Paganism Surviving in Christianity (Classic Reprint)
Paganism Surviving in Christianity (Classic Reprint)

Author: Abram Herbert Lewis

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-09-16

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9781528463782

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Excerpt from Paganism Surviving in Christianity The scientific study of history reveals the norm by which ideas, creeds, movements, and methods are to be tested. Such a standard, when con trasted with the speculations of philosophy, is granite, compared with sand. God's universal law, enunciated by Christ, is By their fruits ye shall know them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Final Pagan Generation
The Final Pagan Generation

Author: Edward J. Watts

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0520379225

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A compelling history of radical transformation in the fourth-century--when Christianity decimated the practices of traditional pagan religion in the Roman Empire. The Final Pagan Generation recounts the fascinating story of the lives and fortunes of the last Romans born before the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their experiences of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them, and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither their juniors’ interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their propensity for violent conflict. Watts examines why the "final pagan generation"—born to the old ways and the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious practices would continue as they had for the past two thousand years—proved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as well as students and scholars of the ancient world.

Pagans and Christians
Pagans and Christians

Author: Robin Lane Fox

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 808

ISBN-13:

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The author recreates the world from the second to the fourth century A.D., when the gods of Olympus lost their dominion, and Christianity, with the conversion of Constantine, triumphed in the Mediterranean world.

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-07-25

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3110486075

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It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Paganism in the Roman Empire

Author: Ramsay MacMullen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1981-01-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780300029840

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"MacMullen...has published several books in recent years which establish him, rightfully, as a leading social historian of the Roman Empire. The current volume exhibits many of the characteristics of its predecessors: the presentation of novel, revisionist points of view...; discrete set pieces of trenchant argument which do not necessarily conform to the boundaries of traditional history; and an impressive, authoritative, and up-to-date documentation, especially rich in primary sources...A stimulating and provocative discourse on Roman paganism as a phenomenon worthy of synthetic investigation in its own right and as the fundamental context for the rise of Christianity.”--Richard Brilliant, History "MacMullen’s latest work represents many features of paganism in its social context more vividly and clearly than ever before.”--Fergus Millar, American Historical Review "The major cults...are examined from a social and cultural perspective and with the aid of many recently published specialized studies...Students of the Roman Empire...should read this book.”--Robert J, Penella, Classical World "A distinguished book with much exact observation...An indispensable mine of erudition on a grand theme.” Henry Chadwick, Times Literary Supplement Ramsay MacMullen is Dunham Professor of History and Classics at Yale University and the author of Roman Government’s Response to Crisis, A.D. 235-337 and Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284

Pagan Virtue in a Christian World
Pagan Virtue in a Christian World

Author: Anthony F. D’Elia

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-01-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0674088549

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In 1462 Pope Pius II performed the only reverse canonization in history, publicly damning a living man. The target was Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and a patron of the arts with ties to the Florentine Renaissance. Condemned to an afterlife of torment, he was burned in effigy in several places in Rome. What had this cultivated nobleman done to merit such a fate? Pagan Virtue in a Christian World examines anew the contributions and contradictions of the Italian Renaissance, and in particular how the recovery of Greek and Roman literature and art led to a revival of pagan culture and morality in fifteenth-century Italy. The court of Sigismondo Malatesta (1417–1468), Anthony D’Elia shows, provides a case study in the Renaissance clash of pagan and Christian values, for Sigismondo was nothing if not flagrant in his embrace of the classical past. Poets likened him to Odysseus, hailed him as a new Jupiter, and proclaimed his immortal destiny. Sigismondo incorporated into a Christian church an unprecedented number of zodiac symbols and images of the Olympian gods and goddesses and had the body of the Greek pagan theologian Plethon buried there. In the literature and art that Sigismondo commissioned, pagan virtues conflicted directly with Christian doctrine. Ambition was celebrated over humility, sexual pleasure over chastity, muscular athleticism over saintly asceticism, and astrological fortune over providence. In the pagan themes so prominent in Sigismondo’s court, D’Elia reveals new fault lines in the domains of culture, life, and religion in Renaissance Italy.

A History of Pagan Europe
A History of Pagan Europe

Author: Prudence Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1136141723

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The first comprehensive study of its kind, this fully illustrated book establishes Paganism as a persistent force in European history with a profound influence on modern thinking. From the serpent goddesses of ancient Crete to modern nature-worship and the restoration of the indigenous religions of eastern Europe, this wide-ranging book offers a rewarding new perspective of European history. In this definitive study, Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick draw together the fragmented sources of Europe's native religions and establish the coherence and continuity of the Pagan world vision. Exploring Paganism as it developed from the ancient world through the Celtic and Germanic periods, the authors finally appraise modern Paganism and its apparent causes as well as addressing feminist spirituality, the heritage movement, nature-worship and `deep' ecology This innovative and comprehensive history of European Paganism will provide a stimulating, reliable guide to this popular dimension of religious culture for the academic and the general reader alike.

The Darkening Age
The Darkening Age

Author: Catherine Nixey

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0544800931

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A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.