PC: Pagan 'Reconquista' against Christian Moors

I am working on an alternate history setting in which the Roman Empire collapses early and leaves behind a number of pagan successor states. An idea I had was a parallel to the Reconquista in which a Christian Berber state invades the Iberian peninsula and forms the Kingdom of Mauritania-Hispania, to then be slowly beaten back by a number of Latin-speaking pagan states.

How plausible would it be that Christianity was widespread enough that Berbers all the way in northwest Africa are following it, but not so widespread that Christians are at best a minority in western Europe?
 
I am working on an alternate history setting in which the Roman Empire collapses early and leaves behind a number of pagan successor states. An idea I had was a parallel to the Reconquista in which a Christian Berber state invades the Iberian peninsula and forms the Kingdom of Mauritania-Hispania, to then be slowly beaten back by a number of Latin-speaking pagan states.

How plausible would it be that Christianity was widespread enough that Berbers all the way in northwest Africa are following it, but not so widespread that Christians are at best a minority in western Europe?
Seems decently plausible, especially if you consider henotheistic or monotheistic faiths like Sol Invictus or Mithraism to be pagan. A good PoD might be preventing a unified, state sponsored Christianity from emerging- aka stop the Council of Nicaea. Maybe an alternate outcome at Milvian bridge for something more specific?
 
What kind of pagan? Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic?

Mostly Greco-Roman in southern and western Europe, although Germanic and Norse paganism will probably exist in northern Europe and east of the Elbe.

About what year?

I am thinking of leaving the PoD ambiguous. Obviously before Constantine.

The current year would be roughly ~1000. The old Empire is but a distant memory, although a Roman rump state still exists in southern Italy as a vestige of the old Empire.
 

Marc

Donor
Structurally, polytheism is on the losing side of history in Europe. There are cogent reasons why monotheism triumphed - not the least being the concepts of redemption and salvation.
One of the hardest things for modern secularists to fully understand is the degree of why religious faith mattered so desperately in the past.
Here is a way to think about it: imagine what you would actually be willing to die for outside of saving someone(s) you love.
 
Structurally, polytheism is on the losing side of history in Europe. There are cogent reasons why monotheism triumphed - not the least being the concepts of redemption and salvation.
One of the hardest things for modern secularists to fully understand is the degree of why religious faith mattered so desperately in the past.
Here is a way to think about it: imagine what you would actually be willing to die for outside of saving someone(s) you love.

You can have a Polythiest Savior religion (at least for all practical purposes. I mean, even look at Christianity: you have to cut God into two distinct entities for him to make sense), but that rewarding personal aspect is important. Pagan religions developed highly ritualistically and with capracious, undependable gods because they were trying to explain the natural world and influence things there, making the relationship between mortal and divine distant and bussinesslike. Stick a caring figure instead (preferably a relatable mortal) and you get a friendship/family relation instead. You really ARE still dying for someone you love and loves you bacl
 
Paganism holding on is certainly not beyond plausibility. Within the range of plausible Pagan Europe TLs, a geographical distribution in which Christian groups are stronger in Northern Africa than in Iberia is certainly also not outlandish.
Beyond that, I fear that we cannot say much in reply to your question because of the huge time gap: your PoD is at the turn of the 3rd/4th centuries at the latest, yet you ask about something that takes place around 1000 ATL-CE... So many things can have happened in the meantime... So, very theoretically speaking, your scenario does not look impossible, but there's a lot of explanation to be done over such a long stretch of time anyway, and things like pagan reconquistas, which at first glance sound a little off, need to be explained along that long narrative of yours.
 

Marc

Donor
You can have a Polythiest Savior religion (at least for all practical purposes. I mean, even look at Christianity: you have to cut God into two distinct entities for him to make sense), but that rewarding personal aspect is important. Pagan religions developed highly ritualistically and with capracious, undependable gods because they were trying to explain the natural world and influence things there, making the relationship between mortal and divine distant and bussinesslike. Stick a caring figure instead (preferably a relatable mortal) and you get a friendship/family relation instead. You really ARE still dying for someone you love and loves you bacl

Very broadly speaking, polytheism in the West was fine at providing a working cosmology for people - the why and how of the world. The Axial religions provided an ethos - how to live a meaningful life in that world. Which is largely why the latter displaced and won over the populace.
 
Very broadly speaking, polytheism in the West was fine at providing a working cosmology for people - the why and how of the world. The Axial religions provided an ethos - how to live a meaningful life in that world. Which is largely why the latter displaced and won over the populace.
If that's case, then it's puzzling why the Norse bothered converting in the first place, aside from instances of it happening in the wake of a massive military defeat. Norse heathenism is pretty clear on what it considers a meaningful life.
 

Marc

Donor
If that's case, then it's puzzling why the Norse bothered converting in the first place, aside from instances of it happening in the wake of a massive military defeat. Norse heathenism is pretty clear on what it considers a meaningful life.

Short answer: Christianity had made inroads throughout Scandinavia for several centuries before the various rulers under political pressure by decree converted en masse their states. Perhaps half the Danish population had been baptized before Harold Bluetooth formally declared for Christianity. The notion of religiously satisfied Norse does not match up with what seems to have been a steady, if not rapid, transformation that was already undergoing. A co-existence between old and new, which occurred in many parts of Europe seems to have been the case, but the balance was tilting.
 
If that's case, then it's puzzling why the Norse bothered converting in the first place, aside from instances of it happening in the wake of a massive military defeat. Norse heathenism is pretty clear on what it considers a meaningful life.

I'd argue that, to the layperson, Yahweh offered a far better and more personal deal in terms of god-human relations than the Aesir. The former loved all his children and wanted to make them happy, and was all-powerful and benevolent with a more communal practice of worship that (whatever you believe about the actual theological validity) sociologically does create a greater sense of support than the more private, distant or less directly particpitory ritutals of paganism. The Aesir offered a bussinesslike relationship: I strengthen you so you can strengthen me, while Yahweh supports you because he made you desirable to him and you want to do good and praise him because you see him as... well, a Father that you want to be happy
 
Short answer: Christianity had made inroads throughout Scandinavia for several centuries before the various rulers under political pressure by decree converted en masse their states.

Funny way of rephrasing "chopped off a lot of disagreeable heads, burned and drowned a lot of people, and subsequently faced significant armed revolts that were normally only won with armed intervention by neighbouring Christian powers" which was basically what happened in Scandinavia too even if it wasn't as long-bleeding or as violent as in the Balkans, Finnic parts of Russia or Slavic parts of Germany.

The idea that Christianity was an inherently attractive thing that would have appealed to the pagan population sooner or later, feeding on their inherent discontent with their own religion, is not defensible in the face of real history. Actual European Christianity arrived where it did with a bloody sword and foreign gold to back it.


The notion of religiously satisfied Norse does not match up with what seems to have been a steady, if not rapid, transformation that was already undergoing. A co-existence between old and new, which occurred in many parts of Europe seems to have been the case, but the balance was tilting.

Funny how the steady transformation and tilting balance always seemed to require a generation of unabashed slaughter to finalize wherever you bother looking.

I posit that a discontented population just waiting for a better more moral religion to give them meaning wouldn't need persuading by the execution of significant portions of the population first.
 
Funny how the steady transformation and tilting balance always seemed to require a generation of unabashed slaughter to finalize wherever you bother looking.
Ironically, given what Norse heathenism preached, the Norse converting to Christianity because they were being slaughtered by its adherents sounds completely in character for them.
 
I see some truth in both sides' accounts here.
Certainly, the Christianisation of Northern Europe was based on the sword and on top-down coercion first and foremost.
Yet, Christianity did make inroads there, and the necessity of a bloody conquest does not preclude the existence of a growing minority of Christians.
Now whether this attractiveness of Christianity speaks for its great spiritual power is something I'm not sure of. Maybe it does, but I think what was probably more important were other associations with Christianity as the creed of the wealthier and comparably more educated European South. Christianity possessed "soft power". That doesn't mean its Northern conquests weren't very much based on hard power.
 
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