Between Bonn and the Eifel lies the origin of one of old Europe's most distinctive cults: the Matronae, three dignified women with fruit baskets, to whom the people of the Rhineland set up hundreds of votive stones over centuries. A cult right on our doorstep.
Whoever seeks Germanic religion need not always look to Iceland. Some of it lies much closer – in the Rhineland, carved in stone. The Matronae, the "matrons", are among the best-attested deities of the Germanic-Roman frontier zone. And their heartland is our region.
The Matronae almost always appear in threes: three seated women, usually with overflowing fruit baskets in their laps, the two outer ones in huge round bonnets, the middle one often with loose hair. This visual formula recurs on hundreds of votive stones. They were guardian and mother deities: responsible for fertility, family, kin and well-being. Whoever fulfilled a vow because a child was born healthy or a journey ended well had an altar set up to the Matronae.
The centre of the cult lay on the Lower Rhine and in the Eifel. In Bonn people worshipped the Matronae Aufaniae, whose altars were even found beneath Bonn Minster. Near Nettersheim and at the heathen temple of Pesch in the Eifel stood a great sanctuary of the Matronae Vacallinehae. Further by-names fill whole lists – often named after places, kin-groups or tribes. The inscriptions are Latin, but the names predominantly Germanic (in part Celtic): here Roman writing and native belief merged.
To the Matronae Aufaniae, NN has gladly and duly fulfilled his vow.Formula of a Rhenish Matronae dedication (public-domain inscription), rendered in sense
Because the Matronae appear as powerful women in threes and watch over the fate of men, they were early compared with the Norse Norns and the Dísir – those women of fate and protection in the far later Edda. The idea is tempting: a line from the Rhenish mothers of the 2nd century to the weavers of fate in the North. But this connection is not securely attested. It is an interpretation that rests above all on the striking number three and the concern with fate – not a continuous cult one could trace across a thousand years.
What remains is striking enough: right in our region, between Bonn and the Eifel, people prayed for centuries to three motherly goddesses – and left us their names in stone.
Nerthus – the earth goddess · Interpretatio Romana · How the Germanic peoples honoured their dead · The grove of the Semnones · The Germanic feasts.
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