when threatened with death and even when death was delivered. For exam-
ple, as late as the Byzantine emperor Justinian (527–565 CE), successful war-
lord and devout Christian, conquered the southern half of the Italian peninsula,
he discovered that the people still retained many pagan beliefs, including
polytheism, and still celebrated many pagan holidays. He executed or starved
out thousands to force conversion to Christianity, to little avail. Similarly, he
and his successors never converted the communities of the African Mediter-
ranean coast; they retained many pagan beliefs and practices well into the
1300s, long after even the Muslim conquest of the area, although the Muslim
method of rule was far more civilized, and did not require conversion to
Islam.
Ramsay MacMullen documents numerous pagan towns and communities
well into the 800s CE, especially in Spain, rural Italy, and nearly all of North
Africa (MacMullen 1997:74–77). Despite the best efforts of Roman and Byzantine
emperors and their bishops, priests, and lay people to eradicate pagan cults,
they endured. In fact, the ongoing pressure and frequent violence to crush
paganism only increased its fervor. On numerous occasions, the local popu-
lace organized and resisted pressure and even military campaigns to defend
their pagan cults. Where rational choice theory predicts its easy disappear-
ance, paganism continued.
Furthermore, recent evidence now shows conclusively that paganism actu-
ally survived, if diminished, throughout the middle-ages, in nearly all parts
of Europe if not elsewhere (Hutton 1999, 1991). The most popular rites and
festivals were incorporated into Christianity, but also existed alongside of,
and as far as church leaders were concerned, in opposition to Christianity.
For example, the kalends, celebration common to nearly all of pagan Europe
and the middle-east (MacMullen 1997:39) continued into the 700s if not later.
Indeed, Boniface reports in 742 that “the annual parading, singing, shouting,
and loaded banquet tables in the open squares in Rome around St. Peter ’s
Cathedral on the traditional date follows the pagan custom” (cited in
MacMullen 1997:37). The kalends are preserved today in festivals such as
Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnevale in Rio de Janeiro. Although pagan-
ism lost its organizational structure, it assimilated into Christian culture as
folk medicine, herbology, wise women and cunning men skilled in the arcane
and often very practical arts of midwifery and animal husbandry.
Many places celebrated the solstices, equinoxes, and other times of the sea-
sons perhaps to modern times. Even in the vehemently Christian Byzantine
The Concept of Choice in the Rise of Christianity • 235