THE HISTORICAL PERIOD

The second of the two sections in this book proceeds to survey a range of religions that are not only documented in archaeological remains (no matter how important these continue to be), but also via texts of various kinds.

We begin our exploration in the Mediterranean area, with David A. Warburton’s survey of Minoan and Mycenaean religions. These can be the sources for Roman religion are, of course, copious; the main challenge for a chapter on this topic is not to eke out information from meagre remains, but rather to condense scholarship into a manageable format. Susanne William Rasmussen’s chapter summarizes basic information on concepts and rituals, priests and politics, deities and festivals. Roman religion, like many other religions described in this volume, was not concerned with theological orthodoxy, but with correctly performed ritual. Sacrifices to the gods were of paramount importance to ensure the well-being of the state, the family and the individual. Divinatory rituals gave privileged access to the will of the deities. The pantheon of gods and goddesses, on the other hand, was rather fluid, and new gods could be introduced. A section on the cult of Cybele shows how a goddess of foreign origin could be incorporated into Roman religion because diviners had indicated that this was required.

Also in the case of Greek religion, the mass of evidence is overwhelming, the amount of scholarly literature is immense, and the historical picture is one of a bewildering variety of coexisting forms of religion. Lars Albinus guides readers into this landscape by presenting some of the key sources and the controversies surrounding their status: to what extent do the works of, for example, Hesiod and Homer bear witness to Greek religious traditions, and to what degree are they the literary constructions of their authors? Some of the main traditions within Greek religion as a whole are then presented: the Orphics, various traditions of Olympian or chthonian orientation, and mystery cults with the Eleusinian mysteries as paradigmatic example.

The chapters on Roman and Greek religion include sections on cults centred more narrowly on a single deity, in particular those of Cybele and Demeter. The two chapters that follow provide a more in-depth coverage of two important cults of classical antiquity. A chapter by Birgitte Bogh discusses the traditions and rituals associated with the goddess Isis. This case provides a particularly apt example of wide-ranging cultural contacts across large geographical areas. Originally Egyptian, and attested as far back as the third millennium BCE, Isis entered Greek space with the arrival on the Greek mainland of Egyptians who brought their deity with them. Because of similarities between Isis and various Greek and Roman goddesses, Isis over time took over functions associated with these divinities. Particularly important were her similarities with Demeter, the goddess celebrated in the mysteries of Eleusis, which contributed to making the cult of Isis a mystery religion, as well. Ultimately, Isis became one of the most popular gods of later antiquity. From Rome the cult spread to the rest of the empire, but ultimately lost momentum in competition with other cults, and was finally banned as a result of the hegemonic ambitions of the Christian Church.

One of the most serious competitors in the plural religious marketplace of late antiquity, and at a point a nearly pan-European cult as attested to by sites ranging from Britain in the north-west to the Balkans in the south-east, is the Mithras cult, described in a chapter by Manfred Clauss. Owing to the nature of the sources - copious archaeological evidence with very little textual materials to explain the nature of that evidence - Mithraism has been interpreted in very diverse (and sometimes rather fanciful) ways.

A division of academic labour has largely allocated the study of the Platonic tradition to philosophers rather than to scholars of religion. The chapter on religious Platonism by Kevin Corrigan and Michael Harrington amply demonstrates that the sharp distinction between religion and philosophy does not hold. Platonic speculation on rebirth, on the transcendent source of true knowledge, his mythic account of the origin of the world, and the spiritual cosmology of his successors surely make the Platonic tradition as much a religious discourse as a philosophical one, albeit a philosophical religion for an educated elite.

From here on, we leave the Mediterranean area, the remainder of the chapters covering the northern half of the European continent. Once used indiscriminately to denote a range of peoples with putatively shared linguistic roots, it is now largely accepted that there is no such thing as a “Celtic culture” or “Celtic religion” in the singular. A more locally circumscribed approach nevertheless remains valid, and a chapter on insular Celtic religion (by Karen Bek-Pedersen) largely focuses on the religion of pre-Christian Ireland.

Three chapters discuss the religions of areas inhabited by Germanic-speaking tribes. Continental Germanic religion (discussed in a chapter by Rudolf Simek) is discussed in a chapter by Leszek Slupecki. Again, our knowledge of the mythology and religion of these groups is limited. As with several other traditions discussed in this book, most of the written information comes from (often unsympathetic) outsiders and was recorded during and after the conversion of Slavs to Christianity in the ninth to twelft h centuries CE. Archaeological findings from a few main sites complement the meagre textual evidence. The fragmentary nature of our knowledge of Slavic religion can be seen from the fact that not a single complete myth has come down to us. What we have are names of gods, and some brief descriptions of Slavic temples and of religious activities carried out there. The site described in most detail in written source materials is the shrine of Sventovit in Arcona on the island of Rügen. The most impressive archaeological remains of Slavic pre-Christian religious architecture were found in the village of Gross Raden in Mecklenburg.

Baltic religion, the topic of the chapter by Sigma Ankrava, is the umbrella term for the similar but not identical traditions of three linguistically defined groups: the Old Prussians, Lithuanians and Latvians. Whereas the Old Prussians had been exterminated or assimilated by their conquerors by the sixteenth century, the two latter groups, although formally Christianized, retained a separate ethno- linguistic identity and continued to pursue some of their local religious traditions. Latvia, in particular, was colonized under a regime of strict separation that kept Latvians away from learned occupations, business, trade or arts until the middle of the nineteenth century. In part because of this isolation, local Latvian customs and oral literature - folk songs and magic formulas in particular - reflect pre- Christian religious conceptions and practices. Although great caution must be exerted in order to separate everyday folk practices from reflexes of earlier religious practices, these sources indicate that myths and rituals focused on a complex pantheon composed of mother goddesses, agricultural deities and celestial gods.

The chapter on Finnish religion (by Veikko Anttonen) grapples with the vast time span of its topic: from the earliest documented human presence in Finland around 9000 BCE until 1200 CE when Christianity was introduced. The earliest strata are, of course, primarily accessible by archaeological means, but the introduction of loanwords into the Finnish language and the geographical distribution of different names for the sacred in toponyms provide important clues to ancient Finnish religions. For the later period, textual evidence can with caution be used to understand changes in these traditions. The combined evidence suggests that the earliest religious practices in this area were shamanic in nature, and revolved around bear ceremonialism.

Although the second section of this volume has not followed a strictly chronological trajectory, it does conclude with one of the peoples of the European continent that was among the very last to be converted to Christianity. A few ethnic groups in the utmost northern regions of the continent, and in remote areas near the Ural Mountains of Russia, were only loosely integrated into European nation states until well into the early modern period. The Sami, as documented in the final chapter by Hakan Rydving, retained their pre-Christian religious heritage until they were forcibly converted to Lutheran Christianity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of the written sources were recorded by missionaries for the new religion, who were highly critical of Sami traditions. Other evidence comes from ritual drums, sacrificial sites and other material traces of Sami religion. Together, these serve to document a broad range of rituals, including sacrifices, life cycle rituals, a bear festival and a range of crisis rituals that involved enlisting the services of a specialist, the ndejtie. Underlying these practices was a multi-layered cosmology that can also be reconstructed with some confidence. All of this was repressed with great force by the representatives of state and church: the Sami were punished for the use of ritual drums and sacrificial sites, many of which were destroyed by the authorities. By the late eighteenth century, most of the overt forms of Sami pre- Christian religion had disappeared, but stories about some of the helping spirits and rulers transmuted into local folklore and are still told today.

NOTES

1. Although Christian hegemony may have been a political goal for much of the period discussed here, it should be emphasized that hegemony was never achieved. Pockets of Diaspora Jews and communities of Muslims in places such as southern Spain, Sicily and the Balkans adhered to their own religious traditions. Greek and Roman religion ceased being practised in the forms these traditions had in classical antiquity, but were well known and continued to permeate all expressions of learned culture. Folk beliefs with only a tangential connection to theologically normative Christianity were widespread, and Christianity itself, of course, came in many different shapes. However, these forms of European religious pluralism fall well beyond the scope of the present volume.

2. As far as possible, we have asked authors to suggest titles in the most commonly read languages, i.e. English and German. Due to the nature of scholarship on religions in ancient Europe, occasionally titles in French, Spanish and Italian have been included. Some of the best scholarship on specific regions has been published in regional languages, but we have largely eschewed titles in Danish, Polish or Latvian, for example, because they will presumably only be useful to few readers of this volume.