A lizard on the wall of St. George's Church in Staraya Ladoga, in the image of the famous fresco "The Miracle of St. George about the Dragon" (made around 1167).
If you carefully read the ancient chronicles, you can find facts in them that would do honor to any science fiction novel. These facts reveal to us an unfamiliar and incredible reality
Readers, of course, know that our ancestors during the times of paganism worshiped Perun, Svyatovit, Dazhdbog and other idols. But not many people know about the worship of living "gods" in the Novgorod and Pskov lands.
In the annals of 1068, the words of Gregory the Theologian are cited that people bring sacrifices to the beast living in the river, which is called "God." In some legends, he is called In-Drik-the Beast or Father to All Beasts. Apparently, we are talking about the worship of the beast lizard. This cult was widespread in the northwestern regions of Russia, in the Novgorod and Pskov lands, apparently because the beast-lashers really lived there. And moreover, quite recently, just a few centuries ago! And there is a lot of evidence of this.
In his work "Paganism of Ancient Rus" Academician BA Rybakov writes: “In connection with our topic, the authentic gusli of the first half of the 12th century from the excavations in Novgorod are of particular interest. The harp is a flat trough with grooves for six pegs. The left (from the guslar) side of the instrument is sculpturally shaped like the head and part of the body of a lizard. Two small lizard heads are drawn under the head of the lizard. A lion and a bird are depicted on the reverse side of the gusli. Thus, in the ornamentation of the gusli, there are three vital zones: sky (bird), earth (lion, horse) and the underwater world (lizard). The lizard dominates everything and, thanks to its three-dimensional sculpturality, unites both planes of the instrument."
Archaeologists have found a gusli with the image of two horse heads (a horse is a common victim to a water horse). Some of the 14th century psaltery have waves.
The Korkodilov must be fed
During archaeological excavations in the Novgorod and Pskov regions, numerous images of a lizard are found on the rafters of houses, on oars, on shaman's plates, on the handles of ladles. This is a very real species of creature with an elongated snout and a huge toothy mouth, similar to one of the many species of prehistoric saurians (most likely to the mosasaur, as it is depicted in the reconstructions of paleontologists) and called in the chronicles "corcodilus".
A sensational message from the German scientist, Free Baron Sigismund Herberstein (1486-1566), a diplomat and traveler who visited Russia in 1517 and 1526, has survived. He wrote down his observations, as well as testimonies from sources that did not raise doubts about their veracity: “There are still many idolaters who feed at home some lizards with four short legs, with a black fat body having no more than three spans (60-70 cm) in length, and are called give-itami. On the appointed days, people cleanse their home and with some fear, the whole family worship them, crawling out to the supplied food. Misfortune is attributed to the one whose givoite will be poorly fed. " (S. Gerberstein. "Notes on the Moscovite affairs". St. Petersburg. 1907 - p. 178).
Modern scientists trust Herberstein's information. His data are also confirmed by Russian chronicles. True, they do not contain a detailed description of the "corkodiles", but this is apparently due to the fact that their appearance was known to everyone and was widely used even in everyday life as a decorative element.
Sadko and the underwater king
Ethnographer A. N. Afanasyev wrote: "The peasants buy a horse in peace, they feed it with bread for three days, then they put two millstones around its neck, smear it with honey on its head, weave red ribbons into the mane and put it in an ice-hole at midnight." Apparently, the one who lived in the hole was a huge and rather gluttonous beast. And sacrifices were brought to him in the winter, during the most hungry season. In the summer, the "underwater king" was not fed, and he "lay on the waterway" and "in the form of the fierce beast of the Corcodile" attacked floating fishermen and merchants, drowning and overturning their boats and eating people.
In the Pskov Chronicle (vol. 2, p. 262) we read: “Inlet 7090 (1582) left the Korkodil lutia animals from the river and the way of the shutter; there are a lot of people. And horror-sha people and pray to God all over the earth. And you will hide your packs, but you will beat others. " Such "kings" were respected, feared, respected, and in winter they tried to feed them. That is, the lizard depicted on the harp together with other animals is as real an animal as a lion or a horse.
A specialist in Ancient Russia, academician B. A. Rybakov considers the epic about Sadko to be one of the most ancient in the Novgorod land. In the original version, Sadko does not travel, but comes with a harp to the shore of a lake or river and plays his songs to the "water king". This "king" comes out of the water, thanks Sadko for the pleasure he has given and promises a constant rich catch and a goldfish so that he will win the dispute with the merchants. Sadko became a respected person in Novgorod and quickly grew rich. The academician even figured out the place where the guslar would meet with the “underwater king”. It was on Lake Ilmen, at the source of the Volkhov, on the western bank of the river. At this place, archaeologists in 1952 excavated a temple known as Peryn, which Rybakov unambiguously identified as the sanctuary of "korkodil".
Beating up the "gods"
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It would seem that semi-mythical animals were revered among the people and lived well some 400 years ago! And we owe their destruction and complete oblivion to the consistent furious and persistent planting of Christianity in these areas, which is clearly seen from the chronicles. The real lizard god was a dangerous ideological enemy of the Church. It was almost impossible to convince those worshiping him, a real and formidable deity, of the existence of some kind of abstract Christian god. There was only one way out - the merciless destruction of all these animals, the "devilish reptiles", and the complete eradication of the memory of them.
Most likely, they first dealt with the domesticated little creatures, and then with the big river "gods". Christians mercilessly exterminated the lizards. Idolaters were convinced that they were not gods at all, but "disgusting" animals. In the manuscript of the Great Synodal Library of the 17th century, a Christian chronicler writes about how the people cried when the "accursed creature" was caught in the Volkhov River and then deprived of its life. The lizard was solemnly buried by local pagans in a "high grave". They even celebrated a feast on him.
It was hard for people to part with their usual ancient gods. And Christians believed that the lizard was swallowed up by hell, it simply could not be otherwise.
The legend of George and the Dragon is interpreted very well in this context. Moreover, the legend was born far from in the Russian lands, and therefore such lizards were found in many places and were considered the gods of pagans and lizards in the name of Christianity were killed everywhere!
The legend of St. George is briefly as follows: a country ruled by an old, helpless king is devastated by a terrible dragon, demanding young men and women for food; after the die falls on the royal daughter, the hero appears, who kills the monster, marries the princess and inherits the crown; the inhabitants of the kingdom accept Christianity.
Interestingly, neither Roman nor early Christian sources mention the battle of George with the dragon, but focus on his martyrdom. Images of St. George slaying a dragon appeared only in the 12th century, when an older legend began to be associated with him. According to various versions, George either kills the dragon immediately (including the sign of the cross), or captures him and, tying him with a princess's belt, brings him to the city, promising to kill him only after a certain number of residents convert to Christianity.
However, the victory over the dragon is not always easy for George. The seventeenth-century book, The Seven Defenders of Christianity, describes his fierce battle with the monster "a belly of gold, shiny as silver, whose skin is harder than brass." The dragon escaped from its lair plunges the saint to the ground, and the spear thrown by George scatters into a thousand fragments. Gathering his strength, George stabs the dragon in the stomach with a sword.
A stream of poison erupts from the wound on the saint, depriving him of consciousness for a while. Recovering under an orange tree, George resumes the battle, first looking at the sky and receiving a blessing. He plunges the sword up to the hilt under the dragon's wing, where the skin is not so strong, so that Ascalon's sword passes through the dragon's “heart, liver, bones and blood”. With the dragon's blood, all the grass in the area turns red. Saint George beheads the monster and thanks Almighty God for his help.
George is certainly not the only Christian saint to defeat the dragon. This feat is attributed to Saint Philip, Leonard, Matthew, Sylvester and many others. Dragons confronting the saints appear to be terrible monsters, but victory over them is usually achieved easily, which is an allegory of the Christian teaching that piety easily overcomes vice. Thus, Saint Donatus kills the dragon by spitting in his mouth, and the ancient Norse Saint Gutmund plunges the enemy with prayer and holy water.
The priests mercilessly and purposefully destroyed the last representatives of the river lizards as pagan gods. So, almost in our time, the last representatives of the ancient lizards were ruthlessly destroyed. And the age-old regime of hushing up these events has done its job.
Few have even heard of it. And today it is hard to believe that the descendants of dinosaurs lived and felt great in Russia back in the 16th century. From school, we are inspired by the idea that these are fictional mythical creatures from folk epics and legends. But from numerous chronicles it follows that this is not so. Once again the truth is confirmed that legends and traditions are reliable sources of information and always reflect real events of the past.