In Pagan times Berchta had the rank of a minor deity.
Some pagan reliefs are built into the tower.
From Christian writers we learn that Harran continued to be a seat of pagan worship and culture down to and even later than the Mahommedan era.
If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended.
People can find Celtic theme wedding rings as well as fashion jewelry, and both Christian and pagan religious jewelry.
Most people with pagan belief systems choose tattoos of the cross to represent the North, South, East and West directions and the four seasons.
The six pointed star is reminiscent of both the Star of David and of some pagan designs.
He incorporated traditional Irish symbols such as fire and the sun into Christian religious symbols to make conversion easier for Irish people who until that time were pagan.
There are probably some people who think it's improper to take iconic symbols and turn them into fodder for intimacy, but it absolutely fits the pagan roots of Christmas.
The Catholic church wanted people to convert to Christianity, and in order to do so they had to change the Pagan celebration to a church-sanctioned one.
The Cylons have a Plan, although the Plan is never detailed, one Battlestar Galactica theory addresses the holy crusade of the monotheistic Cylons purging the pagan Colonials.
As yet the law is not impregnated with the Christian spirit; this absence of both Christian and Pagan elements is due to the fact that many of the Franks were still heathens, although their king had been converted to Christianity.
The fourth is pagan, the fifth Christian, Aeizanes having in the interval embraced Christianity.
They shared the worldly spirit in its various forms, particularly the desire for wealth and the luxuries it affords, and for a place in " good society " - which meant a pagan atmosphere.
But Domitian, according to pagan historians, bore hardly on them.
Three centuries more passed before the pagan models were quite lost to sight.
The Jews, expelled from Constantinople, sought a home amongst them, developed the Khazar trade, and contended with Mahommedans and Christians for the theological allegiance of the Pagan people.
The angry tyrant, unable to refute her arguments himself, sent for pagan scholars to argue with her, but they were discomfited.
Clement also forbade the practice of the Jesuit missionaries in China of "accommodating" their teachings to pagan notions or customs, in order to win converts.
The probability seems to be that the earliest Perceval-Grail romance was composed at Fescamp, and was coincident with the transformation, under the influence of the Saint-Sang legend, of the originally Pagan talisman known as the Grail into a Christian relic, and that this romance was more or less at the root of all subsequent versions.
The earliest may be called the syncretic; it is the fusion of Jewish or pagan with Christian elements.
Gnosticism was the result of the attempt to blend with Christianity the religious notions of pagan mythology, mysterology, theosophy and philosophy" (p. 98).
As long as the Christian Church was itself persecuted by the pagan empire, it advocated freedom of conscience, and insisted that religion could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius); but almost immediately after Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman empire the persecution of men for religious opinions began.
His greatest temptation was the study of the literature of pagan Rome.
The invectives against idolatry of the early Jewish and Christian apologists, of Philo, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius and others, are very good reading and throw much light on the question how an ancient pagan conceived of his idols.
As the Greek and Roman methods of computing time were connected with certain pagan rites and observances which the Christians held in abhorrence, the latter began at an early period to imitate the Jews in reckoning their years from the supposed period of the creation of the world.
The Feast of St Martin (Martinmas) took the place of an old pagan festival, and inherited some of its usages (such as the Martinsmdnnchen, Martinsfeuer, Martinshorn and the like, in various parts of Germany); by this circumstance is probably to be explained the fact that Martin is regarded as the patron of drinking and jovial meetings, as well as of reformed drunkards.
But this is unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that even some pagan writers, such as Juvenal, Pliny and Martial (?), traced a resemblance between Domitian and Nero.
From the earliest Christian times the saints took the place of the pagan tutelary deities (Di tutelares) and were in this capacity called tutelares or patroni, patron-saints.
From the beginning of the 17th century Adel suffered greatly from the ravages of pagan Galla tribes, and Harrar sank to the position of an amirate of little importance.
It was in no small degree due to his stanch and unwavering leadership that the Church was saved from the peril of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of the pagan revival which swept over Asia during the first half of the 2nd century, and it was his unfaltering allegiance to the Apostolic faith that secured the defeat of the many forms of heresy which threatened to destroy the Church from within.
The history of the practice of excommunication may be traced through (1) pagan analogues, (2) Hebrew custom, (3) primitive Christian practice, (4) medieval and monastic usage, (5) modern survivals in existing Christian churches.
Among pagan analogues are the Gr.
The hostile French faction was much the stronger, since at this time the king (whom the whole of the pagan party followed) was of that faction; but after some critical episodes the treaty was signed on the 26th of December.
Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus.
The word originally signified a military commander, but very early came to be extended to anyone bearing rule, Mahomet himself being styled by the pagan Arabs amir of Mecca.
It has been argued that the sacramental rites of the Christians were largely imitated from the pagan mysteries; but for the first two hundred years this is hardly true, except perhaps in the case of certain Gnostic sects whose leaders intentionally amalgamated the new faith with old pagan ideas and rites.
On the contrary, as a thousand passages in the earlier apologists attest, they viewed the pagan mysteries with horror and detestation.
The Christians' of Bithynia were evidently quite frank about them to Pliny (c. 112), and Justin in his Apology reveals everything to a pagan emperor (c. 150).
The disappearance, too, of the pagan mysteries must have left a void in many hearts, and the clerics tried to fill it up by themselves masquerading as hierophants.
Their worship persisted throughout the pagan period, although its character changed considerably in later times.
We have seen St Benedict evangelizing the pagan population round Monte Cassino; and a considerable time each day is assigned to the reading of the Fathers.
Any pagan who wished to understand and criticize Christianity intimately had to begin by learning from the Jews, and this accounts for the opening chapters of his argument.
This capitulary ordered the celebration of baptism and other Christian rites and ceremonies in addition to the payment of tithes, and forbade the observance of pagan customs on pain of death.
Tertullian (c. 200) had long before condemned this as a heathen custom; none the less, it was insisted on in later ages, and is a survival of the pagan lustrations or -repcppavTiipca.
In less than twenty years after the death of its founder, it collapsed before a combined attack of all Poland's enemies, and simultaneously a terrible pagan reaction swept away the poor remnants of Christianity and civilization.
In the first year of the 13th century, the Knights of the Sword, one of the numerous orders of crusading military monks, had been founded in Livonia to "convert" the pagan Letts, and, in 1208, the still more powerful Teutonic order was invited by Duke Conrad of Masovia to settle in the district of Kulm (roughly corresponding to modern East Prussia) to protect his territories against the incursions of the savage Prussians, a race closely akin to the Lithuanians.
The transformation of the pagan Lithuanian chieftain Jagiello into the catholic king of Poland, Wladislaus II., was an event of capital importance in the history of eastern Europe.
Numerous graves, both from the pagan and the Christian periods, the latter containing more than 2000 skeletons, with a great number of small articles, were discovered in the same year in the same neighbourhood.
In the 4th century Demosthenes was expounded and imitated by the widely influential teacher, Libanius of Antioch (c. 314c. 393), the pagan preceptor of St Chrysostom.
His five great pagan poets are Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan; Statius he regards as a " Christian " converted by Virgil's Fourth Eclogue.
This neglect is attributed to their anxiety to avoid the " pagan " element in the ancient literature.
The very existence of Denmark demanded the suppression and conversion of these stiff-necked pagan freebooters, and to this double task Absalon devoted the best part of his life.
In the Gentile-Christian churches, under the influence of pagan associations, ecstasy was the rule.
Of more historical interest are the two books Contra Symmachum, of 658 and 1131 hexameter verses respectively, the first attacking the pagan gods, the second directed against the petition of Symmachus to the emperor for the restoration of the altar and statue of Victory which Gratian had cast down.
In it he depicts the struggle of Christendom with paganism under the allegory of a struggle between the Christian virtues and the pagan vices.
And when the pagan legend of the Syrian Astarte tells how she lived for ten years in Tyre as a prostitute, this directly recalls the Gnostic myth of how Simon found Helena in a brothel in Tyre (Epiphanius, Ancoratus, c. 104).
Reitzenstein has shown (p. 81 seq.) that very probably the system of the Naasseni described by Hippolytus was originally derived from purely pagan circles, which are probably connected in some way with the mysteries of the Attis cult.
The Roman Catholic religion was enforced at the time of the conquest, but a large percentage of the natives may still be considered semi-pagan, the gods of their ancestors being worshipped in secret, and the forms and tenets of the dominant faith, which they but faintly comprehend, being largely adulterated with superstitions and practices of pagan origin.
He made no effort to win over Vladimir to the Roman obedience, but devoted himself to the conversion of the pagan Pechenegs who inhabited the country between the Don and the Danube.
This significance remains to be discussed; the cognate question of how far the development of the Eucharist was influenced by the pagan mysteries is discussed in the article Sacrament.
The Church when it had once conquered the world allowed such precepts to lapse and fall into the background, and no one save monks or Manichaean heretics remembered them any more; indeed modern divines affect to believe that marriage rites and family ties were the peculiar concern of the Church from the very first; and few moderns will fail to sympathize with the misgivings of the barbarian chief who, having been converted and being about to receive Christian baptism, paused as he stepped down into the font, and asked the priests if in the heaven to which their rites admitted him he would meet and converse with his pagan ancestors.
There is indeed a tradition that a written collection (diwan) existed in the family of an-Nu ` man, the last Lakhmid king, containing a number of poems by the Fuhul, or most eminent poets of the pagan time, and especially by those who had praised the princes of the house, and that this collection passed into the possession of the Omayyad caliphs of the house of Marwan; to this, if the tradition is to be believed, al-Mufaddal probably had access.
Here also lived King Radbod, a pagan, and on this isle St Willibrord in the 7th century first preached Christianity; and for its ownership, before and after that date, many sea-rovers have fought.
The Christians of the early centuries, looking for corporeal resurrection, avoided the incisions, extraction of organs, &c., practised by their pagan forefathers, and buried the body entire after pickling it in salt.
Their stricter leaders, however, objected to a custom which so easily led to the worship of relics and the continuance of pagan observances; and with the advent of Islam embalming fell into disuse.
The Indians then took possession, destroyed the crops, churches and archives, and revived their pagan ceremonies.
This is, of course, more true of the middle ages than of the times that preceded and followed them; the Church under the Roman empire hardly as yet realized the possibilities of " sermons in stones," and took over, with little change, the model of the secular and religious buildings of pagan Rome; the Renaissance, essentially a neo-pagan movement, introduced disturbing factors from outside, and, though developing a style very characteristic of the age that produced it, started that archaeological movement which has tended in modern times to substitute mere imitations of old models for any attempt to express in church architecture the religious spirit of the age.
For seven of these years he wrought among the Visigoths beyond the Danube, till the success which attended his labours drew down the persecution of the still pagan chief of the tribe.
But Porphyry's name would impress pagan readers.
At Florence the pope came into closer contact with the humanists, and to this circumstance is due the gradual dominance which they attained in the Roman Curia - a dominance which, both in itself, and even more because of the frankly pagan leanings of many in that party, was bound to awaken serious misgivings.
He was quite unconscious that his own monotheism was hardly to be distinguished from that of the pagan philosophers, and that his Christ was a demi-god.
Ladislaus was not really a pagan, or he would not have devoted his share of the spoil of Durnkriit to the building of the Franciscan church at Pressburg, nor would he have venerated as he did his aunt St Margaret.
Certain popular beliefs connected with All Souls' Day are of pagan origin and immemorial antiquity.
The priestly families, we learn, hearing that the God preached by Gregory needed not sacrifice, sent to the king a deputation and asked how they were to live, if they became Christians; for until then the priests and their families had lived off the portions of the animal victims and other offerings reserved to them by pagan custom.
The generally accepted theory is that it was a pagan altar which some hermit afterwards converted into a cell.
Devoted, however, as were the labours of Boniface and his disciples, all that he and they and the emperor Charlemagne after them achieved for the fierce untutored world of the 8th century seemed to have been done in vain when, in the 9th " on the north and north-west the pagan Scandinavians were hanging about every coast, and pouring in at every inlet; when on the east the pagan Hungarians were swarming like locusts and devastating Europe from the Baltic to the Alps; when on the south and south-east the Saracens were pressing on and on with their victorious hosts.
The Maori rebellion, fomented by French Catholics, was an outbreak against everything foreign, and the strange religion Hau-hauism, a blend of Old Testament history, Roman Catholic dogmas, pagan rites and ventriloquism, found many adherents.
The total number of Indians in British North America is 99,000, of whom about 27,000 are still pagan, and the rest are about equally divided between the Protestant and Roman Catholic Missions.
It was natural that olive and willow should have been chosen for the Palm Sunday ceremony, for they are the earliest trees to bud in the spring; their consecration, however, may be explained by the intention to Christianize a pagan belief, and it is easy to see how their mystic virtues came in this way to be ascribed to the palm also.
In the Apology, after contrasting the judicial treatment of Christians with that of other accused persons, he refutes the accusations brought against the Christians of atheism, eating human flesh and licentiousness, and in doing so takes occasion to make a vigorous and skilful attack on pagan polytheism and mythology.
Thus it was a pagan emperor who in this momentous dispute ultimately determined what was orthodox and what was not;.
Neopythagoreanism was an attempt to introduce a religious element into pagan philosophy in place of what had come to be regarded as an arid formalism.
Thus Neopythagoreanism is a link in the chain between the old and the new in pagan philosophy.
Lastly Neopythagoreanism furnished Neoplatonism with the weapons with which pagan philosophy made its last stand against Christianity.
On his return journey he narrowly escaped the pagan wreckers of Sussex, and only reached his own country to find Ceadda (St Chad) installed in his see.
Here he rescued the pagan folk from an impending famine, sent preachers to the Isle of Wight and founded a monastery at Selsey.
The old pagan faith was not yet entirely destroyed, and traces of its influence may still be detected in popular beliefs and customs. But still Christianity was dominant, and soon became an important factor in the process of civilization, while the close alliance of the German church with the papacy was followed by results of the utmost consequence for Germany.
While the lower classes remained pagan, a fairly civilized system of administration, with an efficient judicial and fiscal organization, was established in the Hausa territories.
In the central hilly region of Kachia are other pagan tribes.
In the plains of the north, inhabited by Hausa and by agricultural pagan tribes, and in the fertile river valleys, agriculture is regularly carried on.
Throughout Northern Nigeria all chiefs, Mahommedan and Pagan, now hold their appointments under the British crown and take the oath of allegiance to the British sovereign.
In the Pagan districts where no native machinery existed and no previous taxation had been in force, a nominal impost was levied and collected by the officers of the government through the agency of the village chiefs.
Early in the 2nd century AD., pagan Egyptians, or perhaps foreigners settled in Egypt, essayed, as yet unskilfully, to write the native language in Greek letters.
The monks whose task it was to perfect the adaptation of the alphabet to the dialects of Egypt and translate the Scriptures out of the Greek, flung away all pagan traditions.
It is conspicuously free from that Oriental mysticism which stultifies so much of the later pagan philosophy of Europe.
In Ireland, where the long barrow form is all but unknown, the round barrow or chambered cairn prevailed from the earliest Pagan period till the introduction of Christianity.
But let it be observed, first, that to reduce the huge and confused mass of pre-existing law into the compass of these two collections was an immense practical benefit to the empire; secondly, that, whereas the work which he undertook was accomplished in seven years, the infinitely more difficult task of codification might probably have been left unfinished at Tribonian's death, or even at Justinian's own, and been abandoned by his successor; thirdly, that in the extracts preserved in the Digest we have the opinions of the greatest legal luminaries given in their own admirably lucid, philosophical and concise language, while in the extracts of which the Codex is composed we find valuable historical evidence bearing on the administration and social condition of the later Pagan and earlier Christian empire; fourthly, that Justinian's age, that is to say, the intellect of the men whose services he commanded, was quite unequal to so vast an undertaking as the fusing upon scientific principles into one new organic whole of the entire law of the empire.
Procopius, for instance, if he was not actually a Pagan, was certainly very little of a Christian.
When Julian visited the place in 362 the impudent population railed at him for his favour to Jewish and pagan rites, and to revenge itself for the closing of its great church of Constantine, burned down the temple of Apollo in Daphne.
The pagan English of Deira (603) routed under lEthelfrith the Christian Scots of Argyll between Liddesdale and North Tyne; and pagan English for more than a century held unopposed the tianity.
The clash of arms breaks upon his pagan paradise with no uncertain sound; he is swift in narrative, breathless in escapade.
In 681 Wilfrid of York, on his expulsion from Northumbria by Ecgfrith, retired into Sussex, where he remained until 686 converting its pagan inhabitants.
But this version of the idea of Antichrist, hostile to the Jews and better expressing the relation of Christianity to the Roman empire, was prevented from obtaining an absolute ascendancy in Christian tradition by the rise of the belief in the ultimate return of Nero, and by the absorption of this outcome of pagan superstition into the Jewish-Christian apocalyptic conceptions.
At Arsuf or Joppa - neither of them far from Lydda - Perseus had slain the sea-monster that threatened the virgin Andromeda, and George, like many another Christian saint, entered into the inheritance of veneration previously enjoyed by a pagan hero.'
To another critic, who had taken occasion to point out the resemblance between Catholic and pagan ceremonies, Wiseman replied, boldly admitting the likeness, and maintaining that it could be shown equally well to exist between Christian and heathen doctrines.
In 1830 he was rector of the university; and in his speech at the tricentenary of the Augsburg Confession in that year he charged the Catholic Church with regarding the virtues of the pagan world as brilliant vices, and giving the crown of perfection to poverty, continence and obedience.
He came back from Italy with a new philosophy of life, a philosophy at once classic and pagan, and with very definite ideas of what constituted literary excellence.
These pagan tribes were repeatedly raided by the Bagirmese for slaves.
However, as late as the middle of the 17th century the Carmelite P. Vincenzo found that the people still called themselves Christians, and had a strange mixture of Jewish, Christian and Pagan rites.
Emigrants founded new cities and new sees of Low German speech among alien and pagan races; and thus in the course of a century the commerce of Lubeck had supplanted that of Westphalia.
His court at Palermo had been one of the most brilliant in Europe, and attracted learned men from all over the then known world; his somewhat pagan philosophy was afterwards regarded as marking the beginnings of modern rationalism.
The extreme severity of his rule repelled the Bohemians, whom he vainly strove to wean from their national customs and pagan rites.
Shortly after the accession of Cyril to the patriarchate of Alexandria in 412, owing to her intimacy with Orestes, the pagan prefect of the city, Hypatia was barbarously murdered by the Nitrian monks and the fanatical Christian mob (March 415).
They are completely pagan, live in scattered hamlets, and have come very little in contact with any civilization.
It is said that he was desirous of erecting a temple to the founder of Christianity, but was dissuaded by the pagan priests.
It forms one side of the virtual apologia for the absence of that earthly prosperity in which the pagan mind was apt to see the token of Divine approval.
Though meant for men of pagan birth in the first instance, it is 1.6 to them as inquirers or even converts, such as " Theophilus, " that the argument is addressed.
But the power of pagan Hungary could not be broken in a day.
Salvatore, with underground rock-cut chambers below it, used as a baptistery (?) by the early Christians, though the walls are decorated with paintings of a decidedly pagan nature.
We must not suffer it to lead us into rhetoric about the deadness and the darkness of the middle ages, or hamper our inquiry with preconceived assumptions that the re-birth in question was in any true sense a return to the irrecoverable pagan past.
Goliardic poetry is further curious as showing how the classics even at that early period were a fountain-head of pagan inspiration.
Meanwhile the languages of Greece and Rome had been so thoroughly appropriated that a final race of scholars, headed by Politian, Pontano, Valla, handled once again in verse and prose both antique dialects, and thrilled the ears of Europe with new-made pagan melodies.
Humanism, as it actually appeared in Italy, was positive in its conception of the problems to be solved, pagan in its contempt for medieval mysticism, invigorated for sensuous enjoyment by contact with antiquity, yet holding in itself the germ of new religious aspirations, profounder science and sterner probings of the mysteries of life than had been attempted even by the ancients.
Gradually, as the race became penetrated with antique thought, the earlier Christian motives of the arts yielded to pagan subjects.
Humanism, in its revolt against the middle ages, was, as we have seen already, mundane, pagan, irreligious, positive.
According to her account, the son of a powerful pagan king demands in marriage Ursula, the beautiful daughter of Deonotus, a king "in partibus Britanniae."
Since the epoch of Alexander the Great IIarran had been a famous centre of pagan and Hellenistic culture; its people were Syrian heathens, star-worshippers versed in astrology and magic. In their temples the planetary powers were propitiated by blood-offerings, and it is probable that human victims were occasionally sacrificed even as late as the 9th century of our era.
His father was a pagan, the priest of an idol called Abnil or Abizal.
The lacquer ware of Nyaung-u and other villages near Pagan is noted throughout Burma.
Subsequently he was opposed by a pagan king called Morken, whose relatives after his death succeeded in forcing the saint to retire from Strathclyde.
In comparing pagan with Christian usage it is important to remember that the lamps in the pagan temples were not symbolical, but votive offerings to the gods.
The pagan custom of burying lamps with the dead conveyed no such symbolical meaning as was implied in the late Christian custom of placing lights on and about the tombs of martyrs and saints.
All this might very early, without the incentive of Jewish and pagan example, have affected the symbolic ritual of the primitive Church.
The Jews were ordered under pain of death to substitute for their own observances the Pagan rites prescribed for the empire generally.
But a powerful pagan king arose who hated and persecuted the Christians, especially the ascetics.
The whole poem is intensely pagan, and is penetrated by the feeling that the world of literature and culture is and must remain pagan; that outside paganism lies a realm of barbarism.
We see by the aid of his poem a senate at Rome composed of past office-holders, the majority of whom were certainly pagan still.
The upper classes are Fula, and there are some Hausa and Kanuri (Bornuese), but the bulk of the people are pagan tribes in a very low state of civilization.
The pagan population has been classified for practical purposes as Hill pagans and Plains pagans, Mounted pagans and Foot pagans.
The old Roman town of Juvavum was laid in ruins, and the incipient Christianity of the district overwhelmed, by the pagan Goths and Huns.
In his sacred poems he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities.
Her cult became centralized in Phrygia, had found its way into Greece, where it never flourished greatly, as early as the latter 6th century B.e., and was introduced at Rome in 204 B.C. Under the Empire it attained to great importance, and was one of the last pagan cults to die.
Many discoveries were made, including the ruins of a theatre, amphitheatre, city walls and gates, baths, aqueducts, pagan and Christian cemeteries, basilicas and many fragments of houses and arches.
The early Christians had naturally preferred the formless marriage of the Roman law as being free from all taint of pagan idolatry; and the ecclesiastical authorities recognized concubinage also.
Eminently religious, and orthodox in his convictions, he did not seek to substitute a pagan for the Christian ideal.
The story of the pagan past slipped out of mind, and in its place was set, by the genius of Eusebius, the story of the world force which had superseded it, Christianity, and of that small fraction of antiquity from which it sprang, - the Jews.
When a line was drawn between pagan and Christian back to the creation of the world, it left outside the pale of inquiry nearly all antiquity.
The terrestrial city, whose eternity had been the theme of pagan history, had just fallen before Alaric's Goths.
The Fula, who first came into the country about the 15th century as nomad herdsmen, are found chiefly in the valleys, the pagan tribes holding the mountainous districts.
The Mask of Pandora is a proof of that growing appreciation of pagan naturalism which marked the poet's later years.
Later on, as he approached his second youth (he was spared a second childhood), he tended to a more pagan view.
What is certain is that certain festivals involving processions were adopted by the Christian Church from the pagan calendar of Rome.
As professor of philosophy at the newly founded academy of Constantinople he revived the cult of Plato at a time when Aristotle held the field; this, together with his admiration for the old pagan glories of Hellas, aroused suspicions as to his orthodoxy.
Many pagan beliefs linger on in the country, where vampires, witches and the evil eye are dreaded by all.
His forecast proved true; for within a few months Julian had closed his brief career of pagan revival.
In this last category are placed the pagan natives.
Ilario is said to occupy the site of a pagan temple, but the name of the ancient town (if any) which occupied this site is not known.
These are clearly aetiological, and invented to explain an existing custom, which the church had adopted from its pagan medium.
Following the fashion of the pagan mysteries in which men were only permitted to gaze upon the sacred objects after minute lustrations and scrupulous purifications, Christian teachers came to represent the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Lord's Supper as mysteries to be guarded in silence and never divulged either to the unbaptized or to the pagans.
And yet Justin Martyr, Tertullian and other apologists of the 2nd century had found nothing to conceal from the eye and ear of pagan emperors and their ministers.
They clearly felt themselves called upon to out-trump the pagan Mystae.
In human history the East represents the spontaneous stage; the Pagan and Christian world represent stages of reflection.
All originated in pagan funeral or commemorative rites, and continued to be held, even in Christian times, in very ancient cemeteries.
It is thus demonstrable that the material for our Grail legend, in its present form, existed long anterior to any extant text, and there is no improbability in holding that a confused tradition of pagan mysteries which had assumed the form of a popular folk-tale, became finally Christianized by combination with an equally popular ecclesiastical legend, the point of contact being the vessel of the common ritual feast.
It might have been thought likely that the son of the pagan Sweyn would have turned out a mere hard-fighting viking.
Although a pagan, he allowed his daughter Cyneburg to marry Alchfrith, the son of Oswio, and it was in his reign that Christianity was introduced into Middle Anglia by his son Peada.
Early in the 16th century the Igbira (Okpoto or Ibo) were one of the most powerful pagan peoples of Nigeria and had their capital at Iddah.
The Bassas are a very remarkable pagan race who permeate the entire protectorate of Northern Nigeria, and are to be found in small colonies in almost every province.
In education the Scandinavian Lapps are far ahead of their Russian brethren, to whom reading and writing are arts as unfamiliar as they were to their pagan ancestors.
This lady was a fanatical pagan of a disquieting strength of character.
Two viceroys, earlier wooers, were burned to death by her orders for their impertinence, and she refused the hand of Olaf Trygvessiin, king of Norway, rather than submit to baptism, whereupon the indignant monarch struck her on the mouth with his gauntlet and told her she was a worse pagan than any dog.
It is undeniable that his favourite wife was the most stiff-necked pagan of her day.
In this aspect Christianity invites comparison with Stoicism, and indeed with pagan ethical philosophy generally, if we except the hedonistic schools.
The fundamental differences between pagan and Christian ethics depend not on any difference in the value set on rightness of heart, but on different views of the essential form or conditions of this inward rightness.
By the pagan philosophers it was always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom, it being inconceivable to all the schools sprung from Socrates that a man could truly know his own good and yet deliberately choose anything else.
We might further derive from the general spirit of Christian unworldliness that repudiation of the secular modes of conflict, even in a righteous cause, which substituted a passive patience and endurance for the old pagan virtue of courage, in which the active element was prominent.
It is, however, in the impulse given to practical beneficence in all its forms, by the exaltation of love as the root of all virtues, that the most important influence of Christianity on the particulars of civilized morality is to be found; p y although the exact amount of this influence is here somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely carries further a development traceable in the history of pagan morality.
We have, however, yet to notice the enlargement of the sphereof ethics due to its close connexion with theology; for while this added religious force and sanction to ordinary moral obligations, it equally tended to impart a moral aspect to religious, belief and worship. " Duty to God " - as distinct from duty to man - had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan moralists; but the rather dubious relations of even the more orthodox philosophy to the established polytheism had generally prevented them from laying much stress upon it.
Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies of the new creed, to which Tertullian (160-220) gave violent and rigid expression, were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy which he ultimately joined; on the other hand, Clement of Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone of his age, maintained the value of pagan philosophy for the development of Christian faith into true knowledge (Gnosis), and the value of the natural development of man through marriage for the normal perfecting of the Christian life.
This legalism contrasts strikingly with the efforts of pagan philosophy to exhibit virtue as its own reward; and the contrast is triumphantly pointed out by more than one early Christian writer.
It is plain, however, that on this external legalistic view of duty it was impossible to maintain a difference in kind between Christian and pagan morality; the philosopher's conformity to the rules of chastity and beneficence, so far as it went, was indistinguishable from the saint's.
Although some of the coast peoples are nominally Mahommedans, and some few converts to Christianity have been made, the vast majority of Papuans remain pagan.
Our knowledge of the beliefs of the pagan Irish is very slight.
The conversion in consequence was in large measure only apparent; and such pagan superstitions and practices as did not run directly counter to the new teaching were tolerated by the saint.
From the beginning the life of the converts must have been in some measure coenobitic. Indeed it could hardly have been otherwise in a pagan and half-savage land.
To judge from the early literature the marriage-tie seems to have been regarded very lightly, and there can be little doubt that pagan marriage customs were practised long after the introduction of Christianity.
Diarmait, son of Fergus Cerbaill (544-565), of the southern Hy Neill, undoubtedly professed Christianity though he still clung to many pagan practices, such as polygamy and the use of druidical incantations in battle.
Eventually Turgeis established himself in Armagh, whilst his wife Ota settled at Clonmacnoise and profaned the monastery church with pagan rites.
Tradition connects the better known of these fairs with pagan rites performed round the tombs of the heroes of the race; thus the assembly of Telltown was stated to have been instituted by Lugaid Lamfada.
He showed great sagacity in receiving the fugitive Adalbert, bishop of Prague, and when the saint suffered martyrdom at the hands of the pagan Sla y s (April 2 3, 997), Boleslaus purchased his relics and solemnly laid them in the church of Gnesen, founded by his father, which now became the metropolitan see of Poland.
The heads of the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state.
The pagan party was led by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, consul in 391, who presented to Valentinian II.
To this petition Ambrose replied in a letter to Valentinian, arguing that the devoted worshippers of idols had often been forsaken by their deities; that the native valour of the Roman soldiers had gained their victories, and not the pretended influence of pagan priests; that these idolatrous worshippers requested for themselves what they refused to Christians; that voluntary was more honourable than constrained virginity; that as the Christian ministers declined to receive temporal emoluments, they should also be denied to pagan priests; that it was absurd to suppose that God would inflict a famine upon the empire for neglecting to support a religious system contrary to His will as revealed in the Scriptures; that the whole process of nature encouraged innovations, and that all nations had permitted them, even in religion; that heathen sacrifices were offensive to Christians; and that it was the duty of a Christian prince to suppress pagan ceremonies.
Add to this that a slave who professed Islam could secure his freedom, at least from slavery to a Christian master, that Arianism had not been quite rooted out, that the country districts were still largely pagan, and it will not appear wonderful that within a generation Mahommedan Spain was full of renegades who formed in all probability a majority of its polulation and a most important social and political element.
The existence of native Christian states in Nubia hindered for some centuries the spread of Islam in the eastern Sudan, and throughout the country some tribes have remained pagan.
In these pagan regions the Sudan government encouraged the work of missionary societies; both Protestant and Roman Catholic, while discouraging propaganda work among the Moslems.
But he was still a pagan reigning over semi-pagan lands; he was equally bound to his pagan kinsmen in Samogitia, to his orthodox subjects in Red Russia, and to his Catholic allies in Masovia.
The Prussian bishops, who were devoted to the knights, at a synod at Elbing questioned the authority of Gedymin's letters and denounced him as an enemy of the faith; his orthodox subjects reproached him with leaning towards the Latin heresy; while the pagan Lithuanians accused him of abandoning the ancient gods.
These apparently retrogressive measures simply amounted to a statesmanlike recognition of the fact that the pagan element was still the strongest force in Lithuania, and could not yet be dispensed with in the coming struggle for nationality.
He has the double purpose in view of exposing the weakness of the pagan view of the universe and of commending the Christian explanation.
Gobir and Kebbi remained Unconquered, as did the pagan hill tribes.
This was especially the case in those districts where there was a large pagan population.
In the Egyptian churches the cross was a pagan symbol of life borrowed by the Christians and interpreted in the pagan manner.
It proved the most successful of the pagan cults in maintaining itself against Christianity, with which it had not -a little in common, both in doctrine and in emblems. But the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in A.D.
As an ardent upholder of the old pagan religion Proclus incurred the hatred of the Christians, and was obliged to take refuge in Asia Minor.
Siegfried, to be sure, is buried with all the pomp of medieval Catholic rites; but Kriemhild, while praying for his soul like a good Christian, plots horrible vengeance like her pagan prototype.
Though they call themselves Mahommedans, their religion is largely mingled with pagan superstitions; they worship animals, and a certain divinity called Karaeng Love, who has power over their fortune and health.
And everything both within and without contributes to the profane and pagan character which it was Sigismondo's purpose to impress on the Christian church.
It was blasphemy against any religion, including pagan religions.
The Normans were descendants from pagan viking adventurers who had settled in the Seine Valley in 911.
Edwin and his followers worshiped pagan gods, and had no concept of a better afterlife to look forward to.
A 3rd century Roman pagan altar was also recently found on the site.
Even in pagan old England, church attendance actually began to rise last year!
Excavation of the graves revealed an astonishing world of pagan beliefs.
Nor do these three dates follow any pattern from the pagan calendar, missing entirely the solstice on 21st.
Capricorn creations Unique pagan spiritual creations for you to wear.
As the pagan customs were taken over by the Church they were given new religious meanings.
The most common solution to this problem among pagan writers was to assign the physical creation to an inferior deity, called the demiurge.
Val Pagan Federation of many groups of many different pathways, including some druids, and not all pagans belong.
In A.D. 250 he published an edict calling for a return to the pagan state religion.
The author explains the ancient nature of the Lithuanian pagan faith and its mythology, which had its origins in the Upper Paleolithic period.
J. L. Weston thought it part of a pagan fertility rite, involving a story similar to that of Adonis.
The Pope hoped to replace the pagan Celtic festival with a church-sponsored holiday.
But that does not make lent or Easter into a pagan festival today.
In his reply the Imam accuses him of enmity toward the prophets and of the love of his pagan forebears.
Our pagan forefathers believed the oak to be a sacred tree and that the marks in the bark revealed the presence of a dryad.
The center piece to the circus is the famous statue of Eros, the pagan god of love.
And it's unlikely he would have any motivation for ' making up ' a pagan goddess.
In part two of the book, Brian provides a practical guide to establishing a modern pagan lifestyle.
Moondragon Cards specialize in pagan, mystical and fantasy greetings cards for almost any occasion, including handfastings and pagan festivals.
Arthur appears as defender of Christianity, driving out pagan heresy, conquering Denmark, Norway and Gaul.
Their heirs later even sent a huge pagan idol, a ' Statue of Liberty ', to naive Americans.
Previously the black rock in Mecca had always been a site of pagan idolatry.
The heavens provide another rich source of pagan imagery within pub names.
Our Pagan Christmas by C J Condon I found inspirational for this.
Any type of redemption in the pagan mythology was motivated by petty jealousy or some type of law that even the gods were under.
Because of her beauty a pagan king made her one of his wives.
Here the gathered nobles allied themselves to fight the growing menace of the pagan Danes, the Vikings.
Some, such as the Yule log and the Christmas tree, are relics of the old pagan midwinter festival.
Is there mutual influence or is the rise of Christianity to be considered an evolution parallel to pagan monotheism?
And again this is a new gnostic pagan mysticism, dethroning reason, they say, so the soul can be free.
He found in Christ the source of the truth and delight he had known in pagan mythology.
First, some object on the basis that Christmas trees have pagan origins.
His mission was to convert the pagan Irish people to Christianity.
As such, it didn't take too much persuasion by the Saxons to talk the indigenous population into becoming pagan once more.
Thus, new pagan only means modern day pagan.
Much of the nation was then taken away captive to Babylon - one of the richest but most pagan and immoral of cities.
Finding out if there are any local pagan or occult discussion forums where you might be able to sell a few copies.
Corinth was a pagan town full of pagan temples.
Having been baptized, she refused to marry a pagan patrician and so was martyred for Christ in Rome.
Born in Poitiers in France of pagan patrician parents, he married early in life.
Much Pagan lore was hidden in these ditties during the years of witch persecutions.
And anyway, Augustine hadn't studied pagan philosophy had he?
He does not descend to the lower level of pagan polemics.
When we turn to more advanced forms of religion than pagan polytheism the same phenomenon recurs.
There may have been a timber original; there may even have been a pagan predecessor.
Is she a witch, as some believe, or a pagan priestess?
Inspired prophets such as those described by Giraldus were widely known throughout the pagan Graeco-Roman world.
Bulwer could not resist inventing the figure of Hilda the Danish Vala, the pagan prophetess.
Pagan worship at this time involved sex with a temple prostitute in order to ensure a good harvest.
The pagan impulse is deeply embedded in the human psyche.
As long he didn't try to argue that the Hebrew Scriptures were the truth and the pagan religions were not.
The very moral standards of the Church were seen as a severe reproach of the pagan way of life.
He does not wish to live with his kinsmen, he says, for they practice pagan rites.
Arthur noted the role of alcohol in pagan rites.
An imagined funeral rite or pagan ritual with Alex listening in.
The Chi-Rho or Crook Inevitably, the Church adopted so-called pagan ritualism and its symbols.
As to the lesser sabbats, there is little evidence for the celebration of any of these by any pagan Celts except possibly midsummer.
There, having protected themselves from being forced to do pagan sacrifices, they fell into a miraculous sleep.
The Cheese Well may have been a pagan shrine in the past, whose veneration has fallen to superstition.
Professor Arnold rightly notes Thietmar's professional interest in condemning the pagan superstitions of his Slav neighbors.
His passage about the cross-shaped hieroglyphics found in the temple gives some idea of how Christianity turned pagan symbolism to its advantage.
In the late 4th century AD Emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of all pagan temples.
New words were employed for old theological ideas, which for centuries had been used in pagan theology.
His chief concern was the Quraysh and, next to them, the hostile pagan Bedouin tribes of the Hijaz.
The figure is believed to be the lid of a pagan funerary urn.
If a " Viking " is a marauding pagan warrior, then the idea of a " Viking woman " would be unthinkable.
In many respects, he is a manifestation of the classical, humanist, pagan worldview.
Although we have only most distorted narratives upon which to rely - pagan eulogy and Christian denunciation--Arbogast appears to have been one of the greatest soldiers of the later empire, and a statesman of no mean rank.
The social environment of Christians may be inferred from the canons prohibiting marriage and other intercourse with Jews, pagans and heretics, closing the offices of flamen and duumvir to Christians, forbidding all contact with idolatry and likewise participation in pagan festivals and public games.
Presently at a feast of Anahite Gregory refused to assist his sovereign in offering pagan sacrifice, and his parentage being now revealed, was thrown into a deep pit at Artashat, where he languished for fourteen years, during which persecution raged in Armenia.
Monasteries abounded in this neighbourhood from a very early date; Shenout (Sinuthius), the fiery apostle and prophet of the Coptic national church, was a monk of Atrepe (now Suhag), and led the populace to the destruction of the pagan edifices.
Mitra, even as late as the 15th century, retained its simple meaning of cap (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.); to Isidore of Seville it is specifically a woman's cap. Infula, which in late ecclesiastical usage was to be confined to mitre (and its dependent bands) and chasuble, meant originally a piece of cloth, or the sacred fillets used in pagan worship, and later on came to be used of any ecclesiastical vestment, and there is no evidence for its specific application to the liturgical head-dress earlier than the 12th century.
He then draws a positive demonstration of the truth of his religion from the effects of the new faith, and especially from the excellence of its moral teaching, and concludes with a comparison of Christian and Pagan doctrines, in which the latter are set down with naïve confidence as the work of demons.
Those famous festivals in which Lorenzo de' Medici delighted had indeed a pagan tone appropriate to the sentiment of the Renaissance; nor were all the worshippers of the Athenian sage so true to Christianity as his devoted student.
In the pagan cemeteries, on the other hand, the sepulchral recess as a rule entered the rock like an oven at right angles to the corridor, the body being introduced endways.
In 1046, and again in 1061, two dangerous pagan risings shook the very foundations of the infant church and state; the western provinces were in constant danger from the attacks of the acquisitive emperors, and from the south and southeast two separate hordes of fierce barbarians (the Petchenegs in 1067-1068, and the Kumanians in 1071-1072) burst over the land.
The Blemmyes, remaining pagan after the Nubas had embraced Christianity (6th century) were soon after driven from the Nile valley eastwards to the kindred Megabares, Memnons and other nomads, who, with the Troglodytes, had from time immemorial held the whole steppe region between the Nile and the Red Sea from Axum to Egypt.
That baptism is called the Seal (vdpa'yls), and Illumination (4ceno-phs) in the 2nd century has been set down to the influence of the pagan mysteries; but as a matter of fact the former term is a metaphor from military discipline, and the idea conveyed in the latter that gnosis or imparting of divine love is an illumining of the soul is found both in the Old and New Testaments.
The Slavonic peoples, whose territories then extended to the Elbe, and embraced the whole southern shore of the Baltic, were beginning to recoil before the vigorous impetus of the Germans in the West, who regarded their pagan neighbours in much the same way as the Spanish Conquistadores regarded the Aztecs and the Incas.
A still greater prince was Gedymin (1315-1342) who did his utmost to civilize Lithuania by building towns, introducing foreigners, and tolerating all religions, though he himself remained a pagan for political reasons.
In 1550 it was proposed in Brunswick to banish all " profane " authors from the schools, and in 1589 a competent scholar was instructed to write a sacred epic on the kings of Israel as a substitute for the works of the "pagan" poets.
He is one of the interlocutors in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, and allusions in that work and a letter from Symmachus to Servius show that he was a pagan.
It is highly illustrative of the tenacity with which the ancient sepulchral usages were retained even after the introduction of Christianity that King Harold, son and successor of Gorm the Old, who is said to have christianized all Denmark and Norway, followed the pagan custom of erecting a chambered tumulus over the remains of his father, on the summit of which was placed a rude pillar-stone, bearing on one side the memorial inscription in runes, and on the other a representation of the Saviour of mankind distinguished by the crossed nimbus surrounding the head.
In fact, compliance with the Christian practice of inhumation in the cemeteries sanctioned by the church, was only enforced in Europe by capitularies denouncing the punishment of death on those who persisted in burying their dead after the pagan fashion or in the pagan mounds.
Steeped in pagan learning, emulous of imitating the manners of the ancients, used to think and feel in harmony with Ovid and Theocritus, and at the same time rendered cynical by the corruption of papal Rome, the educated classes lost their grasp upon morality.
Florus and Eutropius abridged him; Orosius extracted from him his proofs of the sinful blindness of the pagan world; and in every school Livy was firmly established as a textbook for the Roman youth.
His sojourn in Europe fell exactly in the time when, in England, the reaction against the sentimental atheism of Shelley, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, and the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Byron was at its height; when, in the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were inducing a counter current of positive faith, which threw men into the arms of a half-sentimental, half-aesthetic medievalism; and when, in Germany, the aristocratic paganism of Goethe was being swept aside by that tide of dutiful, romantic patriotism which flooded the country, as soon as it began to feel that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon's war-chariot.
The observance, however, is certainly of pagan origin; and at one time there were idols on both the so-called hills (see especially Azraqi, pp. 74, 78).
There is an obvious pun in the title on Wicca, the pagan religion.
Typically, the scholars quibble about whether the source was Pagan or Jewish, rarely considering that both had their influence, through Paul.
As long he did n't try to argue that the Hebrew Scriptures were the truth and the pagan religions were not.
In fact, most boisterous pagan revelries were celebrated in December.
As already noticed, Pagan baptism had superseded Christian baptism as the initiatory rite of Christian fellowship.
Saint George is probably a christianisation of a much older pagan smith god who also slew dragons.
The pagan Meccans, impressed by the splendor of these birds, therefore described their goddesses by an analogous reference to them.
Unfortunately, she was re-captured and still refusing to honor pagan gods, she was stabbed in the throat and beheaded.
Professor Arnold rightly notes Thietmar 's professional interest in condemning the pagan superstitions of his Slav neighbors.
Many of the pagan shrines featured temple prostitutes, with whom acts of fornication were deemed religious experiences.
Baby boys went uncircumcised, priests exercised naked in the gymnasium and the king 's officers went around forcing Jews to make pagan sacrifices.
This would have added authenticity to his alleged semi-divine status among various pagan sects clinging to the divinity of the Winged Planet.
Such stones were the center of pagan worship well into the christian era.
The failure of the pagan gods to wreak a terrible revenge undermined the whole pagan belief system.
The Christians pinched the festive season from the Western European pagan Yuletide celebration of Winter Solstice.
It's been around for so long that it has been discovered in ancient pagan texts and artwork.
Pagan lore claims that the Chalice Well is a symbol of the sacred feminine.
Formal balls, pagan maypoles, Saturday Night Fever disco dance moves, and movie after movie has dance as the center of the attraction between two people who are looking for love.
Some pagan beliefs use the seven veils as a ritual, incorporating the dance into a non-sexual format.
Birth stones are mentioned throughout history as pagan symbols, folklore, and religious references.
It is also through pagan beliefs that zodiac signs were created to help define a person's nature based on the time she was born.
The tradition of the Christmas tree is widely believed to have its root in the pagan traditions of Northern Europe.
As Christianity spread during the Middle Ages, many of our modern Christmas holiday customs developed from earlier pagan observances.
Generally, Webster's defines a pagan as "heathen - not recognizing the god of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism".
Some believe the tradition of evergreen boughs indoors began as a pagan ritual during the winter solstice, which usually occurs around December 23.
Some churches ask that parishioners not put up Christmas trees in their homes because of the possibly pagan origins of the practice.
Inherited from an old pagan ritual, the Christmas tree is now the most popular symbol of the season's decorations.
Once a part of pagan festivals, gift giving evolved over the centuries.
In pagan lore this knot symbolized the three levels of existence; spirit, mind, and body.
Eorpwald, the son of Radwald, was converted to Christianity by Edwin, but was soon afterwards slain by Ricberht (627 or 628), whereupon the kingdom again became pagan for three years, when Sigeberht, the brother of Eorpwald, became king and founded a see for Felix at Dunwich.
On his return he was wrecked on the holy island of Fosite (Heligoland), where his disregard of the pagan superstition nearly cost him his life.
The nation at large was resolutely pagan, and Geza, for his own sake, was obliged to act warily.
Ecclesiastically it weakened the influence of the Catholic Church in Hungary, the Greek Orthodox Church, which permitted a married clergy and did not impose the detested tithe (the principal cause of nearly every pagan revolt) attracting thousands of adherents even among the higher clergy.
So far we have spoken only of the Christian use of Syriac. Of the pagan Syriac literature which issued mainly from Harran, a city about one day's journey south of Edessa, not a single example appears to have survived.
He goes on to attribute the world's science and civilization to pagan inventors; but it is not clear whether in this he is alluding specially to the culture of his own city.
It was instituted in 165 B.C. in commemoration of, and thanksgiving for, the purification of the temple at Jerusalem on this day by Judas Maccabaeus after its pollution by Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, who in 168 B.C. set up a pagan altar to Zeus Olympius.
From the 11 th to the 13th century the old Burman empire was at the height of its power, and to this period belong the splendid remains of architecture at Pagan.
But the obduracy of King Pagan, who had succeeded his father in 1846, led to the refusal alike of atonement for past wrongs, of any expression of regret for the display of gratuitous insolence, and of any indication of a desire to maintain friendship for the future.
About the same time a revolution broke out which resulted in King Pagan's dethronement.
Fond of Latin literature, whether Christian or pagan, and a friend of the arts, he was himself one of the best writers of the period.
This was partly due to the influence of Christianity, which sought to include as objects of sacrilege all forms of church property, rather than merely those things consecrated in pagan cults, partly to the efforts of the later emperors to surround themselves and everything emanating from them with highest sanctions.
The second beast, signifying the pagan priesthood of the imperial cult, called "the false prophet" in xvi.
But in the 4th century this puritanic zeal gave way; and this and other pagan feasts were taken over by the Church; a century earlier in Asia Minor Gregory the Thaumaturge was actively transforming into shrines and cult of martyrs the temples and idolatrous rites of heroes and demigods.
All will admit who study the post-Nicene Church, that the Christian sacraments have stolen the clothes of the pagan mysteries, dethroned and forbidden by the Christian emperors.
He called himself the defender of Christians; others, on account of his favour to the Saracens, spoke of him as a pagan.
In the Pagan states there is no organized system of native administration, and the British residents are responsible for good government.
He appears to have been originally a pagan and to have been born in Syria.
Some people have also interpreted the interlocking circles to represent the male and female aspects of the pagan Goddess or the Chinese yin and yang.
People used to sing carols throughout the year, but as the celebration of Christ replaced the more pagan Saturnalia winter festivities, the popularity of carols centered on the new holiday.
They predate Christianity and are tied with some pagan art, but are also incorporated in Christian artwork and architecture.
Trinity knots can also symbolize the pagan triad of "mother, maiden and crone" or "mind, body and spirit."
In 2000, Brezny developed "Sacred Uproar", which has been described as a "pagan revival show".
This may have been the Church's way of trying to replace Pagan celebrations with ones that were more in keeping with its views.
Pre-Christian pagan cultures held a belief in a female deity, drawn from Norse culture, that represented fertility and marriage.
Her site includes claddaghs, Celtic knots and even Pagan symbols.
Existing as both a Christian and Pagan symbol, Celtic crosses can mean different things to different people.
This is extremely important in the greater context of Pagan beliefs because communications between the two worlds is paramount to many religious ceremonies.
This was probably done to show, at least in his viewpoint, Christianity's supremacy over Pagan sun worship.
The `EAXnvucwv OEpairEvruo lraen,uhTwv (De Curandis Graecorum Affectionibus) - written before 438 - is of an historical and apologetic character, very largely indebted to Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius; it aims at showing the advantages of Christianity as compared with " the moribund but still militant " Hellenism of the day, and deals with the assaults of pagan adversaries.
Cotton is grown in the vicinity, and is woven by the women into fabrics, which find a ready sale among the pagan tribes of the mountains.
Indeed, towards paganism, at least, he is perhaps even more than tolerant, preferring on the whole to keep on good terms with pagan divinities.
He was formerly identified with an Egyptian priest who, after the destruction of the pagan temple at Alexandria (389), fled to Constantinople, where he became the tutor of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates.
Some of its enactments are purely pagan - thus one paragraph allows the mother to kill her new-born child, and another prescribes the immolation to the gods of the defiler of their temple; others are purely Christian, such as those which prohibit incestuous marriages and working on Sunday.
Another equally erroneous idea was that these vast burialplaces of the early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their pagan neighbours, and were constructed not only without the permission of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance.
Clement exhibits the absurdity and immorality of the stories told with regard to the pagan deities, the cruelties perpetrated in their worship, and the utter uselessness of bowing down before images made by hands.
She invented a deity of her own, a mysterious Corambe, half pagan and half Christian, and like Goethe erected to him a rustic altar of the greenest grass, the softest moss and the brightest pebbles.
As an offset to this, Arbogast allied himself with the pagan element in Rome, while Valentinian was strictly orthodox.
Not interpreting this as applying to works printed outside Ulm, he published in 1538 at Augsburg his Guldin Arch (with pagan parallels to Christian sentiments) and at Frankfort his Germaniae clzronicon, with the result that he had to leave Ulm in January 1539.
The Orphic poems also played an important part in the controversies between Christian and pagan writers in the 3rd and 4th centuries after Christ; pagan writers quoted them to show the real meaning of the multitude of gods, while Christians retorted by reference to the obscene and disgraceful fictions by which the former degraded their gods.
Their religion was pagan, being quite distinct from Buddhism; but in Assam they gradually became Hinduized, and their kings finally adopted Hindu names and titles.
Reedwald had been converted to Christianity in Kent, but after his return home he relapsed, according to Bede, owing to the influence of his wife, and there were to be seen in the same building a Christian and a pagan altar.
Of an enthusiastic temperament, accomplished in classical literature, he seems while a pagan to have courted discussion with the converts to Christianity.
As the main support of his proof of the truth of Christianity appears his detailed demonstration that the prophecies of the old dispensation, which are older than the Pagan poets and philosophers, have found their fulfilment in Christianity.
It must not, however, be forgotten that Justin is here speaking as the apologist of Christianity to an educated Pagan public, on whose philosophical view of life he had to base his arguments, and from whom he could not expect an intimate comprehension of the religious position of Christians.
The following is the position of the Druid in the pagan literature.
In 399 the exercise of the pagan cult was prohibited, and the revenues of the temples, which were to be appropriated for the use of the public or pulled down, were confiscated to defray the expenses of the army.
There Arianism was formulated and there Athanasius, the great opponent of both heresy and pagan reaction, worked and triumphed.
Not a few of the slabs, it is discovered, have done double duty, bearing a pagan inscription on one side and a Christian one on the other.
Wooden coffins, with skeletons wrapped in coarse hairy cloth, and both pagan and Christian tombstones with runic inscriptions have been found.
It chanced to be the occasion of a pagan festival at Tara, during which no fire might be kindled until the royal fire had been lit.
He passed his time in feasts and pageants, while in a bull the pope denounced him as a criminal, a pagan and a heretic, until, terrified by a slight disturbance on the 15th of December, he abdicated and fled from Rome.
Ritschl is so faithful to the standpoint of the religious community, that he has nothing definite to say on many inevitable questions, such as the relation of God to pagan races.
The Christian apologists and their pagan assailants; the Theodosian Code, with Godefroy's commentary; the Annals and Antiquities of Muratori, collated with " the parallel or transverse lines" of Sigonius and Maffei, Pagi and Baronius, were all critically studied.
He then draws a positive demonstration of the truth of his religion from the effects of the new faith, and especially from the excellence of its moral teaching, and concludes with a comparison of Christian and Pagan doctrines, in which the latter are set down with naïve confidence as the work of demons.
In my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked on earth and talked face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly built shrines to those I loved best.
Only his superb strategy and the heroic devotion of his lieutenants - notably the converted Jew, Jan Samuel Chrzanowski, who held the Ottoman army at bay for eleven days behind the walls of Trembowla - enabled the king to remove "the pagan yoke from our shoulders"; and he returned to be crowned at Cracow on the 14th of February 1676.
The funeral-banquet descended to the Christian church from pagan times, and was too often profaned by heathen licence.
Vico undoubtedly considered the poetic wisdom of the Middle Ages to be different from that of the Greeks and Romans, and Christianity to be very superior to the pagan religion.
The celebrations are directly traceable to the pagan Saturnalia of ancient Rome, which in spite of the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, and of the denunciation of bishops and ecclesiastical councils, continued to be celebrated by the people on the Kalends of January with all their old licence.
Even as its main historical importance had formerly sprung from pagan learning, so now it acquired fresh importance as a centre of Christian theology and church government.