Word Finder - pagan

definition

A person not adhering to a main world religion; a follower of a pantheistic or nature-worshipping religion.

example

This community has a surprising number of pagans.

definition

(by extension) An uncivilized or unsocialized person.

definition

(by extension) An unruly, badly educated child.

definition

Relating to, characteristic of religions that differ from main world religions.

example

Many converted societies transformed their pagan deities into saints.

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(by extension) Savage, immoral, uncivilized, wild.

In Pagan times Berchta had the rank of a minor deity.

Some pagan reliefs are built into the tower.

From Christian writers we learn that Harran continued to be a seat of pagan worship and culture down to and even later than the Mahommedan era.

If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended.

People can find Celtic theme wedding rings as well as fashion jewelry, and both Christian and pagan religious jewelry.

Most people with pagan belief systems choose tattoos of the cross to represent the North, South, East and West directions and the four seasons.

The six pointed star is reminiscent of both the Star of David and of some pagan designs.

He incorporated traditional Irish symbols such as fire and the sun into Christian religious symbols to make conversion easier for Irish people who until that time were pagan.

There are probably some people who think it's improper to take iconic symbols and turn them into fodder for intimacy, but it absolutely fits the pagan roots of Christmas.

The Catholic church wanted people to convert to Christianity, and in order to do so they had to change the Pagan celebration to a church-sanctioned one.

The Cylons have a Plan, although the Plan is never detailed, one Battlestar Galactica theory addresses the holy crusade of the monotheistic Cylons purging the pagan Colonials.

The fourth is pagan, the fifth Christian, Aeizanes having in the interval embraced Christianity.

They shared the worldly spirit in its various forms, particularly the desire for wealth and the luxuries it affords, and for a place in " good society " - which meant a pagan atmosphere.

But Domitian, according to pagan historians, bore hardly on them.

As yet the law is not impregnated with the Christian spirit; this absence of both Christian and Pagan elements is due to the fact that many of the Franks were still heathens, although their king had been converted to Christianity.

Three centuries more passed before the pagan models were quite lost to sight.

The Jews, expelled from Constantinople, sought a home amongst them, developed the Khazar trade, and contended with Mahommedans and Christians for the theological allegiance of the Pagan people.

The angry tyrant, unable to refute her arguments himself, sent for pagan scholars to argue with her, but they were discomfited.

Clement also forbade the practice of the Jesuit missionaries in China of "accommodating" their teachings to pagan notions or customs, in order to win converts.

The probability seems to be that the earliest Perceval-Grail romance was composed at Fescamp, and was coincident with the transformation, under the influence of the Saint-Sang legend, of the originally Pagan talisman known as the Grail into a Christian relic, and that this romance was more or less at the root of all subsequent versions.

The earliest may be called the syncretic; it is the fusion of Jewish or pagan with Christian elements.

Gnosticism was the result of the attempt to blend with Christianity the religious notions of pagan mythology, mysterology, theosophy and philosophy" (p. 98).

As long as the Christian Church was itself persecuted by the pagan empire, it advocated freedom of conscience, and insisted that religion could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius); but almost immediately after Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman empire the persecution of men for religious opinions began.

His greatest temptation was the study of the literature of pagan Rome.

The invectives against idolatry of the early Jewish and Christian apologists, of Philo, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius and others, are very good reading and throw much light on the question how an ancient pagan conceived of his idols.

As the Greek and Roman methods of computing time were connected with certain pagan rites and observances which the Christians held in abhorrence, the latter began at an early period to imitate the Jews in reckoning their years from the supposed period of the creation of the world.

The Feast of St Martin (Martinmas) took the place of an old pagan festival, and inherited some of its usages (such as the Martinsmdnnchen, Martinsfeuer, Martinshorn and the like, in various parts of Germany); by this circumstance is probably to be explained the fact that Martin is regarded as the patron of drinking and jovial meetings, as well as of reformed drunkards.

But this is unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that even some pagan writers, such as Juvenal, Pliny and Martial (?), traced a resemblance between Domitian and Nero.

From the earliest Christian times the saints took the place of the pagan tutelary deities (Di tutelares) and were in this capacity called tutelares or patroni, patron-saints.

From the beginning of the 17th century Adel suffered greatly from the ravages of pagan Galla tribes, and Harrar sank to the position of an amirate of little importance.

It was in no small degree due to his stanch and unwavering leadership that the Church was saved from the peril of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of the pagan revival which swept over Asia during the first half of the 2nd century, and it was his unfaltering allegiance to the Apostolic faith that secured the defeat of the many forms of heresy which threatened to destroy the Church from within.

The history of the practice of excommunication may be traced through (1) pagan analogues, (2) Hebrew custom, (3) primitive Christian practice, (4) medieval and monastic usage, (5) modern survivals in existing Christian churches.

Among pagan analogues are the Gr.

The hostile French faction was much the stronger, since at this time the king (whom the whole of the pagan party followed) was of that faction; but after some critical episodes the treaty was signed on the 26th of December.

Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus.

The word originally signified a military commander, but very early came to be extended to anyone bearing rule, Mahomet himself being styled by the pagan Arabs amir of Mecca.

It has been argued that the sacramental rites of the Christians were largely imitated from the pagan mysteries; but for the first two hundred years this is hardly true, except perhaps in the case of certain Gnostic sects whose leaders intentionally amalgamated the new faith with old pagan ideas and rites.

On the contrary, as a thousand passages in the earlier apologists attest, they viewed the pagan mysteries with horror and detestation.

The Christians' of Bithynia were evidently quite frank about them to Pliny (c. 112), and Justin in his Apology reveals everything to a pagan emperor (c. 150).

The disappearance, too, of the pagan mysteries must have left a void in many hearts, and the clerics tried to fill it up by themselves masquerading as hierophants.

Their worship persisted throughout the pagan period, although its character changed considerably in later times.

We have seen St Benedict evangelizing the pagan population round Monte Cassino; and a considerable time each day is assigned to the reading of the Fathers.

Any pagan who wished to understand and criticize Christianity intimately had to begin by learning from the Jews, and this accounts for the opening chapters of his argument.

This capitulary ordered the celebration of baptism and other Christian rites and ceremonies in addition to the payment of tithes, and forbade the observance of pagan customs on pain of death.

Tertullian (c. 200) had long before condemned this as a heathen custom; none the less, it was insisted on in later ages, and is a survival of the pagan lustrations or -repcppavTiipca.

In less than twenty years after the death of its founder, it collapsed before a combined attack of all Poland's enemies, and simultaneously a terrible pagan reaction swept away the poor remnants of Christianity and civilization.

In the first year of the 13th century, the Knights of the Sword, one of the numerous orders of crusading military monks, had been founded in Livonia to "convert" the pagan Letts, and, in 1208, the still more powerful Teutonic order was invited by Duke Conrad of Masovia to settle in the district of Kulm (roughly corresponding to modern East Prussia) to protect his territories against the incursions of the savage Prussians, a race closely akin to the Lithuanians.

The transformation of the pagan Lithuanian chieftain Jagiello into the catholic king of Poland, Wladislaus II., was an event of capital importance in the history of eastern Europe.

Numerous graves, both from the pagan and the Christian periods, the latter containing more than 2000 skeletons, with a great number of small articles, were discovered in the same year in the same neighbourhood.

In the 4th century Demosthenes was expounded and imitated by the widely influential teacher, Libanius of Antioch (c. 314c. 393), the pagan preceptor of St Chrysostom.