Paganus → păgân
How the villager became the heathen
Romanian păgân (“heathen”) comes from Latin paganus, “villager”, and the Christian authors of the fourth century explained it the same way (by James O’Donnell’s account, 1977). The oldest passage quoted here, in Tacitus, has the word in a rebuke to soldiers, in AD 69: paganus means “civilian” there. How the word got from one to the other, two theories explain: the village’s and the soldier’s.
- 69
- the year of a rebuke to soldiers, in Tacitus: paganus means “civilian”
- c. 211
- Tertullian sets paganus against miles, “soldier”, and says it of a believer
- a century
- of silence in the surviving Christian texts, then the first clear uses with the sense “non-Christian”
Chapter 1 · The road
What paganus meant, text by text
Seven places where the word survives on a page or a stone, in the order of the years; the last is an epilogue. At each, choose what you think it means, then see what the text says. The senses sit on three lines: villager, civilian, non-Christian.
- what the text shows
- your choice
- the author’s explanation
- no surviving text
In the civil war between Vitellius and Vespasian, Antonius Primus, angry with the praetorians (the soldiers of the imperial guard), says to them:
“vos” inquit, “nisi vincitis, pagani, quis alius imperator, quae castra alia excipient?”
What does paganus mean here?
“You, if you do not win, civilians, what other commander, what other camps will take you in?” rendering by Marius Comper
Your choice:
Civilians. Antonius calls the soldiers “pagani” in a rebuke. O’Donnell lists the passage among the uses with the sense “civilian”, as against “military” (note 3).
It is the sense the soldier theory starts from. Imperator can be rendered “commander” or “emperor”.
Source: thelatinlibrary.com/tacitus/tac.hist3.shtml, §24 · C17
On the Christian soldier and the crown (De corona militis). Of Christ, Tertullian writes:
Apud hunc tam miles est paganus fidelis quam paganus est miles fidelis.
What does paganus mean here?
“With him, the believing civilian is as much a soldier as the believing soldier is a civilian.” rendering by Marius Comper
Your choice:
Civilian, and a believing one at that. Paganus is set against miles, “soldier”, and said of a Christian: it does not yet mean “non-Christian”.
De corona belongs to the group of writings dated 208–212; the dating is disputed. As evidence for a military origin, O’Donnell calls the passage “plausible but not certain”.
Source: thelatinlibrary.com/tertullian/tertullian.corona.shtml · tertullian.org/chronology.htm · C15
How long, after Tertullian, until the earliest clear uses of paganus with the sense “non-Christian”, in O’Donnell’s inventory?
About a century. After Tertullian, O’Donnell writes, “there is silence for a century”. Christians named their opponents with other words: nationes, gentes, gentiles, ethnici, occasionally Graecus.
The silence concerns the texts in O’Donnell’s inventory of 1977; a new find could fill it.
Source: faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/paganus.html · C16, C20
A funerary inscription for a young woman, read as O’Donnell prints it, with restored letters in brackets:
interfideles fidelis fuit,
inter (al)ienos pagana fuit.
What does paganus mean here?
“Among the faithful she was faithful, among the outsiders she was pagan.” rendering by Marius Comper
Your choice:
Non-Christian, in the Christian sense of the word: “faithful” among the faithful, “pagana” among the outsiders. O’Donnell dates the inscription to the first third of the fourth century, “with some confidence”, and says it seems to show the word in accepted use. He says of the young woman that she had married a pagan.
By O’Donnell, the text seems to show that its author had never heard the word explained as in Mohrmann’s position, on which paganus was merely “outsider”. A second inscription, CIL 10.7112, is dated to the same period; its text is not quoted here.
Source: faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/paganus.html, note 10 · C16
A rhetorician who converted to Christianity around 355, Marius Victorinus uses paganus often in his scriptural commentaries and equates it with Graecus. With him, O’Donnell says, the literary testimony begins: “c. 360”. The sense: “non-Christian”.
The passages (the Epistle to the Galatians, 2.3 and 4.3) are O’Donnell’s; Victorinus’s text was not opened here.
Source: faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/paganus.html, note 12 · C16, C21
Valentinian and Valens, to Claudius, proconsul of Africa, about the time when:
Idem aa. ad Claudium proconsulem Africae
… cum paganorum animi contra sanctissimam legem quibusdam sunt … excitati.
dat. xiii kal. mart. Treviris Valentiniano et Valente aa. conss.
What does paganus mean here?
“… when the spirits of the pagans were stirred up against the most holy law …” (the omitted words differ between editions and are left out). rendering by Marius Comper
Your choice:
Non-Christian, as in Romanian: pagans rise against the “most holy law”. The law was long thought to be the first appearance of the sense; O’Donnell makes Victorinus and the two epitaphs older.
Only the fragment common to the two readings of the text is quoted; the capitals of proper names are added here.
Source: thelatinlibrary.com/theodosius/theod16.shtml · C16
At Augustine’s request, Orosius writes a history against the pagans. He also explains their name:
qui alieni a ciuitate Dei ex locorum agrestium conpitis et pagis pagani uocantur siue gentiles quia terrena sapiunt
What does paganus mean here?
“those alien to the city of God, who from the crossroads and villages of rural places are called pagans, or gentiles because they are wise to earthly things” rendering by Marius Comper
Your choice:
Non-Christians, “alien to the city of God”, and he derives the name from villages: “from crossroads and villages”. The village story is thus no invention of a modern dictionary: by O’Donnell’s account, all the fourth-century authors who explain the word tell it so, and Orosius at the start of the next.
Orosius gives an etymology of the name; he does not say that the cities turned Christian first. O’Donnell thinks the old authors may be wrong here, as their contemporaries were in many other etymologies.
Source: thelatinlibrary.com/orosius/orosius1.shtml · C18, C20
The village story goes on, with other villages: those of Athens. Isidore, who died in 636, wrote this shortly before his death:
Pagani ex pagis Atheniensium dicti, ubi exorti sunt. Ibi enim in locis agrestibus et pagis gentiles lucos idolaque statuerunt, et a tali initio vocabulum pagani sortiti sunt.
“Pagans were named from the villages of the Athenians, where they arose. There, in rural places and villages, the gentiles set up groves and idols, and from such a beginning they received the name.” rendering by Marius Comper
Another etymology, with Greek villages. O’Donnell remarks that Isidore seems not to have known that Greek pagos means almost the opposite of Latin pagus.
Isidore’s life dates: Catholic Encyclopedia. The year of writing is not given; “shortly before his death”.
Source: thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/8.shtml · newadvent.org/cathen/08186a.htm · C19
Your road, on the lines
Chapter 2 · Two theories
The village or the soldier
Dictionaries give the word; the road from “villager” to “non-Christian” is told by theories. There are two, and neither is beyond doubt. The same chart, with each route in turn.
- village
- soldier
- no surviving text
Show the route:
Theory one · the one the old authors give
The village theory
The Empire’s cities turned Christian first; the villages held to the old gods. The word for “villager” would thus have become the word for “unbeliever”.
“Lat. PAGANUS, sătean (locuitorii dela țară sustrăgându-se influenței creștinismului triumfător în orașe: de unde sensul religios de necreștin sau idolatru).” — the dwellers of the countryside escaping the influence of Christianity triumphant in the towns, whence the religious sense of non-Christian or idolater.
In the nineteenth century Trench told the same story, and an English dictionary remembers it under his name. Long before either, in the prologue of his histories, Orosius derived the name from “the crossroads and villages of rural places” (stop 6).
Theory two · the one with an older text, of military sense
The soldier theory
In Roman barracks-talk, paganus meant “civilian” — unenlisted. The first Christians would have taken the word up with the picture of Christ’s army: whoever was not a soldier of Christ was a paganus.
“Milites Christi eraŭ «ostașiĭ luĭ Hristos, creștiniĭ», ĭar ceĭlalțĭ eraŭ păgîni.” — the milites Christi were “Christ’s soldiers, the Christians”, and the others were heathens.
Here paganus is the civilian, set against miles, and it is said of a Christian. That is the military sense the soldier theory builds on; it does not yet mean “non-Christian”.
What each road asks for and what the texts show
| Stop | The village road | The soldier road |
|---|---|---|
| Not touched: here paganus means “civilian”, and the countryman is absent from the text. | The sense it starts from: civilian, as against soldier. | |
| Not touched: the text says nothing about villages. | The military sense in a Christian text, said of a believer. As evidence for a military origin, O’Donnell calls it “plausible but not certain”. | |
| The quoted wording of Șăineanu says nothing about it. | O’Donnell: if the origin is military, “the long period in which the word hardly appears” is striking. On his hypothesis, the word may have stayed in common speech or among the learned and been recovered as a sneer in the fourth century. | |
| The objection in the Online Etymology Dictionary: the religious sense of the word predates the period in which villages would have lagged behind. None of the lines quoted here mentions the village. | The earliest clear uses with the Christian sense come a century after Tertullian; between “civilian” and “non-Christian” no text survives. | |
| His explanation: “from crossroads and villages”. By O’Donnell’s account, every fourth-century author who says what the word means derives it from “villager”. | O’Donnell: there is no reason to suspect they were not as wrong about this etymology as their contemporaries were about so many others; for him the witty derivation from “civilian” had been forgotten. |
The chronology objection
The village story needs cities that are already Christian and villages left behind. The Online Etymology Dictionary says the religious sense of paganus is older than that time, and so finds the soldier theory more likely. Tertullian’s passage does not yet have the religious sense, though, and after him, O’Donnell says, comes a silence of a century. O’Donnell himself, who proposes a reconstruction of his own, also leans to the soldier, but calls it a hypothesis.
The village theory is the one the authors themselves gave; the soldier theory has an older text on its side, but that text shows the military sense, not yet the religious one. The reader can judge with both theories in front of them.
Chapter 3 · The dictionary
What the dictionaries say
The word first, the story after. Three dictionaries, one parentage: from Latin paganus.
“păgîn … Lat. paganus (Diez, I, 300; Pușcariu 1244; Candrea-Dens., 1308; REW 6141), cf. … it., sp. pagano, prov., cat. pagá, fr. païen, port. pagao.”
Dicționarul etimologic român (DER, the Romanian etymological dictionary), via dexonline, the Romanian online dictionary portal. For the semantics, DER refers to J. Zeiller, Paganus, Fribourg 1917.Two more voices confirm the parentage. DEX ’09, the Romanian explanatory dictionary, closes briefly: “Lat. paganus.” And the academic MDA2 gives “E: ml paganus”, with an attestation in the Hurmuzaki Psalter (7r/22).
Seven languages, one word
This is how paganus lives on in the sister languages — the Romance forms given by DER:
- Romanian păgân the word in the title
- Italian pagano from paganus
- Spanish pagano from paganus
- Provençal pagá from paganus
- Catalan pagá from paganus
- French païen from paganus
- Portuguese pagão from paganus
Three wrong sayings
They are often heard. They do not hold:
“Păgân comes from Slavic.”
DER cuts it short: “the Romanian word cannot come from Slavic”. Slavic pogan comes from Latin itself — and indeed, says DER, it is “somewhat possible” it passed through Romanian.
“Păgân means a cruel person.”
A “wicked, cruel, merciless person” is the fifth sense listed in DEX, marked figurative. The first sense is religious: one who worships gods or idols.
“Paganus always meant ‘non-Christian’.”
In Tacitus, in AD 69, paganus is the civilian as against the soldier; in Tertullian, around 211, it is the believing civilian. The first clear uses with the sense “non-Christian” come only in the fourth century.
Still open
U1. Which theory is the right one — the village or the soldier. Dictionaries give the word. The Online Etymology Dictionary and O’Donnell lean, as a hypothesis, to the soldier; nobody has proved it.
U2. How the word passed from “civilian” to “non-Christian”. Tertullian sets paganus against miles around 211; the first clear uses with the sense “non-Christian” come a century after him, and what happened in between the surviving texts do not say. The dating of De corona is disputed.
U3. Whether Slavic pogan passed through Romanian. DER says “somewhat possible” — a possibility, not a fact.
U4. What Zeiller says, Paganus (Fribourg, 1917). DER refers to him for the semantics; reading him remains to be done.
U5. What the second inscription (CIL 10.7112) and Marius Victorinus’s commentaries say in full. They are known only from O’Donnell’s report; their texts were not opened here.
Ending · Your words
The words you say
Paganus was not the only word of the faith to come from Latin. Four words of the faith stood beside it, from the same language, Latin — all with a straight line of descent in DER. They are words you use without thinking about them.
biserică
from basilica (REW 972). “A building meant for Christian worship”, says DER. The newer form basilică is the learned doublet, which came later.
Dumnezeu
DER: “Lat. domine deus” (REW 2734) — the same fusion as Italian domeneddio. Old Provençal and Old French had domerdieus, damnedieu.
cruce
DER: “Lat. crucem” (REW 2348), the accusative of crux. Cognates: Italian croce, French croix, Spanish and Portuguese cruz.
înger
from angelus (REW 458a). Italian angelo, French ange; Provençal, Catalan and Spanish angel, Portuguese anjo.
And when someone is called a heathen for being merciless, the sense in use is the fifth one in DEX, marked figurative; no source here says how it was reached from “non-Christian” to “cruel person”.
Your road, on the lines.
Sources
The dictionaries, texts and article the page is built on:
DER, DEX ’09, MDA2, Șăineanu and Scriban, via dexonline — the entry “păgân” (C01–C06, C14)
DER, via dexonline — “biserică” (C07), “Dumnezeu” (C08), “cruce” (C09), “înger” (C10)
Online Etymology Dictionary — “pagan” (C04, C05, C12) and “heathen” (C11)
Tacitus, Historiae 3.24 — Latin text at The Latin Library; the year from the chronology of the Project Gutenberg edition (C17)
Tertullian, De corona 11 — Latin text at The Latin Library; dating (the 208–212 group) from the chronology at tertullian.org (C15)
Codex Theodosianus 16.2.18 (370) — The Latin Library (C16)
Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos, prologue 9 — The Latin Library (C18)
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 8.10.1 — The Latin Library; his life in the Catholic Encyclopedia (C19)
James J. O’Donnell, “Paganus”, Classical Folia 31 (1977) — the text (C16, C20)
Augustine, Confessiones 8.5.10 — The Latin Library (C21)
J. Zeiller, Paganus, Fribourg 1917 — referred to by DER, not read here (C13)
Renderings from Latin and Romanian: Marius Comper. Images carry their credits under each picture. The year 69 is that of the events Tacitus narrates, not of the writing.