The work, which took five years of research, explores the three centuries when Christianity overtook Greek paganism to become the faith of the Roman Empire, from the birth of the Galilean, Jesus Christ, to the death of the Emperor Julian - the "Goose" who failed to restore Greek
pagan religion.
Dowden understandably avoids repeating the mythologies of the various
pagan religions, but the reader who is unfamiliar with Greek, Roman, Germanic and Celtic mythology might feel a bit lost at times, and a brief introduction to each might have been useful for the general reader.
Vikings practiced an ancient
pagan religion where they revered nature, had many Gods and believed in supernatural forces.
A high priestess in her society's
pagan religion, Norma is hiding a terrible secret - the man leading the destruction of all she holds dear is the father of her two children.
Note also what Paul wrote about
pagan religion in the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans, especially 1:18-32 and 2:12-16.
Udolph's concluding suggestion that the term Ostrogothi designates baptized Christian Goths as opposed to those who clung to the old
pagan religion (the Visigothi) is equally unconvincing, quite apart from the interpretation of the first element as designating baptism.
Last week we told of his interest in the
pagan religion Wicca.
The maths teacher, who used to be an atheist, said: ``Atthe start of this year I took an interest in the
Pagan religion.
Most legends link him with the old British
pagan religion and this connects with the current fascination with myth, magic and the occult.
Many such elements have, however, been intimately related to another religion, and it is often difficult to incorporate them without also absorbing their previous religious associations and meanings." He goes on to note that "when Christian elements are themselves interpreted and transformed in a pagan direction, it becomes again a
pagan religion, although now enriched by Christian borrowings" (Concise Dictionary of the Christian World Mission [1971], p.
"Given the importance of December 25 in
pagan religion, it was obvious that something had to be done about this date to encourage people to embrace Christianity, "The solution could not have been simpler buildings we can exist almost without reference to the changing seasons of the natural world, but to ancient people the observation of the heavens was critical," says Paul.
In 627AD, when the Christians of Northumbria took over the site from the former
Pagan religion, they wondered how previous - possibly hostile - spirits would receive them.
They shared the same
pagan religion and clannish social structure; they competed in establishing control over various sections of land, creating a shifting patchwork of rival kingdoms.
These lines from the climax of The Excursion (1814),(11) composed in 1798, echo Tintern Abbey and the anima mundi of Aeneid VI, circling back towards the Virgilian influences from which Wordsworth set out, and forward to the 'Powers' that continue to haunt his later poetry, for example in the second sonnet of the Ecclesiastical Sketches, and in 'At Sea off the Isle of Man', from the Itinerary Poems of 1833.(12) As late as the Preface of 1815 he was arguing that 'the anthropomorphitism of the
Pagan religion' subjected the minds of the poets of the Ancient World too much to 'the bondage of definite form'.(13) In spite of these reservations, however, the pagan gods stage something of a come-back in his poetry from 1803 onwards, as we have seen in 'The world is too much with us'.
In the northeast part of this eastern European frontier, its component lands spread out between the Baltic littoral and the lands of Rus', was a genuine anomaly: a state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, maintaining its own
pagan religion after having had an earlier, and brief, flirtation with the Roman church.
