Today, Christianity is on the decline in the West. While there are several reasons for this development, the availability of free-flowing information has certainly played a role, allowing for easy access to data and opinions that challenge the religion's ideas about the functionality of the natural world.
Christians have also lost control and influence in Western culture. As such, they have faced a growing challenge to the exclusive control they enjoyed over the presentation of their imagery, as Christianity's most sacred and cherished symbols have since been available to – and at the mercy of – non-believers. Notably, the cross and other iconic symbols have been worn and merchandized by individuals with no allegiance to the Christian cause, allowing for the public to conceptualize these powerful symbols in new ways, creating new understandings about the symbol:
Before shedding a tear of sympathy, consider the great irony of the situation; after all, the factors playing a role in the trend towards de-Christianization were once the very same weapons used in the Christian crusade against European paganism. Today, it is widely known throughout the West that pagan imagery has been repackaged and sold under the label of Christianity. But that was not always the case. One begins to understand the silence when it is realized that culture and society were once structured by the Church and its leaders, and such information could do little more than challenge the pure image of the religion, or the symbolism of the imagery associated with it. Moreover, Christian values and beliefs were promoted by the Western culture that had adapted them, maximizing the visibility of Christian signage and its use in that exclusive, Christian context.
In any case, the few early publications concerned with Christianity’s “impure” pagan background came from Christian-friendly sources and, upon the discovery of the obscure truth behind Christian symbolism, generated an outcry. In Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, published in 1922, Thomas Inman put his grievances about the matter to print and called for a purge of Christianity’s pagan elements. As the truth about Christianity's symbols spread, some denominations responded by trying to distance themselves from “all things Pagan” and avoiding imagery of “questionable” origins. In some cases, only the symbols viewed as integral to the Christian faith were kept: the fish, the cross and the ring of holy matrimony.
The truth, of course, is that even these most "exclusive" symbols can be traced back to paganism or ambiguity. The fish symbolizes the vulva of Earth’s "Great Mother Goddess”, while the cross is a timeless symbol illustrating cardinal points of direction, the seasons and even the dwellings of pagan gods. Moreover, Count Eugene Goblet D’Alviella, once regarded as the “greatest living exponent of symbols”, considered the cross to be “so natural” in appearance that it “constitutes a characteristic feature of humanity in a certain phase of development.” Observance of this view was used to forward ideas about the Church’s “impure” pagan background; on the other hand, it was also used to forward the notion that, given the passing of time, movement of peoples and general human experience and thought patterns, the repetition of symbols was to be expected, and nothing should be made out of the repetition - and certainly nothing that delegitimized the Christian message.
Given the impetus to consider most symbols simple and universal, one might not be surprised to find that one of the most important symbols in Christianity, the cross, is a feature in the pagan Northern European tradition. Crosses of various dimension have been found on amulets from ancient Germany, Scandinavia and Brittany, among many other non-European locations pre-dating Christianity. Furthermore, there are important cultural symbols - called runes - from the pre-Christian tradition of Northern Europe which feature such imagery. One rune, Gebo, forms an "X". Another, Teiwaz, looks more like a "T". Of course, these are indeed very basic shapes, which seems to fit the line of reasoning offered by Count D'Alviella - that some sort of replication was likely, if not inevitable.
But then there is the swastika. In the Northern European tradition, the swastika is a picture rune - a glyph - known as fylfot, said to harness the thunderous power and magical force of the pagan god Thor. It was later used by Christians on the Catacombs of Rome, and can be found in Old Danish churches and baptismal fonts dating to the earliest periods of Christian missionary work. Much more complex and less random than a basic shape, one might be inclined to view its use by the Christians as much less of a coincidence and much more of a deliberate effort - more specifically, a deliberate effort to take old symbols and put them in a new, Christian context in order to capitalize on the benefits of recognizability when packaging them with their ideas and presenting them to pagans.
At the same time, the swastika's earlier use in Northern European pagan ceremonial contexts suggests something a little deeper and darker: that part of the purpose of the Christians using familiar symbols was to divorce them from their previous connection to pre-Christian belief systems, in order to deconstruct pre-Christian belief systems and prime them for replacement. The theory gains more traction after examining other examples where the Christians made use of what was very near and dear to the hearts of the populations they sought to Christianize. For instance, one Christian symbol, the “Hand of God” shows a robed hand descending from a cloud, surrounded by rays of light from what closely resembles the sunwheel. The sunwheel was common symbol in Europe since the Bronze Age and was since used to signify holy sites, such as pagan shrines.
That brings us back to the crosses:
Given the response to the idea that Christian symbols are somewhat inorganic, few in recent times would likely have been willing to accept that Christians appropriated the ideas attached to those same symbols. They would probably point to the stories that go with those symbols, such as the cross associated with the crucifixion of St. Andrew, known as St. Andrew's cross or the decussate cross. According to the legend, St. Andrew had refused to be crucified on a cross identical to the one Jesus had suffered on and his executioners obliged and changed its dimensions. Once Christendom was established in Europe, the story inspired the use of the cross as a symbol, later found on heraldry crests and flags - from Scotland to the Confederacy to the Southern United States, in general.
Another iconic Christian symbol is St. Anthony’s cross. Some believe it was the cross Moses bore witness to while he was in the desert, but its name comes from the saint who used the symbol as a mark for those who were in service to God. Later, it was adapted into heraldry and used during the Crusades.
It would seem that the stories giving rise to the Christian use of these symbols set them apart. But then one quickly realizes that these symbols - the St. Andrew's cross and St. Anthony's cross - form the shapes of the Gebo "X" and Teiwaz "T" runes of the pagan Northern European peoples respectively, and while the former is associated with the cosmic union of power and energy from two worlds, the latter - sometimes called Tyr - is a symbolic representation of the god Tyr, representing justice and victory in conflict, a cause for martyrdom in its own right. Moreover, the ceremonial use of the cross, and its symbolism in the context of sacrifice, is by no means unique to Christianity. The pagan god Wotan, the Altvater, had many similarities to the Christ figure. Both Christ and Wotan were wounded by spear. Both sacrificed themselves for their people and, in both cases, it was through a “hanging”: Wotan by tree and Christ by cross.
Finally, there is the cross Jesus was crucified on - crux immissa. What is important to note is that this cross resembles - and sounds like - the Irminsul, a ceremonial pillar that was central to the religion of the pagan Northern European people, which was said to symbolize the concentration of world energy, eternal foundation and law. Charlemagne, the Christianized Germanic leader responsible for the conversion of the pagan Saxons in the 8th century, was said to be personally responsible for the destruction of the Irminsul. His conquest went hand in hand with the development of the old Alsatian (post-Germanic) idiom about having "post and stone in a village”, which meant to enjoy jurisdiction over an area.
Interestingly, there is actually no consensus on what sort of cross Jesus was crucified on. But that does not matter. In fact, the lack of certainty might have actually helped the Christians purge the cross of its rich pagan symbiosis. This was part of the war on paganism that extended beyond the ideographic realm, and aimed to destabilize the symbols within the pagan way of life.
After the conquest and conversion, Christian feasts and celebrations were to replace pagan festivals and sacred trees and holy places were destroyed. Throughout Northern Europe, burial grounds, monuments and other visual cultural documentation were subject to this “Christianization”. Many pagan sacred grounds were also converted for alternative use. Most old shrines were replaced by Christian places of worship which, in many cases, were built directly on top. This helped increase the new religion’s visibility and did away with remnants of the past. As part of the same effort, settlements were uprooted and restructured so that the Church became the center of the community. Burials were conducted separately and pagan tribesmen were distanced from their Christianized counterparts. In some cases, old names were replaced with new ones. New monuments were built and sights were renamed - all to endorse Christianity.
In the Christianization effort, the continued use of old symbols sometimes proved more useful than their destruction. Thus, the Irminsul also inspired Christian imagery at the Cathedral of Torcello and in the Athens Cathedral. The seal of Liege, dating to 1348, shows the symbol of the city, the Perron, a monument inspired by the same structural design.
The runes were targeted as well. Across the landscape, the Northern European pagan culture had built huge monuments with runic inscriptions. Now, those same stones became the focus of Christian art and expression. Studies conducted in the Denmark region revealed that runestones dated from Medieval Period contain Christian prayers and images of the cross in a Christian context. Such characteristics are not found on earlier runestones. The purpose was to ostensibly replace the old with the new, to distance pagans from their past experiences and memories involving their old way of life. It was a direct assault on conceived meaning and value, leading to the ambiguity of sacred signs and symbols.
In Ireland, Christianity brought changes in land distribution and ownership. With these changes, stones retained their sacred value, and were used to denote the borders of each new estate. These stones were given the same sort of special attention that runestones had received, as evidenced by the decoration.
Funeral art was another area where the ideas of Christianity gained permanence, often copying a preexisting style in coffin art and giving it a “Christianizing” touch. In one example, the figures on the sarcophagus, a woman and a philosopher, are shown in the instruction of prayer and various biblical scenes are shown in the background. The decision to incorporate the old shows that the cultures the Christians confronted already had a Christian dimension to them. This also gave the Christians an opportunity to depict the key aspects of their ideology, particularly the sacrifice that Jesus had made for our salvation and the concept of a life everlasting.
Some Christian paintings have shown the Holy Ghost entering the ear of the Virgin Mary in the form of a dove, as part of the process of impregnation. The dove is piloted by a strong current of wind. As unique as this idea may sound, it actually reflects pre-Christian ideas about the power and magic of wind, and even the ear as a source of life. A Scottish sculpture stone shows a bull with a spiral below its ear, seen to be the source of life energy, and similar finds have been made in Scandinavia. The runes were said to contain the power and energy of a thoughts and ideas carried through the wind, with its mysterious and magical power. Similarly, the idea that birds could be positively inspirational was not new to the pre-Christian people of the North. Wotan had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which represented thought and memory, and raven imagery featured prominently in pre-Christian art.
As one might expect, the Christians did not always succeed in giving old images new meaning, and sometimes the images themselves shaped the Christian’s reception. Christianity’s inculturation, its materialization as a cultural entity, took place only when its practice was altered to make it less Greco-Roman and more suitable to the local culture. In one example, in order to explain the mystery of the Virgin Mary’s conception, it was said that the “Smith from above”, Thor, had throw n a hammer into her breast. One of the principal objections to Christianity was its association with Rome. This was the association made by the early Goths, fueling their support of the purportedly more German-friendly Arianism. Some have even argued that, until the Reformation and the emergence of an even more digestible form of the religion, “Christendom” had not fully set in. By accounts of the Church’s ability to pose before the northern European pagans, France, England and parts of Germany were all “Christianized” as early as 750. However, Christianity’s struggle to reach the hearts of the northern pagans – not their homelands – was not the largely successful, “inevitable” endeavor it is often remembered as in Christian historiography.
At times, this bridging was even purposeful. When the gaps between the two religions were not so easily bridged, Christianity became "Germanized". That was the idea behind Arianism, which emphasized a powerful and king-like Christ figure. Here was something the Germanic tribes could relate to, whether through familiarization with Thor or even Wotan, the Altvater. The popularity of Arian Christianity can be seen as a sort of compromise between the old and new, although the Roman Catholic Church was strongly against it. Arianism emphasized a powerful and king-like Christ figure. Additionally, Arianism emphasized that Christ had a beginning and he only became divine, possibly through exaltation, thus emphasizing Christ’s more human likeness as the embodiment of perfection. Arianism spread from the Goths to the Vandals to the Burgundians on its own, though it too, was resisted.
Still, there seemed to be a basic understanding that Christianity had to come with a certain level of compatibility in order to assure its reception. For this reason, some scholars have emphasized the importance of Ulfila’s Gothic-translated Bible in the 4th century - even if only because of what the effort symbolized. In terms of indicating a determination to reach the people, this development was no less vital than Martin Luther's translations of the Bible in the 16th century.
Regardless of its effectiveness, the Gothic Bible is an interesting case study in cultural saturation, as the known language became closely associated with ideas that were seen to stem from Rome. It also answers an important question: how do you use the familiarity of the old – in this case the Gothic language – to convey the ideas of the new, despite the fact that the old is so closely associated with the way of the old? When trying to illustrate the concepts of writing and reading, Ulfila used the corresponding words for paint and sing because write was too closely associated with rune inscription and read conveyed similar ideas. The use of the Gothic language was also important because it separated it from the pagan culture it had previously been a part of. Thus, the familiarity of the old became a tool that was a direct aid in the conversion process.
In his studies of early Christianity, Alan Kreider has gone as far as to say the movement would have disappeared without the emphasis on image and the Christianizing of the familiar. Time and again, the technique of “substitution and cultural transference” was put to use. The most important elements in pagan conversion were textual and visual. Observable miracles were said to have been performed on numerous occasions, such as “resurrecting the dead” or healing illness.
Displaying the power of Christ firsthand was said to be the most successful method of persuasion, for the more obvious of reasons, but the visual also took another form: the image. Conveying the message of God through images, such as paintings and icons, also acted as aids for conversion. Images depicting Christian martyrdom were particularly useful in dealing with a culture that believed Walhalla, the eternal reward for a warriors sacrifice. Images brought to life what a mute word could only suggest. In most instances, images were only used as a supplement to sermons, thereby filling in what could only be produced visually. This was particularly useful in “matching a name to a face” – often a positively caricatured face, at that. The utilization of words, on the other hand, had many shortcomings. Like images and witnessing miracles first-hand, words had the power to trigger the conversion process through a similar appeal to emotions. However, their effective use in preaching required a firm knowledge of pagan culture, verbiage and so on. Missionaries were given training at schools designed to help them in their quest to further spread the religion. Still, these messages fell on deaf ears if the population they visited was uneducated, giving further evidence to the power of the image.
The image of Christianity was also a powerful, psychological tool of persuasion. Some found the Christian lifestyle to be appealing and believed that do-gooders who did not fear death were a positive example to follow. Some noticed that converts to Christianity simply became better people, a result of an entirely new life perspective that appeared liberating. It was encouraged, in Canons of Hippolytus 19, that “[the lives of Christians] shine with virtue, not before each other, but also before the Gentiles so they may imitate them and become Christians.” The positive image the pagans were shown was loaded with promise and idealism, both as a reflection of the Christian message.
Another important element in the transition process was the missionaries who, to a large degree, could be counted upon to perform as salesmen. Accordingly, many pagans believed in the image they were presented and that they could become superior peoples, surrounded by good fortune, if they became Christians. All of these ideas had more or less become equated with the religion itself, beginning with Charlemagne's great successes. Where legend did not work, it is interesting to note that the strongest periods of pagan rebellion occurred in the midst of crop failures and the shortages they begot, which ultimately broke the psychological spell.
Similarly, the perceived healing power of Christianity was equally important to the pagan Northern Europe's reception to the Church. It had been important that Christian “truths” were used to defy the “truths” of the pagans which, as mentioned previously, included the unpunished desecration of god-honoring monuments. To the Germanic Pagan, this was seen to demonstrate that the Christian powers were stronger than the powers of the gods they had been worshipping. The presentation of a strong and powerful Christian God was another factor that worked in favor of the Christians, considering the culture of the people they were dealing with. Reasoning regarding the afterlife and meaning of life was not as important as the fact that the Christian God had “demonstrated” himself to be above the power of Thor and Wotan. To the amazement of local tribes, there were no repercussions and interceding on behalf of the gods when their shrines and alters were destroyed. Incidents such as this were largely responsible for a great number of converts.
The Christian intrusion did not go uncontested, however. Despite efforts to “sell” Christianity and its appeal, others were making the connection between Christianity and its less desired consequences on the tribe. The old religion was seen as part of the tribal community’s past cohesion, while Christianity was seen to be responsible for new loyalties that put the individual in service to God rather than the community. In one example of resistance, the Goths held an increasing numbers of feasts that involved sacrificial meat. This identified the Christians among them and made the Christians feel ostracized. Others, sometimes refusing to worship with the community, were banished from the tribe and even murdered. It is also interesting to note that Thor’s hammers and wagon images, both directly from pagan mythology, appear as engravings on cross-adorned graves in the Denmark-area during Christianity’s most successful period in northern Europe, the 10 th century. There is reason to believe this is reactionary and has less to do with pagan custom than an assertion of cultural identity. The same can be said about the runestones, which actually increased in presence in time with the increase in northern pagan converts. Both acts are best rationalized as attempts to challenge the power and presence of Christian symbols, seen to be a threat to the identity of the tribe.
It had taken almost seven hundred years, but finally, on the eve of Martin Luther's Reformation, much of Northern Europe was Christianized. Though the establishment of true Christendom was not yet solidified, this next step would not have been possible without the extensive cultural transformation process set into motion with the first Christian missions and conversions. Thus began the extensive transformation process that changed the meaning of pagan symbols and signs.
From the start, the challenge was to pagan culture, which began on a symbolic level. Finally, years later, the challenge ended with the full replacement of paganism, using mass exposure, appeal and systems of logic to topple one spiritual dogma – and replace it with another. For this reason, for many years, the “cross” stretched across the northern lands of Europe.
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Christians have also lost control and influence in Western culture. As such, they have faced a growing challenge to the exclusive control they enjoyed over the presentation of their imagery, as Christianity's most sacred and cherished symbols have since been available to – and at the mercy of – non-believers. Notably, the cross and other iconic symbols have been worn and merchandized by individuals with no allegiance to the Christian cause, allowing for the public to conceptualize these powerful symbols in new ways, creating new understandings about the symbol:
Before shedding a tear of sympathy, consider the great irony of the situation; after all, the factors playing a role in the trend towards de-Christianization were once the very same weapons used in the Christian crusade against European paganism. Today, it is widely known throughout the West that pagan imagery has been repackaged and sold under the label of Christianity. But that was not always the case. One begins to understand the silence when it is realized that culture and society were once structured by the Church and its leaders, and such information could do little more than challenge the pure image of the religion, or the symbolism of the imagery associated with it. Moreover, Christian values and beliefs were promoted by the Western culture that had adapted them, maximizing the visibility of Christian signage and its use in that exclusive, Christian context.
In any case, the few early publications concerned with Christianity’s “impure” pagan background came from Christian-friendly sources and, upon the discovery of the obscure truth behind Christian symbolism, generated an outcry. In Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, published in 1922, Thomas Inman put his grievances about the matter to print and called for a purge of Christianity’s pagan elements. As the truth about Christianity's symbols spread, some denominations responded by trying to distance themselves from “all things Pagan” and avoiding imagery of “questionable” origins. In some cases, only the symbols viewed as integral to the Christian faith were kept: the fish, the cross and the ring of holy matrimony.
The truth, of course, is that even these most "exclusive" symbols can be traced back to paganism or ambiguity. The fish symbolizes the vulva of Earth’s "Great Mother Goddess”, while the cross is a timeless symbol illustrating cardinal points of direction, the seasons and even the dwellings of pagan gods. Moreover, Count Eugene Goblet D’Alviella, once regarded as the “greatest living exponent of symbols”, considered the cross to be “so natural” in appearance that it “constitutes a characteristic feature of humanity in a certain phase of development.” Observance of this view was used to forward ideas about the Church’s “impure” pagan background; on the other hand, it was also used to forward the notion that, given the passing of time, movement of peoples and general human experience and thought patterns, the repetition of symbols was to be expected, and nothing should be made out of the repetition - and certainly nothing that delegitimized the Christian message.
Given the impetus to consider most symbols simple and universal, one might not be surprised to find that one of the most important symbols in Christianity, the cross, is a feature in the pagan Northern European tradition. Crosses of various dimension have been found on amulets from ancient Germany, Scandinavia and Brittany, among many other non-European locations pre-dating Christianity. Furthermore, there are important cultural symbols - called runes - from the pre-Christian tradition of Northern Europe which feature such imagery. One rune, Gebo, forms an "X". Another, Teiwaz, looks more like a "T". Of course, these are indeed very basic shapes, which seems to fit the line of reasoning offered by Count D'Alviella - that some sort of replication was likely, if not inevitable.
But then there is the swastika. In the Northern European tradition, the swastika is a picture rune - a glyph - known as fylfot, said to harness the thunderous power and magical force of the pagan god Thor. It was later used by Christians on the Catacombs of Rome, and can be found in Old Danish churches and baptismal fonts dating to the earliest periods of Christian missionary work. Much more complex and less random than a basic shape, one might be inclined to view its use by the Christians as much less of a coincidence and much more of a deliberate effort - more specifically, a deliberate effort to take old symbols and put them in a new, Christian context in order to capitalize on the benefits of recognizability when packaging them with their ideas and presenting them to pagans.
At the same time, the swastika's earlier use in Northern European pagan ceremonial contexts suggests something a little deeper and darker: that part of the purpose of the Christians using familiar symbols was to divorce them from their previous connection to pre-Christian belief systems, in order to deconstruct pre-Christian belief systems and prime them for replacement. The theory gains more traction after examining other examples where the Christians made use of what was very near and dear to the hearts of the populations they sought to Christianize. For instance, one Christian symbol, the “Hand of God” shows a robed hand descending from a cloud, surrounded by rays of light from what closely resembles the sunwheel. The sunwheel was common symbol in Europe since the Bronze Age and was since used to signify holy sites, such as pagan shrines.
That brings us back to the crosses:
Given the response to the idea that Christian symbols are somewhat inorganic, few in recent times would likely have been willing to accept that Christians appropriated the ideas attached to those same symbols. They would probably point to the stories that go with those symbols, such as the cross associated with the crucifixion of St. Andrew, known as St. Andrew's cross or the decussate cross. According to the legend, St. Andrew had refused to be crucified on a cross identical to the one Jesus had suffered on and his executioners obliged and changed its dimensions. Once Christendom was established in Europe, the story inspired the use of the cross as a symbol, later found on heraldry crests and flags - from Scotland to the Confederacy to the Southern United States, in general.
Another iconic Christian symbol is St. Anthony’s cross. Some believe it was the cross Moses bore witness to while he was in the desert, but its name comes from the saint who used the symbol as a mark for those who were in service to God. Later, it was adapted into heraldry and used during the Crusades.
 |
| Teiwaz (left) and Gebo (right) |
Finally, there is the cross Jesus was crucified on - crux immissa. What is important to note is that this cross resembles - and sounds like - the Irminsul, a ceremonial pillar that was central to the religion of the pagan Northern European people, which was said to symbolize the concentration of world energy, eternal foundation and law. Charlemagne, the Christianized Germanic leader responsible for the conversion of the pagan Saxons in the 8th century, was said to be personally responsible for the destruction of the Irminsul. His conquest went hand in hand with the development of the old Alsatian (post-Germanic) idiom about having "post and stone in a village”, which meant to enjoy jurisdiction over an area.
Interestingly, there is actually no consensus on what sort of cross Jesus was crucified on. But that does not matter. In fact, the lack of certainty might have actually helped the Christians purge the cross of its rich pagan symbiosis. This was part of the war on paganism that extended beyond the ideographic realm, and aimed to destabilize the symbols within the pagan way of life.
After the conquest and conversion, Christian feasts and celebrations were to replace pagan festivals and sacred trees and holy places were destroyed. Throughout Northern Europe, burial grounds, monuments and other visual cultural documentation were subject to this “Christianization”. Many pagan sacred grounds were also converted for alternative use. Most old shrines were replaced by Christian places of worship which, in many cases, were built directly on top. This helped increase the new religion’s visibility and did away with remnants of the past. As part of the same effort, settlements were uprooted and restructured so that the Church became the center of the community. Burials were conducted separately and pagan tribesmen were distanced from their Christianized counterparts. In some cases, old names were replaced with new ones. New monuments were built and sights were renamed - all to endorse Christianity.
In the Christianization effort, the continued use of old symbols sometimes proved more useful than their destruction. Thus, the Irminsul also inspired Christian imagery at the Cathedral of Torcello and in the Athens Cathedral. The seal of Liege, dating to 1348, shows the symbol of the city, the Perron, a monument inspired by the same structural design.
The runes were targeted as well. Across the landscape, the Northern European pagan culture had built huge monuments with runic inscriptions. Now, those same stones became the focus of Christian art and expression. Studies conducted in the Denmark region revealed that runestones dated from Medieval Period contain Christian prayers and images of the cross in a Christian context. Such characteristics are not found on earlier runestones. The purpose was to ostensibly replace the old with the new, to distance pagans from their past experiences and memories involving their old way of life. It was a direct assault on conceived meaning and value, leading to the ambiguity of sacred signs and symbols.
 |
| The Karlevi Runestone, in Sweden |
Funeral art was another area where the ideas of Christianity gained permanence, often copying a preexisting style in coffin art and giving it a “Christianizing” touch. In one example, the figures on the sarcophagus, a woman and a philosopher, are shown in the instruction of prayer and various biblical scenes are shown in the background. The decision to incorporate the old shows that the cultures the Christians confronted already had a Christian dimension to them. This also gave the Christians an opportunity to depict the key aspects of their ideology, particularly the sacrifice that Jesus had made for our salvation and the concept of a life everlasting.
Some Christian paintings have shown the Holy Ghost entering the ear of the Virgin Mary in the form of a dove, as part of the process of impregnation. The dove is piloted by a strong current of wind. As unique as this idea may sound, it actually reflects pre-Christian ideas about the power and magic of wind, and even the ear as a source of life. A Scottish sculpture stone shows a bull with a spiral below its ear, seen to be the source of life energy, and similar finds have been made in Scandinavia. The runes were said to contain the power and energy of a thoughts and ideas carried through the wind, with its mysterious and magical power. Similarly, the idea that birds could be positively inspirational was not new to the pre-Christian people of the North. Wotan had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which represented thought and memory, and raven imagery featured prominently in pre-Christian art.
As one might expect, the Christians did not always succeed in giving old images new meaning, and sometimes the images themselves shaped the Christian’s reception. Christianity’s inculturation, its materialization as a cultural entity, took place only when its practice was altered to make it less Greco-Roman and more suitable to the local culture. In one example, in order to explain the mystery of the Virgin Mary’s conception, it was said that the “Smith from above”, Thor, had throw n a hammer into her breast. One of the principal objections to Christianity was its association with Rome. This was the association made by the early Goths, fueling their support of the purportedly more German-friendly Arianism. Some have even argued that, until the Reformation and the emergence of an even more digestible form of the religion, “Christendom” had not fully set in. By accounts of the Church’s ability to pose before the northern European pagans, France, England and parts of Germany were all “Christianized” as early as 750. However, Christianity’s struggle to reach the hearts of the northern pagans – not their homelands – was not the largely successful, “inevitable” endeavor it is often remembered as in Christian historiography.
At times, this bridging was even purposeful. When the gaps between the two religions were not so easily bridged, Christianity became "Germanized". That was the idea behind Arianism, which emphasized a powerful and king-like Christ figure. Here was something the Germanic tribes could relate to, whether through familiarization with Thor or even Wotan, the Altvater. The popularity of Arian Christianity can be seen as a sort of compromise between the old and new, although the Roman Catholic Church was strongly against it. Arianism emphasized a powerful and king-like Christ figure. Additionally, Arianism emphasized that Christ had a beginning and he only became divine, possibly through exaltation, thus emphasizing Christ’s more human likeness as the embodiment of perfection. Arianism spread from the Goths to the Vandals to the Burgundians on its own, though it too, was resisted.
Still, there seemed to be a basic understanding that Christianity had to come with a certain level of compatibility in order to assure its reception. For this reason, some scholars have emphasized the importance of Ulfila’s Gothic-translated Bible in the 4th century - even if only because of what the effort symbolized. In terms of indicating a determination to reach the people, this development was no less vital than Martin Luther's translations of the Bible in the 16th century.
Regardless of its effectiveness, the Gothic Bible is an interesting case study in cultural saturation, as the known language became closely associated with ideas that were seen to stem from Rome. It also answers an important question: how do you use the familiarity of the old – in this case the Gothic language – to convey the ideas of the new, despite the fact that the old is so closely associated with the way of the old? When trying to illustrate the concepts of writing and reading, Ulfila used the corresponding words for paint and sing because write was too closely associated with rune inscription and read conveyed similar ideas. The use of the Gothic language was also important because it separated it from the pagan culture it had previously been a part of. Thus, the familiarity of the old became a tool that was a direct aid in the conversion process.
In his studies of early Christianity, Alan Kreider has gone as far as to say the movement would have disappeared without the emphasis on image and the Christianizing of the familiar. Time and again, the technique of “substitution and cultural transference” was put to use. The most important elements in pagan conversion were textual and visual. Observable miracles were said to have been performed on numerous occasions, such as “resurrecting the dead” or healing illness.
Displaying the power of Christ firsthand was said to be the most successful method of persuasion, for the more obvious of reasons, but the visual also took another form: the image. Conveying the message of God through images, such as paintings and icons, also acted as aids for conversion. Images depicting Christian martyrdom were particularly useful in dealing with a culture that believed Walhalla, the eternal reward for a warriors sacrifice. Images brought to life what a mute word could only suggest. In most instances, images were only used as a supplement to sermons, thereby filling in what could only be produced visually. This was particularly useful in “matching a name to a face” – often a positively caricatured face, at that. The utilization of words, on the other hand, had many shortcomings. Like images and witnessing miracles first-hand, words had the power to trigger the conversion process through a similar appeal to emotions. However, their effective use in preaching required a firm knowledge of pagan culture, verbiage and so on. Missionaries were given training at schools designed to help them in their quest to further spread the religion. Still, these messages fell on deaf ears if the population they visited was uneducated, giving further evidence to the power of the image.
The image of Christianity was also a powerful, psychological tool of persuasion. Some found the Christian lifestyle to be appealing and believed that do-gooders who did not fear death were a positive example to follow. Some noticed that converts to Christianity simply became better people, a result of an entirely new life perspective that appeared liberating. It was encouraged, in Canons of Hippolytus 19, that “[the lives of Christians] shine with virtue, not before each other, but also before the Gentiles so they may imitate them and become Christians.” The positive image the pagans were shown was loaded with promise and idealism, both as a reflection of the Christian message.
Another important element in the transition process was the missionaries who, to a large degree, could be counted upon to perform as salesmen. Accordingly, many pagans believed in the image they were presented and that they could become superior peoples, surrounded by good fortune, if they became Christians. All of these ideas had more or less become equated with the religion itself, beginning with Charlemagne's great successes. Where legend did not work, it is interesting to note that the strongest periods of pagan rebellion occurred in the midst of crop failures and the shortages they begot, which ultimately broke the psychological spell.
Similarly, the perceived healing power of Christianity was equally important to the pagan Northern Europe's reception to the Church. It had been important that Christian “truths” were used to defy the “truths” of the pagans which, as mentioned previously, included the unpunished desecration of god-honoring monuments. To the Germanic Pagan, this was seen to demonstrate that the Christian powers were stronger than the powers of the gods they had been worshipping. The presentation of a strong and powerful Christian God was another factor that worked in favor of the Christians, considering the culture of the people they were dealing with. Reasoning regarding the afterlife and meaning of life was not as important as the fact that the Christian God had “demonstrated” himself to be above the power of Thor and Wotan. To the amazement of local tribes, there were no repercussions and interceding on behalf of the gods when their shrines and alters were destroyed. Incidents such as this were largely responsible for a great number of converts.
The Christian intrusion did not go uncontested, however. Despite efforts to “sell” Christianity and its appeal, others were making the connection between Christianity and its less desired consequences on the tribe. The old religion was seen as part of the tribal community’s past cohesion, while Christianity was seen to be responsible for new loyalties that put the individual in service to God rather than the community. In one example of resistance, the Goths held an increasing numbers of feasts that involved sacrificial meat. This identified the Christians among them and made the Christians feel ostracized. Others, sometimes refusing to worship with the community, were banished from the tribe and even murdered. It is also interesting to note that Thor’s hammers and wagon images, both directly from pagan mythology, appear as engravings on cross-adorned graves in the Denmark-area during Christianity’s most successful period in northern Europe, the 10 th century. There is reason to believe this is reactionary and has less to do with pagan custom than an assertion of cultural identity. The same can be said about the runestones, which actually increased in presence in time with the increase in northern pagan converts. Both acts are best rationalized as attempts to challenge the power and presence of Christian symbols, seen to be a threat to the identity of the tribe.
It had taken almost seven hundred years, but finally, on the eve of Martin Luther's Reformation, much of Northern Europe was Christianized. Though the establishment of true Christendom was not yet solidified, this next step would not have been possible without the extensive cultural transformation process set into motion with the first Christian missions and conversions. Thus began the extensive transformation process that changed the meaning of pagan symbols and signs.
From the start, the challenge was to pagan culture, which began on a symbolic level. Finally, years later, the challenge ended with the full replacement of paganism, using mass exposure, appeal and systems of logic to topple one spiritual dogma – and replace it with another. For this reason, for many years, the “cross” stretched across the northern lands of Europe.
BIBLEOGRAPHY
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Boyer, Pascal, Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Carver, Martin, “Introduction: Northern Europeans Negotiate their Future.” In The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, ed. Martin Carver. York, Great Britain: York Medieval Press, 2003.
Cusack, Carol M., Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples. Great Britain: Cassell Wellington House, 1998.
D’Alviella, Goblet, The Migration of Symbols. New York: University Books, 1956.
Dillistone, F.W., Christianity and Symbolism. London: St. James’s Place, 1955.
Huskinson, Janet, “Pagan and Christian in the Third to Fifth Centuries.” In Religion in History: Conflict, Conversion and Coexistence, ed. John Wolffe. Manchester: Manchester University Press - the Open University, 2004.
Inman, Thomas, Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism. New York: Peter Eckler Publishing Company, 1922.
Jackson, John G., “Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.” first published in 1941, avaible at DuBois Learning Center. 10 December 2006.
