O reino Visigodo: catolicismo e permanências pagãs

• Main Author: Andrade Filho, Ruy de Oliveira [UNESP]
• Publication Date: 2012
• Format: Article
• Language: por
• Source: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Download full: http://www.revistas.ufg.br/index.php/historia/article/view/23568; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/127139
• topic: Christianization; Conversion; Paganism; Antiguidade Tardia; Cristianismo; Igreja; Monarquia; Paganismo; Visigodos

What became accustomed to call “paganism” is undoubtedly one of the most significant forms of what is designated as “popular religiosity”. This expression, which seems useful when a generalization is required, shows all its weakness when a more precise and objective observation of a particular religion is attempted. Would the official visigothic kingdom’s “conversion” to Catholicism, with Recardo (586-601) at the Council of Toledo of 589 have effectively matched to the “conversion” of this kingdom’s population? Firstly, it is necessary to consider, in beyond the exalting intentions of the sources of that moment, that mass conversions do not imply a radical change in the convictions and religious practices of an entire people. Secondly, that “conversion” and “Christianization” are not synonymous. “Religiosity”, which includes the “conversion”, implies a fundamental religious attitude, which can simply be interior and personal. On the other hand, “religion”, in which “Christianization” is included, would correspond to a public aspect, institutionalized, which elaborates a set of techniques aiming, as in the case of “religiosity”, the guarantee of the supernatural Thus, elevated to the position of “official religion,” Catholic Christianity would live with a series of rites, rituals, devotions, from the previous “religiosity” that, through its ecclesiastical perspective, would be reprehensible, considered marginal and something that would lead to error. However, on the eve of the Muslim invasion in 711, not only among the laity but even in ecclesiastical segments, the manifestations of the “paganism” still were aim of coactive condemnation in the Catholic kingdom of Toledo’s councils.