Cult of Herodias
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The Cult of Herodias, in medieval folklore was the alleged worship of the Biblical character Herodias, allegedly[who?] deriving from the worship of Roman goddess Diana.
Fables of this cult began to spread sometime before the 10th century,[citation needed] were denounced by the Roman Catholic Church as superstition or diabolical deception,[citation needed] and had largely died out by the time of the Reformation.
A medieval rumour arose that a group of women in Italy had started a cult centred on the goddess Diana.[citation needed] This cult, according to the story,[who?] was mainly intended for women, preferably lesbian, as many considered Diana a lesbian goddess.[citation needed]
Some versions[citation needed] of the tale added what seemed to be an explicitly anti-Christian character: Herodias, the Jewish queen who plotted the death of John the Baptist, who had become deified as the daughter of the virgin goddess. (Other versions[citation needed] of the story identify Diana's daughter not as Herodias, but as the Germanic goddess Holda.)
This association between the Jewish Queen Herodias and the Roman goddess is resolved in the theory of Carlo Ginzburg[1] that the nocturnal goddess was originally Hera-Diana or Herodiana, and was later conflated with Herodias, a name that lent itself to a particularly negative Christian interpretation.[dubious – discuss]
Although the Church was aware of this supposed cult for a long period,[citation needed] it considered it to be a popular delusion rather than anything else: in the 10th century a fragment of text called the Canon Episcopi (attributed to an otherwise-unknown Council of Anquira) made mention of it as a perversion of the mind originated by Satan, and consider the fable of the flying women accompanied by Diana to be a fantasy experienced while dreaming.
By the 12th century the folktales about this cult had expanded to other places in Europe; the Catholic Church continued to consider it delusory, attributing the stories of its existence either to demonic trickery or to folk superstition.
John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, France, made a comment on these fables in his book Policraticus, naming the goddess Herodias and Noctiluca, queen of the night (12th century). He mentioned the supposed participation of women and men in these meetings. He too considered the existence of this cult to be a fable at best.
Wicca
Among some modern Wiccans, a similar figure is worshipped, called Aradia. This name was most likely adopted from C.G. Leland's book Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899), which claims to be the traditional lore of a 19th century Italian society of witches. This variation on the name Herodias (or Herodiana) is probably because in Late Latin and Italian the "h" is mute (the Italian form of Herodias is Erodiade)[2]. A similar figure from Romania is Doamna Zînelor, also called Irodiada or Arada.[3]
References
- ^ Ginzburg, Carlo (1990). Ecstasies: Deciphering the witches' sabbath. London: Hutchinson Radius. pp. p. 104. ISBN 0-09-174024-X.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ Magliocco, Sabina (2002). "Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend" ([dead link] – Scholar search). Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies,. 18: –.
{{cite journal}}: External link in|format= - ^ Ginzburg, Carlo (1990). Ecstasies: Deciphering the witches' sabbath. London: Hutchinson Radius. pp. p. 103. ISBN 0-09-174024-X.
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