I have to be honest: I’ve never been much concerned with what happened in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1387. I suspect that may even be true for many Lithuanians. In Silence of the Gods, Francis Young pinpoints this year – of the conversion of the duchy to Christianity – as the official triumph of Christianity in Europe over paganism and idolatry. But he then goes on to examine the debris – and the survivors of paganism and their traditions in the northern regions of Europe.
The first difficulty is defining and identifying paganism. The book is published by Cambridge University Press, so there is an unmistakably academic, seminar-ready, conference-hardened edge to the text. In a gruelling 60-page introduction, Young lists the problems of illuminating the subject: the meagre sources that exist tend to derive from the victors and subsequent studies suffer from entrenched attitudes. I don’t think I’ve ever read an introduction with such a powerful message of ‘it’s almost impossible to say anything about this stuff’. Young continues:
This is of course a genuine interpretative problem; it is notoriously difficult to draw the boundaries between religion and magic, to the point that no satisfactory definition of either religion or magic exists that succeeds in excluding the one from the sphere of the other.
It should be mentioned that Young has also written a book on Merlin and ‘occult politics’ in Britain.
When do witches, diviners, healers, drum-bangers, remote-viewers and weather-adjusters count as exiles from the structure of Christianity? If you’re in league with the Devil, aren’t you part of the Christian landscape, even if you’re formally opposed to Christ and looking for a better deal? It’s hard to know how language is being used and what the general attitudes were.
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