According to some scholars, the theonym
Svetovit allegedly derives from
Saint Vitus, because in Slavic languages both names sound very similar. Supporters of this theory cite Helmold, who cites the so-called "Corvey legend" in two versions (in the first version, he calls it an , in the second, he calls it a ) according to which the tribe of the
Rani living on the island of
Rügen was
Christianized in the ninth century, and then abandoned Christianity and idolized Saint Vitus: For an old relation of our ancestors tells that in times of
Ludovicus II a group of monks famous for their holiness left
Corvey. Hungry for the salvation of the Slavs, they insisted on suffering dangers and death in order to preach the word of God. After passing through many provinces, they arrived at those who were called Rani or Rujani and lived in the middle of the sea. That is the home of error and the seat of idolatry. After faithfully preaching the word of God, they won over the entire island, where they even founded an oratory in honor of Our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ and in memory of Saint Vitus, who is the patron saint of Corvey. Later, the situation having changed with permission from God, the Rani moved away from the faith and, immediately driving out the priests and the Christians, changed religion for superstition. For they worshiped Saint Vitus, who we revere as a martyr and servant of Christ, as a god, setting creatures over the creator. There is no other barbarism under heaven more horrifying to Christians and priests; they only rejoiced in the name o Saint Vitus, to whom they even dedicated a temple and a statue with a very significant cult and they attribute especially to him the primacy of the gods. They ask of him prophetic answers regarding all the provinces of the Slavs, and pay sacrificial tribute annually. Not even the traders who coincidentally arrive at those places can sell or buy anything if they do not first make an offering of some precious object from their wares to the god and only then can they make their goods available to the public at the market. They honor their high priest no less than they would a king. And thus, from the time that they renounced their first faith, this superstition perseveres among the Rani until the present. Such a view was expressed by
Evelino Gasparini, or
Henryk Łowmiański, but Łowmiański rejected the authenticity of the legend. Instead, he proposed a hypothesis according to which the cult of St Vitus was supposed to have spread from
Prague to
Brenna – from there came
Drahomira, the mother of
Wenceslaus I, the founder of
St. Vitus' Church in Prague – where it was accepted as a deity by tolerant Slavs, and after the fall of Brenna it was supposed to have reached Rügen. The view of the Christian origin of Svetovit is rejected by most scholars and historians. It is generally believed that this legend was invented in the 12th century to justify political claims to Rügen, already known since the mid-11th century. First of all, it is impossible that there was a Christianization of
Polabia in the ninth century, let alone of Rügen in the ninth century – the first documents attesting the Christianization of Rügen appear only after the fall of the Slavic
Arkona in
1168, although chroniclers of the time were eager to describe the Christianization of any pagans – the Christianization of Rügen is not mentioned by
Widukind of Corvey (
The Deeds of the Saxons), nor by
Adam of Bremen (
Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum). There is also an argument against such borrowing by given names of similar construction, e.g.
Milovit,
Radovit,
Siemovit, etc. It is also unclear why the Slavs would consider an unpopular saint as a chief deity. The cult of St. Vitus itself was transferred to the Polabian region from Prague, not from Corvey. The origin of this legend is unclear. Helmold mentions a Christianizing mission to Rügen, but makes no mention of a tribute, and the monastery makes no mention of a mission, but mentions the right to collect a tribute from Rügen. The first to mention the loss of Corvey's right to Rügen was
Abbot (d. 1071), but this is probably a later
interpolation. The first reliable, albeit indirect, information about the Rügen tribute was given by the
Annales Corbeienses, which describe the expedition of Duke
Lotar III in 1114 against the
Lutici union. The defeated
Circipanians tribe admitted that they had once paid tribute in the form of fox skins or coins to St. Vitus in Corvey (where his relics had been located since 836). According to Łowmiański, this confession to paying tribute was a fabrication to appease Lotar's wrath, since there is no evidence whatsoever that the Circipanians paid tribute before that date. According to Roman Zaroff, however, this information is also a forgery; according to Janisław Osięgłowski, the legend originated around 1110-1114 and was started by monks from Corvey who knew the Slavic language and participated in Lotar's war expedition. When they learned about the island and the benefits that could be derived from its possession, the similarity of the words
Svetovit and
Saint Vitus prompted them to create the legend, claims, however, that the legend may have originated even earlier, but it was not practically applied for the first time until 1114. According to , the information about Svetovit, whose cult prevailed among the Pomeranian Slavs after the fall of
Rethra, may have reached Corvey through merchants charged with donations to Svetovit, or returning prisoners of war who were kidnapped by . The person who translated the theonym was able to translate the first part of the theonym as corresponding to Latin
sanctus, but was unable to translate the second part (
-vit), which, with the medieval tendency toward etymologization, resulted in a legendary identification.
In Serbia Some publications claim that Svetovit was also worshipped in
Serbia (and
Croatia), as evidenced by the holiday of
Vidovdan (literally "St. Vitus Day"). This holiday, which was originally associated with St. Vitus, was forgotten over time and began to regain its popularity in 1818 after the publication of
Vuk Karadžić's
Srpski rječnik, where Vidovdan is mentioned as the day of the
Battle of Kosovo. Since the mid-19th century, with the rise of Serbian romanticism, this holiday among all Serbs began to symbolize the nation's heroism in the fight against the
Ottoman Empire. In 1864 the holiday returned to the church calendar, but at that time the holiday was mainly treated as a day to commemorate the battle of Kosovo and the death of
Prince Lazar. For this reason, there were even claims in the scholarly literature that Vidovdan is not related to St. Vitus at all. At the end of the 19th century, in his book
Natko Nodilo attributes the cult of Svetovit to all Slavs, whose cult was to be deliberately replaced by a saint with a similar name to facilitate Christianization. Based on this book,
Miodrag Popović argues for the pagan origin of the holiday. Popović is later referred to by , according to whom Vidovdan is a festival of the deity
Vid, and the Kosovo myth developed alongside the cult of this deity, as well as ethnologists Dušan Bandić and Mila Bosić. Even today, the view of the cult of Svetovit among
Serbs and
Croats comes up for discussion; his name is often stylized as
Svetovid or
Vid to make the name similar to toponymy and other proper names (e.g.
Vidova Gora), which are supposed to be remnants of his cult. However, the theory of the knowledge of the god Svetovit in the
South Slavs cannot be accepted – it is widely believed in the scholarly community that the god Svetovit was known only to the
Polabian Slavs and did not have a pan-Slavic range, and the Serbo-Croatian toponymy and proper names refer to St. Vitus (). == Cult ==