page_title: Yesha (mythology)
section_title: Study
hierarchical_section_title: Yesha (mythology) / Study
caption_attribution_description: Le pilier des Nautes Esus Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny Source&#160;: Clio20
context_page_description: Yesha or Yasha – Polish or Lechitic god whose exact functions are unknown. Yesha was first mentioned in around 1410 in the postil of Łukasz of Wielki Koźmin in which he was warning about the worship of Yesha and other gods such as Niya, Lada and Kij during spring rituals and folk performances. According to Jan Długosz, he was the highest of the Lechitic gods and the equivalent to Roman god Jupiter.
  The name of the god most likely took the form of "Jesza". In the 15th century, the Polish voiceless retroflex fricative sound, was written as a double s. The word jesza, as noted by Aleksander Brückner, also appears in the Old Church Slavonic language as a wish particle "may!".
context_section_description: From the beginning of the Renaissance, church documents regarding the prohibition and combating of the worship of the god Yesha in Poland were gradually forgotten or even lost. On the other hand, messages from Jan Długosz and Maciej of Miechów remained known and available. In the following centuries, the information about Yesha was accepted without reservations, all the more so because Maciej of Miechów, in a fragment devoted to the god Jesse, repeated Długosz's information without reservations.  
  Then, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the entire message of Długosz and earlier church sources were subjected to too harsh, as is often believed, criticism in the research of Alexander Brückner. This researcher, not taking into account or not knowing the oldest message about the god Yesha - Postil of Koźminczyk - noticed that the very word jesza in the church language meant 'may' additionally hypothesizing that it could not, as in his opinion accidentally heard in folk songs, be the name old god. This position, despite being seriously questioned already at the beginning of the 20th century by, among others, Karol Potkański, managed to find continuators in the form of researchers such as Henryk Łowmiański or Stanisław Urbańczyk, which in effect led to the objection in the academic discourse.
  Nowadays, after the rejection of Alexander Brückner's hypercritical attitude, Jan Długosz's report is increasingly recognized as valuable, and on a comparative basis worthy of further research. Religious expert and archaeologist prof. Włodzimierz Szafrański even notes that Brückner's findings can hardly be considered consistent with the scientific method, in part simply describing them as libel against the person of the chronicler Jan Długosz. Currently, analogous remarks on the work style of Alexander Brückner, including excessive preference for digression, are made by religious expert Andrzej Szyjewski. In addition, information about the remaining deities from Old Polish reports, depending on the publication, is considered valuable by such researchers as the above-mentioned Włodzimierz Szafrański and Andrzej Szyjewski as well as Marek Cetwiński, Marek Derwich, Leszek Kolankiewicz and Aleksander Gieysztor, among others.
caption: Esus (sculpture from the Galician altar found in Paris)
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