"Van Rijn often spoke sharply to St. Dismas about this. He never got a satisfactory reply." (p. 540)
"He stumped off to find a bottle and Adzel, in that order. But first he spent a few minutes with St. Dismas." (p. 547)
Is van Rijn's prayer entirely focused on this saint? Does he leave it to St. Dismas to deal directly with God? Paganism is not a single coherent theology but some pagans believe that there is a high god who is too remote to be approached directly so that, for everyday matters, lesser deities suffice. Some Christians pray to saints to pray to God for them.
Alan Moore said, "Religions are higher fictions." Mars and St. Michael make sense to me as personifications of war but not as literally existing beings with whom we can communicate, presumably by telepathy. Human beings still inhabit very different conceptual universes.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But Catholics do both, pray to God directly AND asking the saints to intercede for them. And at other times we see Old Nick mentioning God directly.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I know but is there anyone who does just connect with one or a few saints?
Paul.
Catholicism was Christianity's "gateway drug" in Europe, and as such it took on a good deal from the previous religions -- half the village churches between the Atlantic and the Vistula are built on previous religious sites, for instance.
In one of Poul's LAST VIKING series, a Norse character says "I confess I miss old Thor, but St. Olaf will do as well", which sums up a lot of people's attitudes.
In that pantheon, Thor was the farmer's God -- a lot of his traditional attributes mimic those generally attributed to the 'bluff, hearty honest yeoman' stereotype.
Odin was far more remote and terrible -- the God the warlords gave the blood of men to in sacrifice, while knowing that he'd always turn on them in the end, the patron of magic and high poetry and sorcerers, whose mind and aims were beyond human ken.
"Nine days I/hung on the Tree
Wounded for Odin/Self given unto self
I grasped the runes of wisdom
Screaming I grasped them..."
Kaor, Paul!
If you mean are there people who favor one saint to pray to over others? Yes, there are. With Old Nick, it's St. Dismas.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And we see the phenomenon you mentioned of Christian churches being built on the sites of pagan shrines in St. Bede's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE as well. IIRC, St. Gregory I recommended to Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, that pagan shrines be rededicated as churches.
I remember that bit from THE LAST VIKING of how King Harald's marshal Ulf missed "old Thor." It would take time with many converts for Christianity to make a deep impact. Which we see happening before Ulf died.
I recall Anderson warning his readers in the preface he wrote for HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA that old Norse paganism was marked by "heathen rites obscene or bloody." Including human sacrifices to Odin. There were REASONS, after all, beyond the merely practical for why the Scandinavians turned away from paganism.
Ad astra! Sean
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