A medieval Greek pagan evangelist

Around 1450, a Greek man named Iouvenalios was executed by an official of the Byzantine Empire for attempting to revive pre-Christian pagan religion.

In one sense, this was not an unusual story. Throughout history, attempts have been made in Christian countries to revive pre-Christian polytheistic traditions. This was the subject of Paganism Persisting, a book that I wrote with the eminent historian Francis Young. Yet pagan revivals prior to the very recent past have tended to be confined to relatively small circles of intellectuals, and have met with very limited success. Iouvenalios is an exception here. He stands as an unusual example of a pagan revivalist who preached his message to ordinary people and attracted a significant body of converts.

We know about Iouvenalios’ case through the testimony of an Orthodox Christian cleric, Gennadios Scholarios. Gennadios served as Patriarch of Constantinople – the highest-ranking bishop in the Orthodox Church – from 1454 to 1465. He was appointed to this position after the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

The episode is recorded in a letter which Gennadios sent to Manuel Raoul Oises, who was a governor (ἄρχων) in the Peloponnese in Greece. [This letter has never been translated into English. My Byzantine Greek is less than perfect, and that should be borne in mind when reading this article.] Manuel was a member of the aristocratic Rallis family, which remains in existence today (it has produced several Prime Ministers of modern Greece).

The letter was written in 1451-52, before Gennadios became Patriarch. At this time, he was a simple monk and a theologian – although he was nevertheless an influential figure with a background in imperial service. The great religious controversy of the day was whether the Orthodox (Greek) church should reunite with the Catholic (Latin) church. Gennadios was a leader of the anti-Latin party and had been involved in the reunification talks.

Turning now to the letter – Gennadios begins with an assertion of the power of the civil authorities to enforce religious morality. This is the true voice of a Christian empire:

“Do you want to be without fear of the authorities?”, says blessed Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. “Then do good and you will have praise from them. For they act as God’s servants in making you good. But if you do evil, you should be afraid. For they do not bear the sword in vain. They are God’s servants, who justly bring anger on those who do evil.” I salute you, then, most pious Manuel, because you have carried out your task of serving God through the laws. I salute you, because you have wielded the sword that was given to you by God in accordance with the teachings of Christ. It is my wish that not only you but all governors who have been put in place by God over peoples and cities will “swiftly destroy all the sinners of the earth, so as to exterminate all those who practise lawlessness from the city of the Lord”.

This latter quotation is taken from the Psalms (101.8). Gennadios is not speaking metaphorically about extermination, as the following text makes clear:

If you have mercy for the other sinners, and you are giving freedom of speech to the sick and infectious sheep – that is, these impious and destructive Hellenists (or rather, shameless apostates from piety) – to kill and destroy the whole flock, you must remove them from the present life by fire and iron and water and all other means, if you wish Christians to have the truth and you have thought for the salvation of the people whom you govern.

The foremost of the “shameless apostates from piety” was Iouvenalios, who had been trying to convert Orthodox Christians back to pre-Christian Greek polytheism.

We might wonder at this point exactly who Iouvenalios was and where he had come from. Gennadios does not give us much information to go on. He was literate, so it is reasonable to suppose that his family was not poor. If he had interests in classical pre-Christian thought, he must have had some level of education. He apparently claimed to be an illegitimate relation of the imperial house, and Gennadios alleges that he had political as well as religious ambitions.

Gennadios associates Iouvenalios with various locations in the Mediterranean: Constantinople, Ainos and the Peloponnese in Greece; and also Albania, as well as Apulia in Italy. His name was originally Latin (Iuvenalis). It was unusual in the Byzantine Empire, although not unknown.

It is clear that Iouvenalios had an unusual preoccupation with religion. He had once wanted to be an Orthodox priest, but it seems that he had been turned down. He had at other times been a Jew, a Muslim and an Epicurean. We have only Gennadios’ word for all this, but it does ring true.

More surprisingly, Gennadios claims that Iouvenalios had been a bandit chief on Mount Athos. He had apparently killed monks there, and had been imprisoned as a result (but subsequently set free). Gennadios does not expand on these extraordinary allegations, and it is difficult to know what to make of them.

Gennadios presents Iouvenalios as being motivated by a desire for wealth, as well as political power. He repeats a story that he had dug up graves at a monastery of St Michael and taken out the bones. Iouvenalios apparently did this in order to get gold and iron from the graves. More generally, Gennadios alleges that he hypocritically lived the life of a beggar while gathering rich followers to himself.

In all, Gennadios did not have a high opinion of Iouvenalios. He was not just theologically wrong but morally corrupt:

He was a glutton, a drunkard, a laughable figure, without self-control, a dancer of the kordax [an indecent dance], unstable.

It is hard to know how far we can take these allegations of depravity seriously. Gennadios is the least impartial source imaginable. For him, Iouvenalios’ polytheism was literally the work of devils. He says that the man had been in the grip of a madness sent by demons, who “drove him into a Bacchic frenzy” (ἐξεβάκχευσαν). (The significance of this reference to the Greek god Bacchus should probably not be pressed too far.)

From what Gennadios says, it appears that Iouvenalios made his converts by visiting inns, festivals and – perhaps more surprisingly – monasteries. He seems to have continued in this course for a period of several years. Clearly, enough people were receptive to his message to make him a real problem.

Iouvenalios both spoke and wrote against Christianity, so he must have been addressing in part a literate audience. He may have been more adventurous verbally than he was in writing. Gennadios says that he employed shameless blasphemous rhetoric rather than reasoned argument; but we only have his word for this.

Iouvenalios may have started out in the town of Ainos (modern Enez), which was not far from the capital of Constantinople. The people of Ainos got in touch with Gennadios to tell him what was happening. Gennadios reports that Iouvenalios made “many” converts in the town. He duly contacted the governor, one Gateliouzos, and advised him either to imprison Iouvenalios or to expel him. The governor expelled him.

After being thrown out of Ainos, Iouvenalios went to Constantinople. At this point, Gennadios sent for him and made a personal appeal to him: if he gave up his pagan evangelism, Gennadios would see to it that the Emperor would grant him (unspecified) honours. Iouvenalios played dumb and denied the allegations against him, presenting himself as a solid Christian.

Gennadios took the view that Iouvenalios ought to be imprisoned. Instead, the Emperor, after being approach by influential people, did the same thing that the governor of Ainos had done: he expelled him from the city in the hope that that would make the problem go away. It didn’t – Iouvenalios came back. Gennadios tried reasoning with him again. By his own account, he spoke to him two or three times.

“My man,” I said, “why are you going around from place to place destroying the souls of the simpler people? You are in danger of being expelled by us from the city again, or indeed of suffering something worse. If you think that what you are teaching to the ignorant people is true, then come, share it with us as well, and we will debate it together. If you come to realise that it is a deception of demons and demon-possessed men – those who taught you these things – it will be entirely to your advantage to come back to the truth: if you love the truth, that is, as everyone else who has any sense does. But if I cannot take away your bewilderment and persuade you to change your mind, you can still continue in your beliefs. No-one will change your opinions by force.”

It is perhaps surprising that Gennadios was willing to let him continue in his beliefs. Perhaps the distinction here is between believing in polytheism and being public about it.

In any event, Iouvenalios seems to have continued denying that he was a pagan. By this time, he seems to have been a known character in Constantinople. Fearing that he was going to be expelled a second time, he went to a high-ranking church official (protosynkellos) by the name of Gregorios. [Gregorios became Patriarch in 1445, so his encounter with Iouvenalios must have taken place before then.] He offered to work for the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches, claiming to be a supporter of the Latins. Gennadios, however, wrote to Gregorios to explain what was going on, and Gregorios persuaded the Emperor to expel Iouvenalios again. He duly fled to the Peloponnese, where he continued his activities until Manuel put a stop to them by killing him.

Iouvenalios was killed by drowning: he was thrown into the sea. According to Gennadios, he died giving praise to the First Cause (τῇ πρώτῃ αἰτίᾳ). [Does this term give an insight into what Iouvenalios’ philosophy was? It is suggestive of the thought of Aristotle – rather than Plato, who otherwise tended to be the influence behind Byzantine pagan revivalism.] He seems to have seen himself as a martyr for his beliefs. If I have understood the Greek correctly, he also allegedly saw his death as punishment for his previous homicidal conduct among the monks of Athos.

Is this just a typical story of an authoritarian state killing a man who dared to dissent from the established religion? Perhaps not. There are indications that Manuel was being criticised for executing Iouvenalios, and that he had acted unlawfully.

Gennadios himself had no qualms on this score. He praises Manuel for killing Iouvenalios and makes it clear that he regards the action as a public service. He seems to approve of the execution for its deterrent effect on others, and for serving as an encouragement to civil officials (whom Gennadios thinks have been lacking in zeal) to mete out similar punishments.

Yet Gennadios also acknowledges that some people, including even clerics, will criticise Manuel for excessive harshness. This, indeed, is what prompted Gennadios to write his letter.

Gennadios comments that Manuel is worthy of blame if he executed Iouvenalios for a motive other than piety. He needs to repent if he issued the death sentence out of greed, vengeance or another human passion. On the other hand, he is worthy of reward if he punished Iouvenalios for the glory of Christ. This raises an unavoidable question: what was Manuel’s true motivation?

A clue may lie in the fact that Iouvenalios had money when he died. Gennadios says that it would have been best if Manuel did not take a share of this money. It is not clear (to me) whether Gennadios is implicitly confirming that Manuel has in fact done this; but it is certainly possible.

There is no reason to think that Manuel was an especially pious individual. In general, it seems that the Byzantine establishment was not necessarily as concerned as Gennadios was about religious problems. Gennadios regarded the growth of paganism as a real threat, but imperial officials did not see it in the same way:

For my part, I shouted about it plainly and declared it to all. But among those who had the power to stop it, some laughed, others did not believe it, and others again thought that the affair was a slander which I had concocted out of ill-will towards those unfortunates.

The legality of Manuel’s death sentence seems to have been open to doubt. Gennadios affirms that apostasy from the true faith is worse than civil crimes; and that, while the church does not expressly require the civil authorities to punish apostates, she commends them if they do so. After all, the role of the state is to do things which are not fitting for the church.

Yet it appears that the laws of the Empire were not necessarily on his side. He seems to refer to the real possibility that Manuel is in legal trouble for executing Iouvenalios. “Who will dare to prosecute the punisher of such a man for murder?”, he asks. One gets some sense from the letter that this was more than a rhetorical question. There seems to have been no law specifically addressing Iouvenalios’ behaviour, so Gennadios is forced to make an argument by analogy from the legislation that did exist. He quotes a law which laid down the death penalty for Greek polytheists who sought baptism but then relapsed into paganism. He also notes that the death penalty was prescribed for Jews who tried to convert Christians. Yet Iouvenalios’ case did not fit into either of these categories.

Going back to Iouvenalios himself, we might ask what we can discover from Gennadios’ letter about how he had come to embrace paganism. He was not an isolated eccentric: he had teachers as well as followers.

As to those teachers, Iouvenalios was in the right place at the right time to have been influenced by George Gemistos Plethon. Plethon was one of the more fascinating figures of the later Byzantine Empire. An intellectual and an imperial official, he appears to have favoured a restoration of pre-Christian Greek paganism. He had died only recently, in 1450-52. Interestingly, he had been involved with Gennadios in the negotiations over unification with the Latin church (which he opposed).

Plethon did not openly seek to build a pagan revival movement. This may cast some light on comments made by Gennadios to the effect that Iouvenalios was more indiscreet than his teachers, who had had the sense to conceal what they were up to:

They tried to bring back to life again genealogies of the gods and undefiled names from the poets and correct rituals (as they call them) and constitutions, and indeed all the things which have been allowed to rot and have been rightly extinguished, against the words and teachings and works of Christ and our most pious devotion. But they did not dare freely and openly to talk and write in this way.

As to his own followers, Iouvenalios himself apparently claimed to have adherents “in the Peloponnese and Ainos and in many other places”. Some of these seem to have been rich; but most would presumably have been ordinary people whom he met in the locations that he visited.

It would be interesting to know why people were won over by Iouvenalios’ message. Gennadios writes that people these days are cold in the faith – he even claims that the end times are at hand. Here we may hear the voice of monkish doomsterism. Gennadios further attributes the revival of polytheism to “confusion in the church”. He laments that neither the church nor the state had done enough to save the souls of Iouvenalios’ followers.

In fact, there was no lasting pagan revival in late Byzantine society. Iouvenalios’ efforts did not lead to an enduring movement to restore pre-Christian Greek religion. All the same, he had been too successful for Gennadios’ liking: numerous people had been converted to paganism, and this amounted to a serious problem. Gennadios mentions the possibility that the converts included even some governors. In any event, he was not impressed with the people concerned:

….[T]hey dare to theologise on the beliefs of Christians, like men dancing impiously in their profanities without any care; they fill their souls with Zeus and Apollo and Kronos and other such drivel.

He was worried that this trend would bring evil on the community – indeed, he feared that it had already done so. With this in view, Gennadios had reported some of the guilty parties to the authorities “to punish them or degrade them from honour, or expel them, or commit them to the sea”.

Gennadios made it clear what Manuel ought to be doing in this regard. In future, if he came across another man like Iouvenalios, he was to warn him three times and then flog him, imprison him, cut out his tongue, cut off his hand and then – if this was not enough – drown him in the sea.

On a somewhat less distressing note, Gennadios’ letter raises an interesting terminological issue. He refers to Greek paganism as “Hellenism” or “Hellenismos” (Ἑλληνισμός). He also describes it using the terms “Hellenic superstition” (Ἑλληνικὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν) and “Hellenic polyarchy” (Ἑλληνικὴν πολυαρχίαν). Likewise, adherents of polytheism are called “Hellenes” (Ἕλληνες) and “Hellenists” (Ἑλληνιστάς, Ἑλληνιστῶν).

These are unusual terms for Gennadios to use. “Hellen-” words refer broadly to Greek culture, ethnicity and nationality, not just to religion. What this essentially means is that he is referring to polytheists and polytheism as “Greeks” and “Greekism” – yet everyone involved in the situation that he is writing about was Greek, including himself and his fellow Orthodox Christians.

There is also a further complication. Modern pagan revivalists who are not Greek but follow beliefs and practices influenced by Greek polytheism sometimes refer to their religion as “Hellenismos”. This can cause offence. In a multi-cultural society which seeks to foster respect and harmony between different communities, it is an important principle that people cannot unilaterally self-identify into someone else’s community without their agreement. It can accordingly be seen as disrespectful for a non-Greek person to declare that they are an adherent of “Hellenismos” – Greekness or Greek culture. It is a bit like someone who feels moved to worship Ganesh and Krishna self-declaring that they are a member of the Indian community. Try saying that in Ealing Road on a Friday night.

From this perspective, referring to revived Greek polytheistic religion as “Hellenismos” is an error: a mistake about the meaning of the word. Angelo Nasios has plausibly traced the mistake to a popular twentieth-century translation of the works of the Emperor Julian, who is an admired figure among modern pagan revivalists. And yet – Gennadios’ letter uses “Hellenismos” and other “Hellen-” terms to refer specifically to Greek pagan religion and its practitioners. Does this provide a precedent for modern non-Greek pagans to do likewise?

Probably not. What the letter seems to bear witness to is an intramural dispute between different Greeks about who was really Greek. It is likely, indeed, that the use of “Hellen-” terms to describe a return to pre-Christian polytheism was something that came from Iouvenalios’ party. It is plausible that they were trying to say: “We are the true Greeks.” It feels like a rhetorical move on the part of a group who saw themselves as throwing off the foreign corruption of Christianity in favour of a more authentically Hellenic ancestral religious tradition. This is clearly a long way from the position of modern non-Greek pagans whose observances are influenced by Greek models. It would be as well to let the “Hellen-” terms rest where they are in Gennadios’ text.

There is a further point to be made here. If Iouvenalios did indeed see himself as a better Greek than his peers because he was restoring ancestral pre-Christian traditions, it is ironic that he comes across as a distinctly Christian kind of pagan. He did his best to preach the message of polytheism in the same way as Christian evangelists sought to proclaim the gospel. He saw his death as a martyrdom, an idea that is deeply bound up with Christian doctrine and history. You can take the boy out of Orthodoxy, but…. In fact, Iouvenalios was like other pagan revivalists in Christian societies in this respect. Once Christianity has come to pervade the social world, even explicit attempts to reject it in favour of restoring the older order will invariably be affected by Christian influences. This is not good or bad in itself; it is just inevitable.

The unusual career of Iouvenalios seems to have been largely neglected by historians of pagan revivalism, at least in the West. I hope that this piece will go some way towards making the intriguing story of his life a little better known.