image of Light. They suppose him 



* Veli, is white in the Slavonian language : Bog, or Bogc, means divinUy in 

 several dialects, as it did in that of the old Bulgarians, according to information 

 conveyed hy the following passage in the " Panoplia Dogmatica" of Nicetas Choniates 

 Acominatus : — 



Boy »'; tCjv Boi'Xyapwj' yKGxjaa koKiX tov Qiov. 



Montfaucon. Palceog. Grsec. p. 333. 



