European Pagans and their Survival...

LSCatilina · Sep 11, 2017

Planet of Hats said:
Even in polytheist Rome, once Lepidus bit the dust, the Emperor was always also the high priest.

G.Washington_Fuckyeah said:
My question is a bit off-topic (since your post focussed on the time after 500 CE): if I understand your statement, Christianity had no advantage over Hellenistic paganism.

I, myself, finds to rather agree with Paul Veynes when he argues that Christianity had a genuine spiritual attraction compared to Roman-Hellenistic beliefs. It's why I want to stress that the reasons Christianity did blossomed in medieval Europe aren't systematically structural, in the sense of blunt and concious self-interest : ideologies, beliefs, doesn't spread this way, not only. It's why imperial cults as Sol Invictus didn't really worked out IMO, and why Christianity (which was an imperial cult, eventually, rather than a popular religion adopted by the emperor) did.

If you allow me to quote.

More than evangelic spirit, that spiritual culture or exalthation yet to come of a suffering Christ and Holy Mother (Byzantium and St. Bernard are still to happen), others attracts, unknown from traditional paganism, were enough to provoke most of conversions : loving piety of a religion of love, collective fervours during long weekly synaxes of a communautary cult, hope and joy of a supernatural destination, peace of soul different from stoician atraxis, and before anything the "bourgeois" moralism that german historians underline; there was, or as we can believe, a certain moralism among respectable plebs media. All of this could only comfort representants of public authority, if they deemed worth to inform themselves.

He mades at some point an interesting comparison with socialism, in the sense that an universalist belief first propaged by intellectual circles and semi-elites, eventually managed to get down in numbers to the lower classes, not because these lites were self-interested (for political control, machiavellian devices or muhahahahaha evilness), but because it appealed to them in the general cultural and ideological crisis, resonating with their own zeitgast, both practically and culturally.

Paul Veynes sees as well a crisis of paganism, among cultivated and scholarly elites, caused by the lack of practical and spiritual cohesion between philosophic and civic religion.
He does stress that among the general population, paganism as a custom was entranched and could have continued, but not so much among scholars, philosophers and general elites.

Now, he certainly doesn't say that the Late Roman empire was pregnant with Christianity and, fairly IMO, points that it was both the interest and probably more the genuine faith of Constantin that propelled a fairly (if significant) minor religion to a main one. But, structually, it was obviously a fitting choice, more than the "natural" evolution of traditional paganism so far, so to speak.

Hellenism too was a closed system which peneprated civic and religious life. In Greek (and, for that matter, Roman) cities, there was no separation of politics and religion. The Gods and their cult were omnipresent.

Which is kinda the point, altough @clem attlee would be far more able than I am to dissert on the imperial religious structures and dynamics, and he seems to point that late Roman religion had institutional autonomy and unity of its own. The strength of Christianity comes, at least when it comes early medieval era, that it was partially separated from politics (up to a point of course, the "natural" ruler of the churches remain the king, most of the time), and that a king adopting Christianity didn't have to bend to the king of Franks or Rome if he could avoid it, and at the contrary could structurate its own clergy in time (it could take more or less of this, arguably, but the HRE never really obtained a protectorate trough religion on Scandinavia, for exemple)

Skallagrim · Sep 11, 2017

One could argue that if you break Frankish power, conversion of northern European Germanic peoples might be a lot slower-going. The Frisians and Saxons were converted by the Franks, and the process was enforced by Frankish power. Without that, Christianity won't be crossing the Rhine as fast as it did in OTL. Also, with Frankish power broken (the POD could be a sequence of escalating succession conflicts), there won't be a Charles Martel (nor a strong power for him to lead) to defeat the muslim forces at Poitiers eventually. Islamic power in southern Europe is thus strengthened compared to OTL, and whatever state the Frankish people are in, they are very much weakened. In any event, Christian powers in Europe will be busy facing a critical threat in the south. They won't have the means to go a-conquering up north, let alone to convert northern pagans.

Besides the always interesting option of butterflying the reconquista (and even opening the door for further islamic expansion in southern Europe), this could also keep many Germanic peoples pagan for a good long time. In OTL, the Alemanni went through a gradual conversion by a process usually credited to emulation of the new religion of the Merovingian elite in the sevent century. With Frankish power shattered, that can safely be considered butterflied.

Without the Frankish empire of Charlemagne and its conversion campaigns, and without the German power that was formed out of the eastern half of his empire (which violently Christianised peoples further east), a lot of northern Europe might well be staying pagan for a much longer time. Long enough for it to stick? For the power dynamics between the Christian and the pagan states to 'gel', so to speak? Maybe. But at the very least, it buys the pagans as much breathing room as they're likely to get.

There's the Byzantine influence further east, of course. The best bet for a pagan 'area' is basically Germanic (both the German lands and Scandinavia), possibly the Baltics, too. If being surrounded by Christians can inspire the peoples in question to find common cause, to some extent, converting them by force may well be tricky.

123456789blaaa · Sep 15, 2017

@LSCatilina I mostly agree with you but I do have one small quibble. I don't think you can really compare all the varied aspects of "Roman-Hellenistic beliefs" to an exclusivist religion like Christianity. While Van Nuffelen has some interesting thoughts on how the concept of "paganism" as a whole isn't really as totally a Christian concept as some believe, it still isn't as closely tied together as Christianity is. I've been doing a lot of reading on Late Antique Platonism in preparation for making a case for the vitality of "paganism" in the Roman Empire. What I've found is that certain sections of "paganism" certainly did experience intense spiritual convictions besides the Mystery Cultists. The figure of Iamblichus in particular seems to mark a turning point where the pagan Platonic "philosopher" became a priest or high-priest figure who fundamentally required the aid of the Divine to reach true understanding and salvation. Amongst the pagan Platonists after Constantine, there are divine visions, pilgrimages, and the emergence of the "pagan holy man" figure (for an exploration of this see Garth Fowdens The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society). Iamblichus for example was later ascribed the ability to perceive other peoples thoughts, soar into the air, and summon spirits. I've seen Patricia Cox cited as saying that many Late Antique thinkers thought of the true philosopher as divine, a spiritual healer, mirror of God, and moral guide. The emergence of theurgy in general seems to point to a much more mystical and theological orientation than previously.

Unfortunately, Constantine and the long reigning, successful Christian patronizing emperors after him succeeded in giving a huge boost to Christianity at precisely the time this evolution in platonic thought was occurring. The pagan Platonists ended up marginalized and restricted to Athens (but still evolving in thought) before finally dying out during the reign of Justinian. One wonders what might have happened if the Christophobic Maximinus Dias had succeeded in becoming the sole Emperor and implementing his structured "high priest" system in the rest of the Empire at precisely the time Iamblichus was alive...

EDIT: Another example of what I mean from Dirk Baltzly's THE PLATONIC COMMENTARY AS PAGAN SACRAMENT page 22:

Few philosophers now would think of a lecture on Plato’s philosophy as an act of prayer. Nor would many of us regard Plato’s own dialogues as hymns so that, in the act of reading out part of the dialogue for the class in order to set the stage for our explanation of it, we are performing a holy act. Yet late antique Platonists such as Proclus did so regard Plato’s works. The lecture theatre was not simply a setting for the transfer of information from teacher to audience. Rather, it was an event in which the master – the final link in the Hermaic chain – was filled with the divine revelation of Plato’s philosophy. As Marinus’ narration of the events witnessed by Rufinus makes clear, it was a setting in which the auditors could find themselves in the presence of a manifestation of divinity. The teaching of Plato, then, constituted a kind of pagan sacrament through which the members of the textual community might be connected to the gods.

CountPeter · Sep 15, 2017

Napoleonrules said:
I feel the Celtic faith seemed to have been the strongest non-Roman pagan group in Western Europe and yet they seem to have been rolled over fairly easily by Christianity. If you can get them to stick to their faith then I think it would be harder for the Christians to convert Germanic tribes. You might see Christianity limited to France, Spain, Portugal, Italy areas in Western Europe.

Sort of an aside due to the fact that the pod is after 500, but the Celtic faith survived crises that Christianity could only dream of. The Romans had commuted genocide on the druids who were by all accounts the driving philosophical and theological class giving "Celtic religion" an identity across Europe. The fact that it survived so long when its priesthood died out in an oral tradition is actually crazy. I do have to wonder how more sturdy it could have been had the druids not died out or if it had become a written religion.

LSCatilina · Sep 16, 2017

123456789blaaa said:
@LSCatilina I mostly agree with you but I do have one small quibble. I don't think you can really compare all the varied aspects of "Roman-Hellenistic beliefs" to an exclusivist religion like Christianity.

We can, up to a point : while the Roman-Hellenistic beliefs were varied, they tended to be more standardized than what existed in Barbaricum, essentially due to the presence of a sophisticated, mostly unified state and the culture it supported (how much in countryside is a matter of debate, but there as well on some respect)
The question isn't that paganism was active, or even dynamic, but that what made it so morally was essentially compatible with Christianity, while the new religion provided scholars, philosophers and learned elites with a coherent ensemble : late Roman-Hellenic paganism was undergoing sort of "crisis of faith" not on the philosophical tenents of their own spirituality, but on the existence of a large gap between this and the "vulgar" paganism, so to speak.

It's really interesting, on this regard to see that Christianity, in western Romania, first won on the Roman "upper middle-class", before even making a dent on popular classes that didn't have the same worries about the relative unchoerence of late paganism.

You mentioned philosophers as bearers of sacraments or playing a role comparable to medieval and modern confessors, and it was indeed a role they played during most of the imperial period in the great families (altough Rome was ridden with self-titled philosophers with a relatively dubious moral and scholar stance, it does point their social role) : Lucien Jerphagnon did an amusing description in his Au Bonheur des Sages.
But Christianity could provide this as well, with the benefit representing a coherent philosophical ensemble, elaborated in the IInd and IIIrd centuries on the same sources than late paganism : again, it doesn't mean at the latest that it was bound by the early IVth to win over Constantine (and eventually late Romania as a whole), but its compatibility with late Roman social-cultural background and its spiritual/ideological benefits (stress on a certain universalism at least religiously, on general charity, etc.) really gave it wings in early IVth, and enough prestige for that several emperors ended patronizing it.

On this regard, the pressure on neo-platonicism was less a cultural oprression, than a hold-up.

CountPeter said:
Sort of an aside due to the fact that the pod is after 500, but the Celtic faith survived crises that Christianity could only dream of.

I'm a bit wary talking of a Celtic faith : druidism was essentially tied to Gallic and Brittonic (and not all, far from it) societies, without any convincing evidence of its existence elsewhere in Celtiberia, Danubia or Italy (it's sometimes argued that it did existed, under other names, which I think is a weak explanation).
Even more, druidism was essentially tied to the social-institutional frames (they participated to build) of the Gallic and Brittonic societies, and when these frames changed in the IInd century BCE in Gaul, druidism simply declined up to the point of irrelevance : Caesar is barely able to distinguish druids as a whole, and is totally unable to identify one of the main persons he encounters, Diviciac, as a druid as he relied essentially on Poseidonios' account. Their absence, while they used to regulate conflicts among peoples, was maybe one of the features that allowed a quick Roman conquest.

What appeared in Gaul, one century before the conquest (but as the Roman influence on their society became more and more important), regards to faith and religious practices was a more individual religions (with a possible revival of bards, tied with more independent, spiritually, aristocracy), where intermediaries as druids are more absents, and where philosophical tentents were either integrated in the late Gallic society, either abandoned (more or less partially, as the revival of figuration in southern and central Gaul).
I agree that Britain and Belgian Gaul were more traditionalist, on this regard, but when Tiberius outlawed druids and uates (which were practicers of religion/magic, as diviners, prophets and soothsayers), druidism itself was already declining importantly since two centuries.

To prevent the decline of druidism in Gaul and Britain (and having a go at expanding it to other Celtic/Celticized regions) you need to butterfly away Roman archê.

wtw · Sep 16, 2017

I just don't see any way beyond 1700 it surviving outside of the Northern reaches in Scandinavia among the Sammi. European Christians saw it as a chance to expand their holdings and empires using religion as a cover. Most of Europe is to close to Rome or Istanbul or any other center of Christianity. The only way I could see European Paganism surviving is if Christianity is butterflied away, or Muslims destroy it before it leaves the MENA region or it embraces more Jewish qualities and never leaves the Levant.

CountPeter · Sep 16, 2017

LSCatilina said:
I'm a bit wary talking of a Celtic faith : druidism was essentially tied to Gallic and Brittonic (and not all, far from it) societies, without any convincing evidence of its existence elsewhere in Celtiberia, Danubia or Italy (it's sometimes argued that it did existed, under other names, which I think is a weak explanation).
Even more, druidism was essentially tied to the social-institutional frames (they participated to build) of the Gallic and Brittonic societies, and when these frames changed in the IInd century BCE in Gaul, druidism simply declined up to the point of irrelevance : Caesar is barely able to distinguish druids as a whole, and is totally unable to identify one of the main persons he encounters, Diviciac, as a druid as he relied essentially on Poseidonios' account. Their absence, while they used to regulate conflicts among peoples, was maybe one of the features that allowed a quick Roman conquest.

What appeared in Gaul, one century before the conquest (but as the Roman influence on their society became more and more important), regards to faith and religious practices was a more individual religions (with a possible revival of bards, tied with more independent, spiritually, aristocracy), where intermediaries as druids are more absents, and where philosophical tentents were either integrated in the late Gallic society, either abandoned (more or less partially, as the revival of figuration in southern and central Gaul).
I agree that Britain and Belgian Gaul were more traditionalist, on this regard, but when Tiberius outlawed druids and uates (which were practicers of religion/magic, as diviners, prophets and soothsayers), druidism itself was already declining importantly since two centuries.

To prevent the decline of druidism in Gaul and Britain (and having a go at expanding it to other Celtic/Celticized regions) you need to butterfly away Roman archê.

That is true. I suppose I tend to use "Celtic faith" as a shorthand for the religions in which druids were a significant part of the faith. To be more accurate, "Celtic faith" as a term is also not the best as many of the cultures which we call Celtic today were not identified as so historically.

I suppose a more accurate revision of my statement would be that druid based religious traditions survived quite well considering active military and political action.

Incasaurus · Sep 16, 2017

CountPeter said:
That is true. I suppose I tend to use "Celtic faith" as a shorthand for the religions in which druids were a significant part of the faith. To be more accurate, "Celtic faith" as a term is also not the best as many of the cultures which we call Celtic today were not identified as so historically.

I suppose a more accurate revision of my statement would be that druid based religious traditions survived quite well considering active military and political action.

Bardic tradition seemed to have survived longest within the realms of the Picts and even after an acceptance ofChristian missionaries and conversions Druidic/bardic traditions continued- King Angus was said to have court bards well beyond that 500 c.e pod date. Without referring to online/literature sources I cannot with certainty proffer an actual date but I am confident that this is the case. Maybe a surviving Pictland more successful than in the otl would have rejected Christianity however it is noteworthy that during the early medieval period Pictland was in relation to it's size and military might equal to any of the other kingdoms of the British isles. I will research the timeline of Pictish conversion to better understand this.

CountPeter · Sep 16, 2017

Nomis Nosnibor said:
Bardic tradition seemed to have survived longest within the realms of the Picts and even after an acceptance ofChristian missionaries and conversions Druidic/bardic traditions continued- King Angus was said to have court bards well beyond that 500 c.e pod date. Without referring to online/literature sources I cannot with certainty proffer an actual date but I am confident that this is the case. Maybe a surviving Pictland more successful than in the otl would have rejected Christianity however it is noteworthy that during the early medieval period Pictland was in relation to it's size and military might equal to any of the other kingdoms of the British isles. I will research the timeline of Pictish conversion to better understand this.

Tbh, depending on what you consider "Christian", there is potential for the druidic/bardic tradition to continue alongside Christianity. The brilliant Irish Book of Invasions was a christian attempt to Christianise Irish myth and legend. Taken literally, the book technically promotes 2 main deities (the Tuatha De being originally talented humans) in the form of the Abrahamic god and Danu who is the goddess of the Tuatha De. In the book, the powers of both druids and christian monks/saints are acknowledged. Make some catastrophe happen which makes Christianity more diverse or without any early monopolising organizations (itself an interesting idea for a tl) and such a religion could hypothetically exist (whether it would be successful or not is a different matter).

With that line of thinking, although I don't have a direct source for this (its the kind of thibg I have read about in books and online but can never tell where it is originally sourced from), supposedly missionaries to the Scandinavian peoples capitalised on the idea that Baldr would be resurrected at the end of ragnarok and would be the lord of the next world. If this is true and actually was briefly believed, it is not impossible for someone to make a belief system which incorporates the myths and legends of the Norse as the stories of the old world and the bible as the stories of the current world (tbh I'm kinda suprised I haven't found any neopagans express such a view, especially as "christo-pagans" are apparently a thing). To borrow from ASOIAF, a person adhering to this faith might swear by the old gods and the new

NolanFoster · Sep 16, 2017

What made Hinduism more resilient than the traditional faiths of Europe, the near east, and the Mediterranean, keeping in mind that it is derived from what can be considered a form of paganism? How can a similar religious system be created from Greco-Roman or Germanic religion?

Jonathan Streeton · Sep 17, 2017

In our OTL the Mari people of Russia are considered one such surviving Pagan faith however they have little influence beyond their immediate sphere and officially converted to Orthodox-ism during the Soviet era.

Other "late" surviving faiths are notably the Lithuanian pagan faith which survived as a state religion well into the medieval period despite repeated attempts at forced conversion.

What other Pagan faiths may have lasted this long or longer if events had taken a different turn?[/QUOTE]

In OTL the Irish refused to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism despite heavy pressure and even military force from the English and Scottish for almost 500 years, without any support from other catholic nations, partially as a passive-aggressive way of rebelling against their more powerful neighbours. If they had not been peacefully converted by Saint Patrick in the 500s, they may have held onto their pagan beliefs in the same way.

LSCatilina · Sep 17, 2017

CountPeter said:
I suppose a more accurate revision of my statement would be that druid based religious traditions survived quite well considering active military and political action.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, actually : druidism in Gaul disappeared less by direct political or coercitive action, than a general change in Celtic societies themselves. Now, we have to note (as you do in your later post) that druidism (or forms of druidism) did survived in Ireland when it disappeared elsewhere (maybe some forms in Wales, but this much isn't that certain). But Ireland was at the very edge of Roman influence (one interesting questions would be why wasn't there a similar situation in Northern Britain, among the peoples that formed Picts in Late Antiquity), so less prone to change along the lines Gallic and Brittonic entities did IOTL.

NolanFoster said:
What made Hinduism more resilient than the traditional faiths of Europe, the near east, and the Mediterranean, keeping in mind that it is derived from what can be considered a form of paganism?

It's mostly what I'd think, rather than anything clearly sourced.
But, eventually, the various Dharmic religions in India strikes me as offering a more coherent philosophical-spiritual ensemble than most, with a great philosophical drive on its justification which made it way trough state-sponsoring without being a civic cult. What strikes me is less that Hindu ensemble did maintained, but how it didn't included Buddhism as well as it did with Jainism : I think this is the key, eventually, as the rivality between close beliefs ans philosophies forced Hinduism-s to really

Note that Islam was seen as an invader's religion, not that it didn't really prevented a lot of conversion since the Middle-Ages (Pakistani and Bengali Muslims doesn't exactly massively descend from Arabs, Persians or Turks), but it did similarily went trough an identitarian reaction while the beneficts joining a "commonwealth of islamic nations" wasn't especially obvious : India was an old,sophisticated geopolitical ensemble which rather tended to "impress" its mark on Asia (altough it was replaced by Chinese influence eventually*), rather than see Islam (or Christianity) as a social propeller.

So, there's shortly my two cents : India was already a sophisticated (politically and socially) ensemble, with Dharmic religions being roughly unified in various coherent and scholarly schools that were considered as part of Indian identity.
Of course, it was served by historical context : there's a possibility for a mostly Islamized India, the way Persia was IMO.

*One can wonder about the possibility of the Indian Ocean being a true Hindu "eastern Mediterranean" up to nowadays without Islam.

How can a similar religious system be created from Greco-Roman

It was more or less attempted (without the idea of creating a counter-Church IMO) by Julian, but it might have been a tiny bit too late, as it would have been a tentative to reconquer scholars without a that obvious way to form a religious body both philosophically and spiritually coherent, and compatible with social frames. Without Christianity, something would have probably took form (altough probably not the usual Imperial cults, probably maybe an Apollonian-Dyonisian ensemble a bit like Hinduism is still unified into three main branches).

or Germanic religion?

Giving the relations and situation in presence, whatever happens in Romania (Christianity, not-Christianity, anything) would have an influence on the immediate Barbaricum. One can't stress nearly enough that a good part of Barbarians were more or less Romanized (would it be on what caused their ethnogenesis and their self-identity).
From this, it depends : frankly, I don't see any good reason why Romania wouldn't pull the same thing India did in South-East Asia, meaning putting Barbaricum into a same cultural (and therefore spiritual) sphere.

123456789blaaa · Oct 4, 2017

LSCatilina said:
We can, up to a point : while the Roman-Hellenistic beliefs were varied, they tended to be more standardized than what existed in Barbaricum, essentially due to the presence of a sophisticated, mostly unified state and the culture it supported (how much in countryside is a matter of debate, but there as well on some respect)
The question isn't that paganism was active, or even dynamic, but that what made it so morally was essentially compatible with Christianity, while the new religion provided scholars, philosophers and learned elites with a coherent ensemble : late Roman-Hellenic paganism was undergoing sort of "crisis of faith" not on the philosophical tenents of their own spirituality, but on the existence of a large gap between this and the "vulgar" paganism, so to speak.

It's really interesting, on this regard to see that Christianity, in western Romania, first won on the Roman "upper middle-class", before even making a dent on popular classes that didn't have the same worries about the relative unchoerence of late paganism.
<snip>

Interesting that you mention the "gap" because I see Iamblichus as a figure who was instrumental in trying to reconcile the two in opposition to earlier Platonic philosophers. For example, in the article High Priests of the Highest God: Third-Century Platonists as Ritual Experts by Heidi Marx-Wolf we see disputes over blood sacrifice:

Iamblichus's criticisms of Porphyry's questions and positions on the issue of theurgic practices, such as sacrifice, are very pointed. But at stake for Iamblichus was not only the salvation of the philosopher's soul, but also the salvation of all souls. For implicit in Porphyry's view that priests who sacrificed animals were worshipping evil spirits was the corollary that anyone who partook of these sacrifices was also participating in this worship. Furthermore, Iamblichus was also concerned about the place of the philosopher as ritual expert in a changing religious and ideological landscape. Iamblichus's daemonology in On the Mysteries is one place where all of these points of disagreement between the two philosophers are highlighted.

Iamblichus used fire to explain how sacrifices symbolize the way in which these spirits help human souls to become free. He writes, "The offering of sacrifice by means of fire is actually such as to consume and annihilate matter, assimilate it to itself rather than assimilating itself to matter, and elevating it towards the divine and heavenly and immaterial fire."76 This explanation of sacrifice's transformative power ran counter to Porphyry's mere propitiation of evil spirits. One sacrificed and burned animals, their flesh and blood, in order to become free from flesh and body. Instead of being a polluting practice, it was a purifying one.

Iamblichus also insisted that the order of sacrifices could not be confused or circumvented. Even the person who dedicated his or her life to philosophical pursuits and theological speculation must, if he or she wished to be healed of the suffering associated with embodiment and generation, perform the proper sacrifices in the correct order and manner.77 This position [End Page 501] ran counter to the one Iamblichus represented as Porphyry's, namely that one can think one's way out of the bonds of nature. According to Iamblichus, Porphyry was of the opinion that the philosopher did not need theurgy but could reach God by virtue of the intellect. Not only was it the case for Iamblichus that philosophers could not think their way to union with the One, but everyday people and communities or states were left with no soteriological recourse according to Porphyry's view of things.78

78. Iamb. Myst. 5.15 (des Places 170; trans. Clarke et al. 253): "So if one does not grant some such mode of worship to cities and peoples not freed from the fated processes of generation and from a society dependent on the body, one will continue to fail of both types of good, both the immaterial and the material; for they are not capable of receiving the former, and for the latter they are not making the right offering." Gregory Shaw, "Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite," 578, explains that the reason Iamblichus denied the possibility that human souls could philosophize their way back to union with the one was that the soul, when it descended, did so completely. Iamblichus disagreed with Plotinus and Porphyry on this point, both of whom believed that some part of the soul remained connected with its source.

Furthermore, in the article Authoritative Obscenity in Iamblichus and Arnobius by Mark Masterson we see Iamblichus apply an elite lens to some of the most vulgar paganism out there:

Iamblichus’s re-theorization of traditional religious practice leads him to consider the erection of phalloi and the utterance of obscenities in religious settings. Obscene physical representations and words reveal the sublime. The erection of phalloi, which had a long history in the ancient societies,26 is a powerful symbol of the divine’s presence in the world:

"… I declare the erection of phalloi to be a sort of symbol of generative power, and I consider this directed towards the begetting of the world; this is the reason, indeed, why most of these images are consecrated in the spring, since this is just when the whole world receives from the gods the power of generating all creation.27"

Iamblichus asserts that the erected phalloi are symbols of divine transcendent creativity that insures the harmoniously organized life of the universe. This symbolization does not lack for paradox. The symbols are material and recall mortal thrusting and ejaculation, and so, through both their construction from matter and their reference to humanity, they continually resist the abstraction inherent in the symbolization. This is hardly supposed to be the way to the orderly, transcendent, immortal, and pure realm of divinity. That which in other contexts was surely regarded as obscene, Iamblichus here connects, within a religious festival context, to cosmology. This connection is underwritten by his revaluation of the material, whereby “the efficacy of actions … and the power of symbols” (both of which are material) “… create theurgical unity.” Iamblichus makes a display of obscene matters, and he is most assuredly not stained by doing so.

After proposing the paradox of the phalloi, Iamblichus continues immediately with discussion of the proper way to understand the utterance of obscenities (here designated by “base utterances”) in a ritual/religious context:

"And as for the base utterances (αἰσχρορρημοσύνας), my view is that they have a role in expressing the absence of beauty which is characteristic of matter and the previous ugliness of those things that are going to be brought to order, which, since they suffer from a lack of ordering, yearn for it in the same degree as they spurn the unseemliness that previously was their lot. So then, once again, one is prompted to seek after the causes of form and beauty when one learns the nature of baseness (τὸ αἰσχρόν) from the utterance of base things (ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν αἰσχρῶν ῥήσεως); one rejects the practice of obscenities (τὸ … ἔργον τῶν αἰσχρῶν), while by means of uttering them one makes clear one’s knowledge of them, and thus turns one’s impulses in the opposite direction.28"

So while I agree that there was a large gap and it presented a problem, I also think that Platonism was in the process of reconciling the contradictions when Christian Emperors appeared. I go more into the changing nature of Platonism and paganism in this thread.

ManintheField · Oct 4, 2017

Skallagrim said:
One could argue that if you break Frankish power, conversion of northern European Germanic peoples might be a lot slower-going. The Frisians and Saxons were converted by the Franks, and the process was enforced by Frankish power. Without that, Christianity won't be crossing the Rhine as fast as it did in OTL. Also, with Frankish power broken (the POD could be a sequence of escalating succession conflicts), there won't be a Charles Martel (nor a strong power for him to lead) to defeat the muslim forces at Poitiers eventually. Islamic power in southern Europe is thus strengthened compared to OTL, and whatever state the Frankish people are in, they are very much weakened. In any event, Christian powers in Europe will be busy facing a critical threat in the south. They won't have the means to go a-conquering up north, let alone to convert northern pagans.

Besides the always interesting option of butterflying the reconquista (and even opening the door for further islamic expansion in southern Europe), this could also keep many Germanic peoples pagan for a good long time. In OTL, the Alemanni went through a gradual conversion by a process usually credited to emulation of the new religion of the Merovingian elite in the sevent century. With Frankish power shattered, that can safely be considered butterflied.

Without the Frankish empire of Charlemagne and its conversion campaigns, and without the German power that was formed out of the eastern half of his empire (which violently Christianised peoples further east), a lot of northern Europe might well be staying pagan for a much longer time. Long enough for it to stick? For the power dynamics between the Christian and the pagan states to 'gel', so to speak? Maybe. But at the very least, it buys the pagans as much breathing room as they're likely to get.

There's the Byzantine influence further east, of course. The best bet for a pagan 'area' is basically Germanic (both the German lands and Scandinavia), possibly the Baltics, too. If being surrounded by Christians can inspire the peoples in question to find common cause, to some extent, converting them by force may well be tricky.

This post deserves a little bit more attention than it's getting, I think.

By the time of Charlemagne, the Saxons had begun to develop a popular consciousness of being 'other' than the Christian Franks in a way that saw defending their traditional paganism as valuable on a genuinely popular level, as far as I know. The raw power of the Frankish realm in this period was enough to overwhelm this developing consciousness, but if you break the Franks earlier...who knows? Even prevent their unification by a Christian monarch in the first place (a 'Sargarius wins!' timeline could be valuable here, less for any chance of surviving native Roman power in Gaul as in preventing the singularly effective Clovis from being the Frankish king to convert) would go a long way to keeping the Rhine as a cultural meeting point, a continuum of Romanism and Germanism, Christian and Pagan cultures. Christianity would certainly influence the development of Northern European paganism in such a timeline, but it would not replace it, I think. Northern European societies will not 'stay' pagan forever in the sense that their paganisms will evolve and become things very different from their roots over time, but I find it perfectly believable to say they may never become Christian.

Further east...again, who knows? It took several centuries of neighboring powerful, very Christian realms to get Slavic polities to start converting and Baltic paganism survived well into the late Middle Ages. Without the OTL pressures that brought about conversion, why should they ever?

CountPeter · Oct 4, 2017

So I've been thinking some more on this, and weirdly a Manichean Rome could be the answer.
Where it spread, Manichaeism often absorbed local traditions,making mention of "pagan" deities as part of the family of light in opposition to the family of dark.
A Manichean Rome could literally expand on the previous roman policy of including the deities of conquered peoples as an understanding of their own, but with an Abrahamic twist.

Although the elect in such a scenario might be more "pure", the layman may very well honour Zues as on the side of light etc.

123456789blaaa · Oct 4, 2017

ManintheField said:
This post deserves a little bit more attention than it's getting, I think.

By the time of Charlemagne, the Saxons had begun to develop a popular consciousness of being 'other' than the Christian Franks in a way that saw defending their traditional paganism as valuable on a genuinely popular level, as far as I know. The raw power of the Frankish realm in this period was enough to overwhelm this developing consciousness, but if you break the Franks earlier...who knows? Even prevent their unification by a Christian monarch in the first place (a 'Sargarius wins!' timeline could be valuable here, less for any chance of surviving native Roman power in Gaul as in preventing the singularly effective Clovis from being the Frankish king to convert) would go a long way to keeping the Rhine as a cultural meeting point, a continuum of Romanism and Germanism, Christian and Pagan cultures. Christianity would certainly influence the development of Northern European paganism in such a timeline, but it would not replace it, I think. Northern European societies will not 'stay' pagan forever in the sense that their paganisms will evolve and become things very different from their roots over time, but I find it perfectly believable to say they may never become Christian.

Further east...again, who knows? It took several centuries of neighboring powerful, very Christian realms to get Slavic polities to start converting and Baltic paganism survived well into the late Middle Ages. Without the OTL pressures that brought about conversion, why should they ever?

The "paganism" of the saxons and pre-Christian eastern Europe is not a structured, transcendentalist religion. It doesn't have the "toughness" required to resist conversion. Preventing Frankish conquest might allow them to Christianize more on their own terms, but unlike Roman paganism, I see no indications that they were evolving into something more sophisticated. Pre-Christian Europe just isn't developed enough and all the most developed "core" regions around are Christian. Civilization emanates from Christianity after the Roman Empire goes Christian.

ManintheField · Oct 5, 2017

123456789blaaa said:
The "paganism" of the saxons and pre-Christian eastern Europe is not a structured, transcendentalist religion. It doesn't have the "toughness" required to resist conversion. Preventing Frankish conquest might allow them to Christianize more on their own terms, but unlike Roman paganism, I see no indications that they were evolving into something more sophisticated. Pre-Christian Europe just isn't developed enough and all the most developed "core" regions around are Christian. Civilization emanates from Christianity after the Roman Empire goes Christian.

I just don't see any necessity at the heart of this argument.

As an example, conversion of the Danes essentially froze over the course of the late 9th and 10th centuries as Frankish efforts to convert them collapsed along with centralized political authority in the Carolingian empire. Only once the Saxon Emperors had re-established power did efforts continue.

The influence and power of Christian civilization is going to have an effect in Northern Europe, no doubt, but what that effect is without the hard, military power of the Christian Frankish Empire is, I think, an open question. Bede, for example, seems to think the Saxons were outright hostile to conversion prior to their conquest by Charlemagne. Why would that stop if Charlemagne never happens?

Even the Alemanni seem to have converted under the influence of Frankish power specifically. The waxing of Merovingia and the cultural pull of its elite culture is what got Christianization in Alemannia going, prior to that there's attestation that they remained pagan even essentially right next door to (very Christian) southern Gaul.

You can find a similar centrality of the Franks to the conversion of Frisia.

Practically every pagan Germanic (or Slavic, or Baltic) people converted after the Franks owes, to some degree, their decision to do so to the fallout from the growth of Clovis' domain and conversion.

Truthfully, Christianity would have penetrated Northern Europe almost no matter what (while Northern European paganism evolving in an exclusivist direction is certainly possible as a timeline, I don't think it's the most plausible) but, without the hard and soft power influence of a Christian Frankish Empire dominating Western and Central Europe for a few centuries, it's hard to see it acquiring the over all dominance it did IOTL. In fact, there's no reason to suspect Christian influence North of the Alps and east of the Rhine will be exclusively Catholic. Without the Church having a great deal of influence with the governing powers of the area, why shouldn't Arianism still continue to win adherents, like it had been with Germanic peoples for centuries?

Skallagrim · Oct 5, 2017

123456789blaaa said:
The "paganism" of the saxons and pre-Christian eastern Europe is not a structured, transcendentalist religion. It doesn't have the "toughness" required to resist conversion. Preventing Frankish conquest might allow them to Christianize more on their own terms, but unlike Roman paganism, I see no indications that they were evolving into something more sophisticated. Pre-Christian Europe just isn't developed enough and all the most developed "core" regions around are Christian. Civilization emanates from Christianity after the Roman Empire goes Christian.

This whole attitude somehow smacks of determinism a bit. "This doesn't have the qualities needed" presupposes that there is a set list of such qualities, which I'd like to dispute (although there are factors of influence, and Germnic paganism does have certain disadvantages). More importantly, it implicitly dismisses that this could ever change, and then shuts the door. The idea that Germanic paganism was non-evolving is just basically untrue, and if you're basing your position on that, I'd suggest reconsidering that stance.

You mention the Saxons in particular. A really good book on their conversion to Christianity, their immense resistace to that conversion, and the methods by which it was ultimately achieved (by force, after thirty years of warfare that could only be ended by Charlemagne literally threatening with total genocide) is Hoe God Verscheen in Saksenland ("How God appeared in the land of the Saxons") by Dirk Otten. I'm sorry to say that to my knowledge, no English translation has yet been published. If you're really interested, I can probably seek out some other sources for you. I have quite some books on Saxon and Germanic history and on Germanic religious tradition, but I'd have to ascertain which ones are most relevant to this particular subject.

What I can say, in general, is that Germanic paganism was dynamic, evolving, and gradually moving towards more widely-practiced, generalised expressions. In other words: it was growing more coherent. The threat posed by Christian missionaries speeded that process up, it would appear, and particularly among those directly facing established Christian powers (such as the Saxons, facing the Franks) it fostered the development of a much more solid "national" identity (I put "national" in quotation marks because I do not mean the latter-day concept. Better would be "people-identity": the Saxons began to explicitly define themselves, and what it mean to be Saxon, because they felt threatened.)

All this rather tends to back up what @ManintheField wrote. particularly these points all ring very true:

ManintheField said:
As an example, conversion of the Danes essentially froze over the course of the late 9th and 10th centuries as Frankish efforts to convert them collapsed along with centralized political authority in the Carolingian empire. Only once the Saxon Emperors had re-established power did efforts continue.

ManintheField said:
Bede, for example, seems to think the Saxons were outright hostile to conversion prior to their conquest by Charlemagne.

ManintheField said:
Even the Alemanni seem to have converted under the influence of Frankish power specifically. The waxing of Merovingia and the cultural pull of its elite culture is what got Christianization in Alemannia going, prior to that there's attestation that they remained pagan even essentially right next door to (very Christian) southern Gaul.

You can find a similar centrality of the Franks to the conversion of Frisia.

Practically every pagan Germanic (or Slavic, or Baltic) people converted after the Franks owes, to some degree, their decision to do so to the fallout from the growth of Clovis' domain and conversion.

Supposing a scenario wherein the Frankish realm still exists, and the Christian missionary impulse no doubt continues to exist, but where the overwhelming Frankish power of OTL is broken early on... the mentioned Germanic peoples will still "feel the heat", but they'll be quite safe from military conquest by the Franks. Under such circumstances, their "national", cultural and religious identities were strengthened in OTL. Unlike in OTL, they'll get what they need to continue that process: namely time.

Even granting that eventual conversion is quite likely, the idea of a pagan Northern Europe finding enough coherence to maintain that identity indefinitely is far from impossible. I wouldn't even call it particularly implausible.

LSCatilina · Oct 8, 2017

123456789blaaa said:
So while I agree that there was a large gap and it presented a problem, I also think that Platonism was in the process of reconciling the contradictions when Christian Emperors appeared. I go more into the changing nature of Platonism and paganism in this thread.

I agree : Roman Christianity was not bound to happen : but the strength of Christianism on this regard, while it could have been replaced by a another spiritual or religious ensemble, was its spiritual attraction that while fit elites' expectations, could be translated more easily trough predication outside the traditional cultural frames (once established there) than a rather complex and, truth to be said, challenging set of beliefs than dogmatic Christianism.
Such a neo-Platonician spirituality would have, IMO, an harder time popularizing itself relatively speaking (altough a Buddhic/Confucean equivalent, or even influence in the first case, is an interesting realistic prospect).

ManintheField said:
By the time of Charlemagne, the Saxons had begun to develop a popular consciousness of being 'other' than the Christian Franks in a way that saw defending their traditional paganism as valuable on a genuinely popular level, as far as I know.

That's not that particular to Saxons, tough, and I don't think it's that obvious even in contemporary chronicles contrary to what we can say about Frisians on which I agree we can say had a definitely anti-Christian policy (Frankish religious policy on this regard was blunt enough that nobody could ignore the ramifications).
Contrary to a Frisia that was a multi-decennal issue for Franks, Saxony (safe the conquest itself, of course) didn't brang as much long-term troubles : I think it's tied with the degree of political sophistication that strikes me as much develloped in Frisia than Saxony.

The raw power of the Frankish realm in this period was enough to overwhelm this developing consciousness, but if you break the Franks earlier...who knows?

It would look differently, and probably slower but rather by the nature of christianism pervasivness (Frankish cultural influence in Northern Europe didn't went anywhere even at the heart of the faida, altough you can argue that the crisis of the late VIIth was more marked) ITTL, trough a more gradual appearance mirroring the development of Christianism in southern England trough Frankish court influence rather than conquest.

Even prevent their unification by a Christian monarch in the first place (a 'Sargarius wins!' timeline could be valuable here, less for any chance of surviving native Roman power in Gaul as in preventing the singularly effective Clovis from being the Frankish king to convert) would go a long way to keeping the Rhine as a cultural meeting point, a continuum of Romanism and Germanism,

For all intent and purposes, Franks were already a hugely romanized people at this point. See, they formed a cultural continuum in Northern Gaul since the late IVth century (in matter of institutional and cultural integration), which translated as a political continuum around the Battle of Déols (a Britto-Roman/Gallo-Roman/Frank-Roman continuum, so to speak) that while breaking away, paved the way for Frankish takeover in a way that Alemanni were unable to (or Syagrius, but a quick search can point you about the really limited potential of Syagrius in Gaul).

Even without Franks, as long Roman (imperial or post-imperial) Gaul is christianized, it will be a religious-institutional base for conversion : would it be Romans, Franks, Goths, Saxons...

ManintheField said:
As an example, conversion of the Danes essentially froze over the course of the late 9th and 10th centuries as Frankish efforts to convert them collapsed along with centralized political authority in the Carolingian empire. Only once the Saxon Emperors had re-established power did efforts continue.

It's not that clear cut, altough I agree with you on the institutional part.

Bede, for example, seems to think the Saxons were outright hostile to conversion prior to their conquest by Charlemagne. Why would that stop if Charlemagne never happens?

Saxons were already in the Frankish sphere of influence since the VIIth century : without the crisis that late Merovingian Francia underwent, you'd still be likely to see at the very least the process of tributarisation and sattelisation continue. A fortiori, without Charlemagne but with Peppinid takeover (and the transmission from Neustria to Austrasia of Frankish cores), Saxony is going to be affirmed as part of Frankish periphery.

The waxing of Merovingia and the cultural pull of its elite culture is what got Christianization in Alemannia going, prior to that there's attestation that they remained pagan even essentially right next door to (very Christian) southern Gaul.

You forgot something there : Alemania wasn't as much close from Christian or Gallic cores that sheer distance would made it, as mountainous lands and ranges prevented a direct link. It's why Bavarians ended up with a Lombard influence rather than Frankish for a while. Similarily, Alemanian regions were rather more tied to Rheinish Francia with remained fairly less christianised until the VIIth century as a whole.

Without the Church having a great deal of influence with the governing powers of the area, why shouldn't Arianism still continue to win adherents, like it had been with Germanic peoples for centuries?

Be careful to not confuse Arianism (or "hard Arianism") that virtually disappeared in the IVth century, and Homeism (or "soft Arianism", basically a non-dogmatic ensemble) which was significantly closer to Orthodoxy but extremely limited outside Barbarian peoples and in constant demographical decline after the Vth century and the political fusion. In a no-Clovis TL, you might see the efforts of Alaric II in his religious policy of "let's blend it all together" a bit more successful. A Gothic Gaul would be then a TL where an Homean elite gradually wins the Nicean elite in Gaul trough the usual process of integration of Roman elites, but eventually with such a Nicean influence that it would end at best with a Nicean-but-in-name Christianity which, giving the sheer influence of Romania, WILL turn into a Nicean denomination sooner or later (safe another PoD about Constantinople)

Skallagrim · Oct 8, 2017

LSCatilina said:
That's not that particular to Saxons, tough, and I don't think it's that obvious even in contemporary chronicles contrary to what we can say about Frisians on which I agree we can say had a definitely anti-Christian policy (Frankish religious policy on this regard was blunt enough that nobody could ignore the ramifications).
Contrary to a Frisia that was a multi-decennal issue for Franks, Saxony (safe the conquest itself, of course) didn't brang as much long-term troubles : I think it's tied with the degree of political sophistication that strikes me as much develloped in Frisia than Saxony.

(...)

Saxons were already in the Frankish sphere of influence since the VIIth century : without the crisis that late Merovingian Francia underwent, you'd still be likely to see at the very least the process of tributarisation and sattelisation continue. A fortiori, without Charlemagne but with Peppinid takeover (and the transmission from Neustria to Austrasia of Frankish cores), Saxony is going to be affirmed as part of Frankish periphery.

I don't know what you're basing this on, but it runs counter to everything we know about the Saxons and their position relative to the Franks. The Saxons were not within the Frankish sphere of influence, and were instead a constant thorn in their side. Regardless of whether the Saxons or the Frisians were ultimately the tougher nut to crack, neither was very willing to be subdued, and both resisted heavily.

If Charlemagne has to basically put a pin in his southern ambitions, go back north, and fight a 30-year war against the Saxons just because they're such a persistent problem... that's not someone who's in your sphere of influence. The Saxons were raiders to the Franks. They've been aptly described as "land-vikings" of sorts, constantly threatening the Frankish border regions. Inasfar as they had normal relations of peace and trade with anyone, it was certainly not with the Franks. Rather, they engaged in such contact with the Danes and to some extent with the Frisians. (Also note that when the Franks conquered Frisia, this relation with the Frisians evaporated-- if the Saxons were already within the Frankish sphere, that would make no sense at all.)

So no, without a Charlemagne-like conquest, the Saxons are not within the Frankish sphere of influence. To say that they were so in OTL before that conquest is frankly (haha, "Frank-ly") bizarre, because the relationship of the Saxons to the Franks before ultimately being conquered is best defined as "implacable foe".

This does not dispute the idea that without Charlemagne, some other Frankish ruler, or a succession of them, could not subdue the Saxons instead. This could happen, and indeed, that way, the Saxons could end up "as part of Frankish periphery" just as you say. Without breaking Frankish power, such a thing is likely... which is why my orgininal suggestion, which sparked this whole line of discussion, was to break Frankish power. But what I do dispute is the notion that the Saxons were -- in any meaningful way -- already within the Frankish sphere before Charlemagne came along and conquered the region. That claim holds no water at all, and it furthers a misleading deterministic view which suggests that the Frankish (and thus Christian) takeover of that region was almost certainly a foregone conclusion. That misleading view really needs to die.