Cisa (goddess)

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Cisa (Cysa, Ciza, Zisa) is an alleged goddess who is said to have been worshiped in Augsburg .

Lore

The goddess is mentioned in several medieval sources (12th-14th centuries). The uniform text in the various books is referred to as an extract from a Gallic story ( excerptum ex Gallica historia ). Also Melchior Goldast took over the text almost verbatim. In the pseudo-historical text, which describes an alleged victory over the Romans, the worship of the Suebi goddess Cisa is mentioned. Augsburg is said to have been named Cizaris after her . According to the sources, the goddess had a barbaric wooden temple and her own feast day, this Cize , which was celebrated with games and merrymaking, on the 59th day after August 1st, i.e. on September 28th.

reception

In addition to Goldast, other authors have also processed the text, according to the clergyman Küchlin in his praise for Herkommen der Stadt Augsburg (around 1440) in honor of the Augsburg mayor, Peter Egen:

they built a temple big in it
to eren Zise of the idolatrous.
which they according to pagan customs
adore to the same quotes

The mountain on which the temple stood was called Zisenberk after Küchlin .

In his mythological handbook published in 1826, the librarian Christian August Vulpius (1762–1827) cited Ciza as the Sorbian goddess of fertility and “as Cisara a kind of Ceres among the Vindelicians” , who had an altar in Augsburg. At their feast, grain was poured into vessels.

Religion research

Jacob Grimm printed the medieval texts in his fundamental work, German Mythology . Although he found that the medieval text was riddled with "incurable contradictions", he believed the account of Cisa:

"But all the nonsense it contains does not negate the value of the strange tradition for us."

Grimm tried to establish a connection with the Isis mentioned by Tacitus and came to the conclusion that Cisa was probably the feminine form of Ziu . He interpreted the peculiar name Cisara for Augsburg as * Cisae ara, "Cisa's Altar". In the addendum he mentions other place names that could be named after the goddess, including the Rhaetian Zizers .

Later researchers agree that the pseudo-historical text with its anachronistic contradictions simply has no trustworthy source value and that the goddess Cisa should therefore be "deleted from the beliefs of the ancient Germans" .

In neo-pagan circles, Zisa is sometimes viewed as a historical goddess.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Küchlin: Herkomen the stat of Augsburg, ed Ferdinand Frensdorff.. In: The Chronicles of the German Cities Volume 4. Leipzig 1865, pp. 343–356, here p. 347.
  2. ^ Christian August Vulpius: Mythology of the German, related, neighboring and Nordic peoples ; Lemma Ciza
  3. ↑ Jacob Grimm: German Mythology (1835)
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Golther: Handbook of Germanic Mythology .

Books

  • Jacob Grimm: German Mythology (1835). (License edition 1992: ISBN 3-922383-68-8 )
  • R. Kohl: The Augsburg Cisa - a Germanic goddess? In: Archive for Religious Studies 33 (1936), pp. 21–40.
  • Rudolf Simek : Lexicon of Germanic Mythology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 368). 3rd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-520-36803-X , p. 67.