| Transcript |
| · | Introduction |
| 0:01 | · | foreign good evening everybody |
| 0:08 | · | I have posed a question in the title of my talk and for most of the 20th century |
| 0:16 | · | the answer to that question given by most experts would have been a |
| 0:23 | · | resounding affirmative it was generally accepted that ancient |
| 0:29 | · | paganism in some form had survived in Britain long after its |
| 0:35 | · | official conversion to Christianity there was |
| 0:40 | · | Sun argument over |
| 0:47 | · | forgive me a moment my clicker is not aha it's my clicker has just |
| 0:53 | · | flashed into life and there we go |
| 0:59 | · | there was some difference over the exact form that it took some Scholars suggesting that the aristocracy had been |
| · | Early Modern Paganism |
| 1:06 | · | mainly Christian that commoners clandestinely Pagan While others |
| 1:12 | · | believed that the two faiths had long persisted amicably side by side from top |
| 1:19 | · | to bottom of society Jeffrey Coulton a great historian of the |
| 1:25 | · | medieval English church asserted in the 1920s that English peasants of the |
| 1:32 | · | period had been cheerful semi-pagans meaning that they dutifully attended |
| 1:39 | · | Christian Services in the day but went home to venerate older deities by the |
| 1:46 | · | Fireside in the evening during the late 19th century |
| 1:52 | · | a belief caught on among British Scholars that the people persecuted as |
| 1:59 | · | witches in the notorious Witch Trials of the early modern period had been |
| 2:05 | · | practitioners of a surviving Pagan fertility religion |
| 2:10 | · | this was given its fullest expression in the early 20th century by Margaret |
| 2:16 | · | Murray whose books turned the idea into something of an Orthodoxy by the 1960s |
| 2:25 | · | it was repeated by such Giants of the historical profession as the |
| 2:31 | · | medievalists Stephen ransomen and the experts in the early modern period Sir |
| 2:37 | · | George Clarke and Christopher Hill support to the idea of a Pagan's |
| 2:44 | · | survival was given by the medieval carvings in British churches |
| 2:50 | · | in 1939 a gentile folklorist lady Raglan |
| 2:55 | · | Drew attention to one form of them in particular |
| 3:00 | · | of human heads with |
| 3:07 | · | foliage gushing from nose and or mouth |
| 3:12 | · | and she linked these to two other pieces of evidence |
| 3:17 | · | one was a figure found in Victorian Mayday processions of a man covered in |
| 3:24 | · | dense vegetation supported on a frame of wood this was thought to be ancient and |
| 3:31 | · | generally known as the Jack and the green the other was a common Pub sign labeled |
| 3:37 | · | the Green Man and by modern times usually showing a Forester or Robin Hood |
| 3:44 | · | but nobody knew quite how old this Motif was |
| 3:50 | · | and what lady Ragland did was to link all these three things together |
| 3:58 | · | as representing the same original Pagan God a deity of returning Greenery and |
| 4:05 | · | fertility to whom she gave the name appropriated from the pub sign of the |
| 4:12 | · | Green Man his place in many churches suggested |
| 4:17 | · | that the Christian clergy had been forced to tolerate his presence in order |
| 4:23 | · | to propitiate the ordinary people who still venerated him |
| 4:29 | · | Margaret Murray who did so much to popularize the idea of the early modern |
| 4:35 | · | Witch Trials as a persecution of pagans made another important contribution to a |
| 4:42 | · | belief in persisting paganism during the 1930s she Drew attention to a |
| 4:49 | · | different form of enigmatic medieval Church carving showing a woman facing |
| 4:55 | · | the Observer and displaying her genitals like this one in herefordshire |
| 5:01 | · | Scholars had generally given these their Irish nickname of Sheila nagig |
| 5:08 | · | Margaret Murray interpreted these as a representation of a pagan fertility |
| 5:16 | · | goddess placed in churches like that of the Green Man to satisfy those who |
| 5:23 | · | continue to worship her these ideas not only continue to be |
| 5:29 | · | accepted outside the academic system during the late 20th century but made an |
| 5:36 | · | impact on its wider culture Margaret Murray's portrait of the Pagan witch |
| 5:41 | · | religion made a major contribution to the development of an entirely viable |
| 5:47 | · | and successful pagan-witch religion in the modern Western world called wicker |
| 5:55 | · | the pioneering scholar of British Iron Age paganism and Ross accepted the |
| 6:02 | · | interpretation of the shield and a gig as a goddess linking the image to a deity whom she |
| 6:10 | · | called the Divine hag of the Pagan Celts in 1975 Anne went even further teaming |
| 6:18 | · | up with a good photographer to produce a popular book called grotesques and |
| 6:24 | · | gargoyles in this she interpreted sheilana Giggs green men and other |
| 6:31 | · | motifs carved in medieval churches as representations of pagan deities |
| 6:39 | · | she accused academic Scholars of virtually and I quote a conspiracy of |
| 6:46 | · | Silence to conceal this evidence for the reality of a persistent Pagan religion |
| 6:53 | · | through the Middle Ages and Beyond radical movements appropriated these |
| 7:00 | · | images for their own uses feminist artists adopted the shield in a |
| 7:06 | · | gig as a powerful and effective symbol of female sexuality empowerment and |
| 7:14 | · | self-confidence the green movements naturally took up the green man as a motif especially |
| 7:22 | · | after the London poet William Anderson hailed it as an archetypal |
| 7:28 | · | representation of the power of the endangered natural world |
| 7:33 | · | there's no doubt that these medieval images have become Dynamic and emotive |
| 7:40 | · | components of modern culture and are extremely valuable as such |
| 7:46 | · | but what is the truth |
| 7:51 | · | concerning survival of paganism are these all actually as we had thought |
| 7:58 | · | evidence for it only from the 1990s did an answer starts |
| 8:07 | · | to emerge based upon solid research a great deal of this was needed to pool |
| 8:14 | · | the data to evaluate the truth of all these previous claims as the data was so |
| 8:20 | · | disparate and so scattered however from the late 1970s this work began powered |
| 8:29 | · | by the expansion and greater dynamism of higher education and by a new mood of |
| 8:36 | · | re-examination of Victorian and Edwardian beliefs |
| 8:42 | · | the idea of the witch trials as persecution of pagans most associated by |
| 8:48 | · | the mid-20th century with Margaret Murray collapsed first |
| 8:54 | · | sustained and widespread Research into the trial records across the whole of |
| 9:00 | · | Europe and its colonies prove that the individuals prosecuted for witchcraft |
| 9:06 | · | had not been pagans even though ancient ideas had played a part in creating some |
| 9:14 | · | of the belief systems that had produced the trials after that the components parts of Lady |
| 9:23 | · | raglan's construct of the Green Man were dismantled the medieval foliate heads were studied |
| 9:31 | · | by Kathleen basford in 1978 and Mercia |
| 9:37 | · | McDermott in 2003 they were revealed to have been a motif |
| 9:43 | · | originally developed in India where it seems to have represented a genuine |
| 9:50 | · | Hindu vegetation God and then the motif traveled through the medieval Arab |
| 9:56 | · | Empire as a decoration and arrived as such in Christian Europe there it is |
| 10:03 | · | first found in Monks manuscripts as a decoration for the margins |
| 10:09 | · | and from there it spread later into churches |
| 10:15 | · | the Jack and the green was studied by Roy judge in 1979 and |
| 10:22 | · | proved to have appeared in London at the end of the 18th century it was actually |
| 10:27 | · | initially a feature of Chimney Sweeps processions enacted to collect money in May the |
| 10:36 | · | whole problem of May for chimney sweeps is it's the beginning of Summer and the |
| 10:41 | · | whole problem summer for chimney sweeps is that people don't tend to use their |
| 10:47 | · | fires thereafter so summer is a bad time for chimney sweeps business and so they |
| 10:54 | · | would hold processions through towns at the opening of it to collect money from |
| 11:00 | · | sympathetic observers to tide them over the Dead period of work in the summer |
| 11:07 | · | and they found that fancy dress attracted more attention and more |
| 11:13 | · | donations and the carrying of foliage and grievery on a frame whilst |
| 11:19 | · | particularly popular so by the late 18th century they'd adopted that and from the |
| 11:25 | · | chimney sweep processions it got into Victorian Mayday celebrations in general |
| 11:32 | · | the Green Man Pub sign while studied by Brandon centerwall an American academic |
| 11:39 | · | in 1997. and shown to derive from the medieval |
| 11:44 | · | motif of the wild man of the Woods this is an imagined figure in the Middle |
| 11:50 | · | Ages of a barbaric or Savage Race of |
| 11:56 | · | humans who are the antithesis of civilization and therefore have all the |
| 12:01 | · | disturbing and exciting traits of antitheses to civilization they lived in |
| 12:07 | · | the woods and they were either covered in hair or dressed in leaves |
| 12:12 | · | and they passed from the Middle Ages from scholarly books into Tudor and |
| 12:18 | · | Stewart Urban pageantry where having an oik dressed up in leaves and wielding a |
| 12:24 | · | club was a very good way of clearing space for the Vegeta for the procession |
| 12:30 | · | to make its way especially if the lads with the leaves |
| 12:35 | · | and the clubs appeared to be drunk and this aided by the connection between |
| 12:42 | · | Vines and wine made the leaf-covered man into a symbol for distillers in the 17th |
| 12:50 | · | century and so it got onto pub signs and has been there ever since the point is |
| 12:57 | · | that none of these three things actually had anything to do with each other or |
| 13:03 | · | with a pagan God further research revealed the true |
| · | Further Research |
| 13:09 | · | context of the shield and a gig in 1977 Jurgen Anderson realized that |
| 13:17 | · | she had come from France and was found there and in Spain as much as in the |
| 13:22 | · | British Isles she was part of a new style of church decoration in the 11th |
| 13:28 | · | and 12th centuries called Romanesque and spread with the other motifs of |
| 13:36 | · | Romanesque along major pilgrimage routes |
| 13:41 | · | in 1984 Anthony Weir and James German confirmed this |
| 13:47 | · | and suggested that it was a warning against sins of the flesh the shielding |
| 13:52 | · | gigs were never beautiful they were always blatant and they were intended to |
| 13:57 | · | turn people off rather than turn them on there was no connection between them and |
| 14:05 | · | a goddess their case is now generally accepted but there may I think be an |
| 14:11 | · | exception to it in Ireland where the motif is often found on secular buildings and where the eye |
| 14:18 | · | cannot reach and can be linked to a genuine Irish folk tradition that a |
| 14:23 | · | woman could avert Evil by exposing her genitals to it |
| 14:29 | · | in Ireland's therefore the shield in a gig May indeed link into ancient Pagan |
| 14:35 | · | belief but that's not however the original point of the image which does |
| 14:41 | · | seem to have been to warn against lust and nor the usual meaning that seems to |
| 14:47 | · | have been placed upon it in medieval times which was that |
| · | Legal Records |
| 14:52 | · | now all those red herrings have been removed what actual evidence is there |
| 14:58 | · | for the survival of paganism in medieval Britain there are two bodies of directly |
| 15:06 | · | relevant material from opposite ends the Middle Ages and they both consist of legal records the |
| 15:15 | · | first comprises Anglo-Saxon law codes are danglosaxon Church Council decrees |
| 15:22 | · | that forbid Pagan practices among the recently converted English |
| 15:28 | · | and these prohibitions certainly exist in the 7th and early 8th centuries but |
| 15:36 | · | they die out in the course of the 8th Century by the time you reach 800 there |
| 15:42 | · | are no more being issued they then reappear in the 10th Century the 900s |
| 15:49 | · | but they are there to deal with newly arrived Pagan Viking settlers who had |
| 15:56 | · | just been converted officially to Christianity and that second series of |
| 16:01 | · | prohibitions also comes to an end in this case after 10 30. thereafter no |
| 16:10 | · | medieval British laws sermons or Publications forbid the worship of pagan |
| 16:17 | · | deities in Britain no matter how Evangelical and intolerant a Christian |
| 16:24 | · | the author at the other end of the Middle Ages in |
| · | Church Courts |
| 16:29 | · | the 15th century we have the records of church courts |
| 16:34 | · | that dealt with religious and moral offenses among local populations |
| 16:41 | · | certainly many people did offend the established Church's view of proper |
| 16:48 | · | religious belief and practice at that time there were plenty of people in some |
| 16:54 | · | areas with heretical Christian ideas who are known at the time by the umbrella |
| 17:00 | · | term of lollards and they are also a few Skeptics and scoffers especially in pubs |
| 17:08 | · | in the evening there is however nothing resembling paganism with the single |
| 17:15 | · | possible example of a guy I found in Hertfordshire who allegedly declared |
| 17:21 | · | that there were no Gods but the Sun and Moon he was however rather disappointingly |
| 17:27 | · | not a member of a cult or an advocate of the worship of the sun and moon but an |
| 17:35 | · | individual cynic indeed apprehended in a nail house suggesting that all religious |
| 17:40 | · | belief was pointless is it possible that pagans could have |
| 17:45 | · | continued to practice their religion in secret by this time without ever being |
| 17:51 | · | detected it seems very unlikely if the lollards |
| 17:56 | · | who did absolutely everything to conceal their beliefs and practices including |
| 18:01 | · | going regularly to the Parish Church ended up in court because they sooner or |
| 18:08 | · | later got detected and it does seem as if every lollard cell in the nation got apprehended at |
| 18:17 | · | one time or another something the church caught records bring home very strongly is the sheer |
| · | Nosiness |
| 18:24 | · | nosiness of ordinary people at the time and their strong sense of the need to |
| 18:30 | · | conform to communal Norms uh in that sense little changed in many areas to |
| 18:36 | · | the 20th century but the records of this in late medieval Church courts are |
| 18:42 | · | particularly striking I'll take an example from my own City of Bristol in |
| 18:48 | · | 191539 I am choosing Bristol not just because it's on my doorstep but because |
| 18:55 | · | the records there are very good and because it's big it's the second or |
| 19:00 | · | third biggest city in England or indeed Britain at that time and if you're going |
| 19:07 | · | to carry on something clandestinely it's notoriously easier to |
| 19:12 | · | do it in a big city than in the countryside because things there are more Anonymous it's much more easy to |
| 19:21 | · | escape the notice of people who tend to have other things in their mind rather than those living in rural communities |
| 19:27 | · | where nothing ever happens or changes for long periods and yet |
| 19:34 | · | it was actually very difficult even in Bristol to get away with the mildest of |
| 19:40 | · | infringements of expected Behavior my favorite case here is Marjorie Norful |
| · | Marjorie Norful |
| 19:49 | · | who was a bouncy Widow who arrived in Bristol from the countryside in that |
| 19:55 | · | year we don't know how her first husband died certainly he did so by the time she was |
| 20:02 | · | 26 and she came to Bristol with the declared attention of finding another |
| 20:08 | · | husband and she then proceeded to buy |
| 20:15 | · | several crates of wine to assist the process of inducing an atmosphere in |
| 20:21 | · | which proposals could take place and her first attempt was on an elderly |
| 20:27 | · | wealthy Clothier but it didn't work out she decided at |
| 20:34 | · | Close Quarters that she preferred a penniless young man to a wealthy Earls |
| 20:39 | · | one and so set about finding a handsome young man and she did his name was Thomas Jones |
| 20:47 | · | recommended to her by a friend in her lodgings who was a servant in Bristol so |
| 20:53 | · | she invited Tom Jones to come to the house when he arrived Marjorie produced a |
| 20:59 | · | bottle of wine and Witnesses reported that they sat at the table drinking wine |
| 21:05 | · | merrily together literally Sherry together it was Bristol after a Time |
| 21:11 | · | Thomas Jones announced that he must go because he had Folks at home and |
| 21:16 | · | therefore he was sorry Mary however refused to let him go but insisted he |
| 21:22 | · | should stay the night so that they could talk further Witnesses then saw Marjorie produce |
| 21:29 | · | another bottle of wine as they retired to her bed chamber the next day |
| 21:34 | · | Witnesses saw Marjorie and Thomas walking hand in hand in the garden and then sitting on a seat under a Woodbine |
| 21:42 | · | plant they then heard Marjorie say to Thomas let us not go inside here's a good place |
| 21:49 | · | for there are many folks Inside Yes there certainly were and they are all taking notes |
| 21:56 | · | and then she set the cloth there already and set her for them wine and Ale and |
| 22:03 | · | there they drank and were very merry together after some time Thomas again protested he was sorry but he must go |
| 22:11 | · | home to attend to his job and Witnesses heard Marjorie say to him uh with my |
| 22:18 | · | assumed accent remember she comes from Somerset what need you to be sorry go your |
| 22:24 | · | hometown to your Harvest for I am your wife and you be my husband and by my |
| 22:31 | · | faith and Truth we will never be departed till God depart us the witnesses watching through the |
| 22:38 | · | Parlor window saw that Thomas likewise took Marjorie by the hand and said by my |
| 22:45 | · | faith and truth I take you to be my wife Thomas then went home but a few days |
| 22:51 | · | later he sent a messenger with an expensive present of a string of coral |
| 22:56 | · | beads with Gordies of silver to Marjorie in the meantime however Marjorie had met |
| 23:03 | · | somebody else and refused to accept the beads saying |
| 23:09 | · | God make him a good man I will never have his tokens now the new man in her |
| 23:15 | · | life was a weaver called Thomas Hayward who was both young |
| 23:21 | · | and good-looking and wealthy and Marjorie solemnly got engaged to him |
| 23:27 | · | however following a complaint from Tom Marjorie got cited before the church |
| 23:32 | · | court for breach of contract and she lost the case we unfortunately don't |
| 23:38 | · | know what happened to her thereafter but given the fact that she was Marjorie I |
| 23:43 | · | imagine she made her own way well enough somewhere the point here is that uh this is a |
| 23:51 | · | common place and intimate and private series of conversations but everything |
| 23:57 | · | that Marjorie said or did with the men was observed and recorded by at least |
| 24:02 | · | two witnesses and this runs through the records people loved nothing more than entertainment |
| 24:09 | · | than observing their neighbors especially if their neighbors appear to be doing something wrong |
| · | Three Isolated Cases |
| 24:16 | · | between these two bodies of evidence are three isolated cases assembled by |
| 24:23 | · | Margaret Murray as evidence for continuing paganism the first was a Chronicle entry for 1282 |
| 24:32 | · | that the priest at inverkey in Scotland had forced The Village girls to dance |
| 24:39 | · | around a human image while he carried a carved phallus on a pearl this is |
| 24:45 | · | admittedly rather unpreast likely paver uh even for the 13th century |
| 24:52 | · | but he was not the leader of the Pagan Community but a lone Maniac who also |
| 24:57 | · | forced his parishioners to strip and whip each other until they murdered him |
| 25:03 | · | the second case was from Kent in 1313 where a man called Stephen Le Pope |
| 25:10 | · | worshiped images of goddesses and gods he'd made them set up in his garden |
| 25:16 | · | unfortunately after this promising beginning it turns out he was clearly |
| 25:21 | · | another solitary lunatic because he murdered his maid on the same night and |
| 25:28 | · | that's why he ended up in court finally in 1351 the monks of friffel |
| 25:34 | · | stock Priory Devon were accused by their local Bishop of Exeter |
| 25:39 | · | of running a fortune-telling racket for money and directing an image and this is |
| 25:45 | · | the interesting bit of proud or disobey and disobedient Eve or unchaste Diana |
| 25:52 | · | the Pagan goddess in their Chapel the interesting thing here though is the |
| 25:58 | · | monks protested it was actually an icon of the Virgin Mary and it must be |
| 26:04 | · | recognized the bishop concerned was a most unusual one a frenetic Evangelical |
| 26:10 | · | reformer who seemed bent in his time as Bishop on accusing practically everybody |
| 26:16 | · | if anything it may therefore be concluded there is no real evidence for genuine paganism in |
| 26:24 | · | Britain off to 10 30 ish defining genuine paganism as allegiance to |
| 26:31 | · | pre-christian goddesses and gods there's enormous amounts of images ideas |
| 26:38 | · | practices and Customs taken into medieval Christian culture from paganism |
| 26:44 | · | that it's all thoroughly assimilated to Christian culture |
| · | Polytheism |
| 26:50 | · | the obvious question to be posed is why this was and the answer offered here is |
| 26:58 | · | that medieval British Christianity made paganism unnecessary by reproducing its |
| 27:04 | · | features in a parallel form United to a very different theology |
| 27:09 | · | those features were number one polytheism paganism had many deities the equivalent |
| 27:18 | · | in Christianity was provided by Saints who are likewise of both sexes and with |
| 27:26 | · | many different individual areas of potency there were hundreds and hundreds from |
| 27:34 | · | whom to choose some had a very localized following Cornwall alone famously had schools |
| 27:42 | · | found there and nowhere else Saint Walston of Barbara |
| 27:47 | · | is a misspelling on the text was venerated by 20 parishes in Norfolk and |
| 27:54 | · | nowhere else and Saint Sidwell was a great favorite in Exeter and East Devon but not found |
| 28:02 | · | elsewhere just as with the relationship with Pagan |
| 28:08 | · | diocese the relationship with people of people with Saints was very ad hoc in |
| 28:15 | · | other words Pagan goddesses and gods had special areas of life or the world over |
| 28:21 | · | which they presided and certainly had a problem that area you went along to that |
| 28:27 | · | particular goddess or God and asked for help and medieval people did the same |
| 28:33 | · | thing with Saints they went to them for help when they had |
| 28:38 | · | specific problems such approaches could be much more important to ordinary common people than |
| · | Saints |
| 28:45 | · | mainstream religion in many ways the great Trinity God |
| 28:51 | · | Christ Holy Ghost or simply too important rather like |
| 28:57 | · | important people and medieval Britain they were simply Out Of Reach of commoners |
| 29:02 | · | and so people instinctually turn to Saints as they would to officials on the |
| 29:08 | · | manor or Parish officials to intercede with the higher-ups for them or simply |
| 29:15 | · | to help them because of their own specialties this remains a feature of traditional |
| 29:21 | · | Roman Catholic societies to this day in the French Department de Parma of legere |
| 29:30 | · | in the 1960s which is a rural uh |
| 29:35 | · | relatively economically impoverished area of France it was found |
| 29:42 | · | that five percent of the working class inhabitants had attended a service in |
| 29:48 | · | their Parish Church during the previous year but 49 of men and 78 of women had |
| 29:56 | · | visited a saint Shrine to pray and ask for help the saints were the religion of |
| 30:03 | · | ordinary people in legere as in medieval Britain |
| 30:09 | · | just like Pagan deities saints were patrons of specific trades age groups |
| 30:16 | · | cures for illnesses genders Nations regions farming processes and |
| 30:24 | · | animals some were clearly overworked |
| · | Natural Places |
| 30:31 | · | Saint Clement ended up patron of blacksmiths anchor makers iron workers |
| 30:37 | · | workers and Carpenters Saint Blaise cared for wool comers wax |
| 30:45 | · | Chandlers which is why he's got candles in his hand on the screen wild animals and appropriately for |
| 30:55 | · | somebody with a feast day in early February sore throats |
| 31:00 | · | like Pagan deities also natural places just Wells and trees were sacred to |
| 31:07 | · | Saints so those seeking their help didn't even need to enter a church if |
| 31:13 | · | they didn't wish it and these trees and Wells could be quite lonely wild places |
| 31:19 | · | where people could go discreetly in order to have a one-to-one with the |
| 31:25 | · | Saints concerned on the whole Pagan temples in Britain |
| 31:31 | · | were not changed directly into Christian churches nor Pagan deities into Saints |
| 31:40 | · | Pope Gregory the Great who said the first Christian missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons wrote a famous letter in |
| 31:49 | · | which he ordered that Pagan English temples be transformed into Christian |
| 31:54 | · | churches this however doesn't seem to have |
| 31:59 | · | happened perhaps because Gregory mistook the sort of temples they had in |
| 32:06 | · | Pagan England for the great stone temples of his very |
| 32:12 | · | own Rome which could make Splendid churches instead the Anglo-Saxons had flimsy little wooden shrines |
| 32:19 | · | which were simply not suitable as communal Christian places of worship |
| 32:26 | · | just for the record and this I admit stunned me |
| 32:31 | · | only 33 out of around one and a half thousand |
| 32:36 | · | medieval Parish churches in Britain have been shown to have had any apparent |
| 32:43 | · | pre-christian activity religious or secular on their site |
| 32:49 | · | no British Saints seem to have been former Pagan deities in contrast the |
| 32:57 | · | situation in Ireland and Continental Europe where you do seem to have a few |
| 33:02 | · | goddesses and gods turned directly into Christian Saints the outstanding Irish |
| 33:08 | · | case being Bridget even sacred Waters have little overlap |
| 33:15 | · | the medieval British Christians had lots of holy Wells so had the Pagan British |
| 33:24 | · | but there's little continuity major Pagan sacred Springs such as coventeen |
| 33:32 | · | as well at karabara up on Hadrian's Wall and the wonderful hot Waters of the |
| 33:39 | · | Goddess sulis Minerva at bath were not apparently christianized |
| 33:44 | · | conversely only one medieval Christian holywell at low later than Essex |
| 33:52 | · | has evidence of cult activity in Pagan times as well |
| 33:58 | · | Christianity in Britain seems therefore not to have adapted Pagan buildings |
| 34:06 | · | deities and locations for its use so much as to |
| 34:13 | · | have provided a similar but parallel service and this parallel service is reflected |
| 34:21 | · | in church buildings so that by 1500 the average Parish |
| 34:26 | · | Church contained anything from 3 to 30 shrines dedicated to Saints who weren't |
| 34:34 | · | the parish patron saints and sometimes more than 30. many of these were |
| 34:42 | · | constructed and maintained and served by guilds local societies dedicated to the |
| 34:50 | · | Saints concerned which maintained their own priests and were open to all but the |
| 34:56 | · | very poor you could be a member of most Parish guilds for a subscription of a |
| 35:01 | · | penny a year and there were of many many different |
| 35:07 | · | kinds there were Parish guilds for the young Parish gills for the elderly |
| 35:13 | · | women's only gills men's only guilds and guilds serving the whole range of crafts |
| 35:20 | · | and occupations found in the parish and again these are a parallel service to |
| 35:28 | · | Pagan organizations they are the medieval Christian equivalent to the |
| 35:34 | · | Priestly colleges or the mystery religions dedicated to particular goddesses and gods that you find in |
| 35:42 | · | Roman Britain the Second Great area of parallel is |
| 35:48 | · | festivals just as in Pagan times so in the Christian Middle Ages seasonal |
| 35:55 | · | festivals were the main religious events there weren't any laws compelling people |
| 36:02 | · | to attend church regularly before the 1550s |
| 36:08 | · | an occasional local snapshots show that even in towns where churches are really |
| 36:14 | · | easy to reach compared to the countryside about half of parishioners didn't go |
| 36:21 | · | regularly the churches were however crowded out |
| 36:26 | · | for the big spectacular annual calendar Feasts |
| 36:31 | · | parishioners sang in The Dawn together on Christmas Day for the end of the |
| 36:36 | · | winter solstice the returning of the light as well as the Nativity they had |
| 36:41 | · | candles blessed at candleness in February to represent new light |
| 36:47 | · | to hold up fire against the dark to drive it back and welcome becoming |
| 36:53 | · | spring parishion has brought new foliage to be blessed on Palm Sunday and to protect |
| 37:01 | · | and decorate their homes and attended the drama of the resurrection of Christ on Easter Day |
| 37:07 | · | represented by a consecrated wafer of bread taken from a miniature tomb |
| 37:15 | · | in May clergy-led regation tied processions to bless the growing crops |
| 37:21 | · | of the area and on Whit Sunday a white dove was released in the church to |
| 37:27 | · | symbolize the Holy Spirit otherwise |
| 37:33 | · | the priests were there to celebrate Services themselves regularly on behalf |
| 37:39 | · | of all parishioners including all those absent just as Pagan priests had maintained |
| 37:47 | · | temples and kept up the regular rights there on behalf of the community |
| · | Secular revelry |
| 37:52 | · | parishioners provided the images hangings carvings gilding incense and |
| 38:00 | · | music churches were really houses of God |
| 38:07 | · | and the priest functioned as the housekeeper and people turned up there when they |
| 38:15 | · | wished or when things were exciting scriptural meanings were imposed on |
| 38:20 | · | Ancient calendar Feasts but the feasts themselves were kept going |
| 38:25 | · | traditional secular revelry converged with religions the Middle Ages went on |
| 38:31 | · | so that may games Village summer feasts and collections by plowboys in January |
| 38:38 | · | all came to be means of raising funds for the Parish Church what had happened |
| 38:44 | · | here is something quite remarkable in the earlier parts of the Middle Ages |
| 38:49 | · | and up to the 13th century Christian churchmen regularly condemned the |
| 38:55 | · | traditional seasonal festivities of the populace as a temptation to sin mostly |
| 39:02 | · | the sins of drunkenness and fornication but in the 14th and 15th centuries |
| 39:09 | · | increasingly the church claimed those very same festivities as a means of |
| 39:15 | · | raising cash for the parish and the result was sensationally successful so |
| 39:22 | · | that by 1500 in most parishes all the expenses of maintaining the church |
| 39:29 | · | physically were paid for by Fun by the proceeds of popular and extremely well |
| 39:37 | · | attended rounds of traditional Neri making Morris dancing Naples Robin Hood Games |
| 39:46 | · | all sorts of traditional dances plays and Feasts and now the proceeds going to |
| 39:54 | · | the church the devil had been cheated even the merry-making we should at first |
| 40:00 | · | been condemned by churchmen as leading to sin became harnessed to pay for |
| 40:06 | · | worship and the proceeds were so considerable that rates |
| 40:14 | · | the local taxes levied upon parishioners to pay for the church could be abolished |
| 40:19 | · | in most English parishioners because Mary England had taken their place |
| · | Feminine power |
| 40:25 | · | there was also a place for the feminine the medieval Christian church had ample |
| 40:32 | · | space for feminine power human and divine about half of All Saints were women led |
| 40:40 | · | by Mary the Queen of Heaven herself whose images took on trappings from the |
| 40:46 | · | Pagan goddesses Juno Venus and Diana women functioned as Parish Church |
| 40:53 | · | wardens and Guild members with equal rights honorees gave them private religious |
| 41:00 | · | spaces and some women made great reputations as Hermits and authors such |
| 41:07 | · | as Julian of Norwich all this served to erect a thick scream at Parish level |
| 41:14 | · | before a fundamentally patriarchal religion and the fourth parallel was that in |
| · | Sacrifice |
| 41:22 | · | medieval Christianity as an ancient paganism the central ritual Act was |
| 41:28 | · | sacrifice but pagans had sacrificed animals and then |
| 41:34 | · | ate them so that a pagan sacrifice was part act of worship and part barbecue |
| 41:41 | · | they also poured Libations of their favorite drinks and they burned incense |
| 41:48 | · | a sacrifice Christianity replaced all this with the self-sacrifice of the |
| 41:55 | · | divine Savior of the religion commemorated by offering up his body and |
| 42:00 | · | blood symbolically in the mass and this was the essential right that had to be |
| 42:07 | · | celebrated regularly preaching by contrast was popular if you had a good |
| 42:13 | · | preacher but not essential and you usually had a good preacher because |
| 42:18 | · | preaching was provided from the 13th century often in Market places or at |
| 42:24 | · | roadside Crosses by professionals the Friars who turned areas |
| 42:31 | · | providing a road show of first class lecturing for the locals |
| 42:39 | · | the priests who served parishes were not required to preach or even to be |
| 42:45 | · | literate and were generally local and Ordinary People risen from the parish or |
| 42:52 | · | the district to serve it related to and relating to the ordinary parishioners |
| 42:59 | · | and to judge from the comparative absence of litigation against them in |
| 43:05 | · | the late Middle Ages they were generally popular looking to the Future |
| · | Looking to the Future |
| 43:11 | · | it's clear that both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic counter-reformation which began together |
| 43:18 | · | in the 16th century represented a massive reaction by the |
| 43:24 | · | leaders of European and indeed British Christianity to end this system of |
| 43:31 | · | medieval religion by then the intellectuals and the presiding figures |
| 43:37 | · | of the western church had come to think that Christianity had become altogether |
| 43:43 | · | too decentralized folky straying away from the central figures of the Trinity |
| 43:50 | · | and its basis in Scripture and both movements Protestants and |
| 43:57 | · | Catholic sought more uniformity better central control |
| 44:03 | · | better education especially for clergy and a piety more closely based upon the |
| 44:10 | · | Bible the Trinity and the key teachings of the church |
| 44:15 | · | in the British case protestantism which became within two generations the |
| 44:22 | · | religion of 95 of the British got rid of the Saints |
| 44:28 | · | the mass Church decorations the place of women in |
| 44:34 | · | the church festive customs and secular merry-making |
| 44:39 | · | the link between merry-making and fundraising was broken as sinful and |
| 44:46 | · | rates and Pew rents were imposed instead to raise the money |
| 44:51 | · | to pay for the church it was a self-conscious removal of pagan |
| 44:57 | · | parallels and it was hoped that what would result as an end to this process would be a |
| 45:05 | · | much more Orthodox uniform fervent educated informed and inspired kind of |
| 45:14 | · | Christianity that will get everybody to Heaven a great deal more easily |
| 45:21 | · | instead what it did was shatter Christian Unity because Protestants all |
| 45:27 | · | over Europe including Britain began very soon to quarrel amongst themselves over |
| 45:33 | · | right belief and right practice and in the 17th century the |
| · | Religious Pluralism |
| 45:41 | · | relatively uniform if unstable Protestant churches of England and |
| 45:47 | · | Scotland shattered in the bloodiest civil wars that both Nations have ever |
| 45:53 | · | known indeed in terms of percentage of population dead the bloodiest Wars the |
| 45:58 | · | British have ever known and the damage was irreparable |
| 46:04 | · | after those Civil Wars the norm was not that of uniform Protestant churches with |
| 46:13 | · | a few Catholic dissidents but established Protestant churches with |
| 46:19 | · | huge numbers of other kinds of Protestants Presbyterians congregationalists United |
| 46:25 | · | reformed Quakers Baptists etc etc religious pluralism |
| 46:33 | · | and in many ways religious chaos within the boundaries of a well-run state |
| 46:38 | · | became the norm this was in many ways a very good thing because learning to live |
| 46:45 | · | with diversity as the British reluctantly had to do produced a much |
| 46:51 | · | more tolerant diverse and dynamic and extremely successful culture to make the |
| 46:58 | · | transition into modest into modernity that the result by the late 20th century |
| 47:06 | · | has become in many ways a modern version of the medieval situation and religion |
| 47:11 | · | with added pluralism in other words whatever people's denomination it tends |
| 47:17 | · | to be the priests or ministers who keep churches going while among the lay |
| 47:23 | · | population it's The Devout who choose to attend religious worship |
| 47:30 | · | you can see a snapshot of this in the 1990s when it was found that 10 percent |
| 47:36 | · | of the British went to church or Chapel regularly but 62 percent believed in God |
| 47:43 | · | however defined 65 percent interestingly |
| 47:49 | · | still profess to be Christian including three percent there who don't believe in God |
| 47:54 | · | and 90 celebrated Christmas |
| 48:00 | · | all that's changed since in that is that the percentage going to church from the |
| 48:05 | · | chapel regularly has diminished still further and the number of people professing no religion in the nation has |
| 48:13 | · | at last risen to be the greatest single group interestingly among the new forms of |
| 48:21 | · | religious pluralism to appear in the 20th century was a revived paganism |
| 48:27 | · | to complicate and round off to date the British religious picture |
| 48:33 | · | that that however is a story for another course of these |
| 48:39 | · | lectures and so I earned this course of lectures on the edge of a Vista of more |
| 48:47 | · | [Applause] |
| · | Questions |
| 49:00 | · | Professor Hutton thank you again for another fascinating lecture we've got time for some questions so what I will |
| 49:06 | · | do is I'll open it up to our in-person audience here before I take any from our |
| 49:11 | · | online audience so show of hands for me anybody who's got the question for Professor Hutton |
| 49:17 | · | a couple here thank you Professor Hudson um appreciate very much what you said |
| 49:24 | · | um just interested where you think woe didn't figures in all of this |
| 49:30 | · | with the Advent of the Saxons of course and leftovers from ancient Britain when |
| 49:36 | · | the Romans left thank you werdin certainly features in this because he is |
| 49:42 | · | preserved in late that's Christian Anglo-Saxon healing charms spells which |
| 49:50 | · | are recorded dutifully by monks as effective against various forms of |
| 49:55 | · | disease and physical Affliction which call upon woden as a helpful Spirit we |
| 50:03 | · | have no idea how much the monks concerns knew who woden was still or what |
| 50:09 | · | attitude they had to him but these charms are clearly pre-christian |
| 50:15 | · | or their the charms are based on pre-christian charms and they were |
| 50:20 | · | preserved because people respected their reputed effectiveness it would be wonderful if woden was still |
| 50:26 | · | there in the charms of the later Middle Ages but he doesn't survive the Anglo-Saxon period |
| 50:32 | · | thank you you said it's deserve no positive belief in pagan gods was there |
| 50:38 | · | skepticism of any of any God was there a it's an Atheism in that period yes uh |
| 50:46 | · | it's it's difficult to be an atheist and medieval or early modern Britain because the penalty is death |
| 50:53 | · | and therefore it's all the more significant that uh there's a steady |
| 51:00 | · | trickle of cases and the church courts of people who seem invariably to have |
| 51:06 | · | been drunk in the village pub or the parish in uh |
| 51:12 | · | who sound off about how can anybody believe in this Tosh and it's all dearly |
| 51:17 | · | reported by their neighbors now we we don't know um how many went unreported because |
| 51:24 | · | their neighbors were benign or because their neighbors agreed with them what one can say is that skepticism is |
| 51:31 | · | definitely there the um |
| 51:36 | · | or when we say counterfeit reparation period |
| 51:41 | · | um with the rise in witchcraft |
| 51:47 | · | in Europe which is almost outside of what you're |
| 51:54 | · | talking about because malice [Music] um |
| 52:00 | · | was 1485. so |
| 52:06 | · | um how does this link in terms of England |
| 52:14 | · | it certainly reached England because uh Britain had some of the most vicious |
| 52:20 | · | persecutions of alleged witches in Europe in fact of the three worst areas |
| 52:28 | · | for Witch Trials one was Scotland Scotland because it has a decentralized |
| 52:33 | · | system of justice uh executed round about two and a half three |
| 52:40 | · | thousand people uh for alleged witchcraft whereas England with five |
| 52:45 | · | times the population executed four to five hundred because it had a centralized and more professional |
| 52:52 | · | system of justice not because it was nicer but the connection with paganism is very |
| 52:59 | · | tenuous the tenuous connection is that pagans believed in Witchcraft and in |
| 53:05 | · | some cases persecuted it just as severely as Christians were to do there |
| 53:11 | · | was a a lull in which persecution in the Early Middle Ages largely because of a |
| 53:17 | · | problem for Christians which is if you have an all-powerful omnipresent single good God |
| 53:26 | · | how can this person license evil human beings to work evil magic and this acts |
| 53:34 | · | as a break on which trials for about a thousand years and then in the 15th |
| 53:39 | · | century Christian theology mutates to the idea that God has licensed the |
| 53:46 | · | devil to empower evil people with magic to hurt their neighbors and Christianity |
| 53:52 | · | to test Faith before the end of the world and therefore the laws are changed |
| 53:58 | · | to bring back the death penalty for witchcraft and lots of ancient fears and |
| 54:05 | · | beliefs which had never quite been eradicated now explode upwards and |
| 54:11 | · | create a bloodbath which we call the great Witch Hunt I've had a question come through from |
| · | Mummers Plays |
| 54:18 | · | the online audience very quickly um did the Mummers plays portray pagan |
| 54:23 | · | origins no is the answer plays are certainly |
| 54:28 | · | Pagan we've always had them perform we've always had the performed at mid-winter like Mama's plays but mama's |
| 54:36 | · | plays are an 18th century craze they appear in the mid-18th century |
| 54:43 | · | spread by printed texts and you can see why they sweep England and some other |
| 54:50 | · | bits of Britain because their knockout comedy and they're very elastic with a |
| 54:56 | · | stock bunch of characters you can pack in all sorts of topical references and |
| 55:01 | · | local jokes and also so it has the twin benefit of being spontaneous and full of |
| 55:10 | · | surprises and yet it's basically so well known that the audience can shout the |
| 55:15 | · | punch lines at particular times and it becomes the favorite drama of the |
| 55:22 | · | southern English at midwinter by the early 19th century then it begins to |
| 55:27 | · | become boring and it starts to die out just in time for folkloris who have no |
| 55:33 | · | idea of its Origins to encounter it around 1900 and think it's Neolithic |
| 55:38 | · | we've had some really very good Research into its Origins recently the 18th |
| 55:44 | · | century origin seems pretty clear even if some of the characters and lines are taken from 16th 17th century popular |
| 55:52 | · | drama and literature thank you very much in your coverage of |
| · | Harvest Festivals |
| 55:58 | · | the various festivals seasonal festivals I think there's one you didn't mention it's one I rather like because there's |
| 56:04 | · | no real theology attached to it that's Harvest festivals and what's the history |
| 56:09 | · | of those I left them out because they didn't appear in parishes till the |
| 56:15 | · | Victorian period uh before then uh they were they were represented by Harvest |
| 56:22 | · | suppers and the Harvest supper was what a farmer would give the people who'd |
| 56:28 | · | helped him reap his crop at the end uh the hands were all given a slap up |
| 56:33 | · | dinner the best the farmer could afford in The Farmhouse kitchen often with |
| 56:38 | · | music and dancing as well but in the 19th century recently farmers were not |
| 56:45 | · | just starting to mechanize but they are also giving wages in money to their |
| 56:50 | · | laborers and didn't see why they had to pay in kind as well at the end and so as |
| 56:56 | · | the parish supper the Harvest suppers died out the vacuum was filled by a |
| 57:02 | · | communal and all Village celebration the Harvest Festival |
| · | Unique Saints |
| 57:07 | · | um I was just wondering if um the unique Saints we find in corn or |
| 57:14 | · | aren't a product of pagan syncretism do we have any idea where they did come from well the answer is no not really |
| 57:21 | · | but uh medieval people had an idea where they came from they virtually all come |
| 57:27 | · | from Wales uh which seems to have been according to early medieval Cornish |
| 57:34 | · | tradition was a missionary Powerhouse that sent out its its spare Saints to |
| 57:39 | · | Cornwall Devon and indeed Brittany where where I lost them ended up uh because |
| 57:46 | · | our only Authority for this is later medieval lives which may all be fiction |
| 57:51 | · | uh we we actually don't know all we can say is we've never yet found a Romano |
| 57:59 | · | British inscription to a goddess or God who has the same name even in earlier form as a medieval saint hi I was struck |
| 58:08 | · | by um what you said about the how few churches can be connected to Pagan |
| 58:15 | · | locations either structures or locations of worship and I know that um |
| 58:22 | · | quite a few people out there you know it's repeated that a lot of churches are connected to Pagan locations you know |
| 58:29 | · | people talk about you trees in church arts and stuff and I just wondered how can you be so definitive because I I |
| 58:36 | · | imagine a lot of pagan worship uh was I mean I don't know enough about it but there weren't actually any structures |
| 58:42 | · | you know they weren't temples as such that could well be the case uh all that |
| 58:47 | · | we can say is that where pagans regularly celebrated you find the |
| 58:53 | · | archaeological remains of Feasts sacrifices and offerings and in the more |
| 59:01 | · | up markets the more important places altars inscriptions and carvings as well |
| 59:07 | · | uh you'd expect more of these underneath medieval Christian churches that you |
| 59:13 | · | don't find them in virtually all cases so much so that the emission must be |
| 59:20 | · | deliberate there was a great misunderstanding |
| 59:25 | · | produced by a popular writer in the Edwardian period not not an academic who |
| 59:31 | · | declared with no fear and no research but in a wonderfully well-written book |
| 59:36 | · | that every English Parish church has a prehistoric Stone Circle underneath it |
| 59:43 | · | and that just went into General belief it began to ebb and then Along Came the |
| 59:49 | · | yew trees the yew trees are there because of a literal dreamer a wonderful |
| 59:55 | · | Visionary called Alan Meredith who literally dreams that you trees were |
| 1:00:00 | · | telling him the secret of how to judge their age botanically you can't date a |
| 1:00:06 | · | yew tree doesn't have tree rings you can't tell how old it is by examining it looking at it so they could be really |
| 1:00:13 | · | really really old but they might not be as old as oak trees we just don't know but Meredith's dreams gave him a form of |
| 1:00:21 | · | calibration and he then announced as proven fact that enabled him to date you |
| 1:00:27 | · | trees to thousands of years and this then persuaded people like David Bellamy |
| 1:00:32 | · | the TV botanist who went around dating new trees all over the country and churchyard to the new stone age and the |
| 1:00:39 | · | Bronze Age and that gave a great boost to the idea these churchyards were Pagan |
| 1:00:45 | · | holy places uh in fact we still have no evidence that anyu tree is actually over |
| 1:00:52 | · | a thousand years in age almost certainly some are but but very very few and the |
| 1:00:58 | · | evidence is still lacking so there's a great deal of 20th century folklore involved in this yes evidence absence of |
| 1:01:07 | · | evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence in this case but |
| 1:01:13 | · | given quite how much evidence pagans piled up in places where they did |
| 1:01:18 | · | celebrate their religion the omission of it underneath Christian churches is |
| 1:01:25 | · | noteworthy thank you very much for your questions and Professor Hutton thank you for |
| 1:01:30 | · | taking us on this journey this year to find the lost gods of Britain next series will be on Magic the Supernatural |
| 1:01:39 | · | and the lost gods of Europe so we hope you can all join us then thank you very much again |
| 1:01:45 | · | thank you |
| 1:01:55 | · | next year it gets down and dangerous we're going to go to some of the darker |
| 1:02:00 | · | and the creepier and the most exciting places of pagan Europe |
