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Paganism-Christianity: Side-by-Side in 999

-By KENNIS WESSEL, Ph.D.
This article appeared in the "Ponca City News,"
on Sunday, June 27, 1999, Page 8A.
-Reproduced here by permission of the writer.-
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(PCN)Editor's Note: The Ponca City Millennium Committee has stimulated a series of articles on the subject of "Life in the Year 999." The articles are researched and written by Dr. Kennis Wessel, Executive Director of the Poncan Theatre. They will appear monthly during the year 1999, anticipating the Second Millennium. This article is the sixth of the series.
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Preliminary Comments
by Bobbie Sue To me, the article you are about to read can be "taken" more than one way. Right away, I found a "spin" on it that I hope other people find, too. Personally, what I get out of it is that for many years, many of our European ancestors had one foot in their ancient so-called "Pagan/Heathen" beliefs, and the other foot in their newfound Christian beliefs. My guess is that this was true in later centuries by the original followers of Native American beliefs (or other "Earth Religions"), as well, who were also so-called "Pagans/Heathens/Savages," and who were hearing their first teachings of Christianity. So, who knows when it all evolved into being an "all or nothing" proposition? Why did it then and why does it now have to be an "all or nothing" proposition? My question is why can't it ALL be considered truths? As long as all of us are giving "credit" to a higher power than us, what difference does it make? And why can't there be mutual acceptance and mutual respect and even a certain amount of blending among all belief systems. Well...if not a blending, which is where I find spiritual "truths/peace," then at least the acceptance and respect of the fact that a person found the right spiritual "connection" for them, even if it isn't exactly the same "connection" as another person's.
IT SEEMS SO SIMPLE TO ME!!!!

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The Article
In 999, a peasant with a fever believed that his body was inhabited by the devil. In 999, an Icelandic lord performed a private mass to his Christian God, and then went out to burn down the house of his enemy. In 999, the Catholic Church absorbed pagan rituals into the church calendar, changing the names of the deities worshiped. In 999, the western world was governed more by faith than we are today.

The Catholic Church was the most significant force in Europe. The Church was recognized from Iceland to the boot of Italy, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. But the Church of 999 was not like the church today. The Church took many centuries to establish a system of churches. In 999, the monastic system was still growing. But ninety percent of the population of Europe lived in villages. Most villages did not yet have a church. Catholicism was spreading as rapidly as it could.

But beliefs change slowly. The church, about to celebrate its own millennium in 999, was still laboring to bring people to God. It was an uphill battle. True, a whole nation or tribe might change faith by a simple flick of the king's hand. It happened often. But the pronouncement of a king may not lead the flock to belief. True conversion was something else. The Church faced ancient, powerful superstitions.

Pagan Rituals Were Common Practices in 999
Pagans weren't always bad. The Latin word "pagus" means "country," in the sense of a rural area. Someone who might live in the country, such as a farmer, was called "paganus." When Christianity became the new, modern religion of Europe, the "paganus" in the country was predictably slow to relinquish ancient beliefs. So the word "pagan," which really meant "a rural person," came to be applied to anyone who was slow to become Christianized.

The word "heathen" is very similar. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "heath." Anyone who lived among "heather" on the hills of England was a "heathen." And like the pagan of Latin areas, they were slower to give up tradition. More progressive people, Christians, looked down on pagans and heathens, and soon those words had the connotation of "unchristian."

To say that pagans were unchristian is not to say that they lacked beliefs. Part of the challenge to the Church was the strength of ancient beliefs. The most compelling beliefs were those that had to do with the life and death of the community. Many pagan rituals were for survival. They were efforts to provide grain, sustenance, the propagation of the species.

In many parts of Europe, farmers performed oblations before planting and before harvest. In England, they planted a little flat cake in the soil before they broke ground to plant new seed. The month of planting was February. Venerable Bede an esteemed eighth century priest, said that February was called "The Month of Cakes" because so many cakes were buried during February planting. These little flat cakes, made of grain, were a gift to the gods in hopes they would favor the farmer with grain once again. The cakes, called "placentae" in Latin, eventually gave their name to the "afterbirth" in human child-bearing.

In 999, Celts, Germans, and Slavs had their own superstitions. They used magic spells to assure the favor of their gods. These peoples were fairly new to farming. Their lands had been forest just a few hundred years before. They had rooted out trees to make farmland. But the old Teutonic culture thought of agriculture as theft from the earth. Even the new culture was nervous about planting and harvesting.

They felt danger in agriculture. Perhaps the earth would be displeased that the forest had been uprooted. Perhaps she would be displeased by a plow scratching her face. So they pretended the plow was an animal rather than a machine. They called it a wolf, or a bear, or a pig's nose, hoping that an animal with its own will would be tolerable to the earth god.

They believed that lightning was punishment from the god Thor. Had the plow not defaced the earth? Thor might be angry. So they singed a few hairs of the oxen, using a little fire to stave off that bigger fire, lightning. The first time they broke ground each spring, they laid an egg before the plow. If the egg broke, they stopped plowing. But if the egg were gently pushed aside, it meant that the earth was ready to receive the plow.

They believed that plowed fields were vulnerable to omens. A funeral procession could not cross a cultivated field, for the evils of death might be communicated to crops. People who were ill were not allowed near a field, nor were women who had just given birth.

Farmers often believed that invisible animals moved through the fields, and the waving of grain was caused by "riders hunting through the grain" or "a witch twisting." But the deathly silence of hot summer days was even more frightening. As hot air shimmered in the afternoons, farmers were seized by a terrible fear of the strange apparition. They saw the shimmering as "the granny of the rye" or "the noontide ghost." The blistering heat was the fiery breath of the ghost.

Even A Goddess in the Field
Various cultures had a goddess of the field. In old Roman cultures, temples for worship of Ceres were still standing. Some were in use. In Germanic cultures, the goddess Freya and the god Frey were thought to have powers over the fertility of crops.

Harvest rituals were very powerful. The last sheaf, the final cutting of the harvest, was always special. In some cultures, it was left uncut as an appeasement. In others, it was harvested but not threshed. In some, it was dressed and put on display, often with ritual dancing around it. And a pillar of dust in the harvested field was a sign in 999 that the god Odin wanted his share of the grain. Often a sack of flour would be emptied into the wind as a sacrifice to Odin.

Mills were also objects of fear and superstition. The thundering of the stone seemed like the voice of thunder himself, Thor. And he might be angered for good cause, since the mill interrupted the flow of the river. Germans and Slavs believed that humans should be subordinate to the forces of nature. Their gods were deities of the river, the wind, the grain, and other principles of nature. While they enjoyed the power of the mill, they were afraid the demons of the river might be angry. They erected little idols in the mills to appease the demons.

Other superstitions and rituals were part of daily life. Sickness and disease were almost always explained by devils. Many different incantations and charms, including Christian rituals, were invoked to prevent illness. The Church had only recently become interested in ceremonies of marriage and procreation. Most weddings were not sanctioned by the Church in 999. Even if they were, the principal ceremony was tribal or civil. At the most, a priest might greet a bridal party at the door to the church. The Christian ritual was on the steps to the church but not inside. The idea of a Christian wedding was not widely observed in 999.

Missionary Work and the Church In 999
Pope Gregory the Great was an amazing man. Several of his ideas transformed the Church forever. One of the most far-reaching ideas was to stimulate missionary zeal in the Church. In 597, Gregory sent St. Augustine to England to bring the Angles and Saxons under the umbrella of Christianity. Augustine established the church at Canterbury.

Ethelbert, a pagan king in Kent, reportedly said to Augustine, "I cannot abandon the age-old beliefs that I have held. But since you have traveled far, and since I can see that you are sincere in your desire to impart to us what you believe to be true and excellent, we will not harm you. Nor will we forbid you to preach and win any people you can to your religion." No Christian ever spoke with more humanity or grace. It was an amazing moment of civility in the chaos of medieval times.

But converting pagans was not a simple task. Cultures with a thousand year history do not vanish because someone has a modern idea. Only rarely will a new idea suddenly replace an old one. Most often, a new idea is grafted on to an old one. Sometimes, contradictory beliefs are held in the same person at the same time. Most often, change happens slowly. One king in Anglo-Saxon England had two altars. One was a Christian altar, and the other was for his pagan deities.

Many people held beliefs in the same way. In some areas, art shows the intermingling of religions. In Anglo-Saxon Christian art, it is not uncommon to find Germanic deities and Christian symbols in the same work. In one huge cross in Cumbria, the image of Christ crucified is not really the dominant image. It stands among images of Woden, Loki and other Germanic deities. Christ in that image is one of several gods. It almost seems as though new converts were "hedging their bets," honoring all the gods to make sure they were safe.

Christians had to be careful. In the early centuries after the Crucifixion, Christians were at some risk across Europe. As they slowly brought more and more converts into the fold, Christians didn't want to be too obvious. After all, Christianity was not always the dominant religion, and many people lost their lives because of their beliefs. It could be dangerous to make your religious differences clear. It was safer to blend with established customs. So the Church often merged Christian celebrations with established pagan customs.

This was a conscious effort by Church fathers. It happened across Europe, from the Latin south to the Anglo-Saxon north. When Pope Gregory sent Augustine to England, Gregory told him to remake pagan temples as Christian churches, rather than to destroy the old. Gregory hoped to entice new converts, and he knew that people would "more familiarly resort to places to which they have been accustomed." By 999, the Church and Christians were safe around Europe. By 999, the enemies to Christians were converted across Europe. But the business of transforming belief was still to be done.

In 999, most people were tied to soil, and like farmers for thousands of years, they found deities in every plant, every field, every tree, every raindrop. Some people were warrior tribes, and even if they converted to Christianity, they often relied on the old gods side-by-side with the new one. But the Church was inventive, resourceful, and often expedient. Instead of compelling belief, for the first thousand years the Church adapted Christianity to the people.

In the fourth century, the Church established the dates of both Christmas and Easter, connecting them to older pagan rituals. The Romans celebrated a sun-god named Mithras. The ritual, dated on December 25, was just after the winter solstice, the most significant moment in the solar calendar. When Church fathers named Mithras's festival as the birthday of Jesus, they probably hoped to replace the pagan celebration with their own. Mithraism was a powerful rival religion of Christianity. Actually, there is some evidence that the birth of Jesus happened at a different time of year.

Dates for Easter were also heavily debated by Church fathers. The Council of Nicaea in 325 produced significant decisions that still are honored in Christian holy ritual today. But the date of Easter, hotly contested in Nicaea, was not settled. Even today, the Eastern and Western churches assign different dates to Easter. Christmas and Easter, the two most significant moments in the Christian calendar, are closely linked to ancient rituals relating to the solar and lunar calendars.

The Gospels connect Easter to Passover. As a springtime story of resurrection, Easter occurs at a traditional time for rituals of rebirth. According to the holy man Venerable Bede, the name "Easter" comes from the name of an Anglo-Saxon deity, Eostre. Eostre was the goddess of the dawn. She was also associated with the return of the sun, the "rebirth" that came with spring. The direction of the dawn took her name. We call it "the East."

In the same way, Christians replaced pagan deities and rituals with Christian saints and rituals. For centuries, Romans celebrated a libidinous fertility ritual called the festival of the Lupercal. During the celebration, mature women consorted with young men. But Christians slowly chastened the event with a sweeter, more romantic purpose, and then invoked the name of a saint. The festival date, mid-February, was retained. But the name slowly changed from "Lupercalia" to "St. Valentine's Day."

Christians replaced old deities with new saints as often as possible. A Christian named Verena became famous for throwing out icons to river gods that one could find in every mill. After her death, Christians replaced old icons with new images of St. Verena. Incantations to Freya, the goddess of clouds and crops, were replaced by prayers to the Holy Mother, Mary. Mary also assumed the role of Demeter, Roman goddess of the hearth, and the role of Ceres, goddess of grain.

Across Europe, Christians began to worship at shrines that held holy relics. Usually, a relic was connected to a saint. It might be a part of the saint, or part of a garment, or any other material object that was part of the saint's life. Any important church had a reliquary, a container for the relic of a particular saint. These reliquaries are often quite beautiful. Some churches came to be known as "pilgrimage churches," because so many people would travel there to commune with the saint.

The medieval Christian generally believed that prayer was more effective if you were close to the relic. A prayer to the saint, in the presence of the relic, improved the chances of being heard. And it was hoped that the saint would intercede with God in heaven. This kind of worship was familiar to everyone. It made the deity more personal, less abstract. It facilitated the transition from paganism to Christianity.

There is evidence that the First Millennium brought many new converts to Christianity. After the year 999, the Church rapidly expanded its reach, its influence, its authority. The effect of the Crusades was profound. They became an effective way to publicize the mission and the glory of the Church. They brought many new people to active participation in the Church. They stimulated the passion for pilgrimage, not only to the Holy Lands, but also to relics of saints across Europe. In the next few centuries, the Catholic Church became wealthy, prosperous, and powerful. In three centuries, the Church would begin to exert its authority in the Inquisition.

But in 999, the Church co-existed with ancient paganism. The Church was still searching for its identity, still reaching out for souls. In 999, faith and belief were a profound experience in every moment of daily life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ -Copyright 1999 by Kennis Wessel

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