Lada and the Slavic goddesses of love: medieval chronicles and scholars

Anyone looking for a Slavic goddess of love almost always comes across the name Lada, often presented as a Venus of the Slavic peoples. Her story, however, is a textbook case of how research on ancient religions must reckon with scarce, late and sometimes misleading sources. Reconstructing the pre-Christian Slavic pantheon means, in fact, working almost always from testimonies written by Christian authors, many centuries after the conversion.

The oldest sources

The most important document on the religion of the Eastern Slavs is the Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kyiv at the beginning of the twelfth century. It tells that in 980 Prince Vladimir had the idols of Perun, Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh set up on a height of the city. A few years later, having converted to Christianity, Vladimir himself had them torn down. In this list the only female deity is Mokosh.

Mokosh is a figure linked to the moist earth, to spinning and to the lives of women, and in later folklore her memory merged with that of Saint Paraskeva, protector of Friday and of women's work. She was not, however, a goddess of love in the sense of the Greek Aphrodite. In the oldest and most reliable sources, in short, a Slavic deity of love properly so called does not appear.

Długosz and the Roman equivalents

The name Lada enters history thanks to the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz, who in the fifteenth century, in his Annales, listed the gods of the pagan Poles, pairing each with a Roman equivalent. According to his scheme, Jesza corresponded to Jupiter, Lada to Mars, Dzidzilela to Venus, Nyja to Pluto and Dziewanna to Diana. For Długosz, then, Lada was not a goddess of love at all, but a god of war.

Later authors, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reworked these lists. In texts composed in the Kyiv milieu, such as the so-called Synopsis of 1674, Lada became a deity of love, weddings and joy, accompanied by figures such as Lel and Polel. Many modern scholars believe these names derive in part from the refrains of folk songs, such as lado or lelo, which scholars of the time interpreted as invocations of deities.

The modern debate

Scholarly opinion today is divided. Some regard Lada as a learned construction, born of misunderstandings and analogies with the classical world; others think that the refrains preserve the memory of an ancient figure linked to spring and marriage. Similar words do exist in several Slavic languages, with meanings such as harmony and concord, and in folk songs they can refer to the beloved or to a spouse.

Dzidzilela, Długosz's Venus, has also given rise to conflicting interpretations, and some have linked her name to words connected with birth or children. None of these hypotheses has been proved. What remains certain is the fascination of these names, which from the nineteenth century onwards inspired poets, painters and movements seeking to rediscover Slavic roots.

The story of Lada teaches a valuable lesson: not all the deities found in modern books are attested in the same way. Distinguishing between what the medieval chronicles say, what scholars added and what folklore has preserved is the first step towards telling the history of religions honestly, even when the truth is less evocative than the legend.