A zhrets is a priest in the Slavic religion whose name literally means "one who makes sacrifices". The name appears mainly in the East and South Slavic vocabulary, while in the West Slavs it is attested only in Polish. Most information about the Slavic priesthood comes from Latin texts about the paganism of the Polabian Slavs. The descriptions show that they were engaged in offering sacrifices to the gods, divination and determining the dates of festivals. They possessed cosmological knowledge and were a major source of resistance against Christianity.
Etymology
The earliest attestation of the word is Old Church Slavonic жьрьць žĭrĭcĭ "priest". In other Slavic languages it occurs as Russian жрец zhrets, Belarusian жрэц zhrets, and Ukrainian жрець zhrets, all derived from Old East Slavic жрецъ žrecŭ, and Bulgarian and Macedonian жрец zhrets and Slovene žréc and all meaning "pagan priest". Czech žrec was borrowed from Old East Slavic, as was Croatian žrec zhrets. The exception here is the Polish attestation żerca, which historically means "matchmaker". The Proto-Slavic form is reconstructed as *žьrьcь, which is an agent noun from the verb *žьrti "to consecrate, sacrifice", which is continued by OCS жрьти, жрѣти žrěti and Old East Slavic жерети žereti and it literally means "one who makes sacrifices". This verb is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷerH- "to praise" and is cognate to Lithuanian gìrt, Latvian dzir̃t, Old Prussian girtwei, Sanskrit गृणाति gṛṇā́ti "to praise", or Latin grātēs "gratitude". From this verb is also derived *žьrtva "sacrifice" continued by OCS жрьтва, ⰶⱃⱐⱅⰲⰰ žrĭtva, and other related words.
In Old Polish, zhrets appears in the forms żyrzec, żerzec, żyrca, żerca since the early 15th century to the 16th century in Polish translations of the New Testament as the equivalent of the Latin word architriclinus and means "matchmaker"; later it appears only in dictionaries, where it appears as a synonym of the Latin words pronubus and paranymphus, and the Polish swat, dziewosłąb, hochmistrz, marszałek weselny. In only one attestation word żyrcowie (plural from żyrca) was used to call all wedding guests. In addition to these words, Samuel Linde's Dictionary also mentions the words żerecki from Budny, żertownik "sacrificial table" in tserkov from Pimina and Sakowicz, żertwa or żertwa and żertować, however, these words are considered to be loanwords from the Old Church Slavonic. For this reason, however, the word żyrzec should not be considered a borrowing from OCS, since in OCS texts the Latin word architriclinus was Slavicized as architriklinĭ or replaced by another word. In contrast to words in East Slavic languages, Polish words never meant "priest" but "matchmaker", which is explained by the fact that pagan priests, in addition to offering sacrifices to the gods, were also engaged in matchmaking. Marriage was out of the control of the Christian Churches for a long time and they used severe punishments before they were able to force church weddings on people. Research into the history of Polish marriages also suggests that the matchmaker had priestly qualities.
The basic form of the Polish word is considered to be żyrzec, because it is the oldest and most frequent, although on the basis of the Old Church Slavonic form žĭrĭcĭ one should expect the form żrzec, żerca. For this reason, Jan Łoś included this word in the group of words łyżka, dźwirze, chrzybiet, where ь was lengthened to i. The disruption of the word development may also have been caused by the words i.e. żyr, pożyrać "to devour": żerca turned into żyrca, and then when in all Polish words -ir- and -yr- turned into -er-, żerzec and żerca were formed.
Description and functions
Genesis
The main informations on the Slavic priesthood concerns the priesthood of the Polabian Slavs. The genesis of the developed Polabian priesthood is unclear: Kazimierz Wachowski attributed to the rulers of the Veleti (Lutici) tribe the simultaneous position of high priests, and Leszek Paweł Słupecki, who expresses a similar view, adds that originally the prince-priest combined the spheres of sacrum and profanum, which later, among the Veleti, was separated. Many other researchers point to the connections between chieftainship and priesthood. Henryk Łowmiański expressed a different stance – he believed that the development of the West Slavic religion in the main points was modeled on Christianity. Ultimately, however, these views are speculation, because medieval sources do not indicate how the selection of priests proceeded.
Polabian Slavs
Priests, unlike most Slavic men, had long hair and beards and wore long robes.