JULIN, THE DROWNED CITY.
(Vol. ii., p. 282.)
It does not at all follow, that if a city perished by the encroachment of the sea, it was a very striking event at the time: it might have happened gradually, not suddenly. Instances both ways seem to have occurred on the shores of the German Ocean (see Lyell's Principles of Geology, ch. 16.). A great flood happened in 1154 (Helmold, p. 216. b. ii. c. 1. s. 5.), but it is mentioned with respect to the oceanic rivers only, and not as to the Baltic, or destruction of houses or buildings.
But was Julin drowned at all? Helmold does not say that it was (his account is in Book i. c. 2. s. 5.); and he does say that it was not, but destroyed by a certain Danish king. It is most inconceivable that he should not have known who the Danish king was, if it happened in his own time. The passage savours of much later interpolation.
Koch, Rivol. vol. i. p. 280., states positively that Julin was Wollin, and was destroyed by Waldemar I. in 1175, for which he seems to rely upon Helmold, or at least his continuator, Arnold. Helmold himself died in 1170.
Saxo Grammaticus lived at that time, and was probably well acquainted with the events, since he was intimate with Archbishop Absolon, who took part in them in a military as well as ecclesiastical sense. In p. 333. he says:
"Waldemar the 1st, goes with a fleet through the month of the river Zwina, then to the river which adjoins Julin and Camin, and has its mouth divided into two. There was a long bridge joining the walls of Julin. The king having landed 'ex adverso urbis in ripa Australi, pontem disjici jussit.' The king cleared the way for his fleet; got to an island Chrisztoa; crossed the river and went to Camin. He went out to sea by that mouth."
This is given very much at length.
All this is the geography of the present day, and the names, if you read Wollin for Julin. The Oder expands into a wide lake, shut off from the sea by a bar of land, through which there are three channels. The Zwein is the middle one of the three; that which passes by Wollin and Kimmin is the eastern one.
In p. 347. he says:
"Rex ... classem ... Zuinsibus ostiis inserit, Julinique vacuas defensoribus ædes, incendio adortus, rehabitatæ urbis novitatem, iterata penatium strage, consumpsit.... Juilinenses, cum urbis uæ recenses ruinas, ferendæ obsidioni, inhabiles cernerent, perinde ac viribus orbati, deserta patria, præsidium Caminense petiverunt, aliena amplexi mœnia, qui propria tueri diffiderent."
In p. 359. he says: The king "per Suinam invectus, Julinum oppidum, incolarum fugâ desertam, incendio tentat."
Saxo mentions Julin, p. 182-24.: "Nobilissimum illius provinciæ oppidum," under Harold Blatand, King of Denmark, who reigned in the latter half of the ninth century. He put a body of troops into it, who became dreadful pirates.
In p. 225. he says that the Danes compelled them to give up their pirates, who were punished. In p. 381., in the reign of Canute, son of Waldemar, there is an expedition against the Julinenses, the result of which is expressed "Julinensium rebus absumptis."
In p. 382., the king sets out for Julin, but seems to have attacked only Camin. Waldemar died in 1182, Canute, 1202 (Koch.)
Arnold (b. iii. c. 8. s. 4.) speaks of the Sclavi as finally subdued and made tributary, about 1185.
In the notes to Saxo (p. 197.) there is a long extract about Wollinum, from Chytræus, a writer who lived 1530-1600, taken from the information of a learned old man whose uncle was born there. He says he went there to see, accompanied by many of the principal inhabitants, the remains of Julin, destroyed in 1170 by Waldemar. Wollin he calls "mediocris civitas." From the ruins, it had been more than a German mile round. Part of it was "ineditiore paulum colle." He speaks of four montes, which had castles. He says Wollin is "non aspernenda civitas," but not a thirtieth part of the ancient size.
C.B.
I regret that my questioner V., from Belgravia (Vol. ii., p. 379.), should have felt aggrieved that, upon his request for my story, I should have been compelled to reply, in the words of the Ancient Mariner:
"Story! bless you, sir, I have none to tell."
As he seems, however, so assured that some account of the destruction of a city of such opulence and renown as Vineta must exist, I shall be extremely happy to learn it from him. I can assure my friend V. that neither Kanzow nor Micrœlius (who has, however, a plan of the stone pavement of its streets at the bottom of the Baltic), nor Giesebrecht, in his Wendische Geschichten (Berlin, 1844, 3 vols. 8 vo.), know anything beyond what I have stated. And as to a great port disappearing in the ocean, without any cotemporary notice, the instances are frequent; as remarkable a one as any occurs in our own island, and at a much later period:—Ravenspur, which was a sea-port of the greatest importance, where certainly Henry IV., and, as some say, Henry VII., landed from the opposite continent, to claim and conquer their crowns, and where the father of De la Pole,
Duke of Suffolk, was a merchant, is now so totally lost from memory and the earth, that its very site is unknown, whether within the Humber, or outside the Spurn; possibly where now the reef called Stony Binks at the mouth of that æstuary is situated.
So far, however, as an actual legend is concerned with the destruction of a great emporium of commerce, I am happy I can supply your correspondent with one, possibly the more acceptable as it is of another famous city, not very remote from Vineta, and is not without relations belonging to the latter: I allude to the town of Wisby, Visbuy, Visbye, Visburgum, on the island of Gothland, of which the following account is found in an old Latin description of Sweden:
"Insulæ unica civitas, olim potentia splendore et magnitudine celebris, tantarum rerum jactura fracta in exiguos fines se contraxit et oppiduli speciem refert, ut Jansonii Atlas docet. Arx prope portum satis valida. Emporiis illis Pomeraniæ clarissimis Wineta et Julin pessum euntibus, Visbya inter omnia Regionum oppida floruit. (Olaus Magnus, l. 10. cap. 16.) Licet urbs vetustissima Visbycensis potentissima ac opulentissima quondam fuerit et pro minima occasione, nempe fractionis unius fenestralis vitri vix valoris obolaris, humiliata sit, tamen leges maritimæ et decisiones omnium controversiarum singulariter longe latèque observantur. Ex distructa autem Vineta Gothlandos incolas marmor, ferrum, cuprum, stannum, argentum, et inter alia duas ænei portas grandis ponderis petiisse, et secum in Gothlandum avexisse ferunt."
I need not remind your readers that the maritime code of Wisby even now influences many of the most important decisions affecting our present mercantile shipping, it having been the model of the Laws of the Acquitanian Islands of Re and Oleron, which Richard I. ordered to be observed in England, and which are still frequently acted on. It is, however, to the notice which I have marked in Italics that I would call the attention of V.,—the destruction of the city on account of a small pane of glass not the value of an obolus: and as he, no doubt, has interested himself on these northern histories, request him to explain the circumstance more in detail. I myself have often determined on searching Pontanus, and other ancient Danish authorities, but hitherto neglected, and therefore know nothing about the matter.
As to the gates, which are more especially mentioned amongst the spoils of the ruined Wineta, we find them also noticed in the same work, at its account of Wineta:
"Urbem frequentabant Græci aut potius Russi multarumque aliarum nationum mercatores, quorum affluxus frequens civibus ingentes divitias et facultates conciliavit: adeo ut portæ civitatis ex ære paratæ, et argentum tam vulgare ibi esset ut ad communium et vilium rerum usum adhibetur."
To go, however, completely into the history of these gates would require a volume. It would be necessary to commence with the great veneration for gates in general throughout the north: whether the name of their great god Thor (a gateway) is cause or consequence would have to be considered, and his coincidence, in this respect, with Janus and Janua, the eldest deity of the Italians, which I have more largely discussed in an Essay on a British Coin with the Head of Janus, in the 21st No. of the Journal of the British Archæological Association. Next, the question would arise, whether these gates have not been migratory, like those of Somnauth, which Mahmoud took to Gazni from a similar principle of deeply-rooted ancient veneration,—relics of sanctity rather than trophies of victory, and which Lord Ellenborough was so unjustly ridiculed for endeavouring to restore. Thirdly, therefore, also whether the famous gates of the cathedral of Novogorod may not be identical with those which have successively adorned Vineta's and Wisby's portals; and whether those which are still the ornament of the west door of the cathedral of Hildesheim, (which, according to the inscription which crosses their twenty scriptural bas-reliefs, were cast by Bereward, the thirteenth bishop, in 1015), may not be an existing and beautiful example; as is the bronze column, with the bas-reliefs of passages of the New Testament winding round it, and placed in the same cathedral close. It would not be too much to surmise, that even the beautiful gate of the Florence baptistery are from the same atelier, as an old Italian author sings:
"O Germania gloriosa,
Tu vasa ex aurichalcis
Ad nos subinde mittes."
WILLIAM BELL, Phil. D.