Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Paganism in the Medieval Catholic Imagination

Following the publication of working documents for the 2019 Synod on the Pan-Amazon Region, various elements within the Catholic Church condemned these documents as heretical by virtue of their allegedly "pagan" and "pantheist" content. This line of critique has endured through subsequent years, raising the question: why do some decry ecologically oriented Catholic moral theologies as heterodoxical endorsements of nature worship? Any attempt to address this question must look to the historical role of paganism in the Christian imagination, specifically to the pastoral developments of the Early Middle Ages – a period of constant encounter between religious “others” and dynamic emergence of syncretic religious formations in Europe. This paper will bring works of pastoral literature by Pope Gregory I, Caesarius of Arles, and Martin of Braga into conversation with the goal of exploring key characteristics of “the pagan” in the medieval (and perhaps contemporary) Catholic imagination.