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Messaline'deep Fantasies ...

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rather paganisms - both traditional Roman and 'barbarian' - weren't the kinds of belief-systems that people died for.

Oh indeed belief systems such as and similar to Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Yezhidism...I mean it is not like anyone died to keep those faiths alive...oh wait...

We cannot accurately gauge numbers because of our distance in time and the fact that the evidence was deliberately suppressed for hundreds of years and it is easy enough to lose large chunks of important data even from the last couple of highly literate centuries but we can assume there were at least some.

All the evidence that is extant indicates that societies in the pre-Christian era were just as pious as those that came later. Therefore there would likely have been martyrs and fanatics (the rule of thumb being ours are martyrs theirs fanatics) on both sides.
 
It is hard to know. Heretics were of more concern to the church of late antiquity than were pagans. In the early middle ages we have a mixture, many peoples were "converted" on the say so of their rulers, not uncommon throughout history, we see this with the Anglo Saxon kingdoms. Sometimes christian rulers like Charlemagne took a more robust approach to encourage conversion at the point of a sword, in his case it came as part of the package, as one of the tools, of "civilisation and empire", I can see Messas pic coming into just such a story.
 
Oh indeed belief systems such as and similar to Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Yezhidism...I mean it is not like anyone died to keep those faiths alive...oh wait...
I was referring to the religions of the Roman Empire.
The behaviour of the Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was, I'd say,
a wholly new and deeply unsettling phenomenon for the Roman 'establishment'.
(though I'd acknowledge that there were some similarities among closely related Jewish groups)
Both Romans and 'barbarians' were all too ready to die for their honour, their families, their tribes, their territories,
their sacred places, their City, their Emperor - but dying for their beliefs?
 
I was referring to the religions of the Roman Empire.
The behaviour of the Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was, I'd say,
a wholly new and deeply unsettling phenomenon for the Roman 'establishment'.
(though I'd acknowledge that there were some similarities among closely related Jewish groups)
Both Romans and 'barbarians' were all too ready to die for their honour, their families, their tribes, their territories,
their sacred places, their City, their Emperor - but dying for their beliefs?

Like at Angelsy for example? Though that example is pagan on pagan, however the awesome piety that would later be noted in the Byzantines

Everywhere, in the public squares, at crossroads, on the streets and lanes, people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.

by Gregory of Nyssa in Christian times also is evident in classical writings in pagan times directed towards faiths we now tend to dismissively deride as merely 'pagan' itself a prejudicial term meaning rural folk.

I would be very wary of dismissing faith so lightly whatever the source.
 
I'm the last person to dismiss faith lightly, RR.
Indeed, paganus (Anglicised as hǣðen heathen) did orignally mean 'up-country',
but it's used (I admit far too loosely) for the wide range of cults that jostled with Christianity in the later Empire.
But the question is, were any people other than Christians executed under either any 'pagan' or Christian Emperors
for persistently and obstinately maintaining the claim of their belief system to be the one and only truth?
Apart, perhaps, for some of the Jews, I think the answer is no.
It was that claim to possess a monopoly on truth that was the driving factor,
and until the eruption of Islam, that was peculiar to Christianity.
 
Hum
But the question is, were any people other than Christians executed under either any 'pagan' or Christian Emperors
for persistently and obstinately maintaining the claim of their belief system to be the one and only truth?
Apart, perhaps, for some of the Jews, I think the answer is no.

The answer is likely not even no to the question as you have re-framed it but the question as was posed is did any of the followers of the old faiths ever die for their beliefs?

The answer would appear to be yes. The problems come though in the nature of the persecutions that took place that were rarely systematic and sanctioned by civil authority and even more rarely deemed worthy of preservation in the annals of the Roman Catholic Church an agency which even had it wanted to give a fair and unvarnished view of history would have been handicapped by the fact that it did not emerge as the pre-eminent arbiter of Christian authority until late antiquity...arguably even the early middle ages.

So we have examples such as the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria but are unclear as to the exact motives though it seems likely she was targeted for being a scholarly pagan of high standing. What we do not appear to have is any kind of pogrom systematically organised from above. Over all the pressure seems to have been more gradual, harassment rather than outright attack, a gradual restriction of legal rights and a steady isolation of non-conformists.

That said a random fanatic murdering a woman who refuses to give up her God/Gods/Goddess? That is entirely plausible.
 
...That said a random fanatic murdering a woman who refuses to give up her God/Gods/Goddess? That is entirely plausible....

In making this pic, I didn't wanted to create a polemic, though this discussion is interesting, but I think that it will be barren regarding the fact that we've not documentation to prove what we 're attesting ....

No, like I've said, take my pic rather like a symbol of intolerance than an historical occurence ...;)
 
Not the start of a story , only a deep fantasy ... but astonishing for me because I dont find from where it could be coming ...
Perhps from my youngness when I was seeing the Via Cruxis in the churches : I was wondering who was this man , why did he deserved such an ordeal ?
Is it possible, in fact, to be tortured, crucified, for our ideas , mainly when they are peace'ideas, love'ideas ?
Why some people could be so much intolerating towards other people ?
It's not finished : in France, recently, we've known this intolerance when the law about the "homosexual'marriage" was voted !
 
Oh, Naraku, never a contribution is not welcomed if it's in topic ...;)

Regarding Hypatia, I think that it was more because she was a scientific female that she was lapidated ;the article says that well :

"...
Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy... "

At this epoch, females were not considered as able to think and yet less able to study sciences ...:D


About "massacre of verden", it's for this reason that I was saying that we do see my pic like a symbol rather than an historical event and that it could be extended until Middle-Age and Inquisition ...
... in our time also, sometimes alas ...
 
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Yes, I think Hypatia has the best claim of any on record to be a martyr for holding non-Christian beliefs,
comparable to the earlier Christian martyrs. The fact that she was a defiant female was no doubt a significant factor -
as it was in the case of the Christian virgins and matrons.

Charlemagne's treatment of the Old Saxons may be more comparable to Messa's scenario -
from the Emperor's point of view, at any rate, their rebellion against him was a rebellion against God
(whose representative he of course was ;))
But whether the rebels thought they were dying for their pagan beliefs or for their warlords and territory is impossible to know.
 
Charlemagne's treatment of the Old Saxons may be more comparable to Messa's scenario -
from the Emperor's point of view, at any rate, their rebellion against him was a rebellion against God
(whose representative he of course was ;))
But whether the rebels thought they were dying for their pagan beliefs or for their warlords and territory is impossible to know.

Yes, which was my point earlier. As throughout history, it was as much a matter of civilisation and empire as of religion, the absorbtion of tribal and/or pagan people into a more sophisticated political and social body. In this case, it was imperial expansion. Elsewhere, as in England, it was different, and anyone holding to their pagan beliefs were doing it in opposition to the march of history and their own leaders. Similarly in Scandinavia a few centuries later, where the medieval kingdoms were carved out by rulers who saw the advantages that Christianity offered them.
 
Yes, I think Hypatia has the best claim of any on record to be a martyr for holding non-Christian beliefs,
comparable to the earlier Christian martyrs. The fact that she was a defiant female was no doubt a significant factor -
as it was in the case of the Christian virgins and matrons.

Charlemagne's treatment of the Old Saxons may be more comparable to Messa's scenario -
from the Emperor's point of view, at any rate, their rebellion against him was a rebellion against God
(whose representative he of course was ;))
But whether the rebels thought they were dying for their pagan beliefs or for their warlords and territory is impossible to know.
And, as the article notes: "Hypatia never married and likely led a celibate life...", just like all those "virgin martyrs" the Early Church was so fond of.
Yes, which was my point earlier. As throughout history, it was as much a matter of civilisation and empire as of religion, the absorbtion of tribal and/or pagan people into a more sophisticated political and social body. In this case, it was imperial expansion. Elsewhere, as in England, it was different, and anyone holding to their pagan beliefs were doing it in opposition to the march of history and their own leaders. Similarly in Scandinavia a few centuries later, where the medieval kingdoms were carved out by rulers who saw the advantages that Christianity offered them.
The smartest thing the early missionaries like St Patrick in Ireland, St Augustine in England and St Remi among the Franks did was to win over the tribal kings & offer them the support of the Church against their rivals.
 
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