PAGANESIMO. — From pagus, village, that is, an agglomeration of farms, whose association constitutes a vicus. Paganalia (v.) were the agricultural festivals held in the pagi, while paganus was the peasant or rustic inhabitant of the pagus.
In its current sense, p. designates not a precise religious system but the aggregate of the polytheistic currents and animistic practices of antiquity, in opposition to Christianity. In Rome, paganus, an inhabitant of the plain, is contrasted with montanus, an inhabitant of the hills; it also has the sense of civilian, bourgeois, as opposed to miles (Suetonius, Oct., 27; Tacitus, Hist., I, 53; Juvenal, XVI, 33; Tertullian, De corona, 11). After the victory of Christianity, p. came to signify the ensemble of the beliefs and practices of the ancient religion, by then defeated and surviving in the small rural centers: «Deorum falsorum multorumque cultores paganos vocamus» (Augustine, Retr., II, 43; cf. Cod. Theodosianus, XVI, 10; Isidore, VIII, 10). To this meaning, which refers above all to cultic practices, must be added that relating to belief in the power of the elements (στονάς): «Paganos elementis esse subiectos, nulli dubium est. Solent pagani ad elementa confugere dicentes haec se colere, quibus gubernaculis regitur vita humana» (Pseudo-Augustine, Quaest., 27: PL 35, 2275).
In Latin liturgical usage, p. is equivalent to non-Christian; in the litany prayer of Good Friday, the Church invites the faithful to pray for the pagans so that, having abandoned idolatrous worship, they may turn to the worship of the true God. In its current sense, the word refers especially to the so-called peoples of nature. In Hebrew terminology, non-Israelites are called ethnic peoples, gentiles (τὰ ἔθνε), since they do not belong to the chosen people but to foreign nations; in the Greek Byzantine Church, pagans are called Hellenes, with Hellenism understood as the ensemble of non-Christian beliefs and practices.