Pagan Reformation: Plausible or Not?

It's not even very clear what a Reformed Religion would look like. In context, it seems to need to be a religion that can hold its own, and command the loyalty of the populace, even in the face of missionaries from other faiths. It needs to have some sort of way to lend legitimacy to its rulers (which was a big reason for the success of e.g. Christianity in making in-roads; get some water sprinkled on your head and you become an internationally recognized big shot). And it needs to offer access to the broader trading zone (this was another advantage; Christian merchants and rulers might do business with a pagan, but they were much more comfortable doing business with a fellow Christian).

So you need popular support, and a sort of missionary culture. Pagan faiths generally didn't have a universalist missionary ethos; their religions tended to be tied up with their tribes. They also generally didn't have much in the way of standardized mythology; don't be fooled by the ready availability of modern books on e.g. "Norse Mythology," there were wide variations in the various myths involved, and general lack of consensus on a lot of things.

Critically, I think a lot of the "Great Ruler decides to institute reform and revitalize paganism" ideas, such as the ones modeled on Julian the Apostate, are fatally flawed. A religion needs to have popular legitimacy if it is going to provide political legitimacy. Random ruler saying "we worship this way now, and here are how our gods want you to do things" is just going to be ignored by the majority of the peasantry. Christianity took centuries building up that kind of legitimacy before Constantine, and converts could take advantage of that preexisting cultural, theological and physical infrastructure. Islam was a bit more sudden, but even there, Muhammad started as effectively a street preacher before he moved to Medina, and was able to build on preexisting exposure to monotheistic religions.
 
What if some intellectual/intelligent priest of some pagan religion traveled around his homeland and neighboring tribes/states, collecting myths, legends and beliefs into a holy scripture he writes about (having learned how to write from prior travels like going to some advanced city or so), that he then starts to preach to his fellow men back home. Eventually he gathers enough of a following to convince his local sovereign to help reform the religion, or something like that?
 
Critically, I think a lot of the "Great Ruler decides to institute reform and revitalize paganism" ideas, such as the ones modeled on Julian the Apostate, are fatally flawed. A religion needs to have popular legitimacy if it is going to provide political legitimacy. Random ruler saying "we worship this way now, and here are how our gods want you to do things" is just going to be ignored by the majority of the peasantry. Christianity took centuries building up that kind of legitimacy before Constantine, and converts could take advantage of that preexisting cultural, theological and physical infrastructure. Islam was a bit more sudden, but even there, Muhammad started as effectively a street preacher before he moved to Medina, and was able to build on preexisting exposure to monotheistic religions.

In 300 AD it was 10% if anything Constantine was the one with popular legitimacy issues.
 
In 300 AD it was 10% if anything Constantine was the one with popular legitimacy issues.
Sure, but 10% was enough. 10% is actually a huge chunk of people. That's especially true when you remember that most people were fairly apathetic towards the traditional religion by that point. It was a religion that people had heard of. They might not like it, but they were familiar with it. It's not some religion that the Emperor suddenly decided to invent and take on as his own. That gives it legs, and means that even when the emperor no longer actively patronizes it, it has enough power to remain as a viable institution.

And critically, it had a preexisting support base. You don't need a big support base, you just need enough people that you can count on them to act as missionaries, to conduct services and generally form a network. If you want to build temples/churches all over the place, you need someone to staff those temples, and to make an effort to spread the faith.

Compare, for instance, Akbar the Great and his attempts to create a new faith for the Mughals or Akhenaten's attempts to promote Atenism.
 

nooblet

Banned
Paganism isn't even a religion so much as a disorganized set of superstitions copy-pasted. Nor did it have a coherent creed that was disseminated to the believers, like Christianity and later Islam.
Well before Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire, traditional paganism was dying a slow death and only the few elite in Roman society took it seriously.

If the Roman state religion was reformed to a significant enough degree, it would basically be unrecognizable.
 
I'm more of the opinion it didn't work out because his religious policies were more long term and he only ruled for 2 years...
And his successors were Christians, as the ruling class had become heavily Christianised under the rule of earlier members of the Constantinian dynasty. If he had ruled longer and had managed to make certain his successors were pagans, things would've been different.
 
Paganism isn't even a religion so much as a disorganized set of superstitions copy-pasted. Nor did it have a coherent creed that was disseminated to the believers, like Christianity and later Islam.
Well before Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire, traditional paganism was dying a slow death and only the few elite in Roman society took it seriously.
Superstitions? Really? :rolleyes:

Paganism did have issues with not being as connected with the whole of society as Christianity was; Julian tried to fix this by establishing similar Pagan charities, which would have been step in the right direction.
 
Question. Why has Hinduism which developed out of the same ancestral religious heritage done so well against both Christianity and Islam. Figure that how and it will greatly help the Northern European pagans.
 
Question. Why has Hinduism which developed out of the same ancestral religious heritage done so well against both Christianity and Islam. Figure that how and it will greatly help the Northern European pagans.
That ancestral religious heritage split off millennia ago and probably differed as much from later traditions as the Vedic religious traditions differed from European paganism. What I mean is that developments were very different from a very early age, although I guess it's worth looking into.
 
Question. Why has Hinduism which developed out of the same ancestral religious heritage done so well against both Christianity and Islam. Figure that how and it will greatly help the Northern European pagans.

While I can't answer your question in full, it should be pointed out that Hinduism was resistant to Christianity and Islam because it had already resisted an initially successful proselytizing religion: Buddhism.

As far as I know, Buddhism initially had some great success in India before Hinduism experienced a resurgence.
 
In ways of course Christanity can be seen as a Hybrid of Judaism and Paganism. Especially considering how it took over the Roman Religion's Organized Relgion and created the Catholic Church from it.
 
And his successors were Christians, as the ruling class had become heavily Christianised under the rule of earlier members of the Constantinian dynasty. If he had ruled longer and had managed to make certain his successors were pagans, things would've been different.
Maybe. The Church was already a prominent power, and there would have been another Christian emperor eventually. Julian's reforms aren't going to change that. There's also the fact that Julian's reforms seem to have failed to attract great devotion, even from Roman pagans. Once again, a ruler inventing a religion (even one nominally based on older beliefs) is starting with much lower legitimacy than a religion that evolves more organically.

But stepping away from Rome, we return to medieval paganism. In this case, it doesn't matter what the local rulers do, the Church is going to be a power, because it's already dominant in the richer parts of Europe. That's a strong base for missionaries, but also for military expeditions to conquer pagan lands, later on.

A good model is Anglo-Saxon England, where prolonged exposure to the Catholic Franks helped support and solidify Christian missions. Good terms with the Franks meant you had trade, money and prestige (even to the point of the King of Kent marrying a Frankish princess), but it also meant you couldn't just say "no thanks" when the Pope sent a missionary to your court. Even when Kent briefly reverted to paganism, the church seems to have exerted significant influence (e.g. ensuring that the king's sister, who had remained Christian, would only marry a pagan ruler under the condition she was able to keep her faith and take a chaplain with her).
 
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