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![A drawing of the Elder Futhark inscription from the Ring of Pietroassa (3rd or 4th century), read as gutaniowi hailag (gutani[o]wi hailag). The seventh letter, here substituted as o (o), was destroyed when the ring was cut in half by thieves in 1875. The reading of the damaged part is disputed, but it is clear that the inscription begins with the name of the Goths (Gutani) and ends with the word for "holy, sacred" (hailag). Pietroassa Inschrift.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Pietroassa_Inschrift.jpg/250px-Pietroassa_Inschrift.jpg)
Gothic paganism was the original religion of the Goths before their conversion to Christianity.
The Goths first appear in historical records in the early 3rd century and were Christianised in the 4th and the 5th centuries. Information on the form of Germanic paganism practiced by the Goths before Christianisation is thus limited to a comparatively narrow and sparsely-documented time window in the 3rd and the 4th centuries.[ citation needed ]
The centre of the Gothic cult was the village or clan (Kuni) and the ritual sacrificial meal held by the villagers under the leadership of the reiks . The reiks saw themselves as the guardians of ethnic tradition. That was expressed starkly in the Gothic persecution of Christians in the 370s in which the reiks Athanaric saw his privilege threatened by the new religion. He responded by the persecution of converted Goths but not of Christian foreigners. According to the Passio of Sabas the Goth, Sabas was executed for professing Christianity or rather for refusing to sacrifice to the tribal gods, and his companion, the priest Sansalas, was let go because he was a foreigner.[ citation needed ]
After the Goths had settled in Scythia in the 2nd century, it is probable that a process of ethnogenesis was set in motion, and that most of the "Goths" of the 3rd and the 4th centuries were not in fact descended from Scandinavia but, much as was the case with the "Huns" in the following century, consisted of a heterogeneous population, which was united under the name of "Goths" by virtue of having submitted to the elite that was formed by the ruling dynasties of the reiks.[ citation needed ]
Gothic religion was purely tribal in which polytheism, nature worship, and ancestor worship were one and the same. It is known that the Amali dynasty deified their ancestors, the Ansis (cognate with Old English ēse, Old Norse æsir ), and that the Tervingi opened battle with songs of praise for their ancestors.[ citation needed ]
The gradual Christianisation of parts of the Gothic population came to a turning point in the 370s. A civil strife between the Christian reiks Fritigern and the pagan reiks Athanaric prompted Roman military intervention on the side of the Christians, which led to the Gothic War (376–382). In 376, the Romans allowed a number of ostensibly-Christian Goths, including bishops and priests, to cross the Danube and to be granted asylum.[ citation needed ]
The English word god itself is cognate with the Gothic word guþ for a pagan idol, presumably a wooden statue of the kind paraded by Winguric on a chariot when he challenged the Gothic Christians to worship the tribal gods. It became the word for the Christian God in the Gothic Bible with its grammatical gender changed from neuter to masculine only in the new sense.[ citation needed ]
The name of the Goths themselves is presumably related and means "those who libate", and guþ "idol" is the object of the act of libation.[ citation needed ]
The words for "to sacrifice" and for "sacrificer" were blotan and blostreis, which were used in Biblical Gothic in the sense of "Christian worship" and "Christian priest".[ citation needed ]
One peculiarity that separates Gothic religion from all other forms of early Germanic religion is the absence of weapons as grave goods. Pagan warrior graves in Scandinavia, England and Germany almost invariably contained weapons until the practice was discontinued by Christianisation, the pagan Goths do not seem to have felt the need to bury their dead with weapons. That may have arisen from the fact that weapon burials began to become prominent among pagan peoples in the 5th and the 6th centuries, possibly as a method of permanently establishing prestige upon certain families by burial ritual in a period of a heightened economy and increased intergroup competition, thus well after the Goths' Christianisation. [1]
A Gothic belief in witches is attested with the story of the haliurun(n)ae (compare Anglo-Saxon hellrúne ), who were expelled from the tribe by King Filimer and later mated with evil spirits and gave birth to the Huns, who eventually destroyed the Gothic Empire. Wolfram compares the rejection of necromancy or witchcraft by the Goths to the pagan Scandinavian rejection of the seiðr of Finnic sorcerers or shamans. [1]
Very little can be said with certainty regarding the individual gods worshipped among the Goths.
In the light of comparative evidence from later forms of Germanic paganism, it seems likely that the "Germanic trinity" of Wodanaz , Tīwaz , and Þunraz may have had a parallel among the Goths, with the names Gaut, Teiws, and Fairguneis. [1]
The Goths had a cult of a god of war, identified by the Romans with Mars, presumably cognate to the Proto-Germanic Tīwaz , perhaps called *Teiws in Gothic, on the basis on the corresponding letter names.[ citation needed ]
Among the Tervingi, perhaps also known as the Terwing, the tribe's mythical, eponymous ancestor, possibly related also to the Týrfingr lost sword legend, 'the finger' of the god Týr, which on touch caused sudden death to its enemies.[ citation needed ]
There was also Gaut or Gapt, the ancestor of the Amali dynasty and presumably eponymous of the entire people of the "Goths". It is unclear whether this deity should be considered independent of those that were just mentioned or if it is only another name by which either of them was also known.[ citation needed ]
Old Norse Gautr in later centuries served as another name for Odin in Scandinavia. It may also be significant that in the Prose Edda, Odin himself is said to have come to the north from the Black Sea region, referred to as Turkland, the lands that some believe were formerly and later inhabited by some ancestors of the Goths. If Gapt was the original "ansic" ancestor, which was later identified with Odin, the Gothic letter name *ansuz (aza) may testify to his importance, but that does not imply that Gaut can be assumed to have had the same attributes typical of Odin in the Viking Age. [ citation needed ] These may be echoes that hark back to an older influence from many centuries earlier in which it is visible in the archaeological records the introduction of steppes elements from the Yamna Culture among the earliest Germanic cultural horizon, which giving birth to the Corded Ware Culture from the Copper Age.[ citation needed ]
Another important god may have been called *Fairguneis (pronounced [fɛːrguːniːs] ), identified by the Romans as Jupiter and presumed by modern scholars to be Thor, but that relies on the accuracy of the Romans' interpretation of Gothic religion.[ citation needed ]
The Gothic letter enguz may indicate the existence among the Goths of the god Ingwaz, an older name for the god Freyr, but there is no other evidence for that.[ citation needed ]
Finally, the Danube River may have also been deified as *Donaws.[ citation needed ]
The Goths were Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe.
The Ostrogoths were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I, the new Ostrogothic political entity which came to rule Italy was formed in the Balkans under the influence of the Amal dynasty, the family of Theodoric the Great.
Paganism is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".
The Visigoths were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied barbarian military group united under the command of Alaric I. Their exact origins are believed to have been diverse but they probably included many descendants of the Thervingi who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and Alaric's Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410.
Yule is a winter festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples that was incorporated into Christmas during the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples. In present times adherents of some new religious movements celebrate Yule independently of the Christian festival. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the heathen Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht. The term Yule and cognates are still used in English and the Scandinavian languages as well as in Finnish and Estonian to describe Christmas and other festivals occurring during the winter holiday season. Furthermore, some present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others may have connections to older pagan Yule traditions.
Slavic mythology or Slavic paganism is the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century. The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Balkan Peninsula during the 6th–7th centuries AD, bordering with the Byzantine Empire to the south, came under the sphere of influence of Eastern Christianity, beginning with the creation of writing systems for Slavic languages in 855 by the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius and the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 864 and 863 in Great Moravia. The East Slavs followed with the official adoption in 988 by Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus'.
Old Norse religion, also known as Norse paganism, is a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peoples. It was replaced by Christianity and forgotten during the Christianisation of Scandinavia. Scholars reconstruct aspects of North Germanic Religion by historical linguistics, archaeology, toponymy, and records left by North Germanic peoples, such as runic inscriptions in the Younger Futhark, a distinctly North Germanic extension of the runic alphabet. Numerous Old Norse works dated to the 13th-century record Norse mythology, a component of North Germanic religion.
The Germanic peoples underwent gradual Christianization in the course of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By AD 700, England and Francia were officially Christian, and by 1100 Germanic paganism had also ceased to have political influence in Scandinavia.
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germany, and at times other parts of Europe, the beliefs and practices of Germanic paganism varied. Scholars typically assume some degree of continuity between Roman-era beliefs and those found in Norse paganism, as well as between Germanic religion and reconstructed Indo-European religion and post-conversion folklore, though the precise degree and details of this continuity are subjects of debate. Germanic religion was influenced by neighboring cultures, including that of the Celts, the Romans, and, later, by the Christian religion. Very few sources exist that were written by pagan adherents themselves; instead, most were written by outsiders and can thus present problems for reconstructing authentic Germanic beliefs and practices.
Gaut is an early Germanic name, from a Proto-Germanic gautaz, which represents a mythical ancestor or national god in the origin myth of the Geats.
The Amali – also called Amals, Amalings or Amalungs – were a leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire during the decline of the Western Roman Empire. They eventually became the royal house of the Ostrogoths and founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom.
Gothic Christianity refers to the Christian religion of the Goths and sometimes the Gepids, Vandals, and Burgundians, who may have used the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language and shared common doctrines and practices.
The Ring of Pietroassa or Buzău torc is a gold torc-like necklace found in a ring barrow in Pietroassa, Buzău County, southern Romania, in 1837. It formed part of a large gold hoard dated to between 250 and 400 CE. The ring itself is generally assumed to be of Roman-Mediterranean origin, and features a Gothic language inscription in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet.
Sabbas the Goth was a Christian martyr venerated as a saint.
The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries.
The Greuthungi were a Gothic people who lived on the Pontic steppe between the Dniester and Don rivers in what is now Ukraine, in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Tervingi, another Gothic people, who lived west of the Dniester River. To the east of the Greuthungi, living near the Don river, were the Alans.
The pagan religion of the Germanic tribal confederation of the Franks has been traced from its roots in polytheistic Germanic paganism through to the incorporation of Greco-Roman components in the Early Middle Ages. This religion flourished among the Franks until the conversion of the Merovingian king Clovis I to Nicene Christianity, though there were many Frankish Christians before that. After Clovis I, Frankish paganism was gradually replaced by the process of Christianisation, but there were still pagans in the late 7th century.
Reiks is a Gothic title for a tribal ruler, often translated as "king".
The name of the Goths is one of the most discussed topics in Germanic philology. It is first recorded by Greco-Roman writers in the 3rd century AD, although names that are probably related appear earlier. Derived from Proto-Germanic *Gutōz ~ *Gutaniz, it is closely related to and probably means the same as the names of both the Geats of southern Sweden and Gutes of Gotland. The implications of these similarities, and the actual meaning of the Gothic name, are disputed in scholarship. Although the Goths have disappeared as a people, their name has survived in various appellations up to the present day.
Haliurunas, haljarunae, Haliurunnas, haliurunnae, etc., were Gothic "witches" who appear once in Getica, a 6th century work on Gothic history. The account tells that the early Goth king Filimer found witches among his people when they had settled north of the Black Sea, and that he banished them to exile. They were impregnated by unclean spirits and engendered the Huns, and the account is a precursor of later Christian traditions where wise women were alleged to have sexual intercourse and even orgies with demons and the Devil.
