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Updated: June 15, 2025
There is such a touch of humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and almost of Christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in them of paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday.
The change socially could not be greater if we were to see some irresistible apostle of Paganism ariving from abroad in Christian Ireland, who would abolish the churches, convents, and Christian schools; decry and bring into utter disuse the decalogue, the Scriptures and the Sacraments; efface all trace of the existing belief in One God and Three Persons, whether in private or public worship, in contracts, or in courts of law; and instead of these, re-establish all over the country, in high places and in every place, the gloomy groves of the Druids, making gods of the sun and moon, the natural elements, and man's own passions, restoring human sacrifices as a sacred duty, and practically excluding from the community of their fellows, all who presumed to question the divine origin of such a religion.
This prophecy was at that time understood universally by the sincere Christians to refer to the birth of Constantine, who was to overwhelm the paganism of the city on the seven hills, and it is still so explained; but it is evident that the heathens must have looked on it in a different light, and have regarded it as a foretelling of the birth of that Great One who should master the temporal power of Rome.
The philosophers of the Platonic school, Plotinus, Porphyry, and the divine Iamblichus, were admired as the most skilful masters of this allegorical science, which labored to soften and harmonize the deformed features of Paganism.
In this sense Pater may well stand for a substantial summary of the æsthetes, apart from the purely poetical merits of men like Rossetti and Swinburne. Like Swinburne and others he first attempted to use mediæval tradition without trusting it. These people wanted to see Paganism through Christianity: because it involved the incidental amusement of seeing through Christianity itself.
This author is Bianchi Giovini, who, speaking of modern Catholicism as the heir of the old materialistic paganism, says: "The Italians have identified themselves with this mode of religion. Cultivated men find in it the truth there is in it, and the people find what is agreeable to them. But both the former and the latter approve it as conformable to the national character.
Missionaries of the different denominations have gone into these remote regions, have lived amidst many privations, and have given their lives to the blessed work of Christianising, and then civilising these long neglected people. They have not toiled in vain. Thousands have renounced their paganism and become earnest, genuine Christians.
Whilst they were thinly scattered over the world, tolerated in some places, but established nowhere, their zeal often consumed their charity. Paganism, at that time the religion by law established, was insulted by many of them; the ceremonies were disturbed, the altars thrown down.
"Yes," I answered, for well did I remember that long journey, and the fearful storm which made travelling through the trackless forest almost impossible. I had gone on a journey of several hundreds of miles to carry the Gospel to some Indians who were still in the darkness of paganism. I travelled with sixteen dogs and four Indian companions, and there was not the least vestige of a road.
Neither the world nor mankind has been standing still ever since; certainly the mind of man has not, even though his senses have undergone no elemental change. Paganism was succeeded by Christianity, and with Christianity came a new art canon, new forms of beauty and harmony the Early Italian.
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