https://cne.news/article/4938-how-arts-draw-europe-back-to-paganism
This article struck me as rather strange. In many respects I can resonate with Placentino's concerns about pagan revival in connection with 18th and 19th century Romanticism, but at the same time I found his arguments wanting and often guilty of begging the question.
First of all the Christendom he celebrates was always a fusion or syncretism of Christian and pagan thought. In reality the High Christendom of the Middle Ages was the result of a combination of Hellenistic culture and philosophy, Northern European custom, ethics, and notions of everything from valour to justice, and yes, the influence of Christianity. The latter in an ever increasingly compromised form, the result of Constantine and the re-framing of the Roman Empire. The first two elements were decidedly pagan and in Biblical terms the whole order was never Christian. It only seemed to be so. Those who brought the Scriptures to bear were persecuted and often killed.
Further, in the popular mind there was a continuity between the pagan past (and its 'glories') and the age of Christendom. We see this in the art and symbols which emerged throughout the period of Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages. It's in everything from the statuary in churches to canon law, literature, and liturgy. Beowulf immediately comes to mind. A magnificent work to be sure but one that exhibits the very kind of syncretism and overlap just mentioned.
Long before Romanticism emerges we find near constant depictions of pagan characters and themes, often right alongside Christian ones. For the Greeks, Zeus and Christ are all part on one story.
So what then made Romanticism different?
The first problem is that Romanticism isn't always easily defined. For some artists and thinkers, there was an explicit rejection of Christianity, but many Romantics did not turn back to pagan Greece and Rome, but to the Middle Ages - which allowed them to also glean from the motifs of Hellenism and national paganism. Others turned this love of all things medieval into devotion, with some artists and thinkers converting to Roman Catholicism. Indeed the Anglo-Catholic/Oxford movement grew from these same seeds.
Driven by emotion and the seeking of the sublime, many were moved by the notion of an ancient past. Others became fixated with nature and thus often looked to Ceres, Persephone, Apollo, and Poseidon as expressions of primeval power and feeling - notions that were eventually combined with the rising consciousness of nationalism and identity - something largely cherished by Right-wing nationalists of our day.
Placentino lists off all the benefits of Christianity (by which he means Christendom) - universal education, the rule of law, private property, and free trade, a remarkable list to be sure and one in which Placentino (perhaps inadvertently) plays his hand.
His interests are not actually historical or aesthetic but political and in the realm of culture war. His list is telling but it's also rather interesting in that none of these things are the fruits of Christendom, but rather constitute its rejection and belong instead to the age of Enlightenment. It's like trying to portray the glories of Spain by appealing to Oktoberfest, beer, and Wagner.
Christendom never brought or encouraged universal education - quite the opposite throughout much of its history. You could argue the Magisterial Reformation tried to bring universal education but this is something Traditionalist Catholics (who have a larger claim to Christendom) tend to condemn.
The Throne and Altar culture of Christendom was overthrown by Republicanism - a key concept being the rule of law. No traditionalist aficionado of Old Christendom celebrated the rise of republicanism.
Private Property did not come to prominence until the post-Reformation period and the early stages of the Enlightenment. In many respects the focus arose due to the process of Land Enclosure. Many had celebrated the end of feudalism but with it came the loss of custom and rights. This combined the rise of capitalism created situations in which land owners consolidated and forced families that had lived on the land for centuries into industrializing cities. The relationship of the individual and society with property and the rights connected to it were completely changed - but none of this is a result of Christendom.
In fact the very free trade Placentino champions helped to bring an end to the old order - enshrining profit above people, the individual seeking his own enrichment above obligation to society, and of course the utilitarian ethics that capitalism exploits at every turn.
In other words, it's safe to say that Placentino is confused - the things he's celebrating are not the results of the system he wants to celebrate but are actually associated with its downfall. That said, the system he wishes to champion (but doesn't seem to understand) was not really Christian at all. We have something of a mess it would seem and this confusion colours the entire discussion about art and romanticism.
Like other Right-wing apologists Placentino wants to blame modern Environmentalism on paganism but the argument doesn't pan out. The modern movement is more often than not rooted in Enlightenment Scientism - the very thing the Romantics were opposed to. The fact that a small handful of people are also Gaia worshippers and the like doesn't change anything. Environmentalism is driven by data (which is not neutral) but it's rarely concerned with pagan categories and framing of Earth-related issues. I dare say the movement is rather fervent in its tendency toward demythologizing and disenchantment.
The attempt by the Soviets and other Marxist-inspired groups was not romanticism or pagan worship of the land but rather Scientific Materialism coupled with their meta-narratives about society. It was a disaster to be sure, but Placentino's arguments don't line up. Even his appeal to Gorbachev falls flat. The last Soviet leader lamented how the USSR had gone all wrong. He didn't want to dispense with it but reform it and yet failed. His idea of what communism should have been was typified by the Israeli Kibbutz - he said so. Of course in Marx's model only an industrialised society was ready for the socialist and then ultimately communist turn. This is why the pre-industrial societies of Russia and then later China, Vietnam, and Cambodia were deemed unsuitable. As such their leaders had to significantly modify the Marxist system - by some estimations to the point that it became incoherent and ad hoc.
Placentino's conclusions just don't add up. Even the most ancient form of church building - the basilica, was borrowed, appropriated from Greco-Roman Hellenistic culture.
To add to the confusion, he is critical of Lönnrot's Kalevala - the national poem that so inspired JRR Tolkien. Now some Christians are certainly critical of Tolkien and yet many reckon him a Christian author writing from a Christian worldview. Given his reliance on and inspiration from works such as the Kalevala and Beowulf - is this not a problem from Placentino? Lönnrot himself apparently saw no conflict between the symbols and imagery of the Kalevala and his own Lutheranism. He was also a noted hymn writer. I'm not saying that the Kalevala is Christian - I don't believe Tolkien's works are either. But I just don't buy Placentino's arguments. He certainly can't make them from his standpoint.
As someone who argues the Bible doesn't support Christendom, I can argue all day long against the artistic trends in Western culture but Placentino cannot. He is forced to resort (ironically) to the very Romanticism he critiques. He must create an emotive revisionist/fantasy version of the past that somehow represents a purely Christian culture as well as one that anachronistically incorporates modern Right-wing and Libertarian notions. The nationalism often so championed by the Right is in the end a religion in itself. Whether that nationalism is built on ideology (born of the Enlightenment for example) or some sense of tribalism - or a fusion of the two, the religious result is the same. And often history and the land itself are subject to this same process of romanticism - and dare I say idolatry?
I'm sure this piece has proved popular and writers like Placentino flourish as they tickle the ears of donors and audiences (by what is effectively emotional appeal) but do so at the expense of both doctrinal and ethical integrity.