Europe's last pagans

Summary

History Extra Podcast Episode Summary: "Europe's Last Pagans"

Date: August 19, 2025
Guest: Dr. Francis Young (Folklorist, historian, author of Silence of the Gods)
Host: David Musgrove

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the persistence and gradual extinction of pre-Christian (often called "pagan") religions on Europe's margins, long after the continent was considered "Christianized." Dr. Francis Young, author of Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples, sheds light on why and how non-Christian traditions survived into the modern era (up to the early 20th century, and in some cases, even today) — focusing on the diverse peoples of the Baltics, Finnic world, and far northeastern Europe. The discussion dismantles myths about rapid Christianization while carefully considering the complexity and diversity of these "last pagans."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Defining "Pagans" & the Book’s Scope

• [01:23] Francis Young introduces the "forgotten peoples" of Europe's religious history in the far north and east—those who retained pre-Christian religions well past the continent’s general Christianization.
• [01:54] The book starts in 1387 (Lithuania’s official conversion) and stretches to around 1900, highlighting the unexpectedly late survival of pre-Christian practices.
• [02:45] The terminology: Young expresses dislike for the term "pagan," noting its pejorative origins ("coined to mock and ridicule people who did not accept Christianity..."), but he uses 'pre-Christian' for specificity.

  "It's a word that isn't all that helpful... it basically just means anybody who isn't a Christian."
  — Francis Young [02:45]

Why Have Europe’s Internal “Pagans” Been Forgotten?

• [04:24] Although the clash of Christianity and indigenous religion is commonly discussed regarding the New World, European non-Christians have been overlooked due to their marginal location and the priorities of major Christian kingdoms.
• The late Reformation era heightened anxiety over non-Christian minorities living within Christian-polity borders.

Diversity & Commonalities Among Europe's Pre-Christian Peoples

• [06:23] Despite great diversity in language and culture (Baltic peoples with Indo-European languages; Finno-Ugric speakers like the Sami, Mari, and others), two main threads united these groups:
  • All had to deal with the presence of Christianity in their worlds
  • Their religious practices were fundamentally shaped by their natural environments

Rituals & Beliefs of Europe's Indigenous Religions

• [08:08] Practices covered a spectrum:
  • Northern Shamanism: E.g., Sami and Nenets utilized trances, spirit contact, smoke, drums
  • Baltic Practices: Sacred groves, fire, veneration of stones, trees as abodes of spirits, perpetual flames, hill altars
  • Forest Animism: Eastern hunters regarded forests as living, sacred beings
  • Polytheism & Sacrifice: Standard; sacrifices could be of animals or offerings of drink and food (libations), not always blood

  "The landscape is always important."
  — Francis Young [08:08]

Prehistoric Roots & Archaeological Evidence

• [10:19] Archaeology, especially in Karelia, demonstrates ongoing veneration at specific stones from the Bronze Age through the 20th century — though rituals’ meanings undoubtedly evolved.
• [11:57] However, Young cautions against assuming continuity in meaning or ritual detail.

Sources on These Religions: The Problem of Christian Viewpoints

• [12:37] There are no native written accounts; all written sources are by Christians (sometimes crude or demonizing, especially in the Middle Ages).
• By the Renaissance, more nuanced (though still Christian-biased) records appear.
• Most illuminating are records from ecclesiastical visitations, which sometimes preserve actual non-Christian voices under interrogation.

Why Did Some Peoples Resist Christianization?

• [16:11] While some places (Ireland, England, Poland, etc.) saw quick Christianization, others did not. Causes included:
  • Language barriers: No missionaries with knowledge of Baltic or Finno-Ugric languages
  • Lifestyle Differences: Nomadic or semi-settled economies (slash-and-burn agriculture, reindeer herding) made Christian structures irrelevant
  • Geographical Remoteness: Sparsely populated, lacking roads/infrastructure
• Illustrative Story: During Lithuania's conversion, the Grand Duke himself had to translate for priests who didn’t speak Lithuanian.

  "He had to preach Christianity to his own people because so few people knew the Lithuanian language."
  — Francis Young [19:14]

Lithuania: The Last Official Pagan Kingdom

• [20:03] Medieval Lithuania was a massive, multi-ethnic state with pagan, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic populations—a strategic "neutral" stance kept it pagan.
• Marrying Poland’s queen-to-be (Jadviga) required the Grand Duke to convert in 1387, thus aligning Lithuania with Catholicism but ending its official paganism.

The Teutonic Knights & “Northern Crusades”

• [22:42] Teutonic Knights were crusading military orders that waged war on Baltic "pagans," occupying land and enforcing Christianity, making themselves de facto rulers over non-Christian populations.

Conversion Realities: Propaganda & Continuity

• [28:10] Conversion events (such as mass baptisms in Vilnius, where people were incentivized with woolen clothes and Christian names assigned en masse) were largely staged for show.
  • True conversion was patchy and slow; reports of pagan practices remained common up to the late 18th century.

Survival & Syncretism after Formal Conversion

• [30:28] While missionaries were sometimes genuinely curious (comparing Lithuanian gods to classical deities), efforts at conversion created syncretic traditions—e.g., Lithuanian pole carving blending pagan symbolism with Christian saints.
• Sacred trees and forests retained deep cultural reverence, with lingering traditions protecting nature.

The “Silence of the Gods”: The Gradual Extinction

• [34:55] After Lithuania's official Christianization, gradual state pressure mounted—especially after the Reformation, which sharpened Christian identity.
  • Increasing bureaucracy (especially in Scandinavia and Russia) enforced Christianity, sometimes brutally through forced mass baptisms.
  • Over time, pagan traditions faded, merged with Christianity, or went underground; only with self-identification did Christianity truly take root among these peoples.
• In some regions of modern Russia, pre-Christian practices and beliefs endure (ex: Udmurtia, Mariel Republic), often alongside or blended with Orthodox Christian identities.

  "When a new president is sworn in in the Mariel Republic... he is apparently sworn in jointly by an animist priest and an Orthodox priest"
  — Francis Young [37:24]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the term ‘pagan’:

  "It's a word that isn't all that helpful because it's a pejorative... but it's a word that most people understand what you're getting at when you use it."
  — Francis Young [02:45]

• On archaeological continuity:

  "The objects in the landscape, whether natural or artificial, provide the continuity."
  — Francis Young [11:57]

• On the staged nature of Christianization:

  "People were lured into the city with the promise of woolen clothes... priests did is that they gathered the people into square formations... and would sprinkle them with holy water and say, everyone in this block, you're all called John."
  — Francis Young [28:10]

• On pagan continuity under the surface:

  "Reports from missionaries ... right to the late 18th century ... finding people who are worshipping trees and lighting sacred fires."
  — Francis Young [28:40]

• On syncretic legacy:

  "Pole carving... is very much a pagan tradition, although nowadays it will be a Christian character, like a figure of Christ or the Virgin Mary that you'll see on the pole."
  — Francis Young [31:00]

• On forced conversion in Russia:

  "Soldiers will arrive in your village and... force everybody to go down into the nearest body of water and a priest will say a few words and you’re now baptized, which has significant consequences for you."
  — Francis Young [36:10]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:23] — The forgotten ‘last pagan’ peoples of Europe
• [02:45] — Problems with the word ‘pagan’
• [04:24] — Why Europe’s own non-Christians are overlooked
• [06:23] — Diversity and commonality among Europe's pre-Christian religions
• [08:08] — Key religious practices
• [10:19] — Archaeology and continuity from prehistory
• [12:37] — The difficulty of sources: all written by Christians
• [16:11] — Why conversion was slow in certain places
• [19:14] — Language barriers in conversion: the Grand Duke as translator
• [20:03] — Lithuania’s unique status, size, and why it stayed pre-Christian
• [22:42] — The Teutonic Knights and “crusading” in the north
• [25:19] — Pagan temple in Vilnius converted into a cathedral
• [28:10] — The reality vs. propaganda of conversion; lingering paganism
• [30:28] — Syncretism and persistence of old beliefs in Christian contexts
• [34:55] — How Europe’s last pagan religions gradually died out (but not everywhere)

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Conclusion

The episode illuminates the nuanced, regionally distinct survival of pre-Christian religions at Europe's margins, challenging the myth of universal medieval Christianization. Key takeaways: Christianization was a long, patchy, often superficial process, shaped by language, geography, and political factors. Many features of these religions survived locally, influencing both cultural identity and Christian practice, while in some cases, distinctly non-Christian traditions endure even today.

Recommended for listeners interested in: The history of religion, cultural continuity, Baltic and northern European history, minority and indigenous traditions, syncretism, and the reality behind myths of Christianization.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Christianity came to dominate Europe in the Middle Ages. However, some parts of the continent remained pagan until very recently. So how did non Christian peoples survive and prosper in parts of Europe for centuries after most of their neighbours had adopted the church? Francis Young, author of a new book, Silence of the Gods, explains all to David Musgrove.

[David Musgrove]

Your new book is Silence of the the Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples. Now that is a pretty exciting title. Tell me what gods and what peoples.

[Francis Young]

So Silence of the Gods is about a group of peoples who have really been rather forgotten in religious history of Europe. Peoples living at the geographical margins of the European continent, in the very far north and also in the east of the continent, who clung on to their pre Christian religious traditions to a late date that may surprise many people.

[David Musgrove]

Talk us through the dates that we're examining here.

[Francis Young]

So the book begins in 1387. That was the year that Lithuania, the last officially pagan country in Europe, officially became Christian. But after that date there are still lots of people in Europe who cling on to their pre Christian traditions. And so the book goes up essentially to around 1900, which is when we get some of the last signs of this. Although there are some peoples in some remote areas who to this day still maintain their pre Christian traditions.

[David Musgrove]

Perfect. That late date may well surprise some listeners and we'll hopefully examine that a bit in our conversation, but very quickly because you do devote quite a lot of time to this in the introduction to your book. When we use the term pagans, are we okay with that? And how should we be understanding that?

[Francis Young]

Yeah, this word pagan is something that I have mixed feelings about. I think on the one hand it's a word that isn't all that helpful because it's a pejorative. It's a word that was coined to mock and ridicule people who did not accept Christianity at the time of the late Roman Empire. That's its original origin and it basically just means anybody who isn't a Christian. So in that way, it's unhelpful because it's kind of lumping everybody together. It's not giving them any kind of individual identity. But on the other hand, it can be quite a useful word because it's a word that most people understand what you're getting at when you use the pagan word, they get the sense that these are people who are following ancestral religious traditions that aren't based on some kind of revealed scripture, that they're probably worshipping multiple gods, that they're engaging in ritual practices that have been passed down from prehistory, quite possibly. But I don't like the word all that much. And so mostly in the book, I tend to use an alternative term, which is pre Christian.

[David Musgrove]

Okay, I will try and follow that line. But if I drop in and start saying pagan, then you'll accept my indiscretion, I hope.

[Francis Young]

Yeah, yeah. Either is fine.

[David Musgrove]

Okay. Now look, there's a nice line in the book that I just wanted to hit you with before we go into the story too much, which is this. The interaction between Christianity and religions indigenous to the New World in the Age of Discovery is accepted as a defining feature of the period. But we don't really talk about wholly or partially unchristianized people in Europe. Why is that, Francis?

[Francis Young]

Well, when it comes to the early modern period, so that's the period, roughly speaking, between 1500 and 1700, then there's a lot of discussion of the encounter between people from the Old World Europe with indigenous peoples in the New World, because clearly these were people that they had no idea existed until the European discovery of the New World. However, what is often forgotten is that there were plenty of people in the Old World, in Europe itself, who were not yet Christians. And I'm not just referring here to people who followed alternative Abrahamic religions, that is to say, Islam and Judaism, but people who are following completely different religious traditions. But I think the reason why those people tended to get ignored or not spoken about as much is because they were quite geographically marginal. So they were at the edge of larger kingdoms, larger polities, which were Christian themselves. But they had these groups, these minority groups who did not accept Christianity. But over time they become more significant. And that's because these states start to become very anxious that they have non Christian Christian minorities within their borders. After all, the Reformation has intensified interest in Christianity and the importance of getting Christianity right in whatever variety it happens to be. And so the idea that you've got these kind of ungodly idolaters within your kingdom becomes deeply concerning.

[David Musgrove]

Now, when you talked about some of the problems with the word pagan, you said that it sort of lumps people together unhelpfully. We're talking about quite a big area of time and space here. So is there any sense of conformity in the languages, religions, or even just the culture and peoples involved in these non Christian parts of Europe that you've investigated?

[Francis Young]

There's a great deal of diversity, but there are some common threads. The main common thread that I would identify that unites, in a sense, all of these religions is that they all had to come to terms with living alongside Christianity and coming into contact with it. The second common factor that they all had is that their religions arose in one way or another from their natural environment. And I have argued in the book that natural environment is actually very important to these kind of indigenous religions. But beyond that there was a great deal of difference, firstly in terms of language. So some of these people were speakers of Indo European languages, like the Baltic peoples, the Lithuanians and Latvians, in the eastern shore of the Baltic. Some of them were. Were speakers of Finno Ugric languages. So that's a very large group of languages that includes Finnish and Hungarian, but it also includes Estonian and a lot of languages that people might not have come across so readily that are now located in European Russia, kind of in the far east of Europe, like Maudvin and Mari and Chuvash and Udmert and so on. And also the Sami people, who may be slightly better known as Laplanders, although today we tend to refer to them as the Sami. But they are located in the far north of Scandinavia and they're also speakers of Finno Ugric languages. But even those Finno Ugric languages, most of them are mutually incomprehensible. They're very, very distantly related to one another.

[David Musgrove]

So can you give me a sense of the sorts of religious practices that were being carried out by these disparate people? Then just give me a bit of flavour and colour of the sort of things that you've encountered.

[Francis Young]

So again, there's quite a lot of variety. On one end of the spectrum. You've got what is generally referred to by anthropologists and students of religion as shamanism. And that's the idea of a religion that's primarily based on a particular set of people who are believed to have the capacity to get into contact with spirits or gods going into trances. And those trances will often be induced by loud noises, by Smoke by various kinds of stimuli that encouraged shaman into a trance. That's something which we find very much amongst the Sami and the Nenet people. So in the very far north, the subarctic peoples of Europe, we've also got perhaps more familiar forms of paganism or pre Christian belief amongst the Latvians and Lithuanians and Prussians, the Baltic peoples, where they are venerating groves, that is to say artificial clearings of trees or natural clearings of trees, venerating trees themselves, in the belief that there are gods or spirits within them, worship of sacred stones, sacred fires which burn perpetually, sacred hills. And you've also got groups of people in the Far east of Europe who are very much hunters in their way of life. And so they tend to propitiate spirits of the hunt. They will worship the forest as itself being sacred. So a whole range of practices, but they tend to be polytheistic, so multiple gods and spirits. They tend to involve some form of sacrifice, though not always animal sacrifice. It might be forms of libation where you offer poured out corn or poured out beer or other drinks. So, yeah, kind of whole range of different practices, but certain kind of similarities in that the landscape is always important.

[David Musgrove]

And you mentioned earlier that some of them there might be some sense of continuity going way back into the prehistoric past. How far can we sort of take the story back, do you think?

[Francis Young]

Yeah, well, this is where archaeology has a real role to play in this kind of history. And archaeologists in Karelia, for example, which is the bit of Finland that's on the far east of the country, but also partly into Russia as well, in Karelia, some of these massive stones, which are essentially glacial erratics that have been brought down by glaciers during the Ice Age and left in the landscape. So they're kind of unusual and were identified as sacred quite early on by prehistoric peoples. The archaeologists have examined the underside of these stones that have lain undisturbed and found that they've been in use seemingly since the Bronze Age. So there have been deposits that have been made at these stones which often have these cut marks in them, some of which are natural, some of which have been artificially carved out in which offerings have been made. Now, these offerings have been continuous from the Bronze Age through to the 20th century in some cases. But of course, the fact that a sacred site has remained in use over millennia doesn't mean that we can say anything with confidence about exactly what the purpose of those rituals was, and that the purpose of those rituals and the meaning of those rituals stayed exactly the same. So sometimes the landscape itself is more significant than the human traditions that take place within it, about which we can surmise, not all that much.

[David Musgrove]

So you can't tell me how Bronze Age people worship then?

[Francis Young]

I don't think so, no. The objects in the landscape, whether natural or artificial, that provide the continuity. I don't think we can say with confidence that rituals remain the same. It's possible they could have done. It's not impossible that they didn't. But, yeah, it's not something that we can say with certainty. That's not a question that archaeology in and of itself can answer.

[David Musgrove]

That's disappointing, but I'll accept your logic. So you talked about archaeology there and how that helps us to understand these pre Christian religions. What other sources have we got to understand what they were doing? Presumably we're seeing them entirely through the lens of literate Christian societies.

[Francis Young]

This is a big problem when it comes to examining pre Christian societies in Europe, because pre Christian societies in this period, so we're not talking here about the Greeks and the Romans, but pre Christian societies in northern Europe are uniformly without literacy. So these are non literate societies, they don't see a need to have a literature that describes their religious beliefs or their cultural practices because those are passed on orally. So, yeah, we've got this problem that all the sources we have, the written sources that we have, are by learned Christian authors. Now, over time, the character of those sources changes. So in the Middle Ages, there tends to be quite a crude understanding of who these people are and what they do, a kind of shock horror. There are pagans, they're awful. They're probably practicing human sacrifice and incest and every kind of abomination that can be imagined, just because that's the stereotype and that's the sort of thing that you expect of pagans and no effort really is made to understand them. So the sources that are written down in the Northern Crusades, that this, this series of medieval crusades against pagan peoples in Northern, they tend to be of that kind of crude character. But then as we get into the Renaissance, as we get the rise of humanist history, so the idea of histories that are motivated primarily by curiosity about human beings, still very much Christian, still very much, the authors have a Christian agenda, but they also have a genuine curiosity about how other humans behave. And so you tend to get these rather richer sources and more interesting sources in the 16th and 17th centuries where some kind of genuine attempt is being made to understand these people. But you've also got sources like ecclesiastical visitations so when a bishop goes to visit an area and wants to find out who are the pagans, what are their views, and then you will actually get the voices of actual pagans, where they are interrogated and their words are written down by Christian scribes. And those are really interesting sources because they give us some sense of how these people think and what their worldview is and how they justify what it is that they do.

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[David Musgrove]

Okay, why weren't these people Christianized early? What was special about them that made them immune to the charms of the Church?

[Francis Young]

This is a really interesting question and you do see Christianity making quite rapid progress in some parts of northern Europe that lay beyond the Roman Empire. Ireland would be one example, England would be another, where Christianity is pretty successful among these Germanic speaking people who have taken up residence in England, the Anglo Saxons and even in Germany you know there are some setbacks. But generally speaking the pattern of conversion in Germany, in Moravia, in Bohemia, in Poland, even amongst the the Rus people who become the Russians and the Ukrainians. The pattern is that the leader will be convinced that Christianity is a pretty prestigious religion that you know, you probably want to ally yourself with in order to increase your reputation amongst other rulers. The ruler will then adopt Christianity, then the people underneath the ruler will effectively be compelled by their loyalty to him to adopt Christianity. And so you get this fairly rapid process of Christianization. But it doesn't happen in the Baltic region. It doesn't happen amongst these Finno Ugric peoples. One reason for that is a language barrier. So whereas it was possible for example for Anglo Saxon missionaries to go to Germany and learn German quite quickly and preach or even learn Scandinavian languages and preach. It wasn't possible for people to learn Baltic languages so quickly because they are a separate subgroup within the Indo European languages that's on its own. And so there weren't any preachers who knew the languages of these people. That was one reason the Finno Ugric language is even more of a problem. Another problem is lifestyle. So some of these people were living lives and had an economy that was so different from the rest of Europe. For example, they were engaged in slash and burn agriculture, where you carry out agriculture, but only seasonally in one place, and then you cut down a bit of forest, you burn, then you plant your crops and then you move on. It's a kind of nomadic form of agriculture, or they were reindeer herders and they were hunters. And so they're engaged in ways of life where a religion that developed in the settled cities of the near east, it doesn't mean all that much to them. You know, the concepts of Christianity don't have much appeal. And I think also geographical remoteness, it's very difficult to set up a parish structure in somewhere that's very remote, has no roads, has no infrastructure, is very sparsely populated. So you end up sending in these missionaries and the missionaries will attempt to convert these people. The people might outwardly conform and say, okay, sure, yeah, we'll convert to Christianity. But as soon as the missionaries go, there's no pastoral provision, there's no reason for them to actually carry on with their Christianity. And so they just go back to what they were previously doing.

[David Musgrove]

So the picture would have been very different if there'd been someone like you, a linguistic expert, who can speak both English and Lithuanian, to smooth that process. Right.

[Francis Young]

Well, it's funny that when the Lithuanians were officially converted to Christianity, Polish priests went to carry out the conversion, but because they couldn't speak any Lithuanian, it was actually the Grand Duke who was in charge of the whole thing, Jorgela or Jagiel, who had to do the translation. He was the only person there who could translate. So he had to preach Christianity to his own people because so few people knew the Lithuanian language.

[David Musgrove]

Extraordinary. Right, well, let's hone back in on Lithuania again, because as you said at the top of the interview, that's the last kingdom that sort of succumbs to Christianity in Europe in the late 14th century. So what's the picture going on there? How many pre Christian people are still living in this part of the world? And how have we got to the point where Lithuania is finally Christianized?

[Francis Young]

Lithuania is a really interesting state in late medieval Europe because it's much, much bigger than Lithuania is today. If you look at a map of Europe today, Lithuania is a pretty small country that's located on the eastern Baltic next to Belarus and Russia and Poland. But in those days, Lithuania was actually massive. It was the largest country in Europe. So it covered the totality of what is today Belarus, lots of what is now western Ukraine, and also large parts of what is now the European edge of Russia. So that far western part of Russia, it's absolutely enormous. It's got a mixed population. Some of them are pagan Lithuanians who live in roughly where Lithuania is now. Some of them are Orthodox Ruthenians. They're the ancestors of the people who live in Belarus and Ukraine today. A lot of Jewish people, some Muslims as well, Crimean tatas who live in the area. And there will be a whole range of different missionaries as well. So you've got Catholics living there as well, and, and Polish merchants and so forth. So it's got a very mixed population. But the grand dukes of Lithuania for centuries had maintained a policy where they stayed pagan, mainly for political reasons. If they stayed pagan, it meant that they didn't have to align their state with one of the great powers. If they went Catholic, that aligned them with the Teutonic Knights to their west, who were their mortal enemies. If they went Orthodox, that aligned them with the Muscovites, ancestors of today's Russians, also their mortal enemies to the east. If they went Muslims, they allied themselves with, you know, the Crimean Khanate, also their mortal enemies to the south. And so they don't want to kind of go with any of these major religions, and so they stay pagan. But eventually an opportunity presents itself to one of the grand dukes of Lithuania that's just too good to pass up. And that's that the king of Poland has died, leaving behind an unmarried daughter who the Polish nobility don't think should be running Poland on her own. And so she's called Jadviga. Joghaila is the Lithuanian grand duke. He decides that it is worth converting to Catholicism if he can marry Jadviga and he can effectively become king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. And so that's how eventually the conversion happens.

[David Musgrove]

We should have just a little aside here because you mentioned the Teutonic Knights, and I imagine people's ears will have pricked up there. Just who were the Teutonic Knights and what's their role in. In this story?

[Francis Young]

Yeah, the Teutonic Knights originated as an order of Hospitallers in the Middle East. So during the Crusades that we normally think of as the Crusades, as in the attempt to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy places during the 12th and 13th centuries, various groups of military monastic fighters develop and they are officially in charge of hospitals who look after wounded knights. But the reality is that they are armed groups of men who take monastic vows and are, you know, very lethal fighting force. And the Teutonic Knights originally are based in the Holy Land but eventually they come to be invited into Europe in the early 13th century to take on a group of pagans called the Cumans. The Cumans are attacking Hungary at that point. Once the Teutonic Knights have dealt with the Cumans, they're then invited in 1226 by a Polish duke called Conrad of Mazovia because his lands are being plundered by a group of Baltic pagans called the Prussians, sometimes known as the Old Prussians, not to be confused with the later Prussians who were Germans. These are Baltic Prussians and the Prussians don't have any interest in converting to Christianity. Any missionaries who go to the Prussians end up coming back as a collection of body parts. And so the Teutonic Knights say, well these people are clearly beyond conversion to Christianity in the conventional way. The only way they're going to learn their lesson is if we essentially go and occupy their land as a military monastic state. So it's kind of a land grab disguised as a crusade. So they go to the area which nowadays if you look at it on a map is part of the Russian Federation, it's called Kaliningrad, this little exclave of Russia, but used to be Prussia just underneath Lithuania. So they take control of that area. And then another similar order called the Livonian Brethren of the Sword or Sword Brethren, they take control of the whole of what is now Latvia and Estonia. So that's just north of Lithuania. And so there are these two military monastic order states if you like, which are run by what are effectively warrior monks. But they have living under them all these pagan people who live as second class citizens.

[David Musgrove]

Let's go back to Lithuania again. So this moment of conversion, what was the. There must have been some sort of temple or something in, in the capital that was the, the focus of the pre Christian religion.

[Francis Young]

Yes, that's right. There was a temple and even more strangely the temple was dedicated to the God of Thunder who's called Perkunas in Lithuanian. But it had originally been a church and possibly a cathedral and that goes back to a Strange story where in the 13th century, so many years before, a Lithuanian ruler called Mindas had decided that he was going to convert to Christianity and built a cathedral. But it didn't work out because Mindo Gas was actually assassinated by his nobles and Lithuania reverted to paganism. And so his successors took off the roof of this temple, so it was open to the elements, because Lithuanians don't like roofs on their temples. Built an altar inside it, which was up many steps, and their offerings were made to Perkunas, the thunder God. And this contained an idol of perkunas, which in 1387, the local Franciscan friars who were already living there, because one of the interesting things about Lithuania is that as a pagan state, it had complete religious toleration, so you could follow your own religion. And they even allowed monks and friars and religious orders to exist within Lithuania. But the Franciscan friars who lived in Vilnius, they basically had the authority now to destroy the shrine. So they destroyed the shrine, they took over the idol, which they kept as a trophy in their dormitory for centuries thereafter, and then they put a roof back on this cathedral and turned it back into a cathedral. And it's still there to this day, although much altered. The cathedral in Vilnius is this building that was both that early cathedral and also that pagan temple. And archaeologists uncovered the evidence for this in the 1980s. But there are also sacred forests that surround Vilnius, and these are forests in which it's taboo to kill anything. Forests where you might carry out the cremation of your relatives. There are specific plots where people will carry out their cremations. There's a place called Shvintaragis, which is a kind of loop in the river where the grand dukes are ceremonially burnt in these great cremations. Cremation is very important to the pagan Lithuanians, but obviously not permissible at that point in Christianity. And, yeah, lots of areas, such as a hill where a sacred flame is kept burning, in which a priest claims to be able to foretell the future by looking at the flames. So, yeah, this whole kind of pagan range of rituals that surround the city.

[David Musgrove]

So that is fascinating. So the cathedral in Vilnius is originally a temple to a thunder God, and it's still there today. That is great intel. Now, 1387, the Grand Duke says, right, we're all Christian now. Is that surely that's game over? No, it just means that Catholicism spreads nicely throughout the Baltic states and that's the end of the story. Right. Why have you needed to write a book?

[Francis Young]

If only it were that simple. These conversion events are often Kind of staged propaganda. They are an occasion when a few hundred people gather in a place and formally accept Christianity and are baptized. The way it worked in Vilnius is that people were lured into the city with the promise of woolen clothes. So Yogalla had brought all these woolen robes and, you know, everybody who agreed to get baptized wives to get one of these robes, basically what the priests did is that they gathered the people into square formations of men and women. And everybody in one formation, a priest would come up with a big sprinkler and would sprinkle them with holy water and say, everyone in this block, you're all called John. And then go over to the women, the block of women, and say, everyone in this block, you're all called Catherine. And then, you know, move on to the next group and give them another Christian name. But clearly this wasn't the entire population of Lithuania. And the reality is that paganism in Lithuania carries on in a meaningful fashion very late. You know, this goes on right to the late 18th century. You're still getting reports from missionaries who are going out every summer into the remote countryside and finding people who are worshipping trees and lighting sacred fires. So this is something which carries on really up to the point where Lithuania is. Is partitioned by the Russian Empire in 1795 and becomes part of Russia. And it's only really at that moment in the late 18th century when the Lithuanians, rather like the Poles, decide, well, our national particularity is guaranteed by our adherence to Catholicism. That makes us different from the Russians. It kind of protects us from being Russified and turned into Russians. So that's really when Catholicism becomes an important part of Lithuanian identity. But up to that point, lots of Lithuanians remain pagan.

[David Musgrove]

How far did these pre Christian religions and the Christianesque religions that you've described, how far did they sort of influence back into Christianity? Did any of their views or the ways they saw life transmogrify back into Christianity?

[Francis Young]

There wasn't a huge amount of influence, I think, but there was some interest that the missionaries showed in some of these religions because they themselves had received a classical education where they'd been encouraged to think about the Greek and Roman gods. And so they were fascinated by this idea that they might be able to go out from the University of Vilnius, which is actually one of the great centers of classical learning in Northern Europe, and find people who are actually doing some of the things that Virgil or Homer described, you know, these kind of pagan sacrifices. And so there is this kind of strange fascination. And I think also when you look at Lithuanian Catholicism today, you do see that there are elements of that pagan past that have filtered into Lithuanian Catholicism in distinctive practices. For example, pole carving. So if you go around Lithuania, you'll see lots of places where religious images are carved on a single pole of wood, which is a bit like a totem pole. And that is very much a pagan tradition, although nowadays it will be a Christian character, like a figure of Christ or the Virgin Mary that you'll see on the pole. But nevertheless, that sense in which it's almost like an artificial tree and it carries through that kind of sense of the holiness of trees. And also huge protests every time somebody proposes cutting down an ancient tree. In Lithuania, there are major protests. I mean, if you think that protests like that are big in the uk, they're even bigger in Lithuania. There is this kind of sense that. That a national connection to ancient trees as something which is sacred and holy in some way.

[David Musgrove]

And that sounds quite beneficial for environmental purposes in that area as well. So these people going and trying to convert the pre Christian Lithuanias in the marshes, it sounds like they were quite anthropological in the way they were doing it. Is it kind of a bit like people going into the Amazon today looking for the sort of the indigenous uncontacted tribes and trying to get a sense about different ways of living? Is it that sort of.

[Francis Young]

I think that there's quite a difference with the new world in the sense that the people living in these remote areas were very well aware of the existence of Christianity and they were very well aware of the missionaries. They were just not very cooperative and didn't see them all that often. You do tend to find these records of expeditions that are going into these remote areas where they're simultaneously fascinated and appalled by what they find. And I think it's quite hard for us to understand that people might be genuinely interested in the pagan religions they're encountering, but also want to destroy them utterly. And that's, I think, a sense that we've lost. We tend to think if something is interesting, we should probably preserve it so that it can be further studied. But in this period they are, yeah, they're kind of simultaneously fascinated in a pool. And so, yeah, they'll constantly be making these comparisons with Roman and Greek religion and saying, oh, you know, Perkinas is Jupiter. That Emina, who's the. The mother goddess is Dea Telluris, she is the goddess of Earth. And they'll be identifying, you know, domestic spirits as lares and Panates, you know, the Roman domestic spirits. So there's always this kind of commentary that is overlaid on the religion that they're encountering, which can make it quite difficult sometimes to see the actual indigenous religion behind it because they're doing so much to overlay these classical interpretations on it.

[David Musgrove]

And is there any validity in that classical interpretation or is that a real stretch?

[Francis Young]

Well, they thought that there was because there was this long standing belief that the Lithuanians were themselves descended from Romans who'd gone into exile. There's this myth that goes back as far as the 15th century and the belief that, for example, the sacredness of snakes in Lithuanian religion was somehow connected to the God Asclepius, the God of healing, who is represented by a snake. Now none of this is true because we now know that any similarities there are between the Latin language and the Lithuanian language are to do with much older links in the Indo European language family. But at the time there was this strong belief that the Lithuanians were in some way Latin.

[David Musgrove]

Right. Now the basic point of your book, and I'm just going to quote from you, is that Europe's pre Christian religions died in silence. So, so what happens?

[Francis Young]

Yeah, so going down from this period that the story begins, which is the conversion of Lithuania, you get this gradual attrition against pre Christian religions and their survival. Nothing really happens that much in the 15th century. But in the 16th century the Reformation comes and there's a great concern about religious purity both on the Protestant side and the Catholic side. And pagans are kind of caught in the crossfire between the Catholics and the Protestants as scapegoats, because they are, are the people who show that Christianity of whichever flavor has failed to achieve what it should have achieved, which is the conversion of the whole of Europe. So that intensifies matters and I think state centralization as well, so the formation of state bureaucracies, which are much more efficient, particularly in Scandinavia, that has a massive impact on the Sami and also in Russia. So Peter the Great's reformation of the Russian state bureaucracy Results in the 18th century in campaigns of mass forced baptism of non Christian peoples who are often, you know, soldiers will arrive in your village and they'll force everybody to go down into the nearest body of water and a priest will say a few words and you're now baptized, which has significant consequences for you. Because if you're now baptized, you're now officially Russian and that means that you're required to pay taxes that you weren't previously paying and you become culturally assimilated in a way that you weren't so yeah, you get these kind of massive campaigns of conversion, some of which are very brutal and very aggressive, especially within the Russian Empire, but also in Norway and Sweden and Finland. And eventually you reach a point where these communities start forgetting their original traditions. And so they might then follow a religion that's partially Christian, partially pre Christian, a bit of a mix of the two. But over time you do start to get these kind of local grassroots Christian movements where people start to adopt Christianity for themselves. And the thing about Christianity, it doesn't really have any success with the people until they themselves decide that they're going to identify with it. Mere imposition from above doesn't seem to work. But you do get these Lutheran pietist revival movements. You get an increasing identification with Catholic piety amongst the Lithuanians, you get more of an identification with Orthodox piety amongst the Finno Ugric peoples in Russia. But I think it's Russia where these campaigns are the least successful. So in terms of Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia, by the end of the 18th century most of these pre Christian practices have died out. In Sapmi or Lapland as we might call it in the far north of Scandinavia, these practices again then by the end of the 18th century, mostly gone. But in Russia it's a little bit more complicated. So you will today if you go to places like Admirtia, which is on the Volga, it's a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, the people there speak their own language and have their own religious practices and they do carry out large sacrifices on the edge of forests, these things still happen. Many of the people will will identify as Orthodox, similar in the Mariel Republic, which is quite nearby, but they will have a mixture of Orthodox and animist practices and some of them won't be baptized at all and will identify themselves as completely animist. So when a new president is sworn in in the Mariel Republic, again that's a constituent republic of Russia, he is apparently sworn in jointly by an animist priest and an Orthodox priest. So these pre Christian religions are still a force to be reckoned with in areas of Russia that most people would certainly not have visited and probably have never heard of.

[Podcast Host]

That was Francis Young, a folklorist and historian of religion and belief. Francis's book Silence of the the Untold History of Europe's Last Pagans is on sale now and he was speaking to David Musgrove. Francis also previously appeared on the podcast to uncover more about English folklore. From iconic characters such as Robin Hood and King Arthur to fantastical tales of shape shifters and mermaids. Just search for English folklore in this podcast feed to bring that up.

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[Francis Young]

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