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Wolinians] will have no other choice.” The author of The Life from Priifen-ing (II, 7) thought that it had been a ruse and that the Wolinians had wanted to send the bishop to his doom, as the inhabitants of Szczecin, who were morę numerous and powerful than other tribes, were morę likely to attack him. This supposition may have been right, but the Wolinians’ advice re-flects their belief about the primacy of the centre of the country. The Lives (Herbord, II, 25; The Life from Priifening, II, 7; Ebo, II, 9) say explicitly that Szczecin was considered the Capital of the country and enjoyed the name of “the mother of Pomeranian towns.”
According to Ebo (III, 1) Szczecin was “a very large town, larger than Julin [Wolin]. It embraced three hills, of which the higher, central one, devoted to the most important pagan god Triglav, had a three-headed statuę whose eyes and lips were covered with a golden veil. The priests said that the superior god had three heads because he ruled three realms: heaven, earth and heli, and that he covered his face not to see human sins and to remain indifferent.” In another place, however, Ebo (II, 9) claimed that Szczecin was situated on four hills.
Some details of appearance of the temples and forms of cult are de-scribed by Herbord and The Life from Priifening (II, 11). The latter, which was written earlier and is considered morę reliable by historians, reads: “In (...) the town there were two houses not far from one another, built with great skill and care. As they contained inside the statues of gods and in Latin ‘contain’ means ‘continere’, the ancestors called them continas." The identical etymology of the word contina (kącina), which is incorrect, as we already know, is found in Herbord (II, 31). “Exactly in that place the stupid pagan people worshiped their god Triglav. Apart from that, the citizens usually kept a horse of beautiful shape, called the horse of god Triglav. Also its saddle, decorated with gold and silver, as becomes a deity, was stored by pagan priests in one of the continas. The divine horse saddled with it appeared at a special time and place, when the pagan people, deceiveed by superstitions, gathered to hear the divination.” In the oracular ritual the horse was led over spears (Słupecki, 1991c). After its detailed description the text adds: “They used to offer one tenth of all spoils that they seized, and in all circumstances they proceeded to the mentioned continas to inquire about the futurę with god Triglav.”
Herbord’s text (II, 32-33), which is morę elaborate, generally confirms that relation, adding many significant details, but it contains also a different piece of information. According to Herbord, there were “four ‘contine’ in the town of Szczecin, but one of them, which was the principai one, had been built with amazing reverence and skill. Its outside and inside were decorated with sculptures protruding from the walls; there were effigies of people, birds and wild animals, pictured with all their features so accurately that they seemed to live and breathe. What I would consider unusual is the fact that rain or snów did not manage to blacken or wear out the colours of exterior pictures, to such an extend had the artists' skill protected them. In accordance with ancestors’ old custom they brought to the tempie the plundered wealth and enemies’ weapons and all that they gained in wars on the sea or land, by the right of one tenth of the spoils. Also gold and silver pots used for divination and for nobles’ feasts, brought from the holy shelter on special days, were stored there. They also kept there huge homs of wild bulls set in gold and precious Stones, suitable for drinking, playing homs, swords and daggers, and many expensive and rare artifacts for the decora-tion and honour of their gods. They intended to hand them all to the bishop and priests when the tempie had been destroyed. But he (...), having blessed them with holy water, ordered the people to divide everything among them-selves. And there was a three-headed statuę there, which borę three heads on one trunk and was therefore called Triglav. Only this, namely the three adjacent heads, without the trunk, did he [the bishop] take away as a symbol of victory and later sent to Romę, for the Pope to see the proof of their conversion (...). The three other contine were less honoured and less adomed. Inside seats and tables were placed along the walls, as they used to hołd their councils and meetings there, because they gathered in those buildings on fixed days and hours, both to drink and merrymake, and to decide about important matters. Moreover, there was a huge oak-tree with lots of leaves there, and a most pleasant spring near it. The simple people regarded it as the seat of a deity and held in great esteem. The bishop wanted to cut the tree after destroying the temples, but the people convinced him not to do that, as they promised to value neither the place nor the tree because of the cult anymore, only because of its pleasant Outlook and shadow...” The bishop accepted the promise that the oak will not be wor-shiped anymore and agreed to leave it, but he set his own condition: he demanded that the Szczecinians expelled from the town the oracular black horse of Triglav, which was attended to by a priest in one of the four temples. The description of divination to which the horse was used brings further details conceming the oracular practices, omitted in The Life from Priifening. Liąuidating the oracie, Otto ordered to sell the horse to another country. There is also a short mention about “calculations from sticks,” i.e. lot-casting.
The two texts differ in the fundamental matter of the number of temples. The Life from Priifening mentions two, situated close to each other, without differentiating between them. Both are described as containing statues, both were admired and in both Triglav was worshiped. But also this Life contains the fact recorded by Herbord, that Otto blessed and retumed to the Szczecinians the valuable artifacts from which he did not take anything for himself, but “when he broke the trunk of the statuę himself (...), he took its three silvered heads, because of which it was called Triglav” in order to offer them to the Pope (The Life from Priifening, II, 12). In this relation two temples correspond to only one statuę, which seems to indicate that Herbord
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