Note 101 — Chapter IX · DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

The Italian Diana who had long become identical with Hekate remained familiar to the Christianized peoples of the early Middle Ages (allusions in Christian authors: Grimm, pp. 283, 286, 933, 949, 1161 f. O. Jahn, Bös. Blick, 108). She was, in fact, the meeting point of the endless mass of superstition that had survived into that time from Graeco-Roman tradition. The nocturnal riding of a mob of women (i.e. “souls” of women) cum Diana, paganorum dea is quoted as a popular superstition by the so-called Canon Episcopi, which in the controversies on witches was so often appealed to. This document, it seems, cannot be traced back further than Regino (end of ninth century). He seems to have got it out of [Aug.] De Sp. et Anima (probably written in the sixth century). It was rescued from oblivion by Burkhard of Wurms, used in the Decretals of Gratian, and became very well known in the Middle Ages. (The passage from Burkhard is printed in Grimm, p. 1741. That the whole is a Canon (24) of the Council of Ancyra, 314 A.D., is, however, only a mistaken idea of Burkhard’s.) This belief in the nightly hunt of Diana with the souls may be regarded as a vestige of the ancient idea of Hekate and her nocturnal crew. It was all the more likely to survive in northern countries with their native legends of wild Hunters and the “furious host” with which it could so easily combine. [“Herne the Hunter,” Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 4; v, 5.]