In the preceding inquiry we took as our starting-point not the ancient
conception of atheism but the modern view of the nature of the pagan gods.
It proved that this view was, upon the whole, feebly represented during
antiquity, and that it was another view (demonology) which was transmitted
to later ages from the closing years of antiquity. The inquiry will
therefore find its natural conclusion in a demonstration of the time and
manner in which the conception handed down from antiquity of the nature of
paganism was superseded and displaced by the modern view.
This question is, however, more difficult to answer than one would perhaps
think. After ancient paganism had ceased to exist as a living religion, it
had lost its practical interest, and theoretically the Middle Ages were
occupied with quite other problems than the nature of paganism. At the
revival of the study of ancient literature, during the Renaissance, people
certainly again came into the most intimate contact with ancient religion
itself, but systematic investigations of its nature do not seem to have
been taken up in real earnest until after the middle of the sixteenth
century. It is therefore difficult to ascertain in what light paganism was
regarded during the thousand years which had then passed since its final
extinction. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the other
hand, the material is extraordinarily plentiful, though but slightly
investigated. Previous works in this field seem to be entirely wanting; at
any rate it has not been possible for me to find any collective treatment
of the subject, nor even any contributions worth mentioning towards the
solution of the numerous individual problems which arise when we enter
upon what might be called “the history of the history of religion.”(1) In
this essay I must therefore restrict myself to a few aphoristic remarks
which may perhaps give occasion for this subject, in itself not devoid of
interest, to receive more detailed treatment at some future time.
Milton, in the beginning of _Paradise Lost_, which appeared in 1667, makes
Satan assemble all his angels for continued battle against God. Among the
demons there enumerated, ancient gods also appear; they are, then, plainly
regarded as devils. Now Milton was not only a poet, but also a sound
scholar and an orthodox theologian; we may therefore rest assured that his
conception of the pagan gods was dogmatically correct and in accord with
the prevailing views of his time. In him, therefore, we have found a fixed
point from which we can look forwards and backwards; as late as after the
middle of the seventeenth century the early Christian view of the nature
of paganism evidently persisted in leading circles.
We seldom find definite heathen gods so precisely designated as demons as
in Milton, but no doubt seems possible that the general principle was
accepted by contemporary and earlier authors. The chief work of the
seventeenth century on ancient religion is the _De Theologia Gentili_ of
G. I. Voss; he operates entirely with the traditional view. It may be
traced back through a succession of writings of the seventeenth and
sixteenth centuries. They are all, or almost all, agreed that antique
paganism was the work of the devil, and that idolatry was, at any rate in
part, a worship of demons. From the Middle Ages I can adduce a pregnant
expression of the same view from Thomas Aquinas; in his treatment of
idolatry and also of false prophecy he definitely accepts the demonology
of the early Church. On this point he appeals to Augustine, and with
perfect right; from this it may presumably be assumed that the Schoolmen
in general had the same view, Augustine being, as we know, an authority
for Catholic theologians.
In mediaeval poets also we occasionally find the same view expressed. As
far as I have been able to ascertain, Dante has no ancient gods among his
devils, and the degree to which he had dissociated himself from ancient
paganism may be gauged by the fact that in one of the most impassioned
passages of his poem he addresses the Christian God as “Great Jupiter.”
But he allows figures of ancient mythology such as Charon, Minos and
Geryon to appear in his infernal world, and when he designates the pagan
gods as “false and _untruthful_,” demonology is evidently at the back of
his mind. The mediaeval epic poets who dealt with antique subjects took
over the pagan gods more or less. Sometimes, as in the Romance of Troy,
the Christian veneer is so thick that the pagan groundwork is but slightly
apparent; in other poems, such as the adaptation of the _Aeneid_, it is
more in evidence. In so far as the gods are not eliminated they seem as a
rule to be taken over quite naïvely from the source without further
comment; but occasionally the poet expresses his view of their nature.
Thus the French adapter of Statius’s _Thebaïs_, in whose work the
Christian element is otherwise not prominent, cautiously remarks that
Jupiter and Tisiphone, by whom his heroes swear, are in reality only
devils. Generally speaking, the gods of antiquity are often designated as
devils in mediaeval poetry, but at times the opinion that they are
departed human beings crops up. Thus, as we might expect, the theories of
ancient times still survive and retain their sway.
There is a domain in which we might expect to find distinct traces of the
survival of the ancient gods in the mediaeval popular consciousness,
namely, that of magic. There does not, however, seem to be much in it; the
forms of mediaeval magic often go back to antiquity, but the beings it
operates with are pre-eminently the Christian devils, if we may venture to
employ the term, and the evil spirits of popular belief. There is,
however, extant a collection of magic formulae against various ailments in
which pagan gods appear: Hercules and Juno Regina, Juno and Jupiter, the
nymphs, Luna Jovis filia, Sol invictus. The collection is transmitted in a
manuscript of the ninth century; the formulae mostly convey the impression
of dating from a much earlier period, but the fact that they were copied
in the Middle Ages suggests that they were intended for practical
application.
A problem, the closer investigation of which would no doubt yield an
interesting result, but which does not seem to have been much noticed, is
the European conception of the heathen religions with which the explorers
came into contact on their great voyages of discovery. Primitive
heathenism as a living reality had lain rather beyond the horizon of the
Middle Ages; when it was met with in America, it evidently awakened
considerable interest. There is a description of the religion of Peru and
Mexico, written by the Jesuit Acosta at the close of the sixteenth
century, which gives us a clear insight into the orthodox view of
heathenism during the Renaissance. According to Acosta, heathenism is as a
whole the work of the Devil; he has seduced men to idolatry in order that
he himself may be worshipped instead of the true God. All worship of idols
is in reality worship of Satan. The individual idols, however, are not
identified with individual devils; Acosta distinguishes between the
worship of nature (heavenly bodies, natural objects of the earth, right
down to trees, etc.), the worship of the dead, and the worship of images,
but says nothing about the worship of demons. At one point only is there a
direct intervention of the evil powers, namely, in magic, and particularly
in oracles; and here then we find, as an exception, mention of individual
devils which must be imagined to inhabit the idols. The same conception is
found again as late as the seventeenth century in a story told by G. I.
Voss of the time of the Dutch wars in Brazil. Arcissewski, a Polish
officer serving in the Dutch army, had witnessed the conjuring of a devil
among the Tapuis. The demon made his appearance all right, but proved to
be a native well known to Arcissewski. As he, however, made some true
prognostications, Voss, as it seems at variance with Arcissewski, thinks
that there must have been some supernatural powers concerned in the game.
An exceptional place is occupied by the attempt made during the
Renaissance at an actual revival of ancient paganism and the worship of
its gods. It proceeded from Plethon, the head of the Florentine Academy,
and seems to have spread thence to the Roman Academy. The whole movement
must be viewed more particularly as an outcome of the enthusiasm during
the Renaissance for the culture of antiquity and more especially for its
philosophy rather than its religion; the gods worshipped were given a new
and strongly philosophical interpretation. But it is not improbable that
the traditional theory of the reality of the ancient deities may have had
something to do with it.
Simultaneously with demonology, and while it was still acknowledged in
principle, there flourished more naturalistic conceptions of paganism,
both in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. As remarked above, the
way was already prepared for them during antiquity. In Thomas Aquinas we
find a lucid explanation of the origin of idolatry with a reference to the
ancient theory. Here we meet with the familiar elements: the worship of
the stars and the cult of the dead. According to Thomas, man has a natural
disposition towards this error, but it only comes into play when he is led
astray by demons. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Devil is
mentioned oftener than the demons (compare Acosta’s view of the heathenism
of the American Indians); evidently the conception of the nature of evil
had undergone a change in the direction of monotheism. In this way more
scope was given for the adoption of naturalistic views in regard to the
individual forms in which paganism manifested itself than when dealing
with a multiplicity of demons that answered individually to the pagan
gods, and we meet with systematic attempts to explain the origin of
idolatry by natural means, though still with the Devil in the background.
One of these systems, which played a prominent part, especially in the
seventeenth century, is the so-called Hebraism, _i.e._ the attempt to
derive the whole of paganism from Judaism. This fashion, for which the way
had already been prepared by Jewish and Christian apologists, reaches its
climax, I think, with Abbot Huet, who derived all the gods of antiquity
(and not only Greek and Roman antiquity) from Moses, and all the goddesses
from his sister; according to him the knowledge of these two persons had
spread from the Jews to other peoples, who had woven about them a web of
“fables.” Alongside of Hebraism, which is Euhemeristic in principle,
allegorical methods of interpretation were put forward. The chief
representative of this tendency in earlier times is Natalis Comes (Noël du
Comte), the author of the first handbook of mythology; he directly set
himself the task of allegorising all the myths. The allegories are mostly
moral, but also physical; Euhemeristic interpretations are not rejected
either, and in several places the author gives all three explanations side
by side without choosing between them. In the footsteps of du Comte
follows Bacon, in his _De Sapientia Veterum_; to the moral and physical
allegories he adds political ones, as when Jove’s struggle with Typhoeus
is made to symbolise a wise ruler’s treatment of a rebellion. While these
attempts at interpretation, both the Euhemeristic and the allegorical, are
in principle a direct continuation of those of antiquity, another method
points plainly in the direction of the fantastic notions of the Middle
Ages. As early as the sixteenth century the idea arose of connecting the
theology of the ancients with alchemy. The idea seemed obvious because the
metals were designated by the names of the planets, which are also the
names of the gods. It found acceptance, and in the seventeenth century we
have a series of writings in which ancient mythology is explained as the
symbolical language of chemical processes.
Within the limits of the supernatural explanation the interest centred
more and more in a single point: the oracles. As far back as in Aquinas,
“false prophecy” is a main section in the chapter on demons, whose power
to foretell the future he expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the prediction of the future
was so strong, the ancient accounts of true prognostications were the real
prop of demonology. Hence demons generally play a great part in these
explanations, even though in other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus
Acosta in his account of the American religions; thus Voss and numerous
other writers of the seventeenth century; and it is hardly a mere
accident, one would think, when Milton specially mentions Dodona and
Delphi as the seats of worship of the Greek demons. Among a few of the
humanists we certainly find an attempt to apply the natural explanation
even here; thus Caelius Rhodiginus asserted that a great part (but not
all!) of the oracular system might be explained as priestly imposture, and
his slightly younger contemporary Caelius Calcagninus, in his dialogue on
oracles, seems to go still further and to deny the power of predicting the
future to any other being than the true God. An exceptional position is
occupied by Pomponazzi, who in his little pamphlet _De Incantationibus_
seems to wish to derive all magic, including the oracles, from natural
causes, though ultimately he formally acknowledges demonology as the
authoritative explanation. But these advances did not find acceptance; we
find even Voss combating the view on which they were founded. It is
characteristic of the power of demonology in this domain that in support
of his point of view he can quote no less a writer than Machiavelli.
The author who opened battle in real earnest against demonology was a
Dutch scholar, one van Dale, otherwise little known. In a couple of
treatises written about the close of the seventeenth century he tried to
show that the whole of idolatry (as well as the oracles in particular) was
not dependent on the intervention of supernatural beings, but was solely
due to imposture on the part of the priests. Van Dale was a Protestant, so
he easily got over the unanimous recognition of demonology by the Fathers
of the Church. The accounts of demons in the Old and New Testaments proved
more difficult to deal with; it is interesting to see how he wriggles
about to get round them—and it illustrates most instructively the degree
to which demonology affords the only reasonable and natural explanation of
paganism on the basis of early Christian belief.
Van Dale’s books are learned works written in Latin, full of quotations in
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and moreover confused and obscure in exposition,
as is often the case with Dutch writings of that time. But a clever
Frenchman, Fontenelle, took upon himself the task of rendering his work on
the oracles into French in a popular and attractive form. His book called
forth an answering pamphlet from a Jesuit advocating the traditional view;
the little controversy seems to have made some stir in France about the
year 1700. At any rate Banier, who, in the beginning of the eighteenth
century, treated ancient mythology from a Euhemeristic point of view, gave
some consideration to it. His own conclusion is—in 1738!—that demonology
cannot be dispensed with for the explanation of the oracles. He gives his
grounds for this in a very sensible criticism of van Dale’s priestly fraud
theory, the absurdity of which he exposes with sound arguments.
Banier is the last author to whom I can point for the demon-theory applied
as an explanation of a phenomenon in ancient religion; I have not found it
in any other mythologist of the eighteenth century, and even in Banier,
with the exception of this single point, everything is explained quite
naturally according to the best Euhemeristic models. But in the positive
understanding of the nature of ancient paganism no very considerable
advance had actually been made withal. A characteristic example of this is
the treatment of ancient religion by such an eminent intellect as
Giambattista Vico. In his _Scienza Nuova_, which appeared in 1725, as the
foundation of his exposition of the religion of antiquity he gives a
characterisation of the mode of thought of primitive mankind, which is so
pertinent and psychologically so correct that it anticipates the results
of more than a hundred years of research. Of any supernatural explanation
no trace is found in him, though otherwise he speaks as a good Catholic.
But when he proceeds to explain the nature of the ancient ideas of the
gods in detail, all that it comes to is a series of allegories, among
which the politico-social play a main part. Vico sees the earliest history
of mankind in the light of the traditions about Rome; the Graeco-Roman
gods, then, and the myths about them, become to him largely an expression
of struggles between the “patricians and plebeians” of remote antiquity.
Most of the mythology of the eighteenth century is like this. The
Euhemeristic school gradually gave up the hypothesis of the Jewish
religion as the origin of paganism; Banier, the chief representative of
the school, still argues at length against Hebraism. In its place,
Phoenicians, Assyrians, Persians and, above all, Egyptians, are brought
into play, or, as in the case of the Englishman Bryant, the whole of
mythology is explained as reminiscences of the exploits of an aboriginal
race, the Cuthites, which never existed. The allegorist school gradually
rallied round the idea of the cult of the heavenly bodies as the origin of
the pagan religions; as late as the days of the French Revolution, Dupuis,
in a voluminous work, tried to trace the whole of ancient religion and
mythology back to astronomy. On the whole the movement diverged more and
more from Euhemerism towards the conception of Greek religion as a kind of
cult of nature; when the sudden awakening to a more correct understanding
came towards the close of the century, Euhemerism was evidently already an
antiquated view. Thus, since the Renaissance, by a slow and very devious
process of development, a gradual approach had been made to a more correct
view of the nature of ancient religion. After the Devil had more or less
taken the place of the demons, the rest of demonology, the moral allegory,
Hebraism and Euhemerism were eliminated by successive stages, and
nature-symbolism was reached as the final stage.
We know now that even this is not the correct explanation of the nature
and origin of the conception of the gods prevailing among the ancients.
Recent investigations have shown that the Greek gods, in spite of their
apparent simplicity and clarity, are highly complex organisms, the
products of a long process of development to which the most diverse
factors have contributed. In order to arrive at this result another
century of work, with many attempts in the wrong direction, has been
required. The idea that the Greek gods were nature-gods really dominated
research through almost the whole of the nineteenth century. If it has now
been dethroned or reduced to the measure of truth it contains—for
undoubtedly a natural object enters as a component into the essence of
some Greek deities—this is in the first place due to the intensive study
of the religions of primitive peoples, living or obsolete; and the results
of this study were only applied to Greek religion during the last decade
of the century. But the starting-point of modern history of religion lies
much farther back: its beginnings date from the great revival of
historical research which was inaugurated by Rousseau and continued by
Herder. Henceforward the unhistorical methods of the age of enlightenment
were abolished, and attention directed in real earnest towards the earlier
stages of human civilisation.
This, however, carries us a step beyond the point of time at which this
sketch should, strictly speaking, stop. For by the beginning of the
eighteenth century—but not before—the negative fact which is all important
in this connexion had won recognition: namely, that there existed no
supernatural beings latent behind the Greek ideas of their gods, and
corresponding at any rate in some degree to them; but that these ideas
must be regarded and explained as entirely inventions of the human
imagination.