Pagani, Gentiles and Rustici

This chapter critically examines interpretative frameworks that have portrayed late antique rural populations as persistently ‘pagan’. It challenges the assumptions that terms like paganus and rusticus straightforwardly referred to rural districts or pagan identity, showing instead that they functioned as rhetorical devices to stigmatise ignorance or nonconformity. Through a close reading of Martin of Braga's De correctione rusticorum and selected hagiographies, the chapter argues that these texts targeted the ‘weak-minded and ignorant’ rather than rural peasants per se. References to pagan and demonic practices are interpreted as stylistic devices, constructing a contrast between ecclesiastical order and the imagined chaos of the countryside, where monastic presence signifies civilisation and its absence denotes untamed wilderness.