Note: graphics haven't been added yet, but will be available on the open access publication Vol V on the Suppressed Histories site coming soon—including a photo essay on Smashed Goddesses for this chapter, showing the systemic destruction.

Attacks on pagan shrines continued through the 400s. It was in this century that the celebrated sculptures of Pheidias were destroyed. His colossal statue of Athena survived in Athens until about 480 CE. [MacMullen, 189 n. 66] Countless other sculptures, many of great antiquity, were crushed, burned, and melted down. Natural sanctuaries were also destroyed in a campaign against everything that had previously been held sacred. In the first half of the century, monks chopped down ancient trees in the grove sanctuaries of Bithynia (northwest Asia Minor. [Chuvin, 80-1] In the following century, bishop John of Ephesus cut down sacred trees in Lydia, and so did monks in the region of Chalcedon (also in Bithynia). [MacMullen, 197 fn112]

Bishop Martin of Tours, an ex-soldier, led bands of monks in cutting down sacred trees and destroying temples in the Loire valley. “His methods were violent and confrontational: disruption of pagan cult, demolition of pagan edifices.” [Fletcher, 43] His biographer acknowledged that Gallic defenders of the temples were very numerous, but claimed that miracles allowed the monk to raze them and destroy the pagan icons. [Holland-Smith, 176-7] Even Christian historians suspect that the “heavenly” warriors reported to have come to Martin’s assistance took the more carnal form of ordinary soldiers. [Fletcher, 45] (State military backup for zealots destroying pagan shrines and statues continued to be the pattern under the Frankish kings.)

Martin’s Vita recounts how the pagans yielded to the destruction of their temple, but balked when he tried to cut down a pine tree. [Vita Martini, in McKenna, 104] Once, “when in a certain village he had set fire to a most ancient and celebrated shrine” the flames spread to a house. He tried to destroy a rich temple in Leprosum, but “a mob of pagans withstood him.” [Holland-Smith, 176-7]

  Martin also destroyed temples in Burgundy, where archaeologists have dated a pile of demolished statues of divinities at Avallon to the late 300s. The headwaters temple of Sequana, goddess of the Seine river, was destroyed around the same time. [Fletcher, 46] Paulinus of Nola attested that the destruction was “happening throughout Gaul.” [Fletcher, 46] Pamela Berger points to shattered pieces of pagan statues recovered from Roman wells and building foundations. Most goddess statues discovered by archaelogists had been decapitated and mutilated. Berger sums it up: “As the early medieval texts corroborate, the struggle against this ancient deity was ferocious.” [Berger, 31]

Smashers of sacred images were active in Spain, Gaul and other Roman provinces. Archaeologists have turned up “great amounts of minutely smashed building elements and statuary in or near holy places, most but not all in Gaul...” [MacMullen, 67] Judging from the dates on coins offered at these shrines, the destruction dates from the late 300s and into the 400s. Iconoclastic smashers were also active in destroying cultural legacies in Britain, in Italy, and along the Danube. [MacMullen, 199 n. 123]

Goddess thrown into a well at St-Aubin-sur-Mer in northwestern France

A statue of an enthroned goddess with two devotees was discovered broken and thrown into a well at the entrance of a temple at St-Aubin-sur-Mer in Calvados, near Caen. The heads of other Gaulish goddesses were struck off or mutilated. Pagans may have tried to protect their statues by hiding them. When the British temple of Coventina came under attack, it appears that votaries concealed her stone altar reliefs by dropping them into her well, intact, to be rediscovered fifteen centuries later. [Ross, 30]

In other cases the triumphant creed used pagan altar stones as building blocks, as happened to a Matres stone and an altar inscribed for a temple of Isis in Britain. They were incorporated into the foundations of a late Roman wall at Blackfriars in London. [Henig, 1984] At Noyers-sur-Surein in France, a roughly carved stone goddess was found concealed at the base of a wall, her face turned to the ground. [Thevenot, 169-70]

The extent of ruination can hardly be imagined from our standpoint sixteen centuries later. Of the thousands of temples that once stood around the Mediterranean and inland in Asia, Europe, and Africa, relatively few survive, and those in ruins. No one seems to have attempted a catalog of the lost temples, much less the statues. But we know of many great temples that once existed, and were destroyed in the forcible christianization of the Roman empire. They include the Artemision of Ephesus, famously demolished by monks in late 4th century CE, and the stone burnt for lime, or carted off for other buildings. Only one pillar still stands.

The lone remaining pillar of the great Artemision of Ephesus

There are the temples of Kybele at Cyzicus, Phrygia (now Turkey) and in Rome (where Vatican now stands), and countless others in Greece, Spain, France, and other imperial provinces. We’d have to count the renowned temples of Ma of Comana, and those of Atargatis at Hierapolis, Syria, and Ashkelon, Israel/Palestine, and the mile-long temple of Caelestis at Carthage. The list includes the temples of Astarte in Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos, and of Aphrodite at Paphos, Cyprus, and at Aphrodisias (Turkey), and the temples of Diana at Ariccia and Nemi.

Others survived, often by being reconscrated to Mary, like the Parthenon and countless other temple sites. The oracular temples at Delphi and Dodona survive in ruins, as does the gigantic Temple of Fortuna at Pozzuoli, Italy. The Temple of Isis at Philae remained in place, only to be removed from its original island in the late 1960s to save it from flooding from the Aswan dam project. The destructions did not reach the more southerly Kemetic temples, such as the Temple of HatHor at Denderah, that of Mut in Luxor, or the great complex at Karnak.

Stone tablet of a Gaulish triple goddess. Metz.

  Around 417, the Roman prefect Claudius Rutilius Namatianus commented on the religious conflict in Gaul, and paradoxically, on the syncretism that was already merging pagan goddesses with the Christian Mary:

You realize that there appears to exist a fierce struggle between all the chiefs gathered at Metz; it's about who will break or transform the most images accepted by a religion other than his own. In these last days, I saw 30 or 40 people at a street corner kneeling in front of a woman's statue, represented veiled with a hanging breast; there were Christians and pagans mixed together, some adoring a certain Virgin who they called Maria, and the others a goddess Maire, genetrix or nourisher; some called her Isis, the messenger of propitious dreams. [Witkowski, 22; see also Hyde, 54]

Reverence for a divine Mother seems to be the one thing these religions had in common. Similarly, MacMullen describes “the mix of votive offerings from petitioners of both faiths at, for instance, the Corinthian Fountain of the Lamps.” [MacMullen, 118] Examples of this could be multiplied, but Christians offered numerous female figurines of ancient type at the tomb of the Coptic saint Mena near Alexandria. Some took the classic moldmade kourotrophos form familiar at temples of goddesses all over the Mediterranean, others with hands to the breasts, and many others with skirts modeled in a triangle pattern that suggests the vulva, some holding offering baskets or bowls. They seem likely to be votive offerings from women seeking conception or protection through pregnancy and childbirth, observances far older than Christianity. [Frankfurter 2010: 2]

Votive figurines offered at the tomb of St. Mena, west of Alexandria

  Copts continued to carve and weave the Ankh, symbol of life, sometimes merging it with the cross, and orante figures based on the classic Kemetic gesture of adoration. They also wove figures of Nereids riding on sea creatures, garment medallions of Aphrodite or Ariadne, and a black Artemis flanked by dancers.

THE GODDESS VEILED

Goddess veneration continued under a Christian umbrella, especially through prayers to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. The Egyptians conferred upon Mary an ancient praise name of Isis: Mother of God (Theotokos in Greek, “god-bearer”). First used at Alexandria in the late 200s, this title was adopted across the empire and was thoroughly absorbed into Catholic and Orthodox religion. [Hyde, 54] Its Greek form and Russian equivalent, Bogoroditsa, is still used in liturgy today. The most popular Catholic prayer, the Ave Maria, also calls on “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” but this last portion was added on in the middle ages. [hozana.org/en/prayer/hail-mary/origin ]

The statuettes of Isis holding Horus, popular for so many centuries, inspired the genre of Christian Madonnas that attracted devotion for most of the next two millennia. Prelates tried, without success, to keep the people from adoring Mary. They faced fierce resistance. Epiphanius of Salamis scolded in vain, “Let no one worship Mary.” [Panarion 3. 2. 7] Churchgoers hissed at such sermons that condemned Marian devotion, and sometimes expressed their displeasure more dramatically:  

When Dorotheus shouted, ‘If anyone says that Mary is Theotokos let him be anathema,’ the congregation made a great uproar in protest and stampeded out of the church. [Drinker, 152]

Popular pressure to recognize Mary as the Divine Mother built to such a pitch that in 431 bishop Nestorius of Constantinople was put on trial for denying her sanctity. This event took place at a church council in Ephesus, the ancient city of Artemis. As the bishops debated, crowds gathered outside, shouting “Hail Mary, Mother and Virgin.” When the Nestorian faction was defeated, the populace took to the streets in a triumphal procession. [Drinker, 152]

However, dirty politics played a big part in the triumph of the Marian faction. It owed much to the machinations of Cyril of Alexandria, author of the Alexandrian pogrom and Hypatia's assassination. He had destroyed temples and heterodox churches in his native Egypt. Anticipating that the Syrians would side with the Nestorians, he started the council before their delegation had arrived. Meanwhile crowds of demonstrators indulged in bloody brawls. Mobs invaded meetings of the Nestorians and beseiged their lodgings, so that troops were called in to quell the rioters.

Both Cyril and his opponents had zealously repressed “heretics.” Now they took to accusing each other. The council halls rang with shouts of “Whoever dares to say that [X] ... let him be anathema.” When the Syrians arrived, they joined in the combat. The bishops split into two councils, each denouncing the other. At last, the conference had to be dissolved to restore order. In the end, some bishops were forced to denounce Nestorius to avoid being condemned themselves as heretics. [Hefele, II.1, 268-419]

These battles continued and expanded to include the Monophysite controversy. More verbal duels and trials followed, with much theological hair-splitting and vituperation. At a second council of Ephesus in 449, there came cries of “Drive out Eusebius, burn him! let him be cut to pieces!” [LeClerc's commentary in Hefèle, II.1, 499-538, corrects the latter's underplaying of the viciousness of this conflict.] Things had gone far, far beyond the Beatitudes uttered by Rav Yeshua of Nazareth. An observant Jew, he would have been aghast at the doctrines that both sides of gentiles were propagating in his name.

Temples into Churches

Christianization of the Mediterranean proceeded by reabsorbing the Mother Goddess under the name of Mary. An early church of the Theotokos was built upon a goddess shrine in Beirut. [Moore, 20] Lebanese grottoes, shrines of Astarte bearing “the symbols of the ancient worship of Canaan,” were rededicated to the Virgin Mary. [Wood-Martin 1895: 48] In Cyprus, the temples of Aphrodite were converted into Marian churches, though people continued praying to the pagan goddess in them. [Walker, 609] In Palestine itself, a church commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus was built over a Hellenistic temple of Venus. [Allegro, 140]

Shrines to the Virgin Mary arose “in many places where Cybele was worshipped.” [Vermaseren •••] The church of Madonna Nera (Milady Black) was built on the ruins of Cybele's temple in Tindari, Sicily. [Moss/Cappanari •••] The Roman church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (“over Minerva”) was built over an old shrine of the Etrusco-Roman goddess, to which temples to Isis and Serapis had been added. That of Santa Maria Maggiore is said to have been built over a temple of the Phrygian Magna Mater Kybele. 

In Armenia, the king ordered the temples of Anahita destroyed upon his conversion in 314, but transferred her consecrated objects to the Christian goddess. (Though the hierarchy did not regard Mary in this pagan light, they were acutely aware that her devotees did. This was a calculated move to transfer popular loyalties to a Christian context.) A “girdle of Mary” (with strong resonances to the belts of Isis and Aphrodite, was brought to Constantinople from Zela, site of an ancient Anatolian temple of Anahita. [Lane Fox, 528]

Artemis Ephesia, like her western counterpart Diana, was pointedly not absorbed into a sycretic cult of the saints. Her festival was still being celebrated around 430 in the Chalcedon region of northwest Asia Minor, according to the Vita Hypatii: “people kept the so-called ‘Kalathos’ to the horrible Artemis each year, over five days.” (In this ceremony, maidens carried baskets in procession, as of old. An inscription on the base of a toppled statue of the goddess exults in the destruction of idolatry: “Destroying the deceitful figure of the demon Artemis..." [MacMullen, 181 fn22; 52] 

The Ephesian temple of Artemis, already in ruins, was demolished in 401. The emperor removed its colossal porphyry pillars and had them transported to Constantinople to be incorporated into the Hagia Sophia cathedral. [Holland-Smith, 234] This Byzantine church of “Holy Wisdom” was not consecrated to Mary, like so many later cathedrals in the West, but to the feminine Holy Spirit. Orthodox Greeks retained Sophia as the female aspect of the trinity long after Gnostic scriptures had demoted her, while the Catholic priesthood had discarded her. Overall, the Greek Orthodox recognized few female saints; but a reverence for black saints persisted.

The Parthenon itself was converted into a church of Hagia Sophia, harking back to Athena’s attribute of Wisdom. In 869 it was made into the cathedral of Athens, and later christened the church of Our Lady the Athenian. Under the Turkish domination, it was turned into a mosque. [“Agreement between ‘God's Temple’ and Idols in Greece,” The Watchtower, Vol. 118, #4, Feb. 15, 1997] Other old Greek goddess symbols, titles and festivals were transferred over to Mary. In Crete, Artemis was replaced by “Virgin Mary of the Bear,” and the festival of Panagia Arkondiotissa (“All-Holy Bear Goddess”) came to be celebrated on February 2 at the cave of Akrotiri. [Gimbutas 1982: 200]

The temple of Hera at Paestum, Italy, had been a focal point of goddess veneration for a thousand years. The worship of Bona Dea was transplanted there during the Roman Republic, and under the empire an Iseum was established in honor of the Nubian goddess. [Cumont 1956] Under the new Christian order, Hera was renamed Our Lady with the Pomegranate—an attribute she shared with other Mediterranean goddesses. Into the twentieth century, southern Italians sent out ritual offering boats filled with the fruit sacred to the ancient Mediterranean goddess. [Holland-Smith, 244]

The Sicilian festival of St. Agatha in Catania was described by a traveler in the early 1800s. The name Agatha (“kind one”) was an old title of Ceres, and like her, Agatha was honored with spring and autumn festivals. They preserved old pagan observances: horse races, mummery, bell-ringing, and the carrying of great torches in a nocturnal procession drawing Agatha, her breasts and veil, in a wagon. Another source mentions a festival custom of carrying around huge effigies of her breasts. The pagan breasts were christianized via a martyrdom legend in which torturers cut off the devout virgin’s breasts. When she was burned, they said, the flames miraculously did not touch her veil. [Eckenstein, 16-17]

Another dramatic transposition of Christianity onto a pagan goddess took place at Enna, Sicily. A very old temple to Proserpina and her mother Ceres stood there, next to a mountain lake where the god of the underworld was said to have abducted Proserpina. After the emperor closed the pagan temples, a church was built incorporating a pillar from this goddess temple. The people brought in a statue of Ceres holding Proserpina and treated it as if it represented the Christian madonna. This goddess statue stood in the church until the mid-1800s, when pope Pius IX had it packed out of sight in a museum, to languish in storage. [Moss / Cappanari, 61]

Celtic goddesses were also assimilated into the church. In France, a Marian chapel was built over the site of the ancient temple at Lhuis, where a dedication “To the Mothers” was uncovered in 1957. [Thevenot, 226] Stella Maris (“Star of the Sea”), a title from the Navigium of Isis, was passed to Mary. [Hyde, 55] The Gaels similarly transferred many pagan titles to Mary, praising her as “Fountain of Healing,” “Home of Peace,” “Mother of the Stars,” “Sun of the Heavens,” “Moon of the Skies,” “Well of Compassion,” “Root of Consolations,” “Grain of the Land,” “Treasury of the Sea,” and “Cup of Wisdom.” [Carmichael, 231-33] None of this had any biblical basis; it flowed purely from popular devotion.

In Greece, the goddess Demeter was thinly disguised as St Demetra, or masculinized as St Demetrios. People in Eleusis were still lighting lamps to St Demetra in the 19th century, hanging garlands on her statue and praying to her for a good harvest. Demeter was even sighted along the road outside town in 1940. [MacMullen, 159, + fn 19] In countless instances, animistic sanctuaries continued in use with little change. The Fountain of the Lamps within a cave at Corinth consecrated to Aphrodite received offerings from pagans and Christians long after the stated officially christianized it. [MacMullen, 118]

In the west, people went on seeking out pagan shrines around healing springs. The baths of Minerva continued in use at Lucus Feroniae in Etruria into the 6^th century CE. [MacMullen, 191 n. 81] At Hochsheid, Germany, a temple at the spring sanctuary of the healing goddess Sirona was destroyed, but her statue survived at the well, with the snake coiled around her arm in the manner of Bona Dea. People kept offering Roman coins at the Iberian sanctuary of Collado de los Jardines in the 5th century, andhar visiting El Cerro de los Santos (“Hill of the Holy Ones”). [Harrison 2000: 127; 130] The very survival of sacramental names at these shrines—another is Nuestra Senora de la Luz (“Our Lady of Light”)—indicates a persistance of the old veneration. In Sicily, too, Archaic rockface reliefs of Kybele, Hekate and Hermes at Collae Orbo (ancient Acrae) kept their sanctity, as shown by the peasant name for them—I Santoni (“holy ones”). [Vermaseren, 68]

It was longstanding pagan custom to hold night vigils in honor of the dead, with feasting, libations, dancing and singing at the graves of kin. Ramsay MacMullen documents in great detail how Christians carried over these observances, most frequently celebrating them at the graves of martyrs. But they also enacted them at family graves, which were equipped with the same funnels for pouring in wine libations as the old pagan graves. Processions with divine images morphed into processions bearing the relics of martyrs. Some martyria were built over old pagan sanctuaries. Often the pagan custom of incubation (sleeping overnight at a shrine or grave for revelatory dreams or healing) was taken up by Christians at the martyria. [MacMullen, 47; 129; 227 n. 66; 229 n.77. His appendices give granular detail.]

In the same way, Christians often transferred the communal feast with dancing and singing held at temples to the saints' days at church. Jerome complained that the burning of lamps and candles in daytime smacked of “pagan ritual” within the very churches. The clergy in many places preached against these customs, as also the processions with images, but the church ended up by swallowing them. [See MacMullen, 192 fn84]

To the clergy's chagrin, ordinary Christians still celebrated the ancient pagan festivals. Realizing that they were unable to stop them, the church fathers attempted to weaken the pagan content of these holydays by assimilating them into the church calendar under new names. They began to strategically assign Christian holidays and saints' days to the old pagan festivals, and preached new stories about them. The early Christians did not celebrate Christmas. A bishop created the holiday in 354, linking it to the winter solstice and the Roman festival of Saturnalia. This date was also sacred to the Persian sun god Mithra, whose cult was enormously popular among Roman soldiers. Sunday was his day, as it was of Sol Invictus. In 376, Christians seized the Mithraic cave-temple on Vatican Hill and converted it into the headquarters of the bishop of Rome. A 12th century Syrian bishop acknowledged that clergy had moved the date of Christmas to the solstitial feast of lights as a deliberate strategy. [MacMullen, 155] The priesthood also switched the early Christian observance of Saturday as a day of rest (following the Jewish Shabbat) to Sunday, calling it Domenica (the “lord’s day”) instead of the old Latin dies solis, “day of the sun.” They also associated it with the resurrection, as with Greek kyriakí and Russian воскресенье (voskresenye).

Other transpositions occurred. The Church adopted the blessing gesture of the Phrygian god Sabazius, whose votive hands show the first three fingers extended: a sign later christened, now with two fingers, as the benedictio latino. [Cumont, 64] (A dispute broke out, of course, over how many fingers should be held up: two or three?) The clergy appealed to pagan sensibilities by invoking the prestige of the Sibyls to authorize their own story, repeatedly claiming that these pagan prophetesses had foretold the coming of the Christos (“anointed one.”).

In his address to the council of Nicaea, Constantine already claimed that the Cumaean sibyl had made this prophesy. Others said the Tiburtine sibyl had pointed out to Augustus the future site of the church of Maria in Ara Coeli. [Lane Fox, 681; Warner, 69] As indicated by the christianized title “of the altar of heaven,” the place had been a sanctuary of Juno Caelestis, the Queen of Heaven. [Palmer, 48] For centuries to come, the church called on the prestige of the sibyls in claiming that their prophecies had foretold the coming of its savior, and even added portraits of them, such as Michaelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel, or the inlaid pictures of sibyls at the Duomo of Siena.
 

Sacramental Dance

 The pagan roots of sacred dance and music ran deep, and the priesthood fought to repress these ancient customs, country by country, and even district by district. Early bishops disputed whether sacramental dance had any place in Christian worship. Most insisted that its links to pagans, sexuality (“the flesh”), and therefore the devil were too strong. Augustine and John Chrysostom both denounced dance as carnal and profane. Ambrose, on the other hand, defended the dancing of Christians, as long as it was toned down. But some "heretical" groups, such as the Messalians in Syria and the Meletians in Egypt, included dance in their church services. [MacMullen, 104]

Most bishops wanted to do away with handclapping, considering rhythm too closely connected to the ecstatic pagan ceemonies. [MacMullen, 104] The clergy prohibited instruments commonly used in pagan processions and rites, such as flutes, lyres, and drums. [Berger, 151 fn29] Augustine of Hippo opposed using any musical instruments in worship, so deep were their pagan associations. Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria was upset that the Ethiopian church incorporated in its liturgy the old temple instruments, drums and sistrums, along with dance and prayersticks, as it does to this day, with the congregations swaying to mezmur (Amharic for psalm).

Most Christian congregations saw singing and dancing as natural forms of worship, and Church patriarchs fought a prolonged battle against them. In Syria, Ephraim preached against wreathed dancers. In Cappadocia, authorities cracked down on the deacon Glycerius for including sacred dance in church services and festivals. Augustine scolded his Algerian congregation for their nocturnal celebrations of martyrs’ feasts with dance, song, food and drink. He called it idolatry, but his flock protested that he was too harsh. At times priestly interference provoked confrontations. At Calama, priests yelled at pagans who danced past the church doors, prompting them to volley a hail of stones. [MacMullen, 104, 114-5, 41]

The pagan custom of dancing, singing and feasting in honor of the dead proved impossible to wipe out for many centuries. Their association with pagan rites did not prevent Christians from adapting them to doctrinally accepted purposes. In Asia Minor, Gregory of Nazianzus testified that Christians danced and sang at martyrs’ graves “for the manifest suppression of demons, for the warding off of disease, for the knowledge of things to come.” [Backman, 143] These purposes were very much in line with pagan precedents.

Prelates were especially hostile toward women's sacramental dance and music. They fought to restrict female bodies, movements, and voices in order to spare men the devil's temptation to lust. Old hymns bear witness to the customary “ringdance of the virgins,” which suggests that married women were already barred from participating. Militant clergy tried to extirpate the maidens' round-dances, and even forbade nuns to sing while people danced. They accused townswomen of obscene behavior for leaping in the dance called saltatio. [Backman, Drinker] It was this joyous dance that was exalted in the apocryphal hymns beloved by the Prisicillianists and other “heretical” Christians.

Basileios, bishop of Caesaria, raged against the way Palestinian women celebrated the Feast of the Resurrection. The bishop did not condemn men for dancing or drinking, but he tore into the female half of the congregation, his words dripping with contempt, for dancing the debka:

Casting aside the yoke of service under Christ and the veil of virtue from their heads, despising God and His Angels, they shamelessly attract the attention of every man. With unkempt hair, clothed in bodices and hopping about, they dance with lustful eyes and loud laughter; as if seized by a kind of frenzy they excite the lust of the youths. They execute ring-dances in the churches of the Martyrs and at their graves... transforming the holy places into the scene of their lewdness. With harlots' songs they pollute the air and sully the degraded earth with their feet in shameful postures. [Backman, 25]

Basileios viewed the young women's dance through a misogynist lens. To him everything was sex. He used sexual shaming to condemn women’s joyfulness and their participation in public events. The “harlot's songs” that Basileios referred to were popular love songs. The Gaulish bishop Caesarius of Arles also denounced festival dances and “diabolic, amorous, and indecent songs.” [McCullogh, 24] In the year 542, he deplored popular Provençal culture: “How many peasants and how many women know by heart and recite out loud the Devil's songs, erotic and obscene.” [Sermo XIII, in Drinker, 178, fn 12]

The fanatics gradually won the battle to bar women from Christian choruses and public celebrations. Jerome instructed women to be “deaf toward instruments” and not to play the flute, lyre or zither, lest men be tempted. Bishop Hippolytus denied communion to women singers, until they gave up their profession and had “repented” for 40 days. He believed that the female voice was “full of seduction to sin.” Professional wailing women were attacked as rivals to the male priesthood. John Chrysostom ordered anyone who hired “these wretched women” to be kept out of the church. [Drinker, 179]

These condemnations extended to folk festivals. Severian denounced people who painted their faces to masquerade as Roman deities on New Year. He was especially offended at animal guisers and ritual cross-dress:

Lo, the day is close at hand, yea, the Calends are here, and the whole devilish procession will come forth, the very fountain-head and workshop of idols will go in full parade.... Moreover men are dressed like herd animals, they turn men into women, I say, they laugh at decency, they break all laws, they laugh at public opinion, they riot and roister while the whole world looks on.... [Summers, 68]

Severian complained of the revellers' sexual antics, and hated the way they dressed up in hides or rags or straw, or daubed themselves with dung. [Summers, 68] The people of Barcelona also celebrated the Calends in this way, according to the Cervus of Pacianus; they ran through the streets dressed in deerskins, begging gifts and “committing a thousand excesses and abominations.” [Menendez y Pelayo I, 309] They were having fun.

Bishop Caesarius of Arles rebuked people for “adorning the table” with offerings on the annual Calends. The spirits—later described as goddesses, fatas, or “the good women” by medieval writers—would eat the food and grant abundance for the coming year. [McKenna, 98] The bishop criticized the Gaulish custom of dispelling evil spirits by fumigating a house, and condemned sick people for consulting diviners, or if they were unable to come in person, sending their belts or headbands. [McCullogh, 17]

These prohibitions seem to have been largely ignored, not only by the populace, but even local priesthoods. Around 452, the second council of Arles found it necessary to scold bishops who held back from suppressing pagan observances: “If in the territory of a bishop, infidels light torches, or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects to abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of sacrilege.” Whoever led such rituals was to be excommunicated. [Evans-Wentz, 427]

Devotees of Diana

Caesarius also inveighed against “the demon that the peasants call Diana.” His line shows that the Roman goddess had already become integrated into Gaulish folk religion, and also that the priesthood insisted on defining goddesses as demons or devils. Caesarius once performed an exorcism to expel her spirit from a girl. [Vita Caesarii Arelatensis, II, 14, in Grimm, 1161; Lea, 494] The bishop of Arles was especially antagonistic since Diana was the principal deity of nearby Marseilles, and had been since Greek colonization in the 7^th century bce. Diana had become popular in northern Italy, Spain, Gaul, and even into Britain. Bishop Peter of Ravenna also cracked down on her devotees in eastern Italy. [MacMullen, 74-5]

Around the year 400, soothsayers were often called dianaticus, or in the feminine, dianaticae. This term parallels lunaticus in attributing ecstatic wildness or madness to the moon, or in this case to the moon goddess. [Ginzburg 1989: 103] The Vita of Caesarius associates Diana with “a sort of madness which attacks women at night.” [Flint, 122 n. 89] Diana was associated with trance and inspired consciousness, even ecstatic frenzy. A sermon of Maximus of Turin called a peasant about to “mutilate” himself in the name of a goddess “a dianaticus, as people say.” He described the dianaticus as a shaggy longhair, bare-chested, wearing only a loincloth, “a frantic priest” beaten by his goddess. [Hillgarth, 55] (Maximus would of course take a different approach to the countless Christian ascetics—and they were legion— who practiced mortification of the flesh.)

Most Christian writers equated shamanic trances with madness, as they had with the “New Prophecy” movement in Asia Minor. Speaking of the women’s mysteries of Bona Dea, Isidore of Seville wrote that the followers of (Fenta) Fatua “became exceedingly bewildered by her prophecies and turned insane.” [Brouwer, 228] The attribution of delusion or madness would persist in priestly treatments of shamanic folk ceremonies through the middle ages. Many of them continued to name Diana as goddess of the witches [Dashu 2016: 234-47] all the way up to 1480 when the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada declared that “Diana is the devil.” He was repeating what Frankish and German bishops had been saying for nearly a millennium.

From 300 on, priestly sources describe Diana as the demonium meridianum, literally the “spirit of mid-day.” The phrase originated in the Vulgate translation of the 91st Psalm, which described the power of pestilence in force at noontime. Augustine compared the demonium meridianum with Artemis, Akedia, and other ancient goddesses. [Dömötör, 95] Churchmen perceived Diana as a sexual temptress who appeared when the sun was at the midheaven, but the peasantry said that she appeared in visions to those working in fields of grain, often when they swooned with sunstroke. (This theme survived over much of Europe, including the Slavic world, for a thousand years.) The noonday goddess was also to be found wandering the forests or at crossroads. [Macculloch and Máchal, 12]

These beliefs remained widespread in Gaul, where sanctuaries of Diana were still active. In the late 500s, Gregory of Tours removed an herbal bundle from a woman who collapsed at a Christian shrine. Chanting diviners had tied the herbs on her as a remedy for afflictions caused by the demonium meridianum. [Meaney, 10] For a Gallo-Roman exorcist of the 500s, it was the demon itself who was called lunaticus et dianaticus (in the masculine). [Vita S. Eligii, in MacMullen, 201 n.1] The Vita Sancta Eugendi Abbatis also mentions a demoniac spirit called Diana. [Russell, 303 n. 20] Diana was worshipped at Sagunto and all over Romanized Hispania. Her veneration persisted into the middle ages, as “the star Diana” invoked in charms sung by common women. [Estopañan, 108; McKenna on her persistence]

The Latin plural dianae persisted and spread through the middle ages as a term for faeries, with phonological shifts to janas in Sardinia, xanas in Asturias (pronounced shanas), zine in Romania, and (dropping the initial D) ianare in Napoli. The Neopolitan ianare, especially, were associated with witches, and figured in the famous legend of Benevento, where witches gathered to dance around an ever-green walnut tree near “the shore of the ianare.” [Piperno, 1984] A Florentine manuscript speaks of witches and ianutiche (compare with late Latin dianatici) who went by night with Diana and Herodiade. [Bonomo, 70]

Image-smashers in Hispania

Spain boasted a brilliant mixture of cultures. The Euskadi (Basques) and Iberians had lived there for untold millennia. North African migrants made early contributions to Iberian culture. Next came Phoenician and Greek trader-colonists, and two waves of Celtic settlers, from whom Galicians are descended. Then Romans conquered most of the peninsula, and after them, the Germanic Vandals and Suevi. All these peoples contributed to the pagan blend in Hispania. Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, was worshipped near Cluna. There were temples to Diana in Mérida and Évora. Like their British and Gaulish cousins, the Celt-Iberians honored the Matres or Mothers, and also built temples to the fountain goddess Ataecina and altars to Navia / Nabia. Inscriptions also appear at sacred fountains dedicated to the Magna Mater, in her forms of Kybele, Atargatis, and Isis. [McKenna, 22; Vermaseren, 131]

A general religious tolerance had prevailed in Spain, until the Christian population grew militant. Fanatics began attacking temples and desecrating pagan holy places and sacred images, even before Constantine. [For rich documentation, see McKenna 1938] After the official Christianization of the empire, the Spanish carried on with their festivals and rituals and dances. When the Visigoths invaded Spain, the populace welcomed them at first, in their eagerness to throw off Roman rule and taxation. The Germanic conquerors, primarily Arian Christians, had no special ties with the Catholic hierarchy and were tolerant of local religions.

 Churchmen continued pushing for the state to enforce doctrine, so that, as Isidore put it, “those who will not practice virtue by the admonition of the priest, may be kept from doing evil by the power of the king.” [Sententiae, 16, McKenna, 113] The clergy regarded as “evil” any religious practice they disapproved, however time-honored and well-loved it might be among the people. But the Spanish bishops did not have things their way until 589, when the Visigoth kings agreed to enforce doctrine at swordpoint. The bishops were militant on the case, holding eighteen church councils at Toledo between 400 and 702.

The first attempt to enlist the upper classes in their conversion campaign came in 304, when the Council of Elvira enacted a canon ordering landowners to stop pagan tenants from offering sacrifices on their estates. But the bishops had no way to enforce their will on the people this early on—even before the emperors had decreed christianization. However, over the next centuries, the clergy took up this strategy of enlisting the big landholders to police religion. By 392, an imperial law held landlords responsible for the paganism of the peasants living on their estates. A council at Arles in the mid-400s urged “lords and officials” to suppress pagan rites and shrines. (It didn’t seem to work; much later, the councils of Braga (571) and Toledo (681) were still enacting similar canons.) An imperial law of 472 targeted owners who had pagan shrines on their land; elite families lost their rank and estates, while commoners were tortured and enslaved in the mines. [MacMullan, 66-8] Predatory state agents were enriching themselves by carrying out these confiscations and brutalizations.

The sermons of bishop Caesarius of Arles show him preaching to landowners to tear down temples, cut down sacred trees, and wipe out paganism. (Imagine the grief of losing a beloved old-growth oak or beech where your family had celebrated for generations or centuries.] If their tenants and slaves resisted, the lords of the land were to shave their heads, put them in manacles, and flog them. (In tender Christian mercy, they were limited to 39 lashes per day.) The boundary between serf and slave seems negligible in this period; servi meant “slave” but got transmogrified into “serf,” someone bound to servitude on the land.

A century later, pope Gregory I authorized harsher measures, calling on Sardinian estate owners to imprison free peasants for paganism, and to flog and torture their pagan slaves. Like Maximus of Turin, he held possessores responsible for temples or idols on their lands, even if he no longer had a powerful state behind him to compel them. [MacMullen, 68; 199 n. 127; 7] The might of big landowners was terrain Gregory knew well; his own aristocratic family held lands in Sicily as well as the mainland.

In the east, the Ostrogothic ruler Theodoric “threatened death for conjurers because they were dealing with pagan gods.” [Kieckhefer 2000: 179] This would have around the year 500. But within the eastern empire itself, a dreadful persecution was gathering force.

Justinian's Byzantine Hunts

The Germanic invasions had greatly weakened Rome, even overrun it. During the 5th century, the empire's political center of gravity shifted to the eastern city of Constantinople, formerly Byzantium. The historian Zosiumus, writing circa 500, blamed Rome's decline on its abandonment of the old gods. [Historia Nova, II. 8] He was the only pagan author of his time whose work has survived the book burnings, and that only fragmentarily. It was increasingly dangerous to be openly pagan. Shortly after 500, Damascius reports that bishop Athanasius arrested, interrogated and flogged members of the School of Athens, descended from Plato's Academy. [MacMullen, 69]

Persecution of pagans and heretics took a sharp upturn when Justinian became emperor in 527. His reign saw several waves of severe repression. He instituted a harsh legal code that systematized imperial Christian Roman law. The Corpus Juridis Civilis enforced state Christianity, even to the point of calling for Christians who participated in pagan festivals or rites to be put to death. It punished heterodox Christians by confiscating their property and barred them from holding public office. They were forbidden to meet orthodox believers, to buy or sell to them, or to collect debts from them. [Durant and Durant 1950: 112] They were economically and socially cut off.

 The code also decreed chopping off the hands of “those sunk in terrible blasphemies.” Copyists of pagan books, the publishing engine of those times, were among those punished in this way. The state ceremonially burned pagan books in the city plazas. Such bonfires are recorded for 529, at Antioch in 555 and Constantinople in 562, and another, undated burning of thousands of books in Asia Minor. Many other pagan manuscripts were scrubbed so that the expensive vellum could be re-used—palimpsests—for Christian texts. Ramsey MacMullen has outlined how this destruction of sources led many historians to conclude that paganism was dead by 400, a belief that has since been overturned. [MacMullen, 176 n. 89; 4; 162 n.5]

The Corpus imposed serfdom, binding free peasants who farmed land for thirty years to that land, along with all their descendants. They became coloni—peons—a condition of bondage that gave us the word “colonize.” Runaway coloni were recaptured like fugitive slaves. [More coming on this.]

Justinian’s code ordered mutilation—amputation of hands, nose, throat, or eyes—for various offences. It burned sorcerers and army deserters alive at the stake. Slaves convicted of felonies were crucified, as the pagan Roman state had done. Free women who formed unions with the men enslaved by others were themselves enslaved, in a revival of patriarchal Roman law. Women who had sexual relations with their own slaves were put to death, and the slaves were burned at the stake. [Lefkowitz and Fant, 197] Of course, male slaveholders’ privilege of raping their slaves remained untouched. No Christian theologian or official objected to that. 

Justinian's draconian laws persecuted pagans, heretics, gays, serfs and slaves        

Gays were outlawed in 342, when Constantine called for them “to be subjected to an atrocious and exquisite punishment.” Theodosius followed up in 390 with a statute ordering for their punishment “in the avenging flames in sight of all the people.” [Codex Theod. 9. 7. 3 and 9. 7. 6] Justinian's code restated this burning of gays at the stake. [Ranke-Heinemann, 323. The Durants, (113-14) add that “Justinian not only decreed death for homosexual acts, but often added torture, mutilation, and the public parading of the guilty persons before their execution.” But Boswell (123-4) says this was for “forcing or selling males into prostitution.”]

Emperor Justinian found it convenient to blame homosexuals for famines, plagues and earthquakes. [Brundage, 340] His victims included a couple of gay bishops, one of whom he ordered to be castrated. Afterwards, he gave orders for the castration of all gays, a punishment that amounted to a death sentence for many. [Joannes Malalas, Chronographia 18.168, in Boswell, 172] Though Justinian prosecuted many known gays, both he and empress Theodora also freely used charges of homosexuality as a pretext to eliminate heterosexuals that displeased them. A single denunciation by anyone, including slaves under torture, sufficed to convict; the unfortunate man was then castrated and paraded through the streets. [Procopius, xi, 34-6] Theodora used the sodomy charge to bring down her enemy Vasianus. He took refuge in a church, but she had him hauled out (not the only occasion when she violated sanctuary) and “inflicted a certain intolerable punishment upon him.” When the populace protested, she cut off his privates and confiscated his estate. [Procopius, 195]"

Empress Theodora

Theodora (490-548) rose from poverty and obscurity to become one of the most powerful women of her time. Her father was a Master of Bears at the circus, whose death left the family destitute. Theodora and her sisters became theater perfomers, strippers and prostitutes. Such women were assigned the status of infamia, which meant that they were without legal recourse for the violence endemic to the sex trade. It can't have been easy, but nothing is known about this period in her life except the calumnies later heaped upon her for it. Theodora was known as a talented and funny performer. The historian Procopius expended much venom on her exploits in the sex trade, her pregnancies and abortions, and her rages against other actresses.

Theodora's life changed dramatically when, on a trip to Egypt with a client, she converted to Monophysite Christianity. She returned to Constantinople and took up the modest (and low-paid) trade of spinning. Justinian, heir to the throne, fell in love with her and had the law changed so they could marry. He became emperor in 527. Theodora's sudden rise provoked accusations of witchcraft. Procopius, who hated her, claimed that she had “consorted with magicians and sorcerers” from childhood on. Rumors claimed that she used witchcraft to control Justinian. [Anecdota 8, 2-6, 103; 9, 26; 22. 27-8]

Theodora was ruthless and cruel toward her enemies, but she also used her power to bring about reforms that benefitted women. She got laws passed expanding women’s rights in divorce cases, allowing them to own and inherit property (though her husband was in the habit of expropriating female inheritances) and prohibiting traffickers from forcing women into prostitution. The empress established homes for prostitutes that aimed to alleviate the harsh conditions that she had experienced herself.

Corruption was the rule at the highest levels of the imperial court. The insider Procopius reveals in his Secret History how Justinian looted the public treasury, sold offices, and confiscated estates from wealthy citizens, including senators. He prosecuted many rich men on trumped-up charges, “charging some with belief in polytheism, others with adherence to some perverse sect among the Christians, or with sodomy, or with having amours with holy women, or with other kinds of forbidden intercourse, or with fomenting revolt, or with predilection for the Green Faction....” [Procopius 19. 11]

 In 532, the Blues and Greens racing factions initiated the Nika riots, fueled by underlying political issues, especially protest against taxation. For once these bitter rivals were united, under the cry Nika (“Win!”). Crowds attacked the palace, beseiging the emperor. Fans engaged in pitched street battles and set fire to houses. The fire spread, burning almost half of Constantinople. The rioters nearly succeeded in overthrowing Justinian, who was ready to flee. It was Theodora who convinced him to stay and fight, declaring that she would never yield. She said, "Purple makes a fine burial shroud." By bribing leaders of his own Blue faction, Justinian was able to disrupt the crowning of a new emperor in the Hippodrome. (It was this same stadium where an earlier emperor placed the Serpent Column, also known as the Delphic Tripod, expropriated from the famed oracular sanctuary.) The Blues stormed out en masse, and the imperial legions were sent in to massacre the Greens. According to Procopius, they slew 30,000.

Procopius runs through a dismal catalog of Justinian's persecution of pagans, Samaritans, heretics and astrologers. The emperor seized treasure and lands from churches of the Montanists and the Sabbatiani Christians. [Anecdota, xi, 18-20] He burned Manichaeans at the stake. [Chuvin, 132] He had other heretics flogged, blinded, their noses cut off; or ordered them to be drowned in sacks, or tortured to death. [MacMullen, 177 fn89] The emperor persecuted the “Hellenes” (which had become a synonym for pagans), “maltreating their bodies and plundering their properties.” He had astrologers flogged and paraded through the city on camels’ backs, for no other crime, wrote Procopius bitterly, “except that they wished to be wise in the science of the stars in a place like this.” Because of these brutalities, “a great throng of persons were fleeing constantly...” They emigrated to escape persecution, “just as if their home country had been captured by an enemy.” [Procopius, 11.31, 11. 37-8]

In 529 Justinian again ordered “supreme punishments” for ordinary pagans and for converted Hellenes who returned to the old ways. [Chuvin, 133] (By now the term “Hellene” fully connoted “pagan” and nothing else, in this Greek-speaking empire.) The emperor decreed that all unbaptized people must come forward to convert. Those who refused lost all they possessed: “stripped of everything, they will be reduced to penury”—among other punishments. They were forbidden to teach, inherit, or receive state pensions. [Chuvin, 133] Christians who became pagan were put to death. [MacMullen, 177 n. 89]

Death was also the penalty for remaining pagan. Despite this, some pagans remained true to their faith and risked their lives to carry out their rites in secret. Procopius wrote that some forcibly “converted” pagans were “seized at their libations and sacrifices.” [Anecdota, 11.32] The Corpus Juridis code itself refers to arrests of crypto-pagans: “some persons have been discovered given over to the error of the unholy and wicked pagans...” [MacMullen, 242 n. 155; 146] They were executed.

Procopius wrote that Justinian believed justice meant the priests prevailing over their adversaries, by any means necessary. “For in his eagerness to gather all men into one belief as to Christ, he kept destroying the rest of mankind in senseless fashion, and that too while acting with a pretence of piety. For it did not seem to him murder if the victims chanced to be not of his own creed.” The Palestinian historian, who witnessed all this from his position within the court, estimated the number of people destroyed by Justinian to be “as numberless as the sands.” [Anecdota, 13, 7 and 231]

The year 529 was a time of terror aimed against prominent pagans. Educated men, officials, nobles, professors, doctors, and lawyers suspected or denounced as pagans were arrested and tortured. [MacMullen, 59] Their property was confiscated by the state, which executed most of them. One of the few spared was the architect Phocas, who had overseen the early construction of Hagia Sophia. Later, threatened with another torture-trial, he poisoned himself, and the emperor had him buried “like a donkey.” [Chuvin, 135]

Another target was the venerable School of Athens, the last bastion of pagan learning. Somewhere between 529 and 532, Justinian closed it down. Its last philosophers fled to the pagan city of Carrhae (Harran) in Syria. It was The place was famous for its Sabaean astrologers. The refugees founded a Neoplatonist school that survived for another five centuries, well into the Muslim era. One of its scholars founded the great School of Baghdad. The pagans of Harran practiced their religion in the open until the 11th century. [Chuvin, 140; MacMullen, 69; 29] Christians believed that the city was inhabited by demons. One story told of an exorcist who drove demons out of a mentally ill woman, and heard them asking where they should go. He said, To Harran, and a voice was heard crying out, “Ho! let’s go to Harran. The way is open to Harran.” [Moore, 43-44]

Christianity itself was being purged of longstanding beliefs by a fierce persecution of whatever ideas the ruling faction regarded as heretical. In Phrygia, the Montanists were still numerous, having held out against the powerful for over 300 years. Sozomen (8.18) stated that every Phrygian village had a Montanist bishop. But Justinian brought such harsh repression to bear that the Montanists gathered all their families in into their sanctuaries, set them on fire, and perished. [Procopius, Historia Arcana 11, in Wace, “Montanus,” online] The fanatical John of Ephesus went further. In 550 he exhumed and burned the bones of Montanus and the prophetesses Carata, Prisca, and Maximilla. [Assemani, Bibl. Or. 2. 88, in Wace, “Montanus.”]

Humiliating the “heretics”

In Byzantine art, high prelates with hard-eyed faces stare down angrily at heretics lying prostrate before their thrones. Church councils and imperial decrees kept on stacking up more anathemata of forbidden beliefs and believers. Some of the targets had previously been revered as church fathers. Authorities burned the books of Origen of Alexandria, so thoroughly that much of his writing was lost, even though a great many copies existed. Origen had once been considered a great Christian theologian, but orthodox clergy now condemned his belief in reincarnation. In 553, the Second Council of Constantinople denounced reincarnation as heretical: “If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.” [“Fifth Ecumenical Council,” online]

More Temple Destructions

Pagan images were still being venerated in Palestine as late as 543, and in Antioch in 555, when a commander of Justinian’s army destroyed them. [MacMullen, 188 n. 63] Byzantine emperors kept up their suppression of the ancient religions in their vast eastern domains with military force. They warred on the worship of Anahita in Asia, and Isis in Africa. Egypt and Ethiopia had officially converted to Christianity in the 5th century, yet people in these countries still venerated their goddesses.

Nubians continued to worship at the ancient temple of Isis at Philae. The backbone of pagan resistance in the Nile valley was the Beja tribe of Nubia (the famous Medjay archers in Kemetic history, known as Blemmyes to the Romans). Theodosius II sent armies against the Beja and exacted tribute from them. Yet they kept faith with Isis. In a 451 treaty with Rome, the Bejas stipulated their right to come north every year to bring a statue of Isis back to their homeland in northern Sudan, where they received prophecies from the goddess, and then to return her to the temple in Philae.      

In the years 535-39, Justinian sent general Narses to loot, strip, and shut down the temple of Isis at Philae. Imperial troops imprisoned her clergy and carried off her statues to Constantinople. The local bishop set up an image of St Stephen to replace Isis. In 545 Justinian's legions finally defeated the last resistant Bejas, and expelled them from the Nile valley. They were forced to take refuge in the harsh eastern desert, where their descendants still live. [Snowden, 138-141; Chuvin, 142; and Procopius, Bell. Pers. 1, 19, 36ff, in MacMullen, 177 n. 91, and 128]

In 542 the emperor appointed the fanatical John of Ephesus as imperial official super paganos for western Anatolia (titled “over the pagans”). The Monophysite monk specialized in “cleansing” the pagan countryside. He rampaged through the region of Ephesus, the lower Meander river, and the surrounding mountains, destroying pagan shrines, building churches, and forcing baptism on the countryfolk. He demolished a famous temple and on its ruins built Darira monastery.

While all this repression was going on, Constantinople, the Eastern Empire and Persia were stricken by what came to be called the Plague of Justinian (541–542). (Modern scholars have identified it as the bubonic plague, originating in Central Asia.) Many thousands died every day just in the capital city, according to Procopius in his Secret History, and bodies were stacked up too fast to bury, or even too hold funerals. The rural areas were ravaged too, which meant the disruption of farming. and grain became scarce and expensive. Justinian did not spare the farmers, but was determined to wring taxes out of them:

When pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable. [Procopius, Anekdota 23.20 ff]

  This harshness was more than Justinian’s usual greedy rapacity. He was in the middle of a costly war against the Ostrogothic kingdom which had taken over Italy and the western Balkans. The epidemic rocked the Byzantine empire and stymied its ability to push back the Goths, Vandals, and other Germanic invaders in its western reaches. It didn’t help that they adhered to Arian Christianity. But when the crisis of the plague had resolved, the emperor unleashed a new wve of persecutions.

     In 546 the emperor proclaimed new laws attacking the religious freedom of pagans and Jews, and instigated witch hunts against pagans in the empire's Asian provinces. Once again, John of Ephesus was his man. Justinian appointed the monk to hunt out secret pagans passing as Christians in Constantinople. Persons of all classes were arrested and filled the jails to overflowing. (One of them was the hapless architect Phocas.) The church rewarded John's efforts by appointing him bishop of Ephesus in 558. Four years later, he began a fresh series of persecutions in Asia Minor. But this time the stick was accompanied by a big carrot: Justinian and Theodora funded a sumptuous payment of 3 triens to each new baptizee, unimaginable wealth for a common person. But there was a catch: converts were obliged to participate in destroying temples, idols, altars, and cutting down holy trees. [Chuvin, 134; 143-4; MacMullen, 76]

In his Ecclesiastical History, John proudly lists his titles, “Superintendent of the Heathen”, “Breaker of Idols,” and twice, “John who is over the heathen, who was bishop of Ephesus.” [“Joannes, bishop of Ephesus,” online. This translator chose “heathen” to render paganos.] In the end, John himself fell to the persecutorial frenzy, when the turn of the Monophysite Christians came in 571. He was one of the first to be imprisoned, then banished by other partisans of orthodoxy. [“John of Ephesus,” online]

At the end of Justinian's rule came another reign of terror, persecuting pagans with forced conversions, confiscations of property, and temple destructions backed up by troops. The Anatolian peasants were outraged, as Procopius tells us, at attempts to force them “to change from their ancestral faith. And since such action seemed unholy to the farmer class, they all resolved to make a stand against those who brought this message.” Some stood up to the army, which killed them; others committed suicide rather than be baptized. Most of them fled into exile to escape the persecution. [Anecdota, 11. 21-23]

Similar protests broke out in Procopius’ native Palestine after an imperial edict against the Samaritans. He wrote that many people pretended to convert to Christianity but retained their old faith in secret. Many, resenting the forced conversion, were drawn to the polytheists or the Manichaeans. “And all the farmers, having gathered in great numbers, decided to rise in arms against the emperors.” They hailed the brigand Julian as their leader. Imperial troops put down the revolt with ferocity, killing a hundred thousand and wiping out much of the peasant class. The repression also hurt Christian land-owners, since they still had to pay taxes after the slaughter of the farmers who produced their wealth. [Anecdota, xi, 25-30]

Another strongly pagan region was the Bekaa valley near Beirut. In 580 a rumor spread that the pagans were plotting to kill Christians in Baalbek. The new emperor Tiberius ordered a general who had just put down a rising of the Jews and Samaritans to march south and suppress the pagans of the Bekaa valley. The imperial army terrorized the Lebanese with arrests and killings by the sword, by crucifixion, and by setting starved animals upon them in the arena. They used torture to force people to give up names of others. This widened the hunt into Antioch and other cities.

The high priest of Antioch committed suicide to avoid torture, but the army forced other pagan leaders to denounce their co-religionists. One of those named was the provincial governor, Anatolius. [MacMullen, 28] Soldiers discovered an Apollo concealed inside a christ statue at his house. Anatolius was tortured, clawed by animals, and crucified; his aide died under torture. The arrest of the highest official in the province was followed by a torrent of denunciations of secret pagans. Even high Christian churchmen were accused, though authorities did not press charges against them. People convicted in the torture-trials were thrown to animals in the arena and burned. Or bodies of executed people were dragged through the streets and dumped on trash heaps outside the city walls. [Chuvin, 112; 144-47]

Anti-pagan riots broke out in Antioch. A mob burned one suspected couple alive on a boat. Crowds invaded courtrooms, converged on prisons to free Christian felons, and even marched on the emperor's palace. They seized a bishop who had been denounced under torture and burned him alive. [MacMullen, 28] Tiberius had to send in troops, then placated the mobs with yet another harsh inquest. His officials used torture to shift blame onto the Jews, Samaritans and Montanists (still around three centuries after the first attempts to stamp them out). The empire crucified some, flogged others, and exiled the lucky ones. Authorities pardoned Christians implicated in these hunts—though not the Montanist “heretics”—or paraded them on mules with false lashes painted on their backs. [Chuvin, 145-6]

Pagan-hunting inquisitions continued into the reign of emperor Maurice (582-602). He prosecuted pagans everywhere, but especially in Harran. Some converted to save their lives, but many more were cut to pieces and their limbs hung up along the main street. The town’s top army commander was crucified as a sacret pagan. That was well enough for the provinces, but in Constantinople, which had been nominally Christian for over two centuries, the persistence of an older faith against all odds had become embarrassing to the ruling order. Another strategy was called for, one that had been effective in undermining popular support for the philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria: redefining pagans as sorcerers. So in 583 we find people being put to death for “sorcery.” [MacMullen, 28; 177 n. 95]

 Pierre Chuvin comments, “The ‘inquisitions’ instigated by Tiberius II (572-582) attest to a pagan resistance that may have lasted locally until the Arab conquest of the 630s and, in [Harran], continued under Muslim domination until the 11th century.” He notes that Laconians on the Mani peninsula of Greece were not Christianized until the 9th century. He points to the Barbaricini of Sardinia, who paid the governor bribes to allow the old sacrifices to continue, and the Roman Christians that pope Leo I rebuked for bowing to the rising sun on the very steps of St Peter’s. An all-pagan village survived outside Antioch until about 600. [Chuvin, 4; 148; 130; 125; MacMullen, 198 n. 121; 157; 24]

But now the massive porphyry pillars of Artemis Ephesia supported the Christian cathedral of Hagia Sophia. In 609 pope Boniface IV rededicated the Pantheon to St Mary of the Martyrs. [Durants •••] The place where the rites of Kybele used to be celebrated had been turned into the Vatican Basilica. [Cumont, 71] But the outlawed pagan culture would survive all this and more. The enduring animacy out of which it was born still lived in the culture and hearts of the common people. The Eleusinian priest Plutarch had prophesied its persistence, five centuries before:

What is inspiration, if not a light shining in the soul and creating a vision? The Pythia declares she shall continue to speak to the hearts of mankind even after her death. They will only have to look up to the moon to see and hear her. [De Pythiae Oraculis, in Goodrich, 210]