2 - Polish Histories

Summary

[Jogaila] goes to Lithuania with Queen Jadwiga, and breaks the idols

… But when he had come to Lithuania, he urged a gathering at Vilnius on Ash Wednesday. The brothers of the king had gathered there by the king's order—Skirgaila, duke of Trakai, Vytautas, duke of Grodno, Vladimir, duke of Kyiv, and Kaributas, duke of Novhorod, and a great many of the knights and people. WŁadysŁaw JagieŁŁo, king of Poland, laboured for many days so that they would cast aside the false gods by whom they had been deceived up to now (in empty pagan error) and so that they would worship the one true God, and agree to venerate, worship, and believe the Christian religion. The barbarians were reluctant, asserting it was impious to desert and do away with their gods, and presumptuous against those things instituted by their ancestors.

Foremost among these were the fire they believed to be perpetual (by the priests putting on timbers), which was worshipped night and day; the forests which they thought sacred; and the snakes and serpents in which they believed the gods lived and lay hidden. With the barbarians looking on, King WŁadysŁaw arranged for the fire to be extinguished which was lit in the city of Vilnius (which was the chief and capital city of the people), and thought by them to be perpetual. They devoured false responses from their priest (as if he had received them from a god) who kept it and fed it by diligently throwing on timbers, who was called žinis [“knowledge”], consulting the god about the course of future events. And he arranged for the temples and altars, in which there had been sacrifice of victims, to be broken; and, furthermore, for the forests which they thought sacred to be cut down, and their groves to be destroyed; and for the snakes and serpents (which were found in individual houses like domestic spirits) to be slaughtered and killed.

The barbarians lamented the ruin, destruction and extermination of their false gods and spirits with so many tears, since they did not dare mutter against the king. But when they had seen with their eyes the idols broken and destroyed, they understood the falseness of their gods, by whom they had so long been made sport.