russian history 44 (2017) 209-242 brill.com/ruhi What Do We Know about *Čьrnobogъ and *Bělъ Bogъ? Yaroslav Gorbachov Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago [email protected] Abstract As attested, the Slavic pantheon is rather well-populated. However, many of its nu- merous members are known only by their names mentioned in passing in one or two medieval documents. Among those barely attested Slavic deities, there are a few whose very existence may be doubted. This does not deter some scholars from articulating rather elaborate theories about Slavic mythology and cosmology. The article discusses two obscure Slavic deities, “Black God” and “White God,” and, in particular, reexamines the extant primary sources on them. It is argued that “Black God” worship was limited to the Slavic North-West, and “White God” never existed. Keywords Chernobog – Belbog – Belbuck – Tjarnaglófi – Vij – Slavic dualism Introduction A discussion of Slavic mythology and pantheons is always a difficult, risky, and thankless business. There is no dearth of gods to talk about. In the literature they are discussed with confidence and, at times, some bold conclusions about Slavic cosmology are made, based on the sheer fact of the existence of a par- ticular deity. In reality, however, many of the “known” Slavic gods are not much more than a bare theonym mentioned once or twice in what often is a late, un- reliable, or poorly interpretable document. The available evidence is undeni- ably scanty and the dots to be connected are spaced far apart. Naturally, many © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18763316-04402011Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 09:14:00PM via free access <UN> 210 Gorbachov Slavic mythologists have succumbed to an understandable urge to supply the missing fragments by “reconstructing” them. As a result, rather elaborate theo- ries have been postulated based on a very slender empirical basis. These re- constructions and theories have then been used as a foundation upon which to build further, even more elaborate edifices. By now, the profusion of speculative proposals and ingenuous claims, some of them quite florid, have reached staggering heights, and the body of “knowl- edge” keeps growing. This calls for a “back-to-basics” approach, that is to say, back to the stark reality of the barren landscape of Slavic mythology as it is ac- tually attested in the primary sources. The object of this discussion is thus not to refute or refine any current claims and hypotheses about the native Slavic religion. The goal is more modest. It is to revisit and reexamine some of the empirical foundations of the existing theories—their “building blocks,” as it were. On occasion, one cannot help but wonder whether those foundations adequately support the structures above them. The present study focuses on Black God and White God. It was conceived as the first of two publications on Slavic mythology. The next study will discuss Velesъ and the “primary (or “fundamental”) myth” (Russ. osnovnoj mif). i State of Attestation. Northwestern Slavic Pantheon Unlike some other, more fortunate, native traditions, the Slavic “folk” religion and mythology were only minimally documented before being obliterated by an imported universal religion. The same fate later befell the native West and East Baltic mythological traditions. A theoretical chance to record pre-Christian Slavic beliefs and practices, describe the deities and their functions, etc., pre- sented itself with the arrival of literacy, which was brought by Christianization around the turn of the second millennium.1 However, the art of writing was in- troduced by proponents of a competing religion, and they set out promptly to 1 The conversion of the Slavs was not a single event. It happened in several waves between the eighth and twelfth cen. a.d. The earliest documented endeavor to convert the Slavs was the Carinthian mission to the north-west Balkans organized by St. Vergilius (Feirgil), bishop of Salzburg (it took place in the 760’s or 770’s). All earlier missions to the Balkan Slavs are semi- legendary and, in any event, did not have a lasting effect. These include the conversion of the Serbs by “elders from Rome,” the baptism of duke Porga’s Croats by “priests from Rome” (both events are reported in De Administrando Imperio, Chs. 31 and 32), the “first Carinthian mission” at the turn of the seventh cen. a.d., etc. The last Slavic regions to be Christianized were Mecklenburg and Pomerania on the Baltic coast (in a series of attempts throughout the tenth-twelfth cen.). russian Downloadedhistory from 44 Brill.com09/23/2021(2017) 209-242 09:14:00PM via free access <UN> What Do We Know about *Čьrnobogъ and *Bělъ Bogъ? 211 eradicate and replace the native Slavic model of the Cosmos. Pagan priesthood was outlawed (although not immediately eliminated2), pagan rituals and other practices were banned, the traditional Slavic gods were demoted to the status of demons or else identified with various Christian figures, and the system of native beliefs and mythological motifs was fragmented into a set of disjointed folktale narratives. We thus have only a very exiguous notion of Slavic pagan- ism, as compared to the Greek, Roman, Vedic or Hittite native religions. The earliest of the existing accounts of Slavic paganism are embedded in external, non-Slavic sources—Byzantine (e.g., Procopius of Caesarea, Con- stantine Porphyrogenitus, etc.), Arabic (e.g., al-Masudi), Persian (Ahmad ibn Rustah), German (e.g., Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau, Herbord, Ebbo), Danish (Saxo Grammaticus), etc. Later, as various Slav- ic populations are Christianized, native accounts of Slavic paganism begin to trickle in, sparse and scanty as they may be. They come in the form of clerical denunciations of remnants of pagan worship; chronicle entries dealing with the semi-legendary heathen past or contemporary pagan holdovers and reviv- als; pagan oaths accompanying peace treaties, etc. The information gleaned from these accounts is patchy and vague, since none of the writers set out to address Slavic heathendom per se. The disparate facts and sketchy discussions of Slavic pagan beliefs and practices, which these sources offer, are always sub- sidiary to, or represent short digressions from, larger political, historical, geo- graphic, diplomatic or polemic narratives. Procopius’s famous excursus into the religion of the Sclaveni and Antae (sixth cen. a.d.) provides a good illustra- tion of this point. The passage alludes to rituals involving sacrifices and divina- tions without ever providing any specifics, and refers to the Slavic storm god without ever divulging his name (Perunъ): (1) …They believe that one god, the maker of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him cattle and all other victims; but as for fate, they neither know it nor do they in any wise admit that it has any power among men… They reverence, however, both rivers and nymphs 2 Old Russian chronicles contain multiple episodes involving pagan priests (vъlsvi) who would appear in major towns at times of trouble, such as crop failure, social unrest, etc. Vъlsvi obvi- ously viewed such times as opportune moments to persuade common folk to return to the old gods. Some of these episodes are reported decades or even centuries after Christianiza- tion. The last public appearance of vъlsvi took place in 1227 in Novgorod during a famine. Four vъlsvi practiced magic and were seized and burned at the place of popular assembly (věče). russian history 44 (2017) 209-242 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 09:14:00PM via free access <UN> 212 Gorbachov and some other spirits, and they sacrifice to all these also, and they make their divinations in connection with these sacrifices.3 Similarly, ibn Rustah (Aḥmad ebn Roste Eṣfahānī) in volume 7 of his Book of Precious Records (Kitab al-Aʾlak an-Nafisa, 930’s a.d.) describes briefly the life- style and several customs of the East Slavs,4 but he never mentions any gods by name or function, limiting himself to the observation that “all Slavs are idol-worshippers.”5 But even when an excursus into Slavic polytheism does provide some theon- yms, it is never the intention of its author to catalogue the pantheon exhaus- tively. Only a few principal divinities are usually listed, while their “duties and responsibilities,” to the extent that they are at all addressed, are dealt with in a more than cursory manner. Thus, in the early eleventh century, Thietmar of Merseburg names only one of the gods worshipped by the Redarii of Mecklen- burg, namely *S(ъ)varožicь, the supreme deity of the local pantheon (dii quo- rum primus Zuarasici dicitur).6 None of the other gods and goddesses at the shrine at Riedegost is identified by name or function. The reader is only given to understand that the idols housed in the shrine were multiple: (2) In the region of the Redarii, there is a burg called Riedegost, which has three corners and three doors. It is surrounded everywhere by a great for- est, which the inhabitants hold to be inviolable and holy. […] In the burg, there is nothing other than a skillfully made wooden shrine supported on a foundation composed of the horns of different types of animals. Marvelous sculpted images of gods and goddesses adorn its outer walls… Inside, stand gods made by human hands, each with a name inscribed and frightfully clothed with helmets and armour. Among them, Zuarasici 3 The Wars of Justinian VII.14.22-30. In: Procopius in Seven Volumes, with an English transl. by H.B. Dewing, vol. 4 (London and New York: W. Heinemann, 1924), 269–273. 4 Including a trizna-like funeral feast and, interestingly, a ritual which looks like the Hindu sa- hamarana rite (‘dying in company with’): a custom whereby a/the widow of a deceased man ritually kills herself (or is killed) at her husband’s funeral and thereby becomes satī.