Re-constructing scholastic, rhetorical and literary attitudes to pagans and paganism in the Middle Ages
By Teo Kia Choong
[Snip] Summary: Christian-Biblical theology has traditionally upheld an adversarial relation between Christianity and pagan cultures, with the latter being the Other and, subsequently, of the devil’s kingdom. As a study of medieval attitudes towards pagans and paganism(s), my thesis however suggests that Christian culture in the late antique to medieval period consciously adapted pagan cultures for its own ends, with a particular view to the usefulness of pagan cultures. Undercutting the texts that I study is a subtle recognition of the power that the pagan past, the Other that medieval Christianity is always at tussles with, holds over the minds of various individuals.
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