In this volume, the persistence, resurgence, threat, fascination, and repression of various forms of pagan culture are studied in an interdisciplinary perspective from late antiquity to the upcoming Renaissance. The contributions deal with the survival of pagan beliefs and practices as well as with the Christianization of pagan rural populations and with the different strategies of oppression of pagan beliefs. They deal with the problems raised by the encounter with pagan cultures outside the Muslim world and examine how philosophers attempted to "save" the great philosophers and poets from ancient culture notwithstanding their paganism. The contributors also study the fascination of classic "pagan" culture among friars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the imitation of pagan models of virtue and mythology in Renaissance poetry. Contributors: Carlos Steel, KU Leuven-University of Leuven; John Marenbon, Trinity College, Cambridge; Ludo Milis, University of Ghent; Marc-André Wagner, Brigitte Meijns, University of Leuven; Rob Meens, University of Utrecht; Edina Bozoky, Université de Poitiers; Henryk Anzulewicz, Albertus-Magnus Institut, Bonn; Robrecht Lievens, KU Leuven-University of Leuven; Stefano Pittaluga, Università di Genova; Anna Akasoy, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum

Many aspects of the pagan past continued to survive into the middle ages despite the introduction of Christianity, influencing forms of behaviour and the whole mentalitéof the period. The essays collected in this stimulating volume seek to explore aspects of the way paganism mingled with Christian teaching to affect many different aspects of medieval society, through a focus on such topics as archaeology, the afterlife and sexuality, scientific knowledge, and visionary activity. Tr. TANIS GUEST.Professor LUDO J.R. MILIS teaches at the University of Ghent.Contributors: LUDO J.R. MILIS, MARTINE DE REU, ALAIN DIERKENS, CHRISTOPHE LEBBE, ANNICK WAEGEMAN, VÉRONIQUE CHARON>

During the Middle Ages, many occult rituals and beliefs existed and were practiced alongside those officially sanctioned by the church. While educated clergy condemned some of these as magic, many of these practices involved religious language, rituals, or objects. For instance, charms recited to cure illnesses invoked God and the saints, and love spells used consecrated substances such as the Eucharist. Magic and Religion in Medieval England explores the entanglement of magical practices and the clergy during the Middle Ages, uncovering how churchmen decided which of these practices to deem acceptable and examining the ways they persuaded others to adopt their views. Covering the period from 1215 to the Reformation, Catherine Rider traces the change in the church’s attitude to vernacular forms of magic. She shows how this period brought the clergy more closely into contact with unofficial religious practices than ever before, and how this proximity prompted them to draw up precise guidelines on distinguishing magic from legitimate religion. Revealing the necessity of improving clerical education and the pastoral care of the laity, Magic and Religion in Medieval England provides a fascinating picture of religious life during this period.

A study of conversion to Christianity in the early medieval world which explores in particular the relationship between archaeology and belief and an attempt to re-centre the 'pagan' as a key element in the conversion process.

Using sermons, exorcisms, letters, biographies of the saints, inscriptions, autobiographical and legal documents—some of which are translated nowhere else—J. N. Hillgarth shows how the Christian church went about the formidable task of converting western Europe. The book covers such topics as the relationship between the Church and the Roman state, Christian attitudes toward the barbarians, and the missions to northern Europe. It documents as well the cult of relics in popular Christianity and the emergence of consciously Christian monarchies.

Nubia had a rich pagan heritage, stretching back thousands of years. During probably the 6th century AD various factors led to the adoption of Christianity. This book charts this huge cultural transition and its impact.

An ambitious history of how medieval writers came to terms with paganism From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.