Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages is not a long book (around 170 pages), but it is source-rich and, at times, quite dense and difficult to read. I usually “read” books in electronic format using a TTS app, so I can listen to them while walking my dog, driving, or cleaning. With this particular book, however, I found I was unable to do so. I kept losing the thread and had to constantly rewind and re-listen to previous sentences and paragraphs just to understand what I was hearing. Eventually I gave up and decided to read the book the old-fashioned way: sitting down with a cup of tea and (somewhat less old-fashioned) an e-paper tablet on my lap. And I do not regret the less-than-usual productive time spent with this book. I found Bylina’s work unique in that it examines Pagan influences on the religiousness of Central and Eastern Europe from the perspective of regular people. He does this by mining the reports of the elites—scholars, bishops, preachers, and theologians—as sources to investigate the actual attitudes and practices of the common folk. The volume of sources he analyses is absolutely mind-blowing: Bylina combed through archives of witchcraft trials, sermons (especially parish-level ones), synodal statutes, visitation protocols, and theological tracts, searching for what ordinary people of the late Middle Ages actually knew and thought about the religion they were supposedly following. Spoiler alert: more often than not, the religion the common people were following was not really Christianity. The book clearly shows how the Christianisation of Central and Eastern Europe was really just a long-running game of whack-a-mole. The Church kept trying to eradicate Pagan beliefs and practices, yet it essentially kept failing — until it often gave up the fight and instead incorporated elements of Pagan tradition into Christian ritual and everyday devotion. What I find particularly hilarious is that, according to the sources Bylina examines, the Christianisation of Pagans more often than not amounted to little more than getting them baptised and making them memorise one to three prayers. There were barely any attempts to explain actual Christian doctrine — including the Church’s point of view on things like animism or magic. This resulted in many “Christians” confidently reciting the Hail Mary during clearly Pagan rituals of healing or protective magic, all while being 100% certain they were being good Christians — because whatever magic they performed, they did it “in the name of Jesus.” Reading Bylina’s book from the perspective of a Pagan, it is basically a monograph explaining how Slavic Pagan tradition survived over 1,000 years of Christianisation. It also clearly demonstrates why Slavic folk customs — particularly those from the less “civilised” (fewer roads, fewer churches, less contact with the clergy) parts of Slavdom — are the way to go when attempting to reconstruct the beliefs of our Slavic Pagan ancestors. To summarise: Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages is not a book that will teach you anything new about how to follow Slavic Native Faith. It will not even give you any groundbreaking context on this or that aspect of Rodnovery. But it will provide you with a very thorough and historically grounded explanation of why reconstructing Slavic Paganism in the 21st century makes sense — particularly if you base your reconstruction on the customs preserved in Slavic folklore. Besides, once you find the time to actually sit down and focus on reading it, you will gain a new appreciation for actual, high-quality scholarly research, which will hopefully allow you to fine-tune your fakelore detector even more accurately. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit witia.substack.com
