This book is more scholarly than I expected. It’s written in an academic rather than a storytelling style. While it’s well-researched, it lacks an engaging human element. DNF ~25%.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

An interesting overview of a part of Europe that didn’t fully Christianize until much later than one would normally think. Best read in sections, it got more academic than a general history for me. Nevertheless, very worthwhile for a general reader.

This is a very interesting—and, in places, illuminating—history book on a rarely considered topic. Before white Christian Europeans conquered the New World and fought indigenous religions on other continents, they did the same thing at home. And it was not the straightforward, black-and-white story we sometimes learn in school. As the author notes,

“The fact that Christianisation could not only fail, but might also be actively rejected, seldom receives the attention it deserves in histories of the conversion and Christianisation of Europe”.

Another aspect that is usually not considered is that we should not label all pre-Christian people as "pagans." Though it's challenging to accept, there was once tremendous diversity in European faiths and rituals, most of which have been forgotten. The attempt to reconstruct this vanished world is fascinating.

Just be aware that this is an academic work rather than a popular science book, so don't expect an engaging narrative. However, all the facts presented here make this book well worth reading for any history fan.

Thanks to the publisher, Cambridge University Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

If You Hear the Gods Talking; You Are the Problem
Francis Young, Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, June 2025). Hardcover. 256pp. ISBN: 979-1-009-58657-3.
***
“The formal conversion to Christianity in 1387 of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seemingly marked the end of Europe’s last ‘pagan’ peoples. But the reality was different. At the margins, often under the radar, around the dusky edgelands, pre-Christian religions endured and indeed continued to flourish for an astonishing five centuries.” It “tells, for the first time, the remarkable story of these forgotten peoples: belated adopters of Christian belief on the outer periphery of Christendom, from the Sámi of the frozen north to the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians around the Baltic, as well as the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia’s Volga-Ural Plain. These communities, Dr Young reveals, responded creatively to Christianity’s challenge, but for centuries stopped short of embracing it. His book addresses why this was so, uncovering stories of fierce resistance, unlikely survival and considerable ingenuity.”
I am puzzled how this book can “revolutionize” the study of European pagans? Has new DNA been found that proves a new narrative? Manuscripts? I turned to the section on “Sources and Hermeneutics”: “The principal sources for the study of pre-Christian religions in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries include chronicles, hagiographies of missionaries, ethnographic (or proto-ethnographic) and antiquarian writings, catechisms, ecclesiastical records dealing with discipline such as episcopal visitations, missionary reports, deeds of foundation of churches, judicial proceedings (for example, trials for witchcraft and sorcery), and, at a later date, the work of lexicographers” (42). These are not trustworthy sources. Books about “witchcraft” used fiction to justify the murder of people in this society. Their authors were not recording honest information about the religion of persecuted people, but rather generating imaginary crimes to accuse them of to not need to have any real evidence for killing them, or confiscating the land of entire “other” groups by invaders such as “missionaries”. And the author adds that these were mostly “second- or third-hand reports”, as opposed to based “on personal experience.” Here is the revealing point: “In the nineteenth century, amateur and professional collectors began gathering, editing, and publishing tales, songs, dances, and customs from rural people all over Europe, resulting in a vast expansion in the body of apparent evidence for popular beliefs” (45). My research into ghostwriting, propaganda, and monopolization of publishing by a few hands has indicated that most such history-changing tales (at least definitely in Britain) were forged by people in European cities who wrote fantasies about what outsiders believed to accuse them of being heretics, and thus to justify confiscating either pieces of land, or colonizing entire countries. Describing a pagan “traditional” belief system turned a country that might have already Christianized, or might have no reason to rebel against Christianization into one that was an “enemy” of Christendom. This enemy-label allowed for a “legal” Inquisition or encroachment on foreign land. Most humans are likely to have been atheists before the Abrahamic religions inserted the God-given rights of kings and popes to own countries and their people. It was only in the 19th and 20th centuries when extensive myth-ghostwriting for these people claimed they were “pagan” idol-worshippers, who thus needed to be rescued by colonialization. This book does not seem to be saying anything radical, but rather it is changing the focus from the propaganda that most of Europe was Christian by the 19th century to one that acknowledges just how many “others” there were on the periphery who had been demonized for Europe to be colonized by Christians. At least the author adds: “the idea that folklore collected in the nineteenth century (and later) constitutes a body of historical evidence for ancient belief systems has been largely discredited” (46).
The source cited for this important finding is: Ronald Hutton’s “How Pagan Were Medieval English Peasants?”, Folklore, Vol. 122, No. 3 (Taylor & Francis, December 2011), 235-49. This source refers to a point I raised in BRRAM’s Verstegan volume: Verstegan (in the Renaissance) appears to have invented much of what was later echoed regarding pagans by altering Greco-Roman and ancient Indo-European theologies just a bit to make them seem foreign and assigning these to Germanic people (by which he meant most Europeans). Most Europeans worshipped the Greco-Roman theology before Christianity. They had altered the names of Greco-Roman gods when they translated these into their languages. Verstegan used this to claim they had an entirely distinct “pagan” theology: which he and previous Catholic ghostwriters designed themselves by inserting fantastic characters and narratives attributed to these forged antique religions. Hutton explains that “folklorists” had claimed “sheela-na-gigs” or Irish “naked women with spread legs” and “foliate heads” were proof those convicted of witchcraft were practitioners of paganism. “Nobody associated the foliate heads in medieval churches with paganism before the twentieth century.” And this theory was disproven by showing an absence of evidence for it by the 1970s. These symbols had made a “first appearance… in manuscripts produced in tenth-century monasteries”, and they only appeared “in churches” afterwards supposedly in the “twelfth century”. One of the churches that had both a “sheela-na-gig” and a “foliate head” on it had been “built by the Norman lord of the village” as part of “a deliberate imposition of Continental culture on that part of England”. In other words, the Normans were creating these images as a warning against carnal-urges, as opposed to a celebration of any alternative religion. Verstegan is likely to have been behind forging manuscripts that have been used of evidence of paganism “in the English Middle Ages”, such as “Canons of Egbert, Archbishop of York”, claimed to be “from around 740” that is the only manuscript from this period that expressed concern about “superstitions or operative magic”, though still not a fear of a “former religion”. “Bede’s” History is one that Verstegan is especially likely to have forged to insert the false-narrative that “paganism… was defunct by that time”. DNA evidence indicates that the English people first migrated to the British Isles from Germany and neighboring regions in the 9th century, so all “Old English” manuscripts that claim somebody Old German speaking was living in Britain before the 9th century must be forgeries, as are their claims regarding what religions were practiced there. Hutton summarizes the evidence as containing only two cases that hint there might have been “pagan cults”, which break apart on closer examination. In 1313, there is a case of Stephen le Pope who was a lunatic who worshipped “images of gods that he had fashioned and set up himself in his garden” amidst a murder of “his maidservant”. And in 1351, there was “an actual cult… at Frithelstock Priory” where monks set up “a chapel” with an unchaste version of the image of “Virgin Mary”. It was torn down in part because the priests were using the image to attract visitors to sell fortunetelling. There were a few such sects of Christians that were the victims of early Inquisitions, in addition to these who are not mentioned by Hutton. He does mention that there were variants of Christianity, including the polytheistic workshop of multiple Christian saints. And there is a mention of the divine feminine appearing in the workshop of the Virgin Mary. He concludes there was no “active paganism… after the early eleventh century”.
While this essay seems to firmly contradict the existence of pagan British cults, Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon is claimed by Young to have contradictorily argued that there is documentation “in Britain” of “‘diabolist’ rural secret societies like the Society of the Horseman’s Word perpetuated folk cults” (361). The point seems to be that this was a later fake society, as opposed to a Medieval or a Renaissance one. Young is arguing the opposite of Hutton’s conclusion as he is asserting there were some cults in Europe, such as the Peko cult, and he is claiming to have found some other sources that argue this, after Hutton had disproven this possibility. Again, the mentioned manuscripts are not credible without archeologic evidence. I found a mention of “Stones with cup marks in Finland, Karelia, Estonia, and Latvia” from as far back as the “Bronze Age” to the “twentieth century” used as “ritual offerings” claim to be “Europe’s longest continuously functioning ritual sites”. This is not evidence, as these “cup marks” seem too general to even be a spiritual reference (371). In the summary, he adds that the main examples demonstrated are: “The Sámi veneration of unusual rock formations, the Lithuanians’ attraction to large and ancient trees, the Estonian interest in cup-marked stones, and the Maris’ love for worshipping in the forest” (372). Rocks, trees, and marked stone cups cannot be serious evidence for alternative religions. The change between Hutton and Young is that Young once again accepts late 19th and 20th century folklore-writing, as well as earlier fantasies starting from the Renaissance ghostwritten by Christians in propaganda as sufficient evidence to believe in pagan religions’ existence, despite this same evidence having been previously firmly countered as false by Hutton and other skeptics. This field seems to be propagandizing for whatever message fits the Christian establishment, instead of arriving at a single knowable truth.
This has been a useful book for adding to my criticism of the field of folklore studies. I disagree with most of its claims. And too much of it is spent on empty propaganda, instead of delivering any new, and certainly no “revolutionary” evidence. It basically repeats antique claims about Christianity as being a fight against an onslaught of Pagan Villains. Those seeking the truth will not find clarity here. But it is good that this book has taken on this subject that is a total blind spot as an academic field nearly-fully made up of fiction, instead of fact.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025

Dr. Francis Young's Silence of the Gods is a new frontier of academic literature on the subject of European "pagans." Its stated purpose is to give readers a historical overview of the changing religious landscape that Europe's remaining unchristianised peoples faced over five centuries, until it could be said that they ceased to exist as a religious group. These groups had been found from Scandinavia to the Baltic and beyond into Russia, and faced and (to use a rather weak word) accepted Christianity at varying times and degrees.

One of the crucial points of this book, and what appears to be of Dr. Young's other work, is the creolisation, as he calls it, of indigenous (pagan) religions and the new Christian one. It wasn't as if preexisting ideas were discarded in favor of new dogma, instead, Young argues that they were intermingled for many centuries, with even Slavic priests engaging in rituals that were "paganesque." This comes in contrast to two previous viewpoints, of much the same substance, on the subject: that, from the proponents of paganism, the religion was a pure, wholly unsullied practice, and the arrival of Christianity culturally destroyed it; or, from the side of Rome, that Christianity arrived, enlightened the heathens, and secured a resounding missionary victory. While prima facie intuitive, Young proves that neither are true as presented, giving readers evidence from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries to illustrate this point.

As the first expansive, rigorously researched English language book on the subject, I feel that it can't truly be criticized for the form its ambitions necessitates it take, but it did feel like eating my broccoli at times. Even for a seasoned reader of academic and legal treatises, it was dry. Still, if you want an answer to the question of what actually happened to the pre-Christian religions of Europe, it will give you your answer, and I'm pleased to have read it.