Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

Fig. 41.—ALTAR TO THE SOLAR-GOD, NIMES.

When Constantine led his legions against Maxentius, he professed to have seen a sign in the heavens, and he believed it to be a token of Christ’s assistance. What he really saw was a mock-sun. He adopted and adapted the sign for his standards, and the Labarum of Constantine became a common Christian symbol. That there was policy in his conduct we can hardly doubt; the symbol he set up gratified the Christians in his army on one side, and the Gauls on the other. To the former it was a sign compounded of the initial letters of Christ, to the latter it was the token of the favour of their solar deity. An addition Constantine certainly made to the six-rayed wheel, but it was not one that materially affected its character.

Among the Sclavonic races in like manner the sun was worshipped, and worshipped with symbols precisely the same.

Fig. 42.—THE LABARUM.

The solar god of the Sclaves was Swanto Wit or Swato Wit, i.e., Holy Light. The sun was the chief god of the Sclaves, and as the cock crows before sunrise and announces the coming day, the cock was regarded as sacred to the god, and sacrificed to it. The worship of this god consisted in circular dances, called kolos, and the dance was taken to represent the revolution of the planets, the constellations, the seasons about the sun. An old writer says of the dances of Swanto Wit that they were celebrated annually on the feast of St. John the Baptist, that is, on Midsummer Day. “Benches are placed in a circle, and these are leaped over by those who take part in the rite. No one is allowed to be present dressed in red. The entire month that precedes St. John’s Day, the votaries are in an excited condition, and in carrying on their dances they fall a prey to nervous terrors.”[41] Another writer tells us that they swung about a fiery wheel in their dances, a symbol of the solar disc.[42]

In the Bavarian highlands, where the mountain names are many of them of Sclavonic origin, and testify to a Sclavonic race having occupied the Alps, this is still customary. The midsummer dances, and the whirling of fiery wheels, are still in vogue. It is the same elsewhere. A writer on the customs of the Sclaves says: “They give each other a hand, and form a circle, whence the name of the dance, kolo = a circle, or wheel. They take three quick steps or leaps to the left, then a slow stride to the right; but when men alone dance it, after the three quick steps, they stand, and kick with the right leg into the middle of the circle. When the dance is accompanied by singing, one portion of the circle sings one strophe, and the other repeats it. The Sclave dance is most wild; and the same is found among the Carinthians and the Croats.”[43] In Dalmatia and Croatia, on St. Vitus’ Day the peasants dance, holding burning pieces of fragrant wood in their hands.

In the reign of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, the Abbot Fulrad obtained the relics of St. Vitus, a boy-martyr, from Rome, and conveyed them to St. Denis. When the Abbey of New Corbey was founded in Saxony, Warin, the abbot, wrote to Hilduin of St. Denis, to entreat the gift of these relics for his church. Accordingly, in 836, they were conveyed to their new resting-place in Saxony. In 879, the monks of Corbey started on a mission to the Sclaves in Rügen and Pomerania, carrying with them a portion of the relics of St. Vitus. They erected a chapel in Rügen, which they dedicated to the saint. The attempt failed; and when, later, the Rugians were converted, the missionaries supposed that the Swanto Wit, whom they found them worshipping, was this very St. Vitus, in Sclave Swante Vit, whose relics had been laid in Rügen. When, in 1124, Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, laboured for the conversion of the Pomeranians, he took with him a figure of a cock and a silver arm that contained bones of St. Vitus. The Pomeranians reverenced the cock as a sacred being, and when Otto appeared before them, holding up the cock and the silver arm, they prostrated themselves to the cock, and he was gratified at having thus inveigled them into doing honour to the relics of St. Vitus.

Saint Wenceslas, Prince of Bohemia, in 930 destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit at Prague, and erected on its site a church to Swante Vit, i.e., St. Vitus.

When Ancona was besieged by the Christian host under Waldemar I., a prophecy circulated that the city would fall into their hands on St. Vitus’ Day. So it did, and Waldemar at once destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit in the city, and on its ruins erected a church to Swante Vit.