Teutons

A virtuous and nurturing women was prized and protected among the Teutons just as the courage and since of Justice was prized amongst the men. Family was key to their survival and success of their society.

Teutons

The word Teutons has an apparent meaning of a mass of "people, tribe or, crowd". Even the Celtic deity Teutates has a name that is said to mean the "god of the tribe".

The Teutonic "mass of people" is a group of individual with no ruler or at the time of Rome, no Emperor. While, it may have an original meaning of "people under arms" in Proto-Indo-European as mentioned by Roman authors.

The Teutons are best known for their participation, together with the Cimbri and other groups, in the Cimbrian War with the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC. But the means and method of being bound in Arms was different than those of Rome who had strayed from many of the practices of the Romans.

Julius Caesar used the term for all living east of the Rhine. They did not all speak a Germanic language but had a strong Celtic influence.

There were as many people living in Europe in 176 AD as there were in 1776. The difference was that the former mostly lived on their own land as freeman with the latter living as subjects and serfs. There is an ancient story of some uncivilized barbarians of Germany who stood together when faced with the invasion of three Roman legions.

Love not levies

• "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I [am] the LORD." Leviticus 19:18

That love of neighbor as thyself is only evident among those who are practicing Pure Religion. No one needs a king or ruler to repent and start down that path of righteousness.

The Germans or Teutons had migrated with their own customs and culture. They were a liberty-loving people who believed that the actions and deeds of a man spoke more of his character than preached philosophies and sermonized dogmas. Their ancestral roots and customs, along with their personal family honor, sealed in their hearts the virtuous ideal that “freedom is better than slavery.”

They gathered together in groups called kindreds. Kinship was at the core of their society and these small groups gathered together in larger groups forming a Hundertschaften.

In the language of the ancient Teutons/Germani religious leaders or priests were likely referred to by a term reconstructed as Proto-Germanic like *gudjô (or similar variants like *gudjan). This comes from linguistic reconstruction: it means something like "one who invokes" or "invoker of the gods," tied to performing sacrifices, maintaining sacred sites (like groves), and related duties. It evolves into later terms such as Old Norse goði (priest/chieftain who oversaw rituals and temples) and gyðja (priestess).

These princes of men were not rulers but respected leaders. As leaders, they were titular and held no power over the families, as “it was the family that wielded the power. While families were the principal enforcers of the law...”.

The leaders could be called on in managing the settling of disputes or coordinating large activities, but could not make law nor tax the people. The families remained sacred units which were never to be violated.

“The communities are wont, of their own accord and man by man, to bestow upon their Princes a certain number of beasts, or a certain portion of grain; a contribution which passes indeed for a mark of reverence and honour, but serves also to supply their necessities.”The words “of their own accord” is translated from a Latin which means “voluntarily”.

These Germanic tribes had fought many battles, but had never faced such an organized army as the Romans. When Publius Quinctilius Varus marched into Germany to keep the peace and tax the Teutons, the people needed someone to lead the whole populace if they were to be free of the imposed excise of Rome. They chose Hermann the Cheruscan as their commander-in-chief against the occupational peace keepers. In the Teutoburg Forest, he led the people against all three legions and destroyed the invading usurpers to the last man.

The Romans knew him as Arminius the Traitor and Rebel, but the people of Germania knew him as Hermannsdenkmal, or Hermann the Hero. In fact, Hermann was a little of both. He was an officer for the Romans and was in their employ when he began to prepare for their overthrow. The Romans had come because some of the Teutons were raiding their neighbors across the Rhine in Gaul. Gaul had fallen under Roman “protection” during the exploits of Julius Caesar, who came to Gaul for much the same reason. Although most of the Teutons did not raid their neighbors, they benefited from the spoils spent and traded back home by the marauders and turned a blind eye to the robbery. Such Slothful on the part of a free citizenry inevitably brings tribute and tyranny.

“The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute.” Proverbs 12:24

Due to their own civil war and the high cost of oppression in other lands, they were forced to raise taxes in Germania. This disregard for the rights of neighbors and the desire for power and continued control led Herman, with the aid of his strongest supporters and using methods he had learned from the Romans, to compel the people to remain under his capable leadership and authority. He virtually sought to crown himself over the people. Though the people were grateful for his service, his own family judged him a dictator and executed him as a traitor and a tyrant.

The people of Germania are difficult for historians to understand from a modern or Roman point of view. As freemen they opposed all forms of tyranny, whether foreign or domestic. Their opposition to any kind of central ruler was so absolute that, when the Romans came back to reap revenge, Tacitus reported that, “Germanicus, who had torn off his helmet so as to be recognized, ordered his men to kill and kill. No prisoners were wanted. Only the total destruction of the tribe would end the war.”

Bonds by priesthood

Caesar (De Bello Gallico, Book 6) explicitly notes that the Germani (including Teutonic groups) did not depend on a formal priestly caste.

Tacitus (Germania, ~98 CE) provides more detail on early Germanic practices a bit later: priests (called sacerdotes in Latin) handled public sacrifices, divination (e.g., lots or sacred horses), enforcing order in assemblies, and certain punishments as divine commands. They were tribal officials with prestige but not a separate powerful class like Celtic Druids. Kings or chiefs could also perform priestly roles.

Who were these people who valued freedom and family, strength and courage, kinship and honor and the essential realities of a vigorous life? There were severe penalties for adultery, cities were despised, usury unheard of, and a passion for justice and liberty. They knew that freedom did not come without constant vigil in time of war or peace.

“The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute.” Proverbs 12:24

Blots

Blóts were the sacrificial offerings that were often associated feasts in both early early Germanic and Teutonic tribes and later in what became known as Norse traditions. They functioned as a form of voluntary, reciprocal social welfare that strengthened the social bonds of their communities. These provisions were donated primarily through communal resource which were given through networks of redistribution, a cultural sense of hospitality, and fervent charity creating a community bonding—without centralized taxation or coercion.

Sumbles

We have been told that their religion was like a B movie paganism. Their customs of sumbels and blóts were not originally designed to appease imaginary pagan gods with superstitious sacrifices.

Through their chosen ministers or priests, these blots were a practical institutions of charity, intended to bind neighbors and communities in a fellowship of love.

Voluntary system

This system was a completely voluntary system because it relied on cultural values and religious duty. There was some obvious mutual self-interest in hope others would be there for you and the possible merit and prestige bestowed on the most generous. But it was the result of a freewill offering rather than enforced levies we might see in Babylon, Egypt or Rome.

A stingy leader, priest, or population risked losing support in time of need, while the a generous would be building alliances. It wasn't a formal "welfare" like modern systems but it also was not a snare or a trap that made the people merchandise or Human resources. This simply embedded aid and welfare into a religious-social life, helping sustain tribes through faith, hope, and charity rather than the force, fear, and fealty of the Roman Free bread.

Later sources (sagas, Heimskringla) reflect patterns likely rooted in earlier Teutonic practices noted by Caesar and Tacitus, where priests and leaders oversaw public sacrifices without a rigid Druid-like hierarchy. In essence, blóts turned piety into practical community support.

A word for Priest might be the word gudjô as a reconstruction fits the evidence from comparative linguistics and later Germanic traditions. Priests often combined religious and social roles, and women (seeresses or priestesses) held notable influence in some tribes, as with the Cimbri/Teutonic migrations.

In short, while Romans called them priests/sacerdotes, the Teutons' own term pointed to "god-invokers" or similar—reflected in the enduring goði tradition. The Hebrew word Corban meant sacrifice in early Israel. Those sacrifices had provided freewill offerings through a system of living altars much like what Christ preached. Corban based on that early pattern was to draw or invoke God to come "near". While the Corban of Herod and the Pharisees made the word of God to none effect because of its leaven.

"...the distribution of blót offerings (sacrificial meat, blood, and related goods gathered or contributed at communal gatherings like sumbel/symbel feasts) was typically managed by chieftains, local rulers/magnates, or goðar (priests/chieftains)...This reinforced social bonds and the giver's status."

Roman view of the Teutons

Not only does the scriptures and many sacred texts profess and declare the sanctity of marriage but Rome knew and recorded that it was the family that was the foundation of society.

Romans knew full well that “…[T]he healthy moral traditions of early Rome were maintained by the discipline of the family, resting on the supreme authority of the father - the patria potestas - and the powerful influence of the mother, to whom the early training of the child was entrusted.”

When Rome moved their social practice from hospitality and the charity of the hearth to the free bread provided through the legal charity of the State the course of their own society was altered.

Polybius had warned Rome of the degeneration of the masses if they became accustomed to living on a government dole at their neighbor's expense having seen the process time and time again in history.

Tacitus' observations while visiting the Teutons in the land of Germanica stood in stark contrast from what Rome had become under the benefaction of the Fathers of the Senate and the emperors as the Patronus of the masses:

"This is in the sense that the matrimonial bond was strictly observed by the Germanic peoples, this being compared favorably against licentiousness in Rome. Tacitus appears to hold the fairly strict monogamy (with some exceptions among nobles who marry again) between Germanic husbands and wives, and the chastity among the unmarried to be worthy of the highest praise. " Publius Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania (Ch. 18).

Tacitus would recall what Rome had lost with envy and almost contempt when observing the Teutons approach to marriage. He admired their woman:

Their "wedding gifts... are no toys collected to suit feminine frivolities or adorn a bride; instead of that, they consist of oxen, and a bridled horse, and shield and spear and sword. These are the presents that await her as a wife, and her own wedding present to her husband in return is a gift of arms. This is the strongest bond of union this the mystery of marriage; these are their gods of wedded life. Lest the woman should think that masculine courage and the perils of war lie beyond her sphere, these tokens remind her upon the threshold of marriage that she comes as the man's partner in toils and dangers ; and that in peace and in war she must expect ... to dare the same." Publius Tacitus

There was no question about what a Germanic woman was nor neede to be:

"... they guard the chastity of their lives, with no shows to entice them nor orgies to excite their evil passions... To men and women alike such a thing as secret correspondence is unknown... Amongst all this immense [race's] population adultery is extremely rare, a woman becomes a wife with a wife's hopes and wishes once and once only....to the end that she may not look beyond him nor let her desires stray further ...To limit the number of the family or to put to death any of the later-born infants is held to be an abomination, and with the Germans good customs have more authority than good laws elsewhere!" Publius Tacitus

By the same measure the women were cherished by the men who "Unlike the great majority of barbarians, they are content with one wife ..." Publius Tacitus

The opposite pattern is seen in Rome at that time where, “Even amongst women there were symptoms of revolt against the older order, which showed itself in a growing freedom of manners and impatience of control, the marriage tie was relaxed…"

“Italy was living through the fever of moral disintegration and incoherence which assails all civilized societies that are rich in the manifold resources of culture and enjoyment, but tolerate few or no restraints on the feverish struggle of contending appetites.”

What ruined Rome was the creation of systems of legal charity which turned the Republic into a city of blood and the people into amoral and [[perfect savagès)].

When the morals of society decay with its sexual revolutions there is an erosion, even rot, of the fabric of society itself. The revoluion of the masses greedy for gain at te expence of others the people riot with selfishness in a rebellion against The Way of God and His righteousness. This may begin with biting one another until their conscience is seared and all are devoured like mere merchandise.

Where ever the permanency of marriage is attacked or decays from neglect there will be a decline and fall of nations.

From Sumer to Sodom, from Rome to Judea the die was cast by the covetous practices of their public religion through the rise of the welfare State:

The “sanctity of marriage had ceased… Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated; unnatural vices, which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated, attained proportions which defy description.”

John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ told us the solution if we have ears to hear.