Watts' interpretation is profound but as with so many Western historians of religion, he shows equally profound ignorance of the Eastern Christian tradition, to which these conclusions do not necessarily apply, as we have seen earlier on in this paper. The problem, however, does not involve theology alone, since Western Europe underwent a radically different process of "Romanisation" than did the East. Let me explain. The veneer of Latin Roman culture that had existed in places such as Gaul and Britain up till the beginning of the fifth century proved to be quite thin. Other areas to the north had never even encountered it. When Roman power collapsed in the West, many peoples in that region - with the exception of Latins in Italy - showed themselves neither able nor willing to maintain the Antique legacy. In this they differed greatly from their contemporaries in the East.
North-West Europe fell back on earlier cultures, traditions, and of course Myths and religions. These, however, could only be seen as hostile and dangerous by the new Roman conqueror of the ensuing centuries: the Latin Papacy. While Christ in the East could easily slip into the guise of Orpheus, He could never be associated by the Latin Church with Woden. And so the Myths of the barbarians were treated by the Papacy in much the same manner as those of the South American Aztecs and Incas were by the Spanish missionaries. The destruction of the holy Saxon fetish of Irmisul by the Frankish agents of the Papacy in 772 remains a vivid image of the second submission of the West to the old Rome. See how the newly converted Pomeranian princes of the early 12th century are said to have described the situation (from the Life of Otto of Bamberg): “In the primitive church ... the religion of the Christian faith began with the people and with common persons and spread to the middle classes and at length influenced the great princes of this world. Let us change the order of the primitive church and let it begin with us princes and, passing on from us to the middle classes by an easy progress, let the sanctifying influence of the divine religion enlighten the whole people and nation.”
