image036
is morę reliable at this point. Quite possibly Szczecin had one tempie and three cult halls, one of which might have been situated near the tempie.
Christianization was accepted by the counselling assembly in Szczecin, but the decision was taken only after a categorical order from Boleslaus the Wrymouth, who threatened the opponents with war (The Life from Priifen-ing, II, 10; Herbord, II, 30). In The Life from Prufening (II, 12) the destruc-tion of the tempie in 1124 is described shortly and schematically. The temples were “pulled down and deconstructed” and “the timber from them was taken by both the faithful and the idolaters (...) for putting up fires and boiling vegetables.” The last detail somehow resembles the scene when the statuę of Svantevit was chopped and bumt under the kitchen pots, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus. According to Herbord’s (II, 31-32) morę elaborate relation, bishop Otto asked the Szczecinians, who had decided to convert to Christianity rather because of Boleslaus the Wrymouth’s threats and power than because of conviction about the new faith, to allow at least him and his companions to destroy the tempie, if they were still afraid of their old gods. When they agreed, “the bishop and the priests, having celebrated the mass and received Communion, armed with axes and hatchets, approached the temples, breaking and destroying everything and tearing off the roofs. The inhabitants stood and waited for the gods’ reaction and wondered whether they would defend their houses or not. Finally, when they saw that nothing wrong happens to the destroyers, they said: if those whose temples and sanctity are being destroyed had any divine power, they would defend themselves. And if they cannot defend themselves or help themselves, how will they be able to defend or help us? With such words they hastened to demolish and break everything. They divided the wood between themselves and took it to their homes to make flre for baking bread and cooking food. And as it was suitable that those who plundered morę got morę, all those four temples were pulled down and destroyed with amazing speed.” Ebo’s mention (III, 1) about “buming the temples of idols” seems a fantasy, as setting fire to a tempie in the middle of a wooden town would have been insane, which everybody realised (Ebo, II, 1). But he also says that after the buming (which should be interpreted as ‘destroying’) the temples “two churches were built, one, whose patron was St Adalbert, on Triglav’s hill, the other, under the invocation of St Peter, outside the town walls, (The Life from Prufening, II, 13, mentiones the Saints Peter and Paul). From this we can infer that the tempie of Triglav had been situated at a hill devoted to him in the centre of the town, which is now the Castle Hill, where the prince’s manor used to stand. St Adalbert’s church, mentioned in the lives of Otto, fell to oblivion. It was probably built hastily of wood and cannot have been an impressive construction, although it was furnished with bells (Kiersnowski, 1953, p. 129-131). The church of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul in Szczecin has survived until now on its original place (Chlopocka, Leciejewicz, Wieczorowski, 1985, p. 58-59).
Allegedly the pagans saved some fragments of the destroyed temples, not only wooden constructions collected rather for veneration than as fuel for cooking, but also a golden statuette of Triglav and the saddle of his horse. Ebo (II, 13) recorded how bishop Otto leamed about it, introducing fantas-tic or even sensational motives into the text. The story is as follows: after the destruction of the tempie the priests secretly carried the statuette to the country and gave it to a certain widów to keep it in hiding. The secret was disclosed by Herman, Otto’s companion, who pretended to be Triglav’s worshiper wishing to make a thanksgiving oblation to the god for help in a sea adventure. He managed to take the saddle of Triglav’s horse from the widów, but had to leave the statuette, which was stuck in a tree trunk. Otto, having consulted his companions, abandoned the plan of gaining the statuette, as he did not want to be accused of greed for gold (cf. Słupecki, 1994).
It is difficult to decide whether the relation is reliable. Other Lives do not contain this story, but it is not entirely improbable, as Otto’s fight with pagan priests is a fact and undoubtedly paganism was cultivated outside strongholds. The place where the statuette was hidden was identified as the village Trzyglów near Gryfice, as Jan Bugenhagen (II, 17) did in the 16th c., or in Rugen, which was based on the bishop’s envoy’s words about “Crossing the sea of way” (MPHsn, vol. 7, part 2, 1969, p. 76, gloss 290).
The resistance of pagan priests against Christianity is confirmed in other sources. Although according to Herbord (II, 34), the inhabitants were bap-tized, but there were exceptions. One of them was “the priest that took care of the mentioned horse. When he had tormented the bishop with great impertinence and contaminated good seed with córa cockle, one day, although induced by everyone with entreaties and defeated by the bishop with numerous arguments, he persistently refused to find consolation in the truth and at that very night (...) died.” According to Herbord, this event filled the Szczecinians with the fear of God and strengthened their faith.
It did not last long, as when the bishop left, a generał apostasy took place. It was caused by a plague. When it began, “the inhabitants of Szczecin (...) influenced by their treacherous priests came back to their old errors. They rebuilt the temples which he had destroyed not long ago and intended to puli down the churches that he had built. Namely, the priests, aware that with the idols they had lost all prospects for profits, said that gods appeared to them in a terrifying shape and scolded them for worship-ing Christ and abandoning them. Then, they said that the plague that incidentally broke out at that time and spread over the whole town was caused by divine wrath aroused by their conversion to Christian supersti-tions and abandonment of the old religion. Thus, the pagans gathered and broke into St Adalbert’s church and first threw down the bells that had been hanging in front of the church door. But these remained intact, as if they had not been thrown down, which showed the power of Christ. Then one villainous pagan priest worth of a curse entered the church with great anger
75
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