Prussian Entreaties

While most of the religious sources on the site are Slavic, it behooves us to look at some neighboring tribes as some of the religious vocabulary of theirs shows potentially remarkable connections.

Starting with the pagan Prussians we have the so-called Treaty of Christburg (modern Dzierzgoń) from February 2 or 7, 1249 between the Teutonic Knights and the Prussians.  The Treaty ended (if only briefly) the Prussian resistance to the Teutons (the so-called First Prussian Uprising).  The text of the treaty contains some interesting religious references with the mention of:

• a Prussian Deity by the name of Kurcho
• Prussian diviners that is Tulissones and Ligaschones 

Old Prussian fortress walls at Dzierzgoń

The actual treaty text resided in Konigsberg and appeared (as Urkunde number 191) Friedrich von Dreger’s 1748 Codex diplomaticus.  The section that interests us reads as follows regarding the requirements imposed on the “neophytes,” that is the Prussian new Christian believers/converts:

“They will refrain from making the annual harvest offerings which had been given to the Deity they call Kurcho or to all the other Deities for verily they are not the creators of heaven and earth.  The Prussians promised too to remain faithful servants of the Catholic Church.  They promised also to refrain from reliance on the auguries of the diviners who are called tulissones and ligaschones for those are but simple charlatans and liars.  They call evil good since at burials they honor the dead for their sinful [lifetime] deeds such as robberies and murders.  These diviners raise their blades up high and shout that they see the dead in the heavens riding on a horse clad in shining armor in the company of other warriors.  It is with such fantasies hat they deceive the people.  The Prussians promised to expel these seers from amongst their people.”

Codex diplomaticus. Oder Uhrkunden, So die Pommersch-Rügianisch- und Caminische, auch andere benachbarte Lande angehen. Aus lauter Originalien oder doch archivischen Abschrifften in chronologischer Ordnung zusammen getragen, und mit einigen Anmerckungen erläutert.

Curiously, the Germans conducted extensive architectural digs at Dzierzgoń (then still Christburg) looking for Teutonic tribes.  They found signs of habitations dated (by them) to the beginning of the first millennium B.C.  They also gratuitously vandalized a few of the local trees with swastikas which can be seen even till this day.

Now most probably think that the Polish swear phrase kurczę blade really does refer to a pale chick and is used in lieu of using something worse.  But perhaps some of that is actually incorrect… There are also the word kruche meaning something that is “brittle” and kurgan which is a Turkic word or so they say.

Interestingly, this mention of a Prussian Deity predates the Polish Yassa, Lada, Nia by some one hundred and sixty years.