Consorting with the other: Re-constructing scholastic, rhetorical and literary attitudes to pagans and paganism in the middle ages

Abstract

Christian-Biblical theology has traditionally upheld an adversarial relation between Christianity and pagan cultures, with the latter being the Other, and subsequently, of the devil's kingdom. As a study of medieval attitudes towards pagans and paganism(s), my thesis however suggests that Christian culture in the late antique to medieval period consciously adapted pagan cultures for its own ends. The forms of autobiography, catechetical manual and historia in Augustine of Hippo's "Confessiones," "De Doctrina Christiana" and "De Civitate Dei" mark his negotiations of fourth-century Rome's pagan-literate culture. Augustine's attachment to a legacy of Classical letters was too strong to be denied. By contrast, Bede's "Historia Ecclesiastica" and the "Mabinogion" mark a narrative concern with the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh-Celtic customs and folkloric traditions of Britain, which the medieval ecclesiam recognized as deeply ingrained in folk consciousness. It hence amalgamated them with Christian belief structures and practices to form a syncretic version of Christianity.