[Anonymous]

The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell is not light reading, but it is interesting and erudite.

Christianity was a product of Hellenism and Hebraism that combined under the Roman Empire and was codified and refined under the auspices of a late Roman government. Divorced from its parochial Jewish roots, it became universal in scope. Its eschatology is what we might call world-denying or world-rejecting, placing at its core a devaluing of earthly life in favor of an afterlife and spirituality.

Germanic polytheism (and, honestly, paganism in general) contrasted in two ways. First, instead of a universal religion, most pagan faiths were folk religions tied to a particular culture. Second, and more importantly, paganism tends to be world-affirming. The presence of an afterlife or afterlives notwithstanding, paganism is concerned with this world and this earthly life.

The author’s thesis is that when the early missionaries brought Christianity to the Germanic tribes, they had to downplay the central world-denying eschatology in favor of the more world-affirming aspects of the faith (such as communal feasts in the name of the saints). The only way the Germans would accept Christianity would be to see it as a faith that affirmed the glories and pleasures of this world, and in particular it had to be seen compatible with the Germanic warrior ethos.

In this, the Christian missionaries succeeded. The Germans bought it. But as the Germans became more Christianized, Christianity became more Germanic – that is, more world-affirming. This explains the phenomenon of early Medieval Folk Catholicism.

The book is a necessary read as it forces the reader to understand the competing world views of paganism and Christianity, and in so doing reconstruct the original Germanic view.

[Rob Holman]

I may have to pick this one up. And I am behind on books already… Damn.

[Rob Holman]

Can you post an Amazon link or something?

[Anonymous]

I don’t remember it being this expensive 10 years ago when I bought it. You may want to look at Abe Books, or Thrift Books.

https://a.co/d/ioG3L4D

[Anonymous]

Some informal notes from the book, to start a discussion.

As noted, the central message of Christianity is devaluing of earthly life for religious rebirth and admittance to an afterlife (sin-redemption-salvation). By contrast, Germanic paganism (what we know of it) was in the main a folk religion where the adherent propitiated supernatural powers for largely practical, earthly concerns (harvest, health, war) and also had an extensive “group dynamic” (family, clan, tribe, warband).

Christianity developed in the very urbanized Greco-Roman Mediterranean where the idea of clan, tribe and even family had lost some of its central importance. The loyalties of an individual could easily shift to a universal savior deity and a religious cult promising refuge from a troubled world. And in fact, this process had been occurring for some time with the Greco-Oriental Mystery cults. By contrast, the Germans were rural, and family and clan and warlord were central ideologies. By historical times, the warband – a central feature of Indo-European societies – had become paramount to the Germans.

The Christian missionaries to Germanic lands could not emphasize the central message of Christianity to the Germans, who wouldn’t appreciate it because of their differing society and social values. Instead, they practiced “accommodation” whereby they cherry picked aspects of Christianity they thought would resonate with the Germans. Were this done, they hoped, the Germans could eventually be warmed over to the otherworldly central message. The irony is that as the Germans were Christianized, Christianity became more Germanic, more worldly.

There are numerous examples of this. For one, the term “salvation” which is has a purely spiritual connotation in Greco-Roman Christianity, was translated into German as healing (heilen, helen) which has a much more corporeal connotation of bodily health.

Another example is that while devotions to Saints and relics had existed in Christianity prior to conversion with the Germans, after Germanic accommodation the cult of the saints rose to prominence. People prayed to Saints largely for the same reasons they prayed to pagan gods – good weather, health, etc. and the fact they all had communal feast days appealed to the Germanic mindset.

One of the central areas of accommodation was tailoring Christianity to the Germanic warlike ethos. The pope cynically suggested if the Germans wanted to fight, let them fight for the church. Let the Barbarians keep their swords, but trade Woden for St. Michael, and portray Christ as a victorious warlord.

On the whole then, Christianity as it existed for the Germans was not the sin-redemption-salvation scheme as it had originated, but instead a magico-religious cult of a great deity (Christ) and lesser deities (Saints). Christ and the Saints had replaced Woden and the lesser gods, but all for that, the German spiritual concern for health and military victory hadn’t changed all that much. And amusingly, that type of thinking would color Medieval Christianity as a whole.

[Rob Holman]

I agree, we can clearly see that early Medieval Christianity in Western Europe had become “Paganized” almost to the extent that the pagans there had become “Christianized”.

[theodric]

I need this book.

[Author]

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