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 PAGANISM

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PAGANISM

philosophical speculations, in which he encountered much opposition from the Conventual Fra Nicola Buico. Among the jurisconsults, after the closing of the university (1509-17), were the canonist Meno- chius, Alciatus, Lancelotti, and Pancirolo, famous also for his knowledge of Koman antiquities.

A characteristic of the University of Padua, even in the eighteenth century, was its internationalism, as seen from t he list of professors about Facciolati ; it was attended especially by Germans. When Venice passed under Austrian domination (1814) the univer- sity was tran.sformed, like that of Pav-ia. At present it has the ordinary four faculties, besides a school of applied engineering and a school of pharmacy and obstetrics. Various astronomical institutes, bacteri- ological, physiological, hygienic, and pathological; chemical, physical, and geodetic laboratories; an anthropological museum; a botanical garden; and an astronomical observatory complete the equipment of the university. It has 128 chairs, 68 professors, 20 paid, and 17 private, tutors. In 1906, there was established near the university an institution for the education of Catholic young men. University educa- tion in Italy is strictly governmental, and without it all professional possibilities are closed to young men. At some seats of learning. Catholic Clubs were started to help them against the peril to their faith and morals, but they failed. The small Pensionata, situ- ated in the neighbourhood of Padua, between the Basilica and the church of Sta. Juliana, was trans- formed into a large estabhshment. The students at- tend a weekly conference which treats of points of faith affecting modern conditions of life and science.

CoLLE, Storia scientifico IMeraria dello Studio di Padava (Padua. 1824): Facciolatus, Fasti gymnasii Patavini (Padua. 1757); Favaro. Lo Stitdio di Padova e la Republica Veneta (Venice, 1889); Cereni starici sulla R. Universili di Padova (Padua, 1873).

U. Benigni.

Paganism, in the broadest sense, includes all re- ligions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism. The term is also used as the equivalent of Polytheism (q. v.). It is derived from the Latin pagus, whence pagani (i. e. those who live in the country), a name given to the country folk who remained heathen after the cities had become Chris- tian. Various forms of Paganism are described in special articles (e. g. Brahminism, Buddhism, Mith- raism); the present article deals only w^th certain as- pects of Paganism in general which will be helpful in studying its details and in judging its value.

I. Claims of Paganism to the Name of Religion. Influence on Public and Private Life. — Histo- rians of religion usually as.sume that religions developed upwards from some common germ which they call Totemism, Animism, Solar or Astral Myth, Nature Worship in general or Agrarian in particular, or some other name implying a systematic interpretation of the facts. We do not propose to discuss, theologically, philosophically, or even historically, the underlying unity, or universal originating cause, of all religions, if any such there be. History as a matter of fact presents us in each case with a religion already existing, and in a more or le.ss complicated form. Somewhere or other, some one of the human elements offered as universal, necessary, and sufficient germ of the developed religion, can, of course, be found. But we would point out that, in the long run, this element was not rarely a cause of degeneration, not progress; of lower forms of cult and creed, not pure Monotheism. Thus it is almost cer- tain that Totemism went for much in the formation of the Egyptian religion. The animal-standards of the tribesj gradually and partially anthropomorphized, created the jackal-, ibia-, hawk-headed gods familiar to us. But there is no real trace of the evolution from Zoolatry to Polytheism, and thence to Monotheism. The monotheistic records are more sublime, more

definite in the earlier dynasties. Atum, the object of a superb worship, has no animal equivalent. lOvcn the repression of popular follies by a learned ofTicial c:uste failed to check the tendency towards gro.ss and un- paralleled Zoolatry, which was food for Roman ridi- cule and Greek bewilderment, and stirred the author of Wisdom (xi, 16) to indignation (Lorct, "L'Kgypte au temps du totemisme", Paris, 1906; Cappart in "Rev. d'hist. relig.", LI, 190.5, p. 192; Clement Alex., "Pird.", Ill, ii, 4; Diodorus Siculus, I, Ixxxiv; Juvenal, "Satires", xv).

Animism also entered largely into the religions of the Semites. Hence, we are taught, came Polydx- monism. Polytheism, Monotheism. This is not cor- rect. Polyda;monism is undoubtedly a system born of belief in spirits, be these the souls of the dead or the hidden forces of nature. It "never exists alone and is not a 'religious' sentiment at all": it is not a degen- erate form of Polytheism any more than its undevel- oped antecedent. Animism, which is really a naive philosophy, played an immense part in the formation of mythologies, and, combined with an already con- scious monotheistic belief, undoubtedly gave rise to the complex forms of both Polyda-monism and Poly- theism. And these, in every Semitic nation save among the Hebrews, defeated even such efforts as were made (e. g. in Babylon and Assyria) to reconsti- tute or achieve that Monotheism of which Animism is offered as the embryo. These facts are clearly indi- cated and summed up in Lagrange's "Etudes sur les Religions sfimitiques" (2nd ed., Paris, 1904).

Nature Worship generally, and Agrarian in particu- lar, were unable to fulfil the promise they appeared to make. The latter was to a large extent responsible for the Tammuz cult of Babylon, with which the worships of Adonis and Attis, and even of Dionysus, are so unmistakably allied. Much might have been hoped from these religions with their yearly festival of the dying and rising god, and his sorrowful .sister or spouse: yet it was precisely in these cults that the worst perversions existed. Ishtar, Astarte, and Cy- bele had their male and female prostitutes, their Galli: Josiah had to cleanse the temple of Yahweh of their booths (cf. the Qedishim and Kelabim, Deut., xxiii, 17; II Kings, xxiii, 7; cf. I Kings, xiv, 24; xv, 12), and even in the Greek world, where prostitution was not else regarded as religious, Eryx and Corinth at least were contaminated by Semitic influence, which Greece could not correct. "Although the story of Aphrodite's love", says Dr. Farnell, "is human in tone and very winning, yet there are no moral or spiritual ideas in the worship at all, no conception of a resurrection that might stir human hojies. Adonis personifies merely the life of the fields and gardens that passes away and blooms again. .\11 tliat Hellen- ism could do for this Eastern god was to invest him with the grace of idyUic poetrv" ("Cults of the Greek States", II, 649, 1896-1909; cf. Lagrange, op. cit., 220, 444 etc.)

Mithraism (q. v.) is usually regarded as a rival to nascent Christianity; but Nature Worship ruined its hopes of perpetuity. "Mithra remained", .says S. Dill, "inextricably linked with the nature-worship of the past." This connexion cleft between it and purer faiths "an impassable gulf " which meant its "in- evitable defeat" ("Roman Soc. from Nero to Aurel.", London, 1904, pp. 622 sqq.), and, "in place of a di- vine life instinct with human sympathy, it had only to offer the coUl svmbolism of a cosmic legend " (ibid.). Its very ada])t:ibility, M. Cumont reminds us, "pre- vented it from shaking itself free from the gross or ridiculous superstitions which complicated its ritual and theology; it was involved, in spite of its austerity, in a questionable alliance with the orgiastic cult of the mistress of Attis, and was obliged to drag behind it all the weight of a chimerical or hateful past . The tri- umph oi Roman Mazdeism would not only have en-