Romuva (religion)

Romuva ceremony

Romuva ceremony

Whatever religion the original inhabitants of the Baltic region had predates recorded history.[15] Mesolithic hunters, gatherers, and anglers of the region practised a religion focused on their occupations. Marija Gimbutas controversially suggested that agrarian settlers of around 3500–2500 BCE were examples of Earth-worshipping Old Europeans. After this, Indo-Europeans entered the area and brought with them their Proto-Indo-European religion. This religion, including elements from the religious past of the region, evolved into the paganism which is attested in the Middle Ages and later.[15]

The adherents of this Baltic religion prospered relatively unhindered until the 9th century when they began to come under pressure from outside Christian forces.[16] The Annals of Quedlinburg mention a missionary, Bruno of Querfurt, who was killed along with 18 men by Yotvingians while attempting to convert the pagans in the area of Lithuania and Prussia in 1009 CE.[17] This was the first time the name of Lithuania was mentioned in written sources.[18] Other sources suggest Bruno had been killed for violating The Holy Forest and destroying statues of gods.[19]

Beginning in 1199, the Roman Catholic Church declared crusades against Baltic pagans.[16] Grand Duke Mindaugas was Christianized with his family and warriors in 1251 so that the Crusades might be ended by the Church.[20] But Mindaugas still worshiped pagan deities as the Hypatian chronicle mentions. He sacrificed to the pagan Supreme god (*Andajus, later Dievas), Perkūnas, Teliavelis (god of smiths), and *Žvorūna (goddess of forests and hunters). Despite any insincerity and realpolitik in his Christian faith, some subsidiary states of Mindaugas' Grand Duchy rebelled in protest. In 1261 Mindaugas renounced his Christian faith as his official conversion failed to placate the Crusaders.[21]

Even in the face of Crusaders, by the time of Grand Duke Gediminas, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded its influence until it formed the political centre of a vast and prosperous "pagan Empire".[22] Lithuanians thus survived late into history as appreciable representatives of ancient European paganism, preserving this tradition as the official, state religion until the late 14th and early 15th centuries when Christianity was finally accepted by the states of the Grand Duchy, again for political reasons.[23] Lithuanians were thus the last non-nomadic people in Europe practicing a European ethnic religion.[16][24] Unofficially, Lithuanians continued in their adherence to traditional paganism.[16]

The Romantic epoch started in the 19th century. This led Lithuanians to look back to their past for both intellectual and spiritual inspiration. The national revival started and Lithuanian intelligentsia idealised ancient paganism and folklore.[25] Some historians wanted to prove the beauty of ancient polytheism and even started creating new aspects of Lithuanian mythology. One of the most famous of these was Theodor Narbutt who edited Ancient Greek myths and created new Lithuanian ones.[26]

In the beginning of the 20th century, ancient pagan traditions were still continued in folklore and customs.[27][28] People were celebrating ancient pagan festivals mixed with Christian traditions.[29][30] Such festivals include Vėlinės (day of dead souls, similar to Celtic Halloween), Užgavėnės (festival when winter ends and spring begins), and Rasa or Joninės.[29][31] For Užgavėnės, people in Samogitia may dress in costumes including masks and burn an idol of an old lady, called Morė or Giltine, goddess of death.

The philosopher Vydūnas is taken as a sort of founding father of Romuva.[32] He actively promoted awareness of and participation in pagan festivals.[32] Vydūnas saw Christianity as foreign to Lithuanians, and instead he brought his attention to what he saw as the spiritual vision of the adherents of the traditional Baltic religion. He ascribed to this a sense of awe in their cosmology, as they saw the universe as a great mystery, and respect for every living being as well as the earth in their morality, as they saw the whole world and every individual as a symbol of life as a whole.[33] The Divine was represented by fire, which was as such used ritually to worship the divine and itself held sacred. Vydūnas had given special treatment to this religion of the Lithuanians in his drama Amžina ugnis (An Eternal Flame). Among this and other works, Vydūnas exalted the faith as being on the highest level of spiritual expression, along with other forms which he recognized.[34]

Domas Šidlauskas-Visuomis (1878–1944) began to create Vaidevutybė (Baltic paganism) in 1911. In the 1920s the Latvian folk religion movement Dievturība was started by Ernests Brastiņš. The main problem was that the first movements were based on limited folklore sources and influenced by Far Eastern traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Even so, the idea of Romuva did not die during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania.

The Lithuanian pagan movement was stopped by Soviet occupation in 1940. Due to the nationalist nature of Romuva, the faith was suppressed during the Soviet occupation and many practitioners were executed or deported to forced labor camps in Siberia. After Joseph Stalin's death the cultural life became more free.

A clandestine Romuva group is known to have existed within a labor camp in Inta, Russia. After the members were released and returned to Lithuania around 1960, some of these practitioners, along with Jonas Trinkūnas, formed the Vilnius Ethnological Ramuva and began organizing public celebrations of traditional Lithuanian religious holidays, starting with Rasa in 1967. In 1971 the Soviets expelled the members from the university they attended and exiled the leaders.[35] By 1988, when the power of the Soviet Union was waning and Lithuanian independence was on the horizon, Romuva groups began reorganizing in the Baltic nations and practising their religion in the open.[9]

A Romuva procession led by Jonas Vaiškūnas in 2009.

After Lithuania regained independence in 1990, Romuva was recognised as an Ancient Baltic faith community in 1992. Under the auspices of the Law on Religious Communities and Associations which was passed in Lithuania in 1995, Romuva gained recognition as a "non-traditional" religion. The law requires a minimum of 25 years of existence before such a religion can receive the state support reserved for "traditional" religions.

In 1990, Trinkūnas created Kūlgrinda, a band that performs in many Romuva festivals. The community was organized and led by krivių krivaitis (high priest) Jonas Trinkūnas until his death in 2014. He was buried according to the old Baltic traditions.[36] His wife Inija Trinkūnienė was chosen as the new krivė (high priest) and her ordination was held on 31 May 2015, in Vilnius on the Gediminas Hill. She is the first woman to become krivė in the long pagan history.[37]

On 24 May 2018, Seimas passed a proposal for granting state recognition to Romuva and began discussing it in the parliamentary committees.[38] In June 2019, Seimas voted to reject Romuva's petition to be recognized as a "traditional" religion. The law provides that the petition could be resubmitted in ten years. The proposal was opposed mainly by the members of the Homeland Union, particularly by Žygimantas Pavilionis.[39] Romuva sued Lithuania in the European Court of Human Rights and won a unanimous decision in June 2021 that the Seimas did not remain "neutral and impartial in exercising their regulatory powers". Romuva will be allowed to reapply for recognition after three months of the ruling.[40]