Were There Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe? - Ronald Hutton

This lecture considers a set of superhuman female figures found in medieval and early modern European cultures- Mother Nature, the roving nocturnal lady often called Herodias, the British fairy queen, and the Gaelic Cailleach. None seem to be surviving ancient deities, and yet there is nothing Christian about any of them either. It is suggested that they force us to reconsider our own existing terminology when writing the religious history of Europe.
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on 8 November 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London
Ronald is Gresham Professor of Divinity.
He is also Professor of History at the University of Bristol.
www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/pr...
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/p...
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[@ladyjusticesusan]

Dr. Hutton is a true treasure. I can’t get enough of him. Thank you with all my heart for posting these lectures. I would otherwise have zero opportunity to see him. (From sunny Florida, USA.)

[@BaldingClamydia]

Fellow Floridian here with the same sentiment!

[@lynpugs]

I'm surprised they aren't banned in Florida.

[@BaldingClamydia]

@@lynpugs it's only a matter of time

[@KarlKarsnark]

Always a treat to hear a lecture from Dr. Hutton.

[@tonyevans9999]

When you know it's Hutton by the title alone, fascinating insights incoming!

[@BaldingClamydia]

Oh, I'm a little late to this one, but if Prof Hutton is the lecturer, I have to watch :D

[@nardo218]

thank you so much for posting these. I am looking to study in grad school exactly this work so it's extremely valuable to me to hear these lectures from a leader in the field. Thanks so much to Dr. Hutton for being so kind and generous with his time and so open with his research!

[@civilengineer3349]

I love Ronald

[@KotyAtamanshiGB]

Everybody loves Ronald

[@TheStoryCrow]

@@KotyAtamanshiGBI came here to write that.

[@matimus100]

Congratulations on being in love with another man Thanks for letting everyone know on KZbin

[@civilengineer3349]

@@matimus100 You should know it too

[@LightBeing369]

✌🏼Indeed, what a brilliant mind. Could listen to this amazing man all day

[@authormichellefranklin]

Always a treat to see Prof. Ronald Hutton!

[@geraldinehughes4490]

Stellar, I appreciate you Professor Hutton. You made my day going forward into old age. You are a dear gentleman, thank you, Geraldine

[@KernowekTim]

Professor Hutton's detractors are entitled to their collective of contrary views. Without contradiction we would never progress. They also share other common denominators; they do not command the universal respect that Professor Hutton has earned, nor will they probably ever be elevated to the post of a living British and Irish National Historical Treasure; in my opinion.

[@darlebalfoort8705]

Having read some of these works, I find his comments quiet salient. Excellent lecture.

[@jamiegallier2106]

These lecture videos are much appreciated. ❤

[@AndYourLittleDog]

What a treat it is to see Dr Hutton

[@pendragon_cave1405]

Love his work and really looking forward to where his interests and research take him, especially on the rise of spiritual, non christian female figures of power within the relatively new (to the UK) patriarchal christian religion Also, what a legend for being able to remove his jacket, continue talking, and manage the microphone with barely missing a beat

[@matimus100]

You love really easy we noticed regularly

[@johnmanno2052]

This guy's AMAZING!! Always a brilliant lecture.

[@jonathaneffemey944]

Thanks for posting.

[@janinebean4276]

Women need figures to look up to and empathize with as well, and Christianity is famously patriarchal. It makes sense that women created their own figures

[@Istehomo]

These lectures by Ronald Hutton have been absolutely fantastic.

[@faithlesshound5621]

One conclusion I took away is that the construction of goddesses, or figures akin to them (theogony), had not ceased in the middle ages. These new figures in peoples minds were not simply survivals of earlier beliefs, but may have derived from fresh creations by storytellers. It's like how some kinds of folk music have been shown to have grown out of artistic compositions from a different time and place. In our own time, we can pin down exactly who wrote stories about fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter and when they were published. For creations of earlier times we don't know who first made up the story, since what we have is like several generations later of fanfiction, where only what tickles people's fancy or resonates with them survives the retelling. Carl Jung and Sir James Frazer suggested that there are patterns that recur in what we make up. That may account for the similarities to earlier religious beliefs, rather than their "underground" continuance.

[@AnnaSibirskaja]

Amazing, thank you ❤

[@vladimirp2674]

Prof. Hutton is a wiseacre. Such a harmonized and profount thread. We a gonna to learn much from him.

[@amanitamuscaria7500]

excellent. Thank you.

[@user-fh6ov3wl4h]

Would love to hear him examine st Bridget in this context

[@dorothyjones8937]

Just want to say thank you. I am a devoted fan.

[@Goldlion973]

Classifying customs as relics of past beliefs and ritual. Yes! Once wrote a paper on 80s Punk rock as a cult of Loki who in myth was chained beneath the earth, thrashing as he is spat upon by a snake. Ditto Hip hop as a cult of the deity Eshu the trickster and Pomba Gira, his wife.

[@dafyddthomas6897]

By mediaeval times, all Classical Paganism had died out. Therefore it was necessary to build a Paganism fit for that society.

[@ramuz-ff3cf]

salud dr. hutton dame mas por favor mas

[@VEDATOR_official]

Fascinating

[@andrewstehlik3917]

Well, by the time Leviathan got to the book of Job it was quite old chap! What we have in those chapters of the book of Job is extensive quotation and gentle reworking of the Ancient Near East cosmology. And Leviathan had its predecessor in monster Litan - for instance in Ugaritic mythology.

[@esthermarygold-lowe4403]

Also, read the books of the apocrypha. There is a divine feminine. The mother/father.

[@curtiswfranks]

I love Dr. Hutton!

[@matimus100]

When did you first discover you were in love?

[@curtiswfranks]

@@matimus100: Maybe a year or two ago, hahaha!

[@user-rg9yz5ou4y]

Why don't you mention Spenser's "The Fairie Queen," the literary classic that most celebrates this being, whom Spenser identified with Elizabeth I?

[@jarrettperdue3328]

Was curious about that too

[@livrowland171]

Maybe because apart from the name, it's not really about her

[@NatrixianNature]

This is a brilliant and fascinating lecture. I do wish they had mic’d professor mouth-sounds differently though.

[@diogenes9524]

It would be interesting to hear Dr Hutton's analysis of several popular and folkloric customs which are commonly assumed to support the idea that vestiges of pagan *worship* survived Christian hegemony. The veneration of Irish Holy Wells maintains a veneer of Christianinty, but until the late 19th century was combined with much excess of bad behaviour including drinking, brutal faction fighting and licenciosness that it was outlawed by the Catholic, Church, yet 'well dressing' has endured, and a great many wells are still cared for and revered. Halloween and The Pace Egg plays were clearly versions of archetypal elemental ritual, including magical potions,which suggest physical participation rather than mere 'thoughts' or literary phenomena. The use of drugs to aid transscendent states, ubiquitous since the 1960s, can surely be classified as pagan religion. The active molecules may have changed but the experience is unaffected by Christian doctrine.

[@ramuz-ff3cf]

Verdadero mucho gracias

[@jarrettperdue3328]

I feel like I learned as much about sweaty, preoccupied, male scholars as I did about the overt subject matter 😁

[@wyattrussell7496]

The exile of the Egyptian princess Scotia

[@speedwagon1824]

Why did you stop putting names on the thumbnails?

[@paulwillard9687]

What about if you break a mirror, you bury it on a full or new moon

[@karljosephburrows8482]

Macbeth's witches

[@eccoeco3454]

It's a bit reductive... He really took the bits and pieces of ginzburg that fitted his argument and left all the rest, also ignoring a lot other studies on the matter of night figures that have been written... It's interesting and surelly at least somewhat true but... Overall a bit unconvincing

[@bwhitedpencilbox889]

He ignored actual linguists when he dismissed Perchta as a personification of epiphany, he didn’t site Erika Timms work and she is the expert in the field and wrote a whole book. His citation for this is an English paper which imo he also cherry picked and misconstrued. There is a whole body of positive folklore that is not only on epiphany around Perchta which he seems completely ignorant about

[@eccoeco3454]

@@bwhitedpencilbox889 he ignored the work of a lot of scholars... I have some experience with these figures mostly on the Italian side... And well... It's annoying to listen... Public attention is a horrible illness for academics... We have come to a point where you don't even need to win a Nobel to get Nobel disease

[@yensid4294]

❤

[@molochi]

Excluding mention of Freya/Freyja seemed odd and pointed. Especially with her association to the Valkyrie.

[@nono_noxx]

i could listen to him all day

[@KerilynDesiree]

Usa is so sad. What a displaced people with no root anymore.

[@ramuz-ff3cf]

Cerdadero mucho gracias

[@justinswingle4714]

well, i know there are still pagen goddesses in Los Angeles!

[@16252]

cool

[@janinebean4276]

It’s also possible that the churchmen chronically underestimated women and thought women were silly, so didn’t take their traditions seriously

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Possible… indeed! 😂

[@lisamomon6793]

Sure went underground

[@user-rg9yz5ou4y]

There is overwhelming evidence that some elements of pre-Christian culture survived the triumph of the Christian faith. Most notably, the preservation of the writings of numerous Greek and Roman authors. Even more so, the widespread view of Christian scholars that Aristotle, a pre-Christian philosopher, was the ultimate authority about scientific questions, logic, and many other matters that interested medieval and Renaissance scholars. There was also some adoption of pre-Christian popular culture and pre-Christian folk practices. For example, numerous wells that in pre-Christian Ireland that had been considered holy places, appropriate sites for meditation and prayer in pre-Christian times, continued to be considered holy places, fitting sites for meditation and prayer, in Christian times. (Take for example, Singh's play The Well of the Saints, which focuses on these traditional Irish beliefs). However, very few if any of these survivals of pre-Christian civilization were incompatible with Christian doctrine, and they did not pose any sort of threat to Christianity as the dominant faith.

[@francisfischer7620]

Heavens, what do you think Mary was?!!

[@peterharris8471]

Ah, Dr Hutton, the very antithesis of Dr Dawkins. Both fill my desire for big words in a British accent.

[@SimonORorke]

Please stop the ads that have suddenly started appearing top left in Gresham videos. They are very distracting, as are the repeated exhortations that I subscribe etc.

[@mischiefisaspeil]

I believe it’s Nerthus the lost earth goddess of the Germanic tribes. She is documented by Tacitus. The great mother existed just wasn’t allowed to be seen by the male dominated religions. But she led the wild hunt prior to Odin. Iduna is the Persephone of Nordic myths.

[@JJONNYREPP]

Were There Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe? isn't that what some woman suggested many years ago - maybe she partook of Gresham college during her teen angst years...and that these paganistic rites are just built upon, redefined and recast with another face or persona at it's centre.....? roman catholicism is rife with it's martyrs - and seems somewhat blood thirsty... p.s i wonder if you will end with some reference to martyrdom or sacrificial rites with this lecture...?

[@user-un8tv1pp8m]

Early christianity appropriated pagan traditions wherever possible. Even rather basic things like the christmas date, easter spring celebrations, autumn celebrations of the dead, holy springs ect have very clear pagan precursors and where added to catholic dogma in the times the religion was new in the areas it spread to. Now the neopagan feminist movements did overstate that stuff a lot and invented parts outright, but at its core they were not wholly wrong.

[@Wotsitorlabart]

​​​@@user-un8tv1pp8m The setting of Christmas Day on 25th of December did not coincide directly with a pagan festival. There is little evidence that there were pagan early spring celebrations (May being the month for such festivities). But in any case the timing of Easter was fixed by Scripture as the trial and execution of Christ took place during the Jewish Passover - ie early Spring. Despite popular belief All Hallows Eve (Halloween) and the Christian festivals of All Saints and All Souls that follow were not celebrated on November 1st and 2nd to appropriate the pagan Irish festival of Samhain. Rome had very early decreed that May 13th be the day to celebrate All Saints but by 800 the English and German churches had begun to celebrate on 1st November (perhaps the gloomy northern season suited the sombre nature of the festival rather better than a sunny May). As Samhain was not found in either England or Germany there was clearly no ulterior motive behind this. And to to reinforce that point the Irish Church actually celebrated All Saints Day on 20th April. It clearly felt no threat from the pagan festival.

[@Johnnycdrums]

Heresy yes. Paganism? Of course, and this is well known.

[@ArmyJames]

What is like to know is: Were there pagans before there were humans?

[@jamesstevenson7725]

this guy is a fraud

[@YAHUAHThetrueMessiah]

You are a Fruit LOOP!!!

[@jeffreybrannen9465]

The very definition of “wet” speaking. If I put the volume very low and put the phone far enough away, I can avoid the revolting noises his voice makes. The material is interesting enough to get through the terrible speaking. It’s like listening to someone talking with Kraft macaroni and cheese in his mouth for over an hour

[@faithlesshound5621]

I must be grateful for my poor hearing then, for I was in no way incommoded by any of the noises you perceived. Just as I am able to sleep well at night without feeling that there is a pea under my mattress.

[@jarrettperdue3328]

The Empire Strikes Back; Han cuts open the dead taun-taun ....

[@The_Letter_J6]

Seems like he's conflating paganism with Christianity, reducing the latter to a mere reworking of "more ancient literature." This is utter rubbish and nonsensical to any lover of the truth, which can only be found in the KJV Bible.

[@JD-qh3sd]

The rhythm and tone of this speaker is painful to listen to. Even if one is going to simply read a scripted presentation word-for-word, there are ways to do it better than this.

[@christeankapp6549]

why can't scholars present well. They just read off some paper.

[@LPRH246]

Really I'm no academic and your way behind.... Get up to speed