I know that the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire…this was in the 4th century AD. However, there were later emperors who attempted to revive the old Roman religion-and I believe that these observances were heldinto the 5th century. When did these beliefs finally die out?
I know that the early Christian church was of two minds about the roman gods-some believed them to be demons, while others (like Augustine) preached that the old roman gods simply did not exist.
Anyway, the fact that many of the Roamn temples were conevrted into Christian churches insured their survival…but at what point did the whole old religion end?
Good luck googling for “paganism”. 99% of your hits will be on Wicca and other modern forms.
Classical paganism was officially prohibited by the Emperor Theodosius in the late fourth century. He was the emperor who also banned the Olympic Games because of their pagan origins. However, there is some evidence that classical paganism probably persisted at least into the sixth century CE. In the first place, it must have still had a vibrant existence at the time Theodosius banned it, because otherwise he might not have bothered. In some ways it’s the mirror image of the condition of Christianity 150 years before. The earlier, Pagan emperors would not have persecuted the early Christians so vigorously if theirs had been so minor a movement as to pose no threat to the established order.
The word pagan originally meant ‘rustic’, or ‘dweller in the country’, where paganism persisted the longest. In fact, when St. Benedict arrived at the village of Monte Cassino to found his monastery, he found the local people busy celebrating a festival to the god Apollo, and this was well into the sixth century.
I see on preview that someone asked about the emperor who tried to reinstate paganism. That was Julian The Apostate, but this was well before the final prohobition of paganism enacted by Theodosius. I don’t think it really went much beyond that one emperor.
[Disclaimer: The basis of this statement is printed sources read long ago. The St. Benedict episode was described in [url-“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226028402/qid=1100207218/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-2049114-6074460?v=glance&s=books”]The Mind Of The Middle Ages, by F. B. Artz.]
Be advised that in the 18th Century, an English scholar traveling in Italy contacted a coven, and was startled to discover that they were worshiping Diana, in a rite that was almost unchanged.
Read this here on the SDMB, too lazy to search for it.
Since we don’t know what the rites of Diana really were back then, we would really have no idea of the rite was “almost unchanged”.
One problem witht he question is that there was* no* “Roman religion” per se. First off all they had some old god and household gods- many of whom were nameless and who rituals were conducted in a language no one understaood- likely mangled terribly by time, note. Then, the Romans more or less stoles the Greek Pantheon whole cloth, “changed the name to protect the guilty” and dropped it on top of that. Then, they had the “mystery cults” (mostly eastern religions", and then at the end, some brought Mitraism in to replce most of that.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus gives more or less the right answer. Note that many Pagan rituals - with some changes over the years- remained for centuries as "folk customs. There are still a few of these extant, where Ethnologist can still see traces of Paganism and the Pagan roots. How much these “customs’ have changed since the were 'rituals” we don’t know, but we are pretty sure they had their roots in such.
From the first century AD, Romans were showing a great deal of interest in alternatives to their native religion. One of these was the secrative cult of Mithras. This was certainly a popular cult in the Army and if you are looking for the last Roman pagans you would probably find them in the army, worshiping Mithra some time in the 5th century AD.
But did the cult of Mithras die out? I have several times heard it said that far from being stamped out, the cult of Mithras merged with Christianity - another Eastern religion with which it had quite a lot in common.
What were Roman temples used for? As I understand it,they were not like Christian cathedrals…they did not accomodate large numbers of worshipers.
Were you required to go to a temple periodically? Or was it a case of occasional visits? Did the Roman religion require its followers to have regular services?
And, when you worshipped, did you worship all the gods, or just Mars, Jupiter, or Pan, for example?
Most temples were dedicated to one or perhaps two gods that were some how connected by their myth, much like later churges were dedicated to one or two saints. Presumably when you went to the temple you’d just worship the god or gods that the temple was dedicated to. The Pantheon, originally dedicated to all the gods must have been an exception.
You might be close if you imagined the average Roman’s relationship to the gods as something like a relationship with a landlord, or perhaps a Mafia godfather. Nobody expected you to love them. Nobody expected you to think about them very often (in fact, philosophers had a word for people who were always thinking about gods - translate it either “piety” or “superstition,” depending on your mood.) It was not even important that you actually believe in their existence. What mattered was that the sacrifices got offered on time.
So a temple was basically the place where sacrifices got offered. There was nothing like “regular services”; no emphasis on belief, no usual emphasis on anything like a moral code. And basically, you could worship whoever or whatever you wanted, as long as you didn’t interfere with the customary sacrifices, did whatever the magistrates told you, and didn’t scare the horses.
[QUOTE=DrDethSpectre of Pithecanthropus gives more or less the right answer. Note that many Pagan rituals - with some changes over the years- remained for centuries as "folk customs. There are still a few of these extant, where Ethnologist can still see traces of Paganism and the Pagan roots. How much these “customs’ have changed since the were 'rituals” we don’t know, but we are pretty sure they had their roots in such.[/QUOTE]
This is interesting. Do you have any examples?
Haj
I presume you’re actually thinking of the American (though he did spend a few years living in Britain) 19th century writer and poet Charles Godfrey Leland who claimed to have been in contact with a surviving Italian witch cult, most notably in his book Arcadia (1899). But, even if one takes his account seriously, it’s not necessarily obvious that they were worshipping Diana.
And, over and above the quibble, few academics do take him seriously at all.
I was fooled by the last name.
Leland does sound British, after all.
BTW–re: the scholars who didn’t take him seriously–19th 20th or 21st Century scholars. Has the rejection of his claims been re-assessed?
“Miraculous” springs, now dedicaced to saints, and where people used to come to have their ailments, infertility or diseases cured (and actually still do, though much more rarely) where probably in almost all cases formed paganb sacred springs.
In my area (and in other countries) , there are the “St John’s fires”, organized at the beginning of summer. All people from the village gather, and a large bondfire is lighted (customarily a whole tree is burned), and young people are expected to jump over the fire, an action which besides the fun and the thrill is supposed to bring health, love, and maybe marriage. It’s quite obviously a remain of a pagan summer festival rather than a celebration that has anything to do with St John.
It never has. It is alive and well in the Roman Catholic Church. Will Durant,* in one of his books that comprise his “History of Western Civilization” series, “The Age of Faith,” says:
“Paganism survived in the moral sense, as a joyous indulgence of natural appetites; as a religion it remained only in the form of ancient rites and customs condoned, or accepted and transformed, by an often indulgent Church. An intimate and trustful worship of saints replaced the cult of pagan gods, and satisfied the congenial polytheism of simple or poetic minds. Statues of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus; the Roman Lupercalia and the feast of the purification of Isis became the feast of the Nativity; the Saturnalia were replaced by Christmas celebration, the Floralia by Pentecost, an ancient festival of the dead by All Souls’ day, the resurrection of Attis by the resurrection of Christ. Pagan altars were rededicated to Christian heroes; incense, lights, flowers, processions, vestments, hymns, which had pleased the people in the older cults were domesticated and cleansed in the ritual of the Church; and the harsh slaughter of a living victim was sublimated in the spiritual sacrifice of the Mass.”
To this add Easter, which is the Christianizing of the celebration of the spring Equinox, and the Queen of Heaven, the Babylonian goddess, “Ishtar” (Latin: “Oester”)
Details of all this can be found in Hislop’s “Two Babylons.”
Aren’t all these things still being practiced, to the hilt, in the Roman Catholic Religion?
*Durant was trained as a Jesuit Priest.
The period in which Leland’s work was taken most seriously by historians was when Margaret Murray was regarded as a leading authority on witchcraft. His claims rather naturally fitted into her view that a pre-Christian “old religion” had survived to be persecuted as witches. But Murray’s reputation comprehensively collapsed in the 60s and 70s. Looking back on Leland from this side of that reassessment, he now looks far more like a Victorian enthusiast who was very much of his period. The most obvious difficulty is that no subsequent folklorists have found any evidence on the ground to confirm his version.
However, his writings had a major influence on 20th century paganism and in those circles he is still taken seriously - an example. Because of this influence, Ronald Hutton duly assessed him and his claims in The Triumph of the Moon (Oxford, 1999, p141-8), laying out the different possible interpretations of what was going on. He’s open about why he’s dubious about Arcadia as an historical source, but does suggest that someone could usefully write a scholarly biography of Leland.
There is the major exception of Carlo Ginzberg, who is prepared to cite Arcadia as “a text of semi-scholarly origin circulating in Tuscany towards the end of the nineteenth century” (Ecstasies, 1989; Penguin, 1992, p200). But he sees it as evidence of a tradition distorting Christianity, rather than a pagan survival.
In Greece, there’s a ceremony celebrating the Virgin Mary, IIRC, where the villiagers wend their way through town carrying offerings, torches, and other things above their heads, where they stop is now a Christian shrine, but prior to this was a site connected with Persophone, IIRC.
When Did The Roman Religion Finally Die Out?
I think Catholicism is still alive but faltering.
And not just there. The veneration of saints, the use of images, statues, vestments, etc is common among Orthodox Christians. And the singing of hymns, and the celebration of Christmas and Easter is almost universal among all Christians; Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox alike.
Christianity adopted or co-opted a good number of pagan practices and rituals. It doesn’t follow that the old pagan religions, in the sense of belief systems, are alive and well.
Interesting thread, with lots of good info.
You have to be a little careful about this idea that Roman Catholicism is just paganism in disguise. Some of the “parallels” amount to little more than “Christianity has rituals, paganism had rituals too, therefore Christianity stole their rituals from paganism.”
One case where the influence is pretty clear is in annual festivals. An important aspect of Roman religion was the annual festival in honor of the god (for instance the Saturnalia in December). This typically involved processions and sacrifices. There is a description of the Easter celebration in Jerusalem from a fifth century pilgrim (I forget her name) that is strikingly similar to descriptions of pagan festivals around the same time.
UDS’s caveat is important, too. The fact that some rituals borrowed from older pagan rituals doesn’t mean that the old beliefs remained unchanged. (An example from modern times is the way that Jews have modified Hannukah celebrations in response to Christmas.) People who wanted to celebrate Jesus would naturally do it in the way they were used to celebrating. That doesn’t mean that they were really celebrating Attis (or whoever).
The major god’s temples (Jupiter, Mars, Juno, etc.) had priests. What did these guys do? Was it general temple maintainence and offering sacrifices? Was the pay good?
And some of those interesting priestesses… (like the Vestal Virgins, for example)-that sounds like it was a pretty good job.
How did a roman youth become a priest?
Except that many of these rituals are not described in the books of the New Testament, leading one to believe that they first gained currency after the church became a Roman institution. Which, combined with the similarities between the described rituals and pagan rituals, leads one to suspect that the early church in Rome coopted pagan rituals to help ease the transistion from paganism to Christianity.