Charlemagne, Part Deux: "A substantialy new Church was allied with a new political system." (ABHRM, Part Six)

[This post is a continuation from the post: Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism [ABHRM], Part Five)]

"Committed ... to the 'correction' and education of their subjects."

The generalized cultural collapse in Roman Italy and what had previously been the western Roman provinces severely weakened the Orthodox (Nicene) Church in the west during the fifth through eighth centuries AD. During this time various heresies (especially but not exclusively Arianism) and even Paganism had more breathing room. In some places, such as Britain, Christianity as a whole declined, at least for a while. But this was not in any way the result of a change of heart or any kind of "liberalization" on the part of the Church.

More than anything else, the somewhat greater religious diversity that is apparent in the west during the darkest of the Dark Ages reveals the extent to which the spread of Christianity (as well as the imposition of one and only one monolithic form of Christianity) had been and continued to be dependent on state sponsored violence. Without a strong, centralized and repressive state as an ally, Christianity in the west was in trouble. But a new saviour arrived late in the 8th century: Charlemagne.

As a direct result of the intervening Dark Age, the resurgent western Christianity that thrived in Charlegmagne's bloody wake was a fundamentally changed religion. For one thing, a Church whose bishops and most prestigious "theologians" and "philosophers", such as they were, could not read Greek (and had no interest in learning how) could make no serious claim of seamless continuity with the Christianity of the early "church fathers" who had styled themselves as the heirs and continuators of classical Hellenic culture and philosophy. Compare the Buddhists of Korea (2500 miles from India), who have maintained a strong continuous tradition of Sanskrit studies (because that is the language of the Mahayana Sutras) since soon after Buddhism was first introduced to the "hermit kingdom" in the 4th century AD up to the present day, with the new western Christendom whose "scholars" could not be bothered to learn the language in which the Gospels, the epistles of Paul, and the Nicene Creed had been written!

But what the new Christendom of the West lacked in intellectual curiosity and capacity it more than made up for in cruelty and ferocity, as becomes abundantly clear in the following extended excerpts from Alessandro Barbero's Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, and also Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom.

Charles [Charlemagne] had not set himself the declared aim of converting the Saxons to Christianity right from the very beginning. Before him, his father and grandfather had fought against them, and on each occasion, after having defeated them, they were satisfied with the payment of tribute. Einhard [c.775-840, Frankish courtier and biographer of Charlemagne] who was writing when the wounds had had time to heal and could have easily attributed Charles's campaigns beyond the Rhine to reassuring predestinations, actually asserts in very pragmatic terms that 'there were too many reasons for disturbing the peace, for example the border between us and them crossed an open plain, except in a few places where great forests or mountain chains more clearly divided the two countries. Thus murder, raids, and arson were continuously committed by one side or the other.' In the chronicler's opinion, this insecurity of the frontier with the barbarians inevitably meant that 'in the end the exasperated Franks could no longer be contented with returning each blow with another and decided to wage full-scale war against them.'

It is clear that religious motivations were inextricably bound up with political ones, as since the time of Charles Martel I [c. 688-741], Frankish swords had sustained missionary work beyond the Rhine. One of the conditions that Pepin [714-768] imposed on the defeated Saxons was the guarantee that the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon clergy working in the area would be free to continue their apostolic tasks without hindrance. It must have appeared obvious to some of these missionaries that Charles's war had a religious justification. 'If you do not accept belief in God,' Saint Lebuin told the Saxons, 'there is a king in the next country who will enter your land, conquer it, and lay waste.' But the Saxons obstinately refused to believe, so in the end that king had to make his move.

It was a ferocious war in a country with little or no civilization, with neither roads nor cities, and entirely covered with forests and marshland. The Saxons sacrificed prisoners of war to their Gods, as Germans had aways done before converting to Christianity, and the Franks did not hesitate to put to death anyone who refused to be baptized. Time and again the Saxon chiefs, worn down by war with no quarter, sued for peace, offered hostages, accepted baptism, and undertook to allow missionaries to go about their work. But every time that vigilance slackened and Charles was engaged on some other front, rebellions broke out, Frankish garrisons were attacked and massacred, and monasteries were pillaged. Even the border regions of the Frankish kingdom were not safe. In 778, when Saxons found out that the king and his army were engaged on the other side of the Pyrenees, and would not be able to return before many weeks of forced marches, they appeared in the Rhine Valley. Local commanders had great difficulty in containing them, and then only after much devastation and plunder.

During the period of these rebellions, the figure of a single leader
emerged from among the Saxon ranks. His name was Prince Widukind, and his authority was acknowledged by all the tribes. Just at the time when Charles felt confident that he had pacified the region and gained the loyalty of the Saxon nobles, it was this leader who triggered the most spectacular rebellion by wiping out the Frankish forces hurriedly sent to confront him on the Suntel Mountains in 782. Beside himself with anger at the treachery that had also cost him the lives of two of his closest aides, his chamberlain Adalgisile and his constable Geilo, Charles bround in a new army and forced the rebels to capitulate, with the exception of Widukind, who took refuge with the Danes. The Saxons had to hand over their arms and then, when he had them in his power, he had 4,500 of them decapitated in a single day at the Verden on the Aller, a tributary of the Weser. This episode produced perhaps the greatest stain on his reputation.

Several historians have attempted to lessen Charle's responsibility for the massacre, by stressing that until a few months earlier the king thought he had pacified the country, the Saxon nobles had sworn allegiance, and many of them had been appointed counts. Thus the rebellion constituted an act of treason punishable with death, the same penalty that the extremely harsh Saxon law imposed with great facility, even for the most insignificant crimes. Others have attempted to twist the accounts provided by sources, arguing that the Saxons were killed in battle and not massacred in cold blood, or even that the verb decollare (decapitate) was a copyist's error in place of decolare (relocate), so ther prisoners were simply deported. None of these attempts has proved credible ....

In reality, the most likely inspiration for the mass execution of Verden was the Bible. Exasperated by the continual rebellions, Charlemagne wanted to act like a true king of Israel. The Amelkites had dared to raise their hand to betray God's people, and it was therefore right that every last one of them should be exterminated. Jericho was taken all those inside had to be put to the sword, including men, women, old people, and children, even the oxen, sheep, and donkeys, so that no trace would be left of them. After defeating the Moabites, David, with whom Charles liked to compare himself, had the prisoners stretched out on the and ground, and two out of three were killed. This, too, was part of the Old Testament from which teh king drew constant inspiration, and it is difficult not to discern a practical and cruelly coherent application of that model in the massacre of Verden. Besides, the royal chronicler wrote a few years later, the war against the Saxons had to be conducted in such a manner that 'either they were defeated and subjugated to the Christian religion of completely swept away.'

In the years that followed 782, Charles conducted a war of unparalleled ruthlessness. For the first time, he wintered in enemy territory and systematically laid the country to waste to starve the rebels. At the same time, he had published the most ferocious of all the laws enacted during his life, the Capitulare de partibus Saxonie, which imposed the death penalty on anyone who offended the Christian religion and its clergy, and in reality it constituted a program for the forced conversion of the Saxons. We can only shudder as we read the sections of this law that condemn to death those who fail to observe fasting on Friday, thus reflecting a harsh Christianity far removed from the original message of the New Testament [bollocks]. Yet we should be careful not to put the blame for this barbarity onto the times in general. The Capitulare de partibus Saxonie is one of those provisions by which an infuriated general attempts to break the resistance of an entire people through terror, and Charles must bear the moral responsibility, like the many twentieth-century generals responsible for equally inhuman measures. It is more important to emphasize that the edict provoked criticisms among Charles's entourage precisely because of its ruthlessness. Particularly severe criticisms came from Alcuin, the spiritual adviser he most listened to.

The policy of terror and scorched earth initially appeared to pay off. In 785, after the Franks has ravaged the country as far as the Elbe, Widukind was obliged to capitulate, and he presented himself at the palace of Attigny in France to be baptized. The king acted as godfather. Pope Adrian congratulated the victor and ordered thanks to be given in all the churches of Christendom for the new and magnificent victory for the faith. But the baptism imposed by force did not prove very effective. In 793 the harshness of Frankish government ferocity provoked another mass insurrection in the northern regions of Saxony, which had been more superficially Christianized. 'Once again breaking their faith,' according to the royal chronicler, the Saxons burned churches, massacred clergymen, and prepared yet again to resist in their forests.

Charles intervened with now customary ferocity, indeed with even more drastic and frighteningly modern measures. Rather than limit himself to devastating the rebel country and starving the population, he deported them en masse and planned the resettlement of those areas with Frankish and Slav colonists. However, he was an able politician and soon understood the need to modify his approach to the problem. He intensified his contacts with the Saxon aristocracy and sought out their collaboration. At a large assembly in Aachen in 797, he isssued on their advice a new version of the capitulary that was considerably more conciliatory than the previous one. This twin policy proved immediately effective, because it guaranteed almost definitively the collaboration of the Saxon nobles with the new regime. Eigil, the monk at Fulda monastery who wrote the account of Abbot Sturmi's life, stated during those very years that Charles had imposed Christ's yoke on the Saxons 'through war, persuasion, and also gifts,' demonstrating that he well understood how a new flexibility had made it possible to integrate those obstinate Pagans into the Christian empire.
[Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, Alessandro Barbero, pp. 44-48]

Compare the above passage from Barbero with the following from Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom:

Charlemagne proved to be a man of truly "Napoleanic" energy and width of vision. He was constantly on the move and constantly planning. In one year alone (in 785) he covered 2,000 miles, pacing the frontiers of his new dominions. Such energy boded ill for the Old Saxons. The fate of the Pagan Saxons was crucial to Charles' new concept of Christian empire. Not only were Saxons Pagan, they were a surprisingly aggressive warrior confederacy whose raids affected precisely the areas in central Germany werhe Frankish settlement and a Frankish style of life had begun to be established.

As had once been the case along the Roman limes, so now in the eighth century, part of the danger posed by the Saxon challenge came from the fact that Franks and Saxons had drawn closer to each other. Saxon noblemen had already come to adopt a large measure of Frankish customs. Yet, like King Radbod [of Frisia], they clung all the more tenaciously to Paganism so as to differentiate themselves from the Franks. It was all the more essential for the prestige of the Carolingian family that the Saxons, who come to adopt so much of Franksih ways, should be declared to be outside the pale as Pagans, and that, as Pagans, they should be well and truly defeated.

In 772, Charlemagne led the Franks into Saxony. They were said to have desecrated the great intertribal sanctuary of the Irminsul, the giant tree which uphead the world. They rode home again, with much plunder, in time for the hunting season in the Ardennes. Next spring the Franks were in northern Italy. In 774, Charles became king, also, of the Lombards. He even made a short visit to Rome. It was the first time that a Frankish king had set foot in Rome. It was also the first time since the fifth century that a western ruler of such power had been greeted in Rome with the sort of elaborate ceremonies which the Romans know so well how to put on. Charles entered Saint Peter's and, next day, was led through the gigantic basilica churches of the city. In return, Charles proved to be a generous donor. An influx of Frankish silver marked a dramatic recovery in the fortunes of the popes, which was made plain by an unprecedented boom in buildings and repairs.

But it was in Germany, and not in Italy, that Charles showed himself to be a ruler as determined to be obeyed in all matters as any Roman emperor had been. The Saxon war was fought along the same routes into northern Germany as had been taken the legions of Augustus. But this time, unlike Augustus who lost his legions in the Teutoburger Wald, Charlemagne won. It was an unusually vehement war, characterized by the storming, one after another, of well-defended hill-forts. The very flexibility of the kingless society of the Old Saxons prolonged the misery. Total surrender of the Saxons as a whole was impossible. Fifteen treaties were made and broken in 13 years. One Saxon nobelman, Widukind, was able to avoid submission for decades on end. He fled to the Danes and involved even the Pagans of Frisia in his resistance.

For a decade, and entire Frankish order was challenged in the north. Charles found himself forced to take over more territory than he had, perhaps, at first intended to do. He pressed on from the Weser to the Elbe, entering the northern healthlands as far as the Danes. The populations of whole areas were forcibly relocated. In 782, he had 4,500 Saxon prisoners beheaded at Verden, southeast of Bremen....

In 785, Widukind finally submitted and accepted Christian baptism. In the same year, Charles issued his Capitulary on the Region of Saxony. A Capitulary was a set of administrative rulings "from the word of mouth of the king," grouped under capita, short headings. These were very different in their brusque clarity from the long-winded rhetoric of Roman imperial edicts. They registered, in writing, the invisible, purely oral shock wave of the royal will. The royal will was unambiguous. In theory at least, the frontier was now definitively closed. No other rituals but those of the Christian Church could be practiced in a Frankish province.

"If anyone follows pagan rites and causes the body of a dead man to be consumed by fire ... let him pay with his life.

"If there is anyone of the Saxon people lurking among them unbapitized, amd of he scorns to come to baptism and wishes to absent himself and stay a pagan, let him die."

A small body of clergymen (notably Alcuin, a Saxon from Boniface's Britain, who was himself connected with the family of Willibrod) were challenged by the brusqueness to restate, more forcibly than ever before, a view of Christian missions which emphasized preaching and persuasion. But, in fact, when it came to Charlemagne's treatment of the Saxons, most later writers took no notice of Alcuin's reservations. They accepted the fact that, as befitted a strong king, Charlemagne was entitled to preach to the Saxons 'with a tongue of iron' -- as a later Saxon writer put it without a hint of blame. Force was what was needed on a dangerous frontier. Education began, rather, at home. IN the reigns of Charlemagne and his successors, a substantially new Church was allied with a new political system, both of which were committed, to a quite unprecedented degree, to the "correction" and education of their subjects.
[The Rise of Western Christendom, Peter Brown, pp. 431-433]

See also (links NOT automatically generated):
Roman Catholicism (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Seven)
Charlemagne, Part Deux (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Six)
Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)
Paganism is not a European Religion
Muhammad (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Four)
Constantine (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Three)
Moses (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Two)
Akhenaten (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part One)
Monotheistic Robots of Doom, Part Deux
Monotheistic Robots of Doom
Lies, Damned Lies, and Pagan Monotheism
Hic Sunt Dracones

Everyone Already Knows What Paganism Is

It seems fair to infer from that universality, however, some set of broadly shared religious ideas and practices ... to put it in other words, the thing so arrogantly called Paganism, being in fact all the many hundreds of the Empire's religions save one, must really have shared certain widespread characteristics.
[Paganism in the Roman Empire by Ramsay MacMullen, p. xii]

Starting early in the 4th century AD a religious conflict unfolded in the Roman world between the followers of a new religious movement that declared theirs to be the one and only true faith and, well, everyone else.

Modern day Christians are the spiritual heirs of those who seized control of the Roman state apparatus and used that power to impose their belief in one and only one God on others by force and violence. Modern day Pagans are the spiritual heirs of those who actively resisted this process of coercive Christianization and who stubbornly persisted in worshiping their old, tolerant Gods and following their old, traditional ways.

The Roman world at the time, by the way, was not "European". The bulk of the Roman population, and the bulk of Rome's wealth, was in it's Asiatic and African provinces.

If long passage of time lends validity to religious observances, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, we ought to follow our forefathers who followed their forefathers and were blessed in so doing.... let me continue to practice my ancient ceremonies, for I do not regret them. Let me live in my own way, for I am free.
[Symmachus (c.340 - c.402 AD)]

Paganism is Indigenous and very, very old -- but it is not limited to "Europe", and it is not "Ethnic"

The roots of modern Paganism long predate the modern conception of "Europe". It is true that the 2nd century (AD) Pagan polymath Ptolemy labeled part of his maps of the world "EVROPA" (well, something like that, but in Greek), and that this more or less corresponds to where we think of Europe being today. But it is also true that this famous "Greek" scientist was sitting at his desk in the great Library of Alexandria when he drew these maps. Alexandria, of course, was on the part of Ptolemy's map labeled "AFFRICA" (see map).

Those who wish to redefine Paganism as intrinsically European show their ignorance of both history and geography, and, much more importantly, of what it means to be Pagan. Precisely the same thing is true of those who want to redefine Paganism as a "New Religious Movement".

There are two things to be clear about: being a Pagan sure as hell doesn't mean being European, and being a Pagan has absolutely nothing to do with being a member of any particular "ethnic" group.

Modern Paganisms' roots are as wide as they are deep. No one can deny the strong influences of the pre-Christian religious traditions of Celts, Germans, Balts, Slavs and others on modern Paganism. But at the same time no one can with any justification deny the Egyptian, Phrygian, Semitic, Chaldean and other "non-European" influences that are an integral part of modern Paganism. Just as the influence of Greco-Roman Paganism, which straddled Asia, Africa and Europe, cannot be questioned.

We know for a fact that ancient Pagans did not recognize clear bright lines neatly separating the "pantheons" of one "people" from their neighbors, or even from those on other "continents". Greeks and Romans worshipped the Phrygian Great Goddess Cybele. Hellenized Romans spread the worship of Egyptian Isis to far flung Britain and Germania. Wandering priests of Dionysos spread the good news of the dying God who yet lives (and who is the son of God, and who promises eternal life) to Africa, Asia and throughout Europe.

At the very least ancient Pagans were tolerant and respectful of the Goddesses and Gods of "others". But often they went far beyond this and eagerly embraced new exotic cults and practices. Of course there were also always those whose mental and spiritual universe was much more narrowly confined, but even these did not question the validity of "foreign" Gods, if for no other reason than for the very good reason of fear of blasphemy.

Here is some suggested light reading:

The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age by Antonia Tripolitis

Ancient Religions, edited by Sarah Iles Johnston

Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture by Walter Burkert

Religion in the Roman Empire by James B. Rives

And for extra credit:

Athenian Religion: A History by Robert Parker

In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele by Lynn Roller

Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization by Martin Bernal

The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth by Martin Lichtfield West

The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age by Walter Burkert

Polytheism and Society at Athens by Robert Parker

Hekate Soteira by Sarah Iles Johnston

Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)

Father of a "Continent"?

[W]arfare accompanied him throughout almost every year of his life. The harshest war, and the one most fraught with complications, was the war against the Saxons, which lasted for more than twenty years, took the borders of Christendom to the banks of the Elbe, and incorporated the entire breadth of the German regions within the Frankish kingdom. Back in 772 Charles had already gathered his warriors and led them against the Pagans of the north to achieve a spectacular victory: they took the principle Saxon sanctuary, the Irminsul, where the sacred tree stood. The tree that according to the Saxons held up the heavens had been burned, and the Saxon idols destroyed. But these punitive expeditions had to be repeated every year, because the Saxons resisted with all their force a subjugation that implied both the loss of all their tribal independence and the abandonment of their ancestral beliefs.
[Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, by Alessandro Barbero, p. 44]

Alessandro Barbero's deservedly acclaimed biography of Charlemagne is subtitled Father of a Continent. But how can a political figure from 1200 years ago be the "father of a continent"? Isn't the formation of a continent a process governed by plate tectonics, not politics and human history, and doesn't it take hundreds of millions of years?

Well, it turns out that there are continents and then there are continents. In this case the "Continent" that Charlemagne gave birth to isn't really a "continent" at all, nor was it even "Europe" (whatever "Europe" might be). What Charlemagne gave birth to was what we today euphemistically refer to as "The West", and this "West" is, in fact, a handful of powerful nation-states that came into existence in Charlemagne's bloody wake and who, a thousand years later, found themselves ruling nearly the entire planet earth.

This same "West" is also the homeland for the two flavors of "western" Christianity: Catholicism and Protestantism. Prior to Charlemagne, Christianity was a distinctly eastern (and distinctly "Greek") religion, and proud of it (see for example the early chapters of Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom, hereafter referred to as RWC). The strategic alliance of the Frankish barbarian king Charlemagne with the Bishop of Rome marks the true beginning of an independent western, "Latin" Christianity, and this eventually led to the Great Schism in which Latin Catholics and Greek Orthodox mutually excommunicated each other in 1054. And it was this distinctly western Christianity that gave us the Inquisition; the Witch-Hunts; the murderous religious wars also known as "the Reformation"; the theological justification for the African slave-trade; the cultural genocide that attempted, and largely succeeded, in annihilating every religious tradition on half of the planet (the western hemisphere); and European colonialism (which was always and everywhere carried out in the name of spreading the Gospel, and in which the Church was an eager and important participant).

Modern Christianity is overwhelmingly dominated by Catholicism and Protestantism, neither of which existed in the late 8th century AD when Charlemagne succeeded his father, King Pepin of the Franks. But even the vast majority of those Christians who are neither Catholic nor Protestant are European Christians who are members of the various Orthodox Churches of Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, etc. Charlemagne did not single handedly start, or bring to its culmination, the process by which Europe became Christian and Christianity became European. But his violent life and times are universally recognized as one of the key milestones along that road.

A Brief Prehistory of "The West"
The part of the earth in which the western nation-states (and western Christianity) eventually arose was on the furthest fringes of the great civilizations of the ancient world. What little cultural progress (measured in terms of things like writing, urbanization, engineering, science, trade and commerce) the peoples of western and northern Europe had made mostly (and quickly) disintegrated not long after the process of Christianization took root early in the fourth century (after Constantine's dream or vision or whatever it was). Two of the most dramatic and telling markers of this decline were (1) the rapid depopulation of urban centers (the city of Rome herself lost 90% of it's population in 100 years, going from 500,000 to 50,000 inhabitants from 450 to 550 AD [RWC, p. 21]), and (2) a comparable decline in the quantity and quality of the historical record (thus resulting directly in the great paucity of written sources documenting this time period).

Although the phrase Dark Ages is often misunderstood and sometimes misused, it nevertheless expresses a very real cultural collapse that begins (roughly speaking) with the sacking of Rome by Alaric and his (Christian) Visigoths in 410, and ends sometime between the year 800, when Charlemagne was crowned "Emperor", and the year 1000, when the "High Middle Ages" officially begin. As with all periodization schemes, the beginning and ending points of this Dark Age are somewhat arbitrary, but the historical process of cultural, economic, technological and demographic decline followed by a pronounced and sustained recovery in all of those areas is an objective reality and not merely some dreamed-up "social construct".

The center of gravity of the Greco-Roman world had always been in the East and the South. Culturally the city of Alexandria ruled supreme. This was where Euclid wrote his Elements, where Ptolemy wrote his Almagest and Geographia, and where Eratoshthenes calculated the circumference of the earth. It was also where Callimachus wrote his Hymns, where Apollonius wrote his Argonautica, and where Aristarchus produced his critical editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Alexandria was also an economic powerhouse, as one of the most important exporters of grain in the ancient world, and it was also among the most populous cities on earth (probably the second or third largest city in the world).

As all students of "Byzantine" history know, the eastern Roman Empire was far more resilient than Roman Italy and the western provinces. In fact, Byzantium continued on until the middle of the 15th century! By then it had been much reduced in power and glory for many centuries already, but culturally and intellectually it remained a truly great power until the bitter end. And in the final years before the Ottomans finally took Constantinople, many Byzantine scholars, seeing the writing clearly written on that city's ancient and once inviolable walls, set themselves to spreading their learning in the West, and many went so far as to resettle among the Latin barbarians. The Italian Renaissance was largely a result of this migration both of knowledge and the custodians of that knowledge, from the Greek East to Latin West.

So the Dark Ages were a distinctly "western" phenomenon. As already alluded to, and in sharp contrast to Byzantium, Roman political, military and economic power in the west eroded alarmingly (although perhaps "vanished" is the right word) during the 5th-7th centuries. Weak successor states (some of them admittedly less weak than others) arose where Roman provinces had previously been. Christianity remained as the official state religion in most places that had been under Roman rule, but it was increasingly difficult or even impossible to impose credal uniformity even among the Church hierarchy, let alone among the laity (both high and low born). Lombards, Saxons, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Avars, etc, (and perhaps even the Franks, although these were the most Christian of them all) remained, at least in part, Pagan, and even when they converted they usually could not be counted on to be orthodox. When the Lombards ended up in Italy some had become Christian and some hadn't, and those that had converted tended to be Arian, or at least tended to be hostile to the Pope in Rome politically, militarily and theologically. When Saxons moved into Britain they brought their Germanic Paganism with them and for a time Christianity declined on the very island where Constantine had first been proclaimed Augustus in 306 (in York).

Where do "peoples" come from?
But who exactly were these barbarian peoples with the funky names? There are two very different answers to that question:

Essentialist approach: Saxons, Lombards, Goths, etc., were already ancient, or at least well established and well defined, "peoples" when they entered the historical record. In particular each of these groups (and subgroups like the Ostrogoths and Visigoths) had their own distinctive "culture", including religious traditions, concepts of kingship, social and family structure, etc. These groups were also ethnically/genetically distinct from each other.

Ethnogenesis approach: Saxons, Lombards, Goths, etc., are, to a great extent arbitrary designations ("cultural constructs") for extremely fluid groups of people who were not at all well defined either in terms of "ethnicity" or "culture" or in any other way either prior to their appearance in the historical record, or subsequently. Instead these labels refer to groups that enter the historical record while still in the process of "ethnogenesis", a process that creates the idea of ethnically (that is, racially or even genetically) well defined groups -- but which does not, in fact, create the objective referent of that idea, although it can be part of the process of creating powerful political entities.

There are some very serious problems with both approaches, but the "ethnogenesis" approach has the advantage of hindsight, by virtue of being the more recently articulated theory, and, therefore, it does address the most obvious shortcomings of previous "essentialist" approaches. One of the most serious problems with the ethnogenesis approach is that it tends to be over-utilized as a blunt instrument in the service of faddish ideological polemics. Postmodernist types especially adore the theory of "ethnogenesis" because it provides them yet more opportunities to say "cultural construct" over and over again. But Christian apologists also are attracted to the theory because it allows them to give the impression that Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, etc Pagans had no real religions of their own prior to their contact with Christianity (thus exonerating them of the responsibility for suppressing the religions of those peoples, since they had none).

Patrick Geary's book The Myth of Nations well illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the anti-essentialist ethnogenesis approach. Geary is relentles, but only ocassionally tiresome, in his earnest polemical deconstructionism. Geary intends this book for a wide audience, and, therefore, subtlety is often just not part of his agenda. But his painting, broad strokes and all, is often accurate and is quite helpful in understanding recent trends in the black art of historiography, and it gives a very nice view from 30,000 feet of how we got from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Europe. A less ideological, but also less accessible and more narrowly focussed, application of the anti-essentialist approach is to be found in Herwig Wolfram's The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples. Another important (and even more narrowly focussed) work on Dark Age ethnogenesis is Patrick Amory's People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554.

From Clovis to Charlemagne
Without getting bogged down in speculative (and as often as not ideologically driven) theoretical postures about where "peoples" come from, we do have to get into at least some of the nitty gritty of this period which is not only called the Dark Ages but is also called the Age of Migration, or even "The Barbarian Invasion of Europe", or alternatively, "The Barbarian Conversion". In order to simplify and focus the discussion in the remainder of this post, I will concentrate now on the developments that eventually led to Charlemagne's coronation as Emperor on Christmans Day, 800 AD. First let's go all the way back to King Clovis. Here is Peter Brown, from his Rise of Western Christendom:

After the 460's, northern Gaul resembled Britain. It was a land without an empire. It's leading inhabitants had begun to accept this fact. This is shown by a significant change in local burial customs. Romani and barbarians alike, whether Christian or pagan, came to be buried bearing arms ....

In this increasingly militarized world, the Franks were by no means newcomers. Many had served in the high command of the imperial armies in the fourth century. To take one example: Bauto, a Frankish chieftain in imperial service became consul in 385 .... Franks such as Bauto were already honorary Romans. They claimed to be descended, like the Romans, from the Trojans. Priam had been their first king. They had only recently -- so Franks close to the Rhine frontier -- come to Germany from ancient Troy!

Not every Frank was like Bauto. The Franks who were led by king Childeric, in the 470's, were wilder men. Childeric was a Merovingian. Later legends made the Merovingians the descendants of a Frankish queen who had coupled with a sea monster when swimming in the North Sea, the legendary home of heroes....

Childeric's son, Clovis -- Hlodovech, "glorious warrior" -- inhereted the many strands of his father's authority in Gaul. He was a pagan; yet he received a letter from Remigius, the Catholic bishop of Rheims: "May justice proceed from your mouth." From the very beginning, Clovis wished to be king of the Franks in a new, more forceful style....

The Lex Salica, the Laws of the Salian Franks [issued by Clovis, possibly around 486 AD], took the paganism of the Frankish inhabitants of the Rhine estuary for granted. It protected with special penalties the great gelded boars who have been set apart for sacrificial banquets: for boars were the bristling, magical guarantors of the waving growth of the cornfields. The law was particularly concerned to regulate the legal status of humble Frankish farmers over against the neighboring Romani. As Franci (perhaps from Frekkr, "the fierce ones"), weapon-bearing Franks, even the poorest, could still stand high in Gaul. But they were told all this in a Latin text, issued by a king who used Latin advisers. Clovis intended to rule Romans and Franks alike as firmly as had any Romanus.
[pp. 133-136]

As Clovis' long reign continued on into the early sixth century, the Visigoths ruling southern Gaul developed an increasingly cozy relationship with the Orthodox (Nicene) Church, despite the fact that the Visigoths themselves were Arian heretics. Clovis viewed this pan-Christian alliance as a potential threat. In 506, the Visigoth king Alaric II issued his own abbreviated version of the Theodosian Code, with the strong approval of Orthodox bishops. Then Alaric summoned a Council of Bishops, the first ever in Gaul, and in return the bishops openly prayed for the expansion of Alaric's kingdom.

Clovis' response to the threat from south was to visit the Orthodox Christian shrine of Saint Martin of Tours, in search of a sign. As Clovis entered the church he heard these words being chanted aloud: "For thou hast girded me with strength unto battle; thou has subdued under me those who rose up against me." (That is from Psalms 18:39, which is one of those "prayers of imprecation" one sometimes hears about.)

Clovis (still not a Christian) praised God and invaded southern Gaul. By the summer of 507 he was the victorious ruler of all of Gaul. A year and a half later Clovis was baptized, along with 3,000 of his soldiers, by the Orthodox bishop of Rheims. (For more details see RWC pp. 136-138 and references therein.)

After Clovis' death his rule devolved to his sons and then to his grandsons, each of whom was a "king". The Frankish realms were once again united under a single ruler under Clothar II, whose reign, along with that of his heir, Dagobert I, from 584 to 639 AD (combined), was "the most peaceful, prosperous and significant period of Frankish history since the reign of Clovis," according to Patrick Geary in his Before France and Germany: The Creation and the Transformation of the Merovingian World (p. 51).

But Dagobert I was the last strong "Merovingian" ruler. In 751, Pepin the Short once again united the Frankish realms. His son was Charlemagne. Together Pepin and Charlemagne ruled from 751 - 814.

[To be continued .....]

See also (links NOT automatically generated):
Paganism is not a European Religion
Roman Catholicism (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Seven)
Charlemagne, Part Deux (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Six)
Charlemagne (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)
Muhammad (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Four)
Constantine (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Three)
Moses (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Two)
Akhenaten (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part One)
Monotheistic Robots of Doom, Part Deux
Monotheistic Robots of Doom
Lies, Damned Lies, and Pagan Monotheism
Hic Sunt Dracones

Are the "Pagans at the Parliament" sleeping with the enemy?

This is just a very quick first response to news coming out of the Parliament of World Religions.

Apparently some of the "Pagans at the Parliament" are pushing to redefine Paganism as "The Indigenous Religion of White People". The blinding, base stupidity behind this is beyond words.

Paganism existed long before there was any such thing as Europe. Europe is not a "continent". Look at a fucking map. Europe is an idea, and the generation of the idea of Europe is tied directly to the formation of the two forms of Christianity that now dominate the world: Catholicism and Protestantism.

Why is it that so many Pagans still have their heads stuck in ethnic/racial conceptions of "identity" that literally date from a time when racism and anti-semitism were simply accepted and even widely approved of by "Europeans"??

My only source for this comes from this alarmingly titled post Is Paganism About To Be Redifined at the Parliament?

Also, here is a post I did a while back with the relevant title Paganism Is Not a European Religion.

Evo Morales, first indigenous president in the Americas, re-elected in landslide

The UK Guardian has dubbed Evo Morales' re-election as President of Boliva a "rout". The more subdued Wall Street Journal was only willing to venture that Morales "appears" to have won (with over 90% of votes counted he has double triple the number of votes of the second place candidate). The Christian Science Monitor says that Morales is "solidifying the revolution he promises to bring to the country's long oppressed indigenous majority."

Morales is both an Aymara Indian, and a socialist. Paganism has no intrinsic affinity for modern politics of either the right or the left (or otherwise), although the opposite is very often assumed by Pagans all over the political spectrum. Something similar is true, in my opinion, for the indigenous religious traditions of the Americas (setting aside for now what relationship these traditions have to Paganism).

To say the least, leftists have not historically been reliable allies for indigenous peoples. Both revolutionary Marxists and more sedate Social Democrat types have often been under the spell of overtly eurocentric conceptions about historical and economic "progress". Although they may have become more sophisticated in their phrasing over the decades, many leftists continue to promote the idea that being conquered by Europeans was a net positive gain for the uncivilized peoples of the world who lacked the good fortune to have been born in Europe or of European ancestry, and that this net gain more than offsets any inconveniences that may have been experienced during the processes of conquest, enslavement, colonization, and forced religious conversion.

Prominent American leftist Michael Parenti, for example, proudly advances the noxious idea that being conquered by the more "advanced" Chinese was the best thing that ever happened to the feudal, superstitious Buddhist savages of Tibet, by virtue of the fact that the Chinese were acting in the name of the European ideology of Communism, which ideology they then proceeded to generously share with their new Tibetan comrades. Parenti informs us that the Chinese occupiers "promote social reforms", and only wish to help the poor, stupid, self-oppressed Tibetans:

Among the earliest changes they [the Chinese] wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.”
[Friendly Feudalism]

This sounds like the same kind of crap that President Andew Jackson used to spew when explaining how his policy of "Indian removal" was in the best interests of the Native Americans:

[The removal policy] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community ... Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the Red Man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home.
[Address to Congress, December 8, 1830]

Parenti's attempts to justify the brutal occupation of Tibet also sound precisely like the justifications that the United States government routinely gives for it's military adventures abroad, all of which Parenti has of course dutifully opposed.

Perhaps (or perhaps not) surprisingly, old Karl Marx was far more sympathetic to the "Hindoos" of India as they suffered under the yolk of British Imperialism, than the modern day Marxist Parenti is to the Buddhists of Tibet. In an article published in English in the New York Daily Tribune in 1853, Marx referred briefly to previous foreign conquests of India at the hands of Muslims and the Portuguese, and then categorically declared that

There cannot, however, remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before ... England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing. This loss of his old world, with no gain of a new one, imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the present misery of the Hindoo, and separates Hindostan, ruled by Britain, from all its ancient traditions, and from the whole of its past history.
[The British Rule in India, June 25, 1853]

One can only hope that a significant number of Latin American leftists are more inclined to Marx himself than to the Marxism of Parenti when it comes to respecting the cultural traditions, including religious traditions, of non-European peoples.

U.S. Government launches balloons to test accuracy of information on the Internet

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today that they were launching one thousand red balloons as part of a nationwide experiment to evaluate the accuracy of information as it spreads on the Internet.

200 balloons were launched simultaneously from each of the State Capitol Buildings of all 50 states at 12:05 pm EST today (12-05). A team of volunteers from the Supercomputing Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will be monitoring all Internet traffic that contains the phrase "red balloons". These volunteers will be using a specially modified version of the FBI's Carnivore software to gather this information. Carnivore, in turn, was a joint venture of the Clinton Justice Department and Microsoft, Inc.

The project was designed jointly by DARPA and an ad-hoc committee of wikipedia senior editors. An unnamed spokesperson for the wikipedia editors stated that they hope to counter widespread concerns about the unreliability of the Internet as an information resource. DARPA, of course, is the Defense Department agency largely responsible for originally creating the Internet. Unnamed Defense Department sources stated that no public funds were used for the project, which is being financed completely by the Gates Foundation and the Partnership for a Better Informed World.

Are there two kinds of religion? (Part One: David Hume on Polytheism and Monotheism)

David Hume on Polytheism and Monotheism
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) set down his thoughts on the subject of the origins and foundations of religion in The Natural History of Religion. In that work, Hume wrote that “polytheism or idolatry was, and must have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind". Indeed, the first section is titled "That Polytheism was the primary Religion of Men." The following excerpt, comprising the opening half dozen paragraphs of that section, nicely illustrates what Hume has to say, while at the same time providing us with a rather unguarded view of the self-perceptions of Europeans of his day with respect to their fellow, non-European, human beings.

It appears to me, that if we consider the improvement of human society, from rude beginnings to a state of greater perfection, polytheism or idolatry was, and necessarily must have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind. This opinion I shall endeavor to confirm by the following arguments.

It is a matter of fact incontestable, that about 1,700 years ago all mankind were polytheists. The doubtful and sceptical principles of a few philosophers, or the theism, and that too not entirely pure, of one or two nations, form no objection worth regarding. Behold then the clear testimony of history. The farther we mount up into antiquity, the more do we find mankind plunged into polytheism. No marks, no symptoms of any more perfect religion. The most ancient records of the human race still present us with that system as the popular and established creed. The north, the south, the east, the west, give their unanimous testimony to the same fact. What can be opposed to so full an evidence?

As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appear universally to have been polytheists. Shall we assert, that in more ancient times, before the knowledge of letters, or the discovery of any art or science, men entertained the principles of pure theism? That is, while they were ignorant and barbarous, they discovered truth; but fell into error, as soon as they acquired learn- and politeness.

But in this assertion you not only contradict all appearance of probability, but also our present experience concerning the principles and opinions of barbarous nations. The savage tribes of America, Africa, and Asia, are all idolaters. Not a single exception to this rule. Insomuch that, were a traveller to transport himself into any unknown region; if he found inhabitants cultivated with arts and sciences, though even upon that supposition there are odds against their being theists, yet could he not safely, till farther inquiry, pronounce any thing on that head: but if he found them ignorant and barbarous, he might beforehand declare them idolaters; and there scarcely is a possibility of his being mistaken.

It seems certain that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or studied geometry before agriculture; as assert that the Deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful, though limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs. The mind rises gradually, from inferior to superior: by abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfection: and slowly distinguishing the nobler parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transfer only the former, much elevated and refined, to its divinity. Nothing could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the vast interval which is interposed between the human and the divine nature. But though I allow that the order and frame of the universe, when accurately examined, affords such an argument; yet I can never think that this consideration could have an influence on mankind, when they formed their first rude notions of religion.

The causes of such objects as are quite familiar to us, never strike our attention or curiosity; and however extraordinary or surprising these objects in themselves, they are passed over, by the raw and ignorant multitude, without much examination or enquiry. Adam, rising at once in Paradise, and in the full perfection of his faculties, would naturally, as represented by Milton, be astonished at the glorious appearances of nature, the heavens, the air, the earth, his own organs and members; and would be led to ask, whence this wonderful scene arose. But a barbarous, necessitous animal (such as man is on the first origin of society), pressed by such numerous wants and passions, has no leisure to admire the regular face of nature, or make enquiries concerning the cause of objects to which, from his infancy, he has been gradually accustomed. On the contrary, the more regular and uniform, that is, the more perfect nature appears, the more is he familiarised to it, and the less inclined to scrutinise and examine it. A monstrous birth excites his curiosity, and is deemed a prodigy. It alarms him from its novelty; and immediately sets him a-trembling, and sacrificing, and praying. But an animal complete in all its limbs and organs, is to him an ordinary spectacle, and produces no religious opinion or affection. Ask him, whence that animal arose; he will tell you, from the copulation of its parents. And these, whence? From the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfy his curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance, that he entirely loses sight of them. Imagine not that he will so much as start the question, whence the first animal; much less, whence the whole system or united fabric of the universe arose. Or, if you start such a question to him, expect not that he will employ his mind with any anxiety about a subject so remote, so uninteresting, and which so much exceeds the bounds of his capacity.

Part of Hume's thesis was controversial, and part was not. The part that was controversial was his contention that polytheism came first, and that monotheism does not appear on the scene until much later. Hume's solidly historical theory of "primary polytheism" was strongly opposed by the completely ahistorical theory of "original monotheism". Two centuries after David Hume, Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959) produced a very nice and succinct summary of the debate between these two positions, in his essay The Formation of Monotheism, which I will talk about in a future post. I will also defer until the (hopefully not too distant) future the following two highly relevant questions:

1. Is this distinction between polytheism and monotheism really so absolute? Aren't there "transitional" religions occupying some gray area between monotheism and polytheism, and/or between primary and secondary religions?

2. What about Christians (and others) today, like Karen Armstrong, who attempt to portray "all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions" as essentially the same or at least equally valid, and who, implicitly or explicitly, reject the idea that there are fundamentally different kinds of religion?

What was not controversial, however, was Hume's claim that monotheism and polytheism represent utterly different forms of religion. This was uncontroversial because it is, as everyone knows, one of the most basic theological cornerstones of Christianity and all other genuinely monotheistic religions.

For now I will conclude with another extended excerpt from Hume on another controversial claim of his: that primary, polytheistic religions are inherently tolerant, whereas monotheistic religions are inherently intolerant. Here is the entirety of the section titled "Comparison of these Religions with regard to Persecution and Toleration.":

Polytheism or idolatrous worship, being founded entirely in vulgar traditions, is liable to this great inconvenience, that any practice or opinion, however barbarous or corrupted, may be authorized by it; and full scope is left for knavery to impose on credulity till morals and humanity be expelled from the religious systems of mankind. At the same time, idolatry is attended with this evident advantage, that, by limiting the powers and functions of its deities, it naturally admits the Gods of other sects and nations to a share of divinity, and renders all the various deities, as well as rites, ceremonies, or traditions, compatible with each other. Theism is opposite both in its advantages and disadvantages. As that system supposes one sole deity, the perfection of reason and goodness, it should, if justly prosecuted, banish everything frivolous, unreasonable, or inhuman from religious worship, and set before men the most illustrious example, as well as the most commanding motives of justice and benevolence. These mighty advantages are not indeed over-balanced (for that is not possible), but somewhat diminished, by inconveniences, which arise from the vices and prejudices of mankind. While one sole object of devotion is acknowleged, the worship of other deities is regarded as absurd and impious. Nay, this unity of object seems naturally to require the unity of faith and ceremonies, and furnishes designing men with a pretense for representing their adversaries as profane, and the objects of divine as well as human vengeance. For as each sect is positive that its own faith and worship are entirely acceptable to the deity, and as no one can conceive that the same being should be pleased with different and opposite rites and principles, the several sects fall naturally into animosity, and mutually discharge on each other that sacred zeal and rancour, the most furious and implacable of all human passions.

The tolerating spirit of idolaters, both in ancient and modern times, is very obvious to anyone who is the least conversant in the writings of historians or travellers. When the oracle of Delphi was asked, what rites or worship was most acceptable to the Gods? “Those legally established in each city,” replied the oracle. Even priests, in those ages, could, it seems, allow salvation to those of a different communion. The Romans commonly adopted the Gods of the conquered people; and never disputed the attributes of those local and national deities in whose territories they resided. The religious wars and persecutions of the Egyptian idolaters are indeed an exception to this rule; but are accounted for by ancient authors from reasons singular and remarkable. Different species of animals were the deities of the different sects among the Egyptians; and the deities being in continual war, engaged their votaries in the same contention. The worshippers of dogs could not long remain in peace with the adorers of cats or wolves. But where that reason took not place, the Egyptian superstition was not so incompatible as is commonly imagined; since we learn from Herodotus, that very large contributions were given by Amasis towards rebuilding the temple of Delphi.

The intolerance of almost all religions which have maintained the unity of God is as remarkable as the contrary principle of polytheists. The implacable narrow spirit of the Jews is well known. Mahometanism set out with still more bloody principles; and even to this day, deals out damnation, though not fire and faggot, to all other sects. And if, among Christians, the English and Dutch have embraced the principles of toleration, this singularity has proceeded from the steady resolution of the civil magistrate, in opposition to the continued efforts of priest and bigots.

The disciples of Zoroaster shut the doors of heaven against all but the Magians. Nothing could more obstruct the progress of the Persian conquests than the furious zeal of that nation against the temples and images of the Greeks. And after the overthrow of that empire, we find Alexander, as a polytheist, immediately re-establishing the worship of the Babylonians, which their former princes, as monotheists, had carefully abolished. Even the blind and devoted attachment of that conqueror to the Greek superstition hindered not but he himself sacrificed according to the Babylonish rites and ceremonies.

So sociable is polytheism, that the utmost fierceness and aversion which it meets with in an opposite religion is scarcely able to disgust it, and keep it at a distance. Augustus praised extremely the reserve of his grandson, Caius Cæsar, when this latter prince, passing by Jerusalem, deigned not to sacrifice according to the Jewish law. But for what reason did Augustus so much approve of this conduct? Only because that religion was by the Pagans esteemed ignoble and barbarous.

I may venture to affirm that few corruptions of idolatry and polytheism are more pernicious to political society than this corruption of theism, when carried to the utmost height. The human sacrifices of the Carthaginians, Mexicans, and many barbarous nations, scarcely exceed the Inquisition and persecutions of Rome and Madrid. For besides that the effusion of blood may not be so great in the former case as in the latter; besides this, I say, the human victims, being chosen by lot, or by some exterior signs, affect not in so considerable a degree the rest of the society. Whereas virtue, knowledge, love of liberty, are the qualities which call down the fatal vengeance of inquisitors; and when expelled, leave the society in the most shameful ignorance, corruption, and bondage. The illegal murder of one man by a tyrant is more pernicious than the death of a thousand by pestilence, famine, or any undistinguishing calamity.

In the temple of Diana at Aricia near Rome, whoever murdered the present priest was legally entitled to be installed his successor. A very singular institution! For, however barbarous and bloody the common superstitions often are to the laity, they usually turn to the advantage of the holy order.

In case anyone missed it, in the above passages David Hume can hardly be said to be at all admiring, or even sympathetic, in his view of polytheism. In fact, he can't help but repeatedly insist on the superiority of monotheism! It's quite possible that this is simply a posture that he chooses to adopt, perhaps ironically, perhaps defensively. Nevertheless what he is saying can in no way be interpreted as any kind of straightforward endorsement of polytheism.

Hume was not at all unique in his assessment of the relationship between monotheism and intolerance: this view was shared by other Enlightenment figures including Voltaire, Thomas Paine and Edward Gibbon. But this same opinion was also shared, and very forcefully reiterated, by the historian J.B. Bury (1861-1927), and it is supported by the work of a wide variety of eminent contemporary historians including, but not limited to, Ramsay MacMullen, Perez Zagorin, Charles Freeman and Jan Assmann. For more on Bury, MacMullen, & Co., see this previous post. On the general issue of religious typology also see these previous posts:
The Essence of Religion
What is Counterreligion?
What kind of religion is Buddhism?
In honor of Freddie Mercury: "We are Zoroastrians, my friends ...."
Religions of the Library
Religions of the Library, Part Deux