medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The discussion on the way authors use of the names of Olympian gods where
we would have expected the names of Germanic or other local deities has not
yet touched on some more famous examples:
1) Tacitus, who described local cults in terms of "Mercury," "Mars," etc.
(for which he had precedents in Caesar, I believe);
2) Gregory of Tours, who, in regard to the conversion of Clovis,
describes Queen Clothilde giving Clovis a boilerplate lecture on the
crimes, scandals, and stupidities of the Olympians (whose application to
alleged Frankish paganism is not immediately clear).
Latin authors seem to presume that when it comes to the gods, one pattern
fits everything. That model was in place before the Christians
triumphed. It was easily adopted by Christian writers. For their purposes
the important division was between Christian and non-Christian. Accuracy
in describing the subsystems of non-Christian error does not seem to have
been a high priority, perhaps in part because much Christian polemic
assumed that all non-Christian systems were obviously absurd and/or diabolic.
--John Howe, Texas Tech
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