The formal conversion to Christianity in 1387 of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seemingly marked the end of Europe's last 'pagan' peoples. But the reality was different. At the margins, often under the radar, around the dusky edgelands, pre-Christian religions endured and indeed continued to flourish for an astonishing five centuries. Silence of the Gods tells, for the first time, the remarkable story of these forgotten peoples: belated adopters of Christian belief on the outer periphery of Christendom, from the Sámi of the frozen north to the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians around the Baltic, as well as the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia's Volga-Ural Plain. These communities, Dr Young reveals, responded creatively to Christianity's challenge, but for centuries stopped short of embracing it. His book addresses why this was so, uncovering stories of fierce resistance, unlikely survival and considerable ingenuity. He revolutionises understandings of the lost religions of the last pagans.

‘Francis Young has carved out a justified reputation for accessible, scholarly research in areas such as the history of exorcism, fairies, and ecclesiastical history, as well as pagan studies. He wears his erudition with a light touch and has an excellent command of early-modern Latin manuscripts and texts. With his knowledge of Lithuania and Lithuanian, he is the ideal scholar to be writing on Baltic paganism. His book convincingly argues for the continuance of non-Christian religions in the Baltic and far North and supersedes previous work on the topic in its breadth and scholarship. There is a scholarly and general readership ready and waiting for new, innovative work on European paganisms. This is a welcome, up-to-date, and refreshing history of a thoroughly tantalizing subject.'

Owen Davies - Professor of Social History, University of Hertfordshire, author of Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells (2023)

‘Francis Young lifts the veil on a lost world of pre-Christian European religions in their final stages. A fascinating, moving and genuinely new exploration of the continent's religious history.'

Tom Holland - author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019)

‘Francis Young has established himself firmly over the past decade as an independent scholar of manifest ability, with a broad interest in what might be termed the wilder shores of the history of European religion: paganism, witchcraft, occultism and fairy belief. Moreover, he is one of the few British historians who knows anything about pre-Christian religion in Eastern Europe. His lucid and accessible prose provides the first comprehensive chronological story of the subject. He persuasively argues that that the process of Christianization, at least among the Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples, was genuinely different from that in the rest of the continent. The result was that in these northern and north-eastern areas it started later than elsewhere and lasted a lot longer. This is not something that has been widely understood by Western historians hitherto.'

Ronald Hutton - Professor of History, University of Bristol, author of Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe (2022)

'A comprehensive, critically intelligent, challenging and original book, which genuinely breaks new ground in mapping the religious history of Europe.'

Rowan Williams Source: The Observer