Jesza

Jesza (read as ''Yesha''; , ) or Jasza (read as ''Yasha''; , ') is an alleged Polish god. He was first mentioned around 1405–1412 in the sermons of , which warned against the worship of Jesza and other gods during spring rituals and folk performances. His popularity is partly owed Jan Długosz's comparison of him to the Roman god Jupiter. However, the opinions of the 20th century and later researchers are divided with respect to the authenticity of the deity.

The Latin names should be written in modern Polish as ''Jesza'' or ''Jasza''. In the 15th century, the Polish voiceless retroflex fricative (''sh'' sound) was written as ''ss'' (modern Polish ''sz'').

Sources

The first known source mentioning the name ''Jesza'' is the ''Pentacostal Sermons'' written by Lucas of Wielki Koźmin around 1405–1412, without giving any specific description:

Similar warnings, also without any description, are also found in: ''Statua provincialia breviter'' (1420–1422), ''Sermones per circulum anni Cunradi'' (1423), ''Postilla Husitae anonymi'', and in glosses of ''Life of Adalbert of Prague''.

The theonyms contained in the ''Pentacostal Sermons'' were also repeated by Jan Długosz, who made an ''interpretatio romana'' and compared Jesza to the Roman chief god Jupiter:

After Długosz the information about Jesza was repeated by historians Maciej Miechowita, Marcin Kromer, Alexander Guagnini, Maciej Stryjkowski, Marcin and Bielskis, and the priest Jakub Wujek.

Historicity

Originally, the historicity of Jesza was not questioned; he appears in the works of Polish Romantics, such as Bronisław Trentowski. This situation changed when Aleksander Brückner criticised the sources mentioning Jesza. Brückner pointed out that the word ''ješa'' (''yesha'') in Old Church Slavonic meant "may", and he also hypothesized that it could not have been the name of the old god as, in his opinion, it was accidentally heard in folk songs. Although this position was not fully embraced by other scholars such as Karol Potkański, it was subsequently supported by such scholars as Henryk Łowmiański, or Stanisław Urbańczyk though none of these were aware of the Lucas of Wielki Koźmin postilla.

Contemporary scholars often criticize Brückner's views on the information given by Długosz, regarding them as hypercritical. However, many scholars, such as Aleksander Gieysztor, or Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov, who consider at least part of Długosz's mythological account valuable also reject the historicity of Jesza, and believe the deity was created through a misunderstanding of the refrains of folk songs or words, as suggested by Brückner, or ignore him in their publications as does Andrzej Szyjewski,. According to Brückner, Długosz considered Jesza to be equivalent to Jupiter because of the phonetic similarity ( "Jupiter", from Latin ''Jovis'').

Other modern scholars, such as the historian Włodzimierz Szafrański, the cultural anthropologist Leszek Kolankiewicz and the historian and medievalist Krzysztof Bracha appear more willing to accept the authenticity of the theonym.

Origin

The word ''ješa'' occurs in Old Church Slavonic (ѥша, ⰵⱎⰰ) as a wishful participle "I wish that, ''utinam''". As an example, a passage from the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Bible ''ješa i nie sьbrali sьbora'' is given, which is translated as "would indeed they had not convened the council!". According to linguists, originally the word ''ješa'' meant "may be" and was third-person singular optative of the word ''*jesmь'' ("I am") – so easily the original meaning of "may be" could have shifted into "if only". Consequently, there is a consensus among scholars that the word ''jesza'' appearing in the church texts occurs in this sense and was mistakenly considered a deity. However, etymological dictionaries state that the word ''ješa'' is attested only in Old Church Slavonic (and its Russian and Serbian versions), and no researcher has indicated where this word found its way into Polish chants.

Another explanation is proposed by Michał Łuczyński, who points to Maria Malec's work ''Imiona chrześcijańskie w średniowiecznej Polsce''. According to Malec, the suffix ''-sz'' forms 56 derivations from Christian names, 15 times with Christian names ending in a consonant and 40 times with Christian names ending in a vowel, and she points to the names ''Busz'', ''Dasz'', ''Desz'', ''Dosz'', ''Gasz'', ''Niesz'', ''Siesz'' and others. She also lists the name ''Jasz'' – ''Jesz'', as two phonetic variants of one name: ''Jasz'' () as a Lesser Poland name from 1228, and ''Jesz'' () as a Mazovian name from 1429, and their variants: ''Jaszak'', ''Jaszek'', ''Jaszko'', ''Jeszek'', ''Jeszko'', ''Jeszel''. Also attested is the hypocoristic (diminutive) of the name with the suffix ''-a'': ''Jasza'' () from 1408. These names are an abbreviation of the name ''Jan'', Polish equivalent of ''John'', so the name ''Jesza'' should be considered as its derivative.

Interpretations

Despite strong criticism of the source material mentioning Jesza, some scholars have accepted or are accepting its historicity and have made interpretations of this theonym.

According to Włodzimierz Szafrański, Jesza could have been a Pan-Slavic or even Pan-Indo-European god. He believed that the name of the god, Jesza, was clearly etymologically related to another Indo-European god, the Celtic Esus, whose name was derived, as in the case of the Norse ''Æsir'' (in Old Norse ''áss'', ''óss'' meant "god"), from the same Indo-European root ''*ansu-'' ("lord, ruler, god"). Also derived from this stem is the Avestan word ''ahura'' meaning "lord", and which later became the epithet of the Zarathushtrian god Ahura Mazda as "Lord of Wisdom", to whom the ''yasna