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This chapter introduces the world of Christians — who came from both the Greek religious environment (Gentile Christians) and Judaism (Jewish Christians) — but also from the group of pagans who were ready to convert to Judaism (the so-called ‘God-fearers’). Emphasizing the multiplicity of backgrounds, the chapter aims at warning the reader that conclusions concerning early Christianity and its relation to animal sacrifice cannot be definite, especially as regards the Christians who lived in Jerusalem that is next to the Temple, before AD 70.

This chapter considers the highly paradoxical position occupied by ancient pagans, who are considered genuinely and outstandingly virtuous and yet at the same are condemned to Hell. This paradox is discussed in detail before the chapter goes on to explain Dante's position in this paradox, by looking at Dante's attitude to pagan wisdom and its relation to Christianity, especially his adoption, but transformation, of the position of limited relativism which strictly separates the spheres of philosophical enquiry and Christian doctrine. The damnation of virtuous pagans turns out to be the price required by this approach, which remains deliberately paradoxical, despite Dante's innovation of placing them in a special part of Hell, where there are no physical torments. Furthermore, the chapter looks at another aspect of Dante's discussion of paganism — his treatment of Epicurus and his followers — and links it to a comparison with his great admirer and commentator, Boccaccio.

This chapter turns to the first of the three aspects of the Problem of Paganism — knowledge, virtue, and salvation — which is examined here for the period 1400–1700. It begins by looking at discussions, mainly about ancient Greek and Latin pagans and their writings, in and out of the universities, before going on to see how the Problem was complicated and given special relevance, but not fundamentally changed, by contacts, from 1492 onwards, with large groups of contemporary pagans, in America and then in China. Within roughly four decades from 1492, Europeans came into contact with — and all too rapidly made themselves the rulers of — a vast number of previously unknown pagan peoples, in what was before long recognized to be a new continent in the West.

This chapter examines how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians faced a new theological challenge in light of new evidence that there exists millions of virtuous pagans who had had no chance of hearing about Christianity (labelled here as ‘invincibly ignorant pagans’). This challenge emerged from the discovery of America and other lands at the end of the fifteenth century, revealing yet new territories where, to all appearances, Christianity had never been preached. However the chapter shows that, on some fifteenth-century treatments of pagan salvation, and on seventeenth-century treatments of illustrious ancient pagans, this new challenge was not entirely new, and that the older lines of discussion were continued, though in a modern format.

This introductory chapter first sets out the main purpose of the book, which is to dismantle the myth that transformed pagan nobles from the arrogant, philistine land-grabbers most of them were into fearless champions of senatorial privilege, literature lovers, and aficionados of classical (especially Greek) culture as well as the traditional cults. It then discusses the supposed pagan revival spearheaded by the aristocracy of Rome and the idea of a pagan opposition. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter examines the anti-pagan poem, Carmen contra paganos (CCP). Since the subject of the poem was both prefect and consul, as Flavian was in 394, the poem was assigned to this year and interpreted as an attack on Flavian written shortly after his death. The tirade against pagan cults it contains was read as a reflection of the pagan revival he supposedly directed. However, the structure, tenor, and themes of the poem as a whole simply do not fit with what is known of Flavian and his part in the rebellion of Eugenius.

This chapter studies accounts of contemporary paganism circulating in Eastern and Northern Europe from the eleventh century onward. In the mid-thirteenth century, when the Mongols had conquered a vast empire, two Franciscan travellers, John of Piano Carpini and William of Rubruk, were received by the Great Khan and wrote about the life and traditions of a pagan society at first hand. Medieval readers also knew a mass of partly fantastical material, much of it inherited from antiquity, about the remote lands of Asia and their pagan inhabitants. In the mid-fourteenth century, an anonymous writer wove this material together with the reports of genuine travellers into The Book of John Mandeville, a medieval best seller which takes a surprisingly deep and original look at the Problem of Paganism. In addition, this chapter takes a look at Willehalm, a Middle High German poem written c. 1210–20 by Wolfram von Eschenbach.

This chapter explores the different trajectories taken by discussions among (mainly) university theologians of pagan virtue, before turning to the topic of salvation in the rest of the chapter. After the discussions on pagan virtue, the chapter turns to the theories devised in the period up to William of Ockham in the early fourteenth century. It then focuses on discussions about the salvation of particular pagans (such as Aristotle himself), before finally moving on to the theoretical developments which took place in the mid- and later fourteenth century and set the stage for the debates which would go on to 1700 and even later.

This chapter turns to the second aspect of the Problem of Paganism: virtue. The dominant view among scholastic theologians in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was that pagans could be genuinely virtuous, although their virtues were not of the sort which could merit salvation. In the period after 1400, mainstream Catholic theologians in the scholastic tradition tended to take the same broad view as their predecessors, but reformulating it to take account of new opponents. By contrast, and surprisingly, writers more influenced by humanism were often more sceptical about pagan virtue, although they presented their doubts in sophisticated literary forms. From 1500, the newly discovered pagans of America presented another side to the problem of pagan virtue, overlooked by most mainstream writers on them, but noticed by Jean de Léry and probed by Montaigne. This chapter looks at each of these approaches in turn.

This chapter examines how Native Americana, perceived as a source of profound ecological and spiritual wisdom, has contributed to the formation of the neo-shamanism community in the West. The controversy that sprang up from the use of Native American symbolism by American and European spiritual practitioners is discussed, along with attempts by members of the neo-shamanism community in the West to move away from the Native American dreamlands and toward their own European indigenous spirituality. The manner in which Carl Jung handled non-Western spirituality offers guidelines which many current spiritual seekers interested in the retrieval of pre-Christian European traditions find useful. Jung implied that Europeans concerned about their roots should look into their own indigenous spirituality and mythology; the alien tradition can be helpful to situate one's spiritual experiences, but the materials should be indigenous.

Late 4th- and 5th-century western culture was dominated by Vergil. The writings, prose as well as verse, of all educated people, Christians no less than pagans, were steeped in Vergilian echoes and quotations. This chapter examines the comments of Servius and Macrobius regarding cult and ritual in Vergil. Since they are by far the best candidates for identifying any sort of specifically pagan scholarship in late antique Rome, it begins by establishing their credentials as scholars.

This chapter discusses the Historia Augusta (HA), a corpus of imperial biographies from Hadrian to Carinus (117–285) that purports to be the work of six different writers, all otherwise wholly unknown, all purportedly writing between ca. 305 and 325. The HA is also alleged to be a covert attack on Christianity, a product of the “pagan reaction” at Rome in or soon after 395. Not only is the HA full of errors, absurdities, and manifestly forged documents, it cites as authorities no less than thirty-five otherwise unknown and for the most part surely bogus historians and biographers. But it was not until 1889 that Dessau branded the entire work a forgery, written by a single author at the end of the 4th century.