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Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion [4] and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. [4] Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". [1] [5] During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a ...
The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, a painting by Gustave Doré (1899). Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic ...
The right half of the front panel of the 7th-century Franks Casket, depicting the Anglo-Saxon (and wider Germanic) legend of Wayland the Smith. Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, or Anglo-Saxon polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th ...
Among the country people as Jean Seznec observed that euhemerist dismissal by Christian writers of pagan deities as once having been human was insufficient cause to abandon old ways: "in country districts, the chief obstacle to Christianity was offered by the tenacious survival of anthropomorphic cults; here the problem became one of still ...
By 200, Christian numbers had grown to over 200,000 people, and communities with an average size of 500–1000 people existed in approximately 200–400 towns. By the mid-3rd century, the little house-churches where Christians had assembled were being succeeded by buildings adapted or designed to be churches complete with assembly rooms ...
Old Norse religion, also known as Norse paganism, is a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peoples. It was replaced by Christianity and forgotten during the Christianisation of Scandinavia.
There is no evidence of the death penalty being carried out for illegal sacrifices before Tiberius Constantine (r. 578–582), and most temples remained open into the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565). Pagan teachers (who included philosophers) were banned and their license, parrhesia, to instruct others was withdrawn.
The poems of the Edda, while pagan in origin, continued to circulate orally in a Christian context before being written down, which makes an application to pre-Christian times difficult. [12] In contrast, pre-Christian images such as on bracteates , gold foil figures , and rune and picture stones are direct attestations of Germanic religion.