52 Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations 0/ Slavonian Race. 



Radegast. 



Among diflfereiit tribes of 

 the Slavi, different objects of 

 worsliip obtained the chief 

 regard.* Zwantewith was 

 adored by the Sorabians, or 

 Wends, of Lusatia; Peroun, 

 or the god of thunder, bjr 

 the Muscovites, and other 

 nations of the east. Among 

 the Obotrites, or Wends of 

 Mecklenburg, Radegast was 

 the favourite, or tutelary god, 

 by whose assistance the Rhe- 

 darians, or people near the 

 lake of Tollentz, expected, 

 according to Helmoldus, to 

 get the better of their neigh- 

 bours in warfare. There was 

 a famous temple of Radegast 

 in the city of Rhetra, which 

 was one chief centre of bar- 

 baric opulence in northern Europe during pagan times. The city and 

 temple have been described by Dithmar of Merseburg and by Adam of 

 Bremen, who lived previously to the final conquest of the Wends, and the 

 entire destruction of their idolatry. The history of Rhetra holds an im- 

 portant place in that of the Wendish nation. The city, with its temple, 

 twice underwent a total destruction. It was overturned, and the temple 

 burnt in the year 955, in the reign of the emperor Otho : the image of 

 Radegast, and all the treasures accumulated during ages of pagan devotion, 

 were given up as a spoil to the bishop of Brandenburg. The obstinate 

 idolaters rebuilt their city, and reinstated the rites of their divinity, anxi- 

 ous to restore to them their former splendour. After the lapse of two 

 centuries, in 1150 and 1157, under the government of Henry the Lion, 

 Rhetra and its temple were finally destroyed and burnt ; and, as far as it 

 could be done, every vestige of the worship of the Wendish divinities 

 carefully obliterated. From these historical facts, Masch endeavours 

 to explain the discrepancies between the accounts given of Rhetra, by 

 Dithmar, and Adam of Bremen. He says the former describes the new 

 temple of Rhetra, as it was restored after its destruction by Otho : and 

 that Adam collected the notices which he could obtain of the older and 



* See an enumeration of the tutelary or favourite gods of particular tribes, in 

 Masch, p. 29. 



