Chapter IV: Introduction (2)

It is therefore not too much to assume that they have been brought to Europe and disseminated by the same agency. These sectaries alone came into direct contact with the masses of the people. They preached their doctrines to the lowly and the poor. They were known themselves as the pure (Cathars) and the poor (Pobres). They alone reached the heart of the people, and were able to influence them to a far higher degree than the murderous Mongols, or other nations that ravaged the country.

The dualistic tales connected with the story of the Creation are found also among other nations, especially among those in Russia and in the countries which belonged to the ancient Persian Empire. Dähnhardt, who has made the investigation of such legends and tales the object of special study (Natursagen, i.; Berlin 1907), comes to the same conclusion that they rest ultimately on the Iranian dualism of the Avesta. He believes that Zoroastrian teaching has penetrated far into the North and West, and has produced these peculiar dualistic cosmogonic legends.

The point to bear in mind in this investigation of the origin of the Rumanian tales and legends is not so much to trace the remote possible source of dualism, but the immediate influences which have been brought to bear upon the shape which these legends have taken. This is the salient problem. Dähnhardt, of course, discusses the further development of the dualistic conception, through Manichaeism and Bogomilism, and thus far is helpful in establishing the connection between Iran and Thrace, and in strengthening the argument that we must trace a number of these "creation" legends to the propaganda of these sects.

It must be remembered that these tales in the European versions have a thoroughly Christian aspect. They presuppose the existence of God and His saints; nay, they show a close acquaintance with apocryphal narratives, which have gathered round the canonical biblical stories and episodes. The Evil Spirit is a clearly-defined personality, and his antagonism to God is not of the pronounced acute controversial type as is the Angromainya who, in the teaching of the Avesta, is the direct opponent and almost negative of God.

A complete transformation had taken place ere these tales became the property of the Rumanian peasants, and for that, also, of the Russian and other North-Eastern peoples, who also have similar tales akin to certain of the cosmogonic legends--to which reference will be made at the proper place in the short notes to the stories themselves. It will not be disputed that some of them are imported, i.e. belong to the circulating stock of popular literature. Mongolian influence--as already remarked above--is entirely excluded, in spite of Dähnhardt. The Mongols never came in direct contact either with the Rumanians or with the nations of the Balkans, who also possess a number of similar tales, and must have derived them from another source, more direct and, as will be seen, more complete than the versions published by Dähnhardt from Russia, Lithuania, Finland and Esthonia, not to speak of Northern Asiatic nations. Of real animal tales there are only a few among those studied by Dähnhardt, such as a peculiar version of "the Bee and Creation," very much shorter than the Rumanian version; then a version of the creation of the Wolf and the Lamb, and of the Goat's knees. These are all taken by Dähnhardt from South-Slavonic and Albanian collections, again corroborating the view that we have to look to the Balkans as the immediate centre of this class of "creation" tales, and then further back to Asia Minor.

The appearance of the "Creation" legends in a compilation of the seventh or eighth century is not to be taken as the date of their origin. They may be very much older, and no doubt are, and may have formed part of a primitive Physiologus in which the origin as well as the peculiarities of the various birds and beasts were described. This is not the place to discuss the remarkable history of the Physiologus. The only point to be noted is that the symbolical and allegorical interpretation of the tales contained in the Physiologus is of a strictly religious Christian character.

The absence from the popular literature of such bird and beast tales as are found in the Physiologus--the Bestiaires of the West--is not surprising, for the Physiologus deals mostly with animals and birds which are of an outlandish character. Very few have any reference to the animals with which the people are familiar, and in which alone they take an interest.

Though the book was known also among the Rumanians, only a faint trace of it could be detected among the popular tales in the present collection. The oldest Fathers of the Church made use of this Physiologus in their homilies, and the other sects have no doubt done the same. Some of the creation legends may have found their way into the old legendary homiletical interpretation of the creation, like the Hexameron of Basil, and other kindred compilations. All these tales form part of a wider cycle of allegorised animal fables. In Jewish literature a collection of Fox fables is mentioned as early as the second or third century.

Indian literature is full of such animal tales, approximating often to some of the Rumanian fables. The collections of Frere, Temple, Steele, Skeat, and Parker abound in such animal tales, in which the more nimble and quick-witted, though small and weak, animal regularly gets the best of the bigger and stronger, yet duller and slower rival. No moral lesson is squeezed out of the tales, and the animal is not a thinly-disguised human being. Yet there can be no greater fallacy than, guided by this similarity, to assume a direct Indian origin for the Rumanian fables.

None of these animal tales finish with the usual "moral," known to us from Aesop onward. Nor do the people seem to be influenced by these artificial fables. In the literary European fable the animal is merely a disguised human being. The animals are performing acts which have nothing of the animal in them. The Indian and Oriental fable differs in this respect from the European, inasmuch as in a good number of them the animal character of the performing beasts is faithfully preserved. Exactly the same happens with the Rumanian animal fables. The cat does not play the rôle of the queen, and the fox is not a sly courtier. Cat is cat, and fox is fox. And yet they were not unaware of the fables of Aesop. I have found these fables in many old Rumanian manuscripts, and one of the first printed popular books of the country was the Collection of Aesop.

Unquestionably a good many proverbs are intimately connected with tales. The "moral" in Aesop has often dwindled down to a simple proverb, or has expanded out of it. These proverbs are, as it were, succinct conclusions drawn out by the people. Anton Pann (in the middle of the last century)--to whom the Rumanian popular literature will for ever remain indebted--therefore calls his Collection of Proverbs and Tales "Povestea vorbii," i.e. "The tale which hangs by the Proverb." One and all of the hundred tales found in the second and last edition of this book are mostly of a purely popular origin. The process throughout is not to invent a story for the moral, but the "moral," such as it is, is to flow naturally from the story.

This is not the place to discuss the origin of the animal fable in general. But one cannot overlook the fact that all the Indian fables--with the exception of some embodied in the Panchatantra--are found in modern collections. All that we know of them is that they live actually in the mouth of the modern people. They may be old, they may be of more recent date.

Against these modern collections must be set now the story of Ahikar, which carries us back at least to the fifth century B.C., and is thus far the oldest record of animal tales. It has become one of the popular stories which circulated in a written form, and became the source of many a quaint proverb, as probably also of some animal tales.

The recent discovery among the Papyri of Elephantine in Southern Egypt of the Story of Ahikar has carried back the knowledge of allegorical beast fables to at least the fifth century B.C. For not only do we find in that story the prototype of the life of Aesop, but also a number of maxims and saws, and not a few beast tales, which are mentioned by Ahikar in order to teach his ungrateful nephew Nadan. We find there, e.g. the prototype of "pious" wolf, who appears in the Ahikar story as an innocent student, but who cannot take in the lesson given to him, his mind wandering to the sheep. There are other wolf, fox, rat and bird fables in the Rumanian and, still more so, in the Oriental and other versions. Ahikar himself relates the beast tales, allowing Nadan to draw the lesson. By the manner in which these tales are referred to, it is obvious that they must have been well known tales current among the people.

The real importance of this discovery lies in the fact that we have here a number of cleverly-used popular animal tales, more than two thousand years old, whose home was in all probability Syria or Egypt, embedded in a collection which has deeply influenced the apocryphal Book of Tobit, and to a certain degree even the writers of the New Testament, as shown by Professors Rendel Harris and Conybeare in the Introduction to their edition of the Story of Ahikar (second edition). The claim for an Indian origin of these fables will have to be abandoned, unless someone could show older writings from India, and the possible road by which these fables could have reached the Western shore of Asia Minor and been taken up by the peoples of Syria and Egypt at such an early date. It is not at all unlikely that some of the fables, just as they travelled westwards, also travelled eastwards and found a home in India as they found a home in Rumania and Russia. If one remembers now that the fabulous "Life" of Aesop ascribed to Planudes is almost identical with part of that of Ahikar, as I have shown, as far back as 1883 in my History of the Rumanian Popular Literature (Bucharest 1883, p. 104 ff.), it will not be difficult to account for the West-Asiatic origin of the fables themselves.

From a Rumanian MS. of the eighteenth century, I have since published the fuller narrative of that version in an English translation (the Journal of the Royal As. Soc., 1900, pp. 301-319). The two tales contained therein have also been reprinted here at the end of the collection, especially as they vary somewhat from the other ancient and mediæval recensions of the Story of Ahikar. This story has become one of the Rumanian popular chap-books in the shortened version of Anton Pann. The practical application of the fable, the "moralisation," is a second stage, limited, as it seems, to the purely literary composition. The people put their own interpretations upon the fables and often dispensed with any such interpretations.

We are brought back again to the same centre, Syria and Byzance, for the dissemination of these fables. Such tales were then within the reach of the teaching of the various sects, such as Manichaeans, Bogomils, Cathars, etc., and travelled with them from East to West, where they met the other current of the Aesopian fables transmitted to the West through Latin and Arabic sources. According to this theory the religious sectarians made deft use also of animal tales, for the purpose of inculcating a moral, of drawing a lesson, of holding up the Church and State to the ridicule and contempt of the masses, and thus creating the animal satire, the best type of which is the cycle of Reynard the Fox. I am not oblivious of the fact that an allegorical use has been made of animal tales in the Arabic literature, such as the "Judgment of the Animals," under the title of Hai ben Yokdhan, written in Arabic by Ibn Tophail, translated into English by Simon Ockley in 1711, in which the lion holds a court, and animal after animal appears to accuse man; or the collection of Sahula (thirteenth cent.) in his ancient apologue Mashal ha-kadmoni. But there is no real connection between this cycle and that of Reynard the Fox.

Any reference to the epic of Reynard the Fox must be incidental. It can only be alluded to here, and not followed up in detail. A real Western origin for these tales, taking them separately or as "branches," as they appear in the old French versions, has not been found, nor any explanation for their sudden appearance in the eleventh or twelfth century.

There are two or three points in connection with this cycle which have to be kept steadily in view. In the first place its almost complete independence of the purely Aesopian fable with its polished form, with its thinly-disguised human attributes, and with its stilted and stiff "moral." Though modified somehow in Babrius, Avianus, even Marie de France and Berachya, this latter cycle belongs more to the literary class. The "clerks" could not take umbrage at them. Not so the tales in the Reynard cycle. They are thoroughly popular. The animals retain their natural attributes, they act as they are expected to do, and they are utilised in the same manner as "political broadsides" were in later times. The human beings represented in these "satirical sheets" are disguised as animals, and not the animals disguised as human beings. There lies the profound difference between these two sets of beast tales.

And because of their animal propensity, the human beings are ridiculed and lampooned in the form of animals and held up to the scorn and laughter of the reader. The bad man, as in the old story of Ahikar, is likened to the beast, and chastised accordingly. The popular origin and character of this kind of satire is self-evident. Courtiers and clerks would not attempt such persiflage of their superiors, and certainly not in so sustained a manner.

Of the men thus ridiculed none are so virulently assailed as the Clergy. People do not mind occasionally a slight skit on priests and other privileged classes, and there are abundant fabliaux which leave very little to be desired from the point of view of ridicule. But to have singled out the Clergy for such unmeasured vituperation shows a deliberate attempt to lower and destroy the influence and authority of the Church in general and of its ministers in particular. Only partisans of heterodox teaching could find pleasure and profit in applying the beast tales to break down the walls of the Church. Only men in contact with the masses could throw that leaven of critical examination into the hearts of the people and open their eyes by means of animal tales to the weaknesses and vices of their official clergy. Such outspoken criticism seldom comes from within. It is often imported wholesale from without, or at least comes from an opposing quarter. In their polemical propaganda these heterodox teachers brought and used also some of those fox tales for which, significantly enough, parallels are to be found mostly in Slavonic tales from Russia and the Balkans.

If such be the partial origin of these Reynard tales, one can easily understand why they appeared in the eleventh or twelfth century, and notably in the countries then the very centres of such heterodox teaching: South of France, Flanders and elsewhere. A very remarkable fact seems to corroborate this hypothesis. One of the presumed authors of a "branch" of the French Reynard cycle, Pierre Cloot, was burnt in Paris in 1208 for heresy. Here we have a man who paid with his life for his heretic faith, actually working on these tales. It may be a mere coincidence, still some connection between the Reynard poem and "heretics" cannot be denied.

With the victory of the Church, Reynard nearly disappeared, yet that satirical leaven has continued to work in those political animal broadsides, which stretch from the "Who killed Cock Robin?" in England to "Who killed the Cat?" in Russia among the Russian broadsides.

There remains now still one section of these Rumanian tales to be considered, that in which the origin of the animal is closely connected with what is commonly known as the fairy tale. It is just in this fact that the pre-eminence of these tales can be found. It is like a window through which the East is looking westwards. It is noteworthy that the "fairy tales" found here connected with the origin of the birds and beasts do not stand so isolated as the legends. To more than one of them parallels may be adduced from other than Eastern collections. In spite of similarity, they differ, however, in many points so profoundly that they lead to a very serious question. It cannot be passed over, though it cannot be treated here at such length as the problem raised would demand. To put it briefly, the difference between these fairy tales and those of the West, is that in these versions of the former a "moral" or perhaps a plausible reason is given to the fairy tale which is often missing in the general form of the fairy tales.

The question has been asked repeatedly, "What is the meaning of such and such a tale," e.g. the "Cinderella" tales or "Bluebeard"? To Miss Cox's indefatigable labour we owe a monumental investigation of the first-mentioned tale, and yet for all that the main question has remained unanswered. This is but one example out of many.

Every collection of fairy tales teems with them. Of course, the æsthetic pleasure of seeing innocence triumphant and virtue rewarded might be a sufficient motive, and no doubt often is. The people like to see, in the imaginary tale, a vindication of the justice which they often miss in real life. The adventurous hero will also appeal to the chivalrous instincts of the people, and especially to the young. Such tales as the epic romances of old require no further explanation. Still there are a good many fairy tales the reason and meaning of which are anything but clear. If it can now be shown that there is a cosmogonic background, or one which gives the clue to it, inasmuch as it tells the "origin" of certain creatures, such a tale is at once its own explanation and justification: if e.g. the final development of "Cinderella" is not that she becomes the wife of a prince, but that she becomes the "dove" or the "sparrow," then "Cinderella" assumes a definite meaning. Under other influences, when such heterodox teachings cannot be tolerated by the powers that be, obviously the creation tales, with this specific character, had to lose their "tail," as the stork does in the story, and hence the fairy tale became partly meaningless. Thus, if the "Bluebeard" could no longer be "a cannibal," as in the tale No. 83, such a person not being tolerated in a modern state, except as a wizard, lycanthropos, or werwolf, he had to be changed into what he is now. The modern "Bluebeard" is a mere pale reflex of the original monster. He does not even make the flesh creep sufficiently. This watering down may have taken place also in other tales which appear to us without any sense. They have lost that decisive part which gave point to the story.

I am fully aware of the objection which could be raised against this view of the original character of some of our fairy tales. It might be urged with some show of plausibility that the process might have been an inverse one, that the popular story-teller used a fairy tale to tack on his moral, that the question of the origin of the bird or insect was an "after-thought," and did not belong originally to the tale. Theoretically, such an objection could be urged, and it might even gain in force if applied to the fairy tales of the West. Andersen, not to speak of minor poets, would supply a proof of it. But we must bear in mind that we are dealing with the unsophisticated people, who would not use the folk-lore material in the manner of the literary artist. They have no preconceived idea to which a tale or legend is made artificially to fit. Moreover, these tales and legends are believed in implicitly. They bear the stamp of their primitiveness. They do not represent a later degree of development, such as the parallels from the West often show. The existence side by side with them of other creation tales of animals is an additional support of the view that the fairy tales have not been "edited" or adapted to cosmogonic purposes to explain the origin of beast and bird.

Fairy tales are, as a rule, taken out of the range of the survival theory. The similarity of fairy tales, so striking among a large number of nations, precludes the possibility of seeing in them local survivals, and yet it appears unscientific to separate one section of oral literature from the other. The line of demarcation between creation legend and creation fairy tale is so thin that it is often indistinguishable. Both spring from the same root, and the theory that endeavours to explain the origin of the one must also be applicable to the other.

In the theory of survivals, however, no attempt is made to deal at the same time with the question of origins. It has not yet been made clear, by any of the more prominent representatives of the theory of survivals, how the similarity in customs and ceremonies is to be explained, in tales and fables, between the most diverse nations living separated from one another. If these survivals represent local tradition, which has persisted throughout the ages, how, then, does it come to pass that they should resemble so closely other ceremonies and customs observed by different nations also as local traditions? Is it to be inferred that at some distant time, far back in the prehistoric ages, some such ceremonies were used, that, in spite of evolution and separation, they have survived everywhere almost unchanged, in spite of the profound modifications of the nations in their ethnical, political and religious status? Either they are local inventions, in which case they could not resemble any other, or they all go back to one common stock, and have survived in such a miraculous manner contrary to every law of human nature. The only explanation feasible and satisfactory is, I believe, the theory of transmission from nation to nation; those resembling one another closely in modern Europe are not of so early an age as has hitherto been assumed, but have come at a certain time from one definite centre, and were propagated among the nations, and disseminated by means of a great religious movement at a time when the political and national consolidation of the peoples of Europe had already assumed a definite shape.

To this conclusion we are forced by the examination of these Rumanian animal tales in their manifold aspect, "creation" tales, fables, fairy tales. They are all more or less of comparatively recent origin. They owe their actual shape to the dualistic teaching of the Manichaeans and Bogomils. They have come by these intermediaries of the religious sects from Syria and the Balkans. These tales stopped first among the nations in the Near East, and then by the same agency were carried to the extreme West. Only in such wise can we explain the appearance of these tales--whatever their archaic character may be--among nations of comparatively recent origin like those now under consideration, Rumanians, Bulgars, Russians and even Saxons and Hungarians. This is the only possible explanation of the very remarkable dualistic character, and of the peculiar teachings embodied in these tales. For, whatever these nations have in common, there cannot be any question of survivals, for the reasons advanced above. All the nations are comparatively modern. It is impossible to assume that what might be a Latin survival among the Rumanians could be so closely connected with what might be a Turanian survival among the Bulgars or a Pelasgian survival among the Albanians. There might be found among these tales traces of more ancient beliefs, myths and customs, just as it is possible to find similar traces among the folk-lore of the nations of the West. But what I contend is that these are not local survivals--that, whatever their primitive character may be, they need not originally belong to the nations among whom they are found now. They were brought by the same movement that brought the tales and legends, customs and ceremonies. The new and the old were carried along by the same stream of tradition and religious influence. An adjustment and readjustment of materials, the placing of layer upon layer, localisation and assimilation then took place. But these are rocks swept along by the stream and deposited far away from the place of origin, or, to take another simile, that of the insect and the amber. The amber has been carried from the North Sea many centuries ago, nay, thousands of years ago, along the trade routes from North to South, and has found its way also to ancient Egypt. Embedded in the amber we have here and there a North European insect which was caught at the time when the amber was still a liquid, and, imprisoned in it, became fossilised, and was carried a long distance. If found, then, among the beads in the tombs of the ancient Pharaohs, no one could say that that insect was of Egyptian origin, or that fly a remnant of the local fauna. It had come thither together with the amber that carried it, and may have remained there if the amber had decayed.

In the same manner ancient customs, ancient beliefs and ancient tradition have been caught in the liquid tales, apologues and legends, like the fly in the amber, and carried along with them from East to West. In this manner they may perhaps be termed survivals, but survivals of a different kind than has been assumed hitherto. They have survived only as long as they were tolerated in the lore of the people.

Hand in hand with dissemination go the assimilation and localisation of these diverse elements. It is impossible to do more within the compass of this introduction than merely touch the fringe of a far-reaching problem which arises from the examination of these peculiar beast and bird tales. One of the most instructive examples of this religious syncretism, of the manner in which it has influenced the people, and the form in which it has been preserved, localised, and assimilated, among them, is shown to advantage in the stories of the origin of the Glow-worm and in the stories of the Bee. Some of the cosmogonic legends of the Rumanians are also found among the Balkan people. They are a fragmentary reflex of a great conception of the world. If I may use the mystical and symbolical language of the legends, they are also sparks from a great light that had fallen down from heaven. The creation of man, the fall of the angels, are here curiously blended together. They represent part of the teaching that went under many names but, in essence, was one. That is, of course, the belief in the dualism of the creative powers, the good God and the wicked one, styled Satan.

From these tales and legends, which are derived from well-known apocryphal writings, we can see how deeply the latter have entered the life of nations which have not yet fallen under the unifying sway of strict dogmatism, and how unable the people are to grasp the higher spiritual interpretations of the dogmas and practices of the Church.

From a purely dogmatic point of view, all these tales are rank heresy; but who among the simple folk knows the distinction between orthodox and heretical teaching? The people are more easily disposed towards a simple philosophy which explains satisfactorily the phenomena of life. They listen with pleasure to tales of imagination. One of the fundamental theories of Gnosticism or, rather later, of dualism, is this peculiar conception of the creation. The world is divided between the power of light and the power of darkness. The latter is anxious to participate in the possession of light, and for that reason steals some, which it breaks up into sparks and covers over with thick matter so that it may not escape. These sparks are the human soul deeply embedded in human clay, anxious always to be reunited with the ancient glory.

In this Gnostic teaching we have the very source of the legend of these angelic sparks now relegated to glow-worms, originally placed in other "earthly worms"--the human race. We hear, moreover, the faint echo of the fall of the angels and of the angels of a lower rank inhabiting (and ruling) the planets and the stars. We even have the legend, found in the Book of Enoch, of the angels who fell in love with a woman and remain upon earth as evil spirits, whilst she is translated to heaven and becomes a star. The interest lies not only in the fact that these ancient religious conceptions have been so faithfully preserved among the people, but also in the manner of their preservation. They have been adapted to the understanding of the folk, and, from dogmatic teachings, they have become beautiful popular legends. But the inner meaning has been entirely lost. The old sparks have been embedded in very thick clay indeed, as can be seen in the treatment meted out to God, Christ, the Virgin, the Apostles and Saints. They are greeted with an apparent lack of reverence and respect that must disturb the equanimity of people of a Puritanic mind. The gods could not have been put on a footing of greater familiarity; it almost borders on the burlesque. Primitive nations show the same apparent want of respect to their gods, idols or fetishes, and we are inclined to put them on a lower scale of faith and reverence than the peoples of Europe.

A better knowledge of the life and religion of the peoples in the East and of the Eastern part of Europe would soon change such a view. In fact, I believe, that if we could descend to the lower depths of the masses of Western Europe, and especially of those in Catholic countries, and get a peep into their innermost soul, we should not find it very different from that of the Slav and the Rumanian. The Saints are not treated differently in Spain and in Italy on the one hand, or in Rumania and in Bulgaria, or even Russia, on the other. They have all the same essential conditions in common, viz. all have a Pantheon of Saints of various degrees and of both sexes. In Protestant countries the people have been impoverished. All the saints have been driven away; a cold abstract spirituality has taken their place, and yet depth of fervour and strength of belief cannot be denied to these Eastern peoples. There is, moreover, a sufficient fund of humour and innate rectitude to keep them at a certain level of morality and albeit free from the hypocrisy of the so-called higher civilization. So that, if the Rumanians take liberties with God and the Church and the Saints, and pay homage to the Devil by mocking and laughing at the jokes which God performs for his confusion, it is all done more in the spirit of good-natured banter, not in that of polemical or fanatical intolerance. Why should the poor Devil not also occasionally have a good time? He is always sure to be outwitted in the long run.

I am fully aware of the objection that may be raised against attributing so much influence to the activity and propaganda of the heretical sects. It may be argued, that their influence was not in any way commensurate with the results ascribed to them, that they did not carry the masses with them to such an extent as to leave indelible traces on their religious life and popular imagery. Some may go so far as to look upon their activity as similar to that of some of the mendicant friars during the Middle Ages. Yet the mendicant friars were able to exercise a tremendous influence upon the people and, helped by other political powers, they were able to create a movement which led up to the Crusades. It seized upon the masses of Europe with an irresistible force. In a minor, yet no less effective manner, the same agencies were able to arm the Kings of France against the Albigenses in Provence. Church history, however, shows very clearly that the power of the Manichaeans was so great that it has taken the Church many centuries to bring the fight to a satisfactory close.--The Cathars (pure) have given the name Ketzer to the German heretics, and every language in Europe shows traces of this heretic nomenclature.--The struggle was a terrible and a long one, and if it had not been for the secular arm which placed itself at the service of the Church for political reasons, who knows whether the Romish Church would have come out victorious in the struggle?

The question may be asked, How did it come about, that the teaching of an obscure sect could be propagated from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and could win the support of so many peoples? The answer lies in a fact which has hitherto been entirely ignored. The connection between Arianism and Manichaeism in Europe has to my mind not yet been even hinted at; yet there must have been a very close and intimate one. Arianism, in fact, prepared the ground for the new wave of heretical teaching which, a few centuries after the former's official extinction, followed in its wake. No one has, as yet, endeavoured to trace the effect which the Arian teaching has had in Europe when it became the national faith of the Goths. In them we have a nation which, from the third century to the end of the sixth, practically dominated central Europe. It established more than one kingdom between the Black Sea and the Atlantic, in Illyricum, in Northern Italy, one of might and strength in the South of France in Provence, with its headquarters in Toulouse. It had overflowed into Spain, and broke down only after the invasion of the Arabs. These Goths are described as rude barbarians, because they differed in their life, and probably in their original forms of faith, from the Greeks and the Romans. The modern idea is that their original home was somewhere in the North-West of Europe, that they came along the Vistula, and then migrated to the country between the Don and the Ural.

This is not the place to discuss the question of their original home, yet the whole history of the migration of the nations shows that the movement came also from the same direction as that of the other nations which followed upon one another from east to west, and that these migrations were prompted by tremendous political changes among the nations of Central Asia. It is therefore probable that the Goths migrated from the western shore of the Caspian Sea, somewhere near Lake Ascanius--hence the confusion--then to the countries between the Ural and Don, and thence by slow degrees southwards and westwards. This would explain many obscure points in the migration of the Goths. Be it as it may, we find them in the second century settled in those very countries in which we now find the Ruthenians and the Rumanians, and stretching further into Pannonia. The Goths are said to have adopted Christianity towards the end of the third century, as it is alleged, by priests and lay Christians brought as captives from Cappadocia and other parts of Asia Minor. As early as the Council of Nicæa, 325, a Gothic bishop is mentioned among the signatories to the decrees. An outstanding figure of the Gothic Christians was Ulfilas, who, owing to pressure from the non-converted section of the Goths, crossed the Danube and settled at the foot of Mount Haemus (the Balkans) in the middle of the fourth century. He had become converted to the Arian doctrine, and took part in the Council under the Emperor Valens, which was held in Constantinople in 358.

Theodosius, who became the Great after his recantation of Arianism, towards the end of the fourth century, promulgated decree after decree, one more drastic than the other, for the persecution and extirpation of this heresy; in fact, he was the very first to establish an inquisition of faith. The example set by Theodosius was followed afterwards by the Catholic Emperors and Kings of the West, even down to the Holy Office, as the Inquisition was afterwards called. But, in spite of this, Arianism spread among the Goths, and, whatever were their political vicissitudes, they kept staunch to this peculiar form of Christianity, the greatest and most powerful enemy of the orthodox and Catholic Church. They spread eastwards and westwards, partly as vassals of the Huns and partly acting quite independently under their own kings and rulers. They overran the Balkan peninsula, destroying every heathen temple, and not sparing Catholic churches. They then sacked Rome, entered Gaul, and occupied the South of France, with Toulouse as the capital. They spread into Burgundy and conquered Spain. It took many battles and many centuries to break the political power of the Goths. It was rather the subtle influences of the Catholic women than religious conviction that brought about the conversion to Catholicism of the Gothic rulers in Spain and Italy. The Catholic Church, in the year 507, armed the Frankish King Clovis--who adopted Catholicism--against the Gothic Arian King Alaric, and thus brought about the first "crusade" between Catholics and heretics in the country north of the Pyrenees. A crusade was to be renewed hereafter for a second time against the Albigenses in the very same country and against the very same cities. Unfortunately very little is known of the beliefs and practices of the half-heathen, half-Christian Goths. The fact, however, remains that they held on to their faith for many centuries in spite of the official conversion of the leaders. In Burgundy, Arianism persisted down to the sixth century, and among the Lombards (merely another tribal name for Goths) in Northern Italy, it persisted to the eighth century.

Meanwhile, other nations poured into the Balkans. Whether they entirely annihilated the Goths, or whether they assimilated with them, will remain a problem unsolved. Very few Gothic words can, however, be traced among the nations of the Balkans. The Slavs, probably coming from Pannonia, are first noticed in large numbers in the fifth and the sixth centuries. The Bulgars from the old haunts of the Goths near the Volga came in the seventh century. The last heathen king was Boris, who was converted to Christianity in the middle of the ninth century. No sooner has Christianity an official status among the Bulgars than we hear of the heresy of the Bogomils and Cathars spreading among them to such an extent that they almost overthrew the orthodox Church. The break between the eastern and western Churches--between Constantinople and Rome--at the end of the ninth century also contributed, in a way, to weaken the allegiance of the faithful to the orthodox Church, and the manner in which the Orthodox vilified the Catholics must have been quite sufficient to reconcile the people to heterodox doctrines. Manichaeans and Bogomils took advantage of the schism and the violence of the two parties to win the people over to their tenets. Bogomilism in a slightly varied form, as Cathars and Albigenses, etc., spread henceforth from east to west, following exactly the same course as that taken by the Goths in their migration from east to west. The ground had been prepared for them, the seed had been sown, and the work was made easy for them by the preceding Arians.

There is one feature in this schismatic movement, the importance of which cannot be appraised too highly. The Word of God was taught in the vernacular, the Bible and, along with it, uncanonical writings, were translated into the vernacular. While the Orthodox and Catholic Churches kept strictly to Greek and Latin as the language of Scripture and Service, the Arians no doubt, on the contrary, allowed the people to pray and to learn in their own language. It was the outstanding merit of Ulfilas that he translated the Bible into Gothic. This practice of translating the word of God into the vernacular remained a distinctive characteristic of the schismatic Arians and other sectaries. They were thus able to reach the heart of the people much more easily than the Catholic and Greek clergy, and to exercise a lasting influence upon the masses, far deeper than that of the representatives of a creed taught in a foreign tongue. This also continued to keep the Arian-Goths away from the Catholic Church for many centuries. The change, which came later on, was due to two causes--the conversion of the kings and rulers, and, to a far larger degree than has hitherto been recognised, the loss of the Teutonic language. The Goths slowly forgot their own language and adopted that of the nations in whose midst they lived as a minority.

This explains much more satisfactorily than has hitherto been attempted the mysterious disappearance of the Goths after the official conversion of Recared in Spain, and the overthrow of Alaric by Clovis in the beginning of the sixth century in the South of France. In Italy they kept to their Arianism under the name of Lombards, down to the eighth century. It must not, however, be assumed that with the public disappearance of Arianism and that of the Goths as a ruling nation, the Arian heresy and all that it brought to the people had also disappeared. That teaching could not easily be uprooted. It was merely driven underground. The Catholic Church was satisfied with having obtained an official public victory. Then followed a slow process of extirpation. The writings of the schismatics were hunted up and destroyed, and thus the wells of heresy were dried up. The people were weaned from their errors by the convincing power of sword and faggot. But so long as these sinners did not belong to the higher classes, the Church winked at their aberrations, especially when they kept quiet and were not aggressive in their action.

Thus the fire of heresy smouldered on under the ashes of the autos-da-fé until it was fanned again into a mighty blaze through the Cathars and Albigenses. The ground was prepared for their reception by the Arianism of the Goths, and by the Manichaean propaganda, which had penetrated into Europe from the West as early as the fourth century.

It is important in this connection to refer, however briefly, to the Priscillianites in Spain, who flourished from the middle of the fourth to the second half of the sixth century, close upon two hundred years. The founder was Priscillianus (d. 385) a man of noble birth and great achievement. He was a great scholar, and had become acquainted with Gnostic and Manichaean doctrines. He was accused of heresy, and was the first Christian who was executed by Christians for preaching a different form of creed. The accusations made against him and his followers were precisely the same which were raised centuries afterwards against the Cathars and Albigenses, and no doubt just as false. From them we learn, however, that he had apocryphal books and mystical oriental legends, which he used for his teaching, and which were believed by his followers. It took two, or close upon three centuries, before the public traces of Priscillianism disappeared from Spain and Gaul. The followers, probably, shared the fate of the Gothic Arians settled in these countries. Then the conquest of Spain by the Arabs or Moors prevented the Catholic Church from further sifting the chaff from the grain. No doubt a good number of so-called heretics, who could not enter the bosom of the Catholic Church, embraced Islam, just as a good number of prominent Cathars in Dalmatia and Bosnia preferred to become Mohammedans after the conquest of the country by the Turks rather than become united with the Orthodox Church. When the Cathars started their propaganda, they followed, as it were, in the track of the Goths. They occupy exactly the same tracts of land as those held for so many centuries by the former, and without a doubt they found there remnants of the old heresy, popular legends and beliefs, even tales and mystical as well as mythical songs, all so many welcome pegs on which to hang their own teaching. It may in a way have been a kind of revival, in which what had been preserved by the descendants from the Goths of old was blended with the new matter brought afresh from the East. Unfortunately--as already remarked--too little is known of the beliefs and practices of the Goths in their pagan state and afterwards as Arian Christians. That they, in spite of being "rude barbarians," had also some theological treatises is evident from Anathema No. 16 of the Council of Toledo (589), when Recared forswore his Arianism and became a fervent Catholic. The anathema runs against "the abominable treatises which we composed to seduce the provincials into the Arian heresy." Many such compositions, especially in the vernacular, must be meant here; they all fell under the ban.

The Cathars followed the same practice and were zealous propagators and translators of the Bible and Apocrypha into the vernacular. They knew the Bible so well that in disputations with the Catholic clergy the latter were easily beaten. Almost every one of the "forbidden" books, i.e. forbidden by the Orthodox and Catholic Church, was preserved in old Slavonian (and Rumanian) translations, and some are to be found this very day among the holy books of the Russian schismatics. Nay, even the oldest French translation of the Bible was the work of Albigenses. So much did this affect the Catholic Church that she excommunicated it, and forbade the people to read the Bible at the Council of Toulouse in 1229; the Bible in the vernacular having before been ordered to be burned publicly by the decree of the Church.

No wonder, therefore, at the popularity of these sectaries and the immense influence they wielded upon the popular mind and imagination. And if it be true that Arius set forth his religious views in doggerel rhymes to be sung to popular tunes by the sailors and labourers, then he initiated a movement which has continued ever since in religious minstrelsy, and is practised amongst others, by the Russian blind beggar-minstrels and other popular ballad singers on festive occasions among the Rumanians and southern Slavs. Nothing, in fact, could better serve the purpose of propaganda than such songs. They would appeal at once to the primitive, unlettered nations, specially amongst those who had such mythological epics of their own. The rude barbarians would be deeply impressed, and they would very easily adopt such songs and the teaching they contained. We can then easily understand a Volsunga Saga or a similar saga originating under such influences, or moulded in accordance with such new models. Neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic Church knows of such popular religious songs of an epic character, filled with the mysteries of the Holy Writ, much less of any filled with mysteries from the apocryphal and legendary writings. They have no more than Church hymns sung in the Church, only on special occasions, together with a certain psalmody chanted by the officiating clergy. And when these Greek (or Syriac) hymns were translated into Slavonic or Rumanian, they practically lost their tune and their inspiration, and they were recited with a peculiar monotonous cantilation. Quite otherwise were the popular carols, and the popular epic ballads with a distinctive religious background and full of wonderful incidents from the life of the saints. Unlike the former, they are not congregational litanies, but purely popular songs and ballads, devoid of any official or liturgical character. This may also explain the origin of the so-called Ambrosian chant as an attempt on the part of St. Ambrose of Milan to counteract the other popular chants by introducing, as it were, congregational singing into the Church. But there it remained, whilst the other spread and has retained its original popular character. Thus, through Gothic Arianism, a certain continuity of the dualistic and peculiar schismatic form of religious teaching has been established.

Moreover, an historic explanation has been found for the origin and spread of these doctrines, tales and fables. Put to the test, these beast tales yield a dogmatic system which approximates in many points to such heterodox teaching. The old Ebionite conception of Jesus, taken up by Arius and afterwards adopted by the Manichaeans, sees in him only a deified human being, and very little more can be found in these tales. Jesus is seldom mentioned, and even then is more like a deified all-powerful human being. God Himself is often treated as a simple human being, almost like the Ialdabaoth of the Gnostics or the inferior God of the Manichaean doctrine. With this, agrees also the notion of the dualism in the creation of the world, i.e. that the evil creatures, wolves, poisonous snakes, etc., are the work of the Evil One. This was also the view held by the Priscillianites. There seem to be, also, reminiscences of such myths as "the world tree," the wolf, etc., which are found in Teutonic mythology and which may also be of an Oriental origin. The Rumanian tales are almost a running commentary on Grimm's German Mythology (Germ. 4th ed. 1876, ch. xxiii. pp. 539-581), which ought to be read in conjunction with the present volume. The legend of the Cuckoo, the hoopoe referred to by Grimm, can be read here under No. 43.

It is significant that there is not a trace of Mariolatry in these tales and fables. If anything, St. Mary appears in a character far from loveable. She is easily offended, she does not spare her curses, she takes umbrage easily at the slightest mishap. She is altogether very disagreeable, just as in the apocryphal literature, where there is not much room for her. Her intercession is invoked only in some Rumanian charms and spells in a peculiar stereotyped form. But of real worship there is scarcely any trace. Quite different is the position which the Catholic Church assigned afterwards to St. Mary. She has become there second to none outside the Trinity.

More prominently almost than any of these points, stands out the fact that, underlying these creation and other tales, is the belief in the transmigration of the human soul into an animal body--the well-known belief in Metempsychosis, or change of human beings into animals, so important a feature of Manichaean teaching, in which all the heretical sects seem to have shared.

It is impossible now to follow this question further. I am satisfied to have indicated the rôle which the Goths may have played in the preparation for the dissemination of special myths and legends, branded as heretical, which other sectaries had brought from the East and propagated in the West of Europe.

As to possible ethnical and geographical continuity, it may be remarked that the places where these tales are found were also the homesteads of the Goths, in which they dwelt for at least two or three hundred years. They were then after a short interval almost supplanted by the Slavs. It is a moot point how long the Rumanians have dwelt there, and when they were converted to Christianity. Not a single old Teutonic word has hitherto been found in the Rumanian language. Any direct contact or convivium of any length of time is thus excluded. The tales may have been remnants carried along from Illyricum across the Danube by the new missionaries of the dualistic doctrine. The problem would be less intricate if we only knew anything definite about Gothic heathen and Christian mythology.

With the Cathars and Bogomils we are on more solid ground. This new stream of similar traditions was brought by a similar religious movement and was propagated by identical means--viz. writings and songs in the language of the people, legends and tales and a simple creed understood by all.