Ed Simon at The Hedgehog Review:
By 1140, when the Italian monk Gratian compiled the first collection of ecclesiastical laws, the Corpus Juris Canonici, the last Olympic Games were 747 years in the past, held in the same year that the Oracle of Delphi delivered its last prophecy, a little more than a century before the Byzantine emperor Justinian I closed Plato’s Academy, in 529 CE. Ever since Rome became Christian, starting with its legalization by Constantine I in 313 and then its establishment as the religion of the empire by Theodosius 380, Europe had existed in the long dusk of its classical past, the ancient rites discarded or suppressed, the oracles made mute, the gods gone silent. Yet within Gratian’s compendium, with its stipulations for restitution and penitence, there is a curious section that mandates a “penance for forty days on bread and water” for those who have “observed Thursday in honor of Jupiter.” In another section, there is discussion of the punishment warranted for those caught worshipping Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. If these penitentials reflect a reality in the twelfth century, are we then to imagine that in the age of Peter Abelard and Hildegard von Bingen and of the Cathedrals at Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey, that there were people still genuflecting before Jupiter?
more here.
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