| The dissertation defines and explores the collective sacred female, embodied in groups of three or more goddesses or saints, particularly in its elaboration in the Germanic Europe of the past two millennia. These groups are named and honored collectively, and they work consensually for the benefit of those who serve them. This study, analyzing the persistent presence of the female collectives in this region, challenges the conventional wisdom that religion among the Germanic peoples is typically patriarchal and violent. The collectives exist within and alongside kyriarchal waves of religious expression, subverting or extending them, and show the Germanic religious heritage to be more nuanced in its portrayal of deity. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study investigating four of these collectives, classifying them over time, comparing them using the work of William Paden, and examining the meaning of each collective to its worshippers. The earliest collective is the Deae Matronae, three goddesses from the Roman era Rhineland offering a Germano-Celtic religion and collective deity to the Romans stationed along the Germanic frontier. These goddesses had close ties to the landscape and deep connections to the Roman ceremony of the vow. From the Viking Age in Scandinavia are the Norns, goddesses of the telling and setting of fate, and the Disir, goddesses of guidance and protection from birth through love, war and death. Both of these collectives are goddesses of the entire life continuum. Out of medieval Catholicism, and remaining vital to the present day, is the collective of saints known as the drei heiligen Jungfrauen, or the Three Holy Maidens. The Jungfrauen provide healing, protection, help and succor for those who venerate them. Weaving together not only text, but art, artifact, folklore, folk art, prayer and hymnody, this study demonstrates the tenacity, meaning and importance of the collective sacred female in Germanic Europe and offers some possibilities for contemporary thought. |
