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Since the second half of the twentieth century, the Neo-Pagan movement has developed into a significant cultural phenomenon throughout the globe. This article investigates the Pagan ‘renaissance’ in contemporary Russia, focusing on several movements with nationalistic, anti-modernist, and anti-globalist features. Rodoslavie, a lesser known movement with distinct local features, is presented as a representative example. This article describes the historical establishment, development, and collapse of this movement in Russia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, its social and cultural basis as well as its ideological framework. It focuses on the social-political and social-philosophical views of Rodoslavie and similar Russian Neo-Pagan movements (some are representatives of Rodnoverie). Social and utopian ideals of Rodoslavie (the ‘people’s monarchy’) and its ethnocentric interpretation of ‘the Russian National Idea’ are studied from this point of view. The study reveals messianic reminiscences inherited from monotheistic traditions and Islamic influences on the worldviews of Rodoslavie followers and their project known as ‘Exodus’.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the features of the biographies of pagan princes of the IXX centuries and the specifics of their reflection in the initial Russian chronicles. The article pays great attention to the methods of working with information and clarifying the author's position in the main source of the initial Russian history the Tale of Bygone Years. The relevance of studying the biographies and places of the main pagan princes Oleg of Novgorod, Igor of Kiev and Sviatoslav I Igorevich in the process of revealing the topic of the formation of statehood, as well as individual state institutions and ways of governing the country during the early Middle Ages is emphasized. Also, this work is important for the disclosure of tools and methods of forming state ideology in the Old Russian state at an early stage of its development. The key differences of the princes' figures, their roles in the work and the significance for the chronicler and the development of his conception of the origin and strengthening of the Old Russian state and the princely dynasty of Ryurikovichi are highlighted. Also, a lot of attention is paid to the allocation of general motives and coincidences in the biographies of Kiev princes of the initial period. The author's ambivalent attitude towards pagan princes is emphasized on the one hand they are the ancestors of the dynasty and the ruling family in general, and on the other hand they remain persistent pagans and a kind of anti-examples for future generations of princes. On the basis of their life and death, the chronicler traces the beginning, development and natural completion of the pagan tradition in the Kiev state. The problem of displaying the Ryurikovichi family in the historical source is considered on the basis of modern achievements of national science.

espanolEn el presente estudio analizamos como las jerarquias eclesiasticas senalaron siempre el baile como una actividad pecaminosa y del todo condenable, y lo convirtieron en un signo mas de alteridad religiosa, aun cuando amplias capas de la poblacion cristiana lo habian adoptado ya como una parte mas de su acervo cultural. El problema resultaba mas grave cuando el pueblo incorporaba dichas danzas a las fiestas efectuadas en honor de los santos, lo cual, para los predicadores, suponia contaminar de idolatria estas solemnidades. Sin embargo, lo que para las autoridades de la Iglesia era una pervivencia del paganismo, para los fieles constituia una expresion mas de su forma de entender la religion y se convertia en una manifestacion mas de la religiosidad popular ajena a la religion normativa; en otras palabras, se erigia como un componente imprescindible de la lived religion. EnglishIn the present study we analyze how the ecclesiastical hierarchies always pointed to dance as a sinful and totally reprehensible activity, and turned it into another sign of religious otherness, even though wide sections of the Christian population had already adopted it as one more part of their cultural heritage. The problem was more serious when people incorporated these dances to the festivals held in honor of the saints; for the preachers, to do this was to contaminate these solemnities with idolatry. However, what for the Church authorities was a survival of paganism, for the faithful constituted one more expression of their way of understanding religion, as it became one more manifestation of popular religiosity alien to normative religion; in other words, it stood as an essential component of the lived religion.

Several archaeological investigations have taken place in the village of Lockarp, just south of Malmö, Scania. These investigations have revealed the remains of a large Viking Age and early medieval farm, or manor. The aim of this article is to discuss the transition from pagan- ism to Christianity on the basis of two buildings in the Lockarp manor that are interpreted as a forge and a chapel. The buildings were situated inside a courtyard, in what was interpreted as the private, innermost area of the manor. The author describes the manor’s social status and the location of these two buildings, and dis- cusses whether the buildings are visible signs of the re- ligious transition.

Iatric cults were spread in Hellas, and in the Hellenistic period were also venerated in Roman Empire. The most famous were Asclepius and his daughter Hygeia. Asclepius was famous Greek physician whose divine nature helped to heal the patients, which is why he was very popular among people. That's why he was popular among people. Asclepius was the only Greek deity to be accepted in the Temple of Westphalia in Rome, which means that the Romans thoroughly accepted him as very important deity in the Roman religion. He was considered to be the guardian of the individuals as well as the whole families, in addition, the protector of soldiers and even emperors. Sanctuaries were built in his honor, but he was also revered in sanctuaries of other gods. The healing power of Asclepius was associated with hot and cold water springs for use of water in the healing process which was very respected since the water was used in healing processes. It is assumed that one shrine was placed in imperial villa in Mediana, due to near hot water source in Niška banja. The veneration of cult of Asclepius in Mediana is traced back to the Roman emperor Julian and his restoration to paganism. Although Julian ruled for a short period of time, the statues of Asclepius and Hygeia remained in the villa in Mediana for decoration, only to be destroyed during the Hun devastation of Nais in 378. The need to prevent and cure people form deadly infectious diseases, which took many lives, had caused the respect of the cult of Asclepius in the territory of Hellas, Asia Minor and most part of Roman Empire in the period from the 16th century BC until the 6th century AD. From ancient time, people felt the need to take care of their own health, and when there was no other way to be cured, Asclepius helped with his supernatural power. His ability and readiness to provide help to everyone who needed it, made him the most widespread and respected cult of healing.

В статье рассматриваются процессы, связанные с взаимодействием мордвы-терюхан с окружающим их русским христианским миром. Мордву-терюхан принято считать наиболее «обрусевшей» частью мордовской общности. Источники говорят о тесных контактах терюхан с русским населением с периода XIII–XIV вв. Несмотря на это, судя по данным археологии, мордва-терюхане сохранили свои языческие традиции вплоть до начала XX в. Библиографические ссылки Аникин И.С. Комплекс средневековых археологических памятников у д. Городище // Нижегородские исследования по краеведению и археологии: сборник научных и методических трудов. Вып. 1 / Отв. ред. Е.А. Молев. Нижний Новгород: Нижегор. гуманитар. центр, 2001. С. 16–23. Беговаткин А.А. Терюшевская мордва – взгляд в прошлое // Нижегородская мордва: история и культура / Под ред. Е. В. Четвертакова, О. В. Гальцева. Дальнее Константиново: РКДО Д.-Константиновского района, 2017. С. 40–54. Беленькая Д.А. Медная пластика городов московской Руси (XIII–XV вв.) // КСИА. 1993. № 208. С. 11–19. Лаврентьевская летопись URL: http: //expositions.nlr.ru/LaurentianCodex/_Project/page_Show.php (дата обращения: 02.01.2020). Малышев А.В., Сорокин А.А. Мордовский «пророк» и «волжский царь»: к вопросу об отношениях Кузьмы Алексеева и князя Г.А. Грузинского // Конфессиональные и этнические группы российских регионов в XIX–XXI вв. / под общ. ред. А.А. Сорокина. М.: Эдитус, 2019. С. 66–73. Мельников-Печерский П.И. (Андрей Печерский). Очерки Мордвы. Саранск: Мордовское книжное издательство, 1981. 132 с. Нижегородский летописец / под ред. А.С. Гациского. Нижний Новгород: Типография губернского правления, 1886. 144 с. Сорокин А.А. Великий князь нижегородско-суздальский Константин Васильевич: заметки к политической биографии // Константин Николаевич Бестужев-Рюмин. 1829–1897. Памяти русского историка / Под ред. А.В. Любавина. Богородск: Вариант, 2014. С. 244–255. Четвертаков Е.В. Отчет об археологической разведке на территории Дальнеконстантиновского и Краснобаковского районов Нижегородской области в 2016 году // Архив ИА РАН. Р-1. 151 c. Четвертаков Е.В. Отчет об археологических раскопках на могильнике Староселье 3 в Дальнеконстантиновском районе Нижегородской области в 2018 году // Архив ИА РАН. Р-1. 130 c. Четвертаков Е.В. Отчет об археологических раскопках на могильнике Староселье 3 в Дальнеконстантиновском районе Нижегородской области в 2017 году // Архив ИА РАН. Р-1. 129 c. Шмелев С.Ю. Родословная семьи Тихановых из села Мигалиха: от язычества до наших дней // Поволжские финны на перекрестке эпох / Под ред. Е.В. Четвертакова. Нижний Новгород: Новая гуманистическая культура, 2019. С. 41–48.

Traditional rituals formed the basis of ethnic Chuvash culture, and are still relevant in today’s festive and ritual culture, primarily among Chuvash ‘pagan’ ethno-religious groups. Today among the unbaptised Chuvash there is, with varying degrees of preservation, a set of ideas about the spirits of nature and the patron deity of different fields of life, practice of ritual prayer and sacrifice, and festive culture. The focus of ritual practice is the cult of the Supreme God Tura (Tură) and the ancestors, who during the calendar year appear in a single complex and in strict sequence. Traditional rituals play an essential role in the funeral and memorial rites and customs of the Chuvash. Thus, ‘pagan’ elements are characteristic not only of the unbaptised Chuvash, but also of some local groups of Christians and Muslims, for example ritual mourning of the dead, weekly commemoration on Thursday evenings until the ritual of ‘seeing off the soul’, ritual singing, sacrificing and ‘feeding’ souls of the dead on remembrance days, and other rituals and their elements. These ‘pagan’ elements in the culture of the Orthodox Chuvash and Chuvash Muslims living in ethnically mixed villages with Russians, Mordovians and Tatars both constitute the basis of their ethnic and cultural identity as Chuvash and contribute to the preservation of their ethnicity. Chuvash ‘paganism’, despite centuries of influence from Russian Orthodox and Muslim Tatar traditions, has a moderating influence over contemporary modernisation and is an element in religious practices of Chuvash confessional communities that is an important resource for the formation and development of ethnic and cultural identity.

This article is relevant, first of all, for compatriots, as it addresses issues of the cultural heritage of Eastern Slavic peoples. The article discusses worship and rituals in East Slavic paganism as the most important part of the religious life of Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians. The issues of the origin and development of these phenomena are analyzed. Numerous examples show the diversity and importance of the system of rites, rituals and worship in ancient and modern Slavic paganism. It is noted that the activities and heritage of the wanderers and the Magi are significant material for studying the culture of our ancestors. The most visited religious objects are distinguished: first of all, sanctuaries, temples, burial mounds, burials of the Magi, the graves of ancient Russian princes of the pre-Christian time. For thousands of neo-pagans, the reverent attitude to the object of worship serves as the fulfillment of the will of the ancestors. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of worship and rites in East Slavic paganism, to show the influence of historical, geographical, cultural factors on their formation. This work may be useful for solving urgent problems of interaction with representatives of different religious denominations.

The Rani, a west Slavic tribe based on the island of Rugen, built an empire existing until 12th century. In 1168 Rani were defeated by Danish king Valdemar I, resulting in the conversion of the tribe to Christianity. The Chronica Slavorum by Helmoldus and Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus are quite commonly quoted sources in the debate concerning Slavic paganism and the attempts of its Christianization. What constitutes high-value Helmoldus’ and Saxo’s works is the fact that the chronicles are an essential and primary sources when it comes to the history of the Polabian tribes – their territories and their neighboring peoples. It is also a vital link in the account of the course of Christianization on the Polabian territory. After the invasion of The Danish king Valdemar I the pagan temple, situated on the island, was destroyed and both the territorial and religious autonomy of the Rani ended. At the tip of Arkona in recent centuries, the cliffs have collapsed into the sea and the chronicles still remain as witnesses of the Slavic history of Rugen.

In this article, the material qualities and the use of space on rune stone and its links to the landscape during the Viking Age and in the Early Medieval Period in South Scandinavia are explored and related to acts of commemoration and changing spatial perceptions. The 11th century rune stones from Denmark and Scania without iconography have previously received less scholarly attention by the archaeologists, but here they form the main focus. Whereas the commemorative aspects of the rune stones have been noticed by a number of scholars, less emphasis has been on their material qualities and the spatial aspects of the inscription on the stones; the spatial references in the rune stones to the surrounding landscape; and the bodily effect they had for the readers of the runes. The rune stones are studied as expressions of social relations between living, deceased and places in late pagan and early Christian Scandinavia. Three phenomena are explored: the rune stones at bridges and the role of the bridge in paganism and Christianity; the use of the surface and shape of the stones to separate diverging beings; and the shape of the inscription and its relation to the new concepts of afterworld in terms of heaven above, while simultaneously creating links to near and distant pasts. Further, the process of creating relations to distant pasts in the Early Christian period is explored.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British passed laws in most of their African colonies prohibiting any individual from accusing another of practising witchcraft and banning...

The Latin Church in medieval time regarded crusades as holy wars against paganism and heretics. Pope Innocent III was one of the church leaders who strongly believed that Christians need to regain the Holy Land. After initiating the Fourth Crusade and was disappointed by the failure of the crusaders, Innocent III organised the Fourth Lateran Council for the main purpose of launching the Fifth Crusade. While some scholars maintained that the reform of universal church was one of the main agenda of the Council, this paper shows that it was ancillary to the preparation of all elements within the Church for the next Crusade.

The Slovenian Rodnovery (Native Faith) group Veles blends contemporary Pagan influences from outside Slovenia with elements of more native Slavic Paganism or “Old Faith,” including elements that have supposedly survived in western Slovenia until the middle of the twentieth century. Our analysis is based on a survey questionnaire administered to members of the group as well as a field survey and participant observation conducted on holy days.

This article deals with Julian the Apostate’s religious policy and its relationship with the renewal of both the Roman state and the morals of Roman society during the emperor’s reign. Julian, who was a zealous follower of pagan religion, attempted to re-establish the old cultus deorum in the Christian-pagan society and to make paganism the Roman state religion. Ammianus, who witnessed Julian’s reign, shows in his Res Gestae that the emperor did his utmost to renew equally the morals of society and condition of the state. In this article the author argues that ‒ according to Ammianus ‒ Julian’s religious programme influenced neither his good moral conduct nor his secular policy. In the Res Gestae, the historian demonstrates that the imperial power as well as Julian’s virtues were sufficient means to renew the morals of society and to restore and strengthen the state, whereas religion only accompanied the emperor’s moves and did not influence them. This article was written with a view to presenting Ammianus’ standpoint on this matter as it emerges from the Res Gestae; one that may seem contrary to how some modern scholars tend to accentuate the role played by pagan religion in the secular policy of the Apostate.

Cyril of Alexandria (412-444) was not only one of the finest Christian theologians of his day, he also stands out in the ranks of the greatest patristic writers of all generations as perhaps the most powerful exponent of Christology the church has known. He brought great influence both in church life and in making the Christian teaching and especially in the formulation of Christological doctrine in the 5th century. For the life of the holy father, little is known. He was born between 370-380 AD Alexandria. The exact date of his birth we are not able to know it. He came from a wealthy family of the Greek city of Alexandria, although often the patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius calls him “Egyptian”, i.e. one who hails from Egypt, in order to taunt him. Nowhere was the divide more clearly seen in 415 CE than between Orestes, the Pagan Prefect of Alexandria and Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, who lead the Christian mobs against the Jews of Alexandria, looted their synagogues, and expelled them from the city. Orestes maintained his Paganism in the face of Christianity and cultivated a close relationship with Hypatia which Cyril, perhaps, blamed for Orestes' refusal to submit to the "true" faith and become a Christian. Tensions between the two men, and their supporters, grew increasingly high as each brushed off the other's advances of reconciliation and peace. His early life is known only from notices in Socrates Scholasticus and a few elsewhere. The latter explains the relations of Cyril of Alexandria with Orestes and Hypatia. Also, Socrates, although, was an enemy to Cyril of Alexandria remains the most objective source for the life and actions of Cyril of Alexandria.

The article aims to verify some of the assertions made about attributing sanctuaries of Mount Stolovaya (Myat-Loam) in Ingushetia to Christianity. The principal tasks of the study are to conduct critical analysis of some of the statements of pre-revolutionary and soviet authors, related to those shrines; to check the conformity of the said shrines to the Christian places of worship; to compare rituals of the sanctuaries with the Christian ones.Pre-revolutionary imperial and soviet authors associate sanctuaries of Mount Stolovaya in the mountainous regions of Ingushetia (Myatzetli, Myattar-Dyala, Susol-Dyala) to Christianity, describing them as churches or chapels. For this purpose, names of the shrines were often distorted and then attributed to Christian saints. Those statements, without any scientific reasoning, were most likely aimed to legitimize the Russian Empire on the Caucasus’ territory, as a former Christian space. However, the study analysis of the sanctuaries, carried out by the leading experts in places of worship (architect A. Goldstein, archeologist M.B Muzhukhoev, ethnologists V. N. Basilov, V.P. Kobychev et al.) reveals that they do not comply with the established criteria of Christian monuments; rituals of praying at the sanctuaries also show no conformity to Christianity (it was forbidden for anyone to be inside the Ingush shrines except the priest; the absence of altar; animal sacrifice; feasts and dances, etc.).The analysis of architectural, ritual and ethnographic aspects of the sanctuaries on Mount Stolovaya provides the conclusion that Myatsil, Myattar-Dyala, Susol-Dyala are pagan shrines, associated with crypts as attributes of the cult of ancestor veneration. Basing on the analysis, it has been established that Myatseli and other distinctive Ingush sanctuaries, located in Kistin community of Ingushetia, were never Christian churches or chapels; attempts at associating Christian names of St. Mary or St. Matthew to the name of Myatseli and the sacred Ingush mountain Myat-Loam are unfounded. The results of the study refute the attempts of false attribution of Ingush national places of worship to Christianity and carry not only gnoseological, but also practical relevance.

This study addresses the possible activity of early Christian missions among the Vogul (Mansi) of the Urals, Trans-Urals, and northwestern Siberia between the 8th–16th centuries. Three stages in their history are described. The fi rst (700–1000 AD) was marked by the import of southwestern Central Asian silver dishes (diskoi) reproducing biblical themes and Christian symbols. Specimens from Grigorovskoye, Anikovskoye, and from the Malaya Ob had been cast in Nestorian communities of Semirechye. The imported diskoi gave rise to the tradition of offering food to deities on metal dishes. The second stage (1200–1400 AD) began when silver plaques depicting the famous theme of icon painting (“The feat of the Martyr Demetrius of Solun defeating King Kaloyan of Bulgaria”) had been imported to the region. The third stage (15th and 16th centuries) correlates with the Russian expansion to Siberia and attempts to baptize the natives. At the ceremony, baptismal symbols such as tin plaques were given to the neophytes. Apparently, most plaques represent the biblical King David and were manufactured by Russians in the late 1400s to early 1500s. In the 16th century, plaques with the fi gure of St. George appeared in Siberia. The analysis of items showing biblical and hagiographical characters and of their distribution in northwestern Siberia suggests that Christian missions were unable to oust paganism from the region. Russian religious items were used in native rituals mostly if they represented horsemen, because these seemed to allude to the son of the Ob Ugric supreme deity Mir-Susne-Khum, also depicted as a horseman.

The Scythians, a warlike, pastoral-nomadic, Iranian-speaking people who dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the first millennium BCE, are known to us through the accounts of Herodotus and other Greek writers of antiquity. The Scythians’ language and many of their cultural customs survive today among the Ossetes of the Central Caucasus, among whom an attempt to revive the ancient religion has been underway since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Uatsdin or ‘True Religion’, as this revived system has been named, consists of rituals associated with the ancient deities of war and hunting, along with such natural phenomena as thunder, wild and domestic food animals, and wolves. This movement can be analyzed within the framework of nation-building ideologies, similar to other movements taking place across the former USSR and beyond.

The first three episodes of the fourth season of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars describe the adventures of the young Prince Lee-Char, the Mon Calamari heir of the throne of the famous eponymous water world, as he struggles against the droid armies, engaging in a form of a rite of passage with mystical components. This aquatic tale can be analyzed on three distinct levels: a “macroscopic” perspective suggesting that this trilogy takes place in a specific context, a “microscopic” analysis exploring some specific elements of this quest as a form of pagan journey, and an intermediate “mesoscopic” point of view focusing on Prince Lee-Char as an individual and evaluating his function as a messianic figure. Drawing upon these three interconnected layers and the therianthropic nature of Prince Lee-Char, this article will explore how this underwater quest of Prince Lee-Char belongs to the logic of the Star Wars narrative and symbolic frameworks, yet how Prince Lee-Char, as a non-Force user and non-human character, renews the Star Wars hero archetype.

In the Hellenistic-Roman period the Jews faced the urgent problem of determining the permissible and impermissible in contact with other cultures of the ancient world. One of its aspects was the question of statues of pagan deities, kings and emperors. They were not only in temples, but also in public spaces — streets, markets, courthouses, etc. The Jews were faced with these sculptures both in the Diaspora and in Palestine. The prescriptions contained in the Pentateuch were, in practice, hard to follow in their totality. The Second Commandment forbids the Jews from creating idols (Ex 20, 4, Deut. 5, 8), and it was perfectly possible to observe, but other instructions were obviously impossible (Ex 23, 24; Ex 34, 13). Philo of Alexandria and Josephus Flavius informed us about the first problems connected with sacred images, and later the discussion about them would become the main theme of the third chapter of the treatise “Avodah Zarah”, which is part of the Babylonian Talmud. In our paper we consider three issues discussed in “Avodah Zarah”: the definition of a cult statue; the definition of a place that served the worship of gods; and the “desacralization” of the cult statues. Rabbis of the 2nd–4th centuries CE created a list of formal attributes that made it possible to distinguish a sacred sculpture from a decorative statue (the presence of a scepter, a bird, a ball, a snake, etc.), but in addition, the attitude of the Gentiles themselves to these statues played an important role. The fundamental role here is played by Gamaliel’s words about the permissibility of using the thermae, if it’s decorated with the statue of Aphrodite. In addition, Y. Furstenberg directly points to the parallels between the destructive actions produced by the Romans in the rituals of damnatio memoriae, the curse of the memory of the “bad” emperor, and the principles by which the rabbis are guided in establishing the permissible and unauthorized.

The article deals with the genesis of the definition “the paganism of the Eastern Slavs” in the works of Russian historians in the 18th–19th centuries. The author determines the sources of that terminology and considers its methodological and ideological sense. He compares the definitions of Old Russian antipagan texts and first Russian scientific works on history and mythology. The medieval literature contained a lot of concepts, but one can’t find their any mention about “paganism” as phenomenon as well as the word “paganism”. Old Russian authors mostly wrote about “pagan people” as social and religious group and gave them the concrete features depending of the context. The awareness with “paganism” as a phenomenon should relate to the scientific works on history and mythology. This definition firstly appeared in the lexicons of E. Veisman and I.K. Adelung with their Russian translation of the Latin “gentile” and German “heidentum”. Also one can find it in the “Russian history” of V.N. Tatishchev who used “Cimbrische Heyden Religion” written by Arnkiel Trogilliusas as one of the important source. However, it took a while to make this definition to become central in the scientific literature. At the beginning of the 19th century, a lot of authors preferred to use the word “basnoslovie”. The definition “paganism” became fundamental with the issue of the great work N.M. Karamsin after all. Such history of this word reveals not only its complexity and ambiguity but the argumentativeness of the traditional view of “paganism” as a product of the church literature only.

The idea of a unified ‘paganism’ is usually taken to be an intentional Christian distortion of the true diversity of ancient polytheism. This chapter presents a different view. Inscriptions recorded by antiquarians and archaeologists at Rome since the fifteenth century document fourth-century senators’ participation in a vast range of priesthoods and mystery initiations. These inscriptions include epitaphs, senatorial résumés, and especially altars commemorating performance of the taurobolium, a sacrifice of a bull to the Magna Mater. The (admittedly fragmentary) evidence reveals a philosophical theology that united all the gods into a single divine reality. It also suggests, contrary to recent scholarship, that the senators’ religious involvement was driven by a desire not just for personal prestige but also (and sometimes more important) for divine favour and mystical insights. When this polytheistic religiosity is set alongside the polemical ‘paganism’ of Firmicus Maternus and ‘Ambrosiaster’, a new picture takes shape. The Christian polemicists’ sharp opposition between ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’ is an oversimplification of a religious situation whose tensions were generally less overt. Nevertheless, the idea of ‘paganism’ is not polemical invention but a Christian theorisation of a prominent contemporary approach to polytheism.

Worshippers of the Gods Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire’s legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature—a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism—as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argues that Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and Ambrose offered substantive critiques of traditional religion shaped to their political circumstances and to the preoccupations of contemporary polytheists. By bringing together this polemical literature with imperial laws, pagan inscriptions, and the letters and papers of the senator Symmachus, Worshippers of the Gods reveals the changing horizons of Roman thought on traditional religion in the fourth century. Through its five interlocking case studies, it shows how key episodes in the Empire’s religious history—the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity, the altar of Victory affair, and the ‘disestablishment’ of the Roman cults—shaped contemporary conceptions of polytheism. It also argues that the idea of a unified ‘paganism’, often seen as a capricious invention by Christian polemicists, actually arose as a Christian response to the eclectic, philosophical polytheism in vogue at Rome.

The spread of mystery cults in Rome, between the first and third century AD, involved that of Persian Mithras too, as shown by his temples. The cult of Mithras was particularly attended by the soldiers who fought against Parthes. The Christian religion spread in the army as well. For example, according to Basilius of Cesarea and the other Christian writers, Forty Martyrs of Sebastia belonged to the Legio XII Fulminata and had been persecuted by Licinius in A.D. 320. Their relics arrived in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century, as well as many others which have been translated from Pannonia, Northern Africa and Holy Land. The aim of this paper is to analyse differences and relationships between mithraea and martyrial sanctuaries, and to show the evolution of Persian cults from Roman Age to Christian era.

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The amulets referred to in this paper were found mainly in the eastern part of the Frankish tribal lands. There, in the Rhineland, Christianity did not hold as much ground in the 6th and 7th centuries as during later periods. Therefore, members of the Frankish aristocracy (a clear indication of the social strata the owners of the jewelry belonged to are the materials, i.e., precious metals, that the pieces were made of) preferred to rely on tried and tested amulets based on the native religious conventions rather than on Christian imagery (e.g., baptismal crosses).

The topic of the publication is devoted to the process of forming the image of the Northern Black Sea region in European society in the times of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Northern Black Sea region had its own peculiarities of mental, verbal and artistic perception. It is revealed that many works are devoted to the perception of the region by representatives of other cultures, among which L. Wolff work dedicated to the study of transformations of mentally-geographical landmarks of Western Europeans should be noted. Wolff tried to prove that numerous traveler-diplomats, writers, adventurers, merchants, and scholars have laid the foundations for the image of the region and as a «civilized» West looked at the «backward» Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region. The Age of Enlightenment was merely a statement of the millennial genesis of this figurative perception. The roots of this process date back to ancient times. The research is based on an analysis of the works of antique, medieval and early modern authors, which have a clear positioning in relation to the Northern Black Sea region. The study of the genesis of perception of the Northern Black Sea region by representatives of «civilized» cultures is the main goal of this publication. It was defined that both «antique» and «medieval» European threat and trouble came from the east, while the closest «eastern» region to the Europe was the Northern Black Sea region. Like the Scythians and Sarmatians in ancient times, and the Huns during the Great Migration of Peoples, and the destruction of the Roman Empire, the Mongol invasion, the Tatar-Nogai raids firmly established in the minds of Europeans the image of this land as a «hellish» place. It is noted that the ancient «sivilis» clearly contrasted itself with the Black Sea «barbarus» and considered it dangerous. Subsequently, after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire, along with the civilization criterion religious was added. Now, the «sivilis», which was associated with «christianitas» (Christianity), contrasted itself with the «barbarus», which consolidated «religia pagana» (paganism).