Modern Sacrifice

[Appalachian Nationalist]

Here's a thought for you: nobody in the Western world really sacrifices anymore. As in, nobody takes possessions/livestock and burns them on an altar, or otherwise disposes of them, as a religious ritual. Likewise, I'm not really aware of people building things (like statues) as offerings to God. Sure, we have plenty of religious artwork, but it seems to me that it's considered as being a form of decoration that's for the Church, not for God Himself.

So, what would it be like if sacrifices were still a common thing in Western/European religion? Doesn't have to be blood sacrifices, taking your dollars/Euros and lighting them on fire is just as good.

 

[A Most Sovereign Lady]

Generalizations are bad, mmkay? According to That Jesus Guy, sacrifice is no longer required by Abrahamics, which most Abrahamics listen to AFAIK. Other religions it varies considerably.

 

[Skallagrim]

Generalizations are bad, mmkay? According to That Jesus Guy, sacrifice is no longer required by Abrahamics, which most Abrahamics listen to AFAIK. Other religions it varies considerably.

Sacrifice was already fading in Jewish tradition before Jesus came along, with animal sacrifice gradually being replaced with more symbolic offerings. The rise of Christianity (which was one of the factors prompting the consolidating development of Rabbinical Judaism) only sped it all along a bit.

This, however, is the key thing: a development from traditional sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice is pretty universal. You see the same in the development from Vedism through Brahmanism and early Hinduism to later-stage Hinduism, for instance. Same with anienct Greece, where Archaic age types of sacrifice, still attested in the myths, faded out over time, and were replaced by symbolic sacrifices. So I'm pretty doubtful on whether the traditional let's-slaughter-this-here-goat type of sacrificial rite really has lasting power. You're more likely to end up with symbolic sacrifice, like burning incense or flowers.

 

[Indicus]

This, however, is the key thing: a development from traditional sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice is pretty universal. You see the same in the development from Vedism through Brahmanism and early Hinduism to later-stage Hinduism, for instance. Same with anienct Greece, where Archaic age types of sacrifice, still attested in the myths, faded out over time, and were replaced by symbolic sacrifices. So I'm pretty doubtful on whether the traditional let's-slaughter-this-here-goat type of sacrificial rite really has lasting power. You're more likely to end up with symbolic sacrifice, like burning incense or flowers.

I dunno if Hinduism and Greco-Roman polytheism is really the best comparison here. They seem to have followed highly similar shifts; for instance, in both religions, new gods were replacing the traditional gods and Neoplatonism is pretty damn similar to Vedanta Hinduism. I've seen it theorized that these similarities are caused by the spread of religious concepts between India and Europe, with this as evidence.

In any case, metaphorical sacrifice seems to be just another similarity between Europe and India.

 

[clem attlee]

Sacrifice was already fading in Jewish tradition before Jesus came along, with animal sacrifice gradually being replaced with more symbolic offerings. The rise of Christianity (which was one of the factors prompting the consolidating development of Rabbinical Judaism) only sped it all along a bit.

This, however, is the key thing: a development from traditional sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice is pretty universal. You see the same in the development from Vedism through Brahmanism and early Hinduism to later-stage Hinduism, for instance. Same with anienct Greece, where Archaic age types of sacrifice, still attested in the myths, faded out over time, and were replaced by symbolic sacrifices. So I'm pretty doubtful on whether the traditional let's-slaughter-this-here-goat type of sacrificial rite really has lasting power. You're more likely to end up with symbolic sacrifice, like burning incense or flowers.

The Greeks continued to sacrifice until Late Antiquity, as did the Romans. Consider the emperor Julian (AD 360-63).

 

[Analytical Engine]

Would something like the Chinese practice of burning offerings to their ancestors to use in the afterlife count?

 

[clem attlee]

I dunno if Hinduism and Greco-Roman polytheism is really the best comparison here. They seem to have followed highly similar shifts; for instance, in both religions, new gods were replacing the traditional gods and Neoplatonism is pretty damn similar to Vedanta Hinduism. I've seen it theorized that these similarities are caused by the spread of religious concepts between India and Europe, with this as evidence.

In any case, metaphorical sacrifice seems to be just another similarity between Europe and India.

Neoplatonism was a highly mystical philosophy of the elites. The ordinary folk kept on sacrificing, as the cults of Mithras and Isis attest. Sidonius Apollinaris relates coming across an Isiac festival in a remote village in Italy. Paganism persisted in some areas well into the Middle Ages.

 

[Skallagrim]

The Greeks continued to sacrifice until Late Antiquity, as did the Romans. Consider the emperor Julian (AD 360-63).

Yes, but my point wasn't that there was no sacrifice-- it was that it was increasingly (and ultimately near-exclusively) symbolic sacrifice. Julian wasn't going to slit the throat of an animal like some uncultured swine, after all. He'd just burn incense and spiritually contemplate the ideal forms of a divine reality.

(Which I think rather meets the OP's request. I'm not trying to argue against sacrifice being able to last until modern times; I'm just trying to indicate which forms of sacrifice would be likely to last, and which would be more likely to fade out.)

 

[LSCatilina]

Here's a thought for you: nobody in the Western world really sacrifices anymore. As in, nobody takes possessions/livestock and burns them on an altar, or otherwise disposes of them, as a religious ritual.

Sacrifices as you describe it were in Europe essentiallty tied to the public, municipal/tribal/dynastical so to speak, cult. With the rise of organized religions, the public demonstration tends to disappear in favour of a ritualized ensemble (which in Christianity, is essentially made trough communion and self-sacrifice from the divine). From the moment an autonomous institution takes dominion over spiritual matters, it does tends to be more symbolic and theologized.https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-pagan-faiths-look-like.419784/#post-15083252

Likewise, I'm not really aware of people building things (like statues) as offerings to God.

There is what are called ex-voto, whom existence predate Christianity but was integrated (diversly) into folk Christianism. It can be as well giving away an object you owned or that you did specifically.

Sure, we have plenty of religious artwork, but it seems to me that it's considered as being a form of decoration that's for the Church, not for God Himself.

It's rather complex : you had whole religious trends for soberty in decorations of churches, during the Gothic or Baroque periods, which points that there was not a great agreement over the question. But, roughly, at least for what matter Catholicism, you decorate a Church because it's where God is particularily present, and as an annoucement of the divine. So, while it's certainly not an offering to God specifically and certainly not a sacrifice, it's still directed at the sacralisation of the divine presence.

Burning incense during service and communion, for instance, is definitely a call back to ancient times, more than just decorum.
While your point there is mostly correct, it's not that much of a cut with pre-Christians practices as you make it.

 

[clem attlee]

Yes, but my point wasn't that there was no sacrifice-- it was that it was increasingly (and ultimately near-exclusively) symbolic sacrifice. Julian wasn't going to slit the throat of an animal like some uncultured swine, after all. He'd just burn incense and spiritually contemplate the ideal forms of a divine reality.

(Which I think rather meets the OP's request. I'm not trying to argue against sacrifice being able to last until modern times; I'm just trying to indicate which forms of sacrifice would be likely to last, and which would be more likely to fade out.)

Read your Ammianus Marcellinus. Julian did sacrifice animals physically and in very large numbers. AM criticised him for the excess of his blood sacrifices.

 

[LSCatilina]

The ordinary folk kept on sacrificing, as the cults of Mithras and Isis attest.

That's mostly true for urban population : while rural folk remained largely attached to their own practices, it was more or less outside the civic organisation of religion that existed in ancient Mediterranean basin, and was more a form of folk religion.

Sidonius Apollinaris relates coming across an Isiac festival in a remote village in Italy. Paganism persisted in some areas well into the Middle Ages.

There's a certain tendence among early medieval chroniclers to consider each slight trace of paganism as the existence of a formal cult to Isis, Tellus, Cybele and Diane, mostly because they borrowed heavily on classical authors to explain these remnents. In fact, and while you certainly had a connection, the non-Christian practices were certainly much less formal and organized than this.

I'd point that these remnents tended to be really remote, and usually located in highlands (what Appollinarius describe is about a place in Insubria), but they disappeared as such in the period between Xth and XIth century with the wake of re-evangelisation of society : they appears sometimes in Carolingian sources as "Saraceni", contemporary chroniclers calling such everything non-Christians, so "well into Middle Ages" is relative there, and there should not be any confusion about a survival of ancient practices into the classical medieval period (altough you did have, certainly, survival into local folkore more or less Christianized and fought by clerical authorities when aware it was definitely too heterodox)

 

[clem attlee]

That's mostly true for urban population : while rural folk remained largely attached to their own practices, it was more or less outside the civic organisation of religion that existed in ancient Mediterranean basin, and was more a form of folk religion.

Roman religion had long outgrown the old model of civic religion. The cults of Mithras and Isis were mystery religions which involved sacrifice. Both persisted strongly until the 5th century. Wherever the Roman army was, there you would find mithraists. Both were in the countryside as well as urban centres.

 

[clem attlee]

That's mostly true for urban population : while rural folk remained largely attached to their own practices, it was more or less outside the civic organisation of religion that existed in ancient Mediterranean basin, and was more a form of folk religion.


There's a certain tendence among early medieval chroniclers to consider each slight trace of paganism as the existence of a formal cult to Isis, Tellus, Cybele and Diane, mostly because they borrowed heavily on classical authors to explain these remnents. In fact, and while you certainly had a connection, the non-Christian practices were certainly much less formal and organized than this.

I'd point that these remnents tended to be really remote, and usually located in highlands (what Appollinarius describe is about a place in Insubria), but they disappeared as such in the period between Xth and XIth century with the wake of re-evangelisation of society : they appears sometimes in Carolingian sources as "Saraceni", contemporary chroniclers calling such everything non-Christians, so "well into Middle Ages" is relative there, and there should not be any confusion about a survival of ancient practices into the classical medieval period (altough you did have, certainly, survival into local folkore more or less Christianized and fought by clerical authorities when aware it was definitely too heterodox)

The 11th to 12th century is very late into the Middle Ages. Local paganism persisted in its old forms for centuries after Rome. If anything, Christian chroniclers were keen to downplay it and emphasise their victory.

 

[LSCatilina]

Roman religion had long outgrown the old model of civic religion.

I disagree : religious organisation still held mostly trough secular institutions, and Mithra cults along soldiers was still largely tied to it (the distinction, in the Late Empire, between military and civilian administration being much more blur than we might expect).
Now, yes, I should have completed "mostly urban" with a para-institutional presence to include exemples such as soldiers or non-urban militia (especially with the "urban exile" of several elites. The point stands, tough, that the cult itself was tied to an institution that was dependent on the civic life, rather than something really dedicated to spirituality : the latter does tend to rather theologize than to go in big demonstrations to unify trough a spiritual esprit-de-corps.

 

[clem attlee]

I disagree : religious organisation still held mostly trough secular institutions, and Mithra cults along soldiers was still largely tied to it (the distinction, in the Late Empire, between military and civilian administration being much more blur than we might expect).
Now, yes, I should have completed "mostly urban" with a para-institutional presence to include exemples such as soldiers or non-urban militia (especially with the "urban exile" of several elites. The point stands, tough, that the cult itself was tied to an institution that was dependent on the civic life, rather than something really dedicated to spirituality : the latter does tend to rather theologize than to go in big demonstrations to unify trough a spiritual esprit-de-corps.

No it wasn't. Mithraism was very common in remote military camps as well as urban centres. It was independent of civic administration because it was a mystery cult. Would you care to state your academic credentials?

 

[LSCatilina]

The 11th to 12th century is very late into the Middle Ages.

Well, I don't remember a precise exemple but I'm not knowledgable enough on religion in Medieval Italy to be definitive on this.
That said, what I managed to understand from the period, would surprise me more than a bit (but that's okay, I love being surprised) if it was something really much more pagan than the usual mix of Christianity and folk practices you could found either in peripherical regions, or more or less munched in more important places.
What did you have in mind?

Local paganism persisted in its old forms for centuries after Rome.

This is the problem with the concept of paganism : it's used to describe a lot of different realities, mixing both the urban/institutionally supported beliefs and practices, what existed in rural part of provinces, and what survived out of both in an increasingly Christianized society.
The point you seemed to do, tough, was that the same kind of cults that existed in the Late Antiquity (Isis, Mithra, etc.) was continued well in the Middle-Ages in remote places where they probably didn't existed as such before Christianisation.

When medieval chroniclers speak about Diane in their description of contemporary heterodoxy;when German penence books mentioned the worship of Mercury, when they mention Apollo as a deity worshipped by Muslims, they definitely not describe a religious reality, but borrow heavily on classical and early christian authors to explain a non-Christian or a para-Christian (the distinction between Christian heresy, and pagan worshipper is sometimes hard to tell for some authors) reality they couldn't concieve differently.

Even the focus given on dance and songs by Christians can be traced rather trough a Biblical narrative (as Hebrews danced and singed around the golden calf) than due to a specific threat of such.
It doesn't mean that you didn't have pagan survival in one form or another (altough folkoric and semi-hidden forms would be probably more current), but that what we know about it are from sources that not only didn't really grasped the reality of it, but had no real interest doing so.

If anything, Christian chroniclers were keen to downplay it and emphasise their victory.

You had a lot of narrative convention to treat definitely heterodox practices as the survival of something bigger, to highplay the role of missions.
The whole martyrology and mission hagiographies in Northern Europe, for instance, really fits these while we know the actual christianisation went much more smoother.

Again, not to say you didn't have a genuine survivance of names or practices, but these doesn't make it the same ancient practices as much early Christianity wasn't the same than medieval Christianity. Especially when descriptions we get are made by people that had to anachronically minequote their main sources on paganism : Bible and classical authors.

 

[edvardas]

they still sacrifice chickens in Voodoo. and I've that Muslims occasionally sacrifice a goat

 

[LSCatilina]

No it wasn't. Mithraism was very common in remote military camps as well as urban centres.

You misunderstood me : I said that I agreed that it didn't existed only in urban centers, but that its presence outside these was less due to the existence of a specific group : with the disappearance of roman army (or rather, the mix of roman army and Barbarians forces into a mostly christianised ensemble) the institutional and social base for the survival of Mithra's mysteries wasn't there, while (and I stress I never disputed this) it certainly had an influence into how folk practices (Christianized or not) evolved.

It was independent of civic administration because it was a mystery cult.

I didn't said it was managed by the civic administration. I rather said it was tied to the existence of such administration.

Would you care to state your academic credentials?

An history master, but when I passed it it was more on southern Gaul in Early MA. I do admit having changing branches since.
Why? Does that makes me unable to discuss? Please, do tell us what you'd expect from someone authorised to talk with you.

 

[clem attlee]

Well, I don't remember a precise exemple but I'm not knowledgable enough on religion in Medieval Italy to be definitive on this.
That said, what I managed to understand from the period, would surprise me more than a bit (but that's okay, I love being surprised) if it was something really much more pagan than the usual mix of Christianity and folk practices you could found either in peripherical regions, or more or less munched in more important places.
What did you have in mind?


This is the problem with the concept of paganism : it's used to describe a lot of different realities, mixing both the urban/institutionally supported beliefs and practices, what existed in rural part of provinces, and what survived out of both in an increasingly Christianized society.
The point you seemed to do, tough, was that the same kind of cults that existed in the Late Antiquity (Isis, Mithra, etc.) was continued well in the Middle-Ages in remote places where they probably didn't existed as such before Christianisation.

When medieval chroniclers speak about Diane in their description of contemporary heterodoxy;when German penence books mentioned the worship of Mercury, when they mention Apollo as a deity worshipped by Muslims, they definitely not describe a religious reality, but borrow heavily on classical and early christian authors to explain a non-Christian or a para-Christian (the distinction between Christian heresy, and pagan worshipper is sometimes hard to tell for some authors) reality they couldn't concieve differently.

Even the focus given on dance and songs by Christians can be traced rather trough a Biblical narrative (as Hebrews danced and singed around the golden calf) than due to a specific threat of such.
It doesn't mean that you didn't have pagan survival in one form or another (altough folkoric and semi-hidden forms would be probably more current), but that what we know about it are from sources that not only didn't really grasped the reality of it, but had no real interest doing so.


At the contrary, you had a lot of narrative convention to treat definitely heterodox practices as the survival of something bigger, to highplay the role of missions.
The whole martyrology and mission hagiographies in Northern Europe, for instance, really fits these while we know the actual christianisation went much more smoother.

[/QUOTE]
I think that we're dancing past each other on this. My concern is principally with late antiquity in my comments. Sacrifice continued there and in physical form, not just symbolic. Mithraism, Isiacism and all those cults which gave Christianity a run for its money were mystery religions, independent of the civic structures. Robert Turcan, Les cultes orientaux a l'empire romain is very helpful on these cults. It has been translated into English as the slightly misleadingly entitled The Cults of the Roman Empire. I don't wish to sound dogmatic or uncivil, but I do have some academic expertise in these areas.

 

[clem attlee]

You misunderstood me : I said that I agreed that it didn't existed only in urban centers, but that its presence outside these was less due to the existence of a specific group : with the disappearance of roman army (or rather, the mix of roman army and Barbarians forces into a mostly christianised ensemble) the institutional and social base for the survival of Mithra's mysteries wasn't there, while (and I stress I never disputed this) it certainly had an influence into how folk practices (Christianized or not) evolved.


I didn't said it was managed by the civic administration. I rather said it was tied to the existence of such administration.


An history master, but when I passed it it was more on southern Gaul in Early MA. I do admit having changing branches since.
Why? Does that makes me unable to discuss? Please, do tell us what you'd expect from someone authorised to talk with you.

I am a Ph.D, a tenured professor of ancient history in the US and have read thousands of Latin inscriptions for my academic work. As I said in my previous post, I don't wish to seem uncivil, but I do have some expertise here. My comment about mithraism is that it was independent of either. My comments apply until the 5th century.