CHRISTIAN TOLERANCE OF THE CULT OF WATER.
Throughout the West the cult of water was flourishing along with the cult
of trees and stones when Christianity found its way to Europe. The holy
wells which were then plentiful have since changed their names, but a few
have still retained their old names. Thus there is or was a spring called
Woden’s well in Gloucestershire, which supplies water to the moat around
Wandswell Court, also a Thor’s Well, or Thorskill, in Yorkshire. When the
faith and usages of the Celtics and the Anglo-Saxons came in contact with
Christianity, together with the still older faiths and customs which the
Celt and Teuton had continued or allowed to continue, the new religion
did not distinguish between the various shades of beliefs and usages.
It merely treated all alike as pagan. Kings, Popes and Church Councils
issued edict after edict condemning non-Christian practices. Let us cite
some of these. The second Council of Arles, held about the year 452,
issued the following canon:
“If in the territory of a bishop infidels light torches
or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects
to abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of
sacrilege.”
King Canute in England and Charlemagne in Europe also conducted vigorous
campaigns against these relics of paganism. Here is an extract from
Charlemagne’s edict:
“With respect to trees, stones, and fountains, where certain
foolish people light torches or practise other superstitions,
we earnestly ordain that the most evil custom detestable to
God, wherever it be found, should be removed and destroyed.”
It was too much, however, to hope for the total eradication of those
faiths and customs of age-long existence. Pope Gregory was not slow to
realize this, as will be seen from the following extract from his famous
letter to the Abbot Mellitus in the year 601:—
“When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most
reverend Bishop Augustine our Brother, tell him what I have,
upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English,
determined upon, namely that the temples of the idols (_fana
idolorum_) in that nation (_gente_) ought not to be destroyed;
but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water
be made and sprinkled upon the said temples, let altars be
erected and relics placed. For if these temples be well built,
it is requisite that they may be converted from the worship of
devils (_dæmonum_) to the worship of the true God; that the
nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove
error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God
may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have
been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter
many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be
exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of
the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose
relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts
of the boughs of trees about those churches which have been
turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity
with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil
(_diabolo_), but kill cattle to the praise of God in their
eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their
sustenance.”
Thus did the early Christian missionaries come to regard the old phase
of water-worship tenderly. Adopting what they could not abolish, they
blessed the waters of holy wells and used them for baptism of converts
and erected chapels or oratories near by or placed an image of the
Virgin, or some saint, near sacred trees and rivers or over holy wells
and fountains. Thus did the new faith which aimed in principle at the
purity of Christian doctrine permit in practice a continuance of pagan
worship under Christian auspices. Curious was the result. Under the
transformation of beliefs thus unconsciously wrought the simple-hearted
Christians beheld in brilliant images of the virgin and the saints fresh
dwelling-places for the presiding deities of the waters whom they and
their forefathers had venerated in the past. The belief in the miraculous
power of water became linked with the name of _Madonna_ or some saintly
messenger of God and so enduring was this combination that it gave a new
lease of life to the old beliefs.
One by one the old ideas and customs which were firmly rooted in the
multitude came to be absorbed into Christianity. A dual system of belief
thus sprang up and this is very strikingly reflected in the supplication
of an old Scottish peasant when he went to worship at a sacred well:
“O Lord, Thou knowest that well would it be for me this day an
I had stoopit my knees and my heart before Thee in spirit and
in truth as often as I have stoopit them after this well. But
we maun keep the customs of our fathers.”[18]
What is true of well-worship is true of other phases of nature-worship.
A vivid picture of the result of the Christian tolerance of paganism
has been drawn by Grimm in the preface to the second edition of his
Teutonic Mythology. For our present purpose it will suffice to quote
from it only two or three sentences which have a direct bearing on the
question of water-worship: “Sacred wells and fountains,” says he, “were
rechristened after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred. Law
usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating
of bounds, consecrations, image processions, spells and formula, while
retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in Christian
forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice
of sprinkling a new-born babe with water closely resembled Christian
baptism.”
This reference to adapted pagan rites in connection with the baptismal
ceremony recalls the words in which Mr. Edward Clodd in _Tom Tit Tot_
traces the early beginnings of the order of the Christian clergy to a
prehistoric past. “The priest who christens the child in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” says he, “is the lineal descendant, the
true apostolic successor of the medicine-man. He may deny the spiritual
father who begot him, and vaunt his descent from St. Peter. But the first
Bishop of Rome, granting that title to the apostle, was himself a parvenu
compared to the barbaric priest who uttered his incantations on the hill
now crowned by the Vatican.”
“We think with sympathy,” continues Mr. Clodd, “of that ‘divine honour’
which Gildas tells us our forefathers paid to wells and streams; of the
food-bringing rivers which, in the old Celtic faith, were ‘mothers’; of
the eddy in which the water-demon lurked; of the lakes ruled by lovely
queens; of the nymphs who were the presiding genii of wells.”