Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? 0334025699

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Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? The interaction between gospel and culture Anton Wessels

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Translated by John Bowden from the Dutch Kersteningen Ontkerstening van Europa. Wisselwerking tussen Evangelie en Cultuur, published 1994 by Uitgeverij Ten Have, Baarn.

© Uitgeverij Ten Have, Baarn 1994

Translation © John Bowden 1994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers, SCM Press Ltd.

0 334025699

“hedleag ities SCHOOL OF THEOLOGYW AT CLAREMONT California

First British edition published 1994 by SCM Press Ltd, 26-30 Tottenham Road, London Nr 4BZ ‘Typeset by The Spartan Press, Lymington, and printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wilts

In memory ofMarius Bremmer, conversation partner and friend When dead I am, when I am dead, then come and whisper, whisper something good,

) shall open my pale eyes, and I shall not be surprised. And I shall not be surprised; in this love death will be just a sleep, a rest in sleep, a waiting for you, a waiting. J. H. Leopold

Contents

Preface

I. The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe Introduction The re-evangelization of Europe? Is Europe Christian? De-Christianization and secularization The success of the original Christianization Modes of Christianization Abolished or transformed? European contextual theology? Plan II. ‘The Graeco-Roman Context

Introduction

|

Not Aramaic, but Greek

The Septuagint - The Christian apologists and ‘pagan’ thought Relations with philosophy Attitudes to Greek mythology Odysseus Orpheus Asclepius Theseus Virgil Christmas and Mithras Mithras and the mystery religions The gospel and (Graeco-Roman) culture Who triumphs?

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24 28 31 34 af. 39 40 41 45 47 51

Contents

Viii

III. The Celtic Contextualization

Introduction Peregrinatio and mission Patrick Pelagius Brendan Columba ‘the elder’ Columbanus (Columba the Younger) The world of the Celtic gods: Daghda, Lugh The Celtic god Brigid and the Christian saint Brigid Druids and the church The menhir and the solar cross Holy times Irish Christianity and nature King Arthur and the Grail legend Gawain and the Green Knight Interaction between Celtic culture and Christianity

IV. The Gospel in the Germanic World Introduction The Christianization of the Germans The Christianization of the Netherlands Willibrord Boniface The Christianization of Scandinavia

Germanic worship The Eddas

The Germanic gods and the new faith Odin/Wodan Odin and the runes Odin and Christ Odin, St Nicholas and St Martin Thor/Donar Thor, Christ and Olaf Saxnot Hulda, Holle, Bertha Balder

100 IOI 102 103 105 106 109 III 113 GG) 11g 122 124 128 130 131

Contents

ix

Loki 133 The Heliand and its image of Christ 134 How Germanic is the presentation of Jesus in the Heliand? 135 141 Otfried of Weiszenburg 142 The Muspilli The Wessobrunn prayer 143 145 The Yule feast and Christmas 149 Tree of life, world tree, may tree, Christmas tree 153 Easter 154 Christ as the more powerful one 158 Abolish or transform?

V. The Interaction between the Gospel and Present-Day European Culture 161 Introduction Christ ‘against European culture’? Via Athens? Dealing with nature: the preservation of creation From ‘demythologizing’ to ‘the truth of myth’ From a culture of the word toa culture of the image The role of stories in word and image Troy and Sarajevo “The European’ Death and resurrection Ascension ‘A parable of a more than earthly mystery’

161 162 166 i71 174: 180 185 186 187 189 IQI 194

Notes

197

Index

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I. The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe

‘The call for an “evangelization” or even a “re-evangelization” ofEurope ts a legitimate concern to the degree that it is addressed to the churches and Christians (of. Evangelii nuntiandi, 1975, 12).’"

Introduction

The question which particularly fascinates me is this: above all at this time, when there is talk of an increasing de-Christianization of Europe, can lessons also be drawn from the history of its early Christianization? Could an answer to this question help with the translation of the Christian message, evangelization, in the secularized European world of today? Before explaining how I came to ask this question, and in what way I hope to work it out, I want first to say something briefly about the present call for a ‘re-evangelization of Europe’, which has been made over recent years above all by Pope John Paul II. This leads to the question of just how Christian Europe really was, and to what degree it has now been de-Christianized. I shall then discuss the two factors which prompted this study. First came the insight of Mircea Eliade, the phenomenologist of religion, into the way in which the original Christianization of Europe came about and the particular way in which an interaction took place here between gospel and culture. In his Christ and Culture (1951), H. Richard Niebuhr studied the different relationships which Christian faith has with culture. I shall investigate the way in which this Christianization took place. On the one hand there was a hostile and antithetical attitude to culture (Christ against culture) and on the other a more positive attitude (Christ as the transformer of culture).

2

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

The second factor prompting this study is the contribution of Asian and African theologians to theology, and their implicit and sometimes explicit questions to European theologians as to what the relationship of Christian faith to their own European culture really is. This chapter will end with the plan for the other chapters of this book.

The re-evangelization ofEurope? In 1982 a symposium of European bishops was held in Rome, attended by about seventy bishops from both Western and Eastern Europe. This was still before the fall of the Berlin wall. The topic of the meeting was ‘The responsibility of the bishops of Europe for the evangelization of the continent’. The discussions revolved around two themes, ‘The Christian Dimension of Europe’ and “The Crisis of Christian Europe’. At the opening of the symposium, the British Cardinal Basil Hume remarked how in many European countries today people were experiencing a very widespread de-Christianization. More and more people, although baptized, were living outside the Christian churches. He then went on to speak of the atheism and the laicism which were insidiously penetrating Western societies. Cardinal Konig of Vienna pointed out how over wide areas there was a climate of total secularization. On this occasion Pope John Paul II called for an ‘auto-evangelization’ with a view to accepting the challenge of the man and woman of today.’ In recent years there has been talk of a ‘re-evangelization of Europe’, above all on the part of the Vatican. In his adhortatio Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II called for ‘a new evangelization of Europe’.3 On his visits to various European cities like Santiago de Compostela, Venice and Strasbourg, the Pope referred to the Christian vocation of Europe.* On his pilgrimage to Compostela in 1989 he confirmed the Catholic church’s aim of preparing for ‘a new Christianization’ of Europe.) In his encyclical S/avorum apostoli he spoke of the Christian identity of Europe ‘from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals’. He presented the work of the apostles to the Slavs, Cyril (who died in 869) and

Methodius iho died in 885, both from Thessalonica) as a model of

inculturation.© At the opening of the European Conference

of

The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe

3

Bishops in Rome in November 1991 there were invocations not only of the patron saints of Europe — Benedict (c.480-547), Cyril and Methodius — but also of all the national patron saints like Joan of Arc (1412~1431, France), Willibrord (c.658—739, Netherlands), Patrick (c.385-461, Ireland), Boniface (c.680-754, Germany), Birgitta (1303-1373, Sweden), Olaf (II) Tryggvason (c.g95—1030, Norway), Bohemia), Johannes Nepomunk Wenceslas (c.1350-1393, (c.go5—929, Czechoslovakia), Stanislaus of Krakow (c.1030-1079, Poland), and many others.’

Is Europe Christian? However, the first questions which arise in connection with any talk of a re-evangelization or re-Christianization of Europe are: how Christian was Europe really? To what extent has it been deChristianized today? ‘If, by Christianization, one understands the reception of Baptism and certain ritual practices — such as attendance at Mass on certain days — then England, France and much of Germany were “Christianized” by 750.’ Moreover it is evident from the work of the AngloSaxon historian and theologian the Venerable Bede (672/3-735), known above all for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which goes up to the year 731, how limited the Christianization then still

was.

ig

The church’s fight against pagan superstition continued for centuries afterwards. Certainly with the first Christianization of Western Europe around 750 ‘the preconditions for a deeper penetration of Christianity were created’.® It should be noted that when Islam began to spread through North Africa and Spain into France, a large part of Europe had not yet been Christianized. The Christianization of England only began to make progress at about the same time as the rise of Islam. And in the case of the Netherlands, C.Busken Huet has demonstrated that the period of time when the first seeds of Christianity and Christian civilization were planted in the Netherlands coincides with the moment when the Muslims conquered the Iberian peninsula and almost succeeded in exterminating West Gothic Christianity.? The Popes would have

4

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

seen the importance of further conversion of Europe as the building of a dam against the further spread of Islam.*° At the same time, when the church expanded thanks to the work of the Frankish king Clovis (466-511), Pope Gregory the Great (c.540-604) and Boniface, ‘the Latin church suffered enormous losses to Islam’."* Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (c.63 5-687) is named as someone who with

his devoted labour and hard work completed the evangelization of the Angles.” After the Christianization of the Saxons, of the Germanic tribes only the inhabitants of the Scandinavian countries had not yet been Christianized. The Danes, Norwegians and Swedes held on to their ‘paganism’ longer. In the ninth and tenth centuries these ‘Vikings’ made raids on Europe and founded cities there. At this time the old pagan religion still flourished.’ However, one may ask how deeply this Christianization had really penetrated in the so-called Christianized areas. According to the historian Jan Romein, mediaeval Christianity was only a thin veneer. Only in the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century was the northern part of Europe really Christianized.’ Others have also pointed out that before the Reformation and the Counter Reformation “early modern popular culture’ in Europe had fundamentally remained ‘pagan animist’. There are those who see little difference between the French of the sixteenth century and, for example, their ‘unbelieving’ Indian contemporaries. ‘The French may well have done their Easter duty and married and had their children baptized in church, but their religion was an outward veneer.’'> Only the ‘shadow of the Christian symbol’ had been cast on them.'® Hence talk of the ‘legend of the Christian Middle Ages’. ‘Christendom around 1500 is almost a mission country!’’7 Moreover the French historian Jean Delumeau believes that we cannot even speak of a ‘mediaeval Christendom’. He goes so far as to see the mediaeval Christianization as a failure.'® On the eve of the Reformation the mediaeval West was at best only superficially Christianized. Delumeau describes Luther’s Reformation and the Roman Counter Reformation as apparently rival movements which finally united ‘in the Christianization of the masses and the spiritualization of religious feelings’.'® He believes that the religious revival which reached its peak in the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries came about only

The Christianization and De-Christianization ofEurope

5

under the promise of heaven and the threat of hell. In Brittany, where the population addressed its prayers to the moon, faith only penetrated in the seventeenth century as if this was the beginning of the expansion of the church. Many pre-Christian practices were still maintained at sacred wells. In his view a number of Christian festivals and rites were only a kind of garb for pre-Christian religion.*° Especially in France, the seventeenth century was an important period of Christianization, because the missionaries made efforts to evangelize the country areas thoroughly. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries the Catholic church made considerable efforts to Christianize the populations — as did Protestant churches in Protestant countries. As a result paganism was forced back.*' Talk of de-Christianization presupposes that the whole population was in fact Christian before the industrial period.”” Delumeau comes to the notable conclusion that ‘the God of Christians was much less alive in the past than has been thought and today he is much less dead than is claimed’.”3

De-Christianization and secularization

This last remark brings us to the question of the de-Christianization of Europe. It is clear today that in large parts of Europe society and culture are alienated from the church and Christianity. Statistics show that the involvement of many Europeans in the church is diminishing. According to Der Spiegel of 15 June 1992, one in four people in Germany are still Christian. This process, which is mostly described by the term ‘secularization’, is continuing, while in the Third World the ‘third church’ is growing, as for example in Africa, where one forecast is that around 2000 there will be more Christians

than there are in Europe. Several decades ago people used to speak of ‘four-wheeled Christianity’, indicating that there were Christians who went to church only if they were taken there on four wheels: to be baptized, to get married or to be buried. The phrase has now virtually disappeared. Many people have allowed themselves to be deleted from the church registers. In the Netherlands, strangely enough, people who do not belong to one church or another, or do not have

6

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

any religious conviction, are said to be ‘nothing’. Nowadays there are even funerals at which people are buried without any rite (rite of passage, Christian or whatever). So it seems that even the ‘myth’ which used to be repeated in the ‘rite’ has definitively been lost. In these cases we could ask whether one cannot in fact talk of people being nothing (though this is not, of course, meant in the moral sense of the word). Be this as it may, it seems undeniable that the experience of the holy or the supernatural in everyday life has drastically declined over the last two centuries in Europe. W. Huber makes three remarks worth noting in answer to the question whether Christianity represents a minority in the world.

— Throughout Christian history, Christians have been a minority in the world. — Within world Christianity, the churches of Europe and North America which still formed a majority in the first half of this century have become a minority. — In European countries and the countries of North and South America, where statistically the majority of the population is Christian, those who will stand up for their faith in their daily life are in a minority.”4

Although it seems that modern industrial society is becoming religiously impoverished to an increasing degree, some people are asking whether we can speak with any certainty of an ‘impoverishment in respect of the holy’ as such.?5

The success of the original Christianization What chiefly prompted me to investigate the question whethe r lessons might be learned from the history of the original Christianization of Europe for the possible evangelization of presen t-day Europe was the re-reading of a passage from the work of Mircea Eliade, the phenomenologist of religion. In one particular paragr aph of his book Images and Symbols, about archetypal images and

The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe

7

Christian symbolism, he points out that the imagery and symbolism of the Christian sacraments — for example water at baptism: being buried with Christ in baptism in death (Rom.6.4) — do not primarily refer to myths and immanent archetypes but to encounter with the divine omnipotence in history. But the new Christian significance given to water must not, according to Eliade, mislead us into failing to understand the old sense of these archetypes: By its renewal of the great figures and symbolizations of natural religion, Christianity has also renewed their vitality and their power in the depths of the psyche . . . The adoption by Christ and the church of the great images of the sun, the moon, of wood, water, the sea and so forth amounts to an evangelization of the effective powers that they denote. The Incarnation must not be reduced to the taking of flesh alone. God has intervened even in the collective unconscious, that it may be saved and fulfilled.”7

Eliade then goes on to say that any new meaning given to an archetypal image completes and perfects the earlier images: for example: The salvation revealed by the Cross does not annul the pre-Christian values of the tree of the world, that pre-eminent symbol of the total renovatio; on the contrary, the Cross comes to complete all its earlier valencies.”®

Then Eliade makes a statement which is very important for the questions discussed in this book: We may even wonder whether the accessibility of Christianity may not be attributable in great measure to its symbolism; whether the universal images it takes up in its turn have not considerably facilitated the diffusion of its message.*?

According to Eliade these images form ‘openings’ to the ‘transhistorical world’. Thus the local cults from Thrace to the Dnieper are brought under a common denominator. By the fact of their Christianization, the gods and cult places of the whole of Europe not only received common names but rediscovered, in a sense, their universal valencies: a fountain in Gaul regarded as sacred ever since prehistoric times became sacred for Christianity as a whole after its consecration to the Virgin Mary. All the slayers of dragons were assimilated to St George or to some Christian hero; all the gods of the storm to holy Elijah. From having been regional and provincial, the popular mythology became ecumenical.3°

8

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

To sum up the quotation in my own words: perhaps it could be said that Eliade sees the secret of the success of the spread of Christianity in Europe as being the church’s success in taking over the images and myths of Europe and raising them to a higher plane.3’ But this brings me to another question: if this is correct, might not the opposite also be true? Might not the demythologizing of the message (of the Bible) have a reverse effect on the communication of the gospel, evangelization or Christianization? During the last three or four decades, theologians in Europe under the influence of Rudolf Bultmann have taught that if the gospel is still to speak to men and women of today, the New Testament message must be demythologized. ‘It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of daemons and _spirits.’3* According to Bultmann one has to remove the mythical ideas which the New Testament contains, because these prevent modern men and women from understanding what the New Testament really means. In his view the mythical must not simply be eliminated. The aim is to extract the truth which is proclaimed by the myth in its own way from the mythical covering, and interpret this existentially (with reference to human existence).*3 But if Eliade is right, doesn’t such an approach put the cart before the horse? Doesn’t it detach the message from the vehicle which must convey it? If Eliade is right

about the past, would it not be better, even in modern times, to

attempt to take up the ‘myths and symbols’ of Europe?

In order eventually to be able to give an answer to this question, in this book I want to construct a clearer picture of the process of the original early Christianization, not only of the south but also of the north and west of Europe. Here we shall above all be concerned with the interaction between the new element, the gospel, and the original religion and culture: the old myths and stories. In other

words, we shall be concerned with the interaction between Christian faith and Hellenistic, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Germani c culture and religion respectively.

The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe

9

Modes of Christianization Europe was Christianized in all kinds of different ways. The way in which the gospel found entry into the Graeco-Roman world differed from the way it took in the Celtic or Germanic parts of Europe. The Christianity with which both the Celts and the Germans were brought into contact was already characterized by views about the social and political order derived from Roman society. In other words, the mission of ‘Romanized Christianity’ already brought with it a ‘whole package of social, political, cultural and moral views from Roman society. Thus the acceptance of Christianity by Celts and Germans at the same time meant the adoption of elements of the social and political structure of Roman society.’ Three different situations influenced the mode of Christianization/evangelization: 1. The Germanic Franks, who at the end of the third, in the middle of the

fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries crossed the Rhine and established themselves in Gallo-Roman territories, were already Christianized and had an organized church. That led to a mutual osmosis and acculturation between Romanized Christianity, influenced by Gaul, and the Germanic tribes. 2. The situation was different in the territories which were not conquered by the Romans, like the northern part of Frisia, the Germanic lands east of the Rhine and Scandinavia.

3. In Britain, from which the Romans had had to withdraw in the fifth century, Christianity made a new beginning around 600. The contacts with Gaul, Spain, Italy and Ireland were very important here.**

What was the church’s attitude to existing religions in the Christianization of Europe? We may briefly distinguish two attitudes in history: on the one hand that represented by Boniface, and on the other that represented by Pope Gregory the Great. (a) The English nobleman and Benedictine monk Boniface is known as the ‘apostle to the Germans’. This title, bestowed on him by Pope Gregory II (715-731), who sent him on a mission among the Thuringians, has, however, been challenged.*°

IO

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

Boniface wanted to ‘abolish’ the religion which he encountered. He devastated pagan temples and in this way won people over to the new faith. Possibly his approach was influenced to a not insignificant degree by the letter sent to him by Pope Gregory II in 732, which was hostile to these cultures.3° In Geismar in Hessen in 724 Boniface had an old oak dedicated to Donar cut down ‘in the presence of thousands of amazed pagans and terrified semi-Christians’. He did this to prove to the peasants of Hessen that belief in the power of the god Donar was mistaken. Willibald (730/40—789), who wrote the life of Boniface, says that as soon as Boniface had made a v-shaped cut, a powerful wind smote the old trunk to the ground and it split in the form of a cross. A later German legend relates that a small fir tree grew under the roots. This is said to have been the first Christmas tree.37

When the giant oak fell to the ground and Boniface remained unharmed, the pagans recognized the superior power of the Christian God and came in hordes to be baptized. While the Irish were tolerant of old cults and customs, according to Boniface these old cults of the gods were of the devil.3° Pieces of the oak were used to build a house of prayer which was consecrated to the apostle Peter, by whom Boniface felt himself to be sent and supported.39 Just as Boniface saved material from the tree for a chapel to Peter, so probably the wood and stones of devastated Friesian sanctuaries were used for the building of Christian houses of prayer.*° Others worked before him in this spirit. The emperor Constantine the Great’s Edict of Milan in 313, which made Christianity a ‘permitted religion’, had already led to the prohibition of ‘immoral sacrifices’, to the closing and destruction of many temples, and to the rejection of idols. Martin of Tours (c.316/3 17-397) went round Burgundy destroying temples, casting down idols and felling holy trees. In his History ofthe Franks, Gregory of Tours (c.539-595) tells how his predecessor Martin went round the pagan temples and idols like a real iconoclast (I, 39). The same stories occur often in the life of Martin by Sulpicius Severus (who died around 420). That Martin of Tours launched a campaign against holy temples has also been confirmed by archaeological investigations.*’ The Council of Epaon

The Christianization and De-Christianization ofEurope

II

in 517 forbade even turning pagan sanctuaries into Christian ones, though six years earlier the Council of Orleans had taken the opposite decision.** It is said of the Irishman Columbanus (c.530-615) that like Martin of Tours he waged war on paganism and with great zeal destroyed and burned idols and temples, establishing monasteries in their place.*? The pagans were amazed that there was no reaction from the gods over the breaking of such tabus.** In Italy Pope Gregory the Great, who became known above all for propagating another attitude (see b below), initially also defended the use of violence against adherents of paganism.*° Sometimes the pagans tried to take reprisals on this desecration of temples and the destruction of idols by the missionaries. The guardian of the idol in Walcheren tried to avenge its destruction by Willibrord (c.658-739) by drawing a sword against him. The pagans in Drente wanted to kill Willihad, the missionary from Northumbria, who with his companions was active above all around Dokkum, after he had devastated a local sanctuary. In both cases the Christians survived, and in the case of Willibrord divine vengeance came upon Walcheren and smote the guardian of the idol: he was possessed by the devil and died three days later.*°

(b) By contrast, Pope Gregory took a quite different approach to the work of Christianization in England. At least, he gave different instructions for it. Here Gregory revoked his earlier admonition to destroy temples as such and to exterminate root and branch all that was pagan. As justification he referred to the Israelite people, who were instructed by God to take over the animal sacrifice of the Egyptians for the worship of the true God.*” Presumably the Oid-British church of Britain, which was inhabited by Romanized Celts, became Christian in the course of the fourth century. But because of the Roman withdrawal and the invasions of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the situation changed drastically. This church became isolated and underwent its own separate development.** Towards the end of the sixth century a small group of missionaries crossed the Channel and brought the Christian faith to Kent. The initiative for the conversion of England came from Pope Gregory. This originally Benedictine monk can be regarded as the ‘apostle of the Angles’.*? It is said of Pope Gregory the Great that he saw British slaves in a market and then said, ‘These are Angles, let them become Angels.’ He used some of his income to buy the freedom of young AngloSaxon slaves. He wanted them to be brought up in the Christian faith and to

¥2

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? return to their country. In 596 the Pope sent the Benedictine monk Augustine (died 604/609), later to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury, with thirty-nine monks to England. This was the first papal mission to the ‘pagans’.°°

Pope Gregory the Great gave the abbot Augustine instructions to preserve anything of the other religion which was not in direct conflict with the gospel. The Venerable Bede reproduces the letter of the Pope with its charge to Augustine: When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine, our brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affairs of the English, determined upon, viz., that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed. For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their heart, and, knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils, some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, as that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited.>'

We can also see clearly from this instruction the perspective in which Gregory gave his missionary instructions for the inculturation of Christianity (to use the modern term). Of course we can regard the advice to preserve ancient holy places of worship and turn them into Christian houses of prayer as opportunistic, given that it was the practice to reuse well-built buildings. This advice also tallied with what was to be done in Rome itself. Pope Boniface IV (608-615), the third Bishop of Rome after Gregory, was given the Pantheon, which was said to be a temple for all the gods, by the Byzantine emperor Phocas (602-610). On 13 May 609 this ancient Roman temple was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all the Christian martyrs.” It must, however, be added that this instruction of Gregory’s was never

implemented in England. There, too, temples were to be destroyed.>3

The Christianization and De-Christianization ofEurope

13

Willibrord, ‘the apostle of the Friesians’, was also to work in the spirit of Gregory’s letter. We know that by preference he built churches on former places of sacrifice. However, we also know of instances when Willibrord destroyed sanctuaries as Boniface did, against the advice given by Pope Gregory the Great. This happened for example on Fositenland, an island off the Friesian coast. An upright megalith on the Ferschweiler plateau called the Sibyls’ Stone or the Frabillen Cross was made into a cross. Gregory of Tours describes how the bishop of Javols put an end to the annual pagan festival of the farmers near Lake Helanius by building a church to Hilary of Poitiers on the spot, to which they could bring offerings that had previously been poured into the water of the holy lake.5+

Abolished or transformed? Thus we find different attitudes in the history of early Christianization. One is more that of Christ against culture, the other more that of Christ the transformer of culture. According to Eliade, the archetypal images were ‘completed’ by Christianity, and the preChristian symbols in no way ‘annulled’.>> Eliade clearly answers the question whether the process of Christianization also affects the content of what was there before in the positive. Here we might think of Jesus’ well-known saying in the Sermon on the Mount that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it (Matt.5.17). Does that also mean that to a certain degree the old still retained its significance? In his book When the Gods are Silent: On the Meaning of the Old Testament,>° K. H. Miskotte spoke of both a ‘deficit’ and a ‘surplus’ in the Old Testament, by this meaning the abiding significance which the Old Testament has for Christians as well. So we can ask whether we cannot also speak of a ‘surplus’ in other religions, which continues despite, or perhaps precisely because of, their Christianization. And is not this, as Eliade suggests, also the explanation of the success of the new, namely that to a certain degree it preserved elements of the old and thus consummated them?

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In subsequent chapters I want to investigate what influence the different religions like Graeco/Roman, Celtic and Germanic religion had on Christianity. Were they swept away, or were they raised to a new level? How did Christianity and Christian faith combine with pre-Christian culture and religion? What changes did the newlybrought, translated Christian faith undergo under the influence of these cultures and religions? What elements of the old religion did Christianity abolish? How did the Christian faith Christianize or baptize Europe? To what extent was the old European Adam submerged in the water of baptism so that a new Christian European Adam emerged?

European contextual theology? Before, finally, I describe the plan of the following chapters I want to mention yet another reason for investigating this question of the relationship of Christian faith to European culture. The question of the relationship between gospel and culture has become topical again during recent decades in theological and above all missiological discussion, not least as a result of the contributions from Asian, African and Latin American theologians. In the last twenty years Christian theologians from these continents have made important contributions to the practice of theology above all by investigating and beginning from their own political and cultural/ religious contexts. So it is now possible to speak of African, Asian and Latin American ‘contextual theology’. European theologians have sometimes reacted negatively to this, because they have thought that this approach sacrifices the distinctive character of the Christian message to what, for example, is distinctive in Asian or African culture. This consciously contextual theology may then be African or Asian, but can it also be called Christian? That becomes the question. Here European theologians usually almost take it for granted that they represent and defend a universal Christian theology which puts them in a position to judge others and measure them by their criteria. African, Asian and Latin American theologians often do not pass the test of what is thought to be ‘universal’ theology, the theology practised by Westerners, and are often dismissed by European theologians as ‘syncretistic’. They are

The Christianization and De-Christianization of Europe

I5

felt to make too many concessions to their own cultural context. A working party on ‘theology and culture’ was set up by the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in 1991 in reaction to anxiety on the part of the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches that the foundations of Christian faith were being attacked by the new churches, above all in Africa and Asia, which incorporate indigenous culture and traditions into their theology.57 In my view, one of the reasons why European theologians find it so difficult to assess African, Asian and Latin American contributions to theology is that they are unaware of the question of their own contextualization, above all in the sense of their inculturation into European culture. What was really the interaction between gospel and culture in Europe? How did the faith that was brought to Europe enter European culture? I want to try to answer this question in the following chapters, in any case as it relates to the first Christianization. We should then be in a position to answer the question whether lessons are to be learned from it for evangelization in present-day Europe. Plan

The plan of the following chapters is this. Iwant to investigate in turn the way in which the gospel reacted, above all in this first phase of Christianization, to Graeco/Roman (II), Celtic (III) and Germanic and Scandinavian religion and culture (IV). In all these cases I am not so much concerned to establish or bring out what must be regarded as typically Greek, Roman, Celtic or Germanic. Often we find a mixing of cultures. Thus it is difficult to indicate precisely what we should understand by ‘Germanic’. Current research indicates that it is no longer acceptable to use the phrase ‘typically Germanic’, even in terms of religion. Many Germans were already part of ancient (Graeco-Roman) culture. So early mediaeval piety has been called ‘inter-Gentile’.5® It is dangerous to make a sharp distinction between ‘the mentalities’ of the Germanic and Roman peoples.°? In this study I do not want to try to identify what might be specifically and purely Roman, Celtic or Germanic. These cultures have influenced one another in all kinds of ways. My concern is to investigate the relationship between Christianity and Roman, Celtic and Germanic culture in different areas of Europe, whatever form or mixed form of these cultures they may or may not have possessed.

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So here we shall throughout be investigating the interaction between gospel and culture, how the pre-Christian religions and cultures of Europe were abolished or transformed. In the last chapter (V) I want to try to answer the question of what we can learn from these histories and examples for bringing the good news to the Europe of our own day. Can the connections which missionaries were able to make with their culture in earlier centuries also be made today in our secularized culture?

II. ‘The Graeco-Roman Context

‘Christianity recorded its greatest initial success in the Roman empire by assimilating to itselfso much ofthe Graeco—Roman culture, and that includes the primarily Platonized religious culture ofwhat are now counted as the first and most formattve Christian centuries.”*

Introduction

Christianity came into being in Palestine, a province of the Graeco— Roman empire. Around 400 the catholic church was largely identified with the Roman state.” In what way did the church translate the gospel into the Graeco-Roman context? In what way can we talk of an interaction between the gospel and Graeco-Roman culture? In this chapter I want successively to consider the languages in which the original Christian message — the New Testament — was handed down. In connection with this we shall be looking at the model provided by the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the way in which there we already have ‘translation’ in the Hellenistic context. The first Christians in the Hellenistic world were under the impact of ‘pagan’ criticism and tried to translate the Christian faith in the framework of its religious context. What was abolished of the old religion, and what remained? What was the relationship of Christian faith to Greek philosophy on the one hand and Greek mythology on the other? We shall be looking at the use made by the church of the Fourth Eclogue of the great Roman poet Virgil (7o-17 BCE), whose Aeneid became the national epic, and also the relationship with Graeco-Roman mythology. In this connection we shall also examine the use made by the Christian apologists and church fathers (especially Tertullian, c.160—220, and Clement of Alexandria, c.150—216), albeit critically, of figures like Odysseus, Orpheus, Asclepius and Theseus. Then we shall investigate the relationship between the feast of ‘the invincible sun’ (Mithras) and the Christian Christmas. Finally, we shall consider

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how far Christianity abolished Graeco-Roman culture and how far it lifted it to another plane. Not Aramaic, but Greek

It is a very important fact that the Christian message, as the church received it, was not primarily handed down in Aramaic, the language which Jesus himself spoke. Its fundamental text, the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, is in kone Greek. In connection with Pilate’s question to Jesus whether he is the king of the Jews (Mark 15.2), it has indeed been noted that the fact that nowhere is a translator mentioned does not indicate that Jesus himself knew Greek. But knowledge of this language by a Galilean at this time is not thought

intrinsically impossible.

That the New Testament has been handed down in Greek is a very important fact, and less obvious than one might think. The gospel of Jesus was already immediately handed down in a translated form. Only a few expressions, albeit important ones, have been handed down inJesus’ own mother tongue. Jesus’ words to the deaf and dumb man, ‘Ephphata’ (‘be opened’, Mark 7.34), and to Jairus’s daughter, “Talitha cum’, ‘Miss, stand up’ (Mark 5.41), are recorded literally in the language which Jesus himself spoke. Jesus’ words on the cross, taken from Psalm 22, are also quoted in Hebrew or Aramaic, ‘Eli, eli, lama sabachtani’ (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, Matt.27.46). Jesus called God in Aramaic ‘Abba’, a particularly affectionate term for ‘Father’ (Mark 14.36), anda very intimate way of expressing his bond with God. Paul uses this Aramaic expression in his letters (Gal.4.6; Rom.8.1 5). Here reference is made back to the original faith as Jesus expressed it in his own

language. In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 16.22, we have

the Aramaic sentence ‘Maranatha’, ‘Our Lord, come.’ Again, as in

the case of ‘Abba’, this indicates a close connection with the original Palestinian Aramaic-speaking community. ‘Young Hellenistic Christianity, streaming powerfully into the world, stands still for a moment and gratefully looks back to the fatherland (Palestine).’+ But these Aramaic expressions are the exceptions which prove the rule. The New Testament text is already coloured by a new context,

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different from the original ‘Aramaic’ context in which the gospel was preached by Jesus in Galilee and Judaea (Jerusalem), although this reference to and indication of the original Aramaic context is not forgotten — as the expressions ‘Abba’ and ‘Maranatha’ indicate. It is important to note that Jesus’ message itself has been recorded in translation. This had important consequences for the way in which the transmission of the gospel was to take place later in constantly new contexts. Here the church is thus in fact following a process which already began in the New Testament itself.

The Septuagint It is interesting to look at the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in connection with the question of translation into a new context. Here we have an example of how the Jews, especially in Egypt, where for centuries they formed an important part of the population, to some degree adapted to the Hellenistic context. The translation was not made for missionary reasons, but to meet the needs of Jewish worship. Greek, not Hebrew, was the mother tongue of these Jews in the Diaspora. The Hellenistic Jews thought it inspired, as we can see from the legend about its origin.> It was said that seventy-two biblical scholars, each in isolation, worked on the translation and discovered that when they had finished, they had all produced the same result. For the Greek-speaking Jews, the Septuagint took on the significance of the holy word of revelation, although people remained aware of the tension which can exist between translation and original.° In his book The Bible and the Greeks, C. H. Dodd described how in the translation of the Old Testament into Greek certain associations of the Hebrew words were lost, while at the same time certain Greek words acquired a significance which was derived from the value of the Hebrew words. He then investigated in particular the names of God and words like ‘righteousness’, ‘mercy’, ‘truth’, ‘sin’ and ‘reconciliation’. The translation of the Hebrew word Torah by the Greek ‘law’, nomos, is not a direct equivalent.’ Although the original aim of the translation may not have been missionary, the Septuagint is presented as a kind of ‘law’ for humankind with a view to attracting proselytes. The ‘vividness’ and

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imagery of the basic Hebrew texts is overlaid in this translation by the conceptual language of Greek. Some words in this translation are

‘like a Greek ship with a foreign cargo’.* A concept of God is presented which is understandably clearer, with the aim of providing a force which can woo readers away from polytheism. The Septuagint translation tries to remove the traces of polytheism from the Hebrew text.? Thus anthropomorphic expressions are avoided in talk about God. For example, the ‘hand’ of the Lord is translated ‘power’. There is less talk of the suffering of God. Kyrios, Lord, is chosen as a translation for the name of God. ‘This translation emerged from the need to shape the specific or particularistic element of the Old Testament to meet the needs of a universal religion for pious cosmopolitans.’'° This translation implicitly makes an absolute and universal claim, and at the same time it expresses a personal faith in its confession that God is ‘my Lord’. The expression pantocrator, ‘ruler of the universe’, is used both for ‘God Almighty’ (El Shaddai’, cf. Genesis 17.35) and for ‘Yahweh Sabaoth’ (‘the Lord of Hosts’). ‘God in the highest’ becomes ‘the highest God’. The divine predicate ‘all sufficient’ also appears as a translation of ‘God Almighty’. The Septuagint translates ‘I am who I am’ (Gen.3.24) with ‘I am the one who is’. This translation of the divine name Yahweh sounds philosophical.'' The fact that different names for God like Yahweh, El, Elohim, Shaddai are translated by “Theos? or ‘Kyrios’ leads to a ‘clarification of the idea of God’ and favours a ‘clear monotheism’. The features of the image of God also shift. “The dynamic picture of God is replaced by a static picture of immutability and the transcendence of God who is sufficient in

himself (Ruth 2.10). In order to make it more understandable in the

world of Hellenism the term ‘lazybones’ is translated ‘non-religious person’ (Prov.24.30f.). In the book of Ecclesiastes the lament over the transitoriness of all human efforts is replaced in the Septuagint with an accusation against the ‘idleness’ and ‘stubbornness of the human spirit’. If the orientation of wisdom in the Hebrew text of Proverbs (1.26) is secular, in the Septuagint it becomes ‘an ethic with a religious definition’. Whereas in the Hebrew Old Testament ‘a long and happy life’ is seen as the fulfilment of the promises (cf. Deut.28), in the Septuagint ‘the resurrection faith’ clearly breaks through (Deut.32.39), the life which follows death. ‘Despite the

The Graeco—Roman Context

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capacity of Hellenistic Judaism to adapt to its surroundings, it gave up nothing of the substance of its belief in the one God.’”? ‘It is on the basis of Septuagint piety that Judaism developed into a universal missionary religion.’ The large numbers of proselytes and godfearers indicate that the influence of the Septuagint in this direction was ‘successful’.*3 The Septuagint in fact functioned as a praeparatio evangelica. The Christian mission was addressed in the first place to Hellenized Jews. Christians, like Jews, initially made use of the Greek version of the Old Testament. There are some striking quotations from the Septuagint above all in Paul’s letters. The ‘godfearers’ whom Paul encountered were brought into contact with Jewish thought by this Greek translation. “The translations and adaptions to the Greek and Hellenistic context, above all in relation to the name of God and the

idea of God, which had already been made in the Septuagint, were an essential factor for the spread of Christian faith. The Christian mission in the first century is unthinkable without it.’’4 The use of Greek in theology and liturgy gave this language a new Christian colouring.*5

The Christian apologists and ‘pagan’ thought Graeco-Roman culture was both rejected and elevated to a higher plane in the early church. In these first centuries the ‘pagan’ intellectuals in the Roman empire were hostile to Christianity. According to the Roman historian Tacitus (c.55—116/20 CE, Annals 15.44), Christians were people who hated the human race. According to a pagan whom the Latin apologist Minucius Felix (probably at the beginning of the third century) quotes in one of his writings, Christians were ‘a people which shuns the light and lives in hiding places; they are not heard in public but can only open their mouths in hidden corners’.'° Perhaps Celsus, according to Origen (c.185251) an Epicurean, is the best and most widely known example of this pagan hostility to Christianity. He formulated a vitriolic challenge to Christianity which is known to us from quotations which Origen (Contra Celsum, c.180) made from it. In his The True Word a remark of Celsus’s is quoted to the effect that Christianity is not founded on rational grounds and in his view calls for blind faith.

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Celsus accuses Christians of ignorance, arbitrariness, indifference to the state, sectarianism and an antipathy to images, temples and altars inherited from the Jews. He accuses Judaism and Christianity

of a lack of reverence. Anything positive that they teach he attributes to plagiarism from Greek wisdom. In his view, monotheism and an exclusive worship of Christ break ‘the old law of religious tolerance, through which Christianity weakens the defence of the ancient world against the onslaught of the barbarians’.*7 Christians were not insensitive to the negative attitude of educated pagans to Christianity. For the well-educated Aurelius Augustine (354-430), with an outstanding training in profane rhetoric, his first acquaintance with Holy Scripture was a disappointing experience. In his view it could not stand comparison with the dignified style of a Cicero (106 BCE-43 CE). The apologists for Christian faith proved sensitive to the argument that Christian faith is irrational. They and the church fathers defended themselves against this ‘pagan’ criticism in different ways. First of all they emphasized the admirable character of their own holy Scripture. Thus one of them says: ‘When the Christian reads the word of God, what need does he have of human letters? What is lacking in scripture that you need to pick up pagan fables? Are you interested in history? Take the book of Kings. Is your preference for oratory or poetry? Read the prophets. Or cosmogony? In that case there is the book of Genesis. Or an ethical

work? In that case there is the Law. Indeed refrain from all else,

those alien and demonic writings.’"® In a number of writers in the early church we can find opposition to Greek culture and Greek thought. In his Oration to the Greeks, the apologist Tatian (c.170) made a fierce attack on Greek culture. Above all, mythology, philosophy and pictorial art are devalued here. He mocks the Greek gods by quoting the most immoral stories from mythology. Furthermore, the Greeks are said to have borrowed their science and art from the barbarians. We also finda similarly negative attitude to culture in Tertullian, who for example in his On Theatregoing dissuades Christians from going to the theatre since it is idolatrous in origin. It was Tertullian who made the famous remark, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? Our instruction comes

The Graeco—Roman Context

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from the “porch of Solomon”, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic and dialectic composition.’’? In one of his letters in 384 Jerome asks the question what Horace has to do or has in common with the Psalter, Virgil with the Gospels or Cicero with the Apostles. His reply is: ‘As little as darkness with light or Christ with Belial. Moreover you cannot drink both the cup of Christ (= Christian literature) and the cup of the demons (= pagan literature).’ Pagan literature (and certainly school literature) risked being declared the work of demons by not unimportant Christians.”° But as perhaps already in this last remark by Jerome, Christianity in the Roman empire for the most part did not take Tertullian’s line. This negative line of repudiation contrasts with another. The history of the Christianization of large parts of the Roman empire shows that Jerusalem in fact had a good deal to do with Athens or Rome. Christians made fruitful use of what was called ‘the spoil from the pagans’ — they used this reference to the treasures which the departing Hebrew slaves took with them out of Egypt (Ex.12.35, 36) as justification for their attitude. Just as in their time the Israelites made use of the precious vessels they had taken with them to decorate the ark of the covenant and for worship, so, according to Origen, Christians could make use of profane philosophy. But the biblical story taught that these treasures were also used for perverse ends, as was evident from the casting of the golden calf (Ex.32). The different attitudes, positive and negative, which could be adopted towards paganism are also shown by Basil the Great (c.330-379), with his picture of the bees who make honey from the freshest flowers but fly past others which have less to offer. According to Augustine the pagan poets sometimes spoke the truth unconsciously, and one could even refer to them (City of God 18.14). According to Clement of Alexandria, Homer (c.800-750 BCE) spoke inspired words without meaning to. The greatest early Western Christian poet, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348-410), whose hymns are still in our hymn books and who wanted to keep the old idols because they were so attractive, said: The very Capitol at Rome laments that Christ is the God who sheds light for

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her emperors and her temples have fallen in ruins at her leaders’ command. Now the successor of Aeneas, in the imperial purple, prostrates himself in prayer at the house of Christ, and the supreme lord adores the banner of the cross.”"

of Prudentius is seen as being his The greatest significance eben 3 : : concern to reconcile Christianity and ancient culture.*

Relations with philosophy How did the church deal with Greek philosophy? Although the apostle Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians says that he did not come to them with brilliant words or wisdom (2.1), and the letter to the Colossians issues a warning to have nothing to do with philosophers or be deceived by their futility (2.8),*? Paul already talks of a ‘translation’ of the message, in so doing explicitly also seeking a connection with the Greek philosophical context. His own thought is doubtless already influenced by different philosophical schools.** In his famous speech on the Areopagus — which could be described as the first encounter of Christianity with Greek philosophy*> — he takes up the image of ‘the unknown God’ and begins with a dispute with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (Acts.17.18). : Here we clearly have an assimilation to notions from his philosophical surroundings. This has been described as a Hellenistic speech with a Christian conclusion.”° Paul here expresses some unmistakably Stoic thought, such as ‘God has no need of anything’ (Acts 17.16f.). The notions that God does not dwell in a temple built by human hands, has no needs, gives life and breath to all things, and is

near us so that in him we live and move and have our being, along with the protest against the images of gold, silver and stone, appear with the Stoa.*” In this Areopagus speech Paul quotes the Greek poet Aratus (c.315-240 CE), who had said, ‘For we are all of his family’ (Acts 17.28). The quotation from Aratus comes from his Heavenly Phenomena and was used by Luke in Acts for the same purpose as the Old Testament biblical quotations. The quotation from Aratus had already been used by the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of religion Aristobulus (c.160 BCE). Hellen-

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istic Judaism, in a comparable way to the Septuagint, had thus preceded Paul in the same manner of translation.”®

Paul’s speech on the Areopagus claims for the ‘Christian’ God the space left free for the ‘unknown God’. Paul’s approach in Corinth, where he compared the ‘scandal of the cross’ with pagan earthly logic and rhetorical knowledge, seems to contradict that in Athens, but we can hardly speak of a division here.?9 A direct line runs from this Pauline approach to the one that later Christian apologists began to follow. So the use of Greek philosophical terminology that can already be noted in Paul continues in the apologists and church fathers.3° The defenders of the Christian faith were fond of using philosophical arguments. Justin Martyr (who died c.165) confesses that from his earliest youth he was attracted to Greek philosophy. Nor did he discard his philosopher’s cloak when he became a Christian. He regarded Christianity as the ‘absolute philosophy’. The apologists wanted to translate the gospel for ‘Greek’ ears. The connection between Greek faith and the Greek philosophical tradition was to be embodied above all in Clement of Alexandria and his disciple Origen.*' While these Christians regarded pagan worship as unworthy and untrue, they were concerned to reconcile pagan philosophy with their own Christian teaching. The Christian apologists found the philosophical concepts not only there waiting, but already predigested.3” According to Justin Martyr, Socrates (469-399 BCE) already had some sense of the truth which was later to be worked out more closely in Christian doctrine. Not only the Jewish prophets but also the best of the Greeks, like Heraclitus the Greek philosopher from Ephesus (c.540-480 BCE) and Socrates, had shared in the Logos which appeared in Christ in his fullness. Clement of Alexandria wanted his fellow Christians to note the significance that secular learning had for him. He attached a positive value to philosophy and wanted to introduce Greek culture into the Christian thought-world.23 Clement saw Christianity as a fulfilment of the divine education of the human spirit and personality, which already came markedly to the fore in the Greek tradition.34

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He wanted the truth that the pagan philosophers had discovered to be put at the service of Christianity. He saw elements of truth in Greek philosophy as ‘preparing the way for the dissemination of the gospel among the pagans’. Clement was the author of an apologetic work, Protreptikos, an exhortation to embrace the Christian faith. Certainly Clement writes polemic against Greek religion and philosophy, but he makes use of this form earlier employed by the philosophers.*5 His two other works are Tutor to Christ (Paedagogos), a Christian ethics, and Carpets (Stromateis), in which he gives an account of the relationship of Greek philosophy to the Christian religion. In it he discusses the significance of pagan philosophy for Christian learning.

Clement of Alexandria assigns Greek culture a providential place in the economy of salvation. Just as the Jews had received the law, so God in his providence had given the Greeks their philosophy. “The seed of the gospel germinates in the field which was fertilized by philosophy.’ Clement sees philosophy as a ‘tutor leading to the truth’. That applies in particular to those who want to arrive at truth through proof. God brought up people through ‘Hellenism’ as he brought up Jews through the ‘law’. Clement sees a strict parallel between Greek and Jewish prophecy, between ‘the preparation for the gospel’ on the one hand, and the law and the prophets, which were given in their time to Jews, on the other. ‘Philosophy was given ° to the Greeks to fit their ears for the good news.’3° In Carpets, Clement puts forward his conviction that behind Greek philosophy is the same God as the God in whom Jews and Christians believe: “The same God that furnished both the Testaments was the giver of Greek philosophy to the Greeks.’37 Just as Plato understood philosophy as paideia, so Clement’s disciple Origen saw Christianity as adult food. For Origen Christ was the great teacher. For him Christ was not a teacher with a human radiance, but one in whom the divine Logos is embodied. That is the great difference between Christianity and all human philosophy.3° Ignatius (c.110) can be cited as an example of a Hellenization which goes still further. He is the first Christian writer to begin to talk of ‘immortality’, which in the New Testament is rendered ‘incorru ption’ (I Cor.15.42). The Shepherd of Hermas in the middle of the second century uses terms like ‘virtue’. There is an ‘osmosis of

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Christian thought and Platonic terminology’. In theological language, background use is made of the philosophical vocabulary of Stoicism and Neoplatonism. Calling God ‘invisible’, ‘incomprehensible’, ‘ineffable’ points to a language of ‘denials’, the so-called via negativa. When the doctrine of the Trinity was put in words in the fourth century, use was made of philosophical, i.e. Neoplatonic, thought. That becomes clear above all from the Cappadocian ‘church fathers’ (Gregory of Nyssa, c.335-394), Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329-389/90) and Basil the Great (died 379). They ‘reshaped Greek philosophy and oratory for Christian ends’.39 If Origen offered Christian religion its own theology in the style of Greek philosophy, with the Cappadocians, as with Origen, we have a fruitful relationship between Christianity and Hellenism, but on another level. “Through them Christianity became the heir to the whole Greek tradition to the degree that this was worth continuing.’*° And although Gregory of Nazianzus warned that one must not preach the faith ‘in Aristotelian fashion, but as fishermen’, he used Greek philosophy as well, just like the other Cappadocians.*’ What happened was that ‘conceptions which were originally typical of the emperor cult, the army, the Greek mystery religions, the theatre and Platonic philosophy became common property both in Christian worship and in doctrine’.4* In building up and expounding Christian doctrine the church fathers borrowed much from Greek philosophy.*? Under the influence of Greek philosophy there seemed to be an increasing tendency to define and systematize belief. As a result the God of the Old Testament and early Christianity is identified with the universal idea of the God of Greek metaphysics. Ontology (God’s being) becomes more important than history (God’s actions). Knowledge (I Cor.1.22) slowly begins to replace event in Christian theology. Salvation can be found in knowledge. Knowledge gained by experience is increasingly replaced by rational knowledge. Prime importance is attached more to the original being of the Holy Spirit than to his activity in history. God’s revelation is no longer understood as God’s communication of himself in events but as the communication of truth about the being of God in three hypostases and the one person of Christ in two natures. ‘The message became doctrine, the doctrine dogma, and

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this dogma was expounded in doctrinal concepts which were technically related to one another.’ Reference has been made to the way in which the Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria (who lived in the first century) already spoke of being in both a personal and an impersonal way, making alternate use of the Greek neuter fo on. ‘Asa result the personal God of religion is more closely connected with the absolute “being” of the philosopher. This makes God rather less personal and the Godhead more immanent in comparison with the Elohim of the Bible. ‘But at the same time,’ Van Aalst adds, ‘the reverse is also true and the abstract notion of Hellenistic philosophy takes on a more personal character from the Old Testament.’ Here he suggests that while Christianity certainly takes over Greek philosophy, at the same time it reinterprets and gives its language and concepts new meaning.

Attitudes to Greek mythology The apologists made use of philosophy, and the ‘success’ of their translation of Christianity can also be connected with this.*> But what about their attitude to pagan religion and mythology? Here too their attitude was both negative and positive. On the one hand Christian writers deal very critically with myths, but on the other they were also brought on to a new level. It seems to be in keeping with their preference for seeking connections in philosophy that in their criticism of religion and mythology they made use of the criticisms of polytheism which had already been expressed by ‘pagan’ philosophers. There was a whole arsenal of arguments against mythology, namely that the gods were mortal, vulnerable and subject to passions, and Christians made

grateful use of it.t° The first philosopher to attack all too human ideas of the gods and the stories about them, which were often thought not very edifying and morally reprehensible, voicing a devastating criticism, was Xenophanes of Colophon (c.580/577— 485/480 BCE). He mocked the world of Homer’s gods for their all too human conduct and because they did not possess the dignity appropriate to their divine nature. ‘Gods who look like human beings, steal, commit adultery and threaten like human beings do not exist.’ The Greek tragedian Euripides (c.480—406 BCE) objected to

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the notion that the gods have a human disposition.*”7 Cicero developed a theory about the origin of culture. He seems implicitly to concede that all gods were human beings who were elevated from earth to heaven. The church fathers made much use of his book On the Nature of the Gods. Reference can be made in this connection to ‘Euhemerism’. This is the name for a theory about the origin of the gods and religion which was presented for the first time by Euhemerus (c.340-260 BCE) in a travel account. His central idea is that the gods of mythology were first human beings who were divinized after their death.4® Christian thought accepted Euhemerus’s hypothesis. Many church fathers compliment him for his clear insight on this point. Thus Clement of Alexandria says: “Those whom you worship became gods having first been men and then dying. At least the old dead who over the long period of error became important people were regarded as gods by those who came later. You have proof of this in your own mysteries ...’ Tertullian hopes that the pagans will yield to such proofs, like the fact that the tomb of Zeus can be found on Crete, that of Chronos in the Caucasus, of Ares in Thrace, of Hermes in Egypt and of Aphrodite on Cyprus. That must lead to the conclusion that all their gods were formerly human beings.*?

The church fathers looked at the Graeco-Roman gods and their myths from two perspectives: (a) demonization of these gods, and (b) rationalization. (a) For this demonization, reference is made to biblical passages like Deut.32.17 and I Cor.8.4f. Lactantius (c.250) is the first to claim that the pagan gods are really demons. If the pagans among us do not believe, he argues, they need only listen to Homer and other poets who counted the most high Jupiter among the demons.°° Justin claims that the gods were fallen angels and Augustine also thinks that they were demons. The gods of pagan fables are connected with the devils who are mentioned in the Bible, as in Ps.96.5 or I Cor.10.20. For centuries preachers drove out the ‘devils’ Jupiter (= Zeus, the supreme god), Mercury (Hermes, messenger of the gods) and so on.°” (b) The second perspective from which the pagan gods were interpreted by Christians was the rationalization of myths. It is said that there was a pagan ‘enlightenment’ movement which was of great importance for the rise of Christianity for three reasons:

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Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? (i) Polytheism was undermined from within and made ripe for replacement with monotheism; (ii) This movement gave Christians an arsenal for fighting

polytheism. (iii) Positive ideas from Greek and above all Stoic philosophy were taken up by Christians to support their own view of God and thus make it more acceptable for the educated.>* It must be pointed out that this criticism of popular piety had no interest in the original content and significance of religious phenomena. There is no question of a phenomenological understanding.*?

But this is not all, nor even the most important aspect of the attitude of the church to Graeco-Roman religion. Over against this negative approach to the myths and stories of gods there was another which was more positive, putting them on a new plane. The church in the Graeco-Roman world not only followed the Greek philosophers in criticizing the world of the gods and all kinds of mythological notions, but despite all the critics also made use of them in connection with its translation of the gospel. Certainly, in the time of the empire, in wide circles the myths had lost their former religious significance, but that did not prevent Christians from giving an allegorical interpretation of them.** Certain apologists felt the need to address their ‘pagan readers’ not only in ‘pagan’ philosophical but also in ‘pagan’ religious language. In the New Testament there is still restraint about images borrowed from Greek culture, but the Christian apologists make use of them in their approach.>> Clement puts it like this: ‘Come, O madman, not leaning on the thyrsus, not crowned with ivy; throw away the mitre, throw away the fawn skin; come to your senses, I will show you the Word, and the mysteries of the Word, expounding them in your own fashion’ (Protreptikos 12, 119, 1). Clement then presents the essence of Christianity in the technical language of the mysteries of Dionysus: baptism and eucharist lend themselves to a description in which the torchbearers, the supreme revelation, initiation, the hierophant (here the Lord), the initiated, the seal, play a role: ‘Come also, old man (Teiresias, the blind seer), leaving Thebes, and casting away from you both divination and Bacchic frenzy, allow yourself to be led to the truth. I give you the staff [of the cross] on which to lean.

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Hasten, Teiresias, believe and you will see. Christ, by whom the eyes of the blind recover sight, will shed on you a light brighter than the sun: night will flee from you, fire will fear, death will be gone; you, old man, who did not see Thebes, will see the heavens. O truly sacred mysteries! O stainless light! My way is lighted with torches, and I survey the heavens and God; I become holy whilst I am initiated. The Lord is the hierophant and seals while illuminating him who is initiated, and presents to the Father him who believes, to be kept safe for ever’ (Protreptikos 12, 119.3; 120,1-2). Just as the church was to deal typologically with the Old Testament, so the mythology of classical antiquity became a type of Christian mythology. “Tracing parallels between classical and Christian myths was also to remain something quite usual in Renaissance science, and both made an enormous contribution to the enrichment of Christian culture and saw to it that the classical authors had a firm place in it.’5° We can go a step further and demonstrate that, paradoxical though it may seem, to some degree Christians made a contribution to the preservation of the content of Graeco—Roman mythology.

Odysseus The figure of Odysseus can be mentioned as an illustration of this Christian use of mythology. Here we need to be aware that in the first centuries of the Christian era, reading Homer was part of school education. Homer’s Iliad, especially the first six books, was intensively read at school. Through school education, every educated adult knew passages from the plays of the tragedian Euripides. The work of the Athenian statesman and orator Demosthenes (384-322) was read at school, and Cicero and Virgil were also established in parts of the curriculum.*” In the first centuries, classical culture was taken over by the church, and the church fathers were steeped in this education. In the fourth century, Christian children and adults were brought up as ‘pagans’ in this sense.>° It is clear that this education played a part in their understanding and translation of the Christian message. In its exegesis of the message the church began from this familiarity with ‘classical’ culture.

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One illustration of this is the way in which the church fathers constantly applied imagery drawn from the voyage of Odysseus to

the church. In his exhortations, on the one hand Clement of Alexandria resolutely attacks the pagans for their pagan mysteries, which have become decadent; instead, he wants to lead them to the mystery of the Logos. On the other hand, in his work we find countless quotations from the Odyssey which are used positively for his message. The travels of Odysseus are compared with the journey of the Christian life. Odysseus, one of the most important Greek heroes in the Trojan War, is the main character in the Odyssey. He had to journey for ten years before reaching his homeland.

— One of the episodes which has a role in this practice is ‘the descent of Odysseus into the underworld’. This episode is cited by Justin Martyr to demonstrate that Homer already knew about the preexistence of the soul, and was certain that evil deeds would be

punished in the hereafter.°?

— Another episode which is extensively commented on is the encounter of Odysseus with the Sirens, nymphs who excelled in seductive song (Odyssey 12,39-123, 154-259). In Christian exposition, emphasis is put on the seductive character of the sweet song of the Sirens. There are two interpretations in Christian literature: either the Sirens are an all-knowing symbol of the danger that threatened Christians from the side of the pagan sciences. Or — and this second interpretation found far wider acceptance — they are harlots arousing lust. On the island of the Sirens ‘there sings a sumptuous harlot, desire, which delights in everyone’s music’.© In Christian interpretation, depicted, for example, in the Callistus catacomb, the episode of the Sirens becomes a mystery of purifying water. — The story of Odysseus’ friends who are turned into swine at the word of Circe is then used symbolically for ‘the dangerous sins which degrade the soul’.°"

— In Christian exposition Odysseus’ ship becomes the symbol of the church at sea, and the hero tied to the mast is a symbol of Christians or even Christ on the cross. The church fathers were fascinated by

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the mystery of the mast.°? While for Clement the Sirens symbolized everyday misdeeds and the appeal of pleasure, Odysseus’ aim was to thwart this by tying himself to the mast: the image of the Christian who triumphs by embracing the wood of the cross. ‘Sail past the song; it works death. Exert your will only, and you have overcome ruin; bound to the wood of the cross, you shall be freed from destruction ...’ (Protreptikos 12, 118, 1-4). ‘Most of those who subscribe to the name of Christian are like the companions of Odysseus. It is not'so much the Sirens they sail past and put behind them as the rhythms and melodies of the genius of Greece. They stop their ears by their rejection of learning because otherwise they would never find their way home again’ (Protreptikos VI, 89,1). Hippolytus of Rome (beginning of the third century) draws attention to another detail of the story, which he interprets as follows. Odysseus, before binding himself to the mast, stops up the ears of his friends with wax. In his view, that signifies that faithful Christians must be deaf to the propaganda of the heretics and become one in body with the wood of the cross to overcome agitation and remain steadfast (Refutatio omnium haeresium 7.13).°3 Hugo Rahner remarks, referring to various Christian writers: If in the course of time Christians regarded the mast to which the immortal seafarer was bound as a symbol of the cross, they were by no means guilty of any forced or arbitrary association of ideas, nor would their pagan predecessors or contemporaries who sailed those same Mediterranean waters in the same kinds of ships, ever have accused them of that. The giant mast, crossed at right angles by the yard, of itself suggests the cross to which rightless or foreign criminals were nailed ... As Minucius Felix concisely observes: ‘We have no difficulty in seeing the sign of the cross in a ship when it moves across the water with bellying sails.’ Justin too sees in the mast the symbol of the power that conquers storms at sea . . . The symbolism which the Christians of antiquity used to describe their good ship, the church, now becomes easier to understand. The mystery of their certain salvation lies in the power of the mast, that is, in the wood of the cross. . . With a loving sense of detail Hippolytus describes the ship of the church: “The sea is the world upon which the church is tossed about as a ship is tossed by storms upon the deep, but still does not founder; for she has on board the tried helmsman, Christ. Amidships she carries the sign of victory over death, for she carries the cross of the Lord.’*4

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Orpheus Orpheus was known in Greek mythology as the mythical singer and poet. By his songs he could charm not only human beings and animals, but even inanimate nature. When his wife Eurydice died, he was able to move the underworld, Hades, so much that he could have

won her back, had he not looked back on her on the return journey,

A marble statue of the ‘good shepherd’ from el-Mina near Gaza.

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whereupon she disappeared for ever. In pictures Orpheus is shown as a seated figure with a lyre in his hand. This was regarded as an image of the immortality of the soul. The figure of Orpheus had already been taken over from Graeco—Romar“art by the Jews in the synagogue of Dura Europos. He was regarded as a symbol of the golden age, and took on messianic significance.°5 The church in the Graeco-Roman world had no problem over connecting Orpheus with Christ. Clement of Alexandria talks about Christ by analogy with Orpheus as his singer; here Christ, of course, is better: ‘He alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance . .. All such most savage beasts, and all such blocks of stone, the celestial

song has transformed into tractable men’ (Protreptikos 1,4,1 and 3). Clement says of the divine singer Christ: ‘He also composed the universe into melodious order, and tuned the discord of the elements to harmonious arrangement, so that the whole world might become harmony’ (Protreptikos I,5,1).©° Eusebius of Caesarea (who died in 339) spoke of Orpheus charming wild animals as Christ charmed stubborn sinners (Life of Constantine, XIV). Initially in the first centuries there were no pictorial representations of Christ, but he was indicated by symbols in ‘art’. Certain apologists on the one hand had a tendency to depict Orpheus as a ‘teacher of the pagans’, and in other circles he was portrayed as a ‘pre-Christian sage’ who was endowed with the Logos and had already proclaimed ‘an only God and his Christ’. The church fathers (Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Cyril and Augustine) taught that Orpheus was converted from polytheism to monotheism. It is also said that elements of the content of Orphic belief were taken over. This included the development of the motif of the ‘good shepherd’. So Orpheus became a kind of symbol of Christ.© Pre-Christian illustrative material is closely connected with Christian imagery.°° In the catacombs in Rome Christ is depicted as a shepherd, a teacher and as the singer Orpheus. In early Christian art Orpheus is seen as a prefigurement of Christ and was regarded at

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a very early stage as the symbol of Christ as ‘Saviour’. This type of shepherd precedes the notion of the ‘good shepherd’. The motif of the ‘good shepherd’ is present in early Christian literature and liturgy and was regarded as the image of Christ. Two elements were distinguished, which indicate the different functions of Christ as pastor. First, there is the shepherd who delivers from sin and death, who has a sheep on his shoulders, ‘the sheep brought home on the shoulders which depicts safe homecoming after the journey of death’ — this image is found around 240 in the earliest catacomb of Lucina® — and as a rule flanked by two sheep (with a praying figure, which depicts human beings praying for redemption). Secondly, there is the rather later, more idyllic notion of the ‘good shepherd’ who pastures his flock on the field of paradise.”° The way in which ‘the good shepherd’, ‘youthful and without a beard, with a lamb on his shoulders’ is depicted goes back to pre-Christian sarcophagus art, which thus becomes the vehicle of a biblical content. The question of who is taking over what can be raised here; Horst Rzepkowski asks ‘whether the theology of the church fathers offers an exposition and clarification of pictorial works of art or whether the works of art go their own special way in expounding what is Christian’.”* The pagan origin of the symbolism in the catacombs is certain. ‘It was Greek mythology which created the decorative elements for the tombs of the first martyrs.’?”

Another feature connected with Orpheus is the use of the symbol of a fish with reference to Jesus. The name Orpheus is derived from a term for ‘fish’. On a beaker from the third or fourth century before Christ Orpheus is depicted as a ‘fisher of men’. Orpheus is called the fisher who fishes men living. like fish in water, turned towards the light. Here is the old notion of the metamorphosis of a fish which becomes a human being. Jesus called his disciples to become ‘fishers of men’ (Matt.4.19; Mark 1.17). That is an old motif which thus precedes Christianity.’> We know that Christ is depicted in the catacombs as a fish. The initials of the Greek for fish, ichthys, are read as ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, saviour’.

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Asclepius In the ancient world Asclepius, son of Apollo, was the god of healing. The snake, regarded as a mediator of healing and redemption, was sacred to him. Like human beings, the snake has a mysterious capacity for self-renewal. Snakes slough off their skin every year. The wisdom of the snake includes the possession of healing, lifegiving herbs and remedies against death. ‘Several tame serpents were kept in his temple at Epidaurus as a symbol of renovation.’ Possibly there is a connection between the snake and the symbol of the tree, in so far as the name of Asclepius perhaps also denotes oak or mistletoe.’* In Epidaurus healing was sought by means of incubation (‘dream oracles’). Epidaurus became the ‘mother’ of hundreds of such places of prayer, above all in Asia Minor and North Africa. They were often visited to cure sickness in body and soul. The cult of Asclepius was officially introduced to Rome on the basis of the Sibylline oracles. The Asclepeion flourished for centuries. Asclepius was called the Soter, the saviour or redeemer, the god who helps in all need, a friend of human beings.7>

When Christianity entered the Graeco-Roman world, it found the worship of Asclepius in its way. That put Christianity in a position of rivalry. Asclepius became a counterpart of Christ. Because Asclepius was seen as the ‘saviour’, as such for a long time he was the rival of Jesus Christ as ‘saviour of the world’ John 4.42; I John 4.14). Jesus was also called Soter, Saviour and Redeemer, just like Asclepius. Celsus compared Christ and Asclepius and dismissed Jesus’ healings in the Gospels as false ones. Justin Martyr (Apology I, 22) already compared the miraculous healings of Christ and his disciples to those of Asclepius. A number of external similarities between the two are striking: Asclepius is the son of God who in his earthly life heals the sick, at times by laying on of hands, raises the dead, himself undergoes death as a punishment, is taken up into heaven, and appears alive to believers on earth. Of the ‘healing gods and heroes’ he gets the most attention. The contrast between Asclepius and Jesus as the true physician already took two forms among the apologists. In the first it was said: “We are telling

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you things which are like what is reported about Asclepius (Justin Martyr): Christ surpasses Asclepius.’ In the second, Asclepius is seen as a demon. This latter form appears more often. According to Tertullian Asclepius was a ‘bad doctor who killed more patients than he cured’. According to Clement, Asclepius was just a ‘doctor greedy for gold who was rightly struck by lightning’ (Protreptikos II, 30).7° The Neoplatonist Porphyry (died 304), the pupil of Plotinus (205-270), who attacked the Christians, remarks that in Rome the cult of Jesus replaced that of Asclepius. He associated the numerous epidemics in Rome around 270 with the decline of the cult of Asclepius.”” It was a long time before this cult of Asclepius was overcome by the Christian church. A Christian bishop even felt called to destroy temples of Asclepius. Such destruction was so thorough that there are not many archaeological remains of these temples.7® The emperor Constantine (who reigned from 306 until his death in 337) had the temple of Asclepius in Aegae (Cilicia) destroyed, which Eusebius welcomed as a triumph of the Saviour Christ over the saviour Asclepius.’? When the emperor Julian, called ‘the Apostate’ (361-363), wanted to breathe new life into the pagan cult — he is also known as the last emperor to have worshipped Mithras®° — he thought that he could use Asclepius for the purpose. He sought help from him, ‘the redeemer of the universe’. In graphic art the pictures of Asclepius have influenced those of Christ.

In Rome the temple of Asclepius on the island in the Tiber was transformed into a Christian church of San Bartolomeo. The clinic of Rome — Fatebefratelli — on the island stands opposite the church. This is an example of the assimilation of the healing ministry around Asclepius. There are several examples of temples of Asclepius which have become churches.*! In present-day Greece there are countless examples of churches in which people sleep at a shrine of a martyr or saint — as once they did at a shrine of Asclepius — to receive dreams rich in blessing.

This example of the relationship between belief in Jesus Christ and belief in Asclepius illustrates what happens in this process of encounter between Christianity and the Graeco-Roman culture.

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Certain elements which are clearly present in the gospel, like the healing activity of Jesus Christ, take on special accents and enrichment by comparison with the original understanding of the New Testament text.

Theseus

I want to mention one last example of a connection which is made between Graeco-Roman mythology and the Christian message, that between the Athenian hero Theseus and Christ. At one time the city of Athens had to pay tribute to king Minos of Crete. Every nine years the Athenians had to send seven youths and seven maidens as tribute, to serve as food for the man-eating monster the Minotaur, half-bull half-human, which was in a maze built by Daedalus. Theseus volunteered to go to Crete. The Delphic oracle had advised him to choose love as his guide. It was Ariadne, the daughter of king Minos, who showed Theseus the way through the passages of the labyrinth, for which she gave him a ball of wool. With a sharp sword Theseus slew the monster and found his way out with the thread. An attractive study by Penelope Reed Dood investigated the way in which the church used this theme of the labyrinth in all kinds of ways, even in cathedrals. God was thus seen as the only true Daedalus, the father of architects, whose labyrinth is the cosmos. Christ was the one who showed the right way out of the labyrinth of hell. There are reproductions of labyrinths in all kinds of European cathedrals. For example, Theseus and the Minotaur are depicted at the centre of the labyrinth of the cathedral of Lucca in Italy. The inscription says that no one can leave the labyrinth except Theseus with Ariadne’s help. The church environment in which this picture appears suggests that the Christian truth is foreshadowed by pagan myth. Asked, what is Daedalus’s work compared with God’s? With Christ, the true Theseus, as guide, humankind can trace confusing ambages to discover that the mythically multicursal and unstable labyrinth — of life, of the world, of hell is a — js in fact universal, stable, and extricable, and that its baffling complexity design -circular concentric necessary and beautiful part of the intelligible is superbly articulated by God, the perfect artifex, whose creative ingenuity

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only faintly imitated by Daedalus and his descendants. As Gregory of Nazianzus asked, what is Daedalus’s work compared with God’s?*?

Virgil How the gospel became bound up with Roman culture can be illustrated from the way in which the chureh dealt with the work of the Latin poet Virgil. For his epic The Aeneid Virgil did not choose a typical heroic fighter, but a kind of pilgrim father, a pious man, Aeneas, who had to suffer much and who was ‘charged with the providential mission of founding a new city and bringing the gods to Latium’.®3 The importance of Virgil for Christians — Virgil is a kind of Christian patron saint of the city of Naples, a city which he regarded as his second fatherland** — lay above all in a Latin poem, the fourth of his Eclogues (pastoral poems), which he wrote around 40 BCE, in which he honoured his patron Pollio. In it he announced the end of the age of iron and the dawning of the age of gold. The birth of a divine child Saloninus, Pollio’s son, ushers in that new period. The last age, foretold by the Sibyl of Cumae, near Naples (a cave in which she is said to have lived for centuries), has dawned; a new series of

ages is beginning:

f

Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high. Only do you, pure Lucinda, smile on the birth of the child, under whom the iron brood shall first cease, and a golden race spring up throughout the world.°5

Virgil is seen by some Christians as one who was not far from the Christian truth. Because of its messianic character, from earliest times this text has been regarded as a prophecy of Christ’s birth, for example by Lactantius (Divine Institutions, VII. 24; cf. Jerome, Letter LIII, and Augustine, City of God X, 27). Lactantius even called Virgil a Christian. Around 300 CE he put this Eclogue on a level with the Sibylline books. He accepted the Sibylline oracles, which were in circulation under the name of Hermes Trismegistos, as authentic. He gives them a chiliastic interpretation and sees in the coming

golden age the thousand-year kingdom of peace, although he does not explicitly identify the child with Christ.*°

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As Clement of Alexandria saw Homer as an ‘unwilling prophet’, so Augustine saw Virgil as a ‘prophet unaware’.8? Eusebius of Caesarea (c.325) put a detailed exposition of the Fourth Eclogue, with its forecast of Christ, on the lips of Constantine the Great. Augustine’s view is that Virgil announced the redemptive grace of Christ through this Sibylline prophecy.*® However, Jerome ridicules the Christian interpretation of Virgil.8° Jerome’s line was continued in the Middle Ages, for example by Alcuin (c.730—804), court theologian at the time of Charlemagne. However, those who, like Augustine, wanted to combine pagan antiquity and theology and attempt to reconcile them through such an exposition were far more numerous. Hrabanus Maurus, an eighth-century theologian from Fulda, is one example.?° Dante expresses this view: ‘You (Virgil) were like someone who goes round in the dark with a lamp behind his back which does not help him but gives light to those who come after him: “The world renews itself: justice returns with the first ages of mankind, and from heaven a new progeny descends.”

In the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo was to paint the Sibyl — this prophesying priestess of Apollo — alongside the prophets. Sibyls and prophets are depicted side by side on the portals of many cathedrals.” Christmas and Mithras

We can illustrate from Christmas how in the Graeco-Roman context this festival of the birth of Jesus came to be combined in a specific way with the feast of Mithras. Mithras was an Indo-Iranian god who is already mentioned in the fourteenth century BCE. He was the ‘light-bearer’ sent to earth to bring fertility. In Iran he reached the top of the pantheon: from originally being the god of treaties he slowly became the god of ‘the dawn’ and then sun god, god of life, and finally the victorious god of war — hence his later popularity among the soldiers in the Roman army. In the first century the mystery religion of the Persian Mithras spread rapidly in the West. Roman soldiers brought the worship of Mithras from Asia Minor to Germany and Gaul, and to Scotland. In the second century, centres of Mithras worship could

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be found in different locations in Germania Superior and Germania

Inferior.?% It is striking that the Romans took over a god from the Persians,

i.e. from those with whom they had permanently been on a war footing. It was the emperor Aurelian (214-275), a Syrian, who introduced this festival in Rome between 270 and 275. Sol Invictus (the unconquerable sun) now took the place of Jupiter. Aurelian did this because this sun god had helped him in the conquest of Emessa.%* Sol Invictus was officially recognized as a god of the court and the empire and from 275-323 CE was at the head of state religion.°> In the Hellenistic period the feast of Mithras was put on 25 December. Mithras is the Sol Invictus who as an incarnation of the divine light is born in the night of the solstice. 9° The 25th was chosen as a feast day because in the Julian calendar the winter solstice fell on this day and it was regarded as the paramount date for the sun.

The choice of 25 December for the celebration of the Christian Christmas is of great importance for the ‘Roman’ interpretation of the Christian faith. The festival, which was first that of Sol Invictus on 25 December, now became the date for the festival of the birth of Christ. The origin of Christmas must be sought in the church of

Rome. At all events it seems certain that Christmas was celebrated in Rome on this date from 336.%7 What was the foundation for this connection between Christmas and the festival of the unconquerable sun? Clearly, at a very early date Christ as likened to the sun, especially the rising sun.°° Jesus is already spoken of in this way in the hymn of Zechariah (Luke 1.78,79). Jesus is described as ‘a light that shines in the darkness’ John 1.5). This could point in the direction of the moon or a bright star. A star announced the birth of Jesus (Matt.2.2).99 The church wanted to gain control of this popular day of light by proclaiming Christ as ‘the new light’, the ‘true’ and ‘only’ sun. He was in truth ‘unconquered’. He himself had conquered death. He was the ‘sun of righteousness which Malachi 4.2 had prophesied. Christ was also a rising ‘sun of righteousness’ in Christian typology. That became the slogan with which the church sought to convert worshippers of Sol Invictus."°°

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In place of the god of the visible sun, the emperor Constantine the Great now worshipped the God who had created the sun.*°* On the relief on Constantine’s arch in Rome there is a depiction of Victory next to Sol Invictus.*®* It is as though the ‘sun of righteousness’ had been sought and found specially for Constantine. The hymn-writer Ephraem the Syrian (306-377) begins a verse about Mary with: “The sun of righteousness has risen from her, which through its rising has lightened the whole world.’ A sermon by Ambrose (340-397, or Maximus of Turin, c.350-420), who wrote numerous sermons and tractates, states: ‘The people is rightly accustomed to call today’s holy birthday of our Lord “the new sun” .. . We should observe it willingly because with the rising of the Saviour not only the salvation of the human race but also the brightness of the sun renews itself, as the apostle says (Eph.1.10), so that through him it renews all that is both in heaven and on earth. For as the sun darkened at Christ’s passion, so it niust be brighter than other lights at his birth.’ And a Christmas prayer from the Gallican liturgy runs: ‘May the rising sun, the splendour of eternal light and sun of righteousness, come and lighten those who are in darkness and the shadow of death. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.’ Chrysostom (c.35 4-407) says: ‘They call the day the day of the Invictus. Indeed who is as unconquerable as our Lord, who has victoriously subjected death? And if they call it the birthday of the sun, now he himself is the sun of righteousness of which the prophet Malachi (4.24) has spoken.’ These words were written at a time when the pagan festival was still being celebrated. The expression phos auxei, ‘the light increases’, which is used in the pagan liturgy on 25 December, as is evident from the Greek calendar, entered the

Christmas liturgy of the church: /ux crescit.'°3

This combination of the festival of Christ’s birth with the festival of ‘the invincible sun’ illustrates what happens in this process of transformation. The interpretation of Christ as the ‘sun of righteousness’ and the like is directly occasioned by the Graeco-Roman context already mentioned. We might ask whether this connection between Christ and the sun would otherwise have been made and the previous comparison have existed at all. This connection with Roman culture put new emphases on the interpretation of the gospel which had not been there in that form before. Only after Christ had taken the place of the pagan ‘Sol Invictus’ and the festival celebrating his birth had been made to coincide with the winter solstice did Jesus

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take on this central significance as ‘sun’. There is no indication whatsoever in the New Testament about the time of year at which his birth took place.'°* It is increasingly said that Christ is the real Helios, the ‘sun god’. In different texts he is called ‘Sol’, ‘the true spiritual sun’, the ‘sun of the resurrection’, the ‘sun of righteousness’, the Saviour expected ‘as the light that comes from above’. In the long run, moreover, Christians did not celebrate the sabbath, but Sunday, dies solis, on which they commemorated the resurrection.

A fourth-century mosaic from the ceiling of a pre-Constantinian catacomb under St Peter’s in Rome.

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One may assume that the Helios of the catacomb of Pietro and Marcellino is to be seen as a symbol of Christ.'°> As Hugo Rahner put it, the young church brought Helios home.’ In a mausoleum below St Peter’s in Rome there is a picture of Christ Helios rising from Hades to his Father. Here a connection is made between the Christian statement ‘descended into hell’ and this non-Christian image. *°7 In the baptismal liturgy the catechumen suddenly turned from the West, the sphere of darkness where the prince of darkness reigned, to the East, to unite himself with Christ. This ceremonial detail was a vehicle of the mythical mentality. Prayer was offered in the direction of the East, where the sun rises; churches were orientated on the East and the dead were buried facing that direction. From the fourth century on the builders of churches made the apse, rather than the facade of the church, face East. In art the sun god crowned with a halo on the imperial coins of the third and fourth centuries is seen as a direct prefigurement of Christ Helios, as we encounter this in early Christian art.'©°

Mithras and the mystery religions Christian authors from the apostle Paul to Pseudo-Dioysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor (sixth and seventh centuries) make free use of the vocabulary and ideas of the Greek mysteries.’©? In the first centuries of Christianity there was a host of mystery societies. Mithras was the object of secret worship performed in underground chapels. In antiquity the celebration of sacramental meals was widespread and was connected with the idea of a god who offered himself for the salvation of the world. The followers of Mithras celebrated such meals. Under the church of San Clemente in Rome, traces of a ‘temple’ to Mithras can still be seen. This is at the same time an illustration of the way in which a holy place was ‘taken over’ by the church. It is fascinating here to note the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity, and above all on baptism and the celebration of the eucharist. In iconography all kinds of elements have been carried over into the Christian mass.’'® Moreover presumably the Greek mysteries themselves are in turn a survival of the religions which preceded the Greeks. In them it was not the gods of heaven like Zeus

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(father and supreme god), Apollo (god of wisdom and the fine arts) or Athene (daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom) who were worshipped, but those of the earth, the gods of reproductive power, which produced the harvest of nature and death. Three deities are mentioned here: Pluto (or Hades, god of the underworld); Demeter (goddess of agriculture and fertility); and Kore (a name for Persephone, the consort of Hades).""’ Close parallels between the celebration of the Christian eucharist and the cult of Mithras can be noted. In this respect Mithras was a dangerous rival of Christianity, and it was to be a long time before he was defeated.'’” The similarity was evidently thought so great that Justin Martyr (Apology 66), says: “This (eating the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus) the wicked demons in imitation handed down as something to be done in the the mysteries of Mithras.’’’3 The mysteries are connected with the cult of the sun. Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of the ‘mystery of light’ that is Christ in contrast to the mysteries of Dionysus (or Bacchus, the god of the powers of growth in nature and wine), Mithras and those of Eleusis.**+ On the one hand Christian apologists objected to the mystery religions, but on the other, they believed that the mystery religions had similarities to Christianity itself: ‘the aim of worshipping a pure God, the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit of brotherhood’.**> As for the influence of the celebrations of these mysteries on Christianity, it is striking that whereas initially Christianity knew no ‘mysteries’, preaching was in public, and rites were simple, the mystery religions clearly had an influence on the rite of baptism and the celebration of the eucharist.’'® It was in the first place the Christian communities in Greece, the closest to Greek worship, which began to adopt these elements.''? Thus under the influence of the celebrations of the mysteries the conception of Christian worship underwent a change. The password for access to the mysteries began to be called the ‘symbol’. ‘Symbol’ became the technical term for the confession of faith, the creed.'!® The term

mysterion was used for baptism.''? Christianity did not destroy the tendency towards an elaborate ceremonial: ‘It rose to a new life, and though it lives only by survival, it lives that new life still. The splendid ceremonial of Eastern and Western worship . . . the survival, and in

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some cases the galvanized survival, of what I cannot find in my heart to call a pagan ceremonial; because though it was the expression of a less enlightened faith, yet it was offered to God from a heart which was not less earnest in its search for God and its effort after holiness than our own.’'”° So elements of the Greek celebrations of the Greek mysteries were adopted in the way in which the sacraments were celebrated. In this way ‘pre-Christian’ elements were clearly preserved and raised to a new level.

The gospel and (Graeco—Roman) culture In the fourth century, after the accession of the emperor Constantine the Great, the church was still constantly engaged in combat with the foreign gods. Paganism was no imaginary enemy. Archaeological evidence indicates that even under the emperor Theodosius I (347-95) there was a revival of paganism. One piece of evidence for this is the killing of missionaries in the diocese of Trent in 397; their converts had wanted to stop the celebration of fertility rites.‘*" Theodosius I was the first emperor to issue a general prohibition against the old established pagan religion, in 392. During the rule of Justinian I (527-565), pagan properties were confiscated and ‘pagans’ were no longer allowed to teach. The seventh century marks the transition. In this period the Arabs, Avars and Slavs invaded the Roman empire. As a result, Christian religion, Roman politics and Hellenistic culture were increasingly identified with one another. One illustration of this is an appearance of Mary: in 626, when the Avars were laying siege to the walls of Constantinople, she is said to have shown herself, and as a result the

city was saved.'*” But this ‘political’ and militant conquest of paganism did not mean that all kinds of elements from the pagan tradition did not exercise any influence, as a result of which they continued to survive in some way. ‘For undoubtedly this little Logos .. . as on the mosaics, wore the tunic and pallium of the ancient world.”*”3 A certain affinity between Christianity and polytheistic religions emerged in teaching about angels and demons. Elements from

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Hellenistic culture poured in.'** The temple of Athene Parthenos was rebaptized the church of the Holy Virgin. Shepherds celebrated St Geroge’s day on a date which was more or less that of Parilia (or Palilia, from pario = ‘bring forth’), an agricultural festival in honour of Pales, celebrated on 21 April, the day on which Rome was founded. St Michael took over the role of Hermes as the escort of souls to the other world.'*5 On many “high places’ in Greece where churches to St Elijah now stand there were once sanctuaries of Helios. In southern Italy, too, sanctuaries of the Helios cult were replaced by those of Elijah. Elijah is depicted with a wheel, recalling the sun chariot of Helios. Poseidon, who ruled the waves, was replaced in Greece by St Nicholas.'?° Sometimes saints were made successors of the gods by a strange assimilation. St Christopher became the heir of Mercury, Hercules, and even Anubis (the Egyptian god of the dead). The gods continued to be worshipped under saints’ names. These amalgams and avatars were modes of survival. Sarcophagi were turned into altars, and fragments of them were used in baptismal fonts. Pictures of the Olympians have been found in the ambo of _Aix-la-Chapelle. Ancient allegories of the earth and the ocean, and of the moon and the sun in their chariots, appeared in Roman art along with pictures of the crucifixion of Christ and his appearance in glory. Sirens and centaurs appear again on tympana and door posts. The upbringing of Achilles by the learned centaur Chiron is depicted both in Vézelay and in Chartres.'*” Jupiter is depicted in the campanile of Florence as a monk with a calix in one hand and a cross in the other.!° Three reasons are given as to why the gods continued to survive through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. 1. The euhemeristic interpretation of which Christian apologists and church fathers made use, namely that the gods were all human beings raised to heaven. On the one hand this put the gods on the level of mortals, but on the other it confirmed their existence and gave them a place in history. 2. The connection of the gods with the heavenly bodies. Neither Lactantius not Augustine doubted the influence of the stars. 3. The discovery of the interpretation of a spiritual significance in the figure of the gods and the moral lesson which was drawn from their adventures.'*9

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As we have seen, the apologists and church fathers who in general looked down on pagan religions were much more positive about pagan philosophy. Like the Jews before them (Philo), they made much use of philosophical material, consciously or unconsciously. Aloysius Pieris, the Sri Lankan theologian, has pointed out that at this time in Europe Christianity was above all engaged in a dialogue with philosophy. Irenaeus (a Greek from Asia Minor), who became bishop of Lyons (he died c.200), was principally preoccupied with Greek thought and not so much with the religious practice directly connected with that thought. In the intellectual climate of this apologetic a tradition developed which turned on a system of thought, by-passing the dimension of experience, of concrete symbols and ritual expression. It became a dialogue more with pagan philosophy than with pagan religion. Pieris attributes this uncompromising position on pagan religion to what he calls ‘Semitic intransigence’,'3° which continued into the early apostolic period. In the second place people were interested in non-Christian philosophy as an intellectual instrument for conceptualizing revelation and formulating the Christian message in a way that pagans could understand. Here above all one can think of the formation of dogma."3" From its first appearance Christianity made efforts to suppress and slander the pagan myths in the name of its own message, ‘not wholly unaware that with the degradation of myth at the same time the myth-making power in human beings itself had to be calumniated’.'3? But that does not alter the fact that the church also sought some connections in the sphere of myth. We do not just find rejection of idolatry, demonization of the gods who were previously believed in, but at the same time inspiration through images and stories like those of Odysseus, Orpheus and Asclepius or Theseus. The apologists even spoke of the ‘perplexing parallels between mythology and salvation history’: Prometheus and the story of creation; Philemon and Baucis and the Christmas story; Deucalion (son of Prometheus), Pyrrha (the consort of Deucalion) and the story of the flood, etc. The apologists still saw this as a temptation (Justin). But through a Christian interpretation, pagan gods increasingly came to be as it were equal partners with the biblical figures.'*° Hugo Rahner, who made a tremendous contribution to the study

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of the relationship between Christianity and Graeco-Roman mythology, has pointed out that God spoke his revelation in the world of the Greek spirit and the Roman empire. ‘The church guards this truth framed in the Greek speech of her sacred Book and in the inherited doctrine which she has received from Latin Rome.’ ‘The heritage of Greece and Rome was gathered back into the bosom of the church. The light that in the midst of human darkness blazed forth in Hellas was only borrowed sunlight, but Christ is the sun.’ However, if Christians now standing in the sunlight look back,

they will discover what the lamps of antiquity reflected. Endorsing Eliade, Rahner claims that ‘the intimations in the Greek legacy were fulfilled in the church’. In his view, ‘the healing of the hidden wounds in man’ is possible only when man ‘bursts asunder the suffocating bond of self-redemption. Man only becomes human in God. This is what constitues the healing of his soul.’ Rahner sees this Christian interpretation of Greek myths as the attractive task of a true humanism. The church claimed the best of the Greek heritage. Here it ‘firmly and kindly corrected its errors’ and ‘safeguarded eternal riches amidst the ruins of the temples. The church brought the Greeks home.’'34 We might ask whether this conclusion does sufficient justice to the particular message which Homer himself (in this case) or others wanted to communicate. The question is whether there is sufficient sense here that these stories functioned in a living religious practice. To take one example, could not the story of the two poor old people Philemon and Baucis, who entertained God (Zeus) without knowing it and gave him the last that they had, touch on the same mystery as the one known from the Bible, where Abraham offers the divine messengers hospitality, or in the New Testament, which speaks of those who have entertained angels unawares (Heb.13.2; cf. Matt.25.31ff.)? The church did not just crown or perfect Greek culture; the Greeks also had something to say to the church. The reinterpretation of Christmas and the way in which the sacraments, especially the mystery of Easter, are celebrated has its model in such a distinctive Graeco-Roman contribution. Christianity did not bring a new culture, but renewed, rejuvenated and purged the Graeco-Roman culture. The ‘Christianized’ Graeco-Roman

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culture was handed on to the Germanic or Slavonic peoples. The period of the early Christian fathers has been called the time of ‘ancient Christian civilization’. Christianity is the child of ancient culture as the renewal movement of antiquity. In other words, one can speak of a pre-Christian and a Christian antiquity. "3° This will be important for what follows, given that the Christianization of the Germans involved coming into contact with a Christianity which had already entered into a marriage with Roman culture. The process of Christianization was to go hand in hand with the process of Romanization.

Who triumphs? One important question which arises over the relationship between gospel and culture, including Graeco-Roman culture, is: who is now really triumphing over whom? Who is the stronger and what role does (political) power play here? In 313 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great came over to Christianity, and in 325 he made it the state religion. When in 312 he was marching against his opponent the emperor Maxentius (c.279—3 12), a cross is said to have appeared in heaven with the words ‘conquer with this’, or ‘in this sign you will conquer’.’3° The triumphal arch of Constantine in Rome has Sol Invictus and Victory depicted on its standard. Under that sign the emperor’s army went against the enemy.’37 This sign was now replaced by the cross. According to Adolf von Harnack, this battle, which thus took on the character of a religious war, was about who was the stronger, the God of the Christians or the old gods.‘3® On the basis of this divine commission Constantine had this sign of the cross put on the shields of his soldiers before the decisive battle at the Milvian Bridge, in front of the gates of Rome.'3? “The world-historical move from paganism to Christianity thus took place first in the army. It was from here that the Christian religion took its beginning . . . Christus victor! The God of the Christians had revealed himself to be a God of war

and conquest.’*4° This last great battle between Christianity and Roman paganism broke out over the altar of the goddess Victory: it could hardly have been more symbolic. The emperor Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) had had this altar built. However, slowly it had become the symbol of paganism.‘*’ In a symbolic way this conquest of paganism in fact

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took place towards the end of the same century when another emperor gave the command to remove the altar and the statue of victory from the Senate building. The Roman state prefect Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (from 384-385 and consul in 391), leader of the pagan opposition in the senate, along with his aristocractic followers, opposed the removal of the altar of Victory from the senate hall on the Forum.'4* He then made a: famous petition to the emperor to restore the altar and thus allow respect to be shown to the age-old gods and goddesses which had guaranteed Roman conquests in the past and in his view would guarantee them in the future. ‘Your fame owes much, and will owe still more, to Victory. . . Permit us, I beseech you, to transmit in our old age to our posterity what we

ourselves received when boys.’** It is important to note the social and political context in which Symmachus’s petition stood. The Roman empire has been called a slave-owning society. Symmachus was the leader of the conservatives in the senate and a spokesman for the noble family of the Symmachi. ‘Among the Roman nobility, who as senators and high officials and as great landowners had enormous power in state and society, were those who blamed Christianity if things went badly with the empire.’'** It is clear in whose interest Symmachus was making his effort and who was and who was not concerned about transmission to posterity. Here he was not primarily concerned with spiritual posterity. When he says, ‘Let me live in my own way, for I am free’,'*> this freedom did not apply to everyone. Then follows a passage which is often quoted in connection with the attitude of Christianity to other religions and cultures: ‘We look on the same stars, the heaven is common to us all, the same world surrounds us. What matters it by what arts each of us seeks for truth? We cannot arrive by one and the same path at so great a secret.’!4° It may be that all men have the same heaven in common, but the question is whether Symmachus is as interested in society on earth. For what he goes on to say at all events applies to a limited aristocratic group: “Let men dictate their wills in peace, knowing that under equitable princes their bequests will be undisturbed. Men are wont to take pleasure in this security, and I would have you sympathize with them, for the precedent lately set has begun to

harass them on their death beds.’'47

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When Symmachus makes a connection between right worship of God and earthly prosperity, there is no doubt about whose prosperity he is concerned with. Arnold Toynbee has added this comment on this remark by Symmachus: “The mystery of which he is speaking is the mystery of the universe, the mystery of man’s encounter with God, the mystery of God’s relation to good and evil. Christianity has never answered Symmachus. To suppress a rival religion is not an answer. The question raised by Symmachus is still alive in the world today. I think we shall have to face it in our time.’'4® We have to concede to Toynbee that the oppression of a rival religion is not in fact a reply to the question of the relationship between one religion and another. His remark also implies that he clearly was not convinced that Ambrose was really successful in replying to Symmachus. However, whether Toynbee’s charge holds, that Christianity still has not given an answer to Ambrose reply to Symmachus, remains

to be seen. Like others,‘49 Toynbee quotes this remark of Symmachus’s in connection with the relationship of Christianity to other religions. But when it comes to the relationship of the gospel to Graeco-Roman culture, the question must not be put in too abstract a way, detached from social and political reality. To put Symmachus’s question in too abstract a way, neat, detached from the social context, is to take it far too seriously. Whatever one may think of Ambrose, one cannot deny his sobriety when he points out that victory is ‘a gift not a power, is bestowed and does not rule, comes by the aid of legions not by the power of religion’.’°° It is striking that Ambrose, in particular, shows much feeling for social questions when he says: “The church possesses nothing but her faith. There are her rents, her revenues. The wealth of the church

is the support of the poor.’™>* Ambrose has been compared with the Hebrew prophets for the earnestness and the force with which he fulminated against one of the greatest evils of his time, namely the greed of the rich and their heartless oppression of the poor. In his work on Naboth he castigated the greed of the rich and their infringements of the rights of the unprotected lower classes. *>* And Ambrose’s remarks to the rich retain their relevance after all these centuries.

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Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? The story of Naboth is old, but at the same time it is daily put into practice. For who of the rich does not daily covet the possessions of others? Who of the well-to-do does not strive to drive the poor man from his small field and to expel the needy from their ancestral properties? Who is content with his property? Which rich man does not set his heart on the possession of another’s land? For that, not one Ahab is born but, far worse, Ahabs are born daily and never die in this world. Not one poor man, Naboth, is killed; every day Naboth is smitten, every day a poor man is put to death . . . How far will you rich press your crazy desires? . . Why do you drive out those who have the same nature as you and require for yourselves the possessions of nature? The earth is created for common possession, for both rich and poor. Why do you, the rich, lay exclusive claim to it?">4

In the dispute over the altar of Victory, Ambrose and the church triumphed. The symbol of paganism was and remains rejected. But was the subjection an answer? Was the rejection of Victory a real triumph? It was certainly a triumph in the secular sense. That is also thought to have happened with Constantine. And it was often to be repeated in the Christianization of Europe.*5* But despite this critical reflection on the role played by (political) power in the acceptance of Christianity, we must recognize what an important role was played in the acceptance of the message by the fact that the church could meet the needs of the Graeco-Roman world. A. J. Festugiére has sought to demonstrate that in any case part of the phenomenal expansion of the Christian movement in the Graeco-Roman world lay in the fact that the proclamation of redemption through Christ and the religious aspirations for redemption in the Hellenistic tradition coincided: ‘redemption from the burden of the misery of the human condition; from the tragic sense of life, which was urgently expressed in the literary dramas, in literature; from the fate and unbending decrees of the old gods; and also from the uncertainty of philosophical opinions’.'55

Ill. The Celtic Contextualization

‘T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. . . signifies any barren land, ravaged land, but the title is also a direct reference to the land stricken with sterility in the legend of the Grail, in which Ehot. . . learned to recognizeamediaeval, Christianized

transposition ofcertain myths offertility . . . At its simplest level, use ofthe Grail myth tends to establish an equivalence between the mediaeval symbol ofa land awaiting its deliverance and the ruined condition ofa land ofpostwar Europe. Such was, one might say, the mythic analogy ofthis text.’*

Introduction

The name of the Celts is Keltoi in Greek and Celtae in Latin. From the third century before Christ the Celts were also called Galatai in Greek and Galli in Latin, in other words inhabitants of Gaul. The Celts settled over a wide area: Gaul (France), Spain, Central Europe (from the Lower Danube to the East) and the British Isles. Celts had settled in Galatia in Asia Minor in the third century before Christ. The apostle Paul wrote a letter to them which has been preserved in the New Testament. Gaius Julius Caesar, statesman and author, counts fifty different Celtic ‘peoples’ in his De Bello Gallico. The independence of Gaul came to an end with the battle of Alesia in 52 BCE and the capture of Vercingetorix, who in 52 BCE had led a large number of recently conquered Gauls to rebel against the Romans. In contrast to Ireland, the Celts in France and Britain were overwhelmed by the Romans and the mystery places there were systematically destroyed. In contrast to Gaul, where the Celts were Romanized, the Celts and their culture continued longer in Ireland

and in certain parts of Great Britain, like Scotland, Cornwall and Wales.” The Romans gave Ireland (Eriu) the name Hibernia, ‘wintry’. Up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Ireland is called Scotia in Latin literature and the inhabitants of the country Scoti. After the Romans left Britain in 47, the population was ravaged not only by the Picts (from Scotland) and the Scots (from Ireland), but also by pirates from the tribes of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

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Ireland was the first country in northern Europe outside the frontiers of the Roman empire which Christianity penetrated. The Irish model is still the best example of the encounter and interaction between Christianity and Celtic culture and religion, though it is not always very easy to distinguish the ‘pre-Christian’ and Christian elements from one another. The Viking invasion ushered in the beginning of the end of the great century of Celtic Christian culture, which survived afterwards only in a weakened or impoverished form.* The Celtic church is usually understood to be the church on the British Isles before the coming of Augustine in 596-7, sent as a missionary from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. In the fourth century the Irish church was already sufficiently well organized to be able to send bishops to the Synod of Arles in 314 and the Council of Ariminum in 359, which was convened by the emperor Constantine. The coming of the Saxons in the course of the fifth century brought the subjection of Celtic culture and put an end to the ‘Celtic church’. Caesarius of Arles (died 453) indicated that the old Celtic belief in the gods of springs and woods was still very much alive, and the same is said of Galicia by Martin, Bishop ofBraga (c.520—580) in north-west Spain, who converted the Suevi.*

In this chapter I want to investigate the characteristics of Celtic religion and the degree to which early Christianity abolished or took over elements of it. First I shall say something about the typical feature of Irish missionizing, peregrinatio. We shall be looking at a number ofthese peregrini, beginning with Patrick (c.390—-c.460). We shall consider Pelagius (c.360—430) because of the supposed Celtic background to his thought. Brendan, Columba and Columbanus are other examples of peregrini.

Then we shall discuss the gods whom the Celts knew and the degree to which something of this belief in them survived. What was the relationship of the Druids to the church, and what was the relationship between the stone structures of their period and the later solar cross? In this connection we shall investigate more closely the question ofthe Celtic-Christian relation to nature. What was the relationship between the Celtic goddess Brigid and the saint of that name? We shall examine the ‘holy’ times of the Celtic calendar and the way in which they were taken over in Christian times. The stories of the ‘Grail’ and the ‘knights of King Arthur’s Round Table’ show

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us another facet of Celtic Christianity, although this legend was never officially recognized by a church authority.

Peregrinatio and mission One characteristic feature of Celtic Christianity was a desire for pilgrimage. This ascetic peregrinatio was practised from the sixth century on. The Leitmotif of Irish Christianity has been called ‘travelling for Christ’s sake’: peregrinari pro Christo. The Irish monks left their homeland to go abroad in order, to use a phrase of Patrick’s, ‘to lead a perfect life’, with the intention of never returning. The missionary had a different aim from the peregrinus. The latter could go to a country that was already Christian. The Irish peregrinus was not someone who visited a shrine and then returned home, but one who left his homeland, usually for good, for the sake of his soul. The prime motive of the Irish monks and scholars was thus asceticism and not evangelization. The brothers went completely into the unknown; then they would found a monastery somewhere in the wilderness. But in fact peregrinatio and missionary work were often interwoven. In this way the Irish exiles and the Anglo-Saxon missionaries played an important role in the Christianization of Europe. The Life of Boniface depicts him as a peregrinus. Out of love of the heavenly fatherland, Willibrord left his fatherland and kinsfolk.5 Amandus (who died c.675) and Willibrord are examples of a ‘concrete adaptation of the Irish peregrinatio for Christ, now understood as a mission to travel through every province and people for the love of Christ’.° Whereas the Celtic monks did not aim at preaching and mission as such, the Anglo-Saxons undertook peregrinatio for the sake of mission. They did not travel out of a desire to arrive at personal perfection, but in order to try to spread the gospel and bring the pagans into the bosom of the church. This was Boniface’s aim in his work. So his peregrinatio was clearly undertaken for

the sake of mission.’

Patrick

Patrick is known as the ‘apostle of the Irish’. He was initially thought responsible for the Christianization of Ireland, though it is probable

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that Patrick was not so much involved in the first Christianization as in organizing an already existing church. There was Christianity in Ireland before the coming of Patrick, but it was certainly not yet general. In the middle of the seventh century Muircht wrote a life of Patrick. This Life has been called ‘the earliest example of an Irish epic’. It has features which suggest a native Irish saga. The day of Patrick’s death, 17 March, has become the national day of Ireland. Patrick was a son of Calpornius, a deacon in Britain, and the grandson of a priest. His mother was called Concessa. At this time Britain was still strongly Celtic. At the age of fifteen or sixteen Patrick was carried off as a slave along with thousands of his fellowcountrymen by Irish pirates. After six years, during which period he had been ‘converted’, he was able to escape. One of the characteristics of Patrick’s religion is his interest in dreams. This is a typical feature of the Celtic temperament. He regarded ‘dreams’ as ‘messengers of God’. A vision had also prompted him to escape. In Gaul Patrick came in contact with the monasticism of Martin of Tours (c.316-397), who has been regarded as the true apostle of Gaul. Martin became the pioneer of Western monasticism. In 432, when he was forty-five years old, Patrick was sent as a bishop to evangelize in Ireland. His mission is an indication of the duty the British church felt to evangelize Ireland. For Patrick, Rome and Christianity went together. Schooled in the Latin Bible as he was, he handed on Latin culture. Patrick preached the Christian faith in Ireland in accordance with the Roman form which had become customary in Gaul. We know of two personal testimonies by Patrick: one is predominantly an autobiographical confession (‘And this is my confession [both praise of the grace of God and a confession of sin] before I die’]) and the other is a letter to a group of soldiers, Epistula ad milites Corotici, in which he pronounces excommunication on Coroticus and his soldiers and calls on them to repent for ae taken Irish Christians prisoner and selling some of them to the Picts.

For thirty years Patrick wrestled with ‘paganism’. It cannot be said that he had much respect for the pre-Christian religion of the Irish. The cult of the sun which Patrick encountered in Ireland was tabu to

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him. In his view, ‘unconverted Irish’ were worshippers of ‘threatening idols’. Things would go badly with all those who worshipped the sun. He wanted to dissuade his converts from worshipping idols. He baptized many people. Usually he reacted to the Druids (a kind of pre-Christian priestly caste about whom I shall be saying more in due course) by challenging their magic arts. Trusting in God, as Elijah once did, he then performed miracles against which the Druids proved powerless. As a result he succeeded in breaking their influence and showing up their ‘pagan’ belief as powerless. Patrick established his episcopal seat in Armagh; whether he himself founded the see is a matter of dispute.’ The castle and palace of Conchobor, the legendary king of Ulster who lived in the first century CE, was just to the west of Armagh. Conchobor is compared with figures like Charlemagne and King Arthur. His nephew was the legendary hero Ci Chulainn, the greatest hero of Irish sagas and the main figure in the epic T4in B6 Cuailinge. He had a spear which could not miss. In 832 Armagh was conquered by the Vikings."°

According to legend Patrick went to Mag Slecht, the site of the chief “dol’ in Ireland, decked with gold and silver, alongside which stood twelve other smaller bronze idols. He destroyed these with his staff. He cursed the demon and banished it to hell. On this very spot he founded a church. This is also the site of Patrick’s well, in which many people were baptized. Patrick is said to have taken up the Celtic-Irish view of God in his preaching. A Christian significance is given to ‘pagan’ woods, springs and trees.'’ According to Joseph Campbell, ‘the most important aspect of the Christianization of Ireland ... is not the conflict but the ultimate accord which was achieved between the older mysteries of the fairy forts and the new of the Roman Catholic church. The magic of king Laeghaire’s wizards was surpassed by that of Patrick’s mighty God, and even in the saint’s lifetime the island was turned to Christ . . .” The period of Patrick’s life coincides on the one hand with the end of the classic paganism of the period of the Roman emperor Theodosius (who ruled from 379-395) and on the other hand with the moment when the greater part of Europe fell to the Germans. However, Ireland was not invaded. A colony of Christ remained in Ireland cut off from Rome, whereas England and the continent fell prey to warring German

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tribes. The year 432, mentioned above, is, according to Campbell, associated with the idea of the renewal of the age. The date of Patrick’s arrival in Ireland marks the transition from paganism to the Christian era."*

Pelagius Two contemporaries of Patrick were the Irishmen Pelagius and his chief disciple and friend Caelestius, who were to be condemned in Carthage in 411. Pelagius in particular must be named here, because possibly typical Celtic features underlie his theology. His name means ‘the one who has come over the water (pelagos, sea)’. Pelagius’ background was in a Romanized Celtic church. He was highly respected by his contemporaries for his learning. He was the first great ‘Irish’ writer and theologian. Pelagius is known above all as an opponent of Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Whereas Augustine thought that the Eastern Christians had been deceived by Pelagius, Pelagius accused his North African opponent of Manicheism."? Pelagius’ theology tries to answer the question how form can really be given to the Christian life. Pelagius was strongly influenced by the radicalism of the Sermon on the Mount and the seriousness of the last judgment. He summed up the gospel as a more pronounced form of the law: do not take vengeance, lie or swear. It is the law of perfection. In his view the last judgment will also weigh the motives for our actions. In contrast to the Manicheans Pelagius taught that Christ is not opposed to Moses, and the gospel is not opposed to the law. Certainly the gospel does away with the law, but in the way that the fruit does away with the seed. The difference between law and gospel lies in the content of the commandments. The righteous God gives the law, which human beings can fulfil. As creator, God bestows on human beings the grace of the goodness of nature and renews the knowledge of the law in salvation history. By the grace of God ‘is’ and ‘ought’ coincide. That is the gospel according to Pelagius.'* Neither Pelagius nor Patrick spoke of original sin. They did not even have a term for it. They preached six propositions which were formally condemned as heretical:

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1. That Adam would have died even if he had not sinned. 2. That Adam’s sin damaged only himself and not the human race. 3. That newly-born children were in the same state as Adam before the Fall; the consequence of this was that children, even if they have not been baptized, have eternal life. 4. That the whole of the human race does not die because of Adam’s death or sins, nor shall it arise because of Christ’s resurrection. 5. Both the Old Testament law and the New Testament gospel give access to heaven. 6. Even before the coming of Christ there were people who were wholly without sin. According to this ‘heresy’, God created all things good by virtue of his goodness and righteousness. Pelagius’s view is that the followers of Arius (c.250—336) fail to recognize

the true Godhead of Christ."°

It has been presupposed that Pelagius’ optimistic, almost ‘pedagogical anthropology’ is derived from the Druidic thought system. The Druids put a great deal of emphasis on righteousness and morality. ‘For the Druids everything in nature was good, but it depended on the will of man for it to remain good . . . The Druids’ triple maxim was: “Honour the Gods, do no evil, be brave.”’?° Pelagius ‘compares the Old Testament with the light of the moon, which was present as a reflection of the sun-Logos in Moses and Elijah. For him the New Testament proclaims the sun, Christ.’ He sees here an idea of Christ of the kind that is depicted symbolically on Irish crosses.'7

The confessions of faith made by Patrick and Pelagius are akin to those of the Eastern churches. Pelagius’ confession is the most important source for Alcuin, who came from a distinguished family in Northumbria and later became a teacher at the great school in York. Charlemagne appointed Alcuin head of his court school at Aachen. We should note that Alcuin thought that Pelagius’s confession came from Augustine! Both confessions have a wealth of heavenly and solar images for God.'® For both Pelagius and Patrick God functions as the supreme conscience for his own creation. The notion of merit and reward seems constantly to have been present in the Celtic church. Scholars talk of ‘Pelagian voluntarism’ and ‘exaggerated moralism’ in connection with the strict asceticism of the Irish monks."?

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In 1210 and 1225 Pelagius was again condemned by the Roman Catholic church. The terms used for his condemnation show striking similarities to those used in the imperial condemnation of the Celtic Druids!*° Brendan

Brendan or Brendanus (c.484-587/577/583) came from Kerry in south-west Ireland. He was the most-travelled of the Irish missionaries. The area of Berlin-Brandenburg is named after him. The form Brendanburg occurs in the foundation document of the diocese of Brandenburg in 948.*' Brandaris, the name of the beacon on Terschelling, one of the islands in the Netherlands, recalls him. He became abbot of Clonfert, a monastery which he may have founded. He also founded other monasteries in Ireland and Wales. The historical nucleus of the story of Brendan is that of the abbot of Clonfert, who undertook a missionary journey to Scotland and visited the northern and western isles, perhaps the Orkneys and the Hebrides. A legend came to be woven around his figure. He became the hero of a monastic odyssey, The Voyage ofSt Brendan or Navigatio Sancti Brendani. The legend is recorded in a Latin translation from the eleventh century, Peregrinatio sancti Brandani. Very soon after that versions in both poetry and prose appeared in England, France, Italy and Spain. The story has been handed down in an old French version from around 1106, Le voyage de Saint Brendan. The Navigatio Sancti Brandani became Ireland’s greatest contribution to mediaeval European literature.” The tenth-century story of the voyage of Mael Duin to the hereafter is a preliminary sketch for the voyage of St Brendan. He is a legendary saint who engages in adventurous voyages after this pattern. Only later does Mael Duin discover that he is descended from a king whose death he must avenge. On the way his ship is wrecked in a storm and survives all kinds of adventures. In the story, pagan and Christian notions of the hereafter stand side by side. What is still magic and pagan in the voyage of Mael Duin is Christianized in the Navigatio Sancti Brandani.”3

Brendan had a special love of overseas missionary journeys, a trait which is characteristic of many Irish brothers. Brendan set sail to

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visit ‘the islands of the blessed’, ‘the land of the promise’, a visit which he achieved after seventy-one years of vain adventuring, with the help of the monster Jasconius. Thus Christian and pagan elements from ideas of the hereafter happily stand side by side in the account. “The delightful fields of the land’ are described as ‘radiant, famous, lovable’, — ‘a land odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land many melodied, musical, shouting for joy, unmournful’. In the Irish world of saga there is therefore constant talk of ‘the land of life’ or of

‘the land of promise’. The land is described as Moy Mell, ‘the Pleasant Plain’. In the Navigatio, the pagan Celtic motif of Elysium seems to be combined with the Christian expectation of the future.** Columba ‘the elder’

One of the most famous peregrini was Columba (‘the dove’, 521597), who came from Ireland.*> In 563, with twelve companions, he travelled northwards and arrived in Iona, a small island on the west coast of Scotland. There Columba founded the monastery of Hi (Eo, Io, Hy, Iona) along Irish lines. As a result of Columba the island of Iona, where there had already been a Christian burial place and a monastery before him, became the spiritual centre of the old Irish church. The name can be derived from I Eoin (island of John). Columba spent thirty years of his life on the island, and it became a centre from which missionary journeys were undertaken. He founded monasteries on other islands in the region and on the mainland. It was missionaries from Iona who brought Christianity to Northumbria and established the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, ‘the holy island’. Aidan (who died in 651) and Cuthbert (who died in 687) stayed there. This famous island sanctuary was the great monastic centre of Northumbrian and Celtic culture. Long before the Carolingian empire was seriously threatened, the great monastic centres of Northumbria and Celtic culture were destroyed: Lindisfarne in 793, Jarrow in 794 and Jona in 802. Celtic Christianity never recovered from this blow.?° Adamnan (c.625-704), one of the greatest scholars that lona produced, a descendant of Columba’s grandfather and Columba’s successor as ninth abbot, wrote the Life of Columba. In this Life, Columba ‘the elder’ is depicted as a universal helper who can predict

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the future and who performs miracles.*? For a thousand years Columba has been revered as the greatest saint of the Celtic church. The greatest development of the Celtic church took placesin the period under Columba and his successors in Northumbria.?° As a typical Irish saint, Columba sought exile and the style of the

hermitage, the ‘wilderness’. Here he did not lose the Celtic feeling for the beauty of nature as this is expressed, for example, in an old Irish hymn from the ninth century: Let us adore the Lord Maker of wondrous works, great bright heaven with its angels, the white waved sea on the earth.

Columba cherished a great love and sympathy for creatures great and small, the cheery stormy petrel, the elements of the earth, and also the seas and thelight. “This mystique of the earth is not just because nature is “natural”, but because it is open and translucent to the supernatural.’*?

It seems that the heroes from the pagan past continued to be venerated. The properties of the pagan gods were transferred to Christian saints. Saints like Columba the Elder were thus admirable ‘stand-ins’ for the old Celtic gods, just as Brigid was to take over the role of the Celtic goddess of this name.3° Columbanus (Columba the Younger) In his youth, Columbanus (543-615) underwent a profound conversion. He received his education at the famous monastery in Bangor (in Wales), from where many missionaries including himself went to the European continent. There was never an Irish monk so driven by ‘zeal for God’s house’ and by the Celtic longing for ‘pilgrimage for Christ’ as Columbanus. He set out as a peregrinus ‘for Christ’. For the sake of Christ he had sought solitude. Whereas Columba the Elder saw his peregrinatio as penance, Columbanus undertook this voluntarily. We might think of Jesus’ image of being ready to take up the cross. Columbanus made the demand that one should be an alien in the worla. Leaving one’s external home is the

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first step on this peregrinatio. He took as his model Abraham, who left his fatherland. The penitential peregrinatio required one only to live abroad, and put the emphasis on the punishment of living outside one’s fatherland, family and clan. The voluntary peregrinatio similarly involved living among foreign peoples, but also, in Columbanus’s own words, ‘sowing the seed’. It was a matter of ‘teaching all nations’ (cf. Matt.28.19).%* ‘It was my wish to visit the pagans, and that the gospel should be preached to them by us.’ It is said that Columbanus was always an itinerant preacher, teaching and instructing. His favourite theme is the metaphor of the Christian life as a ‘way’ and a §journey’.* Columba the Younger was the greatest Irish missionary on the European continent. He was the first Irish missionary to go, with a group of twelve companions, around 583, to the kingdom of the Franks and thus visit the continent. He landed in Brittany and devoted twenty-five years to preaching and founding monasteries in eastern France, Switzerland and northern Italy. Columbanus restored a ruined temple in Annegray in the Vosges to use as his monastery church. In 590 he founded the monastery of Luxueil in the southern Vosges, and this foundation in turn created yet other monasteries. The monastery of Bobbio in Italy, which he founded shortly before his death in 615, played an important role in the conversion of the Lombards from Arianism to Catholicism. It was he who gave a new impulse to monastic life, and all the great monastic founders of the seventh century were his disciples and were influenced by him. Frankish monks, among them Amandus, continued Columbanus’ work.*? Amandus (who died c.675) was trained according to the rule of Columbanus. This Frankish monk was probably born in Aquitaine; he was consecrated bishop in Rome and began his missionary work among the Franks. He was the first missionary to work successfully in Flanders, and was bishop of Maastricht from 647 to 650. Amandus’ tactic of buying slaves and training them as missionaries was probably followed widely.’*

Apart from the ascetic motive of leaving their homes and families, these peregrini were equally orientated on nature and beauty. They proclaimed the love of God for the world and nature, as is evident from the many Lives of the Irish saints. They were able to combine the new with the old.25 They continued without interruption the

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tradition of their ‘pagan’ Celtic predecessors by writing the finest nature poems.3° So Columbanus, who wrote Irish nature poetry, has been called ‘a Franciscan avant la lettre’ 3’

The world of the Celtic gods: Daghda, Lugh Of the more than four hundred names of Celtic gods which have been handed down, many relate to springs and rivers and thus bear witness to a religion which was closely bound up with nature. Later, human behaviour was attributed to these gods. These heroes are the subject of many sagas. Caesar gives the following description of the function of Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods of pre-Christian Ireland: Jupiter (Daghda) rules the heavens; Mercury (Lugh) is the inventor of the arts; Mars (Nuadha, Oghma) is the god of war; Apollo (Dian Cécht, Mac ind Og) dispels sickness; and Minerva (Brigid) contributes the basic principles of civilization.3° Daghda (‘good god’) was the highest of all gods. He was probably also called ‘All-Father’. He was powerful and had much wisdom. He was the son of Ana (= Dana), the ancestral mother of the Irish family of Tuatha

Dé Danann.

Dana

had a series of other children,

including figures like Dian Cécht and Lugh. The Celts depicted these last-mentioned ‘gods of healing’ as important physicians. The healing god Dian Cécht, known in Ireland, looked after the healing of the worst wounds at the request of Lugh himself. The Irish saw Dana as ‘Mother Earth’, who gave fertility to Ireland. Her special place indicates that the Celts in particular worshipped the mother goddess. Daghda incorporated Brigid (the Gallic Minerva) and Oengus (‘only choice’), the god of youth. He has been called the god of Druidism, the Druid. His wisdom and justice became famous, as did his bravery and magic arts, along with his skilled craftsmanship. However, he was ugly. He was a tremendous glutton, as was evident from his large belly. So he became the god of abundance and fullness. He had some famous attributes, including a magic club and a magic cauldron, which played a great role among the Celts. This cauldron was used on various cultic occasions (and suggests the Grail, see below); it had its own symbolism, and was an expression of

an inexhaustible surplus which was guaranteed by the gods. He also

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had a harp on which he played three melodies: one which caused sleep, a second which made people laugh, and a third which was regarded as an expression of misery. The Celts believed that different seasons began, depending on which melody he played.*? Lugh, whose name means ‘the radiant one’ or ‘the shining one’, is in fact the most colourful of the Celtic gods, youthful and slim. Lugh was skilled in many arts (Samildanach). It is said that the god Lugh once went to the court of Tuatha Dé Danann and asked to be admitted. The doorkeeper asked him to give his credentials, since no one could get into Tara without a special art. Lugh finally won at chess, as a result of which he was let in.*°

Lugh was a Celtic god who was known on the European continent as well as in Britain and Ireland. He had a universal significance in the Celtic world. This is expressed in place names like Leiden (Lugdunum), Lyons, Laon, Leignitz (in Silesia) and St Lizier in former Gaul.*’ The emperor Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) made Lyons, the holy city of the god Lugh, the capital of Gaul. In the nature religions as they were encountered by Christianity in Ireland, Lugh, the god of the sun and fire, had pride of place.** Lugh, the god of light (also called Bel), was at the same time the god of fire, because fire is the earthly counterpart of the sun. Lugh was the grandson of Balor. Balor was a mighty one-eyed giant with seven eyelids. He was the leader of the fomhorre. In Irish mythology the fomhoire were a host of demonic powers from the underworld, some of them giants or figures with an unusual appearance. They are sometimes connected with the fertility of the earth.

The fomhoire,

the

adversaries

of Tuatha

Dé

Danann,

were

defeated at the battle of Mag Tured, started by a challenge from Lugh. When the giant raised his seventh eyelid there was a devastating glare. As soon as the seventh eyelid opened again, Lugh threw in a stone, whereupon the giant took flight and died. As well as being sun god, Lugh was at the same time creator of the word, of arts and music.*?

Lugh, akin to Mercury, is the wily god of the wind, who invented in music. He is connected with high places like the Puy de Dome his in the Auvergne, where there was one of the great statues

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honour. The ruins of a temple dedicated to Mercury were found there. There is a close parallel between Lugh and the Germanic Odin/ Wodan, which we shall be investigating further in Chapter IV. 1. Just as Lugh is the high god of the Gauls, so Wodan is the high god of the Germans. 2. Like Odin, Lugh is leader of the army. 3. Lugh plays the main part in Mag Tured, the battle of the gods, as does Odin in the battle between the Aesir and the Wanir (for more detail see Chapter IV). 4. Like Odin, Lugh fights with a spear. 5. Lugh uses magic in battle, as to a large extent does Odin. 6. Lugh closes one eye in this magic action. Odin has only one eye,

since he sacrificed the other. 7. Lugh is the master of poetry, while Odin is patron of the skalds, the old Scandinavian poets. 8. Lugh is in one way or another connected with the raven, a bird which is also characteristic of Odin. g. Lugh is the father of the heroes, and Odin is similarly called leader of heroes.**

The Celtic god Brigid and the Christian saint Brigid Brigid — there are different spellings of her name — is the daughter of Daghda and the patroness of poetry, poets and learning, i.e. traditional learning, along with divination (‘prediction’) and prophecy. She is mother goddess and patron of the arts. She is one of the chief Celtic goddesses. Caesar compared the Celtic goddess Brigid with the Gallic Minerva (= Pallas Athene). The rivers Brent in England, Braint in Wales and Bridwell in Ireland bear witness to the prestige of this goddess in the Celtic world. Inscriptions in both Gaul and Britain attest the name “Brigantia’. She was worshipped by the filidh (old Celtic poets or singers). She forms a triad with her sisters of the same name, who are the goddesses of the smiths and the laws. One sister was associated with the crafts of the smithy, another with the healing arts and a third with handiwork. These three arts were crucial for the cultural survival of a primitive society.*5

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In addition to these gods, in Ireland a saint with the same name became famous: St Brigit (c.453-523). There is a ‘life of Brigid’, written by the hagiographer and monk Cogitosus, which comes from the middle of the seventh century. Cogitosus was a member of the Brigidine community in Kildare, and his Vita Brigitae is the earliest existing life of a saint to be composed on Irish soil. Brigid was the illegitimate daugher of Dubtach (tenth in line from a second-century Irish lawgiver/king). She is said to have been born at Fareghart near Dundalk, of parents who had already been baptized by Patrick. Miracles accompanied her birth. It is said that she was born at dawn, neither inside nor outside the house — in other

words on the threshold — and was fed on the milk of a white cow with red ears (i.e. a supernatural cow). She hung her white cloak out to dry in the sun, and to onlookers her house seemed to be surrounded by fire and flame. She grew up on a farm and was educated in the house of a Druid. She was baptized as a disciple of St Patrick. Although many sought her hand, she dedicated herself to Christ, and went to her father’s home in Kildare. There she founded the first convent in Ireland, of which she became abbess, the double convent of Kildare, where she was buried in 523. This monastery of Kildare and the church of ‘the oak’ were built close to a ‘pagan’ sanctuary or took the place of what had formerly been a Druid settlement. The name suggests the replacement of a Druidic cult place by a Christian chapel or place of prayer.*° The oak was a sacred tree to both the Celts and the Germans. Oak woods were regarded as cultic centres, sometimes by several tribes at the same time. The Druids seem to have used acorns for their predictions. Druids principally relied on the power of the sacred oak. ‘The most sacred of these oak forests once existed on Anglesey, an island off Wales, which was an important Druid centre. Kildare had the eternal flame of the Brigid/Minerva monastery, which was guarded by nineteen chaste nuns, reminiscent of the Vestal Virgins.*7

Relics of Brigid have been preserved in Honau (Alsace), Strasbourg and Lisbon. In Scotland she is known as Saint Bride and in Wales as Saint Ffraid. She is the patroness of Ireland. Veneration of her is widespread throughout the ‘Celtic world’: France, the Netherlands, the Rhineland, southern and upper Italy.

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7O

A mediaeval stained-glass window from the Augustinian church in Erfurt, where Martin Luther was a monk. Note the parrots, which symbolize the faithful translation of the word of God, and the oak leaves.

In the Netherlands and Belgium Brigid is regarded as the patron saint of cows and horses, sometimes also of birds, and in one place, Kortenbos in . ‘ . : : 8 Limburg, she is the guardian saint against eye problems.*

Brigid was known for her hospitality and care of the poor, for comfort and healing of the weak. In the rites associated with her, traces can be found of an old mother goddess, who provides in

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plenty, heals and protects. For Cogitosus she was the giver of all things. Her breath brought the dead to life. The abbess saint was responsible for handing down tradition (the poetic arts, healing and metalwork). How close was the relationship between the goddess Brigid and the saint Brigid? Thatis an interesting question. The connection between the two figures was seen as being so close that some scholars have

talked of a ‘pagan-Christian syncretism’.*° St Brigid has been seen as the personification of a Celtic goddess,*’ indeed as a Christjanization of this Celtic goddess, whose name and functions were to some degree taken over by the saint.** Whereas the goddess Brigid is associated with poetic arts, healing and metalwork, the abbess/ saint is the patroness of teaching, healing and the domestic arts. Cogitosus’ presentation of St Brigid corresponds with the character that the goddess has in Celtic mythology. The goddess has been so to speak ‘handed down’ in her Christian namesake. The two cults of Brigid went together in Kildare. The saint took over the mythological tradition of the goddess. There are traces of an old mother goddess in the rituals associated with Brigid. This takeover is clear ifwe look at her portrait. The original goddess Brigid was made a virgin and identified with the mother of God. The sexual and maternal aspects of the Celtic goddess were transferred to the saint. The larger breasts and pudenda were adapted to the image of the saint. The pagan spring festival Imbolc, the spring rite on 1 February, became the feast of the Christian Brigid on the same date. Her feast of 1 February, of Imbolc, is celebrated in Ireland, Wales, Australia and New Zealand. The life of the saint is closely connected with living things and the produce of the earth.

St Brigid is a remarkable amalgam of a semi-Christianized Celtic goddess and a powerful Irish abbess with the capacity to perform

miracles. In one of the stories she quenched the thirst of a group of unexpected visitors by turning a tub of water into beer. She is said to have had a cow which gave an endless supply of milk. The many animal miracles in Cogitosus’ account are striking. All the wild and domestic animals and birds are subject to her command — probably an allusion to Genesis 1.28; 2.20. So Cogitosus saw in Brigid the realization of the new human being who does not just follow the Jesus of the Gospels but also again possesses what Adam had been given before the Fall.

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Through this woman saint the Celtic tradition claimed its own share in the story of the birth of Christ.*4 It is said of the chief Druid on Iona that at the moment of his death he had a vision in which Brigid was cradling the baby Jesus, asleep on her lap. A very old legend tells how on first meeting Brigid a Christian seer exclaimed: ‘This is Mary whom I have seen because I recognize her form precisely.’ So Brigid is venerated as Maria Hibernorum (‘Mary of the Irish’). Brigid is called ‘the second mother of Christ’, the ‘Mary of Gaul’, ‘Mary of the Celts’, and ‘the mother of the high king of heaven’.°* One story about St Brigid has survived in Ireland and on the west coast of Scotland. The most complete version is to be found in Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica. Carmichael remarks that Brigid was the ‘midwife of the mother of Nazareth in the lowly stable and she is the midwife of the mothers of Uist in their lowly dwellings’. Brigid was the daughter of poor pious parents and the serving maid in the inn in Bethlehem. While she was working at home two strangers came to the door. The man was old, with brown hair and a grey beard, and the woman was young and attractive, with an oval face and blue eyes. They asked the serving girl for somewhere to stay, for food to still their hunger and water to slake their thirst. Brigid could not give them a room, but she gave them some of her own plate of bread and her own cup of water. When she got back at twilight, to her amazement the bread on the plate was still whole and the cup of water full, just as they had been before. When she went outside to look for the couple they had already gone on their way, but she saw a radiant golden light above the stable door. She went into the stable and was just in time to minister to the ‘virgin’ mother and to take the child in her arms, for the strangers were Joseph and Mary and the child was Jesus Christ, the Son of God come to earth and born in the inn at Bethlehem.°> That Mary had a helper at the birth of Christ is not an exclusively Celtic idea. Such a midwife appears in the apocryphal Gospel of James, who in the Byzantine tradition is eventually called Mary. This expresses an extra human involvement in this birth and emphasizes the importance of midwives in Byzantine and Celtic society.5°

The influence of the goddess Brigid was so dominant that doubt has been cast on the historicity of the person of Saint Brigid, and it is not easy to distinguish between the goddess and the saint. Clearly the worship of the Celtic goddess Brigid was so deep-rooted and this

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matriarchal figure so strong that she could not be driven out by the Christian church, which had to take her over.57 Druids and the church

Since no written Druid sources have survived, we are dependent for information on what are the presumably coloured accounts by Caesar and the Greek philosopher Posidonius (c.135—5 1 BCE), who around 95 BCE travelled to southern Gaul. The word druid — strictly drui, plural druid, is Irish for ‘supremely wise’ (Celtic dru-wi-des, ‘the very wise’), and because Druid has been connected with deru, meaning ‘oak’, the word could mean something like ‘oak sage’. Both the words Veda and dru(v)id come from the Indo-European root vid (know). Druid is the name for an age-old Celtic institution, the Celtic priestly caste in Gaul, Britain and Ireland which in both Gaul and Britain derives from the communal prehistory.5* Strabo (64 BCE-19 CE), the Greek geographer and historian, relates that there were three classes among the Gauls: the bards (f/idh: there is a tradition according to which these learned poets were once judges in Ireland), the Vates and the Druids.5° Vates means ‘forecaster’ and ‘seer’.°° In Old Irish the word vates lives on as faith’.°' The term Druid is often replaced by or confused with filidh or bard. In the earliest times bards appeared as musicians, singers and poets. At the courts of kings and princes they performed dirges, songs of praise and taunt songs.°? They travelled around with their songs, myths and proverbs. People became Druids both by descent and by a training which lasted for decades and thus called for a great deal of perseverance from disciples. The twenty years of training was needed to master this knowledge sufficiently. As the guardians of religion, the Druids possessed a secret doctrine which they handed down orally. Elements of this included the survival of the soul after death and the migration of the soul. The Druids were the spiritual leaders and were given supreme authority; they were highly respected. The kings were really the Druids’ servants, an indication of their lofty position. The Druid functioned as a mediator between the gods and the king.®3 Druids had political influence.

Druids could give advice on what was to be prohibited and what was

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to be allowed. A Druid advised when someone had transgressed the code or the tradition. Disasters were not caused by the will of the gods, but by human transgressions against tradition. Druids functioned not only as judges but also as magicians, doctors and astronomers. It seems that that the Druids practised a cult which may even have involved human sacrifices. Not least because of this, the Druidic cult was banned for the first time by the Roman emperor Tiberius (42 BCE-37 CE). This measure led to a decline in their status. According to Caesar the Druids were active in worshipping the gods, supervised public and private sacrifices, and expounded religious matters.°* Carnutrum in Gaul was one of the most important Celtic religious centres. It came to be regarded as the heart of Gaul. According to Caesar the Druids assembled at this centre for annual meetings.°> Those who had disputes which they wanted the Druids to settle appeared before this ‘court of judgment’. However, after Christianization, mission centres of Irish Christianity were established at all the sacred cult places of the Druids. This was also the case with Carnutrum.°7 In this connection the following divine revelation is related: ‘A virgin shall bear a child who will bring salvation to humankind. They set up an altar to this virgin with the inscription: “To the virgin who shall give birth.” On the altar they put a statue of the virgin with the child on her lap and brought her an offering. Some say that this statue stood in a cave on the hill on which the cathedral of Chartres was later built.”°* So the famous cathedral of Chartres stands on the site of this important Celtic sanctuary. There is reason to assume that at the beginning of our era there was a temple dedicated to a local goddess in the neighbourhood of this church or this place. “There is no doubt that in its dispute with paganism the church used persuasion more than force to drive superstitious ideas from people’s minds.’ ‘In the footsteps of Paul on the Areopagus Christian missionaries repeated in Chartres: “This deity whom you have worshipped for so many centuries is none other than the virgin, the mother of Christ.””?

The Druids are regarded as implacable opponents of the church. The battle against the Druids ended up in almost complete annihilation of the Druidic organization.7° Conle, the son of the Irish king Conn, saw in a vision the coming of the missionary Patrick, who was to break the ‘devilish’ power of the Druids.7' It was said of Patrick’s fight against the Druids: ‘He fought against

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the cruel Druids, he destroyed the proud with the help of our Lord of the bright heaven. He purified the Irish pastureland.’”” The Christianization had two consequences for all the members of the priestly class. In the first place, most of the teachings, sacrificial rites and procedures for divination associated with the sacrifices disappeared. As a result the Druids lost their raison d’étre. Secondly, the purpose of writing shifted, so that it became more didactic and pedagogical than magical and religious. It was now more about the transmission of knowledge. Christianization also limited the religious role of the filidh (divinization and prophecy), but their literary function developed enormously.’? In the old Druidic training, the filidh not only had to learn the whole indigenous mythological literature by heart, but also the laws. Once they were Christianized, they detected the analogies between the symbols of Christian faith and those of indigenous myths and legends, and reinterpreted the latter.’+ If the Druids are to be seen on the one hand as opponents of the church, on the other hand we can say that Druidism and the bards issued in Christianity. When Christianity spread through Ireland, the pre-Christian schools for bards remained. Some monasteries even developed links with these schools. The old traditional stories were written down there and supplemented with Christian texts.7° The most important stories are the four known under the collective name Mabinogion, which means ‘youth’. This is a collection of the ‘youthful adventures of a hero’ who lived between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Later, it came to mean ‘stories about youth’ and finally ‘stories’ generally. The stories discuss traditional themes from the distant past. The apocryphal Gospel De Infantia Jesus Christi was entitled Mabinogi Iesu Grist.7°

Druids stood out from others by virtue of their white garments and tonsure, which were later to become characteristics of the clergy of Celtic Christianity. The Celtic tonsure probably goes back to the Druids. The monks as it were took over the Druids’ mantle. In the seventh century some of the Irish monks were fully trained in the traditional indigenous learning.”7 Thus the places where the monks settled had formerly been the sites of Druid schools or cultic centres. The Christian foundation in Armagh presumably stood close to the place of a former pagan sanctuary,”° and the great monastery of

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Kildare — the ‘church of the oak’ — a flourishing monastic centre — was formerly a Celtic sanctuary. The menhir and the solar cross

The great stone structures which are still to be found all over ‘the Celtic world’ were possibly used by the Druids for observing cosmic influences on the earth. It is quite probable that pre-Celtic ‘Druids’ were already celebrating their cult in the famous solar temple of Stonehenge and that rituals were performed within the stone circles. Similarly impressive monuments can also be found in Brittany, like the dolmens (= table stones), which can also be found in central and Eastern France.’? In Brittany the stone circles are also called cromlechs (= curved flat stones). The enormous stones known as menhirs (= long stones) come from a very early period. Usually these are rough-hewn stones about twenty metres high. Megalithic tombs or ‘giants’ graves’ are usually family or collective graves. In an Old Icelandic house such stones appear as seats for ancestors.*° The menhir is a symbol of man, who

strives upwards.

It is the ‘place where

sacrifice was

offered to the gods and the deity received it’. When megalithic man strode from east to west at solar festivals, he was striding in the light of the sun. Since from primal times men worshipped the sun as a deity, they followed the course of the sun god cultically. By striding in the light they gained more of the power which links human beings with the deity, and this was indicated by the increasing height of the stones. There was a proverb in Celtic Ireland customary whenever someone died: ‘He sailed off yesterday; I hope he has had a good voyage.’ The voyage was westwards, into the sunset, towards the cosmic realm of night, the

kingdom of the dead. A special dolmen would be set up for important figures who died, and this slowly took the form of a tumulus (a hollow hill-tomb). The engravings on the stones in the interior of the tomb, which principally consist of solar motifs, indicate the quest for the ‘inner sun’, ‘the inner light’. The sun is the main motif of these symbols engraved in stone. The sign of the sun in the centre, with cruciform leaves arranged round it, has been seen as a forerunner of the later Irish, Christian

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solar cross. The stubbornness with which pre-Christian solar rites were practised in Ireland is also evident from the fact that in our century in certain parts of Ireland only water on which the sun has shone may be drunk. Water has to be drawn by day; drawing water by night is tabu. In the empire of the Franks, between the fifth and the eighth century there were constant discussions and disputes at councils over ‘heavenly cults on the stones’. In 78g Charlemagne issued an edict against the stone-worshippers, even threatening them with the death penalty.*’ It is impossible to say how many churches were built on the sites of sacred trees or in sacred woods. Presumably a large number of churches were built on the sites of overthrown megaliths.*” At the two solstices, Christmas and John the Baptist’s Day (24 June), there was a custom of putting candles by particular stones with holes in them and sprinkling oil on them; the oil was later collected and used as medicine. For a long time the church fought against such customs, but belief in the power of fertility remained. The church supported this notion by giving it a Christian interpretation, making sure that a Christian saint rested in this place. A cross was then put on the menhir.* Various examples of Christianized megaliths and dolmens are to be found in Brittany. Menhir ut Brigognan (in Finistére) is also called the ‘wonderful stone’ (it is 8 metres high and 3.5 metres wide at the base). The cross on top of it must have been put there by the first Breton Christians. The menhir of Saint Uzec is another example. Down the back of the stone there are small channels along which the blood of the victims ran, but the front has been Christianized. It has a cross on top, and on the front a relief has been engraved with the instruments of the passion, the holy countenance, the virgin, the moon and the sun.*4

The stone solar crosses are typical of Celtic Christianity between the fifth and the eighth centuries.”> They give some indication of the transition from Celtic to Christian religion. Thus what was typically Celtic continued to survive in some form.”° In the Christian period, the monumental stone crosses replaced the menhirs, dolmens or cromlechs which had previously effected the link between human beings, the earth and the cosmos. Whereas the Celts had

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SX

\

worshipped the sun, the Christian Celts used the sun as a symbol for translating the Christian mystery. On almost all Irish stone crosses, early and later, the centre of the cross (where the beams join) is the Christ. In the earliest stone crosses, which often take the form of a

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stele, Christ is usually symbolized by the sun. Here Christ is identical with the sun, the ‘light of the world’. There is an Old Irish liturgy in which Christ is called the ‘Son of the sun’, ‘Son of the planets’. In his ‘Confession’ Patrick compares Christ the true sun with the sun cult: ‘But we believe and worship the true sun, Christ’. A hymn which comes from the old Irish tradition puts it like this: ‘The whole earth began to shine when God’s sun came to earth.’°7 This and similar texts explain why at the beginning of Irish Christianity the old solar symbol can be found at the centre of stone crosses.*® Old Irish Christianity worshipped above all the victorious, risen Christ who rules over the earth and humankind as radiantly as the sun. The solar cross depicts how Christ descended from the cosmic heights and in the cross united himself with the earthly man Jesus. Such a cross does not denote the tomb — though it can be found just as often in monastery cemeteries; rather, it draws attention to what it depicts: the risen Christ. The cross is not meant to denote Christ’s suffering but rather his divine power.®? He is the victor over death. Thus the Irish solar cross is always the Easter cross, which as the nucleus of the new message ‘proclaims the certainty of the ongoing powers of resurrection’.”°

Examples of such crosses can be found on the island of Gotland, which was Christianized by Irish missionaries.?’ On the south side of the island of Iona there is an impressive solar cross which bears the name of St Martin. The Norse stave churches have rich ornamentation with Irish influences, and here, too, the solar cross

often occurs in the balustrades of the galleries in the form of a diagonal cross. In the stave church of Biorgund the leaves of the tree of life spring out of the solar symbol in the form of a cross. The antlers of a deer with the skull beneath it are a symbol of solar powers. It was in keeping with the spirit of Irish Christianity that old gods remained present in the form of pillars.?* The very old cross of Carndanagh which resembles a stele shows ‘life-giving bonds which emanate power’. It bears a representation of the risen Christ. Above him is the cross ‘interwoven with serpentine patterns, which give life to everything. Small round solar signs have been inserted like fruit between the serpentine lines: the cross as the tree of life through which the sun shines.’ On later sculpted crosses the figure of Christ

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himself, who has severed ‘all fetters and bonds’, appears in place of the symbolic solar centre.” As soon as ‘depictions’ take the place of the old symbols, ‘it is no longer the circular solar symbol which stands at the centre of the cross, but a graphic representation of it: the figure of Christ, the light of the world, who bears in himself ‘the essence of the solar powers’. The crucifix is never found on Irish stone crosses ‘as a hanging body subject to the force of gravity, which presses on the cross as a physical burden’. He is not depicted as the Christ offering himself with outstretched arms and bowed head; rather, in the solar circle of the stone crosses ‘stands Christ, who has overcome death’. He is the risen one who with a radiant gesture hovers with arms outstretched. On his left arm he bears the cross of death and on his right the symbol of the tree of life, the staff with the two spirals (Druid staff).°*

The Irish monasteries had the custom of increasing the number of psalms which were sung each week on the approach of winter. There was a desire to achieve as it were a spiritual equilibrium between reciting psalms and the darkness. Whereas in some places twentyfour psalms were sung in the short nights throughout the summer, towards autumn, with the increasing darkness, more

and more

psalms were recited. From 1 November to the spring, during the long nights thirty-six psalms were recited. In the large monasteries, groups of monks alternated in singing them. Psalm 118 was seen as being particularly effective, because it could save souls from hell. The continual singing of psalms was the expression of a Celtic approach to the almighty God.9° Holy times The following dates are very important for the Celtic ritual calendar: 1 February, 1 May, 1 August and 1 November. The Celtic year was divided into two halves, a winter half (gamh = winter) beginning on 1 November, and a summer half (samh = summer), beginning on 1 May. The winter is the dark side of the year when nature sleeps, summer has returned to the underworld and the earth is abandoned and inhospitable. In Wales January is called ‘the black month’. In Scotland November was also known as the dark or black month.°®° In

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Wales the eves of 1 November and 1 May were known as ‘ghostnights’. Chaos prevailed around that time. Fairies were particularly active at that moment; witches were busy with their spells, and the future was foreshadowed by all kinds of signs. The Celtic religious notions emphasized the pastoral deities and the Celtic festivals emphasized the transitions between seasons. On all four dates the original Celtic significance remained in one sense or another in the Christian take-over and was from then on given a Christian interpretation.

Samhaim was the beginning of the Celtic new year. In Ireland the word was interpreted as ‘the end of the summer’, but it really means the ‘union’ of a god and goddess.” This festival marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter, when the cows were brought in and the harvest was gathered. In the British Isles this event was an important element in the social and religious stucture of the Celtic year. It was believed that on the eve of the festival, more than at any other period of the year, there was a concentration of supernatural power. At Samhaim the barriers were brought down between human beings and the supernatural, between the natural and the supernatural. All divine beings and the spirits of the dead moved freely among the living and could intervene in their affairs. The boundaries between the dead and the living, between the different sexes and the possessions of one person or another, fell away. The souls of the dead returned among the living on earth, and in Ireland it was the custom for no one to leave the house at this time; at all events people kept away from the neighbourhood of cemeteries or looked round if they heard footsteps behind them. Sacrifices were offered, possibly even human sacrifices, in order to satisfy the supernatural powers which controlled the fertility of the land. At the time of Samhaim all non-human powers which wandered around on earth were recognized. People also hoped to gain information about the future (happiness, good or evil, and predictions of marriage, sickness or death) through divination. of

Whereas in the time of John Chrysostom (354-407) the communal commemoration of all martyrs took place on the Sunday after Pentecost, in Eastern Syria on the Friday after Easter, and in Edessa on 13 May, and Pope Boniface IV (pope from 608 to 615) dedicated

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the pagan pantheon in Rome to the Mother of God and all the martyrs on 13 May 609, in 844 Pope Gregory IV (who died that year) changed the date from 13 May to 1 November. This was done because this date was already used in the north under the influence of the Irish liturgy. The feast ofAll Saints was not known in Frankish territory before the eighth century. The festival was introduced into Northumbria from Ireland. Probably Alcuin brought it to the European continent. Even after its Christianization, this Celtic festival continued to be popular among the Christians in Great Britain. The church tried to divert attention from the observance of the pagan feast by putting the Christian feast, the feast of All Saints, on the same date. Saints known and unknown were commemorated on it.°? Imbole — 1 February. The feast of purification, Imbolc, took place after the darkness of the winter, when the sun gains strength once more and the winter corn begins to germinate. This feast seems to have had particular associations with the ritual of fertility, and was traditionally connected with ewes giving suck. After the Christianization of Ireland, Imbole came to be connected with the feast of Candlemass. Candlemass is one of the oldest feasts of Mary (2 February), and takes its name from the processions

with lighted candles which were held on this day. The Christian feast commemorates the visit of Mary to the temple. There she made an offering for her purification, consisting of two turtle doves (Luke 2.22—24), one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. After that the presentation of Jesus in the temple took place. The feast, with its candles, symbolizes ‘the light for revelation to the Gentiles’ (Luke 2.32). The dedication of the candles is presumably a Christianization of an old pagan custom.'®° In ‘pagan’ Rome Februarius was regarded as the ‘month of purification’. In the old Roman calendar February was the twelfth month and was so called because the Februa, the great festivals of purification and reconciliation, took place from the 11th to 28th of this month. At that time people went through the fields with torches to purge them by fire. Thousands took part in these processions. At the centre of the festivities stood the commemoration of the abduction of Proserpina by Pluto, when Ceres went to seek her kidnapped daughter by torchlight. The church turned the ‘pagan’ festival of purification

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into ‘the purification of Mary’. The occasion for this was a plague epidemic in Constantinople. According to Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), the inclusion of this festival in the Christian calendar from 701 onwards was to do away with a superstitious custom and change it into a better. Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607) said of it: “Because our holy forefathers could not completely exterminate the custom, they determined that burning candles should be carried in honour of the holy Virgin Mary. So what was formerly done in honour of Ceres is now done in honour of the holy Virgin. And what first happened for Proserpina is now done in praise of Mary.’

Imbolc became the feast of St Brigid, especially in Ireland.*°’ Beltine, Beltaine— 1 May. The First of May was called Beltine. ‘Bel’ is the sun god Belenus (‘shining’) and tene means fire. The fertile power of the sun has manifested itself in the power of the spring, which makes everything shoot up. The feast of Beltine was held in honour of this. The feast celebrated on 1 May was the spring festival. The fertility ritual was important at this festival. On the feast of Beltine fires burnt which were dedicated to the sun god. The growing power of the sun was symbolized by the kindling of fire, around which people danced in the direction of the sundial. ‘Fire’ was regarded as the earthly representation of the sun, as its earthly brother. According to tradition, on the feast of Beltine the holy fire was kindled by Druids at a central holy place with the offering of sacrifices. The ‘seed’ of this fire was taken to distant places by relays. The maypole, the sundial and processions through the fields are relics of this in popular custom. Of course it is no coincidence that May is called the month of Mary. The dedication of the month of May to Mary has been seen as an attempt to Christianize the folklore observances at this time of the

ear.*°?

‘ Mention is made of a Druid custom of kindling two fires for the god Bel in each district in Ireland during the month of May. ‘T'wo cattle from each herd were then driven through the fires to preserve them from sickness in that year. Clearly the feast could not be abolished, and so the church put it after the feast of John the Baptist on 24 June.’

Lughnasadh — 1 August. Lugnasadh (Lugh’s assembly or perhaps

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‘memorial’) is a harvest festival, and the main festival of the Celts. It is associated with the omnipresent god Lugh. Lughnas is the first day of August, and in Irish August bears this name. Lugnasadh was the most important harvest festival, marking the beginning of the harvest: the marriage of the sun god Lugh. Mother earth brings forth the divine fruit, bread. At the centre of the space where the feast was celebrated there was a hill-tomb to mother earth. Marriages were performed on this day. The festival must still have been celebrated around 560 in Tara, which indicates that Celtic and Christian customs continued side by side.'** The festival was celebrated on hill tops in Ireland, while in Gaul it was associated with the cult of Mercury. Lughnasadh is still celebrated as a feast in Ireland to this day. It is an example of the degree to which in practice Celtic influence continued to live on in Christian devotional practice.'®

Trish Christianity and nature One special feature of Celtic Irish Christianity is its relationship to nature. One could speak of a characteristic Celtic ‘theology of nature’. A collection of hymns and prayers from the year 680 has been preserved, from which we can see how the Celtic veneration of nature is combined in a special way with the Christian spirit. These motifs from creation and songs of praise are followed by texts about Christmas, the wise men from the East and the passion of Christ.’

One typical feature of the striving for holiness which is associated with the Celtic church was the long night vigil, in which believers stood in the sea up to their knees in prayer. Here one might think of St Cuthbert. He already has the hallmarks of holiness associated with the Celtic church. Bede wrote a life of St Cuthbert. Cuthbert is one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon saints. His life is an example of a holy Irish monk. He left his stamp on the church of Northumbria as monk, abbot and bishop. For a long time he had retreated to an island in the sea about nine miles from the church of Lindisfarne. Cuthbert travelled on foot, visited very remote villages, heard confessions and showed people the way to salvation. He preferred being a monk to being a bishop, being a hermit to being a monk. He kept night vigils in which he stood knee-deep in the sea, sea otters licking his feet while he prayed. His ‘fights with the demons’ in his

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island home and his last days in his cell eating dried onions to keep his weak body alive are regarded as high points of the Celtic striving for holiness.’7

One illustration of Celtic Christian devotion to nature is the old hymn St Patrick’s Breastplate (Lorica Sancti Patritit). \t is a prayer for protection. ‘Breastplates’ were perhaps originally magic pagan formulae against natural danger. A tradition in Irish monastic poetry puts great emphasis on the protective power of God. ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, called “The Deer’s Cry’ in Irish, is the most famous example. This anonymous poem from the eighth century is supposed to have been a prayer which Patrick uttered when the high king of Tara and his soldiers were on the verge of catching him in an ambush. The effect of this poem was for the king and his bodyguard to mistake Patrick and his men for a herd of deer and let them pass through.’ This hymn expresses typical Celtic piety: ‘The Triune God with his heavenly host and his marvellous creation of earth and sky and ocean is a living intimate presence,

the “divine milieu” of Teilhard de Chardin, the breathing together of all things of which the first philosophers of the West spoke so feelingly.”"”? While the first three stanzas have been called very Christian and orthodox, the fourth stanza has ‘the savour of preChristian religion’:9,150 IV

Vv

For my shield this day I call: Heaven’s might, Sun’s brightness, Moon’s whiteness, Fire’s glory Lightning’s swiftness, Wind’s wildness, Ocean’s depth, Earth’s solidity, Rock’s immobility.

This day I call to me: God’s strength to direct me, God’s power to sustain me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s visions to light me, God’s ear to my hearing, God’s word to my speaking, God’s hand to uphold me, God’s pathway before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s legions to save me: from snares of the demons, from evil enticements,

from failings of nature, from one man or many that seek to destroy me,

anear or afar.**’

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According to Donoghue, this expresses a central insight of the Celtic theology of nature: ‘It is the insight that Christ comes not to show up or illuminate the deformity of a fallen world but rather to release a beautiful and holy world from bondage ... and to dissipate the shadows that lie across all creation through the presence of the enemy and his dark angels. The new light of Christ is an enabling light, allowing the original glory of creation to glow and radiate . . 3 This is not the expression of a human righteousness confronting the divine righteousness of Christ [which is the way in which Pelagius’ thought is probably understood and interpreted — wrongly], but rather ‘an affirmation, difficult but possible, of an original righteousness which is the created image of the eternal Father and the all-holy Trinity’.‘'? The prayer ends with an adjuration in which the poet is literally surrounded by Christ: Vil Be Christ this day my strong pro-

Christ beside me, Christ before me,

tector; against poison and burning, against drowning and wounding,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ to right of me, Christ to left of me;

through reward wide and plenty...

Christ rising, Christ Christ Christ Christ

in my lying, my sitting, my in heart of all who know me, on tongue of all who meet me,

in eye of all who see me, in ear of all who hear me.**3

The Celtic Christians saw ‘the world of nature’ as the place in which God’s gracious power was at work and present throughout the natural world. ‘For grace in essence is a way of talking about God’s creative, life-giving, beneficient presence to and within all, both personal and impersonal entities, spiritual and material. And that is the comprehensive impression conveyed by Celtic Christianity at its best and most characteristic.”**4

King Arthur and the Grail legend The Arthurian legends are also relevant to the question of the link between Christianity and the Celtic tradition. In the mediaeval

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chronicles and poems, Joseph of Arimathea appears as the figure responsible for the conversion of Celtic Britain to Christianity. The legend has it that Christianity was brought by Joseph of Arimathea to Great Britain along with the ‘holy grail’ in which the blood of Christ was received when he was taken from the cross. He was also seen as the ancestor of the ‘national’ king Arthur. He is said to have begun the first abbey in Glastonbury, although the earliest remnants seem to come only from the sixth century.**> From the fourteenth century on, nine ideal figures were venerated who were thought to be in possession of the virtues of chivalry; Arthur was one of the nine. Three, Julius Caesar, Hector the greatest hero of Troy (Homer) and Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), were from antiquity; three, Joshua (Moses’ successor), king David and Judas Macabaeus, came from the Jewish world; while Godfried of Bouillon (c.1060-1100), Charlemagne (724-814) and Sing Arthur were regarded as three representatives of the Christian world."*

There seems once to have been a historical ‘Arthur’. The name of this legendary Celtic British king is mentioned for the first time in the early ninth century (826, but goes back to earlier sources) in the Historia Britonum of the Celtic historian Nennius. This last work contains the story of king Arthur, who ruled his people around 500 and defended them against the Saxon invaders. Arthur, the mysterious hero of the British opposition to the invaders, became the nucleus of many other stories and legends. Arthur’s acts are related not only by Nennius but also in the ‘flaming stories’ of the Mabinogion.**? The Mabinogion is the source of the Arthurian epic. This most important document of Welsh literature also includes the story of Kulhwch and Olwen. This is about a youth who seeks the hand of a giant’s daughter, as a result of which Kulhwch become the nephew of King Arthur. Arthur is depicted as a world ruler with magic powers, surrounded by knights. These elements are the oldest forms of the Arthurian romance. Arthur’s nephew Kulhwch has to engage in all kinds of adventures to win his bride Olwen, the giant’s daughter. The climax is the taunting and tonsuring of the giant — the latter is perhaps a last satirical reference to the condemnation by the Roman church of the

traditional Celtic tonsure.""®

Arthur crops up again in the tenth-century Annales Cambriae. These report that he died in 537 in a battle against the Anglo-Saxons. If Arthur was originally a local Celtic figure, Geoffrey (Gallfred) of

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Monmouth (between 1130 and 1140), the Welsh historian, made him a personality in world history — a ruler in war and peace. In a fight with his nephew Mordred, who had taken up arms for love of Arthur’s wife, both Arthur and Mordred were mortally wounded and Arthur was carried off on a ship to the paradisal fairy island of Avalon. Celts believed that from there he would one day return. According to other sources the mortally wounded Arthur survived in Avalon and never dies. Avalon means ‘land of apples’. Here the apple tree has a central place as a sign of eternal youth. Both the Germans and the Celts regarded apples as the fruit of eternal youth and immortality.’*?

The material of the legend of Arthur was increasingly developed, and incorporated independent sagas, like the story of the Grail. The vision of the holy Grail combined Druidic and Christian ideas. The chalice is a symbol of the moon; the host above the chalice symbolizes the principle of the sun. It is a jewel which must bring temporal and eternal bliss. The Grail was kept with the bloodstained lance in an unknown place, accessible only to the pure. The legend of the Holy Grail appears for the first time in Perceval, written by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes (1180-1190), the theme of whose Li contes del Graal is courtly love and the development of the perfect knight.'*° He also associates the Grail legend with Arthur. In the Cistercian Queste del Sainte Graal and in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Parzifal (c.1200), the legend of the Grail is combined with the stories of ‘King Arthur and the Round Table’. Chrétien de Troyes was the real author of the French Arthurian romance which later became so famous. He made Arthur the model of chivalry par excellence. He was the first to use the legend of the Grail and had a permanent influence on mediaeval German literature. In this literature Arthur is the great ethical model, the passive centre of a group of knights. Robert de Boron’s Christianized version Estoire dou Gral (Joseph d’Arimatie) (c.1190) is about the cup from the last supper in which Joseph of Arimathea received the blood of Christ under the cross. The most notable later versions are those of Richard Wagner in Lohengrin and Parsifal. The questions of origin remain open. At all events we cannot rule out the possibility that Celtic influences played a part, since for the Celts the cauldron is the symbol of superfluity and perfection. The Grail will have taken its place in the Christian version.’?!

A series of sagas centred on the court of King Arthur and his consort in Cornwall. Arthur was ‘the radiant sun of the universe’. While he

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instigated others to deeds of chivalry and all the knights returned to him after their journeys, he himself did not take an active part in events. We should not so much ask where the mediaeval castle of the Grail may have been as note that arrival at these holy places is connected ‘with an inward course of development’. In William of Malmesbury’s description we see ‘the inner spiritual power of spirituality blossoming from the soul of the Celtic world’.*”? That the stories about Arthur and his followers are a Christian or Christianized tradition is evident, among other things, from their veneration of the holy Grail, the cross, and other Christian emblems, and the prayers in church before knights go into battle. It was most important that King Arthur called himself ‘Lord of the baptized’, and where necessary took counsel with religious leaders. He defended not only the British heritage but also the kingdom of God*4 Joseph Campbell gave an interesting explanation of the origin of the Grail in an interview. According to an earlier author this cup was brought to earth by a group of ‘neutral’ angels who had taken no part in the dispute between God and Satan. ‘It represents that spiritual path that is between pairs of opposites, between fear and desire, between good and evil.’ The theme of the Grail stories is that the land ‘has been laid waste. It is called wasteland. It is a land where everyone is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you’re told, with no courage for your own life. That is the wasteland. And that is what T. S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land.’'*4 Earlier in the same interview he remarked that the Grail stories turned on ‘compassion with the injured king’. “The injured king, the Grail king, suffering from his incurable wound. The injured one again becomes the saviour. It is the suffering that evokes the humanity of the human heart.’ “The maimed king of the Grail legend is a counterpart of Christ. He is there to evoke compassion and thus brings a dead wasteland to life. There is a mystical notion there of the spiritual function of suffering in this world. The one who suffers, as it were, the Christ, comes before us to evoke the one thing

that turns one thing over and Dedalus,

the human beast of prey into a valid human being. That is compassion. This is the theme that James Joyce takes develops in Ulysses, the awakening of his hero, Stephen to manhood through a shared compassion with Leopold

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Bloom. That was the awakening of his heart to love and the opening of the way.’**°

Thus this ‘historic’ figure of Arthur developed into ‘King Arthur’, “who took on all the embellishments of the old Celtic gods, the remembrance of whom had survived down to Christian times’.'”° The Grail legend arose about 500 years after Christianity had spread through Europe. Here the Celtic and Christian traditions come together. There is said to be a continuity between the topic and figures of Celtic mythology and the persons and stories from the cycle of King Arthur. Most of these stories have the structure of initiation and are connected with the theme of a long and dramatic quest.'*7

Gawain and the Green Knight One of the knights of the round table is called Gawain. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a famous story probably dating from the second half of the fourteenth century."?® On New Year’s Day a ‘Green Knight’ enters the court of King Arthur riding on a green horse: He held a holly cluster in one hand, holly That is greenest when groves are gaunt and bare, And an axe in his other hand, huge and monstrous... . ‘By this branch that I bear, you may be certain That I proceed in peace, no peril seeking; For had I fared forth in fighting gear, My hauberk and helmet, both at home now, My shield and sharp spear, all shining bright, And other weapons to wield, I would have brought; However, as I wish for no war here, I wear soft clothes.

But if you are as bold as brave men affirm, You will gladly grant me the good sport I demand By right... Therefore in this court I crave a Christmas game, For it is Yuletide and New Year, and young men abound here. If any in this household is so hardy in spirit, Of such mettelsome mind and so madly rash As to strike a strong blow in return for another, I shall offer to him this fine axe freely . . .

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Let him leap towards me and lay hold of this weapon, Acquiring clear possession of it, no claim from me ensuing, Then shall I stand up to his stroke quite still on this floor, So long as I shall have leave to launch a return blow Unchecked. Yet he shall have a year and a day’s reprieve, I direct’ (10, 12, 13).

Gawain is the only one who dares to accept the challenge. He cuts off the head of the ‘Green Knight’ at a stroke. However, the knight stands up, picks up his head, takes his axe, and rides away with the words: “Go to the Green Chapel without gainsaying to get. . . Such a stroke as you have struck. Strictly you deserve it. As the Knight of the Green Chapel I am known to many; Therefore if you ask for me, I shall be found. So come, or else be called coward accordingly’ (21).

After All Saints’ Day Gawain goes in quest of the green chapel. The shield which he carries bears the emblem of the pentangle. First he was found faultless in his five wits. Next, his five fingers never failed the knight, And all his trust on earth was in the five wounds Which came to Christ on the Cross, as the Creed tells. And whenever the bold man was busy on the battlefield, Through all other things he thought on this, That his prowess all depended on the five pure joys That the holy queen of Heaven had of her Child. Accordingly the courteous knight had that queen’s image Etched on the inside of his armoured shield, So that when he beheld her, his heart did not fail (27).

Three days before the appointed time, Gawain arrives at a hunting lodge where he asks the way to the green chapel. This seems to be nearby, and he stays with the hunter. When he goes off hunting in the morning, his host invites him to exchange their trophies of the day when he returns. As soon as her husband has gone off hunting, the particularly attractive wife of the hunter makes passes at Gawain. As a knight of King Arthur’s court he resists the seduction. But he is given a kiss. That evening Gawain gives the knight a kiss as his trophy of the day.

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They both laugh. At the end of the second day the trophy is two kisses, which are again laughingly exchanged. For that peerless princess pressed him so hotly, So invited him to the very verge, that he felt forced Either to allow her love or blackguardly rebuff her. His courtesy was in question, lest he be called caitiff, But more especially for his evil plight if he should plunge into sin, And dishonour the owner of the house treacherously (71).

On the third evening the knight receives three kisses and accepts a girdle as a sign of the lady’s love and above all as an amulet against danger. In the evening he again exchanges kisses, but does not surrender the girdle. When he arrives the next day in the green chapel the Green Knight asks him to put his head on the block. He receives only a little scratch. Then the Green Knight, who proves to be none other than his host, tells him that he has sustained this scratch

because he has not given up the girdle.'*? Gawain gives an account of this to the court of king Arthur. He feels a deep shame about his

cowardice, which made him desire the girdle: The blood from his breast burst forth in his face. He shrank for shame at what the chevalier spoke of. The first words the fair knight could frame were: ‘Curses on both cowardice and covetousness! Their vice and villainy are virtue’s undoing. . . Lo! there is the false thing, foul fortune befall it! In being craven about our encounter, cowardice Connived with covetousness to corrupt my nature and the liberality and loyalty belonging to chivalry. Now I am faulty and false and found fearful always’ (g5).*3°

The story of the encounter between Gawain and the Green Knight already appears in the Old Irish Fled Bricrenn, the festival of Bricriu, from the sagas which derive from the Ulster cycle centring on the hero Ct Chulainn in the eighth century. There too the Green Knight appears at a feast. A giant with an axe offers to have his head cut off if the same person will consent to be his opponent the next day. Only Ca Chulainn ventures to accept this challenge. He keeps

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his word. The unknown figure does not cut off his head, but promises the hero the highest rank in Ulster."3' Celtic and Christian elements are combined in this story. There is a fusion between the ‘Germanic’ ideal of the brave warrior and that of the Christian hero. ‘The fusion of Christian ideology and the old ideals now oblige the knight to be considerate of those who are poor and weak. Now the important thing is more a way of life that is pure — and therefore “chaste” — from the perspective of Christian ethics. The intervention of the hero has a more emphatic inner motivation. Gawain is also clearly presented as a champion of these Christian virtues.’'3* The motif of beheading stems from Celtic sources and derives from the world of the Celtic sagas. The holly branch can be seen as a sign of ‘Christmas joy and peace’. The pentangle or pentagram, which was used as a magic symbol and was regarded as a protection against disaster, is given a Christian interpretation. However, when Gawain dons the green girdle for his final fight with the Green Knight, he no longer puts his trust as before in the Virgin Mary, in whose hands his salvation had always been, but in the magic charm of a worldly lady.'3> There is something ambiguous about describing the knight as ‘green’: ‘he is as green and vital as the powers of nature itself’. On the one hand green symbolized spirits, unearthly beings and the devil, and on the other it symbolized spring, life and rebirth. Possibly the Green Knight represents a pagan fertility god. Green is the colour of the Celtic underworld.*3* Campbell calls Gawain a knight who meets the foremost demands of the heroic character: the chivalrous virtues of loyalty, moderation and courage, ‘a European hero like Odysseus who remains faithful to the earth and returns from the island of the sun to his marriage with Penelope, which he has accepted as a duty, not abandoning but being loyal to the values of the life of this world . . Whether one follows the way of the Buddha or Gawain’s middle way, the way to fulfilment lies between the dangers of desire and fear.’’° This ‘Green Knight’ has connections with the ‘Green Man’, one of the best-known images of the old religion. He was always a central figure in the European fertility festivals. As with the Greek god Bacchus (Dionysus), his face was depicted with leaves coming out of his mouth (see the cover of this book). One can find his picture in

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numerous churches in Europe. His name has been preserved as ‘Jack of the Green’, in the Helston May dances and in the stories of Puck (cf. Shakespeare’s 4 Midsummer Night's Dream). He is probably also the origin of Robin Hood. ‘Robin Hood in the Green’ also represents fertility. He is clearly associated with the spring and new growth.’3° The origin of the well-dressing ceremony in Castleton, in England, is to be seen as a survival of the Green Man which perhaps goes back to the Druidic summer solstice festival, 24 June, which has become the feast of John the Baptist.'?’

Interaction between Celtic culture and Christianity In what way did Christianity take up or abolish Celtic culture? On the one hand, in Ireland, too, Christianity waged a harsh war against the influence of pagan religion. The lives of the saints relate how the ‘mouth of the grim ones’ (viz. the Druids) was silenced. Patrick tried to break the influence of the Druids. The asceticism of Columba and the monks is interpreted as a deliberate battle against the Druids. The monks were the counterparts of the Druids.'3° We can see from church sources that even after the death of Patrick, the conversion of Ireland was far from complete, and that the process of establishing Christian centres in the neighbourhood of pagan centres, as in Armagh and Kildare, was a long and difficult one. "39 But Irish monasticism must not be seen as hostile to culture. Early Irish monasticism, the strict asceticism without precedent, the flight from the world, were not meant as a denial of the world; rather, they bear witness to an affirmation of the creation and all its good things. For all their ‘wanting to be apart from the world’ and ‘directed towards God’, their prime concern was the service of their fellow human beings. The humanum stood in the foreground.**° The early Christian leaders were prepared to incorporate elements of old paganism into their own religious practice and assimilate them, rather than giving rise to a conflict of loyalties among the new converts. The veneration of Celtic holy places, springs and stones was not so much abolished as modulated by making them Christian places, springs and stones. The places were associated with Christian saints instead of with Celtic gods. St Brigid is the most telling example of this.

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In Alsace, before Odilia built the Hohenburg monastery on Mt Sainte Odile, sacrifices were offered there to the goddess Rosmerto by the Gallo-Romans. Before this time the Celts had worshipped their own Celtic deity Belen. The relics of a stone circle indicate the existence of a Druidic sanctuary."*’

The Celtic stories of saints are quite often reworkings of pagan myths. Another passage from the Life of St Patrick can be mentioned as an example. In it he attacks the sun-worshippers and says that anyone who continues with such worship will be exterminated. A certain Col (‘one-eyed’, an image for the sun, later Coll MacCuill and finally Machaldus) wanted to murder Patrick. But he was converted by the saint and became a local saint: St Maughold on the Isle of Man. This transformation of the sun into a saint makes it clear how a Christian saint could develop from a pagan being and shows how pagan mythology turns into Christian hagiography.**? Many old parish churches are connected with Romano-Celtic pagan sanctuaries.**? The pagan festivals were inserted into the church year. Even the themes of stories were Christianized in Ireland.*** It has been suggested that the inculturation of Christianity ‘succeeded’ better in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe. It was the general tendency of the Christian church to adapt as much as possible to indigenous customs and institutions, as a result of which there was a remarkably peaceful transition from ‘paganism’ to Christianity."4° A distinctive Celtic contextual Christianity developed in the Celtic context, which, as we have seen, is expressed among other things in

their own regard for nature. So we may conclude that in the relationship between Christianity and the Celts the ‘success’ of the Christianization was also due to the way in which Christianity became attached to gods (Brigid), holy places (Armagh, Kildare) and holy times (like Imbolc). There are just as many indications of the continuity between Christianity and pre-Christian Celtic culture. Brigid was venerated along with Patrick at sacred springs, on the tops of mountains and among old ruins. Both she and Patrick featured in the Christian calendar of saints. ‘Brigid and Patrick partly survived because a matriarchal symbol and a Druid saint could not just be abolished!’"*° So there can be no doubt that Christianity is indebted to the ‘pagan tradition of pre-Christian Ireland’.'*7

IV. The Gospel in the Germanic World

When infolk tales and poems Wesee the world’s true history, Then all perverse being Flies before a mysterious word (Novalts)

Introduction

‘Germans’ does not denotes a race but a linguistic and cultural group. It denotes a number of tribes which in the Roman period migrated east of the Rhine and north of the Danube in a very loose confederation. A distinction is made between the North Germans (Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Icelanders), the East Germans (Vandals, Goths, Burgundians and Langobards), and the West Germans (Franks, Alemanns and Saxons). The Germans differed from the Celts, to the north of whom they settled, in customs and

life-style. Whereas Caesar depicts them as barbarians, primitive and poor, the Roman historian Tacitus praises their natural purity, which he contrasts with the decadence of the Roman society of his time." After surveying the Christianization of the Germans we shall look more closely at important elements of their belief, and then see to what extent and in what way it continued to survive after Christianization. Was the old faith abjured on conversion to Christianity, or does the new faith also bear traces of the Germanic context? In what way was Jesus Christ understood and handed down in the Germanic context? We shall investigate the Heliand, which is regarded as the first German Christian epic, and some other early Christian writings. How are Christian concepts translated into the Germanic context? What is the relationship between the cross and the tree of life? In what way were Christmas and Easter connected with the Germanic context?

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The Christianization of the Germans Throughout missionary and church history an important role has been played by fugitives or slaves, like Aedesius and Frumentius from the Lebanon (who worked in Ethiopia around 400), the ‘Irish’ Patrick (who died c.461/490), or the Goth Ulfilas (his name means little wolf, c. 311-383 in Constantinople). For a long time Christianity was also spread among the Germans in this way: ‘One of the gradual ways in which Christianity came to the Germans may have been through prisoners of war who preached to their pagan conquerors.” Like Amandus in Flanders, Boniface used to purchase the freedom of prisoners and slaves, who were subsequently useful to him as missionaries and translators.’ Between the fourth and the eleventh centuries all the Germanic tribes accepted Christianity. The East and West Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Rugians and the Langobards accepted Christianity in its Arian form. According to Arius, the Son of God was not ‘of the same substance as the Father’, but was the first and foremost creature and ‘of like form’ with the

Father. In opposition to Arius Ulfilas rejected the creatureliness of Christ and his humanity. For him the Father was ‘one in substance’ with the Son, according to Scripture.

The Goths already came to know Arian Christianity as early as the fourth century, on the shores of the Black Sea. This form of Arian Christianity came to the West with the Vandals and the Burgundians. Up to the death of the emperor Valens (378), Arianism enjoyed official recognition in the Eastern Roman empire.* The West Goths received Christianity especially through Wulfilas (Greek Ulfilas). He was the son of a Goth and a Cappadocian woman. Around 341, Ulfilas was consecrated missionary bishop among the Goths. His great achievement was to translate the Bible into Gothic. The Germans had had runic writing before Ulfilas, but they made only limited use of it, above all for magical purposes. Ulfilas established an accurate alphabet.*> The Arian church historian Philostorgius (c.368-439) relates that Ulfilas did not translate the books of Samuel and Kings because of the warlike actions of the kings, since in his view this would have a bad influence on the militant Goths,

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Around 500, the first Germanic tribes and the Franks came over to catholicism, to be followed by the Angles and Saxons, the Alemanns, the Bavarians, the Friesians and the Saxons in Germany. The Franks, the most powerful Germanic tribe, occupied a central place in Western Europe because they were the first Germanic people to opt for catholicism in place of Arianism. Their Christianization began with the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks (466-51 I), who was baptized in 496/497.’ Clovis was married to a Burgundian princes Clotilde (473-545), who was catholic. Clovis himself finally also chose catholicism.*® He promised that he would become a Christian as soon as he defeated the pagan Alemanns. After conquering them he is said to have been baptized along with 3000 Franks in Rheims by Remigius (c.436—533), Archbishop of Rheims (‘the apostle of the Franks’). On this occasion Clovis is said to have declared: ‘We are leaving the mortal gods and following the immortal God whom Remigius proclaims.’ When Clovis was baptized, blinded by the light, on entering the church he asked the bishop, ‘Father, is this the kingdom that you promised me?’ Gregory I the Great was the first pope to realize the significance of the Germanic people for the Roman church and to bind them more firmly to his see in Rome.?

Charlemagne was responsible for the Christianization of the Saxons, the Wends and the Avars. Often the work of conversion began from the top, with the kings, and sometimes force was used. The use of force in conversion had been the order of the day since the emperor Theodosius (379-395), who put an end to freedom of religion.*° The Saxons were one of the tribes which held out against Christianity longest. It was above all with the help of the power of the Frankish kings that they became Christians. In 785 Widukind, a Saxon landowner, who had resisted for a long time, received baptism under pressure, with Charlemagne as his godfather. It is often pointed out that Charlemagne compelled the Saxons to become Christian by force, but this judgment needs to be qualified. Moreover, it seems that the significance of the kings for the conversion of the Germans must not be exaggerated. Only in some cases did kings force their people to go over to the new faith after their own conversion. Kings made an assembly of free arms-bearing

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~

The ‘Our Father in runes (from the first printed spelling book in Swedish 1611). >

men, the ‘d ing 5 > respons ible for dec i ing w hether the new fa ith was to be accepted Th 1S is Sai d to have been the case with kings Clov is, i Edwin (of Northumb ria )> and the two Olafs of Norway. > Itis cla imed that even Charlemagne s pun itive expe d itions against the Saxons had more to do w ith pol itics than m 1SS ion *? Only the forced deportat ion of thousands of Saxons to Fran kish te rritory an d

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the establishment of Frankish colonists among the Saxons led to their subjection.'? Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor in 800, identified his empire with the imperium christianum, with the city of God. That meant that being a Frank and being a Christian amounted to the same thing. Thus trust and loyalty in God and in the king were on the same wavelength. Consequently Saxons were seen as those who were fighting against the Christians. It was obvious that after conquests everyone had to be baptized, because a Christian ruler did not wanted to rule over pagan subjects. The preachers of the faith, like Willibrord and Boniface, came after the

Frankish kings or were in their service, and thus followed their course.'* Saxons who had become Christians and wanted to return to their traditional faith faced the death penalty. The children were all baptized. People were forced to go to church on Sundays. The free farmers had to give land if it was needed for building churches, and tithes were exacted on the produce. ‘These tithes have devastated the faith of the Saxons,’ remarked Alcuin. He wrote to the bishop of Salzburg: ‘A priest must encourage and preach piety, not be a collector of tithes.’ At a German missionary conference held at this time it was resolved that there should be no mass baptisms, and that force should never be used, nor money confused with the cause of Jesus.">

The Christianization of the Netherlands The names of Willibrord (658-739) and Boniface are particularly associated with the Christianization of the Netherlands. The first Anglo-Saxon preacher to cross to the European continent (around 678) and spend some months missionizing in Friesland was Wilfred (634-709). Bede relates that he was received peaceably and with tokens of honour by the Friesian king Aldgisl, who would not be persuaded to kill his guest. Many were instructed in the truth and baptized through Wilfrid’s preaching.’© One of the motives for the conversion of the Friesians is said to have been the good fishing and the exceptionally rich harvest that year, which was attributed to Wilfrid’s God. Like other Germans, the Friesians

sought a strong God who was well disposed to them."7

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Willibrord Willibrord, ‘the apostle of the Friesians’, was born around 658 in Northumbria and died on 7 November 739 in Echternach. In Echternach, where he is buried, every year there is a spring procession (three steps forwards, two backwards), which seems to derive from a pagan dance of joy."®

Willibrord received his education from Wilfrid, Bishop of York, and then Egbert (678-766), in the Irish monastery of Rathmelgisi. He arrived in Flanders some years after the death of Amandus.'? With eleven companions he sailed up the Rhine and landed in Friesland; the major domo Pippin II of Herstal (died 714) assigned him Friesland as a mission territory. His appointment was confirmed by the pope, and he later became archbishop of the Friesians. After the rebellion of king Radboud (died 719) in 714, he had to seek refuge in the abbey at Echternach. When he returned to Friesland during the rule of Charles Martel (714-741), he converted the majority of the Netherlands to Christianity. When the area was brought under Frankish government he was able to return to Utrecht. This shows how the expansion of Frankish power and the expansion of Christianity went hand in hand. Alcuin’s Life of Willibrord relates a number of miracles. Water plays a striking role in these miracles. Water was also holy to the Germans. They venerated the gods of springs and offered sacrifices to them. Willibrord’s miracles with water fit in well with the watery stretches of Friesland.*° There are many wells and springs in the Netherlands which commemorate Willibrord and bear witness to originally Irish customs. It is thought probable that the Willibrord wells were old sacred springs. The springs were used for baptizing people. Willibrord was able to perform the miracle of producing sweet water in salt water areas along the coast, as at the Willibrord Well in Heiloo.*" Heiloo is called Helichelo and Heilgalo in an eleventh-century document, which indicates pagan worship. At Heiloo there was a cult of ‘Our Lady of Oesdom’. In the first half of the seventeenth century her chapel had fallen into ruin. The old practice of pilgrimage was continued in a procession three times round the sanctuary. During a cattle plague in 1713 the well suddenly

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began to flow again. Both Catholic and Protestant farmers from North Holland flocked there because healing power was attributed to the water.”

Boniface Winfrith Boniface was born in South-West England. A West Saxon, he became a Benedictine monk and missionary. In the course of time the Benedictine and Celtic monks and their missionary traditions met and clashed in Northumbria. This encounter of the two traditions was to exercise the most abiding influence on Western European culture. Boniface emerged from the two traditions, of which the Benedictine seemed to be the stronger, a man ‘whose work did more than any other factor to lay the foundations of mediaeval Christendom’.*3 When king Radboud died, Boniface was in Utrecht, in the service of Willibrord. In 747 he withdrew into the monastery which he had founded in 744. This most important foundation also became his last resting place. In 753 Boniface went to Utrecht. He twice undertook a missionary journey to the Friesians; on the second he was murdered at Dokkum, on 5 July 754. Boniface had gone to Germany with the blessing and support of his bishop Daniel of Winchester, and maintained links with the church in England which sent him. He subsequently received the support of the pope. He was the pope’s official representative for reforming and reorganizing the Frankish church.** Boniface founded many monasteries in Germany, where seven Anglo-Saxon bishops were under his jurisdiction, because he clearly found the indigenous clergy hopelessly pagan and corrupt. Boniface enjoyed the protection of the secular authority, especially of Charles Martel and his sons. This protection was essential if his intervention was to be effective, say, in cutting down trees or destroying idolatrous and pagan temples. It made a great impression on the pagans that the idols did not punish him for this.*5 In a letter to Bishop Daniel of Winchester Boniface gave an explanation for such activity: ‘Without the protection of the ruler of the Franks I cannot rule the people of the church or defend the priests, clergy or pious servants of God; nor can I prohibit these pagan rites and sacrifices to idols in Germany without his assent and fear of him.’?°

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The fact that a large number of trees bore a small picture of Mary could indicate the continuation of the veneration of pagan holy places.”? In 1304 a chaplain in Zichem reports how for six months a ‘sacred oak’ has still continued to be worshipped because, it was said, ‘a miraculous power emanates from it’. The legend shows links with an existing tree cult which can also be found in the Netherlands in names like Jesus-oak.”®

The year 750 is given as the date by which the first Christianization of the greater part of Western Europe and the British Isles was completed and the conditions had been created for deeper penetration.

The Christianization ofScandinavia It took even longer for the Scandinavian peoples to be converted to Christianity than in other parts of Europe. There were already Christians among the first colonists on Iceland, but under following generations the land still had a ‘pagan’ culture. In Iceland it was accepted that the new faith was stronger than the old. At the beginning of the Viking period the whole of Scandinavia was still a thoroughly pagan area. It took 150 years for Denmark to be Christianized, two centuries before Norway and Iceland embraced the new faith, and more than three centuries before Sweden could be reckoned Christian.”? It was said of the Swedes that they were the most stubborn in holding on to pagan religion.>° In 960 the Danish king Harald Bluetooth accepted baptism. He resolved on this because he saw the great power of Christ, manifested by the protection which a missionary received in undergoing an ordeal by fire.3’ In 933 Norway had a Christian king, Haakon the Good (died 960), although at his death he received a ‘pagan’ burial.3* The dramatic Christianization of Norway took place under the two Olafs, Olaf Tryggvason (995-1000) and St Olaf (1014-1030). Olaf Tryggvason, who ruled from 995 to 1000, has been depicted as a wild and merciless Viking. He had had to flee from Sweden in his youth. Later, as a boy he was taken captive by pirates and sold as a slave. He was discovered in a slave market by a relative. He grew up to adulthood in captivity. He is said to have been converted by an encounter with a monk on the Isles of Scilly. He accepted baptism and returned to Norway in 995 to occupy the

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A silver cross from the Viking period (tenth century), found in a tomb in the burial place ofBirka, Sweden.

throne. He ruled for only five years, but he gained the reputation of being a soldier king who propagated Christianity with fire and sword.35 Olaf Haroldss6n (995-1030) was king of Norway from 1o16 to 1029. He fought the Danes in England, where he was converted. He returned to Norway in 1015 and became king the next year. His rough methods provoked opposition. He was exiled to Russia and died during an attempt to return. Under ‘St’ Olaf Norway can be regarded as Christian. This Olaf was the king who pulled down London Bridge with his grappling hooks and thus gave rise to the nursery rhyme ‘London Bridge is falling down’ 3+ The first Christian bishop ruled in Uppsala in 1164. An AngloDanish monk wrote about the final phase of the religious dispute in Sweden: ‘As long as things go luckily and well Svear and Goter seem

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willing to honour Christianity. A pure formality; for when things go wrong — bad harvests, drought, tempests and heavy weather, enemy attacks or outbreaks of fire — they persecute the worship which they seem nominally to honour, and they do this not only in words but also in deeds; then they revenge themselves on the Christians and seek to chase them completely out of their country.”*°

Germanic worship The names of some of the most important divine figures from the Germanic pantheon have been preserved in place-names which begin with the name of the god and end with lund (wood), vin (meadow) or ahr (field). At the same time this indicates that the most important rites took place in the open air. Names of gods have survived in English in the days of the week. Sunday and Monday recall the old worship of the sun and the moon, and Tyr survives in Tuesday, Wodan in Wednesday, Thor in Thursday, Freyja in Friday. Tacitus, who along with Caesar provides the earliest information about Germanic religion, identifies Wodan with Mercury in his

Germania. Caesar also makes similar identifications.*° The Germanic gods were neither ‘nature gods’ nor ‘ethical ideals’ but ‘state gods’, and like the Roman gods and the gods of the Greek polis were associated with ‘politics’. Thus the work of conversion by the Norse kings mentioned above coincided with the political unification of the country. Among the Germans a rule applied which was also to hold at the time of the Reformation: the one who controls the region determines the religion. Germanic religion was a matter of political community, and was closely connected with legal, political and social life. The political community was at the same time a cultic community.’’ A ‘list of superstitious and pagan customs’, possibly made in Utrecht, mentions the worship of Mercury (Wodan), Jupiter (Thor) and Freyja, ceremonies connected with the dead and at the tombs of the dead, sacred meals, choruses and songs, cults in the woods and by sacred stones, at springs and other holy places, conjurations and

soothsaying..2%

It is reported that the Saxons who were converted had especially to give up the old gods on their baptism. This abjuration of the devil

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took place on the morning of Easter Eve, when the creed was recited. An old Saxon formula has been handed down from Carolingian times which goes back to a baptismal ceremony in an Easter Eve vigil in the eighth century. The formula of abjuration used at it mentions such names as Wodan, Saxnot and the Unholds (i.e. the other gods). ‘Do you forsake the devil?’ ‘I forsake the devil.’ ‘And the guild of devils?” ‘I forsake the whole guild of devils.’ ‘And all the works of the devil?’ ‘And I forsake all the works and words of the devil, Donar and Wodan and Saxnot

and all the evil spirits who are their allies.’5°

This specific list indicates the suppression of the cults of Mercury-Wodan and Jupiter-Donar. The English missionaries were very concerned that the newly converted should understand the specific significance of their abjuration and what they believed in

their new faith.*° That the survival of the Germanic gods was not limited to the names of the days is evident from the account of a synod in 589 which issued a prohibition against the celebration of the Germanic Donar’s day. The church emphatically opposed veneration of this day. However, in some places the day was still being observed in the seventeenth century.*’ The Eddas

It is possible to get at least some idea of the religious belief and practices of the Germanic tribes from the Eddas. It is possible that the Eddas are close to the cultic rituals which were performed among them. This vital source of information about the world of the Germanic gods comes from the Christian period. The work arose in the period of transition from paganism to Christianity and therefore presumably has not only pagan and mythical but also Christian eschatological features. This raises all kinds of questions for exegesis, which may already be influenced by this Christian environment. At all events it is clear that there is no evident hostility against the ‘old faith’.4? A certain Saemund the Wise (1057-1133) opened a school at Oddi in Iceland, after studying in France. There he is thought to have written the Elder or Poetic Edda. The Younger Edda is

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attributed to the Icelandic statesman, historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241), who was a Christian. He went to the school at Oddi and was a pupil of Saemund’s grandson. He was a rich and important man who also had great political influence. A distinction is thus made between two Eddas, the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda. The name Edda has not been explained satisfactorily, though it has been connected both with ‘poetic art’ and with the place-name Oddi. The Prose Edda was meant as a handbook for poets in writing verse and in the doctrine of the gods. The material is treated through old Germanic mythology. From this book the old Icelandic skalds (court poets) could learn how to deal with the difficult mythological material and to describe it. The first part of the Edda contains ‘King Gylfi’s Blinding’, a brief survey of the whole old Norse creation myth. The long main part, Skaldskaparmal (‘language of poetry’), contains Snorri’s numerous illuminating strophes of the skaldic poems and a theory of verse. The Poetic Edda is an old collection of songs with sagas about gods and heroes. It contains myths of disaster, mythological information, and all kinds of proverbial wisdom, ‘moral teaching with a peasant ethic’, a series of heroic songs (Hamdismal) and a group of songs with episodes from the story, which is also known from the Nibelungenlied. The nucleus of the Nibelungenlied has been regarded as pre-Christian and extra-Christian. The last author is said to have added a Christian veneer. The Christianity in the Nibelungenlied is external.**

The Poetic Edda consists of ten poems about gods (including the Voluspd and the Havamal). The Havamél, “The Song of the High One’, is attributed to Odin, the ‘High One’. One of the most important songs about the gods is the fictious discourse of a seer or prophetess Vala or Vélva. The Voluspa is addressed to Odin, the divine pilgrim, who goes through the world in quest of deep experiences in order to acquire wisdom. The Voluspa opens with the words: Hearing I ask from the holy races, from Heimdall’s sons,

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both high and low; Your will, Odin, is that I relate old tales I remember

of men long ago.

It has been thought that this appeal to the gods assembled in the hall with which the Voluspa begins could have been the opening of a religious service. The main theme of the Voluspa is mortality. It describes the end of the world.t4 The composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was inspired by the Voluspa in his Gotterdammerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’). The visionary song describes primal times, the origin of the world, the battle of the giants and the gods and finally the end of the world: Ragnarok (‘the determination of the fate of the gods’). Then a new world is promised which has paradisal features.*5 The poet expresses his own fear about the fate of the world. The old world of Odin is perishing, the new world of Balder, the innocent dead god, will come: “The poem is the vision of a man who suffers over the wickedness of the present with its fighting and deceit, its sins and crimes, a man who longs for a reconciliation of the

oppositions which divide existence.’ The poem is the “gripping confession of a man who lives when times are changing: with all his heart he holds on to the old in which he has grown up, but the longing which has been aroused in him drives him towards the new’.*° The poet of the Voluspa can thus be seen as someone who lived on the frontier of two worlds, paganism and Christianity. In that case ‘dying paganism and eschatological Christianity’ meet in the Voluspa.*’ There may be Christian influences, especially in connection with the idea of the final battle.*® “The Voluspa indicates how myth takes on an ethical dimension around 1000 with the adoption of elements from the Christian tradition: the moral concepts of guilt and innocence, and the innocent god who is murdered, who is worthy to rule over a new world, following the downfall of Odin’s world.’*9

The Voluspa is said to draw deeply on the world of Christian ideas. The model of Christ’s death is said to be imitated in the death of Balder. Above all at the end, with its comforting harmonies, ‘the stream of Christian ideas breaks through the dam of pagan language’. ‘Poetic language feels strong enough to describe even

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Christian notions with its mythological imagery.’ The Voluspa is said to ‘offer us the golden fruits of Christianity in the silver shells of the skaldic poems’.°° However, Davidson rejects the notion that the conclusion of the Voluspa is influenced by Christianity. To see the downfall of the world as a battle is typically Germanic. In contrast to other mythologies, here the gods, too, get the worst of it. Although it has been said that the vision of the author of this poem is closer to the eschatology of Christianity than to the cosmology of the Germans and that it came into being under the influence of the apocalyptic prophecies of the church, it must be noted that the ideas and the feelings of the poet and the vision have no Christian features. Though certainly inspired by a familiarity with Christian eschatology, he learned to know his own ideas better and to express his own experience of his time.’

The Germanic gods and the new faith One reason for the difficulty in getting a clear picture of the nature of the Germanic gods is that we are dependent on descriptions by the Romans. These all too quickly identified Germanic gods with their own by an interpretatio Romana on the basis of certain characteristics which struck them: Wodan was identified with Mercury (not with Mars!), Donar with Hercules, Freyja with Venus. The names Aesir and Vanir denote gods in Old Norse. The Aesir ruled over the human world (Midgard), but there their power is limited by fate, which is known completely only by the Norns (‘goddesses of fate’). These last determine the fate of both human beings and gods. The name Aes appears as the first syllable in personal names like Astrid, Ansgar, Anselm and Oswald. It comes from asu, the old Indic word for (power of) life, or absuz, the Old German for beam. On Iceland they were revered in the ‘high pillars’ (ass = post, beam). If human beings dwell on earth, the dwelling place of the Aesir is to be sought in Asgard, the distant home of the gods. The earth is imagined as being flanked by hell in the north, the abode of the dead; the giants live in the east. Their home is called Utgard, and the gods are engaged in a constant fight with them. Later, Asgard is located in

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heaven and thus becomes ‘the heaven of the Germans’. There the gods held drinking bouts, played a game on golden tables, and daily met at the ‘ding’ to take counsel. The Prose Edda mentions the following Aesir: Odin, Thor, Balder, Fryr, Tyr (god of war’ = Saxnot), Bragi (god of poetry), Heimdal (‘the brightest of the Aesir’, ‘the watchful one’), Hoder (blind brother of Balder), Vidar (son and avenger of Odin), UI(r) (god of winter), Forseti ‘champion’, ‘judge’). Loki is also reckoned among the Aesir. Mention is also made of female gods like Freyja

(who is also one of the Vanir, see below) and Idun (the eternally young goddess with the golden apples). The Vanir, a divine race which possibly goes back to preGermanic origins, inhabited the heart of the earth (Wanaheim) and the depths of the seas. ‘They were gods of fertility, They had distinguishing sexual characteristics, and there were erotic relations between brothers and sisters, something that the Germans regarded as incest. The Vanir gave fertility to nature and prosperity to human beings. They were associated with agriculture and thus farmers, and had a matriarchal law. Well-known Vanir include Njord, the god of the sea and seafaring, and his children Freyr and Freyja, who were born of Njérd’s sister.s* Freyr or Fro (akin to him or identified with him), whose name survives in Franeker in Friesland (the one who

makes happy, ‘a field dedicated to the goddess Fro’}S and Vroonloo (in North Holland, now St Pancras), was a god worshipped among the Friesians. He came to be highly respected and was regarded by the Germans as the god of heavenly light, warmth, peace, fertility and prosperity. He ruled over ‘Light Alfenheim’ and has been connected with the feast of Yule, when the sun turns towards the earth again, Freyr, who is also called Ing/ Yngi (= lord, prince), was a god of peace, but also a bold fighter, According te Adam of Bremen (who died in 1081), a historian under Archbishop Adalbert (archbishop from 1043/45-1072), in his Hamburg church history, this god had a temple in Uppsala bedecked with gold, in which people worshipped the fertility god. Adam of Bremen speaks of it with abhorrence.s* Freyja is the sister of Freyr, whose female counterpart she is as the goddess of fertility, Her seat is next to Odin’s: she is his consort and the mother of Balder, She was regarded as the goddess of marriage

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and fertility, and represents the maternal principle, which made her popular among women. Along with Odin she cherished a great love for Balder, but could not protect him from death.*5 It is related that one of the first preachers in Iceland quoted to a great gathering of people a verse in which Freyja the goddess of fertility is called a *bitch’.° One of the functions of the Germanic Freyja, that of averting plagues of rats and mice, is said to have been taken over by St Gertrude.*7

In primal times the warlike Aesir began a cosmic battle with the Vanir, but they became reconciled, whereupon hostages like Njord, Freyja and Freyr were exchanged and from then on were counted as Aesir. After that the Aesir and the Vanir shared the rule over the world. This battle must presumably be interpreted as a fusion of two religions. It could also reflect a dispute in which an aristocratic class with militant gods combined them with the ‘fertility gods of the peasants’. The Aesir, at the same time ‘ancestors’ and ‘bearers of divine powers’, were later to become gods of heaven. They are closer to turbulent human life, whereas the Vanir are the gods of fertility.>*

Odin/Wodan Odin/Wodan, whose name still survives in the English Wednesday, is the chief god of the Germans. The cult of Wodan came from Saxony to Scandinavia. Place-names like Odense in Denmark recall this. Bad Godesberg near Bonn indicates worship of Wodan in this place. Wodan’s name is interpreted as ‘the raging one’, ‘the possessed’. Adam of Bremen translated his name as furor. In Old English the word ‘wood’, meaning crazy, was still known in Shakespeare’s time. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare makes Demetrius say, when he is lost in the wood: And here am I and wood within this wood Because I cannot meet my Hermia (II, i, 192-3).

This indicates that he is the god of ecstasy.*”

Odin, clad in a blue cloak with a large, soft hat over his forehead to

hide the fact that he is one-eyed, is seen as a ‘wanderer’. He goes round with his heroes at the most unseasonable times. On stormy

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nights he rides on his eight-footed grey horse Sleipnir — symbolizing the four corners of heaven.°° The eight feet signify great speed and that no obstacle is too high. Wodan is accompanied by two

wolves, Geri and Freki, and two ravens, Hugin (‘thought’) and Muninn (‘memory’), who sit on his shoulder and tell him all that is

happening in the world. In myths and legends Odin’s raven is always the messenger between earth and the divine world. Wodan’s miraculous spear (Gungnir) never misses its target. One of his main attributes is lightning. He is the Lord of battles, but in contrast to Thor never takes part in the battles himself. Initially Wodan was a guide of souls. He is a god of the underworld, and the souls of the warriors belong to him. He brings success in battle. As the supreme god of the Aesir he later bore the name ‘AllFather’. He is the father of the gods, the primal ancestor of the princely families.°" Egil, the most famous skald up to himself his son, who heaven must have served as ‘All-Father’ and ‘Father of lines like omnipater.©

of Iceland (died c.990), claims that Odin raised had died of an illness. Here too the Christian a model. Soon after that Odin, too, was called

Victory’, a designation formed along Christian

As war god, Wodan is god of war and death. He is at the head of Valhalla, i.e. ‘hall of the Val (= ‘choice’ or ‘death’)’. It is the divine counterpart of the royal court.°3 Valhalla has been popularized above all by the operas of Wagner.°+ Those who fall on the battlefield are taken to Valhalla by the Valkyries, where they rise to a new life. The Valkyries are daughters of Odin (the most famous was Brynhild, the beloved of Sigurd; cf. Brunnhilde and Siegfried in Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen), and Freyja the goddess of beauty rules over them. In Valhalla, the heroes who have fallen in battle

feast and the Valkyries serve them mead. The feast which is celebrated with the warriors in Valhalla is the ‘feast of immortality’.°5 They practise daily with their weapons to prepare themselves for the last encounter with the powers, the day of the Gotterdammerung. Kings still traced their genealogy from Wodan in the middle of the eighth century. The Christianization of the genealogies took place around a century later, when they were derived from Noah.

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The account of the life of Columbanus of Luxeuil contains the following passage about his appearance among the Swabians, who still believed in Wodan: ‘When he stayed there and went round among the inhabitants of this region he discovered that they wanted to offer an unclean sacrifice: and in the midst there was a great barrel full of beer. They said that they wanted to offer it to their god, called Wodan. On perceiving this reprehensible deed, he blew on the barrel, and in a remarkable way, with a loud crack it fell apart into small pieces and the beer spouted out; this was a clear indication that the devil had been hidden in the barrel and had wanted to gain power over the souls of those making sacrifices through the impure liquid. On seeing this, the barbarians said in amazement that the man of God had powerful breath because he could thus burst open a barrel reinforced with hoops; and after he had warned them with words from the gospel to refrain from sacrifices, he commanded them to return to their homes.”®7

Odin and the runes

Odin is also known as the god of wisdom and poetry. He is the god of poetic arts or ‘the prince of poets’. There is said to be something ‘uncanny’ about his wisdom and an element of craftiness in his concern for heroes.°® He was helped to achieve his wisdom by a drink from the spring at the foot of the world-tree Yggdrasil which the giant Mimir caused to flow, the water of which gave wisdom and knowledge. Ygger is another name for Odin and drassil means ‘bearer’ or ‘horse’. So the . . 6 cosmic tree is really none other than ‘the horse of the supreme god’.”°

Gunnléd, the daughter of the giant Suttung, allowed Odin to drink from the barrels in which her father kept the ‘drink of poetry’. Odin was ready to sacrifice one eye (his left eye) in exchange for acquiring knowledge and wisdom. He acquired knowledge of magic and the runes by hanging on a tree for nine days and nights, pierced by his own spear. The Havamial describes it like this: I know that I hung on the windy tree, hung there for nights full nine; with the spear I was wounded, and offered I was, to Odin, myself to myself,

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on the tree that none may ever know What root beneath it runs (139).

None made me happy with loaf or horn, And there below I looked; I took up the runes, shrieking I took them, and forthwith back then I fell (140).”°

Because Odin had hung there for a long time, he was later regarded as the guardian deity of all those who were condemned to be hanged or who perished by the noose.”* Hence his nickname ‘Hangagud’.’* The runes are the earliest written characters of the Germans. The word ‘rune’ comes from the Indo-European root ru, ‘mystery’, and the old High German word runer, ‘whispering’, The Germans thought that the runic signs were the bearers of mysterious forces. Every rune denotes both a letter and a word. Runes were not only used as writing but also had a magical cultic significance. Originally they were certainly also a cultic secret art with special apotropaic formulae, for protection or prosperity. The oldest known runic alphabet, called Futhark after the first letters, consists of twenty-four different letters. The runes were engraved on wood, stone, bones, implements and weapons. They were part of the symbolism of Germanic religion,

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and only later became mere characters. As a result of the rise of Christian culture, runic script was replaced by Latin script around the year 1000.

We ultimately find Christian crosses in the later runic alphabet, carved in serpentine patterns. But as Christianity gained a firm footing in the north, the runic invocations were replaced by: ‘This or that made this thing (e.g. a bridge) for his purpose.’ On the front of a rune chest from Auzon there is a depiction of the three kings. Pagan and Christian themes stand side by side, including some from the saga of Wieland the Smith. The ‘Song of Wolund’ is the first ‘heroic song’ in the Eddas. The Christian themes are sometimes commented on in runes and sometimes in Latin script.73 Runes were used by the church in the British Isles. One attractive example of this is the Ruthwell Cross (Dumfriesshire, c.700), decorated with pictures from the Gospels connected with The Dream of the Rood, ‘one of the greatest religious poems in English literature’. The presupposition of both is said to be ‘a statement of the relationship of God to his creation, out of which the artist constructs a formal meditation on the nature and power of Christ’.7* In this Old English poem Jesus Christ is called ‘the young hero’. It should be noted that Freyr is used here as a title for Christ. ‘I saw there the Freyr of mankind.’ The poet describes how in a dream he saw the ‘wondrous’ cross. Christ ‘the young hero’ hastened to ascend his cross in order to redeem humankind. Many came to pierce him. The whole creation wept over his death. The mention of a ‘miraculous tree’ and the ‘shaking of the tree’ (viz., the world tree, Yggdrasil, see above) can only be explained against a ‘pagan’ background. Sometimes pagan belief in the power of myrd, ‘fate’, is mentioned. The weeping of creation clearly suggests the weeping over the death of Balder.”°

Many runic stones found their way into churchyards and were even incorporated into church walls, a practice owing more to economic than religious considerations. The tenth-century Jelling stone contains the first depiction of Christ in Denmark.”° Around 985 Harald Bluetooth commissioned an inscription on a splendidly sculpted runic stone in Jelling (Jutland) which states that he ‘subjected all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians’. By virtue of these last words, it is the commemoration of the official triumph of the new faith in Denmark. There is a crucifixion scene on the massive Jelling Stone, and on the reverse side a depiction of Christ with outstretched arms and a dragon.

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There is a copy of the stone in the cathedral in Utrecht. Under the sanctuary of the Romanesque stone church in Jelling remains have been found of a little church which was presumably the first chapel of king Harald Bluetooth. In all probability the traces of the earlier wooden structure come from his father’s pagan temple. The oldest stave churches often rest on the foundations of razed pagan sanctuaries.’7

This runestone from what was once a ‘pagan’ sanctuary in Felling shows Christ in chains, in accordance with ‘pagan’ tradition.

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Odin and Christ The story of Odin hanging on a tree is sometimes thought to show signs of Christian influence. In poetry Odin appears with new features as ‘the hanged god’, a notion which indicates a clear assimilation to the crucified Christ. The idea of God who hung on a tree as a sacrifice is said to be foreshadowed in the image of Odin on Yggdrasil.7* The following parallels are drawn between Christ on the cross and this Odin on the tree: — Christ hung on the cross. In many mediaeval traditions the cross is regarded as a gallows or tree of life. One of the earliest allusions to the connection between ‘the tree of life’ and the cross is to be found in Justin Martyr. Anastasius Sinaita referred to this connection with the expression “The cross of Christ is the wood of life.’7? One of the first great ‘theologians’ of the early church, Origen, already uses the cross and the tree as one and the same symbol. In the Eastern church, Christ appears as the one who is nailed to the tree.*°

— Both Christ John 19.34) and Odin are wounded by a spear. But on the other hand there are also striking differences: — Christ offered himself for others; Odin himself.

offered himself for

~ Christ died on the cross; Odin did not die on the tree.*

So we can talk of a connection between the hanged Odin and Christ only in a derivative sense. Probably the hanging on the tree which evokes the comparison with Christ has more to do with an initiation rite, and can be better explained from shamanistic practices.” Traces of Odin have been preserved in one particular way in some church buildings, on the pillars. The wooden mask of Odin looks down with one eye into the nave from one of the capitals in the wooden church of Hege in Norway. His head is still depicted in this way in the Norse stave churches and in Romanesque and Langobard churches.

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Odin, the one-eyed god. The tongue sticking out corresponds with the notion that Odin was the god of those who were hanged. We might ask whether the all-seeing eye which is encountered now and then in churches, for example in St John’s church in ’s Hertogenbosch, contains a reminiscence of Odin’s eye.

So belief in Odin continued to live on in some sense after the coming

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of Christianity. Soon after the year 1000 a skald who must already have been a Christian thanks Odin for the gift of poetry. Around 1180 the Icelandic monk and historian Odd Snorrason relates that Odin was the one who had given the Swede Styrbjrn victory over his enemies. Around 1200 Odin was still a living reality in the highest circles as god of war and battle. ‘Perhaps the church preferred the old Odin to keep this old un-Christian office.’ In late mediaeval Norse ballads Odin is still on the side of human beings in their battle with the giants. Down to the nineteenth century he was seen as someone who helped people in need.°3 Odin, St Nicholas and StMartin

The festivals of St Nicholas and St Martin are instances of the survival of pre-Christian notions connected with Odin, though both festivals arose out of church usage. A legend grew up around Nicholas, who was bishop of Myra in southern Turkey in the first half of the fourth century. Veneration of him became widespread in countries like Greece and Russia (whose patron saint he is). He was venerated in Constantinople from the sixth century on. In the tenth century, veneration of him spread to Germany, England and France. In 1087 his bones were moved to Bari in southern Italy. There are few popular festivals in which so many old Germanic customs have been preserved as they have in that of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). This feast has continued to be observed the most persistently in the Netherlands.°4 We can discover many ancient features of old Wodan worship in it. The old ‘beloved’ Wodan clearly cannot be forgotten, and this may explain the enthusiasm for St Nicholas. The holy month begins on 6 December. On that day people celebrated the coming of Wodan. During the month Wodan went by, going around on earth to punish the disobedient. In some respects it can be said that St Nicholas has taken the place of Wodan. People continued to recall Wodan in the figure of Santa Claus, though now completely unconsciously. He was given Wodan’s grey beard. He may not have worn Wodan’s cloud-hat, but he did wear a mitre. He was made to ride through the air and over the rooftops, as Wodan once did. He blessed the trees. Wodan made the land fertile for the following year. The eight-footed Sleipnir on

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which Wodan rode becomes Santa Claus’s horse, who like the ‘wild huntsman’ also comes down the chimney.*5 Wodan held in his hand

his spear which never missed its mark, and was accompanied by his faithful servant Eckart. ‘Black Peter’ was a popular name for the devil. Black Peter can be seen as a substitute for Wodan’s loyal Eckart, although according to some interpretations, because of the replacement of southern Italy by Spain, to which St Nicholas’s bones were brought, his servant was imagined as a Moor and therefore thought to be black. He can also be seen as a representative of old spirits and his black face can be attributed to that. ‘Plague spirits’ were thought of as being black. Peter’s rod is not for disciplining, but is to be regarded as originally having been a fertility rod. Blows from a green branch were thought to produce fertility, and a blow with his magic rod brought growth and fertility.*° Animals, and later parts of animals or their hearts, were originally offered to Wodan. In later times these were replaced by cakes or bread in the form of a deer. This usage has been preserved in Christmas cookies. The wild boar, dedicated to Fro, who in the

summer rode on his wild boar over the budding ears of corn, was an animal often used in sacrifice. The pig was thought to bring good luck, and that would explain the popularity of the marzipan and chocolate pigs, hams and boar’s heads eaten at Christmas. Almond cakes — like marzipan and other sweetmeats — were originally the old sacrificial offerings at Roman feasts of the dead, which have found themselves a place among the St Nicholas cookies. People put out shoes for the good saint as a request for gifts. The handful of hay which was put down under the chimney for the horse must be seen as a survival of a harvest offering. In many places the last part of the harvest was kept until Christmas, and then cooked and eaten. There were even places where people put the grains of seed into the ground. Here the straw is an offering to the god of fertility and especially to his horse. A decree of Eligius (c.5g0—660), a bishop in Belgium and a favourite popular saint, forbade the baking of cakes in the form of human beings or animals.*7 The festival of St Martin is the other festival connected with the presumed survival of customs connected with Odin/Wodan. Traces of the survival of belief in Wodan can also be found here. Martin

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(died 397) was originally a Roman soldier. He once gave half his cloak to a beggar. In the night Christ appeared to him in a vision, clad in part of the cloak, saying, ‘When I was naked you clothed me’ (Matt.25.36). Christ led Martin to receive baptism and become a monk; he soon left the army. With Hilary of Poitiers (c.3 15-367) he founded the first monastery in Gaul at Ligugé. In 372 Martin became bishop of Tours. He destroyed pagan temples, hewed down sacred trees, and overthrew the altars and the images which were worshipped in the villages.** He died on 11 November, the day on which he is now celebrated. The cloak which Martin shared with the beggar in the city gate of Amiens was called cappa and was preserved in a capella by a capellanus (hence our word chaplain). This cappa provided support for the Merovingian Franks and was carried around in war.*?

The day of the Old Saxon nodfiur became St Martin’s Day. Martin as it were took the place of Wodan. The Germans held their autumn and harvest festivals at that time of year. Songs of praise were sung in honour of the giver of these blessings. In their harvest festivals the Germans lit fires of joy on hills. Now fires were kindled on St Martin’s Day. In most places children carry torches in their processions, paper lanterns or hollowed out swedes with candles in them. The old Germanic autumn fire which was kindled at various places came to be called St Martin’s fire. Eating geese on St Martin’s Day recalls pre-Christian customs. Presumably the goose was an ancient thanksgiving for the harvest. The Romans offered a goose to Mars. Perhaps Roman soldiers brought this custom with them, and the affinity between Mars and Martin resulted in the offering.”°

The goose was a bird dedicated to Wodan which took part in the socalled ‘wild hunt’. In Utrecht an open space is called the Goose Market. It was the custom for the ‘master’ and the ‘minister’ to be sent a whole goose. From 11 November all through the winter people played the game of goose. At harvest festivals a goose was sacrificed and eaten at meals. The Friesians are said to have had the custom of eating a goose at Christmas. The ‘Mother Goose’ stories have been connected with the fact that the head of the slaughtered

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goose was stuck to the wall and this was used for telling fortunes, or that all kinds of stories were told in the fantasy of the feast. Priests

predicted the future from the breast bone. The existence of Christmas stories than became linked with this.°"

‘The Germans are not very moderate in their thirst,” wrote Tacitus. At harvest festivals the new wine flowed in honour of Wodan, the giver of all good things. So it is not surprising that when Christianity came, St Martin became the patron saint of the wine-growers, In Germany he is the patron saint of the vineyards, It is said that the Saracens conquered Jaffa on St Martin’s Eve, when none of the German crusaders was sober!

Ther/ Denar

Just as Odin was identified with Mercury and Tyr with Mars, so Tacitus connected Thor with ‘Hercules with the club’. The Remans also identified Thor or Donar with the storm god Jupiter. Denar/ Thor gave his name to Thursday (in Dutch Donderdag and in

German Donnerstag). Thor, the son of Wodan and the earth goddess Jérd (Mother Earth), is the most respected and most important god among the Aesir after Odin. He is the bravest and strongest of the Germanic xegods. In Norway? Thor was the chief god, , ng and for the Icelanders the most important figure in the divine

heaven. Some place names (Torslunda, Torshow, Tersker) indicate

his popularity in the time of the Vikings. Thor is seen as being ‘democratic’, while Odin is thought of as aristocratic: the god of the ruling class. If Odin was worshipped more by the upper levels of society, Thor was worshipped by the peasant population. He was seen as the friend of ordinary people. He was as much feared as honoured,

Thor is the god of rain, thunder and war, This red-bearded god of thunder rides on his chariot through the air, brandishing his hammer: the thunderbolt, thunderstone or méleir. Thunderstorms are a Summer phenomenon, and so as bringer of rain and thunder Denar is an agricultural god. As vegetation deity he protected the harvest, and with his giant hammer broke up the earth to make it fruitful. When he used the hammer to slay an enemy it retumed automatically to his right hand, like a boomerang. In mythology,

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lightning and thunder become weapons or implements which the gods carry with then. Thor is the defender of Asgard. In Germanic mythology Donar with his iron hammer established a new order among human beings. He was a powerful god of battle who slew the giants with his hammer. The hammer played an important role among the Germans, for example at marriages, at the consecration of the threshold of a

house or in marking the limits of a fortress. The hammer was also carried as a sacred sign in the form of an amulet (cf. the chairman’s hammer!).

The poems of the Edda express respect for Thor’s power, but this is usually represented in a comic way. It emerges, for example, in the ‘Song of Farbard’, in which the ‘brave’ naive peasant god Thor is compared with the crafty Odin. Odin makes fun of Thor: Odin has the princes who fall in battle, but Thor has the slaves.”

Thor had a great sense of humour and an incredible appetite. He even ventured to wrestle with old age and death for the sake of humankind but could not win the combat. Here the serpent of Midgard was his main enemy. He tried vainly to destroy it several times, and succeeded in the ‘twilight of the gods’, but was himself killed by the poisonous snake.”° Uppsala was regarded as the stronghold of Odin, Donar and Freyr. In 1070 Bishop Adam of Bremen described the pagan rites there. He reported that great sacrifices were still being offered annually around that time. There was a pagan temple in Uppsala with statues of Odin, Thor and Freyr. Thor’s throne occupied the most important place, between those of Odin and Freyr. Freyr gave peace and pleasure to creatures and his status was adorned with an immense erect phallus. It was the focal point of pagan religion and a stronghold of agitation against Christianity. The temple of Uppsala was probably destroyed at the beginning of the twelfth century. In 1080 a temple was replaced by a Christian church.”

In a tenth-century poem people in the North are called “Thor’s people’. The expression ‘people of God’ (muinter Dé = the Irish) is used several times alongside ‘people of Thor’ (muinter Toir = the Vikings).°7 The cult of Thor continued to be practised for a long time in Europe. The Normans continued to venerate him as the god

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for certain ceremonies (the place-name Turville recalls him). In the eleventh century he was still being worshipped enthusiastically by the Vikings in Dublin.°*

The church in old Uppsala built near or on the place where the sanctuary of Odin, Donar and Freyr once stood.

Thor, Christ and Olaf At the end of the ‘pagan’ period Thor was thought to be the foremost opponent of Christ. Sometimes Thor comes off better than Odin in the Christian accounts. But he is also depicted as a coward who does not dare to oppose the Christian king and his followers.°? Whereas in paganism Thor was the one who fought against the giants, in the new religion it is Christ who fights against the demonic powers.*°° In war Christ proved to be a stronger help than Thor, a hero who had overcome death.*®" It is related of King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway that he and other converts destroyed holy places and pulled gods out of their sockets. On his visit to the temple of Thor, Olav Tryggvason declared that Thor was powerless, compared to the God of the Christians. As a challenge to the worshippers of Thor in this temple, Skeggi, after

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making the sign of the cross Olaf pulled the ropes of the chariot on which the statue stood. When this was interpreted as a sign of Olaf’s veneration of Thor, Olaf struck the statue off the chariot. The sign of the cross strongly resembled the sign that the worshippers of Thor made with the hammer. Thor’s hammer resembles a Christian cross. In certain instances, for example on a runic tombstone from Denmark, one can ask whether what is depicted is a christogram or a hammer.'°* When the Christian king Haakon the Good made the sign of the cross over the head of a sacrifical animal, bystanders interpreted this as making the sign of the hammer in honour of the god. The small crosses worn by Christians strongly resemble the hammer amulets which were worn throughout Scandinavia in the tenth century.’° In later Viking times the pagan northerners chose Thor’s hammer and not Odin’s spear as the symbol with which to oppose the Christian cross.*** When towards the end of the tenth century Olaf Tryggvason sent a Christian, Thangrad, to Iceland to convert the island, he met with opponents who included a poetess, Steinvor. In the public dispute which she is said to have had with him she declared that Thor had challenged Christ to a duel, but that Christ dared not fight. ‘Haven’t you heard that Thor challenged Christ to a duel and Christ didn’t dare to meet Thor?’ Thereupon Olaf’s missionary replied: ‘I’ve heard that Thor would be nothing but dust and ashes if God did not give him life.’ In a poem the poetess praised Thor, claiming that Thor had made Thangrad’s ship suffer shipwreck and that Christ had not been able to protect him.'°>

No one showed greater zeal for the faith than the newly-converted Olaf Tryggvason. During his five-year reign he drove the Norse people to Christianity.'°° There was a cruelty in Olaf which also emerged in the Christian ‘Diocletian’ Charlemagne.'°”? During the rule of Olaf Tryggvason in Norway there were many martyrs for the old faith, while conversely in the Roman world there were many Christian martyrs.'° It is claimed that in the time of the Vikings Christianity was little more than ‘old paganism in a new form with only the names of Christ and Thor exchanged’. The main new development was that Christians did not eat horsemeat or offer human sacrifices.'°? Olaf was worshipped in place of Thor because he was nearer than Christ. As soon as Olaf died the harvest failed, so he was soon invoked in

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place of Thor for the prosperity of the harvest.''® All kinds of illustrations and images can be given of the way in which Christian and ‘pagan’ elements are combined with Thor. Thus the Thorstone from Bride represents a Christian cross with Odin beneath it, while above it on the shaft two dwarves support the firmament. On the other side there is a bearded Thor. A famous incident is depicted on one of the panels: a fishing trip in which Thor tries to catch the world serpent which lay round the earth.""* It is said of Helgi the Lean, who grew up in Ireland and went to Iceland from Northern Britain in 890, that he had a ‘very mixed faith’. He believed in Christ, and called his new court after Christ

(Krist-ness), but invoked Thor when he was at sea or ‘in great need’!'"* In Thomas Carlyle’s famous Heroes and Here Worship, there is an interesting passage on ‘the last appearance of Ther’. At the end of the chapter “The Hero as Divinity’, Carlyle writes: “And now, connected with this, let us glance at the last mythus of the appearance of Thor . .. I fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of Christianity, — set forth repreachfully by some conservative pagan. King Olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing Christianity; surely I should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stikelstadt, near that Drontheim, where the chief cathedral of the north has now stood for many centuries,

dedicated gratefully to his memory as Sain? Olaf. The mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the Christian reform king, is sailing with fit escort along the shore of Norway, from haven to haven; dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers address him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful shore: but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus: ‘Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful with the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you; and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jétuns, before he could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care!” said the stranger, drawing down his brows; — and when they looked again he was nowhere to be found. — This is the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world!"'S

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Although in the eleventh century pagan belief in Scandinavia had to capitulate to Christian faith, which was better organized, for a long time opponents still felt a loyalty to Thor and Freyr. The veneration of ‘St Olafis an example of how veneration of the saints replaced the worship of certain gods. So all kinds of traces of Germanic gods can be found in many of the saints of the mediaeval church. The veneration of saints as it were replaced polytheism. The three most important German gods could easily be replaced by the “Trinity or by three saints. Wodan was replaced by St Michael, St Martin and St Nicholas. Both Wodan and Martin were wild huntsmen. Thor was also replaced by St Peter. Peter the fisherman was depicted with a great key, while Thor was depicted with a gigantic hammer for catching the world serpent.'’* St Erik of Sweden (IX, died 1160, surnamed Helgj, ‘the holy one’, as he was never officially declared a saint), who built the great church in Uppsala, could be a Christianization of Freyr.

King Olaf (c.g9g5—1028) was canonized in 1031. Olaf of Norway is regarded as the first and great saint of Norway. He became a patron saint of the country (19July), and his canonization marked as it were the reconciliation of Norse and Christian traditions.’ The later kings of Norway are regarded as representatives of St Olaf, just as in pagan times the kings of Sweden were the successors and representatives of the God Freyr.‘’° Olaf very soon took the place of Thor as the patron of farmers, the champion against the trolls and witches, and the ideal of the Norse warrior. So St Olaf was really a Thor redivivus. He retained the hammer as the Christian cross. In one picture he seems to be a kind of reincarnation of the god Thor. Olaf became as it were a substitute for Thor and is depicted with an axe in his hand.**7 An effigy of St Olaf was still being carried round in Vastergotland in the nineteenth century to secure a rich harvest, as used to happen in Uppsala with an effigy of Freyr."”* An original Olaf chapel was uncovered in excavations on the Sea Dyke in Amsterdam. This was built by the then city gate around 1450. This chapel is named after the saint, who was not only venerated as the one who brought Christianity to Norway but was also popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries among merchants and seafarers.’

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Saxnot

The name Tyr is echoed in our Tuesday (day of Tyr). In Latin this day was called dies Martis (mardi in French). Tyr was the god of the ‘ding’ or the popular assembly. He is a Germanic god of war and justice. He was involved in procedures connected with popular justice. His symbol was the sword. The meaning of the name Saxnot has been connected with ‘swordcompanion’ or ‘sacrificial god’. In this last case it is worth considering the suggestion by Dumézil that the triad Donar, Wodan and Saxnot in the Saxon document correspond to the triad in the temple of Uppsala."**

St Olaf’s chapel in Sigtuna, Sweden.

In contrast to Odin, Saxnot did engage in fighting. He was able to tame the monster Fenrir, the most dangerous demonic being (the son of Loki and brother of the Midgard serpent and Hel). He lost his right hand in overcoming the Fenrir wolf, so that from then on he had to wield his sword with his left hand. The Germans celebrated his extraordinary courage with sword dances at their harvest festivals. Prisoners of war were sacrificed to him. At the end of the

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world Tyr and Garm, the bloodstained hound of hell, destroy each other.’”’ Alongside these three main gods, Odin, Donar and Saxnot, I want to mention just three oth ers W ho can b e said still to have had some influenc € after Christiani zation: Hulda > B ald er and Loki.

This carving from a Norse church possibly depicts Odin being devoured by the wolf Fenrir in the ‘twilight ofthe gods’.

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Hulda, Holle, Bertha

Pre-Christian belief in a fertility goddess has been preserved in many areas. In Germany such a figure is called Holle, Frau Holle and also Perhta or Berhta. Frau Holle, Holle, Holda, Hulda, perhaps goes back to an old Norse fertility goddess. She was a maternal goddess who ensured the fertility of nature and society. In

folk tales she is a motherly figure.’*? In sagas from Hessen, Franconia and Thuringia she also appears as a friendly figure offering help. She was benevolent, although at times she could be terrifying. In Christian times she is seen as a witch. In her nocturnal rides Hulda is followed by spirits of the dead, including those of unbaptized children. Christian theologians and demonologists transformed belief in the nocturnal rides of Holda, Perhta, into the

‘witches’ sabbath’ on which meetings took place.**? Hulda is mentioned in Germany as early as the tenth century, and in popular fantasy she was thought of as a tall woman of wondrous beauty clad in a white robe with a golden girdle. Places of judgment were holy to her, since she was regarded as the goddess of justice. Of trees, the lime tree in particular is dedicated to her. The figure of Mother Earth lives on in her, into whom one descends as one

descends into the world spring.*** In Scandinavian mythology ‘Hel’ is the goddess of the kingdom of the dead. She is the daughter of Loki and Angurboda, a giant, a beloved of Loki. This last couple brought forth not only Hel but also the terrible Fenrir wolf and the Midgard serpent, which was to play a role in the ‘twilight of the gods’. In old Norse mythology Hel denotes both the place and the one who rules over it. Niflhel, the realm of the goddess Hel, is the deepest abyss on earth. She dwells in the darkness of the earth, surrounded by night and cloud. The Germans understood this as the abode of those who had not fallen on the battlefield, but had died of old age and sickness. The repugnant realm of the dead was the abode of criminals, vagabonds and cowards.'*> Belief in the underworld occurs throughout the Germanic world. Once anyone has entered this realm, he or she never comes out of it. Moreover, while it was a repulsive realm of shadows, it was not a place of punishment.

However, in Christian usage this word ‘hell’ took on new meaning. Hell became a place where sins were punished.'*® In Christian popular tradition the figure of the great goddess became the figure of Mary the virgin and queen of heaven. ‘Just as in

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the Bible Job received recompense sevenfold, so in the folk tale of Frau Holle Good Mary, after all her unjust suffering and her despair, is the only one who is really enviable and happy. This is precisely the sense in which we have to interpret the image of the golden rain of Frau Holle, who in this case is identical with the Germanic goddess Freyja. For Freyja is also called the goddess who is spared through her tears and whose tears turned into gold.’*”7 Balder

Balder is the son of Odin and Freyja.’** This blonde god of light is the brightest figure among the Aesir as god of the sun, light and spring, and is also the personification of goodness and justice. He is warlike yet gentle in character. He is the supreme judge and the most understanding of the gods. In this capacity Balder pronounced judgment on gods and men as ‘president’ in Asgard. His verdicts were marked by justice. He dwelt in Breidablick (‘wide view’) in Asgard with his wife Nanna.

Balder had such dreams that the gods feared that he would suffer great misfortune. Odin asked a female seer to interpret them. She predicted Balder’s death and with it the end of the world. The gods now resolved to do everything possible to protect Balder. His mother put all nature under oath not to cause him any suffering. However, the mistletoe was passed over as being of no account. Originally popular belief attributed disastrous properties to the mistletoe. It was hung on beams to drive away evil spirits from the stable. The mistletoe as a Christmas decoration was thought to bring good luck.

Balder seemed invincible, even when he was shot at in jest. But at the instigation of the crafty Loki, Balder’s blind brother Hdd killed him with mistletoe. His wife Nanna, who had loved her husband deeply,

died of sorrow and went with him to ‘Hel’. On the instigation of Odin

Freyja mounted the steed Sleipnir, went to Hel and asked for Balder to be released. This was promised her on condition that all nature wept for Balder. This suggests that Balder was a spring god and that the rites were meant to encourage a thaw.**?

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Everyone was prepared to weep except a giantess, who proved to be none other than Loki. He refused to weep, so Balder had to remain in Niflheim. It was thought that Balder would return one day, after the end of this world.'%° The myth of Balder and his brother’s unfortunate shot appears in a historicized form in the old English saga of Beowulf, an epic from Anglo-Saxon times, written by an unknown Christian between 675 and 850. Beowulfis regarded as the archetype of the Germanic hero. The young Beowulf, nephew of Hygelac, king of the Gauts, went from his land to Heorat the hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes. He rid him of the demon Grendel, who had human form. For twelve years Grendel had taken Hrothgar’s men from the hall by night and made them sink in a morass. Finally Beowulf conquered Grendel on his own. He killed Grendel’s mother after a fight under water. Germanic motifs are incorporated into this poem. A similar underwater fight also occurs in the Icelandic Grettirsaga.

The Christian character of the saga is evident from the somewhat sermonic tone of Hrothgar, and also from the portrayal of Beowulf himself, depicted as a hero ready for sacrifices who challenges the diabolical powers in Grendel, of the race of Cain. Finally he dies for his people in a victorious fight with a dragon, which he kills.*3’ According to Tolkien, Beowulf represents a fusion of pagan belief in monsters as powers of darkness with Christianity, in which the enemies of humankind in this world are also enemies of God. Both God and pagan fate, myrd, are invoked. Features of myrd (Old English ‘fate’) have combined here with the picture of God. Wyrd or Urd(r) is the name of one of the three Norns who direct fate. But in Christian understanding there is an important difference from dark tragedy. Christian faith changes the ‘tragic enigma of belief in fate into a happy belief in God as a loving father’."3* Beowulf should probably be described as a secular poem with Christian colouring. According to some exegetes, however, neither the Christian nor the pagan elements in this poem should be exaggerated.'33

Milis has pointed out that the Latin work The Deeds of the Danes by Saxo Grammaticus (1 150-1220) gives another picture of the myth of Balder in which Loki plays no role and Balder is a demigod who fights with the Swedish prince Hédr for possession of the daughter

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of the king of Norway. In his view this version fits the Germanic thought world better.*3+ Loki

Loki, the god of fire,’> is the evil god who is akin to both the Aesir and the giants, of whom he is said to be a son. He was also thought of as a demon. He had made Odin his blood brother. Loki is a kind of counterpart of Odin, or his shadow, and is regarded as his both crafty and capable alter ego.'3° Loki as the ambivalent mischief-maker might similarly (to the trickster figure) be seen as a kind of Odin figure in reverse.’37

The cunning Loki is both an adviser and helper of the gods and their sworn enemy. He can divert them as a jester, and then again he breaks spells. Because of his role in the fate of Balder he was banished from the world of the gods deep under the earth and chained to a rock, where a snake above him spewed poison on his head. At the end of the world he will be let loose again, and then Heimdal and Loki will engage in a life-and-death conflict. When everything has gone up in flames a new world will appear, in which there will be a place for Balder, but not for Loki. In an Edda song, ‘Logi’s Taunt’, the rottenness of the Germanic world of gods is pilloried; venomous mockery comes from Loki.*3° After Christianization, Loki is identified with Lucifer, but according to J. de Vries this does not do justice to the varied aspects of his character.*39 In pagan times there was no ‘devil’, but the devil began to play a major role in new popular belief.'*° The Gosforth Cross, a stone high cross discovered in Cumberland, has the representation of a pagan notion: a faithful reproduction of the story of the binding of Loki.'*’ The bound figure lies in a position in which snakes can drop poison on him from above, while a female figure catches it in a shell to protect his face. Moreover the idea of a bound giant is a pre-Christian notion and seems to be independent of the notions of ‘binding Satan’ from Christian sources (Rev.20.2).'** In this transition to Christianity, the old myths were not suppressed, nor were they allowed to be forgotten. They underwent

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a Christian reinterpretation. At all events the myths were not thought incompatible with the message of the cross. The Gosforth Cross contains pagan motifs relating to the end of the world alongside the

cross. 143

The Heliand and its image of Christ In Ulfilas’ Gothic translation of the Bible the New Testament word for Saviour or Redeemer (soter) is rendered nasjands. This is related to the word ganasjan, which means ‘heal’. The nasjands is the physician who heals the sick, who helps the dying in mortal danger and liberates sinners from death, bringing them eternal life. The German and Dutch ‘Heiland’ has the same significance. Hail (as a greeting) and holy are part of the basic meaning of the word."** In the process of translating the gospel for the Germanic world, loan words were used. like Christus, ‘Kirche’, ‘Kelch’, ‘segnen’ or loan translations, like ‘Gewissen’ for conscientia, ‘Gemeinde’ for

communio, ‘Vorsehung for providentia and ‘barmherzig’ for misericors (with a prefixed 5). Repentance (Busse) originally meant the remedying of harm done. The choice of this word as a translation of poenitentia also influenced thought. As a result there was a stronger emphasis on the notion of merit. In his Why God Became Man, Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34—-1109) saw sin as an infringement of God’s honour which necessarily called for punishment: the death of all humankind or satisfaction. God required complete satisfaction, which human beings themselves were not in a position to give. So God became man. Christ accomplished satisfaction vicariously: the suffering of Christ is wholly directed towards the satisfaction of God’s wounded honour. It has been claimed that any special features of Anselm’s view are also influenced by the Germanic view of honour (loyalty to one’s lord, the structure of obedience and command). The German now chooses Christ as fulltri’i,"*5 ‘the only “concrete” human person in the Trinity, and expects from his gentleness a reward commensurate with his allegiance. This then implies an even more marked development of the idea of merit than in antiquity.’"4 If we really want to know how Christ was understood by the

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Germans at the time of the first Christianization, we must look at the

so-called Heliand, because this work is regarded as the greatest Christian poem of the ninth century. It provides an insight into the way in which the gospel was connected with the Germanic context at that time. The Heliand is an Old Saxon heroic epic. It is the most extensive biblical epic in the vernacular and contains the life-story of Jesus. The title Heliand is not original, but comes fromJ.A. A. Schmeller, who produced the first scholarly edition in the nineteenth century. The work was written at the request of Charlemagne’s son Ludwig the Pious (778-840) with the aim of making Christianity known to the Saxons. Ludwig commissioned someone of Saxon descent, known to his people as a singer, to translate the Old and New Testaments into German.**? Presumably the work was written at the monastery of Fulda in Germany. Fulda was one of Boniface’s favourite foundations, and with its Anglo-Saxon tradition it became the seedbed of the German poetic tradition in the first half of the ninth century. Around 830 a translation of the Latin version of the Gospel harmony, Tatian’s Diatessaron, was made in Fulda. This translation was the first extensive account of the life of Jesus to become available in German. The unknown author of the Heliand must have made use of it. Tatian was a Christian around 175. This work, indirectly became the harmonies, including the

apologist whose Gospel harmony was composed probably originally written in Syriac, directly and inspiration for a variety of mediaeval Gospel Heliand. sae

In addition to the Diatessaron, the author may also have made use of the commentary on Matthew by Hrabanus Maurus (780-856), abbot and teacher at Fulda around 821/2, and regarded as a ‘master teacher in Germany’. Hrabanus Maurus was a pupil of Alcuin of Tours and has been called the most fertile writer from the Carolingian period.**?

How Germanic is the presentation ofJesus in the Heliand? The author of the Heliand locates the Gospel story in his own Saxon environment: the ‘landscape’, the ‘way of life’, the ‘atmosphere’—

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everything is coloured by it. Everything is put in German dress and adapted to the imaginative capacity and world of the audience.'*° The ship on the Sea of Galilee is described as a Viking ship. The marriage at Cana becomes a ‘joyful drinking bout’. In the Heliand, combat is in the foreground. The disciples are depicted as those who do ‘heroic deeds’ for their leader. They have a loyalty which is ‘simple’, ‘resolute’, ‘without hesitation and doubt’. Judas, by contrast, breaks faith. The disciples nurture fierce hatred of their enemies.'>' Local references are used, like ‘noblewomen’, ‘knights

and ostlers’, while Pontius Pilate is called ‘prince’ and Caiaphas ‘bishop’. The scene involving Malchus (John 18.10; Matt.26.52) is often quoted in connection with the supposedly typically Germanic character of the Heliand. The author clearly had difficulty with the arrest and passion of Jesus, i.e. the phase of his humiliation. ‘To meet Saxon taste, for example a different picture of Peter and the reactions of the disciples is given from the one in the Gospels. This is how the Heliand describes the arrest of Jesus: Full of fury his enemies approached, until with swords they had surrounded Christ, the saviour in need. The brave heroes, Christ’s men, stood there, stifling their wrath at this abominable crime. They cried to the Saviour, ‘If it were your will, mighty Lord, that they should pierce us with their spears, nothing would be dearer to us, than to die, bleeding to death from our wounds, for the Lord whose vassals we are.’ Then Simon Peter sprang up, swift with the sword, his heart full of courage. No word could he utter, so indignant was he that they should bind his Lord. The mighty hero went bitterly to put himself before his Saviour. In his heart was no trace of anxiety,

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no doubt or hesitation. He drew his sword from its sheath and smote the foremost enemy with it, so that Malchus was struck by the brave hero, who cut off his ear. He was so wounded that his cheek split open in a deadly wound; the blood spouted out, and welled from the wound; the cheek was slit

of the foremost enemy. Then the people drew back, afraid at the biting blow of the sword.*>*

However, the Malchus scene does not confirm the combativeness of the poet; the essentials of the story must be sought in the following words of Jesus, which contain a clear warning against

fighting.‘>? According to Chantepie de la Saussaye, in the Heliand Jesus is portrayed as a ‘Germanic prince who goes through the land with his knights’. Here he is depicted as the saviour and redeemer. In the Heliand Jesus is not the ‘man of sorrows nor the Catholic church’s heavenly Son of God’. He is portrayed as the ‘brave German ruler who leads his followers to conquest’. He is also ‘the rich, gentle, Germanic king of his people who makes a glorious progress through his land to teach, judge, heal and fight’, and is able finally to ‘thwart’ the enemy.'°* Redemption is redemption from the power of the devil on the one hand and the wrath of God on the other. ‘The devil is the great enemy. The devil has tried to thwart God’s plan and has succeeded in leading people astray. But God tries once again to open the kingdom to human beings. Again the devil is watchful and acts as his opponent. But Christ’s temptation does not have the result the devil intended. Christ proves the stronger in the arts of temptation. However, the devil still does not give up. He tries a third time. He seeks to prevent the Lord’s death by means of Pilate’s wife. By suffering death, Jesus really becomes the Heliand, the great helper against God’s wrath and the power of the devil.’*5°

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It has been supposed that the author of the Heliand above all emphasized those things with which his Saxon nobility was most familiar: the lord and his following (vassals). The German religious interpretation of the Heliand has been seen as a distinctive kind of belief in Christ as the liege lord: Christ as the powerful king of the people and liege lord bound in loyalty to his warriors (heroes), the apostles. The disciples had a relationship of obedience to Jesus as their liege lord. Faith began with allegiance: God the king, Christ the liege lord. The catastrophe in the world of men and angels arose from a lack of loyal and obedient trust. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt (who died in 1967) felt that the Germanic notion of obedience played an important role. He saw this attitude, and even more the scenes of combat, as indications of the way in which in the Heliand Christianity was Germanized to be ‘a proud expression of the valiant and obedient popular spirit of the Saxons’. The seventh-century Hildebrandslied (Hildebrand literally means ‘battle sword’) should be mentioned in this connection by way of comparison. The nucleus of this story is the dispute between tribal affinity and liege loyalty."5° The content of this song has been called pagan: fate compels the father to kill his own son in battle. But it also has the first indications of a Christian spirit. Hildebrand calls ‘the mighty God’ as witness and helper.*5” One of the gestures of allegiance is the folding of the hands, which has become the form of Germanic prayer. Whereas in the early church — and still in the Eastern Orthodox church — prayer was offered with raised hands, and the pagan Germans also did this, the Germans who had become Christians prayed in a different way; they approached God with folded hands. This represented ‘a defenceless and unarmed approach by a man asking an armed future leader to accept him’. The approach is in an ‘attitude of boundless trust and service’.15°

What is the connection between the Heliand and the Saxons?'5? Is there a superficial fusion of the Germanic and the Christian, as some scholars think, or does the fusion go deeper? Must we even speak of syncretism? How far does the Heliand show a disputatious Christ whose image does not correspond with that of the New Testament? An editor at the time of the First World War called the Heliand a crucial song of German manhood. Miskotte speaks of clear traces of syncretism in this old Saxon harmony of the Gospels. As an illustration of this, he mentions how in the Heliand Jesus, who was

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once called ‘son of man’, becomes ‘the powerful one’. His honorific names are “Christ rich in power’, ‘the one born the mightiest’, the “exalted head’, while Peter is ‘the first of all heroes’, ‘the swift sword’, ‘the hero renowned in battle’, ‘the lofty hero’. We read in connection with the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple that ‘in his youth he did not yet show his great power to people, the power that he possesses over this world’. According to Miskotte, the Sermon on the Mount has the atmosphere and tone of a ‘ding’. Both the temptation in the wilderness and the crucifixion are turned into the rounds made by a general. Christ seeks death and uses everything to that end.’ It is often emphasized that in the condemnation in the Heliand Jesus is described as ‘a powerful prince who, surrounded by vassals, walks over the earth’. The spirit which this poem is said to express is not that of ‘a monk, but of a warrior’.'* However, it has now been pointed out that there never was such a specifically Germanic understanding of loyalty. The talk in the Heliand about a ‘leader of the army’, ‘fist’ or ‘helmet’ must be seen as a thin transparent mask. Scholars warn against seeing this work too hastily as being typically Saxon or Germanic. While the Heliand certainly takes over notions from the Germanic world, including that of ‘liege loyalty’, at the same time these existing Germanic notions are expanded and deepened through contact with Christianity.'©? It is therefore wrong to speak of the disciples as a ‘host of warriors’ who voluntarily attach themselves to their leader. Fellowship with him must not be seen as ‘fellowship in combat’. Combat is not a feature which governs the picture of Christ in the Heliand. The battle of Christ and his followers against the devil is not typically Saxon. Thomas does not summon the disciples to battle, but to suffer and die with Jesus, as the Gospel says." According to Rathofer, at the time of the composition of the Heliand this accommodation had already progressed some way. He then points out that from the beginning the royal power of Christ was affirmed by the expression Kyrios (‘Lord’). The emphasis put on Christ as the ‘mighty one’ and the ‘king’ does not appear for the first time in the Heliand. So we must stop interpreting the whole work as typically Germanic. Already in the liturgy of the ‘Roman’ Catholic church, which made such an impression on the Germans (!), Christ is celebrated as ‘king of glory’, as ‘true king’, as leader of all heroes

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and conqueror of all enemies. He was asked for ‘heavenly weapons’, while Christians as the militia Christi were among the ‘standard bearers of the king’ on the way to the ‘heavenly citadel’ and the ‘Father’s citadel’.'°4 However, there are those who claim that the Germans contributed their own

values to the liturgy which they took over from Rome. The liturgical celebrations of ‘the victorious return of kings in war’ breathe a Germanic spirit. ‘The readings in the Breviary from the books of the Maccabees in October, with their warlike prayers and images of battles, would not have maintained their position had not a Germanic spirit supported and maintained the Roman liturgy.””°5

The poet of the Heliand does not know any ‘kingdom of God’ that develops here on earth. The kingdom of God is a heavenly kingdom.’ It is not just, as has been asserted, that the story of Jesus is presented as ‘the glorious progress of a king through the land’. Certainly he is ‘the mighty one’, but he does not will to appear in the full glory of his divinity. To outward appearances he is simply a teacher, though he is the best.’®7 ‘Although he possessed the power of God, in humility he willed to visit this earth in his own power.’ So the poet does not aim to create an epic ‘to the glory of Christ as a rich, powerful, gentle king of the German people’. ‘It may well be that the images and terminology are borrowed from old Germanic piety, but the poet’s belief in God grew in other ground.’’°° It can be pointed out to those who claim that the Heliand is a pernicious Germanization of the gospel that the poet omits Jesus’ saying that he has not come to bring peace but the sword (Matt.10.34). The Heliand often refers to the power of Christ. Thus the healings that he brings about are seen as proof of the power of Christ. The Canaanite woman is told, ‘Great is your faith in the power of God, in the Lord of humankind.’'®? The poet first of all seeks to demonstrate that ‘faith and trust in this most powerful of all lords is unconditionally necessary if one wants to be assured of his protection’. Even powerful kings (the three kings) pay homage to the little child (/uttil man). This mighty Lord can also be weak, but this is the human weakness of the body. However, despite all the adaptation to his Saxon context, he brings about a ‘transvaluation’ of Saxon values. In the scene of Peter’s denial, what was first a reason

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for pride, namely trust in one’s own strength and power, is now seen as sinful pride: “Therefore human boasting is more than vain, and the arrogance of the servant when the help of God is denied him for his sins.’ The poet speaks of the eternal damnation of those ‘who have committed maldad (murder). That word is chosen deliberately. It is directed at the Saxons who have had difficulty in abjuring Wodan and Donar.’’7° Certainly, the poet of the Heliand has translated the Christian faith into his own language and in this sense ‘Germanized it’. But in so doing he has not falsified Christian thought.'7" The poet of the Heliand seeks to proclaim the gospel to the newly converted Saxons. It was his intention to translate the doctrine accepted by the church as accurately as possible into ‘pagan language’. ‘He wanted to translate the vocabulary of the Latin church into old Saxon. In so doing he sought to avoid the danger of using words which could arouse the key notions of paganism.’ On the other hand, he hoped to succeed ‘in clarifying traditional Christian doctrine by adapting it to his audience’.*’” In writing the Heliand the author had a pastoral goal in view.'7* The distinctive feature of the Heliand must be seen above all in the choice and ordering of the material. The object of the adaptations to Germanic or Old Saxon ideas and value systems was to make the newly converted Saxons familiar with Christianity. ‘Otherwise, no clarification of the doctrine of Christ and no influence on the emotions of the hearers’ would have been possible."’*

Otfrid of Weiszenburg Another example from a rather later time can be referred to in addition to the gospel harmony of the Heliand, to show the way in which the gospel was transferred to the German context. What the author of the Heliand had achieved in Saxon, Otfrid of Weiszenburg (who died in 868) wanted

to achieve in his Frankish

mother

tongue.'75 Otfrid came from the Benedictine monastery of Weiszenburg in Unterlasz and was a pupil of Hrabanus Maurus. A poet monk, he wrote an epic Gospel harmony in the Frankish dialect of the southern Rhineland between 863 and 871: Liber evangeliorum (also called Book of the Gospels and Krist). It was in five volumes, and

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in it narrative, expository and moralizing chapters alternate. It expresses not only an awareness of sin and grace but also Frankish national pride. Otfrid wrote: ‘Many people are trying to write in their own language in our time, attempting to glorify their own nation. Why should the Franks neglect such things and not begin to sing God’s glory in the language of the Franks?’'7° Otfrid tries to bring the strange world of the gospel to life by illustrating it from his own well-known world, for example by suggesting that the birth of Christ in the world took place in the presence of prominent people. From this it is evident that Otfrid was not a popular preacher but someone who was addressing the upper classes. In his time Christianity was still to a large degree a matter for the ruling German upper class, and was reaching the lower social groups only slowly.'?7 Like the poets of the Heliand, Otfrid moved within the Germanic thought world of the ‘ethic of fighters, loyalty and obedience and the master-man relationship’.'7* In his work the divinity and omnipotence of Christ come strongly to the fore. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem takes place with royal dignity. The crucified Christ remains the powerful Son of God who conquers the world ruled by sin, death and the devil. The emphasis lies on the judgment, in which Christ appears in majesty, surrounded by hosts of angels. All must justify themselves before this judge, face to face."7° Whereas the Heliand warns against strife and puts the emphasis on the saying ‘all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword’ (Matt.26.52), Otfrid passes over this text. He praises Peter’s heroic courage in the fight against Malchus, whereas the poet of the Heliand warns against it.'8° Whereas in the Heliand Jesus is not regarded as a real king, and his works and passion are not seen as a fight, this is how Otfrid saw them.'®!

The Muspilli The Muspilli is a ninth-century poem in Bavarian, only fragments of which have come down to us. Like the Heliand, it was given its title by J. A. Schmeller. The word muspilli probably means ‘last things’, ‘end of the world’, ‘downfall of the world’. The Heliand refers to the Muspilli, on mankind and the saying that the ‘end of the world’ will come like a thief in the night.'®?

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The poem is about the fate of human beings in death and the last judgment. Combat is in the foreground. It includes a description of the battle between Elijah and the Antichrist, and the consequent world conflagration. This battle is to be seen as a ‘translation’ of Thor’s fight with the serpent of Midgard. The last judgment resembles a Germanic ‘ding’, and the sins for which penance is done are those typical of the poet’s time. The author speaks in concepts like ‘allegiance’ in order to make the new Christian teaching clearer to his contemporaries. God is not presented so much as the good God of the New Testament, but rather as the supposedly ‘avenging God of the Old Covenant’, whom the Germans would have found easier to approach. The presentation of the end of the world is meant to make readers more inclined to believe. In this poem Christian and pagan accounts of the end of the world and the last judgment are combined. In fact an old pagan notion of the end of the world lived on in the Muspilli, a Christian poem."

The Wessobrunn prayer Whereas the Muspilli is about the fate of the soul after death and the end of the world, the Old High German Wessobrunn prayer is about the beginning of the world.’*4 It is a poem about creation written in the ninth century in the monastery after which it is named. This I learned among men as the greatest of the sciences.

The poet then proclaims a message about the world. The earth was not yet, nor heaven above, nor was there any tree or hill. The sun did not shine, nor did the moon light the fairy sea; no ends or changes were there. Only the one almighty God.

‘Perhaps nowhere is the whole tension within the Christian concept of God so tersely expressed,’ writes Schmidt, as in almahtico cot manno milisto (Almighty God the mildest of men).

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‘Two superlatives, but what a contrast in one man!’ The ‘Christ

God’ is the Lord of the world.'®5 How great his infinite power is will become clear when at the end of time the final battle is fought with the powers of darkness. The world of the Germans was caught up in a deep struggle. The earth was constantly threatened with its end. As long as the gods are the stronger, the earth is green. But when the end of the world comes they will not be able to manage it. Human beings are torn between the powers which threaten them and the powers which help them. We still find this division in early Germanic Christianity: Christ with the devil as his counterpart, both surrounded by angels and demons which support them. ‘Thus the great confrontation continues, but with one great difference. Christ ensures not only the salvation of the individual but also ultimate victory over the powers of the devil. Had the Germans not seen Christ as their helper in need, it would have been unthinkable for them to have accepted Christianity. This helping power finds its consummation in the final victory in which the powers of darkness are defeated. Ragnarok is confronted with Easter. People took the side of the one who could ensure them the final victory. The significance of this final victory can be seen from the description ofthe fight between Christ and the devil. At the centre of the acts of Christ stands liberation from the domination of the devil. The crucifixion is part of this battle. It was interpreted as a royal sacrifice. By sacrificing himself, the king brought his cause to certain victory. That was also the case with Christ. By sacrificing himself he conquered. In the Anglo-Saxon epics he is not crucified, but ascends the cross, voluntarily offering himself. His concern is to overcome the devil. Christ is really saviour only as the one who conquers the devil. For the Anglo-Saxon singers this conquest of hell was a joy to warm the heart. So Christ the victorious hero is praised as the ‘prince of mankind’, as ‘almighty God’, ‘highest Lord of heaven’, ‘God of the peoples’, ‘the watcher from heaven’, ‘the Lord of glory’, the ‘rich Christ’, ‘the saviour God’, the God king’, ‘the almighty’, ‘strong’, exalted’, ‘gentle’, ‘Lord of all’, the ‘God of all spirits’. ‘The early church did not have most of these titles for Christ. How the image of ‘Christ the helper in need’ must have glowed in the heart of the Anglo-Saxons, when they praised him as the

‘watchman from glory’!'®®

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The Yule feast and Christmas How did Christmas get a place in the Germanic context? To what degree was the festival a mixture of pre-Christian and Christian elements? What is the relationship of Christmas to the Yule feast, the midwinter or solstice feast? The Yule feast. Whereas in English and Dutch the feast at this time of year is called Christmas, manifestly a Christian name, in Nordic languages the feast is still called by its pre-Christian name, Yule (Jul).'*7 The Yule feast was the most important Germanic feast

celebrated

in the winter,

and

was

identified

with

the

midwinter feast. It is evident from the Old Norse literature that Odin was connected with the Yule feast. According to Snorri Sturluson the Yule feast was celebrated in midwinter. He says that Haakon the Good transferred it to 25 December. The Yule feast had a threefold content: the revival of the dead, the renewal of

vegetation, and the solstice. The celebration of the return of the sun gave relatively little substance to the great winter festival, at all events far less than the cult of the dead and the fertility cult."** The Yule feast began on 25 December, after the shortest day of the year, lasted twelve nights, and was a time of universal peace. It was the holiest period of the year. When the earth awoke to new life, a sacrifice had to be made to the gods of fertility. The new powers of the earth gathered under the covering of winter. The gods Freyr, Odin and Thor seem to have been the recipients of sacrifices on this occasion. Freyr and Freyja, the divine couple associated with fertility, had close connections with the Yule feast. Snorri relates that one of the three sacrificial meals at Yuletide was for the produce of the land. During this midwinter festival there were processions, singing, dancing and drinking.’*? The sacral drinking bout was a fixed ingredient of the feast. “Drinking Yule’ is an expression from pagan times.'?° The animal features in the demons which appeared at Yuletide, like the buck, the goat and the wild boar, must be seen as symbols of the fertility principle. The feast is presumably connected with the worship of fertility goddesses. Bede writes of the Anglo-Saxons: “They began the year around the twentyfifth of the month of Yule (December) and called this time modranecht

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(night of the mother). In this night the sun as it were sinks into the great Mother, Mother Earth.’*%’

Yuletide was the time when the Germans commemorated their dead. It was believed that the spirits of ancestors returned then to take part in their festivals. So food was put out for them as well. The returned shadows of the ancestors are depicted in the ‘wild hunt’ led by Wodan, in which for twelve nights he summoned the dead souls to ride through the air with him.*% The recollection of the ‘wild hunt’ of Odin still survives in an expression used during storms, “Odin far forbi’ (Odin is riding by).*%

This is a rite of passage, a magical action intended to further the continuation of life, through which the power of vegetation is transferred to the new harvest. So sometimes participants dressed up as ‘demons of the dead’ (horses, dogs and birds) or fertility demons (wild boar and he-goat).*%* All kinds of customs at the Yule feast were connected with the figure of Odin and have slipped into the celebration of Christmas. They cannot be explained from Christianity. Eating and drinking at the Yule feast were sacred sacrifical actions. The eating and drinking at Christmas has a similar characteristic. The main dish was the wild boar dedicated to Freyr, the Germanic god of vegetation. In Sweden Christmas cookies or Christmas bread are still called julgalt (= Yule boar) and also take the form of deer, which are dedicated to Freyr. The preparation of the Christmas cookies — one need only think of Christmas garlands, Christmas bread or the Christmas stollen — is certainly a recollection of old pagan offerings (Yule bread). Christmas bread was often baked from the last ears of corn or the last dough, so that it contained all the power of vegetation from the previous year’s harvest. The crumbs were supposed to be particularly fertile. They were put by fruit trees to encourage their fertility for the coming year. It is probably that the ring form as it occurs in Christmas garlands is aimed at the uninterrupted continuation of vegetation and symbolically stands for the renewal of life. In the Middle Ages, the Christmas bread was offered to the priests and the poor, and can be regarded as the Christianization of an original pagan offering.’

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Certain elements of the celebration of Christmas are connected with the custom of ‘the wild Lord’ or the ‘wild hunt’.'®° The midnight mass survived for a while in popular belief as the mass of the dead, who rose from their graves and entered the churches. As late as 1555 in Dresden on Christmas Eve men used to perform sword dances on graves, either naked or wearing a shirt. Death and fertility are closely connected. In this connection it is worth mentioning the custom of farmers in the Achterhoek in the Netherlands on Christmas Eve of binding a bundle of straw round the fruit trees for a better crop. The negative has to produce the positive: ‘Through death to life (it is the putting out of Odin’s eye which makes him see well), through injury to bloom.’*?7 The burning of the Christmas log is known (under different names) throughout North-West Europe.'%® In some villages there was a practice of taking the Yule log (Christbrand) from the fire as soon as it began to flame. It was then carefully preserved, to be put on the fire if there was a storm, because of a belief that lighting could not strike the house in which the Yule log was smouldering.

The earliest extant written account of the custom of the Yule log dates from 1597. The ritual was meant to bring prosperity to human beings, animals and agriculture. In the Netherlands, making a noise has moved from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. The purpose of making a noise at the end of the old year can be connected with the idea of driving away evil spirits in fields and woods and waters. The ringing of church bells and on New Year’s Eve is connected with this. The sound of the bells is meant to drive away evil spirits and attract good spirits to guard against barrenness. The giving of presents at Christmas, a very old custom which has returned under commercial influences, derives from an old Germanic custom. In Sweden they are still called Jul-klapper — Yule gifts. In the Scandinavian Julklap one hears a knock at the door or the window and the present comes in, or is put in front of the door, leaving no sign of the giver (cf. the customs associated with Santa Claus). In Mecklenburg the gifts are thrown round the door with the cry ‘jul-klap’. In the Middle Ages there are repeated prohibitions

against giving presents. In Auxerre in 585 a church assembly

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prohibited the exchange of New Year gifts.'°° Because such giving was seen as part of the old Yule feast, in Kampen in the seventeenth cenutry giving money or presents on Christmas Eve was still forbidden.*°° It is hard to deny that Christmas displaced the feast of Yule and took over many of its customs. Without any doubt Christmas has become the most popular of all the Christian festivals in northern Europe — more, for example, than Easter. This is connected with the fact that Christmas has Christianized a pre-Christian feast.?°’ When Christianity comes, ‘the work is to be done wisely, and must not exterminate it (old belief and old customs), but ennoble and exalt it, or at least see that it done in a permissible, passive, way’.”°” Perhaps it has to be said that although it is theologically arguable that Easter is the most important Christian festival and is also central in the Eastern churches, in Europe Christmas has become the most

important Christian festival. The feast of Sol Invictus and the solstice festival have in some ways been incorporated in the Christian feast of Christmas.

Tree of life, world tree, may tree, Christmas tree It is worth noting the significance of the tree in the Germanic context and the way in which pre-Christian notions and ideas have become associated with this tree — for example the Christmas tree. In general the tree plays an important role in most religions: it is seen as the place in which spirits dwell and is associated with divine powers. On the one hand the tree has roots in the subterranean world and on the other it reaches up to heaven. It links the three cosmic spheres: heaven, earth and hell. This can be illustrated from the ‘thousand-year-old’ lime tree in Sambeek in Brabant (though it has been estimated to be only 500 years old). It is a socalled ‘stage lime’; i.e. in the past it has been pruned in a number of stages to indicate the connection between earth and heaven. There is something symbolic about each stage. The top stage symbolizes the divine, the middle the clergy, and the lowest the people.**3

The tree of life stands in the centre of the world and is the symbol of life which constantly renews itself, cosmic regeneration. We find the

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tree of life on a capital of the temple of Athene in Priene. Important actions took place near such a tree, like seeking oracles, pronouncing law, swearing oaths and celebrating festivals (cf. the may tree). In Scandinavian mythology the mountain ash was dedicated to Thor. The oak was sacred to the Celts and Gauls. The oak was usually the sacred tree among the Indo-Germans. The oak or the lime was regarded as a holy centre among the Alemanns.*°* In German mythology Yggdrasil, the evergreen ash, is the most sacred tree. It is both the world ash tree and the tree or pillar which supports the whole world. Yggdrasil and the ‘beanstalk’ of the well-known story are related to this world tree, which has its roots in the underworld but also has branches reaching to or past heaven.*°> As a central pole, it holds a tent of air in place. The crown of this tree reaches to heaven, the branches spread over heaven and earth, and the roots reach to hell. One of the three powerful roots draws from a

threefold fountain which is the source of all life. The Norns who spin the thread of life sit on the second. The third is fed by the spring of wisdom, under which the giant Mimir keeps guard.?© Not only runes but probably also oracles were carved on its wood. By means of these the Germans hoped to clarify what was to come (the future).*°7 Knocking on wood (‘touching wood’) was said to be a sign of veneration for this tree and protection against fate.7°8

From its roots sprang three fountains, which connected Midgard (the human world), Utgard (the realm of demons and giants) and Niflheim (the cold cloudy realm). This tree had life-giving mead pouring from it, which moistened the valleys. It stood above the spring of Urd (= the past), one of the three Norns. Together with the two other goddesses of fate, Verdanki (the one who knows what is, the present) and Skuld (the one who knows what is to come, the future), Urd knew and determined human fate. The Norns brought human beings happiness and unhappiness. Skuld determined the time of death at the end of life. The gods pronounced law in the shadow of this tree. Its greenery was constantly renewed. When the end of the world approached, the tree would suffer and groan. Ygegdrasil shakes and shiver on high the ancient limbs,

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and the giant is loose; In fear quake all in the world of Hel, as the kinsman of Surt (the wolf Fenrir) bursts his bonds

(Voluspa, 47).°°° The definitive withering announces the beginning of the ‘twilight of the gods’. Nidhégg, the vicious biting ‘dragon’, who is also imagined as a snake, gnaws away at the roots of this tree. A squirrel, Ratatéskr, jumps up and down on the tree between a two-headed eagle on top of the tree (the bird of paradise, representing the light) — there are also two hawks and a cock there — and the snake/dragon beneath (which represents darkness and the underworld); it provides an exchange of information and keeps alive the feud between the eagle and the dragon, a symbol of the duality which constantly prevails in the world. These birds up in the tree warn the gods of the coming of enemies.**° For many Germanic tribes, especially the pagan Saxons, the Irmin pillar was presumably a representation of the world pillar which supports the universe. In 772 Charlemagne destroyed this pillar in the Saxon frontier fortress of Eresburg in Westphalia. It was described by mediaeval historians, like Rudolf of Fulda (c.860), as

an enormous trunk: ‘the universal pillar which bears virtually all things’.*** Different explanations have been given of the name. One connects it with Irmin, the queen of heaven, and the place name Ermelo on the Veluwe. Irminlo appears in a document dated 855, where it means ‘holy wood in which the god Irmin is worshipped’, probably a reference to Tiwaz.*"*

In Germanic and Celtic Christian notions the cross is associated

with the symbol of the tree of life around which animals gathered. In the Bible the world tree is the symbol of all life, of paradise and the endtime. One might think here of the tree of life, which, according to the Genesis story (Gen.2.9; cf. Gen.3.22-24), stood in the midst of paradise or the reference to it in Revelation 2.7. The last book of the Bible mentions the tree of life, saying that ‘the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations’ (Rev.22.2). The notion of the cross as tree of life arose in the fourth century. In Eastern Christian art the tree of life appears on sarcophagi, tombstones and crosses in the form of a living cross in blossom, as a symbol of the

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conquest of death. According to certain traditions the cross was made from the wood of the tree of life. The tomb of Adam was to be found on Golgatha. 213 From his tomb grew the tree of life: Christ’s cross.

We can find the connection between the cross and the tree of life in all kinds of ideas in different places, for example on the tympanon of an old English church in Little Paxton. The illustration on the halftitle depicts a tenth-century Norman stone cross from the Isle of Man. It is an example of the survival of this motif of the tree of life. Animals surround the arms of the cross. These crosses, which are to be found above all in the British Isles, have an ornamentation which -

comes from the time of the Vikings and reinterprets old ‘pagan’ elements of the tree of life as the cross of Christ.**4 The tree of life with animals can also be found on the tympanon of the church in Marigny (Normandy). These are clear examples of the Christianization of an old pre-Christian motif.**>

The origin of the Christmas tree is sought in the Germanic or even Indo-Germanic tree cult, a particular form of vegetation worship. If that is the case, then there could be a connection with other trees

which were the objects of particular veneration in the Middle Ages, like the may tree, the tree of paradise or the cross, all of which could be regarded as the tree of life. The decoration of the Christmas tree is presumably connected with an old tradition, like that of the may tree.?"° A connection is made in an old Dutch song between Mary, the dying Christ and the may tree:

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The may tree was dried up, its branches without leaves. But Jesus’ sweat has restored it to us. . . Think of the sweat of Jesus, who, with his good mother, came to bedew the may tree with his holy blood.?"7

The May festival is closely connected with tree symbolism. It turns on the revival of nature and fertility. Now that Christ, the invincible sun, has risen, nature can revive and bring forth new life. The may tree (or maypole) is the central axis along which the sun rises, and the people dance around it.?"® The Easter palm branch is seen as a ‘miniature may tree’, herald of spring. The green garlands which adorn the may tree are found again here. They are carried round in spring to help the sun to follow its new course. For this purpose the Scandinavians used to roll the Yule garland uphill.*"° Despite the church’s opposition, the First of May continued to be celebrated. The maypole then became a symbol of the French Revolution and was called the ‘tree of freedom’, and the peasants continued to dance round it as their ancestors did. Later, the First of May was celebrated as the day of labour and contains vague memories of the myth of the regeneration and restoration (or improvement) of the community. In Europe the maypole was burnt and the ash was scattered round the fields at Christmas or carnival to encourage the harvest.?*°

Decoration with evergreens is a distinctive feature of Christmas. In England the preference is for ivy, laurel or holly, while on the European continent spruce and fir are mainly used. The mysterious mistletoe, which the Celtic Druids cut from the holy tree with a golden sickle, became a symbol of Christ in the Middle Ages. There is no mention of a Christmas tree in the Middle Ages, only reports of loose branches of evergreens.**" In his important study of Christmas, Mak comes to the conclusion that it is thanks to the conservatism of ordinary people and their persistence in old customs and concepts that ‘Europe did not become rationalized more quickly; remarkably enough, this also means that it will not be deChristianized more quickly, in other words will not decline more quickly’.» 222 Easter

Like Christmas, the Christian Easter took up a pre-Christian

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festival. It is striking that in English and German the name Easter/Ostern has no connection with the Greek pascha, which provides the name in French and Dutch; it is very probably taken from the name of the Saxon goddess Eastre or Ostara, the goddess of eggs and of the spring. The Venerable Bede reports that in English April is called ‘Eoster-monath’.*?3 Ostara was regarded as the goddess of the resurrection of nature after the long death of winter. The feast dedicated to her now became the Christian Easter. Eggs were eaten at the festival, and Christians preserved this custom.??4 The egg became the symbol of the resurrection of Christ. Taking round Easter eggs and kindling of Easter fire, along with the custom of a hunt for eggs, derive from the festival of this goddess.””5 Possibly this custom goes back to burying eggs in fields for fertility. It has been claimed that ‘this graceful goddess was so popular among the Teutons that even after Christianity had been introduced, they had such good memories of her that they did not want to demote her to the level of a demon .. . and took over her name at their great Christian festival. It was for a long time the custom to celebrate this day by exchanging gifts of coloured eggs, since the egg is the symbol of the beginning of life. So the first Christians maintained this rule. They simply said that the egg also symbolized the resurrection.’** Christ as the more powerful one The ‘power’ factor played an important role in the Christianization of the Germans, as it did with other peoples. The reason why many people in the Germanic world accepted Christianity was that belief in Jesus Christ was seen as more powerful than other religions or gods. This motif plays an ‘important role in different cultural contexts, and not just in the German context.**? The Germans did not think it necessary to accept the God of the Christians if he showed himself to be powerless.??® As Christopher Dawson remarked, “The conversion of Western Europe was achieved not so much by the teaching of a new doctrine as by the manifestation of a new power, which invaded and subdued the barbarians of the West.’*?9 The Voluspa seems already to expect the coming of Christianity,

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and then sees the powerful ruler who will come to rule over the new world.*3° There comes on high, all power to hold, A mighty lord, all lands he rules (65).73"

The text of the Voluspa ends like this: Then fields unsowed bear ripened fruit, all ills grow better, Balder comes back. Balder and Hod dwell in Valhalla, and the mighty gods: would you know yet more? (55)

From below the dragon, dark come forth, Nithogg flying from Nithafjoll. The bodies of men on his wings he bears, the serpent bright: but now I must sink (66).

232

Evangelization was often more about showing the impotence of the idols and the omnipotence of the Christian God by signs of power. The debates over belief mostly turned on the question ‘Which god is the more powerful?’?33 Thus Lebuinus (who died around 776), a missionary who came to the Low Countries in the middle of the eighth century, emphasized in his preaching in Overijssel the sovereignty of the Christian God, the exclusiveness of Christianity and the insignificance of the idols. By felling the Donar oak Boniface showed that Christ was more powerful than Donar. Bishop Daniel of Winchester had also instructed him in this spirit: “The pagans must time and again be reminded of the superiority of the Christian world and of the fact that those who still hold to antiquated beliefs form a very small minority.’’3+ That the Christian faith was stronger played a decisive role in the conversion not only of Clovis but also of king

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Olaf of Norway. Gregory of Tours (who died in 594) mentions the ‘motif of the stronger god’ as a crucial point in the conversion of Clovis. ‘That hour was decisive for Clovis, for the Franks, for Western Europe and for the whole of Christianity.’ It is not surprising that Gregory compares this conversion with that of the emperor Constantine the Great, nor is he wrong in doing so. Both conversions are milestones in the history of Christianity. “With Constantine the Latin world and with Clovis the Germanic world was won.”*3> The process of Christianization developed along this line. The argument about the power of the gods also played a role in winning over king Edwin of Northumbria in 627. If these gods did not help, it was better to seek another god.73° The Germans were ready to exchange their gods for Christ if it could be shown convincingly that he was more powerful.”3?7 Alcuin, the court theologian of Charlemagne, asserted that ‘through the triumph of Charles’s bravery Jesus’ power . .. over many kingdoms of the earth is made manifest’.?3° For King Olaf Tryggvason, as well as for king Edwin, the fact that the good fortune and protection of the new God were stronger than the powers of the old tilted the balance.*39 The Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who received baptism in 960 along with his son Swen, seems to have arrived at this decision through seeing the greater power of Christ, which showed itself in the protection of a missionary in the ordeal by fire.74° Some pagans became Christians because Christianity could do more for them than the old gods. Thus Christ became a more powerful support in war than, for example, Thor.**" The proclamation of the faith was often followed by a demonstration of power. The Germans expected a reaction from their gods. If that did not come, it was shown that Christ was the most powerful. Thus by the farmstead of Codran, an Icelander, stood a stone on which people were accustomed to make offerings to a helpful spirit which was said to hide in it. Codran was not prepared to receive baptism until the bishop had shown that he was more powerful than this spirit. In the last appearance of this spirit in his dream he declared: ‘I served you as a useful and powerful god as long as I did not know the true God. But now that I have come to know you as a deceitful and powerless god, I have the right to abandon you without being guilty of any

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disloyalty, and to take refuge under the protection of a God who is much better and stronger than you are.”*4?

This emphasis on power was expressed in preaching. Preaching to the Germans emphasized the first of the twelve articles of the creed, ‘God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth’. Throughout the Germanic world the stress was on the notion of the Christian God as creator of the world, as almighty and the sole ruler. This almighty God was compared with the nothingness and impotence of the pagan gods. Here it is striking that the proclamation of Christ as redeemer and his crucifixion faded into the background. Reference is made in this connection to the great influence of Pope Gregory the Great, who ultimately began the mission among the West Germans. Christ’s death played a marginal role in his theology. The main accent was on the /ife of Jesus, his teaching and example. Faith was essentially trust in the power of God. It was about what was to be expected from God’s power. “The mighty Christ created the whole world’, sings an Icelandic skald.*45 The message which the missionaries proclaimed in word and action was that of the almighty God who had proved to be stronger than Odin, Thor and Freyr, indeed more powerful than fate. Christ was presented in sermons as the living Lord and Creator. Compared with this radiant figure, Odin, Thor and Freyr proved to be gods created by human beings, without power and light.*** Such notions were also expressed in Christian poetry. The idea of Christ ‘as a brave young fighter at the head of a group of loyal men of rank’ was developed in the early Christian poetry of Anglo-Saxon England. It shows how faith could be presented in a form which was acceptable to people who had been brought up in the pagan traditions of the heroic past.”*5 In the old Norse literature, especially in the skaldic poems, Christ was presented as the king who stands at the head of his people. ‘He is so strong that none can withstand him’, sings the poet of the Muspilli. In Anglo-Saxon poetry Christ was praised not only for his courage in battle, but also for his help towards victory. The mere presence in battle of splinters from his cross, worked into a horse’s bit, guaranteed victory. “War is the focal point of history, and battle the focal point of war.’ For the Germans Christ is the saviour if he proves himself the stronger. ‘Only if and

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because Christ proved himself powerful could a German gain trust in him.’?4°

This view of Christ as the powerful one was expressed not only in preaching and poetry but also in art. Among the Germanic peoples, Christ was presented as a ‘young hero, fighting and bringing victory, often beardless, as in Gottschalk’s evangetiarium of 786, triumphing on the cross with a crown on his head and arms outstretched like a conqueror’. Until the late Middle Ages Christ is celebrated in popular ballads in full armour as Sigurd (Siegfried), who fights against the dragon and is incorporated into Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. By descending into the realm of the dead, Christ had overcome the powers of darkness. Just as Sigurd was possibly fighting against the Midgard serpent in the form of the dragon, so Christ was fighting against the devil.*47 On a twelfth-century crucifix in the church at Svaravadardal on Iceland, Christ is depicted as standing and not hanging, with his feet side by side and not one on another. Sigurd and scenes from his sagas still appear as ornamental decorations on the door posts of stave churches in Norway in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The stave church in Hyllstad (around 1200), which has depictions of scenes involving Sigurd, is an example of this.?4°

Abolish or transform? This whole survey raises the question of the relationship between Christian faith and Germanic religion and culture in this early period of Christianization. How far was Germanic religion abolished and how far was it transformed? The Synod of Tours noted in 567 that pagan customs like the veneration of rocks, trees and springs had still by no means disappeared. At that time there was still an unmistakable tendency towards syncretism among the people.**9 The church tried in all kinds of ways to put something in place of ‘pagan customs’. ‘With a fine psychological insight it made concessions to popular taste, which was more interested in the tangible than in the speculative.’ A new Christian content was given to old, partly religious customs which the people stubbornly kept up. ‘Processions through the fields in Rome, Gaul and Germany in which statues of the gods were

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Reconstruction of a ‘pagan’ temple which shows a striking similarity to the stave churches in Norway.

carried in order to produce good weather were replaced with prayer processions. The harvest thanksgivings were given a Christian dedication. The bell was rung or psalms were sung in place of ‘superstitious’ means of averting bad weather; candles were lit and prayers for the weather were introduced. Riding round boundaries at Easter and Pentecost derives from pagan German times. Crosses were now putat the side of the road, by groups of trees and at danger points, in place of figures of idols and pagan symbols.*>° Sacrifices were continued under cover of Christianity. Libations were made to saints and angels instead of to the gods: hence the so-called love drinks: to Michael, Martin, Gertrude, Benedict and above all John.”5* On the one hand there was a break in the veneration of ancestors, but on the other there was continuity in that the nobility established cultic centres where ancestors were buried. ‘In the monasteries which they founded, monks were taken into service to ensure the eternal bliss of ancestors through their prayers and penitence.’”>*

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According to Ljungberg, a study of individual and collective Conversions shows that the difference between Christ and the old gods was seen as an absolute one. In his view one can talk only of a sprinkling of syncretistic ideas. He even thinks that ‘a tendency towards discontinuity can be noted’ in places where churches were set up, as compared to the old cult places. Opposition to Christianity was strongest in the sphere of custom. ‘Only ina bitter struggle with the Norse notion of retribution and the safeguarding of family and honour did the Christian notion of love find an opening.’*>> In his view, the old continued in Christian times only at the level of religious custom and within the sphere of the lower religion.*>* Derolez, too, says that we cannot speak of a mixing of two religions. ‘Conversion in any case for the most part presupposed a break with the old.’ His conclusion is that if we want to talk of the ongoing existence of Germanic religion after conversion, we have to follow the distinction introduced by Ljungberg between higher religion, lower religion and magic. Whereas the higher religion quickly disappeared, the lower religion, belief in spirits, dwarves, giants and trolls, lasted longer.*>> ‘Yet while in Scandinavia we find no great hostility towards the change of faith, there was still a great love of the old poems and stories, and the wealth of tradition about ancient kings and heroes and the achievements of the pagan past. It was due to this faithfulness to old memories of gods they had now forsworn that we find so many echoes of the world of myths in the art and literature of northern Europe.’?5° As Iremarked at the beginning of this chapter, the names of the days of the week still recall the old gods. Many Christian festivals go back to pre-Christian feasts: Christmas replaced the Yule feast, the solstice festival; Easter replaced the feast of the spring goddess Ostara; the summer solstice festival became the feast of John the Baptist (24 June). Gods became Christian saints: Wodan became St

Martin (of Tours); Freyr St Leonard;”5? Balder St George and Freyja the Blessed Virgin.?5° But in all these cases they were given a Christian interpretation and raised to a higher level.

V. The Interaction between the Gospel and Present-Day European Culture

‘What does it mean for me that fourteen hundred years ago Mary gave life to the Son of God ifI do not give life to the Son of God in my time and in my culture’? (Meister Eckhart)

Introduction

When I was in Indonesia I was struck by the fact that people did not ask “How are you?’ but ‘Where do you come from?’ and ‘Where are you going?’ These really are among the most fundamental questions that one can ask. They were raised at the beginning of the Christianization of Europe by an English prince, Edwin, and the answer given by Christian faith was the reason why he accepted this faith. One of the emissaries of the new faith, Paulinus (c.625), had penetrated to

distant Northumbria. King Edwin hesitated over how to react to the new message. He decided to call an assembly. In it someone stood up and said: ‘The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark

winter from which he emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.’ (Paulinus baptized Edwin of Northumbria in his capacity as Queen Ethelberga’s chaplain.)'

The questions of where we come from and where we are going, and of the meaning of human life in the world, were raised at the beginning of the Christianization of Europe and can also be raised

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anew today. The church cannot ignore these questions in our present-day European culture. In this chapter I want to return to the question with which this book started: are lessons to be learned and stimuli to be derived from the history of the early Christianization of Europe which will help in the translation, practice and dissemination of Christian faith in modern Europe? How far have the previous chapters produced insights relevant to the question of how evangelization or (re-)Christianization can be carried on in our own present-day ‘secularized’ European culture? At least it can be said that the previous chapters have proved Eliade right, in that in the history of early Christianization there was a successful assimilation to culture: what was already there was elevated to a higher plane, in a process of reciprocal fertilization, though much was also abolished. Can the same thing also happen today?

I now want to deal with the following points. 1. Isn’t there a danger in taking too positive an attitude to European culture? Isn’t Christ against culture? Doesn’t Jerusalem stand over against Athens? 2. At this time, when the ecumenical movement is paying so much attention to justice, peace and the preservation of creation, can’t we learn lessons, for example, from the way in which the Celts dealt with nature? 3. Is it possible to drop an attitude of hostility to myth, and again develop an eye for its truth? 4. Now that the period of a culture of the word seems to have given way to that of a culture of the image, what is the significance of the modern culture of the image for the translation of the gospel? Can the church take this up? 5. Can the ‘mystery of the Christian faith’ be translated in word and image and also in action?

Christ ‘against European culture’? Shouldn’t we be afraid of too positive an acceptance of European culture? Wasn’t something of that kind tried in the 1930s, when a link was forged with Germanic culture? Doesn’t too positive an approach to other cultures or religions all too rapidly (indeed

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perhaps always) lead to syncretism? Is there no wisdom ina primarily antithetical approach? Isn’t too open an attitude to culture a threat to the preservation of one’s own Christian identity? Can and may Christians learn from other cultures and take over and preserve elements of them as well as rejecting them? For Northern Europeans, fear of all too positive an approach derives directly from specific experiences of contextual theology in the first half of our century, though the term was not being used at that time. Important though these questions of the relationship or interplay between Christianity and the other religions and cultures may be generally, and in Europe in particular, as soon as the relationship of Christianity to Germanic culture in particular arises, the topic becomes historically loaded. This is directly connected with the way in which church and theology reacted to National Socialism, especially in Germany in the 1930s. The ideology of National Socialism developed in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time it could be discussed in scholarly circles quite innocently. In his work on ‘the myths and gods of the Germans’, published in 1939, Georges Dumézil wrote that it was perhaps because Adolf Hitler had suffered in the trenches (of the First World War) that the spirit of Siegfried followed him. He called the neo-pagan propaganda in the new Germany an ‘interesting’ (sic!) phenomenon for the historian of religion. He also applied the same adjective to the speech given by Hans Naumann at the University of Bonn in 1937 on the occasion of the Chancellor’s birthday, under the title ‘Germanic Hymns to the Gods’.* But what in fact happened in Germany in the 1930s posed a great threat not only to the church and Christianity but also, as was soon to emerge, to the Jews. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:‘In its roots, Nazism was a rebellion against the Bible, against the God of Abraham ... Sensing that it was Christianity that implanted the bond with the God of Abraham and involvement with the Hebrew Bible in the hearts of Westerners, Nazism resolved to exterminate both the Jews and Christianity and replace them with a revival of Teutonic paganism.’ In the 1930s a Germanic theology came into being, represented by ‘German Christians’. These Christians made a reprehensible concession to this reviving Germanic paganism by accepting the

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ideology and practice of National Socialism. The ‘Confessing Church’ opposed them, not least in the theses of the Synod of Barmen, held in 1934. It is to the great credit of K. H. Miskotte that he already opposed this ‘revival of paganism’ in the 1930s. At a time when there was talk of a revival of old Germanic religion and culture, he wrote his important work Edda and Torah: A Comparison of Germanic and Israelite Religion.* If ever it could be said that a religion needed to be abolished, this was true of this kind of resurgent pagan religion. Miskotte’s writing of his book at that time was obedience to the demands of the hour. Some examples may illustrate how this warning against the dangers of such a revival of Germanic religion, or at least facets of it, were not superfluous and how Miskotte was certainly not fighting shadows. The Dutchman J.de Vries, at the time professor in Leiden, a post from which he was dismissed immediately after the Second World War, and a great expert in Germanic religion, expressed ‘a vague hope in a restoration of the old times in the political waters of National Socialism’.> Speaking of the Germanic peoples, De Vries uses the image of the ‘closed, and thus healthy, society’. ‘Here was a healthy people, founded on itself, which was not at all in a psychological emergency.’ The last chapter of his monumental book Aligermanische Religionsgeschichte is entitled “The Downfall of Paganism’. He suggests in so many words that this paganism disappeared like the Titanic, intimating that a great disaster took place: ‘A dark and almost pessimistic mood lay upon souls .. .”° C. G. Jung, the famous psychologist of religion, commented that the romantic-political ideology of National Socialism with its revival of Old Germanic cultural elements was favoured by the fact that the masses in Germany were so intent on a life directed outwards that they were overwhelmed by unconscious destructive energies which actualized archaic archetypes: Wodan, Valhalla, etc.’ How dangerous this was is evident from this judgment on the Christianization of the Germans: ‘Because Christianity came upon the Germans as an alien religion, they were psychologically split, morally distressed or at least robbed of the basis of their essential state; they lost racial purity and their social cohesion was seriously damaged.”®

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Another example of such a dangerous way of dealing with the Germanic heritage can be found in a book by F.J. Los on Charlemagne. In it he says that this ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation all too clearly bears the stamp of its origin’. ‘It lives mainly by non-Germanic traditions; it has an alien culture which is imposed from outside and is thus essentially inauthentic.’ He speaks of the enormous pressure which this ‘un-Germanic (Roman!) empire, as heir of the Frankish empire, exerted on the spiritual life of the German people’, and then describes the Viking storm which shook Christian Europe to the roots, again reinforced the political predominance of the Germanic element in this part of the world, and thus penetrated it and fertilized it with ‘Nordic racial blood’. ‘However, while in the course of the centuries the people who created the empire became more and more degenerate and lost almost all the Nordic racial element on which its original power rested, on the other side of its frontiers stood a people which had been able to preserve its youthful power, thanks to its blood, which had remained pure.’ He says that Clovis was the first German ruler to adopt ideals alien to his race as a result of his conversion and claims that in converting the Saxons, Charlemagne finally broke their opposition for good, ‘eventually seeing no other means than a forced migration, deliberately tainting the blood of this people (sic!)’. With a clear reference to the Third Reich he describes as a task for the future the construction of a ‘Northern land which is totally free from alien influences, which again — like the old Germania — is founded on itself and obeys its own laws’. ‘If this is achieved, then in a sense Europe will have returned to the starting point of its history, since again it will have been divided into a Roman and a Germanic world which will also be clearly different in cultural and spiritual terms.’ He gives this answer to the question whether history was then simply a meaningless repetition: “The age-old battle between the spiritual domination of alien racial elements has finally led Germans to become completely aware of their own nature and character. This awareness, which is the fruit of a long and eventful history, is first making headway in our days and holds promise for the future. The new Germany that we see growing will therefore become inwardly richer and therefore more powerful than the old.”

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That such racist talk does not simply belong to the past may be shown from a more recent example. Another reason why people have looked mistrustfully on the northern heritage is its falsification by the Nazis. It is high time for this unfair stigma to be refuted. I claim that if our native northern religion had been granted a natural progress from primitive animistic views through a more refined pagan pantheon, the next step in this evolutionary progress would have been a mystery school along the lines of those which flourished in ancient Greece and Egypt. Alas (sic!), we were not allowed to follow our own religious development. Christianity intervened, and in a relatively short time we lost almost all traces of our heritage. *°

These examples may be sufficient to make it clear that the warnings which Miskotte uttered against the wrong kind of attachment to a culture were justified and have lost nothing of their validity. One can go wrong with such an interest in the preservation of both the gospel and culture. This danger must always be deliberately avoided, also at this time. Given the revival of (religious) nationalism in Europe (Croatia, Serbia) and the xenophobia which is cropping up everywhere, it is clear that Europe today is not prepared to become a truly intercultural and inter-religious society. Rather, it seems that a period of new barbarism has dawned. The church in Europe must guard against this and make sure that one particular cultural or ethnic identity does not arise in opposition to the identity of another. At all events, the legitimate defence of and rise of one’s own cultural identity must not in any case become un-ecumenical in a Christian perspective, a threat against the social well-being of the whole ecumene, the ‘inhabited world’.

Via Athens?

This is not the place to investigate in detail whether Miskotte’s analysis of Germanic religion was thorough enough. In his Edda and Torah, Miskotte was not exclusively concerned with ‘interpreting the Germanic myths in the context of the history of religion. He interpreted the myths in the light of an option for the Torah and with a view to an analysis of modern paganism.’’' J. de Vries does not approve of this

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theological phenomenology. He challenges Miskotte’s approach on philological grounds. He criticizes him for limiting himself to the Edda, which gives him an incomplete picture of old Norse literature. He also criticizes him for coming to too hasty a conclusion over the powers of fate (Norns).'?

My concern is to point out that however much Miskotte’s warnings remain relevant, he has not given a complete answer to the question of the relationship between the Torah and the Edda. In the 1930s he rightly indicated where the Torah needed to do away with the Edda, but failed to answer the question where the Edda, or some of its religious and cultural elements, could also be brought under this heading and as it were be raised to a new plane. It is interesting in this connection to note that Miskotte himself certainly saw this other side of the connection which he himself clearly felt attractive: ‘We gladly (or rather not so gladly, but honestly, and to that degree gladly) acknowledge that in the course and tone of myth as we understand it, we find our deepest feelings addressed and gripped; what we hear there is spirit of our spirit, blood of our blood.’*? But Miskotte clearly sees this as a temptation to be resisted. In my view, though, not every connection needs to be dismissed as temptation, betrayal or syncretism. Nor is it the case that such an attitude is diametrically opposed to the notion of mission or evangelization.’* In wanting to argue for consideration of what might possibly also be a positive attachment to myths, I am not arguing for or toying with that new attention to myth which has recently been a characteristic of German paganism. Under the title ‘Wodan and Co Back in Germany’, the Dutch paper Trouw described how some people were celebrating the ‘solstice’ in the Teutoburg Forest and how in Frankfurt a witches’ coven under the name Ygegdrasil was working with ‘magic runes’. One of the most active neo-pagan groups is the ‘Pagan Community’ founded in 1983: they worship the Germanic Celtic gods of nature and are militantly anti-Christian.‘> Nor am I out to make a ‘friendly cocktail of myth and magic which is offered under the name New Age’.’°

But the question remains: must the church today attach so much importance to European culture? Isn’t one city, Jerusalem, and one revelation on Sinai and/or in Jesus Christ, enough? Wasn’t

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Tertullian right in his often-quoted question “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?’ and his negative answer to it? As we have seen, the church was not in fact so antipathetic to ‘Athens’. It is important to note in this connection that much of this pre-Christian religion and culture would not be known had it not been for Christianity. How positive the church in Europe was to pre-Christian culture and religion is evident from the amount it did to preserve the pre-Christian heritage. ‘Without the church almost all our knowledge of the ancient Celtic world would have disappeared; and without the church the Celtic world would have remained in alio orbe.’'7 It has been asserted that Christianity drove out the pagan myths. But that is not true of the heroic Norse sagas. It has often been thought, wrongly, that mediaeval culture was intolerant of what lay outside the tradition of Latin Christianity. But according to Dawson, in reality ‘both the Norse sagas and the chanson de geste (the old French heroic poetry) can be said to be the creation of mediaeval Christianity’.'® Christianity preserved the heritage of ancient myth and integrated it into the great cosmic drama, already connecting these myths with spiritual values relating to ‘creation’, ‘birth’ and ‘death’.'? The Edda was set down in writing only at the period in which Europe was being Christianized. It is thanks to the priests and the schools of Christian Iceland that the rich tradition of Norse mythology, poetry and saga were preserved. Around 1200 heroic history contained as much and as little mythical material as it did in the pagan centuries. When the Goths, Franks and other tribes in the south created their heroic sagas, they already had ‘the font behind them or were standing right in front of it’.”° We have seen that in the past the ‘success’ of the acceptance and dissemination of the Christian message in Europe was clearly connected with the possibility of forming links with the distinctive features of this culture. Things could not have been otherwise. ‘Without popular symbols and customs the content of faith would not have been fully accepted into the hearts and minds of the people.’*’ The interaction between the gospel and Graeco-Roman, Celtic and Germanic culture has indicated that this culture was not only challenged and rejected but also taken up positively by the new

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Christian understanding of faith. Why shouldn’t the Roman, Celtic and Germanic treasures be brought into the new Jerusalem (Rev.21.26)? Indeed, didn’t Boniface himself ‘make household utensils to nourish southern civilization from the wood of the felled Donar oak’?** The pre-Christian religions and gods may have been stigmatized by the church, but were the saints more than the ‘successors of the gods’? And although the veneration of the saints may be said to be in a sense pagan in origin, does the authentically Christian element in it have to be denied??3 To counter the caution shown by Miskotte showed over a possibly wrong attachment to Germanic culture, here is a story which Abraham Heschel’s daughter tells about her father. As we have seen, Heschel was well aware of the dangers of German paganism as this was revived in Nazism. His daughter relates: ‘On his walks with them (she is referring to a group of poets), my father liked to put his hat on when he entered the woods round Wilna, saying that when they entered these woods they were entering a holy place filled with God’s presence.”*+ But — and this is a question also raised by this book — doesn’t this contextualization, this openness to European cultures and religions, lead to an abandonment or dilution of one’s own Christian identity? In an attractive study of Maimonides, David Hartman, the Jewish philosopher from Jerusalem, discusses a similar question: did Jewish theology totally change when Maimonides adopted the Greek understanding of God, mediated through the Islamic philosophers? ‘Does the nature of Athens eliminate the possibility of the Sinai of Jerusalem? Does the importance Maimonides assigns to the laws of nature cause him to take up spiritual residence in Athens?’ Hartman answers the question like this: Perhaps he inhabits neither city — not if they are understood as two polarized frameworks of theoretical and practical virtue. A new, yet old, Jerusalem may emerge once Athens enters into history. The concept of nature and the contemplative ideal inspired by a God who is revealed through the ordered laws of nature may grow in Jerusalem without destroying the city’s unique quality. Athens may provide a wider understanding of what the Sinai movement implicitly demanded. Once the outgrowths of Athens have taken root in the soil of Jerusalem both cities may not need to remain opposing

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spiritual poles. A new, spiritual synthesis with different categories may emerge. Many may remain fully within the way of Jerusalem and yet deeply appreciate and appropriate the way of Athens.”

David Hartman maintains that no dilemma is to be constructed either for Maimonides or for himself between Athens, which stands for reason, and Jerusalem, which stands for revelation. He wants to integrate the claims of both Athens and Jerusalem.”° This is how he put it in an interview, reacting to the view of those orthodox Jews who, as Tertullian did in connection with Christianity, asserted that

everything could be found in the Torah and that there was nothing to be learned from the world: ‘I have an identity. I have roots. I have a family. I have a history. I have a Torah. I do not deny any of that. I hold on to them, but my history, my family, my roots and my Torah are not the only show in town. My Sinai is not a closed book. My Torah lives in dialogue with the world. I learn from Aristotle. I learn from Kant. I say that not all the wisdom of the world was found on Sinai. Sinai is my point of reference, but I do not remain there. From Sinai I learn about the world, and I absorb the world in Sinai.’*7 I want to argue that the answer of Christians to the question of the translation of the gospel in European culture should be sought in the same direction of integration and association with ‘Athens’, or whatever other name may be used for the European city. The church must also continue to go its way via Athens (as G. J. de Vries put it), as Hartman also indicates. That is what it did in the past, despite Tertullian, and it should continue to do so in the future. That does

not exclude a prophetic attitude to any Athens of this world (and the Jerusalems!), but includes it. It is ‘still profitable and even inevitable for us to choose the way via Athens.’?® As with Hartman, the adoption of such an attitude need not imply that there is no room for a distinctive Christian responsibility and mission. Real ‘evangelization’ also involves a change of culture. ‘In the midst of our concerns for contextualization, we must not be lulled into thinking that contextualization will leave the culture untouched and simply affirm the good values there. Christ can be found in culture, but making that discovery explicit will have consequences for the culture.’*? Christians, too, should not deny their own identity, nor will they

want to. Without wanting to deny Sinai (in the case of Christians this

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would also be Golgotha), we can echo David Hartman’s remark:

“The special way of Israel must not turn on the false presupposition that God is accessible only to members of the covenant.’22 Today, the church in Europe on the eve of the new millennium must associate with other cities than Athens, without denying its own identity — ‘Jerusalem’. Here the perspective must not be solely and exclusively on the hereafter — the new Jerusalem in heaven — as perhaps might be suggested by the story of the bird at the beginning of this chapter (though it need not be). The last book of the Bible, Revelation, is about the vision of the new Jerusalem which comes from heaven, but descends upon this earth. It is not just about the question of the truth of a life after death, but also about the question of a life before death for human beings and the environment in Europe and the world. ‘Where are we going?’ is not just a question

about a new Jerusalem and a new heaven, but also about a new and renewed earth. In 1531 the Zurich Reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) wrote to the French King Francis I (1494-1547): ‘If you tread in the footsteps of David, then you will see God himself, and alongside him you may hope to see Adam, Abel, Enoch, Paul, Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, the Catos, the Scipios.. .>’ Butif itis a legitimate hope for the eschaton that we shall meet ‘pagan heroes’ as well as ‘biblical heroes’, should we not, indeed must we not, be concerned now, already, in this life to meet people of another faith and another culture?

Dealing with nature: the preservation ofcreation As an illustration of what the church can still learn from a ‘preChristian’ or ‘non-Christian’ culture even now, we could consider how the Celts treated nature, which was described above. One of the

challenges which the church must accept today in the communication of the gospel in Europe (and the world) is how to deal with nature and the environment. It can be said that by his instruction to Augustine, Gregory the Great championed a “Christ as the transformer of culture’, whereas in certain respects some missionaries,

like Boniface and others, seem to have preached a “Christ against nature’. In the past, was not the way in which the primitive religions dealt with nature too rapidly dismissed as ‘nature religion’? Logghe

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remarks that in their deepest core the pre-Christian religions were ‘mystery religions which used natural symbols to express more fundamental, deeper structures of the whole mystery. [twas not that trees or springs were worshipped, but the thought that lay behind them. Nature was seen as the face of the gods.’>? Matthew Fox is a theologian who has devoted much thought in

past years to the rediscovery of a creation-centred spirituality“S In his view Western’ European theology is far too much practised and conceived on the basis of an exclusive fall-redemption model of spirituality. He calls this a ‘dualistic’ and ‘patriarchal’ model, in which theology begins with (original) sin and ends with redemption. But this spirituality does not teach believers anything about the ‘new creation’ or ‘creativity’, doing justice and transforming society, about eros, play and pleasure and the ‘God of delight’. In Fox’s view this tradition goes back to Augustine, while the tradition centred on creation goes back to the ninth century before Christ: the Yahwist, the psalms, the wisdom literature and then the New Testament Jesus (‘the living voice of Israelite wisdom’) and the first theologian of the West, Irenaeus.** “There cannot be peace on earth without peace with the earth.’5> Since the Enlightenment, the left side of the brain has produced a culture which drowns us in the verbal. Instead of talking about original sin, Matthew Fox wants to talk about the ‘original blessing’. He then points out how Celtic spirituality centred on creation was swept away or at least suppressed in the Western church at a very early stage. He refers to the condemnation and suppression of the Irishmen Pelagius and Johannes Scotus Erigena (c.800/815—c.880). But in his view it was the Celts above all who laid the foundations both in Germany (the Rhineland) and northern Italy for the creation-centred mystics like Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179, called the prophetissa teutonica or the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’), Mechthilde of Magdeburg (c.1210-1277, ‘God is our playmate, who evokes the child in each of us’), Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) and even Francis of Assisi (1181—1226)5° The Celtic spirituality of Ireland, Scotland and Wales is deeply centred on creation. Jesus was a poet, a story-teller, an artist. ‘He was not a priest or a theologian or an academic or a dispenser of sacraments, but one who made people aware of the sacrament of the cosmos, of the kingdom (queendom) of God.’ Just as in the first centuries Jesus

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acquired the title ‘sun of righteousness’ and his birth was celebrated at the time of the solstice, so today Fox wants to speak of Jesus as ‘Mother Earth’.37 Without wanting to suggest that Fox is to be followed in every respect, | think that he is right in pointing to the neglect of certain currents in the Christian tradition which need to be revalued. It was above all Celtic Christians who, because of their cultural background, were very aware of God’s gracious power and saw God’s spirit and God’s grace as being present throughout the natural world.2* Someone like Teilhard de Chardin can be cited as a figure who with his cosmic vision has given a contemporary reinterpretation of the vision which can also be found in an ancient Irish prayer to Christ.*9 At this time, Christians in Ireland are again propagating this attachment to their own Celtic heritage. It is striking that here the cosmic significance of Christ is being understood. More emphasis is put on his resurrection than on his cross. The heart of Celtic spirituality can be sought in the experience of a sense of the ‘wholeness of creation’. ‘For the Celts, nature and in particular trees, rivers and springs already had a sacred significance and offered the possibility of becoming aware of the divine presence. The hermits regarded this part of their spiritual heritage as something which generally coincided with Christian ideas about creation, incarnation and the sacramental way in which the material can transmit spiritual realities.’ One expression of this attitude is the way in which they treated birds and animals. Hermits emerge as protectors of threatened animals: Melangell, who gave refuge to a hare, or Silyn, who gave refuge to a deer, are examples of this. Brynach spoke not only with the birds but also with the angels. “This vision of a harmony existing between the human race and the natural world which is to be found in Brynach, Silyn and the other hermits, and which they derived from Christ (“He was with the

wild beasts”, Mark 1.13), putting it at the centre of Celtic Christianity, must,’ according to Patrick Thomas, ‘again be revived if our corrupted and cruelly exploited planet is to survive and be restored ... The rediscovery of this vision may prove to be one of the most significant contributions which Celtic spirituality can make to the future of humanity.’*°

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From ‘demythologizing’ to ‘the truth of myth’ The argument that in our day in Europe the ‘stories’, ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ of Europe must be taken up as they were in the first period of Christianization has to counter a powerful stream which simply wants to do away with myths. A story is told about a German professor who spent only one day in Leiden in the position to which he had been apppointed. The next day this ‘Romantic’ offered his resignation ‘because he could not entertain any mythological notions in such a flat country’.*"

How hostile our Western culture, and not just theology, is to myth

can be illustrated from no less a figure thanJ.G. Frazer, the author of the famous The Golden Bough. At the age of sixty he felt that he could not justify his preoccupation with mythology. At the end of his book he says that he looks back on ‘the melancholy account of human foolishness and vanity which attracted our attention’ and ‘welcomes the replacement of religion by science’. ‘But,’ Alwyn and Brinley Rees add, after quoting this passage, ‘if he had been so sceptical he should not have devoted himself to such a thorough study of this subject.’4* In any discussion of a possible positive attachment to myths we must be aware that for most people today the word ‘myth’ has quite specifically negative associations. It is understood not only to denote ‘a narrative tradition relating to the worship and world-view of a people’, but also to have the secondary meaning of ‘fable’ or ‘groundless tale’.43 The negative attitude which Christian theologians have often adopted towards the use of mythology is connected with the hostility to myths which is found in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, in the period after the Babylonian captivity there is a hostility to Canaanite mythology, a prohibition of images and a piety increasingly centred on the law.** Where the New Testament speaks of myths it does so negatively: ‘Have nothing to do with godless and silly myths’ (I Tim.4.7).*5 The Pastoral Epistles above all contrast truth and myth,*° in speaking of people who turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths (II Tim.4.4). And in II Peter we read: ‘For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and

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coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty’ (II Peter 1.16). However, the question is whether this negative attitude applies to the Bible as a whole, or above all to myth in all the meanings that could be given to this word. Don’t the Old and New Testaments not only abolish myth but also raise it to a higher level? The Bible often parodies images and motifs from other mythologies.*7 It cannot be said that the Old Testament as a whole is characterized by a hostility to myth. We must not underestimate the degree to which the Old Testament also took over important elements from its religious environment, even the Canaanite environment. In the relationship between Israelite belief in God (Yahweh) and the Canaanite environment, we can note that Yahwism raises belief in El or Baal to

a higher plane. Clearly the Old Testament both abolishes myth and raises it to a higher level. It would be wrong to discover only an antithetical line. There is not only discontinuity but also continuity between the faith of Israel and the Canaanite context. There is no antithesis between belief in God as Lord (Yahweh) and belief in God as El. Toa certain degree belief in God as El elevated and influenced belief in Yahweh. Many important characteristics of El, above all his nature as creator, his fatherhood and his mercy, were incorporated into belief in God as Lord (Yahweh). The abolition of Canaanite religion is clear, however, in the case of belief in Baal. The

exploitation and sacrifice of human beings, cf. the story of Naboth’s vineyard, in which Ahab sacrifices Naboth to his urge to expand his property (I Kings 22) and the worship of Moloch, the child sacrifice or prostitution connected with the worship of Baal, are sharply condemned. Yet even here there is some ‘adoption’ and influence. Then we have not only the literary influence of, for example, the fertility myth but also influence in the sphere of faith.**

Myths could be fiercely atacked in the church in the Graeco— Roman world. Clement of Alexandria half filled his Protreptikos (4.43, 57, 60) with an argument against the ‘smearing of fantasy by myths’.*? One of the consequences for Christian art of this abolition of mythology and eroticism was that as a result ‘all figuration, including non-plastic figuration, lost its best themes’. People lost interest in ‘the profound allegoresis of ageold myths’. “The mythological store remained unoccupied.’ There was avery

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strong sense that the church had a tangible history to offer, rather than myths. That is why people began to depict the holy places of the Old and New Testaments in their actual Palestinian situation. They began to create illustrations both out of a need to make salvation history concrete and out of historical interest. Christians wanted to counter the rich world of myth by saying: ‘We too are not of yesterday, but look back on a four-thousand-year history, and this is greater and more authentic than the history of Troy, Athens or Rome, since it is the real history of humankind.’>°

According to Drewermann, one of the bad psychological consequences of this dissociation from pagan mythology was that it created the conditions which led to its message being rejected by many people today.’ Whereas for years in Protestant theology under the influence of Rudolf Bultmann it was said that the message of the myth must be extracted and that the kerygma stood over against myth,>* Bultmann’s own ‘master pupil’, the Jew Hans Jonas, remarked: ‘The ultimate mystery can certainly be presented better in the symbols of myth than in the concepts of thought.’°> According to Hollenweger, ‘myth does not die’. He discusses Bultmann’s method of demythologizing, what he calls his ‘monocultural dealing with myth, which cannot be used interculturally’.5+ The question is rightly raised whether a really complete demythologizing is both possible and desirable. It has been pointed out in connection with the new tendencies towards demythologizing that ‘myth must be reclaimed by Western Christianity in order to protect the dissolution of Western Christianity into myth. For that to be done, it is first necessary to take myth utterly seriously.’>> According to Northrop Frye, if we try any thorough demythologizing of the Bible ‘there will be, quite simply, nothing left at all’.5° ‘Literally, the Bible is a gigantic myth, a narrative extending over the whole of time from creation to apocalypse, unified by a body of recurring imagery that “freezes” into a single metaphor cluster the metaphors all being identified with the body of the Messiah, the man who is all men, the totality of /ogot who is one Jogos, the grain of sand that is in the world.’>7 Nowadays the insight has rightly broken through that we cannot avoid a mythical way of speaking.5* According to the well-known phenomenologist of religion, Joseph Campbell, who has produced an enormous collection of books on mythology, including the four-

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volume work The Masks of God (Primitive, Oriental, Occidental and Creative Mythology respectively), a mythology which functions well has four important functions: — First, by its rites and images the myth maintains in the individual a sense of awe, gratitude and even ecstasy, more than fear, an aliveness to the mystery of both the universe and human existence within it. — Secondly, mythology offers human beings a comprehensive and comprehensible image of the world around them, roughly in accordance with the best scientific knowledge of the time. In symbolic form this tells them what their universe is like and what their place is in it. — The third function of a living mythology is to support the social order by rites and rituals which make an impact on young people and shape them.

— The fourth and most important function of mythology is that of guiding the individual step by step through the unavoidable psychological crises of an ordinary life from the position of childhood dependence through the traumas of adolescence and the trials of becoming adult and finally to the death-bed.°° Human beings in search of an ideal could at least begin, according to Cambell, by looking into the myths of antiquity, religion and modern literature.

‘For the elite who

can

read and understand

them,

T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, among modern writers and poets, and Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, among modern artists, have updated the ancient mythological motifs.’°° According to George Steiner, myths are among the most subtle and most direct languages of experience. “They re-enact moments of signal truth or crisis in the human condition.’ The mythographer — the poet — is the historian of the unconscious. That gives the great myths their haunting universality.’ ‘Mythology is not a lie, but poetry. It is metaphorical.”°? In most cultures there is no sharp dividing line between myth and folk-tales, because they all form part of the literature of pre-literary societies. Plato suggested that ‘the future citizens of his ideal republic should begin their literary training by telling myths rather than with mere facts or so-called

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rational propositions’. Even Aristotle, ‘the master of true reason’, says, “The friend of wisdom is also the friend of myth.’ Mircea Eliade describes these stories as ‘models for human behaviour which as a result give meaning and value to life’. He has shown how the adventures and trials undergone by ‘heroes’ in folk tales are often expressed in terms of initiation. ‘Everyone wants to experience certain dangerous situations, undergo exceptional trials, in order to find a way to the other world, and they experience it all at the level of their fantasy lives by hearing and reading folk tales.”°3

To say, like Bultmann, that using electricity and believing in miracles cannot go together, is now regarded as a mistake.°* In fact, as Weima rightly remarked, modern men and women freely change from a secular to a religious system of reference. ‘The tendency towards demythologizing ‘robs the Christian religious framework of reference of its religious character, making religious experiences increasingly difficult to achieve’.°5 He sees some theories and theologies of secularization functioning as self-fulfilling prophecies, thus contributing to the rise of a secularized consciousness and making it almost impossible to experience reality in a religious way.° The only question is whether we have to speak ofa steady process of evolution in the direction of adiminished sense of the holy.°? The suggestion has been made, and the thought is alive, that this process of secularization will ofnecessity find a way into the rest ofthe world. The terminology has become so powerful that we are also inclined to see other cultures from this perspective. I caught myself doing this a number of years ago after a visit to Indonesia, when I remarked to European friends that many people there were still going to church. I subsequently asked myself where I got the word ‘still’ from. I think it was connected with the aprioristic presupposition that the secularization present in the West will inevitably spread like an oil slick all over the world. The revival of religion in our time, and not just of Islam, clearly indicates another tendency, despite all the theories of secularization. One of the characteristics of the secularized consciousness is the expulsion of almost all transcendent elements from the Christian framework of reference. Once one accepts the idea of demythologizing, the biblical stories are stripped of all their miraculous content,

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because they are thought to conflict with today’s closed picture of the world. ‘Is this argument right,’ Weima asks himself, ‘or are people here using an antiquated ideology of science?” He believes that we can try to give an ‘existentialist interpretation of myth’, but when this interpretation is detached from the myth itself, symbol and myth dissolve into existential philosophy and theology is reduced to anthropology. But it is wrong to replace religious symbolic language with philosophical or psychological language. ‘As soon as the concept replaces the symbol, the symbol (the myth) is destroyed as an instrument of knowledge.’ “The myth is . . . not an object of knowing but a category of knowing. As such it is the condition and category of experiential religious knowledge.’ Again according to Weima, many modern psychologists of religion begin from the assumption that ‘symbols and myths have a kind of reality which breaks through the limits of space and time and in so doing moreover leaves no room for any kind of rationalistic interpretation. Moreover the myths and symbols of Christianity are never “just” myths, although theologians or psychologists can investigate their mythical content and thus their relevance to human life. However, for the believer the Christian symbol is at the same time a vehicle for a higher reality.’ Weima ends with a reference to Eliade. On the one hand Christian symbols and myths thus have a clearly archetypal significance, and on the other, Christians believe, they are realized in history and so take on their deep significance for salvation. ‘In taking over the great symbols of the natural religious person, at the same time Christianity made use of their possibilities and their power. So the mythical and archetypal dimension which was from then on made subject to the historical dimension remained present in no less real a way. The Christian revelation did not destroy the matrices of human imagination but made use of them and added a new value to them.” It is also of essential importance for the communication of the gospel in today’s Europe to arrive at a revaluation or rehabilitation of the role of metaphor, myth and analogy and to rediscover a sense of mystery and enchantment. The central doctrines of the Christian tradition can only be expressed in the form of metaphors.’° That was the case during the Christianization of Europe in the past. The early Middle Ages saw the rise of a new “Christian mythology’ in the form

of legends of the saints. The French bishop and saint Gregory of

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Tours (538-594) himself made many contributions to this through his hagiographical accounts of, among others, the miracles of Martin of Tours. It was only through this ‘that the vital transfusion of the Christian faith and ethics with the barbaric tradition of the new peoples of the West could be achieved’.’’ According to Frye, ‘In Western Europe the Bible stories had a central mythical significance until at least the eighteenth century’ in that ‘they are the stories that tell a society what is important for it to know’. ‘Mythical’ in this sense means ‘the opposite of “not really true”’. It indicates that the story is charged with a special seriousness and importance. Sacred stories illustrate a specific social concern. ‘Whereas the name of Copernicus symbolizes the replacement of a mythological view of space with a scientific view, that of Darwin symbolizes the replacement of mythological by scientific conceptions of time.’ In Frye’s view, in any period the central fact of a mythology is reshaped by the poets. He points out how in Western literature Dante and Milton took their themes from myth, while Chaucer and Shakespeare stayed with folk-tale and legend. He speaks of a close and unavoidable relationship between mythology and poetry. Time and again new life is breathed into mythology by poets. Poets always think in myths and metaphors and can only make use of scientific language to a very limited degree. ‘Perhaps the myths of the Bible are to be read poetically.’”* “Truth did not come naked into the world, but in symbols and images.’7?

From a culture of the word to a culture of the image In an interview shortly before his death on 23 April 1986, Mircea Eliade remarked how for modern men and women the world has been desacralized, and many dogmatic formulae like Trinity, Immaculate Conception and transubstantiation have lost their meaning. The precise sciences have a great power of attraction. Many people fix their hopes on a desacralized messianism, like Marxism. But he then went on to say that religious meaning is certainly felt at the level of the unconscious. He mentioned film, literature and dreams as forms of expression of this. As an illustration from film one might think of the work of Steven Spielberg,

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like his Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET, and his extensive use of symbolism. As for dreams, attention can be drawn to the renewed interest in the work on them by the psychologist C. G. Jung.

Eliade gave a nice illustration from literature. He mentioned Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) Journey to the Centre of the Earth, pointing out how in it the author is unconsciously telling an initiation story. All the classical trials are in it: the night, the water, the monsters. Eliade remarks that the initiation structure of a ritual is always a religious creation. The striking thing is that this book comes from the ‘bard of the triumph of technology and clear knowledge. Jules Verne was a positivist who believed in the progress of science. But myths return in a camouflaged way.’’* These remarks take up what Eliade had written earlier about hierophanies, i.e.manifestations of the holy, expressed in symbols and myths. He thinks that the history of religions contains a series of messages which are there to be deciphered. They disclose ‘fundamental existential situations’ which are directly relevant to modern men and women. In the most secularized societies and among the most iconoclastic of present-day youth movements (like the hippies) there are a number of apparently non-religious phenomena in which we can see ‘new and original discoveries of the holy’. Here Eliade is thinking in particular of modern art and some important and very popular films. He also mentions the rediscovery of the sanctity of life and nature, which need not necessarily be a return to ‘paganism’ or ‘idolatry’. In this connection one might think of theological reflection on ecological questions. It may be that secularization is very successful at the level of conscious life: old theological ideas, dogmas, positions of faith, institutions, which are increasingly being robbed of their significance. But, he goes on to say, ‘no living, normal man can be reduced to his conscious, rational activity, for modern man still dreams, falls in love, listens to music, goes to the theatre, views films, reads books — in short, lives not only

in a historical and natural world but also in an existential private world and in an imaginary universe’.’°

In connection with the communication of the gospel in the presentday European context, special attention needs to be paid to the powerful attraction of films and television. In a study of religious

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films, A. Dronkers remarked more than thirty years ago: “This investigation teaches us to recognize the distinctive potency of the word but at the same time gratefully to take up the visual medium which offers us the prospect of new possibilities for communication to a world and people whose focus is visual.’7° We are now experiencing how the culture of the word has been replaced by the culture of the image. We are moving from an age of printing — the Gutenberg age — to one of audio-visual experience. “The “experience” of the audio-visual media has become more important than the “inner mental pictures” of the print media. The audio-visual media are becoming the dominant media in our culture.’””? The audio-visual media, and especially film, are certainly becoming one ‘of the most important translators of contemporary myths, if not the most important’.7° The interviewer Bill Moyers said to Joseph Campbell: ‘When I took our two sons to see Star Wars they did the same thing the audience did at that moment when the voice of Ben Kenobi says to Skywalker in the climactic moment of the last fight, “Turn off your computer, turn off your machine and do it yourself, follow your feelings, trust your feelings.” And when he did he achieved success, and the audience broke out into applause.’ Campbell replied: ‘Well, you see, that movie communicates. It is a language that talks to young people, and that’s what counts. It asks, are you going to be a person of heart and humanity — because that’s where the life is, ° from the heart — or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called “intentional power”?’7°

“The relationship between film and present-day spirituality is played out first of all at the level of present-day cultural language, which for the most part consists of a mixture of moving images, the spoken word and music.”*° A ‘pictorial language of faith’ is not just required for younger people. Pierre Babin has pointed out that a new audio-visual language has come into being which brings with it it own all-embracing culture. The audio-visual medium is the key to understanding present-day culture. The audio-visual method is another means of communication. He mentions three characteristics of modern life which people must remember if they want to speak to younger generations: the revival of fantasy, the importance of affective relations and values, and the breaking down of national and cultural boundaries. He argues for a total transformation of our

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ideas about religious communication. In his view it is impossible to enter the world of the electronic media without breaking out of the circle of the print-orientated universe. Just as in the Gutenberg period since the sixteenth century faith has been taught by the catechism (Luther’s Lesser and Greater Catechisms or the Heidelberg Catechism), so today the choice must be made of an audio-visual and symbolic catechism which appeals to the imagination and the quest for total fulfilment. Expressing Christ’s message in an audio-visual way is the experience that we have of Christ: communicating his nature and his words. In Babin’s view, the essence of this audio-

visual catechesis is really expressed in the words of the First Letter of John: ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life — that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, that you may have fellowship with us’ (1.1-3).°" A return to oral traditions can be seen in the audio-visual approach. ‘Its language and form have a strongly emotionalaffective, associative, dramatic, mythical and narrative character,

expressed in and through the mixing and montage of image and sound under electronic supervision.’®? ‘Since television is the medium above all that mixes eye and ear, image and language in a new way, it is a medium in which criticism and training for both the perceptions and conceptions of Christian witness and understanding can be explored in a new context.’ The ‘narrative theologian’ should find television an ‘effective medium through which he/she can investigate the many levels of meaning in the story of the community’.®3 Thus both have important consequences for the communication of the gospel in our culture. Close attention to the media and their significance is not an option but a prime requisite for communication of the gospel in this world.8+ Whereas formerly the emphasis was placed on the doctrine of the church and the utilization of the truth, now it has come to lie on believing and being the church as ‘celebrating, healing, making whole, living’. ‘Feeling, dramatizing and telling’ are essential forms of expression of the audio-visual culture, and are a close parallel to the dramatic stories in the gospel. The media culture ‘creates new space for the imagination of

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believers, for the wisdom of the heart’. ‘Audio-visual language often makes use of symbols, myths, rites and rituals, the magical side of life.’*5 In this language, symbols and images have priority and make a great impact on people.*® Hoekstra points out that ‘stories, myths and dramas are ways of deciphering and disclosing reality, discovering meaning, giving significance and orientating life’. Whereas in a written culture people are tested by what they say, now expressions are tested by the credibility of the person who uses them visually.57 John Shea (Stories ofFaith) and his colleagues regard popular art (film, novels, poetry and television) as the prime expression of a language of religous experience. The best textbooks are not ‘the second-hand theological discussions but the living works of artists who are connected to the sources of creative fantasy’.“* Whereas until recently spiritual culture was called above all ‘a spirituality of the closed senses, the spirituality grafted onto the stem of the art of film is of a fundamentally different kind’.*? A first step that needs to be taken over the new contemporary spirituality of the living image is said to be an evaluation of the artistic work of film-makers, who have often been completely absent from the church sphere. Here the thought is of the early films of Ingmar Bergman, and the films of Robert Bresson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky (4ndret Rublev) and K. Kieslowski (Decalogue). A next pastoral step in the|

direction of the living image is called the ‘fifth gospel’. The central notion here is that ‘every period faces the task of writing its own “fifth gospel”. That can only be done with and in the material of its own time.’?° In his book on television and religion, William F. Fore speaks of the new world-view oftelevision and the influence which this has on our culture, and how television and religion work on each other.?' He identifies as the hidden role of television a narration of what kind of a world ours is, how it works and what it means. The medium

reflects and expresses the myths by which we live. The medium of television gives us a vision of the world which defines not only what we think but how we think it and who we are. Television provides us with myths, doctrines and expressions of our religion, whether we recognize this or not.°* He sees the task of the church as working critically here to ‘unmask messages’.°? The church cannot hide itself away in a cultural ghetto, but must investigate what it means to live in

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an electronic age.”* ‘Television makes use of the instruments of myth, symbol, image and fantasy.’ By myth he does not understand stories from a distant past which are not true, but stories which relate who we are, what we have done and what we can or cannot do. “They deal with power (who has it, who doesn’t), with value (what is

of value and what is not), and with morality (what is right and permissible, what is forbidden).’9°

The role ofstories in word and image One of the most distinctive features of Jesus’ activity was that he spoke in parables. His message of the coming of the kingdom was expressed in all kinds of images and stories. | think that today, too, ‘story can be combined with the ‘myths’, folk-tales and stories (in both words and images) which are and have been encountered in our culture. The distinctive Christian emphasis is the interpretation given of these images and symbols. The argument for the use of myths and mythical forms of expression in translating the Christian message for our time does not exclude the possibility of criticism or Christian reinterpretation of these myths and stories. That happened in the past and should also happen today. ‘Christians cannot get anywhere without words, images, symbols, parables. But myths must be condemned and disputed if they become Molochs demanding human life.’%° All kinds of illustrations can be given of this, from both classical and modern literature. Thus thirty or forty years ago J. H. Bavinck advised his theological students to read ‘literature’ as one of the ways of coming to know culture. Here one might think of the modern classics like Dostoievsky or Kafka, who described his writing as ‘a form of prayer’,?” but of course also of many other recent authors. This remains valuable advice about how to learn the modern sense of life. Joseph Campbell remarked how much he himself had learned from reading the works of Thomas Mann and James Joyce — one thinks of his Ulysses. Both ‘adapted mythological themes to expound the problems, questions, realizations and cares of young people growing up in the modern world. You can discover your own guiding myths through the works of a good novelist who understands these things.’

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Just as the church in the Graeco-Roman world made use of the stories of Homer (c.800-750 BCE), and especially the Odyssey, to proclaim its message, so in our time the story of Odysseus has been used in many ways in connection with the goal of human beings in our century. Fritz Jiirss pointed out how at the end of the ‘twelveyear thousand-year kingdom of brown barbarism’ the return of Odyseus again stood at the centre of artistic interest: the fate of the emigrant, his wanderings and his return. ‘And transformation and metaphor is always involved: coming home to oneself, to conditions of human dignity; for a long time one is not yet home when one is home, for, as Becher remarked, “I must still go homewards for a long, long time.” Thus the Odyssey becomes an endless undertaking because it is also like life, and life means incessantly being on new shores.”??

Troy and Sarajevo We are in a good tradition when we relate classics from Graeco— Roman tradition to the Bible. Ambrose refers to the travels of Odysseus and Aeneas, though his usage was perhaps above all rhetorical.'°° And didn’t Clement of Alexandria regard Homer as a ‘Greek prophet’?*®" It has been pointed out that above all in times of war, there is a heightened interest in classic works like those of Homer, Shakespeare and Tolstoy (1828-1910), and ‘the passages which give war its abiding (or archetypal significance) are read with a new understanding’. The great writers ‘are capable of transcending the differences of time and place and expressing universal themes’.*°” At a time when so many cities in the world have been threatened (Beirut, Sarajevo) and countless people have taken flight, we can learn from Homer, who describes such a disaster which can overtake

a city (Troy) and what happens to the survivors: ‘When a city was devastated, people were forced to wander over the earth or live outside it as a partial return to the existence of a beast. That is the central meaning of the //iad,’ writes George Steiner in an attractive article ‘Homer and the Scholars’. The Odyssey describes the aftermath of this event. It is the epic of a ‘displaced person’. ‘The cities have been devastated, and the survivors wander over the

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surface of the earth as pirates and beggars. These refugees brought the shattered fragments of their own culture with them.’ In the Odyssey there is a short dialogue between Odysseus and the shade of the departed Achilles: ‘I would rather follow the plough as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be king over all the perished dead.’"®3 Steiner goes on to comment that in his view Achilles would never have said this during his lifetime. Had he done so, it would have meant peace for Troy. Didn’t all the great misery for both Greeks and Trojans stem from the wrath of Achilles, of which the opening lines of the Iliad speak? With this unbosoming of Achilles, Homer, now grown older after writing the J/iad, in the Odyssey puts a question-mark against the whole impulse of the liad. According to Steiner, the Iliad is characterized by a ‘youthful lack of compassion’. Perhaps Homer later felt this view to be incomplete. It could be that in the noontide of his life this much-travelled poet returned to the world of the //iad to compare the view of human behaviour with that of his own experience. The Odyssey grew out of that. ‘With marvellous acumen, Homer chose for his protagonist the one figure out of the Trojan saga nearest to the “modern” spirit. Already in the //iad, Odysseus marks a transition from the simplicities of the heroic to a life of the mind more sceptical, more nervous, more wary of conviction. Like Odysseus, Homer himself abandoned the stark, rudimentary values inherent in the world of Achilles. When composing the Odyssey, he looked back to the Jad across a wide distance of the soul — with nostalgia and smiling doubt.’’°*

‘The European’ As an example of such attachment to ‘stories’ from more recent

times I would like to cite one of the stories of Herman Hesse. Perhaps his ‘The European’ could serve as a ‘Fairy Tale for Wise Children’, to use the title of a collection of modern tales by Stefan Heym. Although it comes from the beginning of this century — the time of the First World War — it still has much to say to Europeans at the end of this century, because the problems and challenges are often comparable:

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Finally the Lord God had mercy and himself put an end to the days on earth which had culminated in a bloody world war by sending a great flood. . . The only surviving European was drifting around in a lifebelt ... Black and powerful, there appeared on the grey horizon a crude vessel which slowly approached the weary European. To his great satisfaction it seemed to be a gigantic ark, and before he lost consciousness he also saw the age-old patriarch standing on the deck . . . A gigantic negro picked up the drowning man ... The patriarch smiled. He had made a good end to his work, had saved examples of all kinds of inhabitants of the earth . . . Now (on the ark) a new game began among all these colourful human beings and animals as they vied with one another in showing their qualities and skills . . Everyone had to come forward and claim what he thought he was good at, and each did this in turn. This splendid game went on for days . . . No one was left out.. The cheerful contest continued, and finally everyone had shown his talents and gifts, all the animals and all the human beings. Only the European had yet to show his skills, and now everyone looked at him with great attentiveness as he came forward and did his bit . . . He hesitated for a long time . . . Then Noah asked him to obey. ‘I too have developed a particular skill to a high degree. It is not with a view to being better than other beings, far less is it a skill or a craft ... My gift is the intellect.’ ‘Show us,’ exclaimed the negro, and they all thronged more closely round him. ‘I can’t,’ said the meek white man. “You don’t understand. What makes me different is my understanding.’ ‘Understanding?’ asked the Chinese slowly, “Show us your understanding. So far there isn’t anything to see.’ “There is nothing to see,’ said the European meekly. ‘My gift and speciality is this: I make pictures of the outside world in my head and from these pictures I can produce new pictures and orders just for myself. I can think the whole world in my brain and thus create it anew.’ ... ‘What’s the good of that?’ said Noah slowly. ‘Creating again a world which God has already created, and then all for yourself within that little head of yours? What do you have then?’ Everybody loudly showed their assent and burst out laughing. ‘Wait,’ cried the European. ‘You don’t understand me at all. It’s not as easy to demonstrate your understanding as it is to demonstrate other skills.” The Hindu smiled. ‘O, you can do that. Show us how your understanding works, say, by doing a sum . .. A couple has three children and each child starts a family. Each young couple has a child a year. How many years will it be before there are a hundred of them?’ . .. The European began to count. But a moment later the Chinese produced the solution. ‘Very clever,’ conceded the white man, ‘but my understanding isn’t for performing that kind of trick, it’s for solving great problems, problems connected with human happiness.’ ‘O, I would prefer that,’ said Noah eagerly . . . ‘Tell us what you have to say about human happiness . . . ‘It isn’t my fault.. but you’re still getting me wrong. I haven’t said that I know the secret of happiness. I just said that my understanding occupies itself with questions which will bring me

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closer to solving the question of human happiness. The way is long, and neither you nor I will see an end to it. Many generations yet will go on pondering this difficult question.’ Everyone stood looking perplexed and despairing. Amidst this general confusion and silence the Chinese blandly said, “Dear brothers, this white cousin is a joker. . . I suggest that we give him his due as a joker . . How about a cheer for our joker?’ . . . Almost everyone joined in and was glad that this painful event was now behind them... But some were still uneasy and disturbed.. That evening the Negro, along with the Eskimo, the Indian and the Malayan, went to the patriarch and said: ‘. .. That white fellow, who made such fun of us today, we don’t like him... . So we ask you, dear father, whether it is right for such a creature to help building a new life on this dear earth. It could cause disaster .. ” The old patriarch gazed at the questioners with his clear eyes. ‘Children,’ he said gently . . . “You’re right and you’re wrong . . . but God has already given an answer before you ask. I have to concede that this man from the land of war is nota particularly welcome guest, and it’s really difficult to see why there have to be such folk. But God who made them certainly knew why he did. You have to forgive this white man a great deal, because his kind so damaged the earth that punishment had to follow. But look, God has given a sign of what he intends the white man for. All of you, you negro, you Eskimo, have your dear wives with you for the new life on earth that we hope to begin soon. . . Only the man from Europe is alone ... This man is here among us as a warning and a stimulus, perhaps as an evil spirit. But he can only have children if he once again enters the multicoloured stream of mankind. He is not allowed to contaminate your life on the new earth. Be comforted.’ Night fell, and the next morning the top of the holy mountain rose steeply above the waters.*°5.

Death and resurrection Wilfred Cantwell Smith has pointed out the important influence of the Jewish thinker Martin Buber (1878-1965) on Christian thought in this century. He in turn was influenced by the Christian tradition. His doctoral study was on two Christian mystics, Nicholas of Cusa (c.1400—1464) and Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), and later he edited the work of a third, Meister Eckhart. Buber dedicated his 1932 book Konigtum Gottes to two friends who helped him to read scripture. One of them was a Jewish scholar, Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), and the other, whom he mentions first, was a Christian, Florens

Christian Rang (1864-1924). Smith remarks: ‘Do we not participate in the processes of each other’s most intimate developments?!”

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In Europe, Hasidic stories have become popular in this century, not least in the churches. It has become easier for the ‘modern’ European to gain access to these stories because Martin Buber has edited them, removing all kinds of miraculous elements which might have attracted the modern European reader less. But I wonder whether the ‘success’ of this reception might not be connected more with the fact that they were Eastern European, in other words came from a cultural climate familiar to Europeans. That is not to deny that they are Jewish in origin, but they were ’contextualized’ in the European environemnt. That is not to deny their Jewish authenticity, but to stress their European contextual character. Today in fact many of these Hasidic stories function as a translation of the Christian message. One tells of a boy going down the street crying. A rabbi who meets him asks him ‘Why are you crying?’ The child replies: ‘I am playing hide and seek, but no one is looking for me.’ Thereupon the rabbi bursts into tears and says: “You are like God. He hides himself but no one looks for him.’ We could ask ourselves whether this is only a Jewish story. Couldn’t it equally be called a Christian or a Muslim story? Jews, Christians and Muslims alike will easily recognize the message in this story. But surely this is a true story? I think that the end of George Steiner’s Real Presences communicates a message which can be understood by any European, and can be regarded as a vehicle for the translation of the Christian message, regardless of what Steiner himself meant by it. “There is one particular day in Western history. . . Itis a Saturday. And it has become the longest of days. We know of that Good Friday which Christianity holds to have been that of the Cross. But the non-Christian, the atheist, knows of it as well. This is to say that he knows of the injustice, of the interminable suffering, of the waste, of the brute enigma of ending, which so largely make up not only the historical dimension of the human condition, but the everyday fabric of our personal lives. We know, ineluctably, of the pain, of the failure of love, of the solitude which are our history and private fate. We know also about Sunday. To the Christian, that day signifies an intimation, both assured and precarious, both evident and beyond comprehension, of resurrection, of a justice and a love that have conquered death. If we are non-Christians or non-believers, we know of that Sunday in precisely analogous terms. We conceive of it as the day of liberation from inhumanity

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and servitude. We look to resolutions, be they therapeutic or political, be they social or messianic. The lineaments of that Sunday carry the name of hope (there is no word less deconstructible). But ours is the long day’s journey of the Saturday. Between suffering,

aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of

rebirth, on the other.’?°7

Ascension

The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and the early church borrowed all kinds of images, symbols and rites from their religious environments. This can be illustrated from the story of the ascension of Christ. Thus for example the Greeks believed in the ascension of their hero Heracles, who went up to heaven in a storm, with thunder and lightning. He is depicted on a chariot next to the goddess Athene.'°? The Romans believed that the founder of Rome, Romulus, went to heaven in thunder and lighting. For the Romans the ascension of Romulus expressed belief in the power of the emperors, while for the Greeks the story of the ascension of Heracles expressed belief in the divinity of human beings. Human beings could elevate themselves to God and the divine. But when the Christian church uses this imagery, it is conveying a different message, although the same medium is used. That is evident from the story of the ascension of Jesus Christ. The story of the ascension of Jesus seems to be about something different from the ascensions of Hercules or Romulus. This new element does not lie in the imagery used. These stories were used as vehicies. But the story of the ascension of the crucified and risen Christ creates, if you like, the picture of an ‘anti-hero’. So it is not just about the divinization of a human being or of humankind, as in the Roman myth. The Christian proclamation of the ascension of Jesus is about a quite different kind of exaltation. He is no Heracles who needs an apotheosis on Olympus. Jesus’ exaltation is of a paradoxical kind: as John teaches, Jesus is raised up on the cross (3.14).'°? This Christian message can be and in fact is constantly translated into our time and culture. We can find anti-heroes, the small and

oppressed, in keeping with the gospel in present-day art. We find interpretations in modern art which are close to the purpose and content of the gospel.

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Two examples may serve here, one a text set to music, another from the graphic arts. Whereas in many ‘classical’ operas the love sung of is often an upper-class love, in the Thirteenth Symphony of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (Babi Yar, op.113), for bass, male chorus and orchestra, using poems by Yevgeni Yevtushenko (1933), there is a celebration of the poor women of the people who have to stand for hours queueing in the shops. Some with shawls, some with scarves,

as though to some heroic enterprise or to work, into the store one by one the women silently come. Oh the rattling of their cans, the clanking of bottles and pans! There’s a smell of onions, cucumbers, a smell of ‘Kabul’ sauce. I’m shivering as I queue up for the cash desk, but as I inch forward towards it, from the breath of so many women a warmth spreads round the store.

They wait quietly, their families’ guardian angels, and they grasp in their hands their hard-earned money. These are the women of Russia. They honour us and they judge us. They have mixed concrete, and ploughed and harvested. They have endured everything, they will continue to endure everything. Nothing in the world is beyond them they have been granted such strength. It is shameful to short-change them. It is sinful to short-weight them. As I shove dumplings into my pocket I sternly and quietly observe their pious hands weary from carrying their shopping bags."*°

How this Christian notion of the ‘ascension’ can be depicted in images in modern times can be illustrated from the work of Vincent

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van Gogh (1853-1890). It is pointed out that Jacob Boehme did not express his notions primarily in the form of thoughts but in the form of images.''’ Of course that is also true of the graphic artists, including Vincent van Gogh. One might say that in his work Van Gogh translated what the gospel means by ‘ascension’. He did not paint any successes, people who had made it, ‘those who storm heaven, skilful people who have “arrived”. For him pictures of ordinary people, above all suffering people, took on a halo, a sacred aura.’ ‘I would like to depict men and women with something of the eternal, of which the halo used to be the symbol’. The potato eaters (‘those people, eating their potatoes in the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour, and how they have honestly earned their food. I have wanted to give the impression of a way of life quite different from that of us civilized people’)"*” were for Van Gogh a picture of ‘the holy family’. For him ‘La Berceuse’, the woman at the post office in Arles, is a modern madonna. Of her portrait he says: ‘If I had had the strength to continue I should have made portraits of saints and holy women from life . . . and they would be middle- class women of the present day, and yet they would have had something in common with the very primitive Christians.’’'? Here he indicates what is meant by the exaltation of the lowly. One might think of one of his drawings of an old man sitting by the hearth. He sits there exhausted and worn out, with both hands beneath his head. The drawing is called ‘At Eternity’s Gate’. The old man is at the gate of death, the gate of eternity. In a letter to Theo, Vincent sighs: ‘It seems to me it’s a painter’s duty to try to put an idea into his work. In this print I have tried to express (but I cannot do it well or so strikingly as it is in reality; this is merely a weak reflection in a dark mirror) what seems to me one of the strongest proofs of the existence of something higher . . . namely the existence of God and eternity — certainly in the infinitely touching expression of such a little old man, which he himself is perhaps unconscious of, when he is sitting quietly in his corner by the fire. At the same time there is something noble, something great, which cannot be destined for the worms.’!'+ Van Gogh is able to translate what the gospel is all about: the exaltation of the lowly. No Romulus or Hercules, but the old man at Eternity’s Gate, who ‘cannot be destined for the worms’.

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‘A parable ofa more than earthly mystery’ Christians today should use these and similar stories and images in multi-cultural secularized Europe, really still as the first peregrini did. Their pilgrimage had different significances. It involved a journey ‘inwards’; in other words, these pilgrims were primarily also in quest of God. But in so doing they became peregrini pro Christo, who also brought Christianity to our part of Europe in the first place. Their mystical model is worth following, since their journey had no imperialistic intent and they were not intent on destroying the other cultures.'’5 The ‘discovery’ and ‘revelation’ of ‘the mystery’ of who Jesus was and is did not occur to Jesus’s first disciples at the beginning of their encounter, but on the way. The disciples on the road to Emmaus said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us when he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us’ (Luke 24.32). In Caesarea Philippi, when asked who Jesus was, Peter made the confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matt.16.16), and after the resurrection Thomas confessed, ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20.27). As is evident from the example of Peter, this confession can be coupled with complete incomprehension as to the reason for Jesus’ way of the cross, to Jerusalem (Matt.16.21ff.). And today, too, the story of Jesus can be told with the help of stories in a way which makes it a ‘parable of a more than earthly mystery’, as one of our hymns puts it. Jesus’ warning to those who call him ‘Lord, Lord’ without doing his command (Luke 6.46) should not be forgotten here. It was said of the early church that the behaviour of the early Christians, the ‘language of love’ on their lips and in their lives, their propaganda of action, was of greater significance for mission than the ministry of the itinerant preacher or monk. As in apostolic times, so in post-apostolic times behaviour had a missionary dimension.‘*® For Pope Gregory the Great, who stands at the beginning of the Christianization of north-western Europe, the power of living saints was greater than that of the dead. That these living saints could perform miracles was primarily important as ‘a manifestation of inward virtues of Christian love of neighbour, simplicity and humility’.'’” A prime cause, if not the most important one, of the spread of Christianity in the Roman empire was the fact that

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The ‘medicine window’ from a cycle made byFohannes Schreiter for the Holy Spirit Church in Heidelberg. ‘The electrocardiogram shows the last seconds of a human life. Blue appears at the beginning and end of human life as God’s colour. The heartbeat which can be seen is against a red background, symbol of God’s lifegroing spirit.’

Christians were members one of another. The emperor Julian attributed the success of Christianity, among other things, to their

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‘philanthropy towards strangers’. “These godless Galileans feed not only their own poor but also others, while we neglect our own.’ “Had that not been the case, the world would still be pagan. And the day that that is no longer the case, the world will become pagan again.”" iS The distinctive thing that Christianity brought to Europe, in the early Middle Ages as well, was the thought and practice of social activity, care for the poor and the liberation of captives. “Blessed are the poor’ was not a view held in either the Graeco-Roman or the Germanic world. Through preaching, the lives of saints, stories of mircles, parables and charitable institutions, the church brought about this change in awareness. “The duty of the care of the poor which was not there in Graeco-Roman antiquity came about in this way.”""9 Do the churches in Europe today stand out in this way and make their claims evident? The figure of Martin of Tours stands at the beginning of the Christianization of Western Europe. Every year on 11 November we are reminded of the story of his giving a beggar half his cloak. It was disclosed to him in a vision that in so doing he had given a cloak to Christ himself. A Turkish woman in Germany once told me that she had never understood why he did not give all his cloak. It was said of the Old Testament scholar Dr Martin Beek, at one

time professor at the University of Amsterdam, who gave his inaugural lecture on

11 November, St Martin’s Day, and dated one

of his books 11 November 1949, with reference to his first name: “The halfness of the bishop who could not give away all his cloak appealed to him, conscious as he was of the incompleteness of all our deeds and words.”’*° Shouldn’t this be a challenge to the church in “de-Christianized Europe’ to improve on its less than half work?

Notes I. The Christianization and De- Christianization ofEurope 1. The New Europe: A Challenge for Christians, Concilium 1992/2, viii. 2. Le Monde, 12 October 1982, 13. 3. A.Houtepen, ‘Secularisatie: Bedreiging of uitdaging voor kerk

en

theologie’, in A.Houtepen (ed.), Secularisatie: Noodlot of opdracht, Leiden and Utrecht 1989, 105, 130. 4. R.Luneau, ‘Retrouve ton ame, vieille Europe!’, in R.Luneau (ed.), La réve

de Compostella: Vers la restauration d’une Europe chrétienne?, Paris 1989, 30. 5. Le Monde, 20/21 August 1989. 6. Le Monde, 4 July 1985. 7. Trouw, 29 November 1991, 10. 8. J.N.Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe, Philadelphia 1986, 170. g. C.Busken Huet, Het land van Rembrandt: Studién over de noord-nederlandse beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw, Utrecht nd., 15. 10. J.A.Huisman, ‘Christianity and Germanic Religion’, in P.H.Vrijhof and J.Waardenburg, Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies, The Hague, Paris and New York 1979, 62. 11. Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.8), 170. 12. J.H.Kane, A Global View of Christian Mission, Grand Rapids 1975, 40. 13. Cf. H.R.Post, De overgang van de Friezen tot het Christendom, ‘s Hertogenbosch nd. 14.J.and A.Romein, De lage landen bij de zee: een geschiedenis van het Nederlandse volk, The Hague and Antwerp 1973, 162. 15. A.T.van Deursen, ‘Volkscultuur in wisselwerking met de elitecultuur in de vroegmoderne tijd’, in G.Rooijakkers and T.van der Zee, Religieuze volkscultuur: de spanning tussen de voorgeschreven orde en de geleefde praktik, Nijmegen 1986, 57. 16. Cf.J.Baker, ‘The Shadow of the Christian Symbol’, quoted by D.J.Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifis in the Theology ofMission, Maryknoll 1QQI, 214. 17. Thus J.le Goff, quoted by J.Delumeau, Christianisme va t-il mourir?, Paris

1977:

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Delumeau, Christianisme (n.17), 26, 84. Id., Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire, Paris 1971, 237Ibid., 237, 238, 242, 243. Ibid., 276, 323. Ibid., 325, 326. Id., Christianisme (n.17), 139-

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Notes to pages 6-11

24. W.Huber, Kirche, 187, quoted by W.Hollenweger, Umgang mit Mythen, Munich 1982, 66. 25. S.S.Acquaviva, The Decline of the Sacred in Industrial Society, Oxford 1979, 199. 26. M.Eliade, Jmages and Symbols, London 1961. 27. Ibid., 160, 161. He refers to L.Beirnaert, ‘La dimension mythique dans le sacramentalisme chrétien’, Eranos Jahrbuch XVII, Zurich 1950, 248-5. 28. Ibid., 164. 29. Ibid., 168. 30. Ibid., 174. 31. Cf. A.D.Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine ofHippo, London 1933, 210, 211. 32. R.Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, in H.W.Bartsch (ed.), Kerygma and Myth, London 1952, 5. 33. F.Hesse, ‘Entmythologisierung’, in B.Reicke and L.Rost, Biblischhistorisches Handworterbuch 1, Gottingen 1962, 414f. 34. A.G.Weiler, Willibrords missie. Christendom en cultuur in dezevende en achtste eeu, Hilversum 1989, 17, 18. 35. K.Hartmann, Atlas-Tafelwerk zur Bibel- und Kirchengeschichte, Stuttgart 1980, 117. 36. J.Thauren, Die Akkommodation im katholischen Heidenapostolat: eine missionstheoretische Studie, Minster 1927, 125. 37. David Keep, St Boniface and his World, Exeter 1979, 11. 38. Herder Lexikon. Germanische und keltische Mythologie, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna 1987, s.v.” Thor’; Helmut Hiller, Sesam atlas van het bijgeloof, Baarn 1987, 235; J.H.Ebrard, Die iroscottische Monchkirche, Gitersloh 1873, 407; AJelsma, De blaffende hond: Aspecten uit het leven van Wynfreth Bonifatius, The Hague 1973, 68 n.13; Reallexikon fiir Antike und Christentum IV, s.v. ‘Eiche’; Kane, Global View (n.12), 41, 42. 39. Jelsma, Blaffende hond (n.38), 68. 40. Thauren, Akkommodation (n.36), 125. 41.J.N.Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization of Western Europe in the Seventh Century’, in H.Léwe, Die Iren und Europa im friheren Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1982, 315 n.17. 42. Thauren, Akkommodation (n.36), 120, 124. 43. Kane, Global View (n.12), 41. 44. lan Wood, ‘Pagans and Holy Men 600-800’, in Préinséas Ni Chathdin and M.Richter (eds.), Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien und Mission, Stuttgart 1987, 355. 45. Hilgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.8), 55. 46. Wood, ‘Pagans and Holy Men’ (n.44), 355; E.Neuman and H.Voigt, ‘Germanische Mythologie’, in H.W.Hausig (ed.), Wéorterbuch der Mythologie II, Géotter und Mythen im Alten Europa, Stuttgart 1973, 45, 46;

Notes to pages 11-20

47.

199

J.van den Berg and W.Hendrikse, ‘De Nehalennia tempel te Colijnsplaat’, Westerheem 30, 1981, 13-17. Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization’ (n.41), 327; Thauren, Akkommodation (n.36), 124.

. K.Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, Tibingen 1933, para 39. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.3,4), 31. 50. Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism (n.11), 150; Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.34), 33; cf. R.A-Markus, ‘Gregory the Great and a Papal Mission Strategy’, in GJ.Cuming (ed.), The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith, Cambridge 1970, 29-38. . Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, London 1910, Il, 11. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.3,4), 45. . Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism (n.11), 150. . C.Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, London 1950, 34. . Eliade, Images and Symbols (n.27), 143. . K.H.Miskotte, When the Gods are Silent, London and New York 1967. . Trouw, 25 September 1991, 10. .A.Angenendt, Das Frihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit, Stuttgart, Berlin and Cologne 1940, 34, 38, 39, 42, 43. 59. Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization’ (n.41), 311, 312.

49.

II. The Graeco-Roman Context 1. J.Mackey, An Introduction to Celtic Christianity, Edinburgh 1989, 4. J.N.Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism: The Conversion of Western Europe, Philadelphia 1986, 65. 3. Thus Wellhausen, quoted by P.Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur, Tubingen 1907, 122 n.1. 4. A.Deissmann, Die Urgeschichte des .Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung, Tibingen 1910, 26, 25-29; cf. JJeremias, Abba, Studien zur neutestamentlichen Theologie und Zeitgeschichte, Gottingen 1966. . D.Tabachovitz, Die Septuagint und das Neue Testament, Lund 1956, 7. A.Deissmann, Die Hellenisierung des semitischen Monotheismus, 1903, 2.

quoted in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart}, ‘Septuagintaforschung’. .C.H.Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks, London 1964, xi, 25, 223-95. W.S.van Leeuwen, Ejirene in het Nieuwe Testament: een semasiologische exegetische bijdrage op grond van de Septuaginta en de Foodsche literatuur, Wageningen 1940, 17, quoted by H.Rzepkowski, “Das Papstum als ein Model friihchristlicher Anpassung’, in T.Sundermeier (ed.), Die Begegnung mit dem Anderen. Pladoyers fir eine interkulturelle Hermeneutik, Gitersloh 1991, 84. g. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (n.7), 510. J.L.Koole, Christelijke Encyclopedie, Kampen *1961, s.v. ‘Septuaginta’.

200

Notes to pages 20-25

AJ.van Aalst, Aantekeningen bij de hellenisering van het christendom, Nijmegen 1974, 111; cf. also Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (n.7), 45 G.Bertram, ‘Praeparatio Evangelica in der Septuaginta’, Vetus Testamentum VII, 1957, 24312% Thus the view of Bertram, ‘Praeparatio Evangelica’ (n.11), 230. 13. Thus id., ‘Septuaginta-Frommigkeit’, in RGG?; cf. also id., “Vom Wesen biblischen der Septuagint-Frommigkeit: Zur Pragung der Gottesvorstellung in der griechischen Ubersetzung des Alten Testaments’, in Die Welt des Orients, 1956-59, 502-13; id., Bertram, ‘Praeparatio Evangelica’ (n.11), 225-49, which I follow for this view. 14. W Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum und die griechische Bildung, Berlin 1963, 3, 4, 83 n.11. is. Cf. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 81-4, and the literature quoted there. 16. G.J.M.Bartelink, Het vroege christendom en de antieke cultuur, Muiderberg 1986, 154. Minucius Felix tries in language and form to adapt his ideas to the thought world of his environment with its Stoic stamp (RGG, s.v). . C.Andersen, ‘Celsus’, (RGG sv.); Christelijke Encyclopedie (n.10), s.v. ‘Celsus’. . Bartelink, Het vroege christendom, 12, 13. . Tertullian, The Prescription against Heretics, in Ante-Nicene Fathers III, Edinburgh 1885, 246; cf. A.F.Orbdan, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen: botsing en integratie tussen de Romanitas en de Christianitas’, in R.E.V.Struip and C.Vellekoop, Culturen in Contact. Botsing en integratie in de Middeleeuwen, Utrecht 1988, 58. However, there is of course more to be said about Tertullian. Cf. J.-C.Fredouille’s conclusion in his Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique, Paris 1972, 484. 20. Orban, “De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 46, 48. 21. Prudentius, Apotheosis, 444-8, in Prudentius 1, Loeb Classical Library, ed.H.J. Thompson, London and Cambridge, Mass. 1947; Bartelink, Het vroege christendom, 109, 14, 31, 32; F.van der Meer, Christus’ oudste gewaad, Baarn *1989, 29, 35; Prudentius already indicates scorn about the ancient myths (ibid., 42). 22. M.Lavarenne, quoted in Een compendium van achtergrondinformatie bij de 491 gezangen uit het liedboek voor de kerken, Amsterdam *1978, 833. 23. Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur (n.3), 129. 24. D.Bosch, Transforming Mission; Paradigm Shifis in the Theology ofMission, Maryknoll 1991, 194. ae: Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 89. 26 . See M.Dibelius, ‘Paul on the Areopagus’ (1939), inid., Studies in the Acts of the Apostles, London 1956, 26-77. aq: Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur (n.3), 1907. 28. E.Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, Oxford 1971, 525. II.

Notes to pages 25-31

201

29. As Y.Bonnefoy, Mythologies, Vol.II, Chicago and London 1991, 655, seems to suggest. 30. Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur (n. 3); 143: 31. Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum (n.1 4), 21, 27, 28 and the passages quoted. 32. A.D.Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine ofHippo, London 1 933, 179. 33- A.Sizoo, Geschiedenis der oud-Christelijke Griekse letterkunde, Haarlem 1952,

44, 45, 83, 84, go.

34. Jaeger, Das frithe Christentum (n.14), 47; cf. K.Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa, Oxford 1992, 47. 35.Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum (n.14), 44. 36. Stromateis, VI, 44, 1; cf. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 663, 664. 37. Stromateis, V1, 41, 7; 42, 1; cf. Herman von Skerst, Der unbekannte Gott, Stuttgart 1967, 64, 65. 38. Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum (n.1 4), 49, 51. 39. Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 5, 51, 12, 111. 40. Thus Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum (n.14), 55, 56, who is of course expressing a value judgment here. 41. Van Aalst, Aantekeningen bij de hellenisering van het christendom (n.11), 113. 42. Ibid., 54; Bosch, Transforming Mission (n.24), 192. 43. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 86. 44. Van Aalst, Aantekeningen bij de hellenisering van het christendom (n.11), 110f., 88f., 138; Bosch, Transforming Mission (n.24), 194, 195. 45. Cf. Nock, Conversion (n.32), 210f.: “The success of Christianity is the success of an institution which united the sacramentalism and the philosophy of the time.’ 46. Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 33. 47. lbid., 66; Jaeger, Das friihe Christentum (n.1 4), 36; RGG, s.v. “Xenophanes’. 48. Cf. RGG, s.v. ‘Euhemerismus’; Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 666. 49. Quoted by Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 667, 669. Cf. J.W.Schippers, De ontwikkeling der euhemerische godencritiek in de christelijke Latijnse literatuur, Groningen and Djakarta 1952. 50. Orban, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 52, 53. 51.J.Seznec, The Survival ofPagan Gods. The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, Princeton 1972, 44, 45. 52. Orbdn, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 56, 58. 53- Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 76. 54. Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 67. 55. A.Wifstrand, L ‘eglise ancienne et la culture grecque, Paris 162, 107-34, quoted by Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 656. 56. N.Frye, The Great Code, London 1982, 70; E.Drewermann, Der todliche Fortschritt: von der Zerstorung der Erde und des Menschen im Erbe des

202

Notes to pages 31-40 Christentums, Regensburg 1981, 200; id., Strukturen des Bosen. Die jahwistische Urgeschichte in psychoanalytischer Sicht, Paderborn, etc. °1985,

III, 514-44. 57: 58. 59. 60.

Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 33, 355 37: Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 693. Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16),33. Cf. H.Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, London and New York

1963, 353-71. . Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 68; Lexikon der christlichen Tkonographie, s.v. ‘Odysseus’. . Rahner, Greek Myths (n.60), 372f. . Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 657, who cites further examples; cf. Rahner, Greek Myths (n.60), 15; Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, s.v. “Sirenen’. . Rahner, Greek Myths (n.60), 371-3. . Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, s.v. ‘Orpheus’. . Cf. H.A.Stiitzner, Die Kunst der romischen Katakomben, Cologne 1983, 45, 46. . RGG, s.v. ‘Orpheus-Christos’. 67 68 . Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, s.v. ‘Hirt’, ‘Guter Hirt’. 69 . Van der Meer, Christus’ oudste gewaad (n.21), 176. 70. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 74, 76; RGG, s.v. ‘Guter Hirt’. qt. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 75.

FD. G.G.Coulton, Art and the Reformation, Cambridge *1953, 323. 73- J.Campbell, The Power ofMyth, New York and London 1988; M.Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, New York and London 1987, s.v. ‘Fish’. 74: R.Graves, The Greek Myths 1, Harmondsworth 1969, 177; Eliade, Encyclopedia (n.73), s.v. ‘Asclepius’. 75: A.von Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, London 1904, 127-31; R.Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine, Harmondsworth 1988, 151. 76. Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), 69. 77: Dodds, The Bible and the Greeks (n.7), 109, 115. . Eliade, Engyclopedia (n.73), 464, 465, sv. ‘Asclepius’. 79- Life of Constantine 3.56; Reallexikon fiir Antike und Christentum XIII, Stuttgart 1968, s.v. ‘Heilgétter’. 80. M,J.Vermaseren, Mithras de geheimzinnige god, Amsterdam and Brussels

1959, 154. 81. Eliade, Encyclopedia (n.73), s.v. ‘Asclepius’, ‘Fatebefratelli’. 82. P.R.Dood, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the

Middle Ages, Ithaca and London 1999, 67, 125 n.45, 127, 128, 133: 83. C.Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York 1 950, 24. 84 - T’.Trede, Das Heidentum in der rimischen Kirche, Gotha 1889, FT

Notes to pages 40-45

203

85. Eclogue 4, 6-100, in Virgil I, ed. H.R.Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library, London and Cambridge, Mass 1947, 28f. 86. Sizoo, Geschiedenis (n.33), 50; Orban, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 51; cf. the works by K.Priimm, ‘Das Prophetenamt der Sibyllen in kirchlicher Literatur mit besondere Riicksicht auf die Deutung der IV‘ Ekloge Virgils’, Scholastik: Vierteljahresschrift fiir Theologie und Philosophie IV, 1929, 54-77, 221-46, 489-553; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (n.75), 648, 658; Bartelink, Het vroege christendom (n.16), Fitts 87. Quoted by Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 664. 88. Priimm, ‘Das Prophetenamt’ (n.86), 74, 75, concludes that Augustine does not see a prophecy of the saviour meant by the poet of the Fourth Eclogue. 89. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 665. go. Orban, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 51; cf. P.Courcelle, ‘Les exégéses chrétiennes de la quatriéme églogue’, Revue des études anciennes

LIX, 1957, 249-319.

gl. This last is a quotation from Virgil’s Eclogue 4, 5-7; Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatory XXII, 67-72; Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 665. g2. Seznec, The Survival ofPagan Gods (n.51), 16. 93- H.Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Bonn 1911, 351; J.de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte: Einleitung in die Vorgeschichtliche Zeit. Religion der Siidgermanen, Berlin and Leipzig 1935, 159-61, gives a survey of the places of these and other ‘Eastern’ cults. 94. H.W.Riissel, Antike Welt und Christentum, Amsterdam and Antwerp 71944, 23; cf. F.V.M.Cumont, Die Mysterien des Mithra: ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit, Darmstadt 1963, 176. 95- RGG, s.v. ‘Mithras’; C.S.Song, The Compassionate God, Maryknoll and London 1982, 209. 96.J.J.Mak, Het kerstfeest: ontstaan en verbreiding; viering in de middeleeuwen, The Hague 1948, 4, 5; Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image, Princeton 1990, 3397. H.Usener, Weihnachtsfest, Bonn 1911, 375, 378; F.Heiler, Erscheinungsformen und Wesen derReligionen, Stuttgart 1961; Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.g6), 32. 98. Cf the classic work on this point, F.J.Dolger, Sol salutis: Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum, Munster 1925. 99- Frye, The Great Code (n.56), 111. 100. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.96), 36, 37; Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 654. IOI. Usener, Weihnachtsfest (n.97), 365. 102. Franz Altheim, Der unbesiegte Gott. Heidentum und Christentum, Hamburg 1957, 110. 103. Seznec, The Survival ofPagan Gods (n.51), 43104. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.96), 35105. H.A.Stiitzer, Die Kunst der romischen Katakomben, Cologne 1983, 47. 106. Rahner, Greek Myths (n.60), 93ff.

204

Notes to pages 45-51

107. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 76. 108. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 654; LCI s.v. ‘Sonne’. 109. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 656; cf. E.Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, London 1895, 283-309; A.D.Nock, Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background, New York 1964, 116-45. IIO. Campbell, The Mythic Image (n.96), 248. BO Ossfs Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (n.109), 283, 284; E.Drewermann, Der Krieg und das Christentum, Regensburg *1984, 112.

113. 114. LES: 116.

Gf. 118. 119g. 120. Iams 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 129: 128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 1335

134. 135. 136. 137; 138.

00. abet Das Markusevangelium: Bilder von Erlosung U1, Olten 1988, 466. Justin, Apology 66; cf. A.Drews, Die Christusmythe, Jena *1910, 97. Rzepkowski, ‘Das Papstum’ (n.8), 79. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (n.109), 291, 292. Ibid., 292, 293, 294. Ibid., 305, 306. Ibid., 298. Ibid. 296. Ibid. 309. Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.2), 53. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 672, 674. Van der Meer, Christus’ oudste gewaad (n.21), 126. Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur (n.3), 126. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 674. Trede, Das Heidentum in der romischen Kirche, 315. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 692, 693, 694. Seznec, The Survival ofPagan Gods (n.51), 161, 162. Thus Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.29), 694. It seems to me wrong to connect a specific line which diverges from the surrounding culture, of the kind found in the Old or the New Testament, with a language or race. A.Pieris, Love Meets Wisdom. A Christian Experience ofBuddhism, Maryknoll 1988, 21. Thus E.Drewermann, Psychoanalyse und Moraltheologie I, Angst und Schuld, Mainz *1988, 171. Orban, ‘De latijnse Middeleeuwen’ (n.19), 60; H.Rahner, Symbole der Kirche: die Ekklesiologie der Vater, New York 1988, 21. Rahner, Greek Myths (n.60), xv, xxi. Russel, Antike Welt und Christentum (n.94), 235, 236. Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, 1.27. Altheim, Der unbesiegte Gott (n.102), 11. Adolf von Harnack, Militia Christi. Die christliche Religion und der Soldatenstand in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Darmstadt (1905), 1963, 45.

Notes to pages 51-57

205

139. 140. I4I. 142.

Altheim, Der unbesiegte Gott (n.102), 108, 109. Von Harnack, Militia Christi (n.138), 86, 87. K.Latte, Romische Religionsgeschichte, Munich 1960, 2 353 Ibid., 301; J.Gagé, ‘La theologie de la victoire impériale’, Revue historique 171, 1933, 34; Jaeger, Das frithe Christentum (n.14), 53. 143. This ‘memorandum’ has been preserved because of Ambrose’s reply to it and appears in collections of his letters between Letter 17 and Letter 18, cf. The Letters ofAmbrose, Library of the Fathers 45, London 1881, 94-100:

95, Nos.4, 5.

144. J.Wytzes, Ambrosius brieven, Amsterdam 1950, 9. 145. The Letters ofAmbrose (n.143), 97, n0.9. 146. Ibid., no.10.

147. Ibid, 98 no.13. 148. A.Toynbee, Christianity among the Religions ofthe World, London 1958, 112. 149. E.g. F.Heiler, cf. G.Rozenkranz, Der christliche Glaube angesichts der Weltreligionen, Bern 1967, 46, 187. 150. The Letters ofAmbrose (n.1 43), Letter 18, no.32, p.111. I5I. Ibid., no.17, p.107. 152. M.R.P.McGuire, Ambrosti de Nabuthae: A Commentary, with Introduction and Translation, Washington 1927, xvii. 153. Ibid., 47. 154. For this passage ‘who triumphs’ see my Van Alkmaar begint de victorie, Kampen 1979, 10-14. 155. AJ.Festugiére, L ’idéal religieux des grecs et ’Evangile, Paris 1932.

ITI. The Celtic Contextualization 1. Y.Bonnefoy, Mythologies II, Chicago and London 1991, 780. 2. M.Schipper, Dienaren van god: de spiritualiteit van de vroeg-christelijke kerk in Terland, Deventer 1986, 12. 3. W.Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche von ihren Anfangen bis zum 12. Jahrhundert, Munich and Basel 1954, 9; A.Mulders, Missiegeschiedenis, Bussum 1957, 74; K.McCone, ‘Pagan Past and Christian Present’, in Early Irish Literature, Maynooth 1990, 256, 257; C.Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York 1958, 88. 4. J.N.Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism, 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe, Philadelphia 1986, 54; W.H.C.Frend, Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries, London 1976, viii, 20, 21. 5. T.Finan, ‘Hiberno-Latin Christian Literature’, in J.Mackey,An Introduction to Celtic Christianity, Edinburgh 1989, 68, 104; J.N.Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization of Western Europe in the Seventh Century’, in Proéinséas Ni Chathdin and M.Richter (eds.), Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien und Mission, Stuttgart 1987, 323, 324; R.P.C.Hanson, “The

206

Notes

to pages 57-62

Mission of Saint Patrick’, in Mackey (ed.), Introduction to Celtic Christianity, 41, 43; H.R.Post, De overgang van de Friezen tot het christendom, ‘s Hertogenbosch nd, 11, 13. Cf. A.Tomas O’Fiaich, ‘The Irish Monks on the Continent’, in Mackey (ed.), /ntroduction to Celtic Christianity, 103, 104; A.Angenendt, Das Frihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit von 400 bis goo, Stuttgart, Berlin and Cologne 1990, 64, 65. 6. Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization’ (n.5), 323, 3247. G.Rosenkranz, Die christliche Mission: Geschichte und Theologie, Munich 1977, 102; D.Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission, Maryknoll 1991, 235; cf. T.Reuter (ed.), The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton, Exeter 1980,

71-94. 8. Angenendt,

Das Frithmittelalter.

Die abendlandische

Christenheit

(n.8),

204. 9. K.McCone, ‘Early Irish Saints’, Maynooth Review Il, 1984, 33; Hanson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 23-44 (esp.24, 31, 35, 37); Herder Lexikon: Germanische und keltische Mythologie, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna +1987, s.v. ‘Conle’, ‘Conn’; Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche (n.3), 15, 25, 31; 33; Nicholson, in Mackey, /ntroduction (n.5), 395. 10. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘CG Chulainn’. 11. J.Thauren, Die Akkommodation im katholischen Heidenapostolat: eine missionstheoretische Studie, Miinster 1927, 124. 12. J.Campbell, The Masks of God, Occidental Mythology, New York 1964, 460,

463, 464. 13. Mackey, /ntroduction (n.5), 17; M.Forthomme Nicholson, ‘Celtic Theo-

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

logy: Pelagius’, in ibid., 387, 388; Christelijke Encyclopedie, s.v. ‘Pelagius’; cf. T.Bohlin, Die Theologie des Pelagius und ihre Genesis, Uppsala 1957; J.Ferguson, Pelagius. A Historical and Theological Study, Cambridge 1957. Thus the summary of his theology in RGG, s.v. ‘Pelagius’. Campbell, The Mask of God (n.12), 465, 466; Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 396. Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 401. J.Streit, Zon en Kruis; van steenkring tot vroegchristelijk kruis in Ierland, Rotterdam 1977, 161. Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 387, 396, 403, 404. Angenendt, Das Frihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit, 208; Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 404. Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 17. Ni Chathdin and Richter, /rland und die Christenheit (n.s5), 44. Prdinséas MacCana, Celtic Mythology, Feltham 71984, 64; Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 101: Tomas O’Fiaich, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 124, 125; Sint Brendaan: zeereis van Sint Brendaan, ed. M.Draak, revised by B.Aafjes, Amsterdam 1944.

Notes to pages 62-67

207

23 . Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Mael Duin’. 24 . D.Hyde, A Literary History ofIreland from

Earliest Times to the Present Day, London 1910, 9, 210; Thomas Finan, ‘Hiberno-Latin Christian Literature’, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 90; N.Bakker, Eiland van heiligen

en geleerden, Goes 1990, 93.

25. Cf. A.O. and M.O.Anderson, Adomnén’s Life of Columba London 1961; W.Reeves (ed.), Life of Saint Columba: Founder of Hy (1874), reprinted 1988; Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.4), 121. 122. 26. Tomas O’Fiaich, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 107; M.Anderson, St Ninian, Westminster 1964, 80; Angenendt, Das Friihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit (n.8), 57; Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (n.3), 85. 27. Angenendt, Das Frithmittelalter. Die abendlindische Christenheit (n.8), 107. 28. N.Chadwick, The Celts, Harmondsworth 1985, 148. 29. T.Finan, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 70,71. 30. J.N.Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism, 350-750 (n.4), 120; cf. A.P.Smyth, Warlords, London 1964. 21 A.Angenendt, ‘Die irische Peregrinatio und ihre Auswirkung auf dem Kontinent vor dem Jahre 800’, in H.Lowe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa in friheren Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1982, 63. 32: T.Finan, in Mackey, Jntroduction (n.5), 74. 33- Diarmuid O’Laoghaire, ‘Irish Spirituality’, in Proinséas Ni Chathain and M.Richter, /reland and Europe, Stuttgart 1984, 75; Tomas O Fiach, “The Irish on the Continent’, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 106, 107, 111; T.Finan, in ibid., 72; Angenendt, ‘Irische Peregrinatio’ (n.31), 52, 53, 56; J.H.Kane, A Global View of Christian Missions, Grand Rapids 1975, 41; Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism 350-750 (n.4), 176, 179. T.O’Fiaich, in Mackey, Jntroduction (n.5), 111; Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity 34. and Paganism 350-750 (n.4), 1986, 169, 137, 139. 35: Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 102. 36. Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 15. ay . T.Finan, in ibid., 78. 38 Cf. M.Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, London 1986, s.v. “Tuatha Dé Danann’. Celtic 39- G.Dumézil, Mythes et Dieux des Germains, Paris 1939; MacCana, Mythology (n.22), 64; Herder Lexikon, s.v. “Dagda’, ‘Kessel’; Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia (n.38), s.v. ‘Daghda’. 40. Streit, Zon en kruis (n.17), 65, 72AX MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 27-9. 42. Donald O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism in Ireland’, in J.Preston (ed.), Mother Worship, Chapel Hill 1982, 78; J.de Vries, Keltische Religion, Stuttgart 1961, 50, 51, 54, 227. 43. Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche (n.3), 115 Herder Lexikon, s.v. “Balor’.

Notes to pages 68-74

208

44. 45.

Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 152, 170 ,172, 180. R.Graves, The White Goddess, New York 1970, 101, 102; O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 78, 70, 81; MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 33, 34; Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 169. 46. McCone, ‘Pagan Past and Christian Present’ (n.3), 29; MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 33, 93, 133; O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 82, 83, 84. 47. O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.22), 83; De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 217; MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 933 K.McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature, Maynooth 1990, 164. 48. De grote Winckler Prins® s.v. ‘Brigitta’. 49. O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 83, 84, 90; McCone, ‘Early Irish Saints’ (n.g), 162-6; LCI s.v. ‘Brigida’. 50. O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 76. SI. Ibid., 75; cf. Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick, The Celtic Realms, New York 1967, 144. 52. O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’, 86. 53: Ibid., 75, 83, 84, 90, 91, 92; HJ. Vogt, ‘Zur Spiritualitat des friihen irischen Monchtums’, in H.Lowe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa im friihesten Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1982, 31, 40, 41; McCone, ‘Early Irish Saints’ (n.g), 46, 181; Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 144, 170; MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22),

34) 35. Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche (n.3), 220 n.20; O’Cathasaigh, ‘A

Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 84. . P.Thomas, The Opened Door of Celtic Spirituality, Brechfa 1990, 9, 10; A.Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, Edinburgh 1983, I, 164, 165. . Thomas, The Opened Door of Celtic Spirituality (n.56), 10. . O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 76; cf. Hyde,A Literary History ofIreland, 156-65. . Dumézil, Mythes et Dieux des Germains; cf. Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 400; De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 210. . De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 210. . Ibid., 217; A.and B.Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales, London 1961, 17. . De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 216. . Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 12; Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche (n.3), 10. . De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 208. - MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 145, 137. . De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 206. 66. Ibid.; Nicholson, in Mackey, Introduction (n. 5), 401. 67. R.Meyer, Zum Raum wird hier dieZeit: Die Gralgeschichte, Frankfurt 1 983,73.

Notes to pages 74-81

209

68. K.Heyer, Das Wunder von Chartres, Stuttgart 1956, 3; F.C.J.Los, De oudTerse kerk: ondergang en opstanding van het Keltendom, Zeist 1975, 20. 69. R.Merlet, La Cathédrale de Chartres, Paris 1956, 11, 12; cf. E.G.Rhé, Uber den Ursprung des Kultus. Geschichtlich erwiesener Parallelismus zwischen der Glaubenslehre und den religionsgebrauchen der Heiden und der Christen, Stuttgart 1839, 215. FO: MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 137.

whe Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Conle’. 72: Delius, Geschichte der irischen Kirche (n.3), 10.

73° 74. 75:

Eliade, Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘filidh’. T.G.E.Powell, The Celts, London 1967, 470. Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 12, 13; Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 75.

76. Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 110, 111. a7 Thauren, Die Akkommodation im katholischen Heidenapostolat (n.11), 124; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Druiden’; Powell, The Celts (n.74), 470; Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 35, 86; Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 70.

78. MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 133. 79. Los, De oud-Ierse kerk (n.68), 21, 23; De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 210. 80. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Menhir’. 81. Thus according to the interpretation by Streit, Zon en Kruts (n.17), 12, 13,

82. 83. 84. 85.

EO92052'55 20927, 31132: Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism (n.4), 327Mircea Eliade, Myths and Symbols, London 1961, 250, 251. J.Briard, The Megaliths ofBrittany, Lucon 1991.

Schippers, Dienaren van god (n.2), 69. 86. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 124; cf. L.Bieler, Ireland Harbinger ofthe Middle Ages, London 1963. 87. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 112, 143; C.J.Greith, Geschichte der altirischen Kirche, Freiburg 1867, 164. 88. EJ.Goodspeed, Die altesten Apologeten, Gottingen 191 4, 310; Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 116. 89. H.Richardson, ‘The Concept of the High Cross’, in Ni Chathain and Richter, /reland and Europe (n.33), 128. go. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 157Ot. Ibid., 121; V.Lemke, Gotland, Stuttgart 1970. 92. D.Lindholm, Stabkirchen in Normegen, Stuttgart 1968. 93- Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 126, 141, 94. Ibid., 142, 143, and illustrations on pp. 82, 83, 88. 95- Schipper, Dienaren van god (n.2), 63, 74; M.Anderson, St Ninian, Westminster 1964, 100, 108; J.Pokorny, Altkeltische Dichtungen, Bern 1944, 116ff n.108. 96. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage (n.60), 84. 97- De Vries, Keltische Religion (n.42), 229, 230.

210

Notes to pages

81-88

98. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage (n.60), 89, 90, 91. 99. MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 127; E.Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, Oxford 1946, 16; Eliade, Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Halloween’; Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 180, 181; De Grote Winckler Prins, s.v. ‘Allerheiligen’ (H.A.J.Wegman). 100. Christelijke Encyclopedie, s.v. “Lichtmis’. 101. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 63, 64; K.Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf; voorkristelijke symboliek in de Nederlanden en elders in Europa, Brepols 1992, T12\153: 102. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 31, 64; J.Delumeau, Le catholicisme entre Luther en Voltaire, Paris 1971, 257.103. Hyde,A Literary History of Ireland (n.20), 90, 91. 104. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 64. 105. D.A.Mackenzie, Myths ofCrete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, London 1917, 154, 155; cf. Hyde,A Literary History ofIreland (n.20), 48. 106. Streit, Zon en Kruis (n.17), 86, 89; Mackey, /ntroduction (n.5), 17107. Vita Sancti Cuthberti, in Two Lives of St Cuthbert, ed.B.Colgrave, Cambridge 1940; F.Buehner, Godrick, The Hague 1984; J.R.H.Moorman,A History ofthe Church in England, London 31973, 22; A.G.Weiler, Willibrords missie: Christendom en cultuur in de zevende en achtste eeuw, Hilversum 1989, 69, 70; K.Mildenberger, ‘Unity of Cynewulf’s Christ in Light of Iconography’, Speculum. A Journal ofMedieval Studies XXII1.4, Cambridge, Mass. 1948, 431. 108. Translation by K.Meyer in The Deer’s Cry, ed.P.Murray, Dublin 1986, 20. 109. O.Donoghue, ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, in Mackey, /ntroduction (n.5); O’Laoghaire, in Ni’ Chathain and Richter, /reland and Europe (n.33), 79. 110. O.Donoghue, in Mackey, /ntroduction (n.5), 54. 111. Ibid., 45, 46. 112. Ibid., 60: ‘In this vision of Christ in everybody the whole creation becomes luminous . . . This is “the right invocation of nature” . . . that calls on the primordial goodness of all that is made. This is not a covering-up of the human and the natural world but a recovery of that essential goodness which has never lost the image of the creator. In its realism and optimism it stands as a clear alternative to that Augustinian pessimism’ (ibid., 62). 113. O.Donoghue, in Mackey, Jntroduction (n.5), 48; cf. also Thomas, The Opened Door of Celtic Spirituality (n.55), 24; Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland (n.20),146, 147. 114. O.Donoghue, in Mackey, Introduction (n.5), 12, 13. 115. B.W.Tuchman, Bible and Sword. How the British Came to Palestine, London 1983, 14. 116. LCI, s.v. ‘helden’, ‘neun’. 117. Anderson, St Ninian (n.g5), 119. 118. Chadwick, The Celts (n.28), 48, 111, 112.

Notes to pages 88-95

211

119g. Logghe, Tussen hameren staf (n.101), 58. 120. “He stamped upon men’s minds indelibly the conception of Arthur’s court as the home par excellence of true and noble love’, C.S.Lewis, The Allegory of Love, London and New York 1958, 23. 121

. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Gral’; LCI, s.v. ‘Artur en Gral’; Thomas, The Opened

Door of Celtic Spirituality (n.55), 19; E.Drewermann, Der Krieg und das Christentum, Regensburg 1984, 334 n.63. 122. J.Bedier, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, Paris nd 150, 105, 151, 154. 123. Anderson, St Ninian (n.g5), 116. 124. Joseph Campbell, The Power ofMyth, New York and London 1988, 244. 125. Ibid., 140, 143, 144. 126.J.Markale, King Arthur: King of Kings, London and New York 1977, 110. E27 M.Eliade, The Quest. Meaning and History in Religion, Chicago and London 1984, I21. 128. ‘It is one of the masterpieces of fourteenth-century art in England’, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, London 1983, 72. 129. This is seen as the origin of the legend of the Order of the Garter; cf. Campbell, The Power ofMyth (n.124), 188, 190,191. 130. Extracts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and translated by Brian Stone, Harmondsworth 1970 (references in brackets are to stanzas). 13F.Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Gawain’, ‘Fled Bricrenn’, ‘Griiner Ritter’. 132. G.Latré in his commentary on Heer Gawein en de groene ridder, Antwerp 1979, 93, 94133. Ibid., 94, 96. 134. Ibid., 83, 84, 91, 92, 93, 98 for notes and commentary on the text. 135. Campbell, The Power ofMyth (n.124), 190, 191. 136. D.Keep, St Boniface and his World, Exeter 1979, 35. 137: Cf. the brochure Castleton Garland published by the Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language, 1977. It is also claimed that the feast of John the Baptist took the place of that of Balder, J.H.Kruizinga, Levende folklore in Nederland en Vlaanderen, Assen nd, 138, 139. 138. Vogt, ‘Zur Spiritualitat des friihen irischen Ménchtums’ (n.53), 35. 139. Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism (n.4), 118. 140. Thus Vogt, ‘Zur Spiritualitat des friihen irischen Monchtums’ (n.53), 5, is I4I. Tan Reen, ‘Een heldin die het licht zag’, De Volkskrant, 3 April 1993; cf. R.Meyer, Der Gral und seine Hiiter, Stuttgart 1958, 85. 142% Sean O’Faolain, The Irish, New York, etc. 1980, 27. 143. C.Donaldson, Martinus van Tours, Hilversum 1987, 9. 144. Thus Vogt, ‘Zur Spiritualitat des frien irischen Ménchtums’, 34. 145. MacCana, Celtic Mythology (n.22), 132. 146. O’Cathasaigh, ‘A Study of Pagan Christian Syncretism’ (n.42), 76. 147. Ibid., 291.

Notes to pages g6-101

212

IV. The Gospel in the Germanic World 1. A.G.Weiler, Willibrords missie. Christendom en cultuur in de zevende en achste

ceuw, Hilversum 1989, 21. P.D.Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen, Haarlem 1900, 146. 3. J.N.Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe, Philadelphia 1986, 131, 169. 4. W.Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Germanisierung des Christentums, Darmstadt 1959, 14. The Christian Centuries. 1. The First Six 5. J.Daniélou and H.Marrou, Hundred Years, London 1964, 288. . E.A.Thompson, cited by D.J.Bosch, Transforming Mission; Paradigm Shifts in the Theology ofMission, Maryknoll 1991, 194. . Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.3), 73. Cf. H.R.Post, De overgang van den Friezen tot het christendom, ‘s Hertogenbosch nd, 3, 25. 2

. Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.3), 83; Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 25, and the works cited there; J.J.Mak, Het kerstfeest: ontstaan en verbreiding; viering in deMiddeleeuwen, The Hague 1948, 97; K.Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, Tubingen 1933, 37h. 10. Préiséas Ni Chathain and M.Richter, [reland and Europe. The Early Church, Stuttgart 1984, 491. I. Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 20, 21. 12. K.H.Miskotte, Edda en Tora; Een vergelijking van Germaansche en Israelitische religie, Nijkerk 1939, 440 — with reference to E.Schnepel, Christus unter den Germanen: Der Weg der Gemeinde Jesus von 400-800, 1938; R.Ludwig, Karl der Grosse und die Sachsen, 1936. 13: Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte (n.g), para 43d. 14. A.H.Bredero, Christenheid en christendom in de Middeleeuwen: over de verhouding van godsdienst, kerk en samenleving, Kampen 1986, 26, 309; cf. R.Schneider, ‘Karl der Grosse politische Sendungs-Bewusstsein und Mission’, in K.Schaferdiek, Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte, II.r, Kirche des friiheren Mittelalters, Miinich 1978, 234f., 242f. 15. R.D.Terlaak Poot, ‘De kerk in het tijdperk der Karolingers’, in F.W.Grosheide et al., Geschidenis der Kerk 1, Kampen 1942, 302, 304,

305. 16. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 78; W.Levison, England and the Continent

17: 18. 19. 20.

in the Eighth Century, Oxford 1946, 51. Post, De overgang van den Friezen (n.8), 16. W.Zaal, De heiligen, erflaters van Europa, Baarn 1982, 38. Hillgarth (ed.), Christianity and Paganism (n.3), 68, 69. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 168, 169.

Notes to pages 101-106 21.

22.

22. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

213

J.A-Huisman, ‘Christianity and Germanic Religion’, in P.H.Vrijhof and J.Waardenburg, Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies, The Hague, Paris and New York 1979, 64; A.G.Weiler et al., Geschiedenis van de kerk in Nederland, Utrecht and Antwerp 1 962, 25; cf. F.C J.Los, De oud-Ierse kerk: Ondergang en opstanding van het keltendom, Zeist 1975. J.de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte; Einleitung in die Vorgeschichtliche Zeit. Religion der Stidgermanen, Berlin and Leipzig 1935, 244, cf. 196-200; W.Frijhoff, ‘Vraagtekens bij het vroegmoderne kersteningsoffensief, in G.Rooijakkers and T.van de Zee, Religieuze volkscultuur,; de spanning tussen de voorgeschreven orde en de geloofspraktijk, Nijmegen 1986, g1. C.Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, London 1950, 66-9, 106. Bosch, Transforming Mission (n.6), 235. Hillgarth (ed.),Christianity and Paganism (n.3), 64. M.Richter, ‘Practical Aspects of the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons’, in H.Lowe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa im friiheren Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1982, 367. Huisman, ‘Christianity and Germanic Religion’ (n.21), 64. K.Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf; voorkristlijke symboliek in de Nederlanden en elders in Europa, Brepols 1992, 69, 70. J.Brondsted, The Vikings, Harmondsworth 1970, 285. R.Derolez, De Godsdienst der Germanen, Roermond and Maaseik 1959,

249-51, 255, 256.

31. H.R.Post, ‘Het opnemen van de Germanen in de kerk’, inJ.Waterink et al., Cultuurgeschiedenis van het christendom, Amsterdam I, 1957, 534. 32. His court poet wrote a lament for him that was modelled on a pagan one: R.I.Page, Oudnoorse mythen, Baarn 1992, 61, 62. 333 H.R.E.Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology, London 1969, 136; M.Magnusson, Vikings!, London 1980, 223-5; Brondsted, The Vikings (n.39), 288. Magnusson, Vikings! (n.33), 285. 3435- Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 290. 36. H.Hiller, Sesam atlas van het biygeloof, Baarn 1987, 236, 257. 37: Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 41, 42; cf. id., Vom Geist und Erbe Thules: Aufsatze zur nordischen und deutschen Geistes— und Glaubensgeschichte, Gottingen 1944, 21, 22. 38. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 170, 171 0.22. 39: Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 148; Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 173 0.33; J. and A-.Romein, De lage landen bij de zee; een geschiedenis van het Nederlandse volk, The Hague and Antwerp °1973, 156. 40. Proinséas Ni Chathdin, ‘Early Ireland and Western Christendom: The

Notes to pages 106-112

214

Bible and the Missions’, in ead. and M.Richter (eds.), Irland und die Christenheit; Ireland and Christendom, Bibelstudien und Mission: The Bible and the Missions, Stuttgart 1987, 496.

41. Hiller, Sesam atlas (n.36) 236, 257. 42. Herder Lexikon s.v. ‘Edda’; E.Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual, Odin and his Masks’, in R.J.Glendinning and H.Bessason, Edda. A Collection ofEssays, Cambridge 1983, 4, 19, 21; E.B.Titchenell, The Masks of Odin. Wisdom of the Ancient Norse, Pasadena

1988, 20, 21, 37; Davidson, Scandinavian

Mythology (n.33), 128, 203. 43. Thus A.Heusler, Nibelungensaga und Nibelungenlied, Die Stoffgeschichte des deutschen Heldenepos, Dortmund 1923, 124-6. 44. Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 4, 19. 45. Titchenell, The Masks of Odin (n.42), 37. 46. J.de Vries, Edda. Goden en heldenliederen uit de Germaanse Oudhetd, Deventer 1980, 26. 47. A.T.van Holten, De dood van de goden, Groningen 1977, 153. 48. Generally accepted since A.Olrik, Ragnarok. Die Sagen vom Weltuntergang, Berlin and Leipzig 1922; thus H.A.Molenaar, Odins Gift: Betekenis en werking van de Skandinavische mythologie, Meppel 1985, 258. 49. L.Milis et al., De heidense middeleeuwen, Rome 1992, 36, 37. 50. E.H.Meyer, Mythologie der Germanen, Strassburg 1903, 455, 457, 469, 470. 51. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 203; W.Gronbech, Kultur und Religion der Germanen, Hamburg 1989; H.Naumann, Germanischer Schicksalsglaube, Jena 1934, 27. 52. G.Turville Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, 1969; de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 185. 53. Cf.K.Huisman, ‘PC in Franeker voortzetting van heidense cultus’, Leeuwarder Courant, 13 March 1993, which speaks of a possible survival of the worship of Ing-Fryer. 54. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 23; de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 244; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Freyr’; Derolez, De Godsdienst der Germanen (n.30), 126. 55- Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Freyr’. 56. Huisman, ‘Christianity and Germanic Religion’ (n.21), 65. 57- Romein, De lage landen bis de zee (n.39), 157. 58. Weiler, Willibrords missie (n.1), 23; de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 244; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Freyr’; Titchenell, The Masks of Odin (n.42), 42. 59. Haugen, ‘The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 6. 60. E.Nack,

Germanien,

Lander

und

Volker der Germanen,

Vienna

and

Heidelberg 1958, 11. 61. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Wodan’; J.Streit, Zon en kruis: van steenkring tot vroegchristelijk kruis in Ierland, Rotterdam 1977, 146; Haugen, ‘The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 8.

Notes to pages 112-121

215

62. H.Kuhn,

63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

‘Das Fortleben der germanischen Heidentums nach der Christianisierung’, in La conversione al cristianismo nell’europa dell’alto medioevo, Spoleto 1967, 752, 753. Grénbech, Kultur und Religion der Germanen (n.51), 247. Titchenell, The Masks of Odin (n.42), 75. Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 16-18. E.S.Kooper, ‘Botsing en integratie’, in R-E.Stuip and C.Vellekop, Cultuur in contact. Botsing en integratie in de Middeleeuwen, Utrecht 1988, 9,20; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Merseburger Zauberspriiche’. C.W.Mé6nnich, Vreemdelingen uit Ierland: Het leven van Columba van Iona beschreven door Adamnan; en van Columbanus van Luxeuil beschreven door

68. 69.

70. Ohi 72.

73;

74: 75.

Jona van Bobbio, Amsterdam 1962, 117, 118. A. Heusler, ‘Die altgermanische Religion’, in E.Lehmann et al., Die Religionen des Orients und die altgermanische Religion, Berlin 1923. Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf (n.28), 79. The Poetic Edda, ed. Henry Bellows Adams, Princeton 1936, 60f. H.A.Guerber, Noorsche Mythen uit de Edda en de sagen, Zutphen nd, 32. Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 13, 7. M.Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia ofReligion, 1987, s.v. ‘Runes’, ‘Rune chest of Auzon’; Herder Lexikon s.v. Rune’; Haugen, ‘The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 7, 13; J.Streit, Zon en kruis: van steenkring tot vroegchristelijk kruis in Ierland, Rotterdam 1977, 28. M.Swanton, The Drama of the Rood, New York 1970, V. B.Branston, The Lost Gods of England, London 1957, 52, 140, 158, 160,

161. 76. Eliade, Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Runes’.

77: Magnusson, Vikings! (n.33), 285; Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 267, 268, 276. 78. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 35, 43 108. 79: H.Bergema, De boom des levens in schrift en historie, Hilversum 1938, 502, cf.

503-12. Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf (n.28), 90. A.T.Holten, De dood van de goden, Groningen 1977, 139. Kuhn, ‘Das Fortleben der germanischen Heidentums’ (n.62), 752. Ibid., 750, 751, 752Mak, Kerstmis, 24; cf. C.C.v.d.Graft, Nederlandsche volksgebruiken bij hoogtijdagen, Amsterdam 1947, 92-104. 85. D.Wouters, J.Waterink et al, Kerstmis enMuddewinter: Volkskundig leesboek voor de lagere scholen, Groningen 1931, 35. 86. Ibid., 56, 57, 61, 63. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

87 . Ibid., 62, 86.

88. Ibid., 43; Monnich, Vreemdelingen uit Ierland (n.67), 21. 89. Mannich, Vreemdelingen uit Ierland (n.67); id., 157; cf. J.van den Bosch,

Notes to pages 121-127

216 Capa, Basilica, Monasterium

et le culte de saint Martin de Tours. Etude

lexicologique et sémasiologique, Nijmegen 1959. go. De Grote Winckler Prins®, s.v. ‘Maarten’. gl. Wouters and Waterink, Kerstmis en Muddewinter (n.85), 35, 38, 39, 43> 44

46, 47.

g2. 9394: 95-

Ibid., 45. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 73-

.

97.

08. 99. 100. IOl.

Haugen, ‘The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 7; De Vries, Edda (n.46), 88, 91. A.Eliot, Mythen der mensheid, Amsterdam 1977, 127, 221, 225, 292. Gamla Uppsala. The Ancient Site, Uppsala *1987, 14 (quotations from Adam of Bremen); Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 254, 264, 292. W.Lange, Studien zur christlichen Dichtung der Nordgermanen 1000-1200, Gottingen 1958, 178. Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 272, 274. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 73, 132: A.Strom and H.Biezais, Germanische und baltische Religion, Stuttgart 1975, 278. K.S.Latourette, The History of the Expansion of Christianity 11, New York 1958, 146. Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf (n.28), 40.

102. 103. Kuhn, ‘Das Fortleben der germanischen Heidentums’ (n.62), 746. 104. Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 275. 105. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 133, 134; Heusler, ‘Die altgermanische Religion’ (n.68), 270. 106. Post, De overgang van den Friezen (n.8), 536. 107. Heusler, ‘Die altgermanische Religion’ (n.68), 270. 108. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 135.109. According to H.Schtick, Svenska folkets historia 1.1, 1914, 27, quoted by H.Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum, Gitersloh 1940, 314. TIO. Lange, Studien zur christlichen Dichtung (n.g9), 135. Pa. 112.

D3. 114. 115. 116.

117. 118.

Magnusson, Vikings! (n.29), 93. Kuhn, ‘Das Fortleben der germanischen Heidentums’ (n.62), 750; Magnusson, Vikings! (n.29), 202; cf. Lange, Studien zur christlichen Dichtung (n.97),177; Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 285. T.Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, London 1907, 39f.; cf. Branston, The Lost Gods ofEngland (n.75), 114. Huisman, ‘Christianity and Germanic Religion’ (n.21), 60. Kuhn, ‘Das Fortleben der germanischen Heidentums’ (n.62), 746. Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (n.23), 84; cf. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (3 vols), Giitersloh +1875-78. Logghe, Tussen hameren staf (n.28), 30 pl.2. R.Delorez, De godsdienst der Germanen, Roermond and Maaseik 1959, 263.

Notes to pages 127-134

B17

11g. NRC Handelsblad, 1 August 1991. 120. Eliade, Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Germanic Religion’. 121.

Herder Lexikon s.v. ‘Tyr’.

¥22. Ibid., s.v. Holle’, ‘Perchta’; cf. De Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 292, 293. 122) R.A.Horsley, ‘Further Reflections on Witchcraft and European Folk Religion’, in History of Religion 19, 1979, 87, 88. 124. E.Drewermann, Frau Holle. Grimms Marchen tiefenpsychologisch gedeutet, Freiburg *1982, 45, 27. 125. Brondsted, The Vikings (n.29), 271; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Niflhel’. 126. Milis et al, De heidense middeleeuwen (n.49), 26. £29. Drewermann, Frau Holle (n.124), 40, 45 nn.17, 52. 128. Cf. “Baldr’s Death and The Golden Bough’, in G.Turville-Petre and J.S.Martin, Iceland and the Medieval World, Studies in Honour of Ian Maxwell, Victoria, Australia 1974, 25-32, which even puts some question marks against Frazer’s interpretation of the midsummer festivals (the eve of the feast of John the Baptist) and Balder. 129. R.H.Wax, Magic, Fate and History, Kansas 1969, 50, 51. 130. Herder Lexikon, s.v. Balder. Ze Ibid., s.v. ‘Beowulf and ‘Grendel’. 032. K.D.Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand der Germanen’ (1948), ed. M Jacobs, in Gesammelte Aufsatze, Géltingen 1967, 9-24: 22, 23. 133. Quoted by I.M.D.Cherniss, /ngeld and Christ, The Hague 1972, 128, 150. 134. Milis et al., De heidense middeleeuwe (n.49), 37; Herder Lexikon s.v. ‘Saxo’. 135: Titchenell, The Masks of Odin (n.42), 67. 136. Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual’ (n.42), 16, 23. 137. Titchenell, The Masks of Odin (n.42), 67. 138. De Vries, Eddas (n.46), 107. 139. J.de Vries, Heldenlied en heldensage, Utrecht and Antwerp 1959. “There is said to be Christian influence on Loki’s role in the death of Baider and in the final struggle, but this is denied by others’; Molenaar, Odin’s Gift (n.48) 1985, 158. 140. E.H.Meyer, Mythologie der Germanen, Strasbourg 1903, 436. 141. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 128. 142. Eliot, Mythen der mensheid (n.g5), 225: with his painting of Thor who is trying to fish the Midgard serpent the artist probably wants to depict the mediaeval view that Christ catches the dragon or leviathan or the devil with the fish hook of the cross; cf. Branston, The Lost Gods of England (n.75), TLOVL1 710: 143. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 208; Heusler, “Die altgermanische Religion’ (n.68), 271. 144. Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand’ (n.132), 9,10. 145. Delorez, De godsdienst der Germanen, 73, 74, relates that the so-called fulltrii belief, of which traces are found for the first time in the sagas and

218

146.

147. 148. 149.

150. i 152. 153. 154.

155. 156. WSF

Notes to pages

134-140

heroic poems, is about a very personal relationship between the individual and a particular god. The ‘personal relationship of Christians to their God could have worked as a catalyst here. This belief implies that they regard their God as their fulltrii, their familiar friend.’ Baetke sees this as a projection from Christian times. Cf. W.Lange, Studien zur christliche Dichtung der Nordgermanen, Gottingen 1958, 233. I have taken this argument from RGG, s.v. ‘Germanisierung des Christentums, Verdienst IV’; cf. Peter von Polenz, Geschichte der Deutsche Sprache, Berlin and New York 1978, 41-5. RGG, s.v. ‘Heliand’. J.Rathofer, Der Heliand: Theologischer Sinn als tektonische Form, Cologne 1962, 56. RGG, s.v. ‘Hrabanus Maurus’; G.Duby, De kathedralen-bouwers; Portretvan de middeleeuwse maatschapptj 980-1420, Amsterdam and Brussels 1985, 88. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 164, 165; Herder Lexikon, s.v. “Heliand’. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 165; Miskotte, Edda en Tora (n.12), 368. The Heliand, 4858-84. Rupp Heinz Rupp, ‘Der Heliand: Hauptanliegen seines Dichters’, in J.Eihoff and I.Rauch, Der Heliand, Darmstadt 1973, 260, 261. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 165. Thus Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand’ (n.132), 19. Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum (n.109), 323. RGG s.v. ‘Mittelalterliche Literatur’; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Hildebrandslied’; cf. Peter Wapnewski, Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Gottingen

1975, 18, 19. 158. Schmidt (n.132), 21; RGG, “Heliand’, s.v. ‘Germanisierung des Christentums’. 159. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 206. 160. Miskotte, Edda en Tora (n.12), 368, 269. 161. De Vries, Heldenlied en heldensage (n.139), 239. 162. A.Angenendt, Der Frithmittelalter. Die abendlindische Christenheit von 400 bis 900, Stuttgart, Berlin and Cologne 1990, 41, 42. That the disciples were in the position of ‘vassals’ does not mean that Jesus is thought of as an earthly king (W.Foerste, ‘Otfrids literarische Verhaltnis zum Heliand (1980), in J.Eichhuff and I.Rauch, Der Heliand, Darmstadt 1973, 129). According to Rupp, ‘Der Heliand: Hauptanliegen seines Dichters’ (n.155), 166, historians must discover whether the idea of ‘discipleship’ was still flourishing in the Saxon context of the ninth century. 163. Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 32-5; cf. John 11.16.

Notes to pages 140-143

219

164. Rathofer, Der Heliand (n.148), 52, 53. 165. J.Thauren, Die Akkommodation im katholischen Heidenapostolat, Minster 1927, 125. 166. H.Wicke, Das wunderbare Tun des heiligen Krist; nach der altsdichsischen Evangelienharmonie. Eine Einfiihrung in das Verstdndnis des ‘Heliana’, Gottingen 1935, 9,10. 167. Ibid., 32, 33. This is claimed by Vilmars in his Geschichte der deutschen Evangelienharmonie. Eine Einfithrung in das Verstindis des ‘Heliand’, 72, quoted ibid., 77. 168. Ibid., 43, 77, 86, 94. 169. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 165. 170. Rupp, ‘Der Heliand: Hauptanliegen seines Dichters’ (n.153), 250, 251, 252, 256, 255, 258, 259, 260. 17 _ . Ibid., 265, 268. The image of Christ in the Heliand puts the emphasis on his divinity, pre-existence and royal dignity. The Heliand is thought to accord with Carolingian theology. Angenendt, Der Frihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit (n.162), 438; cf. Wicke, Das munderbare Tun des heiligen Krist (n.166), passim. 172: Thus Rathofer, Der Heliand (n.150), 52. £73. Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 27; cf. Scherer, quoted by Wicke, Das wunderbare Tun des heiligen Krist (n.169), 80. 174. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 164, 165; Rathofer, Der Heliand (n.147), 52: ‘All this was more understandable to the Saxons. So scholars have spoken of a Germanizing of the Heliand. Wrongly, since the author changed nothing in the Christian doctrine itself. . . However, a pagan remnant has remained which even the author of the Heliand did not overcome: the “wurt”, the German concept of fate, stands alongside God’s omnipotence’ (H.Walz, Die deutsche Literatur im Mittelalter, Munich 1976, 26). 175: Foerste, ‘Otfrids literarische Verhaltnis’ (n.162), 130. 176. F.Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs: Ss.Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, New Brunswick 1970, 370. 177: RGG, s.v; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Otfrid von Weiszenburg’; Foerste, “Otfrids literarische Verhiltnis’ (n.162), 129. 178. J.M.Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, Oxford 1983, 386. 179. Angenendt, Der Friihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit (n.162),

440, 441.

180. 181. 182. 183.

Rupp, ‘Der Heliand: Hauptanliegen seines Dichters’ (n.155), 261. Wicke, Das wunderbare Tun des heiligen Krist (n.166), 81. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 206. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Muspilli’; Chantepie de la Saussaye, Geschiedenis van den godsdienst der Germanen (n.2), 163, 165; de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 236, 237-

220

Notes to pages 143-152

184. Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 37185. Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand’ (n.132), 11, 12. 186. Thus the interpretation by Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand’ (n.132), 14, 15, 16, 17; cf. de Vries, Aligermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 235, 236. 187. Herder Lexikon, s.v. Jul’; cf. J.Mak, Het kerstfeest, The Hague 1948. 188. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 80, 81, 82. 189. Wouters and Waterink, Kerstmis enMuddewinter (n.85), 31, 34; 35190. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 81. IQI. Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf (n.28), 104, cf. 33; de Vries, Aligermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 256. 192. Eliot, Mythen der mensheid (n.95), 230. 193. Milis et al, De heidense middeleeuwe (n.49), 38. 194. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 136; cf. Herder Lexikon, s.v. “Perchta’. 195. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 133, 134, 88. 196. In 1939 the myth of the wild hunt of Wodan appeared in the form of the American cowboy song ‘Riders in the Sky’, cf. Branston, Lost Gods of

Europe (n.75), 89. : 197. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 92, 84,87. 198. Wouters and Waterink, Kerstmis en Muddewinter (n.85), 38. 199. Hiller, Sesam atlas (n.36), 236. 200. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 90; Wouters and Waterink, Kerstmis en Muddewinter (n.85), 37: 201. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 80. 202. Wouters and Waterink, Kerstmis en Muddewinter (n.85), 34, 35. 203. There are only a few such lime trees in the Netherlands. This tree got into the news because of a preservation order (Tvoum, 23 July 1991). 204. Streit, Zon en kruis (n.73), 32, 333 de Vries, Aligermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 289, 290. 205. Frye, The Great Code, London 1982, 149. 206. Eliot, Mythen der mensheid (n.95), 43, 108. 207. R.Flasche, ‘Germanische Religiositét als lebensbezogener Schicksalglaube’, in G.Stephenson (ed.), Leben und Tod in den Religionen. Symbol und Wirklichkeit, Darmstadt 1980, 25. 208. S.A.Osmen, Heilige Plaatsen, Rijswijk 1990, 175. 209. The Poetic Edda (n.70), 20. 210. Christelijke Encyclopedie’?, Kampen, s.v. ‘Yggdrasil’; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Yggdrasil’. “Ratatoskr’; Eliot, Mythen der mensheid (n.g5), 43, 108. ZK. Tacitus, quoted by Eliade, Encyclopedia, under ‘Germanic Religion’; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Irminsul’; M.Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, New York 1959, 21. 212. De Vries, Aligermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 241, 215. 253; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Baum’; RGG, s.v. ‘Lebensbaum’. 214. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Steinkreuze’.

Notes to pages 152-157

221

215. For the illustrations mentioned see the reproductions in the Christelijke 216.

2178 218.

219. 220.

22u% 222: 2285 224. 22158 226.

227. 228. 229. 230. 2300

2B2 233: 234. 235:

Encyclopedie (n.210), s.v. ‘Boom des Leven’, also ‘Steinkreuze’, ‘Yggdrasil’. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 89, go. Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf (n.28), 71. Ibid., 98, 99. v.d.Graft, Nederlandsche volksgebruiken bij hoogtijdagen M.Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion. A Study Sacred in the History ofReligious Phenomena, Cleveland

Herder Lexikon, s.v.

(n.84), 36. of the Element of the and New York 1963,

310, 311. Mak, Het kerstfeest (n.187), 138, 139. Ibid., 149. De Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (n.22), 232. Strom and Biezais, Germanische und baltische Religion (n.100), 280; cf. Graves, The White Goddess, London and Boston 1986, 404. Romein, De lage landen bij de zee (n.39), 158. Guerber, Noorse Mythen (n.71), 54; cf. van der Graft, Nederlandsche volksgebruiken bij hoogtijdagen (n.84), 52. Heusler, “Die altgermanische Religion’ (n.68), 270. Derolez, De godsdienst der Germanen (n.30), 261. Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (n.23), 32. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 128. De Vries quotes these words in his translation of the Edda as one of the remarks by the poet about the triumph of the coming new world ruler in a different manuscript from the one that he follows in his translation of the

Edda (Edda[n.46], 26). The Poetic Eddas (n.70), 75f. Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum (n.109), 83, 99, 317. Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism (n.3), 173Thus H.R.Post, ‘Het opnemen der Germanen in de kerk’, inJ.Watering et al., Cultuurgeschiedenis van het Christendom, Amsterdam 1957, I, 516, 517;

518, 519. 236. Ibid., 523. 237% Derolez, De godsdienst der Germanen (n.30), 253238. A.Nitschke, ‘Friihe christliche Reiche’, in G.Mann (ed.), Propylaen Weltgeschichte V, Berlin 1963, 273-93, 34239. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 137240. Post, ‘Het opnemen der Germanen in de kerk’ (n.235), 523. 241. Latourette, History of the Expansion of Christianity Il (n.103), 145. 242. Derolez, De godsdienst der Germanen (n.30), 252, 253, 254243. Baetke, Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen (n.4), 25, 26, 44,

45, 16.

244. Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum (n.109), 102,98, 99.

222

Notes to pages

157-165

245. 246. 247. 248.

Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 126. Thus Schmidt, ‘Christus der Heliand’ (n.132), 10, 11. Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Sigurd’. Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum (n.109), 99; Herder Lexikon, s.v. ‘Sigurd’, ‘Stabkirche’ (with illustration); Magnusson, Vikings! (n.33), 109; for the illustration see 108. 249. Thauren, Die Akkommodatiun im katholischen Heidenapostolat (n.165),

123. 250. Cf. ‘Kruisen en Kapellen’, in E.de Grood et al., Zuid Limburg, Amsterdam

1977, 64-85. 251. Thauren, Die Akkommodation im katholischen Heidenapostolat (n.165), 122,

123) 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257.

Bredero, Christenheid en Christendom in deMiddeleeuwen (n.14), 309. Ljungberg, Die nordische Religion und das Christentum (n.109), 317, 318. Ibid., 319. Derolez, De godsdienst der Germanen (n.30), 261. Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology (n.33), 137: RGG s.v. ‘Leonhard’, ‘Nothelfer’. Leonhard was descended from a family close to Clovis; Remigius was his godfather and spiritual mentor. He was seen as one of the fourteen saints who help in need. 258. T Jung, in P.Herrmann, Deutsche Mythologie, Berlin 1991, 10.

V. The Interaction between the Gospel and Present-Day European Culture 1. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, London 1910, II, 13.

2. G.Dumézil, Mythes et Dieux des Germains, Paris 1939, 156, 157. Recently Dumézil’s attitude to Nazism has come under discussion, e.g. in an interview with him in Le Monde, 12 April 1985, 14, and ina comprehensive study, D.Eribon, Faut il briiler Dumézil?, Paris 1992. 3. H.Kasimov and B.L.Sherwin (eds.), No Religion is an Island. Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue, New York 1991, 4. 4. K.H.Miskotte, Edda en Thora: een vergelijking van germaansche en israelitische religie, Nijkerk 1939. 5. A.T.van Holten, De dood van de goden, Groningen 1977, 149. 6. Quoted by van Holten, De dood van de goden (n.5), 152f. 7. See C.GJung, Civilization in Transition, London 1964, ‘After the Catastrophe’, 194-217; ‘Fight with the Shadow’, 218-26. 8. K.D.Schmidt, Die Bekehrung der Germanen zum Christentum, Gottingen

1936, 43.

g. FJ.Los, Karel de Frank: de Groote? De Frankische kerstening, Amsterdam 1940, 119, 156, 157, 159, 161, 163; H.Riickert, Die Christianisierung der Germanen: Ein Beitrag zur ihrem Verstandnis und ihre Beurteilung, Tubingen *1934, wrote in the same spirit.

Notes to pages 166-172 10. IT.

12.

13; 14. 5; 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

223

F.Aswynn, Leaves of Yggdrasil, Runes, God, Magic, Feminine Mysteries,

Folklore, St Paul 1990, 2, xxv. G.G.de Kruif, Heiden, jood en christen; een studie over de theologie van K.H.Miskotte, Baarn 1981, 102. Nieuw Theologisch Tijdschrift 29, 1940, 151-7; cf. de Kruif, Heiden, jood en christen (n.11), 192. Miskotte, Edda en Thora (n.4), 37. “As long as syncretistic tendencies prevail there is never place for mission in religion’, ibid., 417. Trouw, 25 April 1991, 10. S.Daecke, ‘Glaube und Pluralismus’, in Evangelische Kommentare XX], November 1988, 630. N.K.Chadwick, Celtic Britain. The Fabulous Saga oe by the Artifacts of an Ancient People, North Hollywood, Ca. 1989, 13, 14. C.Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, London 1950, 100, 115. Thus M.Popescu, ‘Eliade and Folklore’, in J.M.Kitagawa and C.H.Long, Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor ofMircea Eliade, Chicago and London 1969, 89. The author points out that in contrast to Western Europe popular traditions have continued to live on in Eastern Europe through the rural Christianity which has a cosmic and prehistoric dimension. A.Heusler, Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied: Die Stoffgeschichte des

deutschen Heldenepos, Dortmund 1923, 123, 26. . A.Vergote, Het meerstemmig leven: gedachten over mens en religie, Keppelen and Kampen 1987, 237. 22. A.Heusler, ‘Die Altgermanischen Religion’, in E.Lehrmann et al. (ed.), Die Religion und die Altgermanische Religion, Berlin 1923, 271. 233 Y.Bonnefoy, Mythologies, Il, Chicago and London 1991, 688, 693, quoting P.Saintives, Les saints successeurs des dieux, Essai de mythologie chrétienne, Paris 1907. 24. Kasimov and Sherwin, No Religion is an Island (n.3), 26. = D.Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, Philadelphia, New York andJerusalem 1976, 6, 7. 26. Ibid., 25, 43. 27 Quoted from T.Friedmann, From Beirut to Jerusalem, Glasgow 1990, 319. 28. GJ.de Vries, ‘Via Athene’, Wending XIV, 1959-1960, 724. 29. RJ.Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies, Maryknoll and London 1985, ES7t 30. Hartman, Maimonides (n.25), 213. Zila Quoted by J.Szenic, The Survival ofPagan Gods. The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and An, Princeton 1961, 23. 32: K.Logghe, Tussen hamer en staf: voorkristelijke symboliek in de Nederlanden en elders in Europa, Brepols 1992, 170. Fe, New 33: M.Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, Santa 2

Lal

Notes to pages

224

172-176

Mexico 1983, 13; cf. also his The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, New York 1988; id., Creation Spirituality Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, New York 1991. 34. Fox, Original Blessing: APrimer in Creation Spirituality (n.33), 11. 35- Id., The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (n.33), 3436. Id., Original Blessing:APrimer in Creation Spirituality (n.33), 274, 282; cf. id., The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (n.33), 112. 37: Ibid., 145, 149; cf. id., Original Blessing: APrimer in Creation Spirituality

(n.33), 274, 239.

38. J.Mackey (ed.),An Introduction to Celtic Christianity, Edinburgh 1989, 13. 39- N.D.Donoghue, ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, in Mackey, An Introduction to Celtic Christianity (n.38), 6, 61. 40. P. Thomas, The Opened Door;A Celtic Spirituality, Brechfa 1990, 4, 28, 30, 32, 35; cf. W.J.Rees, Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, Llandovery 1853. 41. G.J.de Vries, ‘Vrij onder open hemel’, Wending XII, 1957-58, 700. 42. Thus A. and B.Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales, London 1961, 21, 22. 43- Cf. Van Dale, Groot woordenboek der Nederlandse tal, The Hague °1961, s.v. ‘Mythe’. 44. E.Drewermann, Der Krieg und Das Christentum. Von der Ohnmacht und Notwendigkeit der Religidsen, Regensburg *1984, 250. 45. Cf. I Timothy 1.3, 4; Titus 1.14. 46. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.23), 651. 47- N.Frye, The Great Code. The Bible and Literature, London 1982, 149. 48. T.Worden, “The Literary Influence of the Ugarit Fertility Myth on the Old Testament’, Vetus Testament Ill, 1953, 273-97. For a thorough basis and working out see my ‘Biblical Presuppositions for or against Syncretism’, in J.O.Gort et al., Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Grand Rapids 1989, 52-65. 49. Cf. F.van der Meer, Christus’ oudste gewaar, Baarn 71989, 42. 50. Ibid., 45, 47, 20. Si Drewermann, Der Krieg und das Christentum (n.44), 277, 278. 52, However, Frye, The Great Code (n.47), 71, 327, notes how unfortunate it is that the term “demythologizing’ is connected with Bultmann, because in his view Bultmann’s understanding of the New Testament as a whole is not a demythologizing one. 53- Cited by WJ.Hollenweger, Umgang mit Mythen, Interkulturelle Theologie 2, Munich 1982, 74. 54. Ibid., cf. 76. 55. A.Jeremias, Die ausserbiblische Erlosererwartung, Berlin 1927, 378; this last addition is by H.von Skerst, Der Unbekannte Gott. Griechische Mysterienschau und christliche Erfillung, Stuttgart 1967, 146, who also quotes Jeremias.

Notes to pages

176-182

225

56. Frye, The Great Code (n.47), 42. 57: Ibid., 224. 58. H.Ott on Bultmann in the introduction to R.Bultmann, Die Frage nach Entmythologisierung, Munich 1981, 29-80. 59. Quoted in an interview with G.Clarke, ‘The Need for New Myths’, Time Magazine, 17 January 1972; cf. J.Campbell, The Power ofMyth, London and New York 1980, 13, and his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton 31.9973, E1: 60. Clarke, “The Need for New Myths’ (n.59), 35. 61. G.Steiner, Language and Silence, London 1985, 199, 200. 62. Campbell, The Power ofMyth (n.59), 206. 63. Quoted by B.Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance ofFairy Tales, Harmondsworth 1988, 25, 35. 64. According to H.Sunden, Die Religion und die Rollen, Berlin 1966, quoted by J.Weima, De religie, de mens en de geseculariseerde samenleving, Kampen 1989, 206. . Weima, De religie, de mens en de geseculariseerde samenleving (n.64), 206. 66. In this connection Weima refers to A.Greeley, The Unsecular Man, New York 1972, who remarks that ‘the idea that talk of a decreasing capacity for a religious experience of reality has to do with an a priori presupposition that rests on the model of an evolutionary process and not on the basis of historical events

. 68. 69. 70.

eb 2 73:

74-

75: 76. 77:

can be verified’, Weima,

De religie, de mens

en de

geseculariseerde samenleving (n.64), 206, 207. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 219, 220, 221. Thus D.J.Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission, New York 1991, 353, referring to Frye, The Great Code (n.47), 102. Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (n.18), 3 4: Frye, The Great Code (n.47), 33, 38, 46. B.Koole, Voorbij het patriarchaat; tegenbeelden van de westerse cultuur, Kampen 1989, 161. Le Monde, 3/4 May 1986; cf. M.Eliade, The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago and London 1984, 124: ‘Some of his novels — especially Le voyage au centre de la terre, L'Ile mysterieuse, Le chateau des Carpathes — have been interpreted as initiatory novels.’ Eliade, The Quest (n.74), Preface. A.Dronkers, De religieuze film: een terreinverkenning, The Hague 1961, 235. H.Hoekstra, ‘Ontwikkelingen in de communicatiemedia en de geloofscommunicatie’, in H.M.WJ.van de Wouw (ed.), Geloof en Communicatie: Audiovisuele media als vindplaats van religiositeit en spiritualitett, Driebergen 1991, 19.

Notes to pages 182-186

226

78. M.Verbeek, ‘Film en spiritualiteitsgesprek’, in J.G.Hahn and H.Hoekstra, In gesprek over film en televisie over de theorie en praktijk van het mediagesprek, Kampen 1991, 105. 79: Campbell, The Power ofMyth (n.59), 178. 80. Verbeek, ‘Film en spiritualiteitsgesprek’ (n.78), 119. 81. P.Babin, The New Era in Religious Communication, Minneapolis 1991, 3, 4, 676; 17532: 82. Hoekstra, ‘Ontwikkelingen in de communicatiemedia’ (n.77), 20. Under the presidency of electronic apparatus (camera and montage), word and image have undergone a new wedding: Hoekstra, ‘Audio-visuele media en het media-gesprek. Hun zin en betekenis voor geloofsbeleving en kerkgemeenschap’, in Hahn and Hoekstra, /n gesprek over film en televisie (n.78), 47. Cf. also his ‘Audio-visuele media: mogelijkheden en kansen voor godsdienstige communicatie en vorming’, Voorwerk (a journal for religious education in school and church), 5 July 1988, 3-13. . T.Inbody, Changing Channels. The Church and the Television Revolution, Dayton, Ohio 1990, 92. . W.Carr, Ministry and Media, London 1990, 148. . Hoekstra, ‘Ontwikkelingen in de communicatiemedia’ (n.77), 20, 21, 22. . P.Babin, “The Language of Television and Film and Expression of Faith’, in van de Wouw (ed.), Geloof en Communicatie (n.77), 65. . Hoekstra, ‘Ontwikkelingen in de communicatiemedia’ (n.77), 8, 10. . Shea, quoted by R.A.White, ‘Mass Media and Religious Imagination’, in van de Wouw (ed.), Geloof en Communicatie (n.77), 27. . S.De Bleeckere, ‘Filmkunst en spiritualiteit’, in van de Wouw (ed.), Geloof en Communicatie (n.77), 81. go. Ibid., 79, 80. gl. W.Fore, Television and Religion. The Shaping of Faith, Values and Culture, Minneapolis 1987, 15.

g2. Ibid., 21, 22, 25. 93- Ibid., 37.

94. 95.

Ibid., 39.

Ibid., 60.

. Thus J.Sperna Weiland, rightly, in L.Kolakowski, Wat gebeurt er met ons religieus erfgoed (published by Volkskrant in collaboration with the Van der Leeuwlezing Foundation), Groningen nd, 24. 97. Quoted from L.W.Nauta, De mens als vreemdeling, Amsterdam 1960, 26r. . Campbell, The Power ofMyth (n.59), 177. 99. F Jurss, Vom Mythos der alten Griechen. Deutungen und Erzahlungen, Leipzig 1988, 189. Ioo. Bonnefoy, Mythologies (n.23), 657; cf. also Chapter II. IO!. Ibid., 664, which refers to Clement and says that Goethe speaks of ‘holy Homer’.

Notes to pages 186-196

229

102. J.L.Henderson, ‘Ancient Myths and Modern Man’, in C.GJ ung, Man and His Symbols, London 1979, 107. 103. The Odyssey of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore, London and New York 1967, xi, 488-90. 104. G.Steiner, ‘Homer and the Scholars’ in Language and Silence, London and Boston 1985, 200, 201, 211, 213. 105. H.Hesse, Traumfahrte, Frankfurt 1956. 106. W.Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative Study ofReligion, Philadelphia 1981, 40. 107. G.Steiner, Real Presences. Is There Anything in What We Say?2, London 19809, 232; 108. Cf. the ascension of Elijah: Elisha exclaims, “The chariots and horsemen of Israel’ (II Kings 2.12). 109g. Cf. E.Drewermann, Das Markusevangelium Il, Olten and Freiburg 1988, 723-6. 110. Translation from the booklet to the Decca recording by Bernard Haitink, 417-261 2. Lit. Koole, Voorbij het patriarchaat (n.73), 179, 180. 112. The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, London 1958, no.404, Vol. 3, P. 37°. Liz Letter no.605, Vol. 3, p. 211. 114. Letter no.248, Vol. 2, p. 495. An Introduction to Celtic Christianity (n.38), 18. 115. Mackey (ed.), 116. Adolf von Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, London 1904, I, 181-249; K.Holl, ‘Die Missionsmethode der alten und der mittelalterischen Kirche’, in H.Frohnes and U.W.Knorr, Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte I, Die Alte Kirche, Munich 1974, 8. 117.J.N.Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evangelization of Western Europe in the Seventh Century’, in Préinséas Ni Chathdin and M.Richter, /reland and Christendom, Stuttgart 1987, 324, 325. 118. AJ.Festugiére, quoted by E.R.Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge 1965, 138, 27. 119. Thus both, quoted by A.Angenendt, Das Friihmittelalter. Die abendlandische Christenheit, Stuttgart, Berlin and Cologne 1990, 46. 120. ‘Hier blijven half alle ogenblikken’: Keuze uit het werk van M.A.Beek, Baarn 1988, 7.

Index

Aalst, A.J. van, 28, 200n.11, 201 Abraham, 50, 65, 163 Achilles, 48, 187 Acquaviva, S.S., 198 n.25 Adam of Bremen, 110-11, 123, 216n.96 Adamnan, 63 Aedesius, 97 Aeneas, 24, 40 Aeneid, 17, 40 Aesir, 68, 109-12, 122, 131, 133 Aidan, 63 Alcuin, 41, 61, 82, 100-1, 135, 156 Aldgisl, 100 Alemanns, 96, 98, 150 Alexander the Great, 87 Allegiance, 138 Allegory, allegorical, 30, 175 All Saints, 1 Altheim, 203 n.102, 204 n.137,

205 n.139 Amandus, 65, 97, 101 Ambrose ofMilan, 43, 53-4, 186, 205 America, 6 Ana, cf. Dana, 66 Andersen, C., 200 n.17 Anderson, M., 207 nn.25, 26, 210

N17; 211au123 Angenendt, A., 199 n.58, 206, 207, 218n.162, 219 nn.171, 172, 227 e119

Angles, 11, 55,98

Anglo-Saxon, 4, 8, 11, 57, 84, 87, 100, 102, 135, 144-5, 157 Angurboda, 130 Anselm of Canterbury, 134 Anubis, 48 Aphrodite, 29 Apollo, 37, 41, 46, 66

Apologists, 17, 21, 22, 25, 28, 30, 37> 49; 135 Aramaic, 18-19 Aratus, 24 Areopagus, 24, 74 Ares, 29 Arianism, Arians, Arius, 67, 97, 98 Aristobulus, 24-5

Armagh, 59, 75, 94-5 Arthur, 56, 59, 87-92, 211 n.120 Ascension, 191-3 Asclepius, 17, 37-8, 49 Asgard, 109, 123, 131 Asian, 14, 15 Aswynn, F., 223 n.10 Athene, Pallas, 46, 48, 68, 191 Athens, 22-3, 25, 39, 162, 166, 168-72, 176 Augustine, Aurelius, 22-3, 29, 35, 40-1, 48, 60-1, 171-2 Augustine of Canterbury, 12, 56 Augustus, emperor, 51, 67 Aurelian, 42

Index

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, 23 Auzon, 115 Avalon, 88

Avars, 47, 98

Baal, 175 Babin, P., 182-3, 226 nn.81, 86

Bacchus, 30, 46, 93 Baetke, W., 212.4, 212 n.11, 213.37, 218n.163, 219 n.173, 220n.184, 221 nn.2, 3 Baker,J.,197.16 Bakker, N., 205 n.24 Balder, 108, 110-11, 115, 129, 131-3, 155, 160, 211.137,

217nn.128, 139 Balor, 67 Baptism, 2-6, 10, 14, 30, 45-6,

59, 61, 69, 89, 98, 100-1, 103, 105-6, 120, 156 Bard, cf. filidh Baronius, 83 Bartelink, G. J. M., 200-2 Basil the Great, 23, 27 Baucis, 49-50

229 Benedict, Benedictines, 3, 9,

II-12, 102, 159 Beowulf, 132 Berg,J.van den, 199 n.46 Bergema, H., 215 n.79 Bergman, I., 184 Bertha (Perchta), cf. Hulda, Holle, 130 Bertram, G., 200 Bettelheim, B., 225 n.63 Bieler, L., 209 n.86 Biezais, H., 216n.100, 221 n.224 Birgitta, 3 Bleekere, S. de, 226 nn.88, go Bobbio, 65 Bohemians, 3 Bohlin, T., 206 n.13 Bohme,J., 189, 193 Boniface, 3, 4, 9-10, 12, 57, 97; 100, 102, 135, 169, 171 Boniface IV, 12, 81 Bonnefoy, Y., 201, 202 nn.58, 63,

203, 204, 205 n.I, 223 n.23,

Beanstalk, 150

224n.46, 226 nn.100, IOI Bosch, DavidJ., 197 n.16, 200 n.24, 201 n.44, 206.7, 213 n.24, 215 n.89, 225 n.70 Bragi, 110

Bede, Venerable, 3, 12, 84, 100,

Branston, B., 215 n.75, 216

145,154, 222n.1 Bediako, K., 201 n.134 Bedier, J.,211n.122

N.113, 217.142, 220n.196 Bredero, A. H., 212n.14, 222

Bavarians, 98, 142 Bavinck,J.H., 185

Beek, M. A., 196 Beirnaert, L., 198 n.27 Beirut, 186 Bel, Belen, Belenus, 67, 83,

95 Belgium, 70, 120 Beltane, 83

n.252 Breidablick, 131 Brendan, 56, 62 Bresson, R., 184 Briard, G., 209 n.84 Brigid, 54, 64, 66, 68-9, 71—2,

95 Brigit, St, 68-72, 83, 94-5

230

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

Britain, Britons, 9, 11, 55—6, 58, 67-8, 73, 81-2, 103, 115, 152 Brittany, 65, 76-7 Brondsted,J., 213 nn.29, 35, 216, 217N.125 Brunnhilde, 112

Buber, M., 189-90 Bultmann, R., 8, 176, 178, 179 N.32, 225 n.58 Burgundians, Burgundy, 10, 96-7 Busken Huet, C., 197 n.9 Caesar, Gaius Julius, 55, 66, 68, 73-4) 87, 96, 105

Caesarius of Arles, 56 Calpornius, 58 Campbell,J.,59-60, 89, 93, 176-7, 182, 185, 202 n.73, 203 n.g6, 204 N.110, 206, 211, 225 nn.59, 62, 226 nn.79,°98 Canaanites, 174-5 Candlemass, 82 Carlyle, T., 126, 216n.113 Carmichael, A., 72, 208 n.55 Carnutrum, cf. Chartres, 74 Carolingian, 63 Carr, W., 226n.84 Celsus, 21-2, 37 Celts, Celtic, 8-9, 11, 14-15, 55-6, 58-9, 63-4, 66-9, 71-2,

74-6, 78, 80-2, 84-5, 87-90,

93-6, 102, 150-1, 153, 162, 168-9, 171-3 Ceres, 82-3 Chadwick, N. K., 207 n.28, 208, 209 n.76, 210 n.118, 223 n.17 Chantepie de la Saussaye, P. D., 137, 212 N.2, 213 n.39, 218, 219

Charlemagne, 41, 59, 77, 82, g8—100, 125, 135, 151, 154, 165 Charles Martel, 101-2 Chartres, 74 Chaucer, 180 Cherniss, I. M. D., 217 n.133 Christianizing, xi, 1, 4-6, 8—o,

13-15, 51, 54; 83, 98, 135, 154; 158, 161-2, 168, 178, 196 Christmas tree, 10, 148, 152-3 Christmas, 17, 42, 49-50, 77, 84, 93, 96, 120, 122, 131, 145,

147-9, 153, 160, 193 Christopher, St, 45 Chronos, 29 Chrysostom, John, 43, 81 Cicero, 22, 23, 29, 31 Circe, 32 Clarke, G., 225 nn.59, 60 Clement of Alexandria, 17, 23,

25-6, 29-30, 32-4, 38, 41, 175, 186 Clotilde, 98 Clovis, 4, 98-9, 155-6, 165

Codran, 156 Cogitosus, 69, 71 Columba the Elder, 56, 63-4 Columbanus, 11, 56, 64-6, 113

Compostela, 2 Concessa, 58 Constantine the Great, 10, 38, 41,

43,47) 51,54, 56,156 Contextual theology, contextualization, 14-15, 55, 61, 169, 190 Counter Reformation, 4 Copernicus, 180

Cornwall, 55, 88 Corotius, 58

Index Courcelle, P., 203 n.go Cross, 7, 10, 13, 18, 23, 25, 30,

32-3, 51, 64, 77, 79-80, 87, 91, 115,117, 125-7, 134, 152, 158,

173, 190 Cu Chulainn, 59, 92 Cumont, F. V. M., 203 n.94 Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, 4, 63, 84

Cyril, 2,3,35

Czechoslovakia, 3 Daecke, S., 223 n.16 Daghda, 66, 68 Daedalus, 39-40 Dana, cf. Ana, 66 Daniélou, J.,212n.5 Daniel of Winchester, 102, 155 Dante Alighieri, 41, 180, 203 n.g1 Darwin, C., 180 Davidson, H. R. E., 109, 213 N.32, 214 nNn.42, 51,215 n.78, 216, 217 nNn.141, 143, 218 N.159, 219n.182, 221, 222

Dawson, C., 168, 199 n.54, 202 n.83, 205 n.33, 207 n.26, 213 n.23, 216n.116, 221 n.228, 223 n.18, 225 n.71 De-christianization, 1, 2, 5, 196 Deissmann, A., 199 nn.4, 6

Delius, W., 205 n.3, 207 n.43, 208 n.54, 209 n.72 Delumeau,J.,4-5, 197, 210 n.102 Demeter, 46 Demosthenes, 31 Demythologizing, 8, 174, 176, 178 Denmark, Danes, 96, 103-4, I11, 115,125

231 Derolez, R., 160, 213 n.30, 214

N.54, 217.145, 221, 222 N.255 Deucalion, 49 Deursen, A. T., van, 1970.15 Dian Cécht, 66 Diatessaron, 135 Dibelius, N., 200 n.26 Diocletian, 125 Dionysius, Dionysian, 30, 46,

93 Dodd, C. H., 19, 199 n.79, 200 Nn.1I, 202 N.77 Dodds, E. R., 227 n.118 Dokkum, 11, 102

Dolger, F.J., 203 n.98 Dolmen, 76-7 Donaldson, C., 211 n.143 Donar, 10, 106, 109, 122-3, 128-9, 141, 155, 169 Donoghue, N. D., 224.39

Dood, P. R., 39, 202 n.82 Dostoievsky, F., 185 Dragon-killer, 7 Drewermann, E., 176, 201 n.56, 204, 211 n.11,216nn.124,

127, 224 nN.44, 51, 227N.109 Drews, A., 204n.113 Dronkers, A., 185,225 n.76 Druids, 56, 59, 61-2, 66, 69, 72-8, 80, 83, 88, 94-5, 153

Duby, G., 218n.149

Dumézil, G., 128, 163, 207 n.39,

208 n.58, 222 n.2 Dvornik, F., 219 n.176 Easter, 50, 81, 96, 106, 144, 149,

153-4, 159-60

Ebrard,J.H., 198 n.38

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

232

Echternach, 101 Eckart, 120 Eckhart, Meister, 161, 172, 189 Eclogue, 40-1 Eddas, 106-7, 110, 115, 123, 133,

166, 168 Edwin of Northumbria, 99, 156, 161 Egbert, 101 Egil, 112 Fl, 20, 175

Elijah, 7, 48, 59, 61, 143 Eliade, M., 1, 6-8, 13, 50, 162, 178-81, 198, 199.55, 200,

207 N.37, 209 nn.73, 83, 210 N.gg, 211 n.127, 215 nn.73, 76, 217N.120, 220, 221 n.220, 252, nNn.74, 757 Eligius, 120 Eliot, A., 216.95, 217.142, 220 Eliot, Ty'S.555389; 177

Fairy tales, 81, 174, 178 Februarius, 82 Fenrir (wolf), 128-30, 151

Ferguson,J.,206 n.13 Festugiére, A. J.,54, 205.155, 227n.118 Filidh, 68, 73,75 Film, 181-2, 184 Finan, T., 205 n.5, 207

Fish, fisher, 36 Flanders, 65, 97 Flasche, R., 220n.207 Foerste, W., 219 nn.175, 177 Fomhoire, 67 Fore, W. F., 184, 226 Forseti, 110 Fox, M., 172-3, 223 n.33, 224 France, 3, 5, 55, 62, 65, 69, 76,

152-3, 157 Ephraem Syrus, 43 Epicureans, 24 Eric of Sweden, 127

119 Francis I, 171 Franks, Frankish, 9, 65, 77, 82, 96, 98-102, 121, 141, 142, 156, 168 Frazer,J.G., 174, 217.128 Frend, W. H. C., 205 n.4 Freyja, 105, 109-12, 123, 131, 145, 160

Euhemerus, Euhemerism, 29

Freyr, Fro,

Euridice, 34 Euripides, 28, 31 Europe, European, 1-9, 14-16,

127,145, 146, 157, 160 Friedmann, T., 223 n.27 Friesland, Friesians, 9-10, 13, 98 b 100-2, 110, 121 Frigg, cf. Freya Frumentius, 97 Frye, N., 176, 180, 201 n.56, 203 N.QQ, 220 N.205, 224 nn.47, 56, 225 Fulltru’i, 13.4 Futhark, 114

England, English, 3,7,

11-12,

59, 62, 68, 94, 102, 104, 119,

39, 49; 54-6, 90, 94-5, 100-3, 123, 149, 153, 161-3, 166, 168, 171, 174, 179, 181, 187-8, 190,

194, 196 Eusebius of Caesarea, 34, 38, 41, 209 n.136 Evangelism, evangelization, 1, 2, 6-9, 15, 166, 162, 170

110-11, 115, 120,

Index

233

Gagé,J., 205 n.142 Gamh, 80

Greith, C. J., 209 n.87

Garm, 129 Gaul, Gallic, 7, 9, 41, 55, 58, 67-8, 72-3, 84, 150, 158 Gawain, 90-3 Geismar, 10

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 87-8 George, St, 7, 48, 160 Germany, Germans, Germanic, 3, 5, 8-10, 14-15, 41, 51, 60,

68-9, 83, 93, 96-8, 100, 102, 105-7, 109, 114, 119, 121-3, 127-8, 130, 142-5, 148-52, 156-60, 162-6,

168-9

Goff,J.le, 197 n.17 Gogh, Vincent van, 19-23 ‘Good shepherd’, 36-6 Goodspeed, E. J., 209 n.88 Gosforth cross, 133-4 Goths, 96-8, 104, 168 Gotterdimmerung, cf. Twilight of the gods, 112, 123, 129-30, I5I Graeco-Roman, 9, 14-15, 17-18, 21, 290-31, 34, 37-9, 41, 435 47;

60-1, 53-4, 168, 175, 186, 196 Graft, C.C.v.d., 221 nn.218, 226

Grail, 56, 66, 87-90 Graves, R., 202 n.74, 208 n.45 Gregory the Great, 4, 9, 11-13,

56, 98, 157, 171, 194 Gregory II, 10 Gregory IV, 82

Grendel, 132 Greeks, Greek, 15, 17-22, 24-8,

30, 34, 36, 46, 187, 191

‘Green Knight’, go-3 Gronbech, W., 215.51, 215 n.63 Grood, E. de, 221 n.250 Guerber, H. A., 215 n.71, 221 n.226 Gungnir, 112 Gunnlddd, 113 Gutenberg, 182-3 Haakon the Good, 103, 125, 145 Hades, 34, 45-6 Haenchen, E., 200 n.28 Hahn,J.G., 226 nn.78, 82 Hamdismial, 107 Hammer (of Thor), 122-3, 125,

127 ‘Hangagud’, 114 Hanson, R. P. C., 105 n.5, 209 n.g Harald Bluetooth, 103, 115-16, 156 Harnack, A. von, 51, 202 n.75, 204n.138, 105 n.140, 117 n.116 Hartman, D., 169-71, 223 Hartmann, K., 198n.35 Hasidism, 190

Gregory of Nazianzus, 27, 40,

Hatch, E., 204 Haugen, E., 214, 215 nn.65, 72,

46 Gregory of Nyssa, 27 Gregory of Tours, 10, 13, 156, 179-80

216.94, 217 N.136 Havamal, 107, 113 Hebrew, 18-20, 23, 53 Heiler, F., 203 n.g7, 205 n.149

234

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

Heiloo, 101

Heimdal, 107, 110, 133 Hel, hell, 128, 130-1, 151 Helgi the Lean, 126 Heliand, 96, 134-42 Helios, 44-5, 48 Hellenism, Hellenistic, 8, 17, 19, 20-1, 24, 26-7, 42, 47-8, 54 Henderson,J. L., 227 n.102 Hendrikse, W., 198 n.46 Heracles, Hercules, 48, 109, 122,

171, 191, 193 Heraclitus, 25 Hermes, 29, 48 Hermes Trismegistos, go Heschel, A. J., 163, 169 Hesse, H., 187, 227.105 Heusler, A., 214.43, 215 n.68, 21 ONNM1OS 107 .221227, nn.20, 22 Heussi, K., 199 n.48, 212 nn.9, 13 Heyer, K., 209 n.68 Heym, K., 187 Hilary of Poitiers, 13, 121 Fildebrandslied, 138 Hildegard of Bingen, 172 Hiller, H., 198 n.38, 213 n.36,

214n.41 Hillgarth,J.H., 197 nn.8, 11, 198 nNn.41, 45, 199, 204.121, 205 nn.4, 5,206 n.6, 207, 209 n.82, 211, 212,203 N.25,22n0 34) 227N.117

Hippolytus, 33

Hod, 155 Hodder, 110 Hodr, 132 Hoekstra, H., 184, 225 n.77, 226

Holl, K., 227 n.116 Holle, 130-1 Hollenweger, W. J., 176, 198

n.24, 224N.53, 54 Holly, 93 Holten, A. T. van, 214.42, 215 n.81,222nn.5,6 Homer, 23, 28-9, 31-2, 43, 56, 87, 186-7 Horace, 23 Horsley, R. A., 217.123 Houtepen, A., 1970.3 Hrabanus Maurus, 41, 135, 141 Huber, W., 6, 198 n.24 Huisman,J.A., 197.10, 213 nn.4, 27, 214n.56, 216n.114 Hulda, cf. Holle, Bertha (Perchta), 129-30 Hyde, D., 207 n.23, 208 n.57,

210 Iceland, 76, 96, 104, 106-7, 109, II I-12, 122, 125-6, 132, 156, 158, 168 Idhun, 110 Ignatius, 26 Thad, 31, 186-7 Images, Culture of, 6-8, 13, 162, 182 Imbolc, 71, 82-3, 95 Inbody, T., 226 n.83 Ing, 110 Innocent III, 83 Iona, 63, 72,79 Ireland, Irish, 3, g—10, 55-69, 71—35:75> E20) 1.723 176-855, 194-7 Irenaeus, 49, 172 Irmin, pillar of, 151

Index Islam, Islamic, 3-4, 178 Italy, 9, 39, 62, 65, 69, 119-20

Jaeger, W., 200n.14, 201 Jarrow, 63

Jasconius, 63 Jelling stone, 115-16 Jelsma, A., 198 nn.38, 39 Jeremias, A., 224.55 Jeremias,J., 199n.4 Jerome, 23, 40-1 Jerusalem, 19, 22-3, 162,

167-71, 194 Jews, Judaism, 18-19, 21-2, 24-6, 28, 34, 49, 87, 163,

169-70, 190 Joan of Arc, 3 John the Baptist, 7, 83, 94,

159-60, 211 0.137, 217 n.128 John Paul II, 1-2 John Scotus Erigena, 172 Jonas, H., 176 Joseph of Arimathea, 87-8 Joyce,J.,89, 177, 185 Judas Maccabaeus, 87, 136 Julian, 38, 195 Jung, C. G., 164, 181, 222.7, 226n.102 Jung, T., 222n.258 Jupiter, cf. Zeus, 48, 66, 105, 106,

122 Jiirss, F., 186, 226 n.99 Justinian, 47 Justin Martyr, 25, 32-3, 37-8, 46, 49, 117, 204N.113 Jutes, 11,55 Kafka, F., 185

235 Kane,J.H., 197 n.12, 198 nn.38, 43, 207 0.33 Kant, Immanuel, 170 Kasimov, H., 22 n.3, 223,n.24 Keep, D., 198 n.32, 211 n.136 Kent, 11

Kieslowski, K., 184 Kildare, 69, 71, 76, 94-5 Koole,J.L., 199 n.10, 225 n.73, 227N.111 Kooper, E. S., 215 n.66 Kore, cf. Persephone, 46 Kruijf, G. G. de, 223 nn.1, 12

Kruizinga,J.H., 211 n.136 Kuhn, H., 215, 216 Kulhwch and Olwen, 87

Lactantius, 29, 48 Lane Fox, R., 202 n.75, 203 n.86 Lange, W., 218n.145

Langobards, 65, 96—97 Latié, G., 211

Latin America, 14, 15 Latourette, K. S.,216n.101, 221

n.241 Latte, K., 205 n.141 Lavarenne, M., 200 n.22

Lebuinus, 97, 155 Leeuwen, W. S., 199n.8 Lemke, V., 209 n.g1 Levison, W., 210n.99 Lewis, C. S.,211n.120 Light Alfenheim, 110 Lime tree, 150 Lindholm, D., 209 n.g2 Lindisfarne, 63, 84 Ljungberg, H., 160, 216n.109, 218 n.156, 221 nn.233, 244,

222

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

236

Logghe, K., 171, 210n.101, 211 n.119, 213 n.28, 215 nn.69, 80,

216nn.102, 117, 220N.191, 221. nn219,288)7223.n-32 Lohengrin, 88 Loki, 110, 128-33, 217.139 Los, F. J., 165,222 n.9 Los, F. C. J., 209 nn.68, 79, 213 n.21 Lowe, H., 198 n.41, 207 n.31, 208 n.53, 213 n.26, 214 n.40 Lucifer, 133 Lugh, 66-8, 83-4 Lughnas (adh), 83-4 Luneau, R., 197.4 Luther, Martin, 4, 183 Luxeuil, 65

Martin of Tours, St, 10-11, 58,

79, 119-22, 127, 159-60, 180, 196

Mary, 7, 12, 43, 47-8, 72, 82-3, 93, 103, 130-1, 152, 160-1 Mast, 32-3 Maughold, 95 Maxentius, 51 Maximus Confessor, 45 Maximus of Turin, 43 May tree, 149-50, 152-3 McCone, Kim, 205 n.3, 206 n.9, 208 McGurie, M. R. P., 205 n.152 Mechthild of Magdeburg, 172 Media, Audio-visual, 200 n.21, 202 n.69, 204.123, 224 nn.49, 50 Meer, F. van der, 20 n.21, 202

Mabinogion, 75, 87 MacCana, P., 206 n.22, 207 nn.39, 41, 208, 209, 210.99,

211N.145 Mackenzie, D. A., 210n.105 Mackey,J., 199 n.1, 205 n.5, 206, 207, 210.106, 224 n.38,223

N.115 Mael Duin, 62 Magnusson, M., 213 n.34, 215

N97; 216 ns Mag Tured, 67-8 Maimonides, 169-70 Mak, J. J.,153, 203, 212 n.9g, 215 n.84, 220, 221 Mann, Thomas, 177, 185 Markale,J.,211.126 Marrou, H., 212 n.5 Mars, 66, 109,

121-2

Martin,J. S.,217n.128

n.69, 204 n.123, 224nn.49, 50 Menhir, 76-7 Mercury, cf. also Hermes, 48, 66-8, 84, 105-6, 109, 122

Merlet, R., 209 n.69 Methodius, 2-3 Meyer, E. H., 214.50, 217 n.140 Meyer, R., 208 n.67, 211 n.141 Michael, St, 48, 127, 159 Midgard, 109, 150 Midgard, serpent of, 123, 128, 130, 143, 155,217n.142 Mildenberger, K., 210n.107 Milis, L., 132, 214.49, 217

nn.126, 134, 220N.193 Milton, J., 180

Mimir, 113, 150 Minerva, 66, 68

Index Minucius, Felix, 21, 33, 200

nn.16 Miskotte, K. H., 13, 139, 164, 166-7, 169, 199n.56, 212 n.12, 218 nn.151, 160, 22.4, 223

n.13 Mission, 5, 12, 21, 57 Mistletoe, 131 Mithras, 17, 38, 41-2, 45-6 Molenaar, H. A., 214.48, 217 n.139 Moloch, 175, 185 Monnich, C. W., 215 n.67, 215 n.89 Monotheism, 20, 22, 30

Moon, 5,77, 88 Mordred, 88 ‘Mother Earth’, 66, 122, 130, 147,

173 Muircht, 58 Mulders, A., 205 n.3 Muspilli, 142-3, 157 Mystery religions, 45 Myth, mythology, 7-8, 17, 22,

28-9, 31, 34; 36, 39, 45, 49-50,

71, 73> 90, 106-7, 109, 122, 133, 150, 160, 162-3, 166,

175-82, 184-5 Naboth, 53-4 Nack, E., 214.60 Nanna, 131 National Socialism, 163-4 Nature, 60, 64, 66, 84, 162 Nature religion, 66-7, 105, 171-2

Nauta, L. W., 226n.97 Nennius, 87 Neo-Platonic, 27, 38 Nepomunk, Johannes, 3

237 Netherlands, 3, 5, 69-70, 100-1, 119, 148 Neuman, E., 198 n.46 Nicholas, St, 48, 119-20, 127

Nicholas of Cusa, 189 iebuhr, H. R., 1 ibelungs, 107 Like Ze i Chathain, P., 198 n.44, 205 n.5, 206 n.21, 207 n.33, 209

n.89, 210 N.109, 212 N.10, 219 N.40, 222.117 Nidhogg, 151, 155 Niflheim, 132, 150 Niflhel, 130, 150 Nitschke, A., 220n.238 Njord, 110-11 Nock, A. D., 198 n.31, 201 nn.32,

45, 204N.109 Nomos, 19 Normans, 123 Norns, 109, 132, 150, 167 Northumbria, 11, 61, 63-4, 82, 84, 101-3, 161 Norway, Norse, 3,79, 96, 103-5,

107, 109, 115, 117, E19, 126-7, 133, 145, 158, 160, 167-8 Nuadha, 66

Oak, 150, 154, 169 O’Cathasaigh, D., 207 n.42, 208, 211 nn.146, 147 O’Faolan, S., 211 n.142 O’Fiaich, A. T., 206 nn.5, 22, 207

nn.26, 33 O’Laoghaire, D., 207 n.33, 210 n.109 Odilia, 95 Odin, 68, 107-8, 110-12, 114, 117,10, 122

238

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

Odysseus, 17, 31-33, 49; 93; 186-7 Odyssey, 32, 186-7 Oengus, 66 Oghma, 66 Olaf Haroldsson, St, 99, 103-4 Olaf II Tryggvason, 3, 99, 103, 124-7, 156 Olaf’s Chapel, 128 Orban, A. F., 200 nn.19, 20, 201 nN.50, 52, 203 N.go, 204 N.133 Origen, 21, 23, 25-7, 117

Orpheus, 17, 34-6, 49 Osmen, S. A., 220n.208 Ostra, 154, 160 Otfrid von Weiszenburg, 141-2

Page, R. I., 213 n.32 Pales, 48 Palestine, 17, 18, 176 Pantheon, 12, 105 Parilia, 48 Parsifal, 88 Pasolini, P. P., 184

Patrick, 3, 56-61, 69, 74, 79, 85, 94-5, 97

Paul, 18, 21, 24-5, 45,55, 74; 171

Paulinus, 161

Pelagius, 56, 60-2, 172 Pentecost, 159 Peregrinatio, peregrinus, 56-7,

64-5, 194 Peter, 10, 127, 136, 139-40, 142, 194 Philemon, 49-50 Philo of Alexandria, 28, 49 Philostorgius, 97

Phocas, 12 Pieris, Aloysius, 49, 204.131 Pippin II, 101 Plato, 17, 26,177 Pluto, cf. Hades, 82 Pokorny,J.,209 n.g5 Poland, 3 Polenz, P. von, 218 n.146 Polytheism, 20, 30, 47, 127 Popescu, M., 223 n.19 Porphyry, 38 Poseidon, 48 Posidonius, 73 Post, H. R., 192 n.13, 206.5, 21 n.8, 213 n.31, 216n.106, 221 Post, L., 198 n.33 Powell, T. G. E., 209 nn.74, 77 Prometheus, 49 Proserpina, 82-3 Prudentius, 24, 200n.21

Priim, K., 202 nn.86, 88 Psalms, 18, 23, 80, 172 Pseudo-Dionysius, 45 Pyrrha, 49 Radboud, 101-2

Ragnarok, 108-44 Rahner, HH; 33) 45» 49-50, 202

n.106, 204.134 Rang, F. C., 189 Ratatoskr, 151 Rathofer,J., 1, 39, 218.148, 219 Re-Christianization, 3, 162 Rees, A. and B., 174, 208 nn.60,

96, 209 n.98, 224.42 Rees, W. J.,224n.40 Re-evangelization, 1-3 Reformation, 4, 105

Index

Reicke, B., 198 n.33 Remigius, 98 Resurrection, 171, 191 Reuter, T., 206 n.7 Richardson, H., 209, n.89 Richter, M., 198 n.44, 205 n.5, 206 n.21, 207 n.33, 209 n.89, 210N.109, 212 N.10, 213 n.26, 227.117 Robert de Boron, 88

Robin Hood, 94 Romans, Rome, 9, 11-12, 15, 17,

23, 37-8, 40-2, 45, 47, 50-2,

239 Saxnot, cf. Tyr, 106, 110, 128-9 Saxo Grammaticus, 132 Saxons, 11, 55-6, 87, 96, 98-100, 106, 111, 128, 135-6, 138-41,

151, 165 Scandinavia, 9, 15, 68, 108, 111, 125, 127, 153, 160

Schipper, M., 205 n.2, 207 n.35, 208 n.62, 209 Schippers,J.W., 201 n.49, 209 n.85 Schmidt, K. D., 138, 143, 217 nn.132, 144, 218 nn.155, 157,

55-6, 58, 82, 96, 109, 121, 140,

220nn.185, 186, 222 nn.246,

158, 165, 169, 176, 191, 194

248

Romein,J.and A., 4, 197.14, 213.39, 214N.57, 221.225 Romulus, 191, 193 Rooijakkers, G., 197 n.15, 213 n.22 Rosenzweig, F., 189 Rozenkranz, G., 205 n.149, 206 n.7 Rickert, H., 222 n.9g Rudolf of Fulda, 151 Rugians, 97 Runes, 114-15, 150, 167 Rupp, H., 218 nn.153, 162, 219 Riissel, H. W., 203 n.g4, 204 N.133 Rzepkowski, H., 36, 199 n.8, 200 N.15, 201 nn.43, 53, 202 nn.70, 71, 203 nn.107, 114 Saemand the Wise, 106-7 Santa Claus, 119-20 Samh, 80 Samhaim, 81 Sarajevo, 186

Schneider, R., 212.14

Schreiter, R. J., 195, 223 n.29 Scotland, 41, 55, 62-3, 72, 80,

172 Secularization, 2, 5, 16, 162, 178, 181,194

Septuagint, 17, 19, 21, 25 Sermon on the Mount, 13, 60,

139 Seznec,J.,203 nn.g2, 103, 204 n.128 Shakespeare, W., 180, 186 Shea,J., 184, 226 n.88 Sherwin, B. L., 222 n.3 Shostakovich, D., 192 Sibyl, Sibyllines, 37, 40-1 Siegfried, Sigurd, 112, 158, 163 Sirens, 32-3 Sizoo, A. 201 n.33, 203 n.86 Skalds, 107, 109, 119, 157 Skuld, 150 Slav, Slavonic, 9, 47, 51 Sleipnir, 112, 119

240

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

Smith, W. C., 189, 227 n.106 Snorri Sturluson, 107, 145 Socrates, 25, 171 Sol invictus, 42-4, 51, 149 Spain, 3, 9, 55, 62, 120 Sperna Weiland,J.,226 n.g6 Spielberg, S., 180

Tatian, 22, 135 Teilhard de Chardin, P., 85,

173 Teiresias, 30-1

210, 214N.61, 215 n.73, 220 n.204

Television, 181, 183-5 Terlak Poot, R. D., 212 n.15 Tertullian, 17, 22-3, 29, 37, 168, 170, 200 N.19 Thauren,J., 198, 199, n.47, 206 N.11, 209 N.77, 210 Nn.165, 222 nn.249, 251 Theodosius I, 47, 59, 98 Theseus, 17, 39, 49, 171 Thomas, P., 173, 208 nn.55, 56, 210N.113, 211 N.121, 224N.40

Strom, A., 216n.100, 221 n.224 Stiitzner, H. A., 202 n.66, 203

Thor, cf. Donar, 105, 110, 122-7, 143, 145, 150, 156-7, 217

n.105 Suevi, 56 Sulpicius Severus, 10 Sun, solar cross, 56, 58, 61, 76-7, 79 Sundermeyer, T., 199 n.8 Swabians, 113 Swanton, M., 215 n.74 Sweden, 3, 96, 103-4, 127, 147-8

n.142 Thuringians, 9 Tiberius, 85 Titchenell, E. B., 214, 215 n.63, 217 Tiwas, 151 Tolkein,J.R. R., 132, 211.128 Tolstoy, L., 186

Stanislaus of Krakow, 3 Steiner, G., 177, 186-7, 190, 225 n.61, 227 nn.104, 107 Stoa, Stoics, 24, 27, 30 Strabo, 73 Streit,J.,206 n.17, 207 n.40, 209,

Sword, 128

Torah, 168-70 Toynbee, A., 53, 205 n.148

Symbol, symbolism, 6-8, 13, 46, 66, 117,128,159, 172,177;

Trede, T., 202 n.84, 204n.126 Tree oflife, 117, 149, 150, 151,

179-81, 184-5, 191, 193 Symmachus, Quintus Aurelius,

52-3 Syncretism, 14, 160 Szenic,J.,223 n.31 Tabochovitz, D., 199 n.5 Tacitus, 21, 96, 105, 122, 220

n.211 Tarkovsky, A., 184

152 Troy, Trojans, 176, 186-9 Tuatha Dé Danann, 66-7 Tuchman, B. W., 210n.115 Turville-Petre, G., 214.52, 217 n.128 Twilight of the gods, cf. Gotterdammerung Tyr, cf. Saxnot, 105, 110, 122,

128-9

Index

241

Ulfilas, 97-8, 134 UII), 110 Unholds, 106 Uppsala, 98, 104, 110, 123, Urd, 150 Usener, H., 203

Wagner, R., 88, 108, 112, 158 Walcheren, 11 Wales, 55, 62, 64, 68-9, 71, 80-1,

127-8

Utgard, 109

Valens, 97 Valhalla, 112, 155, 164 Valkyrie, 112 Vandals, 96-7 Vanir, 68, 109, 111 Vates, 73 Vellekoop, C., 200 n.19, 216 n.66

Venus, 109 Verbeek, M., 226 nn.78, 80

Vercingetorix, 55 Verdanki, 150 Vergote, A., 223 n.21 Vermasseren, M. J., 202 n.80 Verne;J., 131

Victory, 51-4 Vidar, 110

Vikings, 4, 56, 59, 103, 122-5,

172 Wallace-Hadrill,J.M.,219n.178 Walz, H., 219n.174 Wanaheim, 110

Wapnewski, P., 218.157 Waterink,J.,213 n.31,216nn.g1, 92, 220 Wax, R. H., 217.129 Weiler, A. G., 198 n.34, 199, 240-100, 212.213,213 nn.54,58 Weima,J., 178-9, 225 Wenceslas, 3 Wendland, P., 199 n.3, 200 n.23, 201 N.30, 204Nn.124 Wends, 98 Wessobrunn prayer, 143 White, R. A., 226n.88 Wicke, H., 219 Widukind, 98 Wieland, 115 Wifstrand, A., 201 0.55

135, 152, 165 Virgil, 17,23, 31, 40-1 Vogt, H. J., 208 n.53, 211 Voigt, H., 198 n.46

Wilfrid, 100-1

Voluspa,

Winter solstice, 52, 145, 160,

107-9, 151, 154-5

Vries, G. J. de, 167, 223 nn.28, 41

Willibald, 40 Willibrord, 3, 11, 13,57, 100-2 Willihad, 11

173

Vries,J.de, 133, 164, 166, 203 N.93, 207 N.42, 208, 209, 213 N.22, 214, 216.94, 217, 218 n.161, 219 n.183, 220, 221 Vrijhof, P. H., 197 n.10, 213 n.21

Witches’ sabbath, 81, 130 Wodan, cf. Odin, 68, 105-6, 109,

Waardenburg,J., 197 N.10, 213 n.21

Word, culture of, 180-5 Worden,J.,224.48

II1I-13, 119-22, 127-8, 141, 147, 160, 164, 167 Wolfram of Eschenbach, 88 Wood, I., 98 nn.44, 46

242

Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian?

World ash, 150 World tree, 113, 115,

Yahweh, 20, 172,175 Yevtushenko, Y., 192 Ygegdrasil, 113, 115, 117, 150, 167

117, 149 Wouters, D., 215, 216nn.g1, 92, 220 Wouw, H. M. W. J. van der, 225 N.77, 226 nn.88, 89 Wyrd, 115, 132 Wytzes,J.,205.144

Yule, 110, 145, 147-9, 153, 160

Xenophanes of Colophon, 28

Zwingli, U., 171

Zee, T. van der, 197.15, 213 n.22 Zeus, 29, 42, 45-6, 48, 50

448555 CLAREMONT, CALIF,

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J IPE THEOLOGY LIBRARY SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA 91711

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199 $ been

The decline of Christian beliefs and Christian practice in modern Europe has often been commented on, and there have been calls for a ‘re-evangelization’ of Europe. But how far has Europe really been Christian? That is the fascinating issue explored in this book. In a historical survey of the Graeco-Roman, Celtic and Germanic backgrounds against which the gospel was first preached, Anton Wessels asks how Christianity came to be related to pre-Christian cultures. Were these swept away or just given a new significance? Which elements of them were abolished and which Christianized? Did Christianity prevail only by incorporating much of what had previously existed? These questions are not just asked out of curiosity. What has long fascinated the author is whether an insight into the spread of Christianity through Europe can be of any help in presenting the gospel in today’s secularized world. There is much talk of the

‘inculturation’ of the gospel in other cultures: African, Asian and Latin American; but Europe can be no exception here and the inculturation of the gospel in European countries is something of which Europeans should be far more aware. Here is a wealth of fascinating information, from the GraecoRoman mystery religions through the Arthurian legends to the German festivals. And here is an area of exploration which is likely to prove increasingly important. Anton Wessels is Professor of Missiology and Religion in 1 the Free University of Amsterdam.

Cover design by Andrea Purdie

ISBN 0-334-02569-9

£12.95 net

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