What Religion Did the Slavs Follow?

Short answer

The Slavs of the early Middle Ages practiced a polytheistic religion, often called Slavic paganism or Rodnovery (in modern revival usage), centered on a sky god associated with thunder and lightning (Perun in East Slavic, Perkūnas in Lithuanian, Perun in South Slavic), a chthonic deity associated with the underworld and the cattle (Veles or Volos), and a great mother goddess (Mokosh or Baba). The religion was tied to a complex of ritual practice: sacred groves, ritual feasts, ancestor veneration, and seasonal festivals. The Slavic world was Christianized in the ninth and tenth centuries, partly through the Byzantine mission of Cyril and Methodius and partly through the Frankish and German missions to the western Slavs.

The Sources for Slavic Religion

The earliest evidence for the religious practices of the Slavs comes from Greek and Latin sources of the sixth and seventh centuries, which describe a polytheistic, ritual-based religion. Theophylact Simocatta, Procopius, and the chronicler of the missionary work of the brothers Cyril and Methodius all describe religious practices of the Slavs. The most detailed pre-Christian Slavic religious source is the Chronicle of the Slavic Peoples by Helmold of Bosau (c. 1170), which describes the religion of the Slavic peoples of the Elbe and Baltic region in the twelfth century. The Primary Chronicle of Kievan Rus (c. 1113) contains substantial information about the religion of the East Slavs before the conversion of 988, including the famous account of the attempted pantheon of Vladimir of Kiev in 980.

A particular problem in reconstructing the Slavic religion is the heavy Christian and anti-pagan polemic of the sources. The Christian missionaries, who are the principal transmitters of the pre-Christian material, had every reason to misrepresent the Slavic cults in the most negative possible terms. The Slavic religion, in the surviving descriptions, appears to have had a great variety of local cults and deities, and the surviving written sources may be reconstructing a unified “Slavic” pantheon that never existed.

The Pantheon

The principal deity of the Slavic world was Perun, the god of thunder and lightning, the sky, and the rain. In the East Slavic sources, Perun was the chief deity of the early Rus pantheon, and his idol, with a silver head and a golden mustache, stood on a hill above the Dnieper in Kiev until the conversion of Vladimir in 988. In the West Slavic sources, Perun is less prominent, and the supreme deity is often Svarog, the god of the sky, or his son Svarozhits. The southern Slavs worshipped Perun as well, in forms that often resemble those of the East Slavs.

The second principal deity was Veles (also Volos), the god of the earth, the cattle, the underworld, and the dead. Veles and Perun were the two great cosmic principles in the Slavic religion: Perun the sky, the lightning, the heavenly realm; Veles the earth, the cattle, the realm of the dead. The two were bound together in a perpetual cosmic struggle that mirrored the cycles of the agricultural year.

The third principal deity, in the East Slavic sources, was Mokosh, the great mother goddess, the protector of women and of spinning, weaving, and fertility. In the South Slavic sources, the principal female deity was called Baba or Vesna, and was associated with the spring and the growing year. Other deities, attested in the regional traditions, include: Stribog, the god of the winds; Dazhbog, the god of the sun; Khors, possibly a sun god, attested in the Primary Chronicle; and Morana, the goddess of death and winter.

Religious Practice

The Slavic religion was tied to a complex of ritual practice, of which the most distinctive elements were the kupala (the summer solstice fire festival), the kolyada (the winter solstice festival), the mazur (the spring festival), and the great ritual feasts (bratchina) at which the gods were honored with animal sacrifice. The volkhv, the Slavic priests, were the principal ritual specialists; they interpreted the will of the gods, sacrificed animals, and presided over the great feasts. The veche, the assembly of free men, was an important political and religious institution in many Slavic communities.

The sacred sites of the Slavic religion were the kupaly, or sacred groves, and the trubishche, or sacred mounds. The cult of the dead was also important: the Slavs believed that the dead continued to participate in the life of the community, and elaborate funerary practices, including the deposition of food, weapons, and grave goods, are attested from the earliest Slavic cemeteries. The Christianization of the Slavs, from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, was, in part, the suppression of these practices and the replacement of the sacred groves and the sacred mounds with the churches and the cemeteries of the Christian world.

The Christianization of the Slavic World

The Slavic world was Christianized over a period of about three centuries, beginning with the conversion of the Bulgars in 864 and the mission of Cyril and Methodius to Moravia in 863. The Christianization of the eastern Slavs was the work of the Rus state, beginning with the conversion of Olga of Kiev around 957 and the mass conversion of the Rus under Vladimir in 988. The Christianization of the western Slavs (the Poles, the Bohemians, the Moravians, the Sorbs, and the Polabians) was the work of Frankish and German missionaries in the tenth and eleventh centuries; the Christianization of the Baltic Slavs (the Pomeranians, the Obotrites, the Lutici) was delayed until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the German colonization of the east and the conversion of the Baltic region brought the new Christian orders into the Slavic lands.

The Christianization of the Slavs was not instantaneous or uniform. The great Slavic cults of Perun, Veles, and Mokosh continued to be observed, in some form, for centuries after the official conversion of the Slavic states. The Russian Orthodox church continued, until the seventeenth century, to condemn the surviving pre-Christian practices of the rural population; the Catholic church in the Slavic lands of central Europe was more successful in suppressing them, although the great Slavic festivals of the kupala and the kolyada survived, in Christianized form, in the folk calendar of the Slavic world.

Modern Slavic Paganism

The Slavic pre-Christian religion has been the object of modern revival movements, especially in Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic, since the nineteenth century. The modern Rodnover movement, which began in Russia in the 1990s, has tried to reconstruct the pre-Christian Slavic religion in a form suitable for contemporary religious practice. The movement has been controversial: scholars have criticized the historical accuracy of its reconstructions, and the movement has been associated in some countries with nationalist and far-right political tendencies. The historical study of the pre-Christian Slavic religion remains, however, a legitimate and active field of Slavic studies.