Adapting ancient beliefs

EMMA WILBY is fascinated by a look at how long-held religions and traditions of pre-Christian Europe endured right into the modern era

- Emma Wilby

Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples by Francis Young Cambridge University Press, 456 pages, £25

Whether vestiges of paganism survived Europe's Christianisation is a subject of enduring fascination. Scholarly debate navigates between the 'maximalist' position (much survived) and the 'minimalist' (nothing survived). For the former, a medieval farmer leaving out bowls of milk for fairies or the dead was testament to the persistence of an archaic devotion to ancestor spirits. For the latter, the practice was simply an unorthodox element of 'popular' Christian religion.