Mit einer banier rôtgevar, daß was mit wîße durch gesniten

The idea that Zisara or Cisa or Ciza was a Slavic Goddess (see the Ex Gallica Historia post) seemed to make sense except for the location of the Ciza cult which seems to have been around Augsburg – in Swabia – where there should have been no Slavs.  The connection with Dzidzilela also made sense except that it was just a guess.  But then I cross-searched for the two and discovered that I had hardly been the first to have such an idea.  Over 3 centuries ago, August Adolph von Haugwitz (1647 – 1706) wrote an interesting book dealing with the History of his home province of Lusatia – the Prodromus Lusaticus.  (He was born near Bautzen/Budyšin).  Although, by today’s standards, this history book is hardly professional one, von Haugwitz’s effort is quite well-researched and appears well-intentioned – at least in the sense of not obviously pulling things up out of thin air.  In that same book you can find much about Slavic and Germanic pagan history.  Though much of the material may refer to Gods and Goddesses that themselves indeed may have been “made up” in the course of looking for some sort of pre-Christian identity of the German countryside, von Haugwitz provides numerous citations to earlier works and compilations, some of which may be taken seriously.

In the case of Cisa or Ciza he cites, among other things, the Augsburg Chronicle and the Goddesses’ defense of the city.  It does not really matter whether the inhabitants at the time of any invasions really believed that the Goddess helped them.  What matters is that the inhabitants of Augsburg – again, a place where there should have been no Slavs – believed they had earlier worshipped a Goddess whose name seems connected to attested Slavic cults in the East (such as in Poland).  But it gets better. Haugwitz actually claims that the Sorbs (the Cisa chapter appears in the section De Diis Soraborum) also worshipped Cisa or Ciza providing perhaps a bit of a landbridge connection to Poland. 

And, of course, Augsburg was known as Augusta Vindelicorum.  Vindelici were mentioned by Strabo and by Pliny (Pliny’s work has been interpreted to refer to the Vandals – but Pliny’s manuscripts vary and we have Vandilici and Vindili listed as well).

In any event, here is the 1522 edition of Sigismund Meisterlin’s Augsburg Chronicle (Cronographia Augustensium) in the German print (Ein schöne Cronick & Hystoria…) discussing Ciza, the Vindelici and, of course, the River Lech (and Wertach, that is Vertava – compare with Varsava):

Sigismund Meisterlin wrote his chronicle in German in 1457 (the Latin version was written down the next year).  It was a big deal for the city (he also wrote a chronicle for Nuernberg) and they even created a painting to commemorate one oof the first copies of the same being made:

The plant you see in the coat of arms of the city of Augsburg is a fir cone (Zirbelnuss).  Its first attested appearance in the city’s coat of arms is in 1237.  The fir cone may have been also on the Roman shields of the Roman occupiers back in the day when the VIndelici were driven from Lacus Venetus (by later emperor Tiberius & Co).

Now, one may point out that in Polish cis refers to the yew, a coniferous tree (the Eibe).  The eibe is rather poisonous but has, interestingly, also been the subject of Poland’s first environmental statute (of Warka in 1423) which prohibited the cutting of that tree.

Could that fir cone be yew cone?  Well, the problem is that a yew rather does not have cones in the common sense of the word – its “cones” “bloom” into these red “arils”.

This is what Brueckner has to say about the etymology of the same here:

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October 21, 2017

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