History of Religious Ideas, Volume 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General, Comparative Religion, History, Theology
ISBN: 9780226204055
Google: 3lSgYWSab4MC
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1988-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

38

Religion, Magic, and Hermetic Traditions before and after the Reformation

304. The survival of pre-Christian religious traditions

As we have remarked at several points, the Christianization of the peoples of Europe did not succeed in effacing their different ethnic traditions. The conversion to Christianity has given place to symbioses and religious syncretisms which, many times over, provide brilliant illustration of the creativity specific to “popular,” agrarian, or pastoral cultures. We have already recalled several examples of “cosmic Christianity” (cf. §237). Elsewhere, we have shown the continuity—from the Neolithic up to the nineteenth century—of certain cults, myths, and symbols relating to stones, water, and vegetation.1 Let us add that, following their conversion, even where it was superficial, the numerous ethnic religious traditions, as well as the local mythologies, were homologized: that is, they were integrated into the same “sacred history” and expressed in the same language, as that of the Christian faith and Christian mythology. Thus, for example, the memory of storm gods has survived in the legends of Saint Elijah; a great number of heroic dragon slayers have been assimilated by Saint George; certain myths and cults relating to goddesses have been integrated into the religious folklore of the Virgin Mary. In sum, the innumerable forms and variants of the pagan heritage have been articulated in the same outwardly Christianized mythico-ritual corpus.

It would be vain to mention all the categories of “pagan survivals.” It suffices to cite some particularly suggestive cases: for example, the kallikantzari, monsters who haunt Greek villages during the Twelve Days (between Christmas and Epiphany) and who prolong the mythico-ritual scenario of the centaurs of classical antiquity;2 or the archaic ritual of the firewalk that is integrated into the anastenaria ceremony of Thrace;3 or, finally, once again in Thrace, the Carnival feasts, whose structure recalls that of the “Dionysus of the fields” and the Anthesteria celebrated in Athens from the first millennium before the Christian era (cf. §123).4 Let us also note, further, that a certain number of themes and narrative motifs attested in the Homeric poems are still current in Balkan and Romanian folklore.5 What is more, in analyzing the agrarian ceremonies of central and eastern Europe, Leopold Schmidt was able to show that they are of the same stock as a mythico-ritual scenario that disappeared in Greece before the time of Homer.6

For our purposes, it is worth presenting several examples of pagan-Christian syncretism, illustrating both the resilience of the traditional heritage and the process of Christianization. We have chosen, to begin with, the complex ritual of the Twelve Days, for it submerges its roots in prehistory. Since there is no question of presenting it in its entirety (ceremonies, games, songs, dances, processions of animalian masks), we will concentrate on the ritual songs of Christmas. They are attested in all of eastern Europe, as far as Poland. Their Romanian and Slavic name, colinde, derives from calendae Januarii. Over the centuries, the ecclesiastical authorities strove to extirpate them, but without success. (In 692, the Council of Constantinople reiterated the ban in draconian terms.

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