Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

by Sarah Bakewell

This word pagan, originally meaning “peasant” or “country bumpkin,” was used by Christians to describe all pre-Christian religion, but especially that attached to the old Roman gods. Relations between the two traditions had always been strained, hence the eagerness of early Christians to literally stamp the Roman temples and statues out of the landscape. The relationship mellowed with time, however. It became clear that pagan traditions were so interwoven with Christian ones in European culture that they could not be fully untangled again. The very stones of Rome were pagan in origin, and Roman and Greek mythology was so full of good stories that artists, in particular, could never resist it—especially when it featured love goddesses emerging from seashells wearing floaty, translucent clothes. Perhaps, rather than trying to wipe out the pagan tradition, it was better to try to assimilate and Christianize it.