-----Original Message-----
From: Ingegerd Holand <[log in to unmask]>
To: Medieval-religion <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, December 31, 1998 5:16 AM
Subject: Re: The role of clergy in medieval Christianity
>some accounts of how pagan beliefs and ritual structures survived into
>Christian times in my native Norway, especially in common rituals
associated
>with life transitions, such as births, marriages, burials etc.
I suspect that at least part of the problem you pose here is in classifying
these life-course rituals as "pagan" as opposed to "Christian." I have
done some work and more reading on marriage which is an area where the
church only reluctantly and lately entered fully into participation.
Non-Chrisianized marriage took a variety of forms but I would hazard the
generalization that most of them were "secular." It was generally a matter
that the church left ot the couple themselves and their friends and family.
Its ultimate involvement in the marital rituals and ceremonials came from
its commitment to limiting incest and imposing indissolubility. There is
little documentation on how they may have neutralized strictly pagan
elements but these were insignificant in any case compared to financial
negotiations, etc. It was probably a reasonably easy matter to persuade
Christians to drop "superstitious" fertility incantations or what have you
or else to reduce them to quaint folk customs whose pagan roots were long
forgotten.
in
>carrying out these rituals, partly because of the appropriation of
>ritual in the Christian church, but perhaps this wasn't so?
Taking the famous letter of Gregory I incorporated into Bede's
Ecclesiastical History as the standard, I would suggest that the target of
the Church's de-paganization program was genuine religious practice: feasts
dedicated to various gods, etc. These were to be systematically undermined
by substituting Christian feasts and cults and, judging by the ultimate
results, the program was hugely successful.
Jo Ann
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