{"id":11803,"date":"2020-09-25T11:36:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T17:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11803"},"modified":"2020-09-25T11:37:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T17:37:03","slug":"11803","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11803","title":{"rendered":"Book to Explore Paganism in Early Modern Lithuania"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The Samogitian Sanctuary, a reconstructed Pagan observatory and sacred place in Lithuania (Wikipedia).<\/p><\/div>\n

I post a lot about old and new Pagan movements in the Baltic nations, a region that I have never visited, although some of my family members have.((One of my older sisters lived the last couple of years of her life in Kaunas, Lithuania, but that had nothing to do with Paganism although I believe her choice had a strong “karmic” element.)) So here is an interview with the Britsh historian Francis Young about a forthcoming book, Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

On his own blog, Young writes,<\/a><\/p>\n

The Baltic peoples of Prussia (Lithuania Minor, today\u2019s Kaliningrad Oblast) and Lithuania were almost unique among European nations in retaining their ancestral pre-Christian religion until the late Middle Ages. While the conversion of the Prussians was the justification for the Baltic Crusades, which brought Prussia and Latvia under the rule of German military orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania not only remained officially pagan but also expanded into a vast Central European empire. Although Lithuania formally converted to Christianity between 1387 and 1413, according to some accounts the nation was not fully Christianised until the eighteenth century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His work is previewed at The Thinker’s Garden <\/em>blog in a post titled “Paganism in Early Modern Lithuania and Prussia<\/a>.” where writer J. Locksley notes,<\/p>\n

Paganism in Lithuania was curiously\u2013and perhaps preternaturally\u2013 resilient. Notably, it persisted in the wilder regions of the Baltic state until the eighteenth century. For this reason, as Young has pointed out, descriptive texts by contemporary observers of its key rites and mores might be the \u201cclosest we can ever get to encountering an ancestral European paganism as an unbroken tradition\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read both posts to get a broader picture. And don’t forget to watch The Pagan King<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I post a lot about old and new Pagan movements in the Baltic nations, a region that I have never visited, although some of my family members have.((One of my older sisters lived the last couple of years of her life in Kaunas, Lithuania, but that had nothing to do with Paganism although I believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[201,230,299,5,4],"class_list":["post-11803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-latvia","tag-lithuania","tag-pagan-studies","tag-paganism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-11803","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8604,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8604","url_meta":{"origin":11803,"position":0},"title":"No “Neos” Here, We’re “Ethnic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter from one of the leading Hellenic Pagan groups to the government of Lithuania supports a request by the Lithuanian Romuva for state recognition. Just as the Hellenic Ethnic Religion, Romuva is by no means a \u201cneo-pagan movement\u201d or a \u201cnew religious movement\u201d. It belongs to the category of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Romuva_flag-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10588,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10588","url_meta":{"origin":11803,"position":1},"title":"Religion News Service: Baltic Pagans Spurred by Conservation","author":"Chas S. 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