Baduhenna
Continental Germanic · deity · Continental Germanic religion under Rome (1st c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) · deity
Baduhenna is a goddess of the Frisii, attested only in Tacitus, Annals 4.73. In 28 CE, during the Frisian revolt against Roman taxation, a Roman relief column was cut to pieces 'in the wood called the grove of Baduhenna' (lucus quem Baduhennae vocant), where about nine hundred men perished fighting until the following day. The name is generally analysed as containing Proto-Germanic *baðwō 'battle' plus the -henae suffix characteristic of the Matronae inscriptions of the Rhineland, which has led scholars to interpret her as a war-associated mother-goddess. Her cult thus joins the well-attested Germanic practice of dedicating groves to deities, here one bound up with battle and slaughter.
Domains
- war and battle
- sacred grove
Powers
- to receive battle and the bodies of the slain within her sacred wood
Sources
- Tacitus, Annals 4.73, ed. and trans. J. Jackson, Loeb Classical Library 312 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937).
- Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), s.v. 'Baduhenna', p. 26.
- Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1956–1957), vol. 2, § 318.