Words

Pagan

PAY-gun
A non-Christian or irreligious person, from Latin paganus, a villager, the country bumpkin of religious vocabulary.
Documented

The rustic civilian

Latin paganus: from pagus, country district, hence villager, also civilian as opposed to soldier. Early Christians, styling themselves milites Christi (soldiers of Christ), used paganus for everyone not enlisted, civilians of the faith. Rural districts kept old gods longest, so both meanings converged on the same word.

Assessment: Documented: both derivations are attested; scholars still argue which came first.
Stories

The demotion story

The retelling: Christian Rome sneered at countryfolk, and the sneer became doctrine. Heathen ran the identical play in the Germanic world, heath-dweller, the person out on the heath with the old shrines.

Assessment: Stories: the convergence of pagan and heathen on rural-is-backward is real and suspiciously symmetrical.
Interesting claims

The district that kept its gods

Pagus's family: pageant, and by a separate thread, propagate (originally to fix plants, from pangere). The countryside as the place where things stay rooted: old gods, old words, old plantings. The city's word for rural faith became the rural word for resistance.

Assessment: Interesting: the semantics hold; whether pagans thought of themselves as pagans is another matter, the name was assigned from the city.
Sources and further reading
  1. Oxford English Dictionary, 'pagan'
  2. Lewis & Short, 'paganus,' 'pagus'
  3. Christine Mohrmann, on paganus as civilian vs. miles Christi
Worth asking

Was Christianity an urban fashion before it was a faith?

Open in the interactive archive
GR8YFILES · competing origin stories, labeled by the strength of their evidence · readers 14+