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 Microelius (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, {444} 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.
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