I was reading some comments on something and one guy said that in the middle-ages, the backwoods populations were for a long time semi-pagan who worshiped a ton of stuff in addition to the Christian God.
Is there any truth to that comment? Did semi-pagan folk religion survive for some time in christian lands?
It makes me wonder how much of their own religion the average person knew, considering the sermons were in Latin.
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Well, it could (and has been) argued that the various saint's cults in Northern Europe were a holdover from earlier pagan beliefs.
Furthermore you have the continuing importance of pagan festivals like Hallowe'en and Christmas.
It depends on where you are and how far after conversion youre talking about. Even though a king or lord might adopt a new religion, its going to take a while for everyone to. It can take decades, even centuries for everyone to adopt a religion.
That said, you have to keep in mind too that alot of times people of the time period equated paganism with satanism and withcraft. So when you see someone talking about pagan practices in a primary source, it very well could just be meaningless slander.
Depends. Middle Ages is a long time, and depends a lot on where you were. I know the Irish law codes gave druids the ability to grant protection and some other big rights until just before the Viking age.
When you seriously take a look at the role of saints in Catholicism, it's hard not to see paganism.
Catholicism in general is a very neat middle ground between Messianic judaism and european paganism
Huh, interesting way to put it.
It's arguable how much continuity there was with pre-Christian religion, but it's certainly true that country folk then, as now, had many peculiar customs, superstitions and beliefs.
b-b-but muh latria and dulia!
There were pagans in Eastern Europe well into the 1400's. Even had a few Crusade or two directed at them in the Baltics.
I wonder how many common people were taught the difference. That's priest language.
Except maybe some isolated people like Samis, I doubt there were many pagan peoples in Europe since medieval times, but pre-Christian practices definitely survived in a Christianized form all over the place, and especially in rural peripheral areas. Actually worshiping non-Christian gods would be a rarity though. Instead they'd sometimes be turned into saints, like Brigit of Kildare.
I was just reading earlier about how much of the rural Irish Catholic population before the mid-19th century (when there was a 'devotional revolution' that ended non-canonical practices) was into all kinds of folk magic and ritual with pre-Christian origin, like driving cattle through the smoke of bonfires to protect them from illness. One belief that survived even longer was the superstition surrounding faeries, being which supposedly dwelt in caves and ancient monuments that needed to be respected for fear of bad luck. These figures were often derived from earlier pagan gods, but again, there was no actual worship.
This. Much of Medieval Christianity was very much based around syncretism. They weren't really pagans, but many of the same practices were carried over, and many times saints were used in place of local religious figures.
Europeans had folk religion up until the 20'th century
My grandmothers grandmother was kinda a witch with herbs and stories about spirits and elfs and that kind of stuff, mixed with all kinds of half-baked Christianity on top of it like "when it rains it's because God's angels are crying" etc.
Where was she from?
The border area between Denmark and Germany
You can still found touch-healers and other folk medics.
In Slovenia, certain isolated communities where old faiths were followed existed into the 20th century.
they still were quite recently. there is a grove here where has been buried coins, bottles of booze and other small stuff in 19th and even early 20th century as offerings.prob food and that kind of things too but they have rotten away a long ago. there even was one coffee plate with a eagle and swastika on it's bottom.
Sure they did, atleast parts of them. Over here in sweden it was fairly common in agrarian communities just a couple of generations ago to put out food etc for "hustomten" (the house gnome) so that he would protect the house instead of fuck it up. We also dance around a gigantic phallus every year around the time of the summer solstice. The kids love it.
was just gonna mention this... belief in tomtar is alive and well in Sweden to this day.
If one were to look at the christian population they would realize that they are not really christian as much as they are incredibly superstitious.
>They have rituals for everything, that is know as folk wisdom. Like prayers for the Evil Eye or headaches.
>They view Christianity as transactional. The church encourages people to give money for everything to the point where belief is not even anymore.
>They collect crosses and icons and display as many as they can think that the higher number multiplies the blessings
You can see how they never really changed the population from their old shamanistic roots just slapped a coat of Jesus on top of everything.
People did and still do ritualistically cut a pig a couple of weeks before Christmas and make a "Pig's Wake" with the fresh meat even tho this always takes place during Lent which is a big part of the Orthodox Doctrine.
>Here's a video showing people cursing each other and pushing and pulling just so they can get as much holy water as possible.
youtube.com
Romanian christian population *
Also if you go further back you have the description of the Southern Moldavians who believed that God already decided the time of their death so they just went full on retard during battle since it didn't matter.
This indicates a connection to the old slavic religions who were derivative of the Norse ones concerning predetermination.
It's probably due to the fact that Moldova had to be recolonized in a sense after the Mongols left so it has a higher percentage of Slavs due to the Polish and Russian peasants that were brought in by the nobles.