Revival of Roman paganism

Revival of Roman paganism has been happening in several forms, both in modern times and in the past, since the times of Renaissance .

A ceremony to Jupiter being made by the Roman Republic group in British Columbia, Canada during the beginning of Ludi Romani in 2020.

Cultus Deorum Romanorum (worship of the Roman gods), known variously as Religio Romana (Roman religion) in Latin, the Roman Way to the gods in romance languages (via romana agli dei in Italian and camino romano a los dioses in Spanish), is a contemporary movement reviving traditional Roman religious cults consisting of loosely related organizations.[1][2]

History

The interest in reviving religious traditions from ancient Rome date back to the Renaissance and people such as Gemistus Pletho and Julius Pomponius Laetus.[1] In the 19th century, the anti-clericalism of the Italian unification and the fall of the Papal States made some Italian intellectuals consider a revival of Roman paganism as a serious alternative to Roman Catholicism, leading people such as the archaeologist Giacomo Boni and the writer Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo to promote the restoration of Roman cults.[3][4] Some of the pagan revivalists were interested in occultism, Pythagoreanism and Freemasonry; these included Amedeo Rocco Armentano, Arturo Reghini and Giulio Parise. In 1914, Reghini published the article "Imperialismo Pagano" (lit. 'Pagan Imperialism') where he argued for the existence of an unbroken initiatory lineage in Italy, connecting ancient Roman paganism to modern times through people like Numa Pompilius, Virgil, Dante Alighieri and Giuseppe Mazzini.[5]

The attempts to revive or revitalise Roman cults coincided with the rise of the National Fascist Party and several of the pagans tried to ally themselves with fascism. This ended in 1929 when Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty, leaving pagans such as Musmeci and Reghini embittered with fascism.[3][6] Loosely influenced by Reghini's and Julius Evola's Ur Group of the 1920s, various other groups have appeared in Italy, most notably the Movimento Tradizionale Romano and Curia Romana Patrum in the 1980s, which unified some calendars.[7] Adherents can be found across Latin Europe, but also in the Americas, the latter exemplified by Nova Roma and the Roman Republic.[8]

Beliefs

As usually grouped in Italian literature, the Italian movements may not correspond precisely with the English-literature notion of reconstructionism, but to a more encompassing notion of "Roman Pagan tradition[alism]".[9]

See also

References
  1. Marré, Davide (2008). "Tradizione Romana" [Roman tradition]. In Marré, Davide (ed.). L'Essenza del Neopaganesimo [The essence of neopaganism] (in Italian). Milan: Circolo dei Trivi. pp. 35–37.
  2. Angelini, Andrea (22 January 2019). "The Roman Way To The Gods: The Ancients Are Back". Italics Magazine. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  3. Giudice, Christian (2012). "Pagan Rome was Rebuilt in a Play: Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo and the Representation of Rumon". The Pomegranate. 14 (2): 212–232. doi:10.1558/pome.v14i2.212. ISSN 1743-1735.
  4. Buscemi, Francesco (2019). "The Sin of Eating Meat: Fascism, Nazism and the Construction of Sacred Vegetarianism". In Gentilcore, David; Smith, Matthew (eds.). Proteins, Pathologies and Politics: Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-3500-5686-2.
  5. Giudice, Christian (14 October 2016). Occultism and Traditionalism: Arturo Reghini and the Antimodern Reaction in Early Twentieth-Century Italy (PhD). University of Gothenburg. pp. 19–20. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  6. Lloyd Thomas, Dana (2006). "Reghini, Arturo". In Hanegraaff, Wouter (ed.). Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. Leiden and Boston: Brill. pp. 979–980. ISBN 978-90-04-15231-1.
  7. Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, (2004) p. 187
  8. George D. Chryssides, Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2011, 2nd ed.)
  9. Del Ponte, «Le correnti della tradizione pagana romana in Italia», Algiza, 7 (aprile 1997), pp. 4–8. web version

Further reading
  • Hakl, Hans Thomas (2009). "Das Neuheidentum der römisch-italischen Tradition. Von der Antike in die Gegenwart" [Neopaganism of the Roman-Italic tradition: from antiquity to the present]. In Gründer, René; Schetsche, Michael; Schmied-Knittel, Ina (eds.). Der andere Glaube. Europäische Alternativreligionen zwischen heidnischer Spiritualität und christlicher Leitkultur [The other faith: European alternative religions between pagan spirituality and Christian dominant culture]. Grenzüberschreitungen (in German). 8. Würzburg: Ergon. pp. 57–76. ISBN 978-3-89913-688-3.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.