According to Rhys[13] many churches dedicated to Mary were built on spots where tradition speaks of the discovery of a wooden image, probably a heathen statue which was connected with her.
In the seventh century Pope Sergius (687-701) expressly ordered that the festivals of the Virgin Mary were to take place on heathen holy days in order that heathen celebrations might become associated with her[14]. The festivals of the Virgin to this day are associated with pilgrimages, the taste for which to the Frenchman of the Middle Ages appeared peculiarly German. The chronicler Froissart, writing about 1390, remarks ‘for the Germans are fond of performing pilgrimages and it is one of their customs[15].’
Mary then, under her own name, or under the vaguer appellation of Our Lady (Unser liebe frau, Notre Dame, de heilige maagd), assimilated surviving traditions of the heathen faith which were largely reminiscences of the mother-age; so that Mary became the heiress of mother-divinities, and her worship was associated with cave, and tree, and fountain, and hill-top, all sites of the primitive cult.
‘Often,’ says Menzel[16], ‘a wonder-working picture of the Madonna is found hung on a tree or inside a tree; hence numerous appellations like “Our dear Lady of the Oak,” “Our dear Lady of the Linden-tree,” etc. Often at the foot of the tree, upon which such a picture is hung, a fountain flows to which miraculous power is ascribed.’
In the Tyrol we hear of pictures which have been discovered floating in a fountain or which were borne to the bank by a river[17].
As proof of the Virgin Mary’s connection with festivals, we find her name associated in Belgium with many pageants held on the first of May. Throughout German lands the Assumption of the Virgin comes at the harvest festival, and furnishes an occasion for some pilgrimage or fair which preserves many peculiar and perplexing traits of an earlier civilization.
The harvest festival is coupled in some parts of Germany with customs that are of extreme antiquity. In Bavaria the festival sometimes goes by the name of the ‘day of sacred herbs,’ kräuterweihtag; near Würzburg it is called the ‘day of sacred roots,’ würzelweihtag, or ‘day of bunch-gathering,’ büschelfrauentag[18]. In the Tyrol the 15th of August is the great day of the Virgin, grosse frauentag, when a collection of herbs for medicinal purposes is made. A number of days, frauentage, come in July and August and are now connected with the Virgin, on which herbs are collected and offered as sacred bunches either on the altar of Our Lady in church and chapel, or on hill-tops which throughout Germany are the sites of ancient woman-worship[19]. This collecting and offering of herbs points to a stage even more primitive than that represented by offerings of grain at the harvest festival.
In a few instances the worship of Mary is directly coupled with that of some heathen divinity. In Antwerp to this day an ancient idol of peculiar appearance is preserved, which women, who are desirous of becoming mothers, decorate with flowers at certain times of the year. Its heathen appellation is lost, but above it now stands a figure of the Virgin[20].
Again we find the name of Mary joined to that of the heathen goddess Sif. In the Eiffel district, extending between the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, a church stands dedicated to Mariasif, the name of Mary being coupled with that of Sif, a woman-divinity of the German heathen pantheon, whom Grimm characterizes as a giver of rain[21]. The name Mariahilf, a similar combination, is frequently found in south Germany, the name of Mary as we hope to show further down being joined to that of a goddess who has survived in the Christian saint Hilp[22].
These examples will suffice to show the close connection between the conceptions of heathendom and popular Christianity, and how the cloak of heathen association has fallen on the shoulders of the saints of the Christian Church. The authorities at Rome saw no occasion to take exception to its doing so. Pope Gregorius II. (590-604) in a letter addressed to Melitus of Canterbury expressly urged that the days of heathen festival should receive solemnity through dedication to some holy martyr[23]. The Christian saint whose name was substituted for that of some heathen divinity readily assimilated associations of the early period. Scriptural characters and Christian teachers were given the emblems of older divinities and assumed their characteristics. But the varying nature of the same saint in different countries has hardly received due attention. St Peter of the early British Church was very different from St Peter who in Bavaria walked the earth like clumsy good-natured Thor, or from St Peter who in Rome took the place of Mars as protector of the city. Similarly the legends currently told of the same saint in different countries exhibit markedly different traits.