Nine present-day pagan symbols representing (1st row) Slavic, Celtic, and Germanic Neopaganism, (2nd row) Hellenism, Wicca, Italo-Roman Neopaganism, (3rd row) Goddess movement, Kemetism, and Semitic Neopaganism
2 February 2022
Pagan is a Christian term which originally meant someone who is not Christian, a heathen. In later use, it came to mean someone who does not practice an Abrahamic religion. Pagan is borrowed directly into English from the Latin paganus. That Latin word originally meant a rustic or someone from the countryside, as opposed to the city. In the opening centuries of the Common Era, paganus developed a secondary meaning of civilian, as opposed to miles (soldier). And around the fourth century C.E. it developed the religious sense that was borrowed into English.
Why that semantic change happened in Latin is uncertain. It may have been that as Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, the older, polytheistic deities continued to be worshiped in the countryside. Or the shift may have occurred in parallel with milites Christi (soldiers of Christ). Or it may have occurred in parallel with heathen, which is often believed to have originally referred to a dweller on the heath, although the etymological connection between heathen and heath may be spurious.
Regardless of how the religious meaning developed in Latin, it is the religious sense of pagan that was imported into English. We first see the English word in The Alliterative Morte Arthure, whose surviving manuscript is from c.1440, but whose composition date was probably before 1400. In this passage, Arthur is speaking of Mordred:
I sall neuer soiourne sounde, ne sawghte at myne herte,
In ceté ne in subarbe sette appon erthe,
Ne ȝitt slomyre ne slepe with my slawe eyghne,
Till he be slayne þat hym slowghe, ȝif any sleyghte happen;
Bot euer pursue the payganys þat my pople distroyede,
Qwylls I may pare them and pynne, in place þare me likes.(I shall never rest soundly, nor be at peace in my heart,
In a city nor in a suburb that is set upon the earth,
Nor yet slumber nor sleep with my slothful eye,
Till he is slain who slew him, if any deceit happen;
But ever pursue the pagans that destroyed my people,
So I may confine and pin them in a place of my choosing.)
Direct borrowing from Latin is the source for our present-day word, but there were two older versions that came into English from Latin via the Anglo-Norman paen. These are payen and paynim. Both of these words appear in a collection of Kentish sermons from c.1275:
For al þat is ine þis wordle. þet man is. bote yef ha luuie godalmichti. and him serui; al hit him may þenche for lore and idelnesse. þo a resunede ure lord þe paens be ise apostles. vre fore he hedden i be so longe idel. þo þet hi ne hedden i be in his seruise; þo ansuerden þe paens; þet non ne hedden i herd hij.
(For all that is in this world of men is good if he loves God almighty and serves him; all may seem to him to be loss and idleness, consequently our lord did not ask paynims to be his apostles. For they had been so long idle, because they had not been in his service; though the paynims answered that they had not heard him.)
And:
And ihesu crist þet for us wolde an erþe be bore. and anured of þo þrie kinges of painime.
(And Jesus Christ would be born on earth for us and worshiped by the three kings of pagandom.)
But by the sixteenth century, the Anglo-Norman versions gave way to the one directly from Latin, except in historical or deliberately archaic use.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2017, s.v. paen.
Hall, Joseph, ed. “Dominica in sexagesima sermo.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250, vol. 1 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 221. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud MS Misc. 471.
———. “Sermo jn die epiphanie.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250, vol. 1 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 216. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud MS Misc. 471.
Krishna, Valerie, ed. The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition. New York: Burt Franklin, 1976, lines 4042–47. Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91.
Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. paganus. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. pagan(e, n., pagan, adj., paien, n., paien, adj., painim(e, adj., painim(e, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. pagan, n. and adj.; September 2005, s.v. payen, n. and adj., paynim, n. and adj.
Image credit: unknown artist, 2011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.