The clever medieval trick that destroyed the last stand of stubborn paganism in Europe

This tactic proved decisive in the Baltic, Europe’s last pagan stronghold, where the conversion of Lithuania in the late 14th century was achieved not only through the power of military campaigns, but also through the symbolic appropriation and supplanting of sacred space.

Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian and folklorist Francis Young takes up the story.

What do we mean by ‘pagan’?

As Young explains, the very word ‘pagan’ carries its own baggage.

“The word ‘pagan’ is something that I have mixed feelings about. It basically just means anybody who isn’t a Christian, but it can be useful as shorthand for ancestral religious traditions.”

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In the late Roman empire, paganus began as a slur. It mocked those who clung to older practices as Christianity spread, lumping together a wide variety of traditions under a dismissive label. In reality, Europe’s pre-Christian faiths were diverse, ancient and deeply rooted in the natural world.

The many faces of pre-Christian belief

Across Europe, ancestral religious life was expressed through a patchwork of local rituals.

“The pre-Christian Baltic disparate peoples had varying pagan traditions and beliefs: shamanism in the far north, venerating groves, sacred fires and stones. It was polytheistic; there were sacrifices and libations,” Young explains.

In the Arctic, Sámi shamans used drums, chanting and smoke to enter trances and communicate with spirits. In the Baltic, Lithuanians, Latvians and Old Prussians honoured sacred groves, maintained perpetual fires, and poured offerings over boulders thought to embody divine power.

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Polytheism was the norm, with gods of thunder, fertility, hunting and forests each receiving sacrifices of animals, food or beer. What united these traditions was their deep entanglement with the natural landscape – hills, rivers and stones were all considered the embodiment of something divine.

Ancient roots stretching back millennia

Many of these rituals were astonishingly old. Archaeological studies in Karelia, on the border of Finland and Russia, for example have uncovered sacred stones venerated for thousands of years.

“[The stones] have seemingly been in use since the Bronze Age,” Young notes.

Marked with grooves worn by centuries of offerings, these glacial boulders reveal extraordinary continuity. Even as empires rose and fell across Europe – and meanings shifted and traditions changed – the sites themselves endured as anchors of pagan belief.

For Christianity to displace such ancient and deeply held traditions, preaching alone wasn’t going to be enough. The church needed to claim these landscapes, actively replacing ancient rituals with Christian ones performed on the same ground.

How the church conquered through continuity

The conversion of Lithuania shows this process vividly. In the mid-13th century, King Mindaugas briefly accepted Christianity and built a cathedral in Vilnius. But after his assassination, Lithuania reverted to its ancestral religion, and the building itself was reappropriated.

“Looking at the moment of conversion in Lithuania, the temple dedicated to Perkūnas, god of thunder, had originally been a church and possibly a cathedral. Mindaugas’s successors took off the roof, built an altar inside it, and offerings were made to Perkūnas instead,” Young explains.

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When Lithuania formally converted in 1387 under Grand Duke Jogaila, Franciscan friars destroyed the pagan altar, removed the idol of Perkūnas, and simply put the roof back on – restoring the structure as a Christian cathedral.

That cathedral still stands today in Vilnius, its stones layered with the history of temple, shrine and church.

Pagan Europe’s last stand

Lithuania and Latvia were two of the final bastions of pagan Europe. Elsewhere, rulers had accepted Christianity centuries earlier: Clovis of the Franks in the fifth century, Olaf Tryggvason in Norway around 1000, and the rulers of Poland and Hungary soon after.

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But in the Baltic, ancestral traditions held out until the late Middle Ages. From the 12th century, the region became the target of the Northern Crusades: campaigns to conquer and convert the ‘pagan north’.

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The most prominent participants were the Teutonic Knights, a German military order originally founded during the Crusades in the Holy Land. After losing influence in the Middle East, they turned their energies to the Baltic, establishing castles and waging war against local peoples.

Supported by the pope and by European rulers, the Knights saw themselves as crusaders fighting a holy war, just as legitimate as campaigns in Jerusalem. For the Lithuanians and their neighbours, this meant generations of armed incursions, forced baptisms and political pressure to adopt Christianity.

Remarkably, Lithuania resisted longer than any other European state. Even into the 14th century, it was one of the continent’s last officially pagan kingdoms, balancing between military resistance to the Knights and pragmatic diplomacy with Christian neighbours.

One of the ways Lithuania ensured its paganism was through its religious tolerance. Christian friars and monks were allowed to live within its borders, which was an unusual degree of medieval religious coexistence.

Yet the combination of sustained military pressure and symbolic strategies, such as the takeover of sacred sites, eventually ensured Christianity’s triumph.

A clever medieval trick with a long legacy

By building churches over older sacred places, the medieval church found a way to conquer through continuity. Across Europe, sacred wells, ancient stones and revered groves were given new meaning as baptismal sites, church foundations or holy relics. Communities could continue to gather at familiar places, but the rituals now proclaimed the supremacy of Christ.

The tactic worked across the continent. In Britain, parish churches rose beside holy wells. In Rome, Christian basilicas replaced pagan temples. In Ireland, sacred sites associated with druids were claimed as monastic foundations.

By adapting, rather than erasing, the church won its long struggle with Europe’s ancestral religions and conquered the last bastion of Baltic paganism.

This article is based on an interview with Francis Young, speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.