Abstract
This book is an anthology of Latin medieval sources that describe the Slavic paganism and its later syncretic merger with popular Christianity. The presented selection of Latin texts (supplemented with one Old Norse and two Old Greek sources) is organised by the geographic territorial distribution and arranged in the chronological order.
Every text is briefly introduced, annotated and commented on and its author is presented; every introduction is also supplemented with the list of used editions and existing translations of particular text, plus the basic bibliography for the topic is added. All sources here are printed in the original Latin, Old Greek, or Old Norse edition, and in its modern Czech translation.
The most of the sources is translated to the Czech language for the first time ever. The anthology is also supplemented with a complete bibliography, list of abbreviations of languages and biblical citations, and with four indices: index of proper names, index of topographic names, index of ethnonyms and index of mythological and ritual terms.
In the background of this book is a general attempt to set a solid ground for the historical reconstruction of the system of pre-Christian Slavic religion (by "religion" it is meant a complex symbolic system, the inseparable cluster of politics, poetry, economy, warfare, ritual and other aspects of culture). This anthology aims to help with doing so with the utmost respect to the written sources we possess.
The author of the selection and translations only hopes, that it will be found useful by many specialists not only in the area of Slavic paganism as such, but also by slavicists, medievalists, church historians, archaeologist and religionists interested in syncretism and religious change in general.