https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c9f18a6acd154bc921ebf9aa6e64aa5c.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=ZIlcEaAOR2g9PR5vKP7angGWRpcm%7EoZgVHpONGfNnRFMyyPvktW2MbAzMc6ycDAffW2-d9l%7E0d5NrTRrlSse%7ELyeompS44hQGe-HOByGvNpWWlYZQ-BcC4w84uGP0K2as03H950Nh-LYtB7z-7k8aeR6yiMgEaBLYTEWlTPvqMHf5DfOHhdVwQ4CaUS2fR19o-K3IqI9tSqbPSYmeOegdpFFRd9PA58wshdgk1krtpcftS6i-rMnzxcOYt4GBCKuzw3YylcV4bO7d82rAFYi1bH-yPV3b0YbB0Tmlk1L49yzhayLpYwvyc1IuK7fH3WQZxyoZwU9CFqA8Kxp7zkEGA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ad100fa724fab3a3760cfa21ad381675 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM. tyw Jhorau ratones. BY ROBERT FORDER. PRICE ONE PENNY. « LONDON : B. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, 1 8 8 8. E.C, �PRINTED BY -ARTHUR BONNER, 34 BOUVERIE STREET, ’LONDON, E.C. �PREFACE. 'The following pages are the substance of a lecture given by me from many platforms in London and the Provinces, and which also has appeared in the National Reformer. Mr. Bradlaugh has kindly given me permission to reprint the articles, to which there are some slight alterations -and a few additions. I venture to hope that the facts here stated may be useful for our friends to lend or give to enquirers whose .minds are open to the reception of truth. �6 tions at trials in place of oaths, had precedence over consuls and chief magistrates, and even had power to pardon condemned criminals. So ancient was the worship that Ovid says it was brought to Italy from Troy by 2Eneas (“Fasti”, book iii). We are at once enabled to trace this myth to its origin, for Butler says that St. Ambrose declares that agues in Greek means chastity, and in Latin, lamb. “ The parents of St. Agnes, who escaped her fate, were, after her decease, blessed with a vision while praying at her tomb, in which she appeared to them, in a garment of glory, and a lamb standing by her side of the purest white, a companion which the painters havevery appropriately given to her, not only for that cause, but upon a consideration of a lamb being the universallyacknowledged emblem of innocence with which her name so fortunately accords, and to preserve which coincidenceshe was no doubt, so miraculously saved from all impurity” (Brady, “ Clavis Calendaria ”, vol. i., p. 168). St Agneshaving been transferred into the Church of England calendar at the lieformation, a proceeding somewhat puzzling to Brady, who was a staunch Protestant, it wasnecessary for him to present the legend of her in a piousand decorous manner. This story, like all the others, has been turned to excellent account by the Church. The Pope is often figuratively called the shepherd. “ Ego sum Pastor Sonus ” is the state ment made of himself by Innocent XI. in a medal described by Bonanni, a title that Hartwell Horne regarded as absolutely blasphemous. But we shall see that the popes have been careful and business-like in their sheep dealing. There is in Pome a magnificent church dedicated, to St. Agnes, to which the popes were wont to repair on St. Agnes day. Two white lambs were brought to the high altar and solemnly blessed by his holiness; beingsheared, the wool was handed over to the nuns of St. Agnes. By these it was woven, and of the cloth palls were made which fetched high prices from newly-made archbishops who were compelled to purchase them. “ That the Pope sheared the Christian sheep is allegory ; but it is fact also that he is a breeder of real four-legged ewes and. rams, and knows how to sell his wool at a price that would astonish all our farmers. He keeps a little flock of lambs, which have been consecrated over the graves of the- �Apostles, and. from the wool of which the bishops’ palls are woven............ The price set'on a pall was very high indeed ; the revenue got from this source pleased the popes well, and John VIII. ordained that every Archbishop who* had not obtaind his pall from Rome after three months’ time was to be considered as deposed. The popes gave, however, in the cloak some little for the treasure of a price they set upon it; this was yet to be saved, so the cloak dwindled away into a worsted ribbon, a few inches wide, with a red cross for its ornament. Such ribbons are woven by nuns from the consecrated wool, and weigh about three ounces. The wool of the Pope’s little flock would fetch about three millions of florins ” {AU The Year Hound, vol. iii., p. 431). The writer of the above tells us that Arnold, Archbishop of Treves, was very much at a loss when he received two palls, with the bills, from two opposing popes, and that Marculph, Archbishop of Mayence was compelled to sell the left leg of a golden Christ to pay for his. Barnaby Googe, an old English poet, has these lines : For in St. Agnes’ church this day, the while the Mass they sing Two Lambs as white as snow the Nuns do yearly use to bring. I should hesitate to quote the following ode, which is a long, long way after Horace, did I not And it in a Roman Catholic author, Forster, on page 25 of his “Perennial Calendar It is headed “Verses on St. Agnes’ Shrine “ Where each pretty Ba-lamb most gaily appears, With ribbons stuck round on its tail and its ears, On gold fringed cushions they’re stretched out to eat, And piously ba, and to church music bleat. Yet to me they seem crying, Alack, and Alas ’ What’s all this white damask to daisies and grass ! Then they’re brought to the Pope, and with transport z they’re kissed, And receive consecration from sanctity’s fist; To chaste Nuns he consigns them, instead of their dams, And orders the Friars to keep them from rams.” From the Pagan deification of one of the most sacred of human virtues there can be no doubt was evolved this myth of Agnes. Vesta was invoked by the Roman women; childless matrons implored her intervention in their behalf; �8 young girls sought her aid to complement their lives ; thy priests received their common offerings and grew rich on the credulity of the votaries of the Goddess. As with the heathen myth, so with its Christian successor; numberless superstitions grew and flourished among Christian women, artfully counselled by their priests to regard Agnes as their patron and protectress. Our own Keats has immortalised one of these legends as only poets can. His “Eve of St. Agnes” was being read by Shelley when that sudden squall deprived the world of his genius and him of life, for when his body was found he was holding in his hand the poems of Keats opened at this very piece. Of Madeline, Keats says :— ‘ ‘ They told her liow^ upon St. Agnes’ Eve, Young virgins might have visions of delight, And soft adoiings from their loves receive Upon the honeyed middle of the night, If ceremonies due they did aright.” Paine rightly said that the heathens having had gods for everything, the Christians have saints for everything. The Church has, therefore, canonised Agnes again under her ' other name of Pudentiana, and she is remembered in the calendar under that title on May 19th. On the door of the church dedicated to her at Rome “ is a Lamb of God in a medallion with the following inscription: ‘ Dead and living I am but one ; I am at once the shepherd and the lamb ’ ” (Didron, “ Christian Iconography”, p. 338). Every symbol connected with the myth is Pagan too, but we reserve observations on the “lamb” cult for Corpus Christi day. Didron, who was an ardent Christian, has this admission in connexion with the figure of the good shepherd: “In conclusion, it has been affirmed at least by Pagan antiquaries, that the subject of the Good Shepherd does not belong properly, and as an invention of its own, to Christianity; according to them, Christians borrowed that idea, as they.had done the nimbus, from Pagan art”. This contention he does not controvert, contenting himself with saying (p. 341), “ the subject was one of love, which had strayed into Paganism”; but that the religion of Christ being emphatically that of love, it was entitled to claim it as its own. Strange logic this; but the fact is op.e to be remembered, especially in reading the Fourth �9 ’Gospel, in which the Galilean legend is presented in its Platonic dress. Hone, in his “ Book of Days ”, 1825 (p. 143), quotes a '•curious story from Stopford’s “ Pagano-Papismus ” of sheep being driven into churches and blessed by the priests after being sprinkled with holy water. It concludes: “Then he signed all the sheep with'the sign of the cross, repeated thrice some Latin verses, with the Paternostei’ and some Ave Maria, sung the mass of the Holy Ghost, and at the conclusions an offering of fourpence was for him self and another of threepence for the poor. This cere mony was adopted by the Romish Church from certain customs of the ancient Romans in their worship of Pales, tue Goddess of sheepfolds and pastures. They prayed her to bless the sheep, and sprinkled them with water. The -chief difference seems to have consisted in this, that the ancient Romans let the sheep remain in their folds, while the moderns drove them into the Church.” SAINT BRIDGET. Prom Italy to Ireland is a far cry, but there is a very close resemblance between the two countries and the two peoples. A volume might be written on the tempers, prejudices, sufferings and aspirations of these nations, both having experienced the same mental and political bondage and from precisely the same causes. Italy, thanks to Garibaldi, Mazzini, and the band of stainless patriots who gave or risked their lives for freedom, has at least rid herself of Bourbon despotism and political serf dom ; although the abject ignorance of the masses and the accursed militarism of her present rulers—a disease that infects the whole of Europe—still keep her poor. But let us turn to Ireland and observe the misery, the utter �10 hopelessness, and the dense ignorance that envelope the peasantry of that land, keeping in remembrance that this wretchedness is not of recent growth, but the outcome of nearly a thousand years of misrule and centuries of super stitious teaching. “God save Ireland” has been the prayer of millions of patriots, but God has hithero refused •or been unable to do so. Periodic famine has devastated it, and removed a fourth of its population ; myriads of its sons and daughters have fled its shores to escape starva tion; pestilence has followed in the footsteps of want and claimed its victims in turn. Is it not on record that even sea-weed has to furnish life-giving sustenance on which landlords claim their royalty ? Yet with this ever accumulating load of horror and misery it has boasted for a dozen centuries that it has possessed a blessing and a jewel that more fortunate peoples have lacked—the True Church, Ireland has reared magnificent cathedrals, built churches in every hamlet; abbeys, convents, retreats, and chapels have overspread its fertile valleys and its barren hills; gold and silver ornaments have been given by its faithful children to deck the shrines of dead men and women, and of mythical men and women too. Rich vestments of the finest linen is furnished for its great black army; tithes and church dues have been paid wiih the utmost regularity; shiploads of luscious wines have been imported at the cost of its votaries from Spain and Portugal, to be miraculously transformed into the blood of their .God, not one drop of which comes to their share. In addition to all this faith and liberality, this suffering and credulous people subscribes largely to Peter’s Pence for the' Pope, to Foreign Missions and other causes to enable heathen and heretic to share in their good fortune; and thousands of its stalwart sons have enlisted under the flag of foreign despots to crush liberty and heresy—pouring out their blood under the blessings of their church on a hundred battlefields from Fontenoy to Mentana. And what has the church in return for all this, given to the people ? Did the priests ever teach the people self-reliance ' or prudence ? Did they ever recommend them to restrict their numbers to the measure of capacity of the land to support them ? Have they ever initiated either productive or distributive co-operation ? Did they when their power was paramount, and their faith unchallenged in pre- �11 \ Reformation days, give education to their devoted flocks ? The priest to-day frequently boasts of the seminaries and colleges founded by pious Catholics of ages past; institu tions that were reserved for the priests to manufacture his successor, or for the rich few whose wealth was the only passport to knowledge. But they have given something to Ireland. Heaven and hell I Purgatory I St. Patrick and hundreds of other legendary male and female saints, among whom are St.Bridget. Even this is doubtful; for the probability is that Bridget was stolen from the old Pagan religion of Ireland. Let us go to her priestly historian to see who the Church alleges she was, what she did, and where shecame from. Butler (“Lives,” vol. ii, p. 28) says she was born at Pochard, but gives no date or particulars. She received the veil from St. Mel, nephew of St. Patrick, flourished in the beginning of the sixth century, and “her five modern lives mention little else but wonderful miracles. . Thisis the usual story. Ages after the assumed period when the saint lived, fiction supplied what is deemed essential for the ignorant and the credulous. In a note Butler says that her name occurs in most copies of the martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, which in itself wouldi be sufficient to prove her a Goddess, considering that that holy saint lived in, the preceding century to herself. Her body with those <ff St. Patrick and St. Columba, were found in a triple vault at Downpatrick in 1185,.“ but their monument was destroyed in the reign of King Henry VIII. ”. The Jesuits, however, are fortunate in having her head in their church at Lisbon, but Butler, who states this, and also that she was buried in Downpatrick Cathe dral, does not tell us where these lucky Jesuits got the extra head from. But, seriously, was there ever such a woman as St. Bridget or such men as Saints Mel and Patrick? Was Ireland a Christian country in the fifth century, with nunneries and kindred institutions ? History —real history—is against such an assumption; but there was a Bridget—Pagan, not Papal. Ireland, centuries before the time under consideration, had a religion, priests, temples, ritual, holy books, hymns, heaven, hell, and Bridget. The Irish language bears ample proof that the Phaenicians had traded on its shores, and left behind. �12 the impress of their speech and faith. Lieutenant-Colonel oft«1 oqTa de Rebus Hibernicix, no. 8, p. . -91): To those who, do not trace the origin of the ancient Celtes and their language from the Orientals, it is matter of wonder how the worship of Baal should be known to the Iberno - Celts or Irish”. Again “ Bal >nhairth ort and Bal Shia Shall the good Bal, and the God Bal to you, are to this day common salutations in Munster, and particularly about Waterford”. Further he says “Ceres or Beres was worshipped as the moon ? m Irish signifies clouds, vapors, and Be is the moon, which compounded form Ceore. She was also named ' ^eolestis and AioZerZzs, and was invoked in droughts to ' obtain ram ipsa virgo Ceolistis pluviarum pollicitatrix ; Mertullian Apol., c. xxiii). M. Bolin thinks this deity was Ae same Queen of Heaven, to whom the Jewish women incense, poured out drink offerings, and made cakes with their own hands. Ut facit placentas regince Ceadi. I he children gathered the wood, the fathers kindled the fire, and the women kneaded the dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven1 (Jer. vii, 18). This Pagan custom is still preserved m Ireland on the eve of St. Bridget, and it was probably transposed to this date from the festival of a tamed poetess of that name in the time of Paganism, i ailcien^ glossary now before me she is thus ■described : Brighid ban shileadh ingheau aeu Bagha ; beau dhe Bu-inn ; 1 e Brigit, a poetess, the daughter of Dagha ; a .goddess of Ireland. On St. Bridget’s Eve every farmer’s wife m Ireland makes a cake called Bairin-breac; the neighbours are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity.” Here, then, we have the fact that, just as in all the aeligions of the ancients the sun and the moon were personified, and eventually had divine honors paid to them m pre-Christian Ireland, and Ceres or Brighed was their <Queen of Heaven. When the latter was transformed into a Christian saint it is exceeding doubtful if the worship of Mary had found a footing in that country. Valiancy is not the only authority who proves the legendary character 1 is the exact rendering of the revised version : the authorised version having’ their Queen of Heaven. �13 * . of this Christian saint. Even Moore, good Catholic as hewas, is compelled to admit that “ by one of those violations of chronology not unfrequently hazarded for the purpose of bringing extraordinary personages together, an intimate friendship is supposed to have existed between St. Bridget and St. Patrick, and she is even said to have woven, at the apostle’s own request, the shroud in which he was buried.. But with this imagined intercourse between the two saints,. the dates of the respective lives are inconsistent: and it is but just possible that Brigid might have seen the great apostle of her country as she was a child of about twelve years old when he died.” Of course Moore has no evidencefor the date of the birth or death of either, but it would not have done for the faithful to have been apprised of tin's difficulty. Giraldus Cambrensus says that at her cell at Kildare—Kill dara, Cell of the Oak, there was an altar on which perpetual fire kept ablaze, and in his time six hundred years after Brigid’s supposed death it was still: burning. Moore, in noticing this heathen practice, seeksto extenuate the force of our and other writers’ contention, that the Christian Brigid was manufactured from the Pagan Brigha. ‘ ‘ Whether this rite formed any part of the Saint’s original' institution, or is to be considered as an innovation of later times, it is, at all events, certain that when Kildare wasfounded, the policy of converting to the purposes of the new faith those ancient forms and usages which had so long been made to serve as instruments of error, was very generally acted upon.” Exactly, even to the creation of .' the saint out of the goddess. Moore goes on to say, “ and, in the very choice of a site for St. Brigid’s Monastery, the same principle is manifest, the old venerable oak, already invested with the solemnity of druidical associations, having, in this, as in most other instances of religiousfoundation, suggested the selection of the spot where the • Christian temple was to rise.” Here, then, we have four indisputable facts (1) the name of the saint corresponds with the name of the Pagan goddess; (2) the shrine is erected at a spot where a druidical temple stood, which name it has since con tinued to bear; (3) the rites attendant upon her worship' were a continuation of the old fire-worship of the Pagan Irish; and (4) that this was the usual course of procedure- �14 in converting heathen rites and festivals into Christian ones. Another curious parallel allied to this subject is to be found in its Priapean aspect. Payne Knight has indu bitably shown that indecent rites were an accompaniment of the worship of Mylitta of the Assyrians, and of Aphro dite of the Greeks; and “while the temples of the Hindoos possessed their establishments, most of them had bands of -consecrated prostitutes, called the Women of the Idol, se lected in their infancy by the Brahmas for the beauty of their persons”. Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. i., p. 357, Bohn’s Edition, says: “In imitation of heathenism, the Romanists assigned tutelar gods to distinct professions and ranks of people (some of them not of the best sort), to different trades, etc............... It is observable in this place how closely Popery has in this respect copied the heathen mythology. She has the Supreme Being for Jupiter; ■ she has substituted angels for genii, and the souls of saints for heroes, retaining all kinds of demons ”. Then follows a list of the saints, and the diseases and trades they pre side over, common women having for their patrons “ St. Magdalen, St. Afra (Aphra or Aphrodite), and St. Brigit”. In Payne Knight’s great work on “the Worship of Priapus ” there are engravings of most disgusting figures of women taken from Irish churches, which the natives •call “bad Bridgets”. It may therefore be taken as an established fact that this saint, honored in many lands on the 1st of February, is no other than the Pagan concept which honored a passion and a vice now happily regarded with abhorence. Much as the writer desires to see self-rule in Ireland, he -cannot conceal the fact that real progress and prosperity is unattainable there until legends like this of St. Bridget •and many others are exploded, and the inhabitants of that • over-religious country are indoctrinated with Freethought. > * -.1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes. 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