Paganism, a term synonymous with heathenism and polytheism (q. v.

), is used to denote the

non-Biblical religions of the world—that is to say, all those religious notions not called out by the
revealed Scriptures. Hence the whole human race may be said to be divided into Jews,
Mohammedans, Christians, and Pagans.
The word paganism comes from the Latin word pagus, a country district, a canton, the
adjective from which, paganus, denoted pertaining to such a pagus; then not a soldier; then
boorish, or unlearned; and, finally, among the Christian writers, one not a Christian, Jew, or
Mohammedan. Its application in the last sense, which it now continues to hold, is thus accounted
for: When Christianity gradually became the religion alike of the Roman empire and of the
conquerors who embraced its civilization, those who obstinately clung to the old idolatry were
called, both in Latin and in the Teutonic speech, by names which in themselves expressed, not
error in religion, but inferiority of social state: the worshipper of Jupiter or of Woden was called
in Latin mouths a pagan, in Teutonic mouths a heathen. The two names well set forth the two
distinct standards of civilization which were held by those who spoke the two languages. The
paganus was the man of the country, as opposed to the man of the city. The Gospel was first
preached in the towns, and the towns became Christian, while the open country around them still
adhered to the old gods. Hence the name of the pagan, the rustic, the man who stood outside the
higher social life of the city, came to mean the men who stood outside the pale of the purer faith
of the Church. In the England of the 6th century, and in the Eastern Germany of the 8th, no such
distinction, however, could be drawn. If all who dwelt within the walls of a city had remained
without the pale of the Church, the Church would have had few votaries indeed among the
independent Teutons. In their ideas the opposition between the higher and the lower stage was not
the opposition between the man of the city and the man of the country; it was the opposition
between the man of the occupied and cultivated land and the wild man of the wilderness. The
cities, where there were any, and the villages and settled land generally, became Christian, while
the rude men of the heath still served Woden and Thunder. The worshippers of Woden and
Thunder were therefore called heathens. Pagan and heathen, then, alike mark the misbeliever as
belonging to a lower social stage than the Christian. But the standard of social superiority which
is assumed differs in the two cases. The one is the standard of a people with whom the city is the
centre of the whole social life; and the other is the standard of a people among whom the city, if it
was to be found at all, was simply the incidental dwelling-place of a part of the nation which was
in no way privileged over those who dwelt beyond its bounds (comp. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, ch. xxi; Freeman, Hist. of the Norman Conquest, iv, 415).
The relation of the Christian Church to the various forms of paganism, or, better, polytheism,
which it has sought to supplant, and continues seeking to supplant, is a subject of great importance
to the student of ecclesiastical history. But we have not sufficient room to enter here into a detailed
account of paganism. We must content ourselves with saying that the principal pagan religions of
the world are briefly defined as follows: Those of Japan, Buddhism and Sintoism; of China,
Buddhism and Confucianism; of Tartary, Lamaism; of India, Brahminism, Buddhism, Thuggism,
and the religion of the Parsees; of Persia, Mohammedanism and the Zoroastrian religion; of Africa,
Fetichism; of Polynesia, image-worship and hero-worship; of the ancient aborigines of Lapland,
Greenland, and North America, a peculiar combination of spirit and fetich worship, described
under the article INDIANS. For an account of these various forms of paganism, see the articles

q. v. quod vide = which see.

treating of the different countries mentioned, and of the various religious systems mentioned in
that connection.
The entire pagan population of the world is estimated in Johnson’s Family Atlas at
766,342,000, distributed as follows:
America 3,899,000

Asia 666,251,000

Africa 94,972,000

Australasia and Polynesia 1,220,000

766,342,000

Against this there is an estimated Christian population, including Protestant, Roman Catholic, and
Greek communions, of 369,969,000; a Mohammedan population of 160,823,000; and a Jewish
population of 6,000,000.
In this place we confine ourselves to that form of paganism with which Christianity came in
contact immediately after its organization and propagation, i. e. the paganism of the Roman
empire, and those powers organized and controlled by institutions of a like standard of civilization.
For the paganism of the remaining world, in its relation to Christianity, see FETICHISM;
POLYTHEISM.
I. Pagan Theology.—The theology of these pagans, according to their own writers, e.g.
Scævola and Varro, was of three forms. The first of these may well be called fabulous, as treating
of the theology and genealogy of their deities, in which they say such things as are unworthy of
deity; ascribing to them thefts, murders, adulteries, and all manner of crimes; and therefore this
kind of theology is condemned by the wiser sort of heathens as nugatory and scandalous. The
writers of this sort of theology were Sanchoniatho, the Phœnician; and among the Greeks, Orpheus,
Hesiod, Pherecydes, etc. The second sort, called physic, or natural, was studied and taught by the
philosophers, who, rejecting the multiplicity of gods introduced by the poets, brought their
theology to a more natural and rational form, and supposed that there was but one supreme god,
which they commonly made to be the sun—at least this was an emblem of him—but at too great
a distance to mind the affairs of the world: they therefore devised certain dæmons, which they
considered as mediators between the supreme god and man; and the doctrine of these dæmons, to
which the apostle is thought to allude in 1 Tim. 4:1, was what the philosophers had a concern with.
They treated of their nature, office, and regard to men, as did Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the
Stoics. The third form, called politic, or civil, was instituted by legislators, statesmen, and
politicians—such as, first among the Romans, Numa Pompilius: it chiefly respected their gods,
temples, altars, sacrifices, and rites of worship, and was properly an idolatry, the care of which
belonged to the priests, and this was enjoined upon the common people, to keep them in obedience
to the civil state. Thus things continued in the Gentile world until the light of the Gospel was sent
among them. The times before were times of ignorance, as the apostle calls them: men were
ignorant of the true God, and of the worship of him; and of the Messiah, and salvation by him.
Their state is truly described (Eph. 2:12) that they were then “without Christ; aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel; strangers from the covenants of promise; having no hope, and without
God in the world.;” and, consequently, their theology was insufficient for their salvation.
 II. Paganism combated by Christianity.—The contest between Christianity and paganism, so
far as the circumstances of it are known, was almost as much a contest between the civil authorities
of the Roman empire and the religion, as between Christianity and the old religions of the civilized
world. Of all that took place with respect to conflicts between the new and old religions in countries
adjoining the Roman empire, such as the Parthian empire in the West and the Germanic nations in
the North, we know next to nothing. But within the bounds of the Roman empire itself Christianity
was a standing enemy of many existing institutions in every country, and these institutions being
upheld by the state, Christians came to be looked upon, in respect to their religion, as national
enemies wherever they existed. It was part of the policy of the Roman empire, as is well known,
to tolerate all national religions within the boundaries of the nations which professed them, but
this toleration was suspended when these religions began to exercise a proselyting influence
beyond their national boundaries. Now it was an essential characteristic of Christianity that it was
a proselyting religion. Its teachers acted under the especial commission, “Go ye into all the world,
and make disciples of every creature,” and no other religion ever showed such an aggressive
nature. Thus Christianity was, in limine, a foe to the existing religious institutions of the world, as
they were looked at from a statesman’s point of view. But, more than this, Christianity refused to
become a peaceable member of any eclectic system. The scepticism of the academies was
superseded during the early spread of Christianity by an eclecticism originating with Ammonius
Saccas and his disciples, the Neo-Platonists. This system became extremely fashionable among
the intellectual classes in the more learned regions of the Roman empire. It was an attempt, a last
attempt, of heathenism to work itself into an alliance with a foe of whom an inner conviction
seemed to say that he would in the end prove too strong for it. But Christianity would not come to
terms. It would not even consent to the drawing up of preliminaries for a treaty of peace. The words
of its Master were continually illustrated by all Christian missionaries, “I came not to send peace,
but a sword.” Christianity sought not toleration, not compromise, but universal supremacy. Thus,
theoretically at least, the contest between Christianity and paganism was a war which could only
end by the extermination of one or the other, and the process of resistance to extermination on the
part of paganism was that which constituted the substance of the struggle between it and
Christianity. But, apart from this general antagonism between the two religious systems, there was
a special institution of the empire, its official religion, with which Christians came into fatal
conflict almost by accident. This official religion had more of the rising eclecticism in it than of
the old decaying polytheism, but it was little concerned with moral or theological principles, its
one prominent requirement being the recognition of the emperor as an object of worship. The
sacrifice of a few grains of incense to him was the test of religious obedience. To frequent the
temples, to offer sacrifices to the gods, to take part in the mysteries, might be parts of religious
practice, and every one was at liberty to adopt them as he pleased. But public piety, that which
established a citizen as, quâ religion, a good citizen, was the religious veneration of the emperor,
neither more nor less. Thus the religion of Christians when tried by this test was necessarily open
to misconstruction. To burn incense to the emperor was idolatry; not to burn it seemed to be
disloyalty and rebellion. They who would gladly have taken an oath of allegiance, if it had been
offered to them simply as such, refused with an unyielding firmness to do so when it was presented
to them under the form of an idolatrous rite. It seems strange that the astute statesmanship of the
empire did not devise some means by which men so really loyal to it as were the early Christians
might be permitted to live in peace; but perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact that the
kingship and kingdom of Christ were ideas which entered largely into their religious teaching, and
formed a prominent idea in the popular theory of the multitude. Such an idea would look like
rebellious rivalry to the mind of a Roman statesman—one who would never be able to appreciate
the force of such words as “My kingdom is not of this world”—and thus his only antidote to that
worship of Christ which recognised him as the king of the Christians, though an invisible one,
would be a repudiation of him by adoption of the visible emperor as their numen. If the novel
custom of deifying the living emperor had not been invented, the Christians could have declared
their allegiance to him without any hesitation, as is shown by the Apologies; and in such a case it
is not improbable that they might, so far as public authority was concerned, have been tolerated in
their religion, provided its proselyting principles had not caused any disturbance of public order.
III. Popular Paganism and Christianity.—At the same time that Christianity was thus opposed
to the state religion of the empire, it was also in a position of strongly aggressive opposition to the
popular religion of every country within its boundaries, that of the Jews alone being, and that only
for a short time, an exception. Whether the popular religion was polytheism or some of the many
varieties of fetichism, it was certain to be denounced as false by Christian teachers, and as so
entirely false that nothing would satisfy Christianity except the entire abolition of what was
denounced. Thus Christians arrayed against themselves a large class in those whose personal
interest it was that the old religion should be maintained, and in the bulk of the ignorant among
the people at large, whom stolid habits and unreasoning prejudice would enlist against innovators
to whom no religion seemed sacred. Such a position of antagonism to the old religions was as
essential to Christianity as uncompromising opposition to Baal was essential to Elijah; and even
when Christians were not aggressive by positive opposition, their negative opposition was
necessarily conspicuous. For the rites of polytheism were not confined to the temples; they
pervaded all the customs of social and public life. Christians were prevented from attending the
public games by the association of idolatrous rites with them—“the many images, the long line of
statues, the chariots of all sorts, the thrones, the crowns, the dresses”—by the preceding sacrifices
and the procession. “It may be grand or mean,” says Tertullian; “no matter, any circus performance
is offensive to God. Though there be few images to grace it, there is idolatry in one; though there
be no more than a single sacred car, it is a chariot of Jupiter; and anything whatever of idolatry,
whether meanly arrayed or modestly rich and gorgeous, taints it in its origin” (De Spectac. c. vii).
The theatres were equally forbidden, for “its services of voice and song and lute and pipe belong
to Apollos and Muses, and Minervas and Mercuries, … and the arts are consecrated to the honor
of the beings who dwell in the names of their founders” (ibid. c. x). Even in the intercourse of
private life, the Lares and Penates of the hall, the libations of the dinner-table, the very phraseology
with which ordinary conversation was largely decorated, all partook of the nature of idolatry
(Tertullian, De Idol.c. xv, xvii, xxi, xxii), and the necessities of their anti-idolatrous principles thus
secluded Christians from the social assemblies of their heathen acquaintance, and made them in
many respects a separate community. Above all, Christianity was the deadly foe of a widespread
immorality, the extent of which is almost inconceivable. Polytheism was always a religion of mere
ceremony, unassociated, as a religion, with any moral law. Hence the most religious man in the
sense of polytheism might be a shameless profligate, emulating the gods to whom he sacrificed in
their reputed licentiousness, and guilty (as was Socrates) of crimes against which even nature
revolts (id. Apol.c. xlvi). Vices of this class were terribly common among the Romans of early
imperial times, and are exposed with scornful indignation by Tertullian in his Apology. Something
of the extent to which profligacy was carried may also be seen by his denunciation of infanticide,
in one bold sentence of which he says: “How many, think you, of those crowding around and

id. idem = the same.

gaping for Christian blood; how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for
their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting
their offspring to death?” (ibid. c. ix). Against the class of crimes thus indicated, Christianity
protested by word and example, Tertullian fearlessly declaring in respect to the latter that
Christians were conspicuous for “a persevering and steadfast chastity.” Popular habits and customs
being thus so contrary to the spirit of Christianity, it could not fail that a very strong opposition
must have been offered to its progress; and although vast multitudes were quickly gathered to the
standard of the Cross, there was still a large and influential mass of the population in every country
of the empire who looked upon it as the sign of an institution which sought the abolition of their
cherished customs and habits, which made its disciples bad citizens and bad neighbors, and which
was therefore to be hated and, if possible, extinguished.
IV. Pagan Philosophy and Christianity.—Apart from the ruling powers of the empire, and
from those classes which formed the bulk of the nations composing it, there was also a considerable
class of highly educated men, especially in Rome and Alexandria, on whom old-fashioned
polytheism had no hold, but who yet set themselves against Christianity. Among such were the
Epicurean Celsus, who wrote a comprehensive work, The Word of Truth (now known only by
Origen’s refutation of it), against the new faith; the cynic Crescens—φιλοψόφος καὶ φιλοκόμπος—
the boasting braggadocio of Justin Martyr’s Apology (Just. Mart. Apol. ii, 3; Euseb. iv, 5); Trypho
the Jew, against whom the same apologist wrote an important work, his Dialogue with Trypho;
and Lucian the satirist, who opposed Christianity as a superstition unworthy of intellectual men
(Lucian, De Morte Peregrin. c. xi–xvi). Indeed, the contemptuous manner in which grave writers
like Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius mention the new faith seems to show that the literary class in
general was opposed to it, and did not even think it worth while to make any effective inquiry in
regard to its principles. That they gradually learned to feel more respect for it is shown by the rise
of the eclectic school of the Neo-Platonists; but even among these there were bitter opponents of
Christianity, though there were indeed others who theoretically adopted a large portion of its
principles. See ECLECTICISM; NEO-PLATONISM.
V. Persecutions of Christians by Pagans.—The broadest and most evident form of the struggle
for life and supremacy between paganism and Christianity was that of the continuous attempt of
the former to suppress the latter by force. In this the state and the populace co-operated, and there
is no reason to think that the intellectual classes and philosophers held aloof. The first approach to
a general persecution was that begun at Rome under Nero (Tertull. Apol. c. v). St. Paul’s account
of his own sufferings (1 Cor. 6:13–17), his reference to the amphitheatre at Ephesus (1 Cor. 15:32),
to actual persecution of Christians (1 Cor. 4:9, and perhaps in Heb. 11:35–38), to the position of
the apostles as the “offscouring of the earth,” to the “much tribulation” through which the faithful
entered into rest, to his deliverance “out of the mouth of the lion,” all seem to show that the struggle
between paganism and Christianity had begun even in apostolic times. But it is probable that
persecution then was of a local kind, arising out of charges made by Jews against Christians, for
whom they entertained a deadly hatred. Suetonius mentions, indeed, that the Jews were driven out
of Rome by Claudius on account of an insurrection raised by one “Chrestus,” probably one of the
many false Christs that rose up at this period, and Christians who were not Jews may have been
expelled with them, though anything like a Christian insurrection (as the historian’s words are
sometimes interpreted) was so alien to the spirit of the early Christians as to be beyond probability.
After the great fire of Rome in the year 64, Nero, however (who is said by Dion and Suetonius to
have been himself the incendiary), accused the Christians of causing it, and brought upon them a
terrible stream of indignation from the excited Romans. Tacitus wrote his annals about thirty years
after that, and he describes their sufferings in a few graphic words. Nero invited the citizens to a
festival in the imperial gardens (now the Vatican), and the chief spectacle which he then offered
them was the martyrdom of their hated neighbors. Some were sewn in the skins of wild beasts, and
torn to pieces by dogs; some crucified: some burned to death; some smeared over with inflammable
substances, and used as torches or bonfires to light up the gardens after dark. This persecution
lasted for four years, and there can be no doubt that it was carried on in other cities as well as at
Rome. During the course of it the apostle Peter was one of those who were crucified in the gardens
of Nero, and Paul was beheaded a short distance out of Rome. How many others went to make up
the grand vanguard of the army of martyrs it is impossible to say, but the words of the heathen
historian point to a great multitude rather than to a merely considerable number. It is usual to
reckon ten periods of persecution, at intervals, spreading over the latter half of the 1st, the 2d, the
3d, and the 4th centuries. But this enumeration is arbitrary, and cannot be supported by historical
evidence. During the whole of that time there was persecution going on in some part of the empire,
although emperors like Hadrian, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, and Trajan (Tertull. Apol. c.v) were
unlikely to give it any encouragement. Yet Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan (Plinii Epp. x, 96) shows
that it was difficult to save Christians from the popular cry for their extermination; and the
martyrdom of St. Cyprian is another illustration of the same fact. The last and most terrible of the
general persecutions was that which immediately preceded the accession of Constantine, when it
seemed as if Diocletian had nearly accomplished his object of destroying the very name of
Christian. It is not the purpose of this article, however, to go into any details respecting these
periods of persecution, and the subject may be dismissed with the following table, which represents
the conclusions that may be arrived at from the examination of historical data:
A. D. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF PAGAN
PERSECUTIONS.

64–68 Under Nero: Martyrdom of St. Peter and St.

Paul (Tertull. Apol. v; Euseb. Hist. Eccl.
ii, 25).

95–96 Under Domitian: Banishment of St. John

(Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii, 17–18).

104–117 Under Trajan: Martyrdom of St. Ignatius

(Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii, 36).

161–180 Under Marcus Aurelius: Martyrdom of St.

Polycarp and the martyrs of Lyons
(Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv, 15 v, 1).

200–211 Under Severus: Martyrdom of St. Perpetua

and others in Africa (Euseb. Hist. Eccl.
vi, 1, 4, 5).

250–253 Under Decius: Martyrdom of St. Fabian

(Euseb. Hist Eccl. vi, 41–42).
 257–260 Under Valerian: Martyrdom of St. Cyprian
(Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vii, 10, 11, 12).

303–313 Under Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximian:

Martyrdom of St. Alban (Euseb. Hist.
Eccl. viii, 1–17; ix, 1–11; Bede, Hist.
Eccl. i, 6, 7).

VI. The Decline of Paganism.—The long and bitter struggle between the paganism and the
Christianity of the Roman empire came to a close with Constantine’s victory over Maxentius. As
early as A. D. 311 Galerius had been terrified by a shocking and mortal disease to issue a decree,
in which he, with the emperors Constantine and Licinius, directed that persecution should cease,
that churches should be rebuilt, and that the Christians should be allowed to worship in peace
(Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. viii, 17). But the execution of this decree was much hindered by Maximin
and Maxentius, and it was only on their defeat by Licinius and Constantine that a real toleration
began. After that event (A.D. 313). the emperors immediately published the famous Edict of Milan
(Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. x, 5; Lactantius, De Mort. Persecut. xlviii), in which the previous decree
was rigidly enforced and all persecutions entirely suppressed. In the year 321 a severe blow was
given to expiring paganism by an edict in which the emperor established the Lord’s-day as a public
festival, and a day of abstinence from labor. When Constantine became sole emperor, in A.D. 324,
he issued one in a still more decided tone, in which he exhorted all his subjects throughout the
empire to forsake paganism and worship Christ only; and from that time he and his successors
ruled the empire as Christian emperors. Before the end of the 4th century paganism had become
so much weakened and the Christian population so decidedly predominant that the emperors were
able to take measures towards its final suppression. Theodosius (A.D. 381) forbade apostasy to
paganism and suppressed its sacrifices, though still tolerating its minor rites (Cod. Theodos. xvi,
7), the Western emperors, Gratian and Valentinian, following his example. When Theodosius
became sole emperor (A.D. 392), he forbade all kinds of idolatry under severe penalties (ibid. 10,
12). The last traces of paganism died out in the Eastern empire in the first quarter of the 5th century
(ibid. 10, 22), and its final extinction in the West was at the same time effected by the supremacy
of the Northern invaders. If since that age Christianity has lost its ground, it has not been to the old
paganism, but to its Eastern successor, Mohammedanism. The former never revived after the time
of its last great effort to gain supremacy in the Diocletian persecution, and for nearly three centuries
the empire was wholly Christian.
See Kortholt, De Religione Ethnica; Rudiger, De Statu Paganorum; Tzschirner, Fall des
Heidenthums; Döllinger, Judaism and Paganism; Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i;
Hardwick, Church Hist. of the Middle Ages (see Index); Maclear, Hist. of Christian Missions, p. 5
sq.; Merivale, Conversion of the Northern Nations; Schaff, Ch. Hist. ii, 67–71; Pritchard, Egyptian
Mythology (designed to illustrate the origin of paganism).1

sq. sequent. = following.

1
M’Clintock, J., & Strong, J. (1894). Paganism. In Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical
Literature (Vol. 7, pp. 527–530). New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.