Imagining Paganism through the Ages: Studies on the Use of the Labels Pagan and Paganism in Controversies

This volume contains the proceedings of the first International

Colloquium of the Research Centre Polemikos that was founded in 2016

by Joseph Verheyden (KU Leuven) and Daniela Muller (RU Nijmegen). The

Centre is dedicated to the study of the history of religious polemics.

This first meeting, held 14-16 of March 2018 in Leuven, studied a

commonly known and broadly used way to discredit an adversary by using

labels, in particular the negative label par excellence - that of being

a pagan .

For practical reasons, the focus was limited to voices and evidence of

Western origin - from the famous adversus Paganos literature to

the controversies on native populations after the discovery of the New

World and the place and role to be given to more rationalistic

approaches to the Christian faith in the (early) modern period. The case

studies presented here illustrate that the label can receive many

different meanings. Among these are the characterisation of the others

as strangers or barbarians and the accusation of committing idolatry,

but also all sorts of insinuations or claims of immoral behaviour and

more outlandish ones that associate these pagan others with demonic

schemes. The last two contributions have less to do with fighting and

more with imagining paganism, though these two aspects overlap as is

shown in several of the essays; hence the choice for Imagining

Paganism in the general title.