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Dionysus, the Cretan: Contributions To the Religious History of Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
We are still far from a religious history of Europe (l'histoire réligieuse de l'Europe) which would satisfy the requirements of modern religious scholarship. We do, however, have a picture of the religions of Europe, the old and the new, of their metamorphoses and effects on the intellectual world of European man, which we can use as a temporary survey. A modification in this survey concerns not only scholars; the religious history of Europe is our religious history, regardless of the value it has for the individual as creed or philosophical doctrine. Unlike religion, religious history cannot be repudiated on the basis of doubts as to its truth or its existential validity (could this be “my” religion?). What is more, such a history cannot be side-stepped, for even the repudiation of all religion is an act within religious history; and a presentation of the religious history of Europe which does not concern itself with Nietzsche would not satisfy our demands as scholars.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1957 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. Compare with my paper, Die Herkunft der Dionysosreligion nach dem heutigen Stand der Forschung ("Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen," Pamphlet 58 [Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1956]).
2. The names were read this way at first by the decipherer Michael Ventris but not in cluded in his first publication. That is why they are missing in my lecture on the origin of the cult of Dionysus, which is based on the testimony from Pylos, on Minoan art, and on the myth of Ariadne. After the publication of my paper, Professor T. B. L. Webster, University College, London, drew my attention to the readings of Ventris.
3. Müller, Ancient Art and Its Remains; or a Manual of the Archaeology of Art, ed. F. G. Welcker, trans. John Leitch (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852), p. 488; Handbuch der Archaeolo gie der Kunst (3d ed., 1848).
4. Compare my The Gods of the Greeks (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1951), pp. 260-61; Mythologie der Griechen (2d ed.; Zurich, 1955), p. 253; La Mythologies des Grecs (Paris, 1952), p. 257.
5. N. Platon, Kretika Chronika, III (1949), 534-73.
6. I owe this allusion to Professor Charles Picard, Paris, as well as to the following litera ture : E. Kirsten, "Siedlungsgeschichtliche Forschungen in West-Kreta," in Deutsches Ar chaologisches Institut, Forschungen auf Kreta 1942 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1951), pp. 142-44; and Ernst Kirsten, "Folklore und Archaeologie auf Kreta," in Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson, ed. George E. Mylonas and Doris Raymond (2 vols.; St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University, 1953), II, 1198-1210.
7. H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London: Macmillan & Co., 1939), Pl. XVIIa.
8. It is almost too ridiculous to say this, but a great hindrance to the understanding of the whole Minoan culture was the unfounded assumption of its discoverer, Sir Arthur Evans, that the chief beverage of the Minoans was beer. It has been conclusively disproved by Ventris and Chadwick in Documents in Mycenean Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), p. 130, after the procedure by J. Sundwall.