by Dakota St. Clare | November 13th, 2023
This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Saintcraft: Catholic Folk Magik for All by Dakota St. Clare.
The Roman Catholic Church Was Roman Before It Was Catholic
To understand Roman Catholicism in its popular practice one must understand the history of the Church, the blueprint it was built on and what role the populace played in these developments. So, let’s begin with pre-Christian ancient Rome. We know the Romans were deeply pluralistic people, adopting and incorporating the gods of those they conquered into their own pantheon. The Romans maintained a core, abiding belief which dictated that Rome was the supreme civilization on earth (at least to their eyes) because they honored the gods better than anyone else. This was hardcoded into the DNA of Roman life at all levels, as evidenced by the regular household worship maintained by all (micro-level), the public worship which one would regularly engage in (meso-level) and large-scale practices like the sacred hearth flame of Vesta, understood to be the very hearth of Rome itself (macro-level).
Now, the regular worship of the gods was akin to one’s civic duty, equivalent to paying one’s taxes, rather than a transcendent or ecstatic experience. One was not to have any zeal or passion in their veneration of the gods, lest they be accused of having a superstitious nature. While the Romans heavily disproved of superstition, their dedication to honoring all the gods was so ardent that they built an “Altar to the Unknown God” on the Palatine Hill. This was most likely a continuation of the Greek cult of Agnostos Theos, the Unknown God to whom Athenians often swore oaths. Whether this god was a euphemism for the Furies or some other chthonic god or a placeholder for any god that might have been missed in the expansion of these civilizations, it was this practice which was heavily ridiculed by Christian polemicists accusing Greco-Roman polytheism of having a superstitious, overwrought nature. Interestingly, an identical criticism would be made against the Church by Protestant Reformers.
Rome’s devotion to the gods went beyond an extra temple on the Palatine Hill, as seen in the fascinating practice of evocatio. This was a ritual which was often performed when the battle lines were drawn, the warriors were assembled and Rome was on the verge of sacking a new city. Battle priests and/or generals would beseech the tutelary god of the city in question, promising grand temples, a devoted cult and lavish offerings. The god’s answer to these calls was most likely determined through some form of augury, usually through haruspicy, the reading of the liver from a sacrificial animal. If the answer was in the affirmative, they would sound the victory trumpets, announcing that they had successfully wooed the city’s divine protector. This was seen as averting the anger of the protector god when the city’s treasure was cleaned out by the soldiers, however it was also an acutely potent act of psychological warfare, often resulting in the forces for the city laying down their arms, devastated by their divine patron’s abandonment. Still, the attempt, or at least the fear of the god’s potential wrath, was most likely genuine since in all recorded cases a temple was still built in their honor afterwards.
So what happened when one emperor decided to snap his fingers and decree there was only one true god and all others should be abandoned? The veneration of the gods as a guarantee of the safety, health and longevity of the Roman civilization was hardwired into its people, so they were not about to abandon all of the gods, known and unknown in an instant. Just look at how long it took to tear down the ancient Roman religion. Many believe it was Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of Rome and tore down the old temples when in fact he merely crafted the Edict of Milan in 313 AD which recognized Christianity as a religion and ensured religious freedom for all peoples. Toward the end of his life, he most certainly favored Christianity, and this set the stage for later emperors to continue this trend, however the traditional, pagan religion of Rome persisted for centuries. In fact, the Church was still condemning the crossroads offerings left to Hekate as late as the 11th century.
One of the most important elements of the ancient Roman worldview and cosmology that is consistently ignored or overlooked is its deeply rooted animism. They did not just worship the pantheon of gods but also the spirits of place, of concepts and conditions, of life and death and everything in between. They were known, and later criticized, for having had a god for anything a human could dream up and so it would seem that they did the logical thing: they kept worshipping the gods, they just didn’t call them gods anymore. And it’s no coincidence that many of their gods, both major and minor, served as the blueprint for some of the most iconic, beloved saints of all time and the shape their worship would assume. Indeed, the vast number of saints and the breadth of their collective purview shows its pre-Christian roots on its face.
The evidence for this throughline is plain in the similarities between the cults of the saints and the cults of the gods. First that there were and are cults of the saints, individual worship organized around a single figure among many, is indicative of a polytheistic cosmology and worldview. The saints are identified just as the gods were - by their patronage, attributes, iconology, preferred offerings, feast day(s), correspondences and mythology. The saints share a further element of identity with the gods in the many ranks, titles, honorifics and epithets which may attributed to them. Lastly and most importantly there is the dual nature of the saints which is mirrored in their godly forebears. In popular Catholicism across the world, it is clearly understood that the saints may be both benevolent and malevolent, they relieve specific ills from those they favor and inflict these same injuries upon those who displease or anger them. There is a classic saying, “for every sickness there is a saint and for every saint there is a sickness”. One does not call upon the saints lightly, they are often just as feared as they are beloved, and this sense of trepidation is only heightened when one seeks to call upon one of the madonnas.
But the cults of the gods are not the only place we see these similarities. The cults of heroes also influenced the cults of saints through the concept of apotheosis. Apotheosis, or deification, is the process through which a mortal human ascends to divine status, even godhood, as explained in various ancient mythologies. This was a very common practice found across the ancient world which was beloved by the Romans who were already engaged in elevating emperors, heroes and ancestors to the role of minor gods. Its this practice which laid the groundwork for the canonization of the Saints, through which significant humans are recognized and venerated after their death. Add in that the Roman emperors and heroes who were deified were most often syncretized with an existing god, usually incorporated as a specific function or aspect of said god and the case for canonization’s roots in ancient Roman apotheosis is made clear.
Now, this is where the paths diverge and where many stop digging. The cults of the saints, specifically the cults of the martyrs were very much a cult of the dead and this did not have Roman roots. Although apotheosis was a common practice, the pre-Christian peoples of Late Antiquity witnessed the rise of Christianity’s cult of the martyrs with abject horror. In popular practice, the cult of the saints was unlike anything that had ever been witnessed, violating both the written laws and the moral natural order of the Pagan and Jewish worldviews. Up to this point there had been a clear, inviolable boundary between the living and the dead. This may be best exemplified through this snippet from St. Jerome who was responding to a criticism of the cult of the dead: “[So you think,] therefore, that the bishop of Rome does wrong when, over the dead men Peter and Paul, venerable bones to us, but to you a heap of common dust, he offers up sacrifices to the Lord, and their graves are held to be altars of Christ.”
The necropolis or “city of the dead” was a deeply important feature of ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean, North Africa and Near East, especially during the Roman Empire. This was the burial grounds for all who lived in a specific locale, characterized by elaborate above-ground monuments and an intentional placement in a remote location away from the city itself. According to Roman law, the dead had to be buried outside the city limits as the dead were believed to carry some kind of pollution or contamination. Necropoli were found in ancient Egypt, Etruria (which built literal mock cities, houses and streets for the dead), post-Mycenaean Greece, Asia Minor and Persia. The early Christian Church developed in gatherings venerating the saints at their tombs outside the city limits, eventually leading to the commingling of grave sites and public worship for the first time. This led to major changes in the architecture of the necropolis, especially in the establishment of elaborate, ornate shrines and altars built around and atop the graves of the martyrs and eventually there were Christians parading the remains of condemned, executed criminals (the martyrs) through the city streets in religious procession. As a result, these places became major sites for pilgrimages crossing the ancient Mediterranean, North Africa and the Near East. In doing so, another major line was being crossed - the line between the public and private areas of life. The graves of the martyrs were transformed into public shrines which hosted public rituals and were open to anyone and everyone. Before this, graves were private, only built, tended and visited by loved ones in a necropolis believed to be fraught with potential dangers.
Heroizing the dead, choosing to gloss over their flaws, engaging in myth-making or entirely rewriting their biography was already common. Divinizing the dead and offering them veneration was also in common practice, but they were not worshipped as gods - they had been tainted by physical death which meant they were irrevocably distinct from the immortal gods. The saints on the other hand, especially the martyrs, were seen as having an innate closeness to God which granted them their abilities to intercede on behalf of the living, to grant miracles and work wonders. While a dead hero may be venerated as exemplifying the values of the Roman elite they were not believed to have any powers to answer prayers or grant miracles. Whereas the heroes were exclusively belonging to the dead, the saints embodied a bridge between the living, the dead and the divine.