Within the often-intertwined domains of law and religion, the matter of origins is typically vital. After all, it is through identifying an origin point that one can ascertain the identity, precepts and code of conduct authoritatively set by an all-important lawgiver. Yet identifying such an origin can easily lead one to implore the question of what ways of being preceded the lawgiver’s message – and what meaning might be attached to them once the lawgiver’s message has been received? Within the meta-domain of Abrahamic monotheism generally, and European Christianity more narrowly, the umbrella term for this pre-lawgiver past, and its possible persistence, is ‘paganism’. While this term has attracted no shortage of controversy, for the scholar of law and religion (amongst others) interested in the profound, but often hidden, impact of paganism and the many imaginaries it has long attracted, Robin Douglas and Francis Young’s Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganism Since Antiquity is nothing short of a treasure trove.

When approaching this topic, Douglas and Young’s focus is on the definitively documented history of paganism (a term they position as a Christian conceptual affirmation of the ‘self’ via the construction of an ‘other’) as opposed to a more open-ended interpretation afforded by anthropology or folklore. In the process, they centre an over-arching scepticism towards a common trope in studies of European paganism positing the existence of hidden pagan communities that allegedly persisted in their original form well into the Christian era. According to Douglas and Young, ‘[t]he language of “pagan survival” is problematic because it carries with it the assumption that Christianity replaces, as a matter of course, every aspect of pre-Christian belief and practice’ (p 12, emphasis in original). Rather, in reconciling this historical survival of pagan attributes with historical consciousness that something was definitively lost with the coming of Christianity, Paganism Persisting focuses not on pagan survival, but deliberate efforts at pagan revival as they periodically emerged throughout history. As such, ‘… the approach of this book is to focus on individuals and groups whose enthusiasm for paganism seems to have exceeded mere cultural interests, tipping them into assertions of the theological truths of pagan beliefs and the revival of pagan religious practices’ (p 17). Replete with an array of colourful characters and much novel recasting of important events, Douglas and Young masterfully provide a wide-ranging history whereby so many seemingly disparate forces are integrated under the broad rubric of ‘pagan revival’. It is difficult to come away from this book without continuously rethinking a great deal.

Beginning with Greco-Roman Antiquity, Paganism Persisting highlights the stakes of later revivals by making clear that pre-Christian paganism was not simply a different religion than Christianity, but a different form of religiosity. Rooted in particular contexts of community and ritual, it differed immensely from Christian emphasis on universal truth and personal salvation. As such, while Christian influence proved highly durable once paganism’s communal contexts were disrupted – a reality demonstrated by the Roman Emperor Julian’s failed attempt at pagan revival – paganism left an alternative exportable basis for truth seeking through its esoteric traditions, especially as they were developed by Plato. In the next chapter, Paganism Persisting confronts the varied practices of maintaining an order of Latin Christendom following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Of great import here is the variation of conversion practices at different times and places. On one end of the spectrum was Ireland, where, beginning approximately in the fifth century, numerous pre-Christian practices were preserved in the largely peaceful Christianisation process. By contrast, in the Baltic region, beginning in the twelfth century, the conversion of Europe’s last pagans occurred through war, conquest and colonisation – but also gave rise to arguments such as those of the Polish priest Paulus Vladimiri that Christian–pagan alliances against other Christians could, under certain circumstances, be just under natural law.

While these first two substantive chapters deal with pagan realities and their unmaking, Paganism Persisting’s subsequent four chapters concern pagan revival efforts distinctly understood. Geographically expansive, chapter 3 concerns varied Early Modern manifestations ranging from the revival of Plato’s esotericism in Byzantine Greece to celebrations of Olympian deities in Renaissance Italy to conflations of Catholicism with paganism as the Protestant Reformation took hold in Northern Europe. In chapter 4, Douglas and Young explore how the eighteenth-century Enlightenment challenge to Christianity did much to revitalise interest in paganism as it concerned the human relationship with ‘the natural’ – a framing linked to the revolutionary politics of the age, namely the ‘Cult of Reason’ in Jacobin France that invoked pagan iconography when seeking an alternative to Catholicism. Chapter 5 then turns to Victorian Britain as a location where ‘[a] growing number of people who were looking for an alternative to the moral oppressiveness of Christianity and the spiritual deadness of secular modernity were coming to find it in the persisting patrimony of ancient pagan traditions, which they duly set to work reanimating (p 135)’. Notably, the satyr Pan – Greek mythology’s iconic symbol of pastoralism, revelry, and sexual licence – was tremendously celebrated against this backdrop. Finally, in confronting the twentieth century (and beyond), Paganism Persisting turns its attention to ‘modern paganism’ whereby perceptions of pagan practices could not but be influenced by the rise of Nazism and Communism and, in an intimately related capacity, the death and destruction wrought by the two World Wars. In view of these unforeseen existential crises, paganism was embraced in varied capacities ranging from celebrations of this destructiveness to a proclaimed return to ways of being that could banish such destructive impulses.

While law is certainly not Douglas and Young’s primary focus, it is easy to see how their text might be of the utmost value to legal historians of religious conceptions and religious institutions. After all, in the annals of juridical controversy uncovered by these histories – especially as they pit faith against faith, denomination against denomination, and religion against secular authority – references and analogies to paganism were commonplace. Here one need only consider public international law, a medium for navigating Europe’s encounter with the rest of the world where, despite the field’s secular self-stylings, rigorous historication reveals a myriad of Christian influence.Footnote ¹ From this vantage point, one is well positioned to afford new-found significance to how Christendom’s pagan ‘other’, in often surprising capacities, shaped the terms of international law’s global expansion.Footnote ² For those making sense of such pasts as they might apply to international law and a vast array of additional legal orders, there is much value to be gleaned in understanding how, at a given moment, contemporary minds imagined the pagan legacy and feared (or celebrated) the prospects of its revival. Despite being a slim and accessible volume, Paganism Persisting offers more than ample grounds for staging such contextual explorations of varied episodes as they occurred across a timescale of sixteen centuries.