How did the early Church deal with people who continued practice of pagan religion?

Comments

• False.
  
  (1) Charlemagne's efforts against the Saxons stands out in stark contrast to the rest of Christian history before and after him, (2) the Church spoke out against Charlemagne's Saxon policy, and (3) he didn't commit "a vast genocide" against them: he tried to intimidate and coerce them into abandoning pagan practices; when that failed he deported them to Hungary - neither of which constitutes genocide.
  
  No such actions were taken against the Scandinavians. Scandinavians, especially Scandinavian kings, saw religion as a national matter, specifically a vassal-suzzerain relationship between their people and a divine overlord and protector and his divine kin and vassals: to spurn the national religion and worship other gods was seen as treason. When those kings were pagan they persecuted Christians among their people. When they became Christian, they ordered eveyone to convert as well and punished rebels who did not. But this is not "genocide", nor did the Church do it. It was a matter of internal domestic politics. (And purely personal, individual religion was something complete alien to the pagan world, in which religion was corporate, tribal, and national, and "freedom of religion" wasn't even a concept - except as code for "national independence".)
  
  As for "the Slavs" - if you're referring to the old Baltic Prussians, and the so-called "Prussian Crusade", you should know its prime driver and justification was to put a stop to the incessant brigandry, piracy, and slave raiding of the pagans of the region against their Christian neighbors. In other words, "Christianization" was not an end in itself, but part of a strategy to end hostilities. But these weren't force "convert or die" conversions. Generally, in negotiated peaces, the pagan tribes agreed to convert, and may have even been baptized ... and as soon as the Christian states demobilized or were occupied elsewhere, they went right back to their old ways - including the raiding and brigandry. That's why the whole process took over a century.

  • Report
  

  by Stormarm on January 29th, 2011