In the Roman world it was Cicero (106–43 BCE) who provided an etymology of the wordreligiowhen he distinguishes it from superstitio(superstition). In his workDe natura deorumhe writes:
Accipimus […] deorum cupiditates, aegritudines, iracundias. […] Cultus autem deorum est optimus idemque castissimus atque sanctissimus plenissimusque pietatis ut eos semper pura, integra, incorrupta et mente et voce veneremur. Non enim philosophi solum,
verum etiam maiores nostri superstitionem a religione separaverunt. Nam qui totos dies precabantur et immolabant ut sibi sui liberi superstites essent superstitiosi sunt appellati, quod nomen patuit postea latius. Qui autem omnia quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent dil-igenter retractarent et tamquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo ut elegantes ex eligendo tamquam a diligendo diligentes, ex intellegendo intellegentes; his enim in verbis omnibus inest vis legendi eadem quae in religioso. Ita factum est in superstitioso et religio-so alterum vitii nomen, alterum laudis.¹
We receive […] the desires, diseases and furies of the gods. […] But the cult of the gods is excellent, absolutely pure and holy, and full of piety so that they are worshipped with both an uncorrupted mind and voice. Not only the philosophers, but our ancestors too separated superstition from religion. Those who offered prayers and sacrifices every day so that their children might survive them are called superstitious, a word [whose meaning] was extend-ed afterwards, while those who diligently reconsiderextend-ed and seemextend-ed to be going over and over again everything that concerned the cult of the gods, are called religious from relegen-do(reread), just as they are called elegant fromeligendo(elect) and diligent fromdiligendo (favour), and intelligent fromintellegendo(understand); all these verbs have the same force as“re-read”in religious. In this way the superstitious and the religious acquired a name that was either reprehensible or praiseworthy.
Cicero ascribes to the wordreligioa meaning that corresponds exactly to the con-ception then current in ancient Rome regarding the proper attitude one was to assume towards the gods: those who follow scrupulously the ceremonies and practices established by tradition are deemed religious; those who love their children more than their parents, and so are incessantly introducing new forms of worship and prayer, almost as if they wanted to force the gods to protect and defend their progeny, even after their death, are superstitious.Religioin the Roman world is expressed through the link between past and present, and be-tween the individual and the gods who dominate every particular aspect of life:religioconsisted of liturgical and sacred practices in pre-determined times and places, either to be held in certain seasons of the year or on certain set oc-casions, or, in the case of events that were surprising or unexpected, of practices that could be introduced without breaking the rules that allow continuity be-tween generations, however differently those rules might be applied.
In the Christian world it was the Church Father Lactantius (250–327) who in disputing Cicero’s conception of religio, also dwelt on the term’s etymology. In book four,“De vera sapientia et religione”, of his workDivinae Institutiones, Lac-tantius, like Cicero, underlines the difference betweenreligioandsuperstitio:
Quae cum ita se habeant, ut ostendimus, apparet nullam aliam spem vitae homini esse pro-positam, nisi ut abjectis vanitatibus et errore miserabili, Deum cognoscat et Deo serviat,
Cicero,De natura deorum, II, 70–72.
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nisi huic temporali renuntiet vitae, ac se rudimentis justitiae ad cultum verae religionis instituat. Hac enim conditione gignimur, ut generanti nos Deo justa et debita obsequia praebeamus; hunc solum noverimus, hunc sequamur. Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo et religati sumus; unde ipsa religio nomen accepit, non ut Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo. […] Haec interpretatio quam inepta sit, ex re ipsa licet noscere. […] Si semel facere, optimum est, quanto magis saepius? […] Quod argumentum etiam ex contrario valet: si enim totos dies precari et immolare criminis est; ergo et semel. […] Nimirum religio veri cultus est, superstitio falsi. Et omnino quid colas interest, non quemadmodum colas, sed quid precere. […] Superstitiosi ergo qui multos ac falsos deos colunt. Nos autem religio-si, qui uni et vero Deo supplicamus.²
Things being as we have shown, it is clear that human life is given no other hope than knowing God and serving God, once vanities and wretched error have been abandoned, re-nouncing this earthly life and dedicating oneself to the principles of justice governing the practice of the true religion. In fact we were created [literally, generated], so that we might offer the right and proper signs of submission to the God who has created [generated] us, that we might know Him only and follow Him only. With this bond of piety we are subju-gated and bound to God; religion received its name from this and not, as Cicero interpreted it, from“re-read”. […] One can see from the thing itself how inappropriate this interpreta-tion is. […] If doing something once only is excellent, how much more so can it be to do it more often? […] This argument also holdsex contrario:if it is a crime to pray and sacrifice every day, then it is to do so even once. […] Of course, religion is the cult of the truth, and superstition the cult of the false. And only what you adore matters, not how you adore it, but what you pray. […] So those who adore many false gods are superstitious, while we are religious because we pray to the one true God.
Lactantius, we may note, does not understand Cicero’s thought regarding the op-position ofreligioandsuperstitio:he simply identifiessuperstitiowith an exces-sive repetition of acts of worship rather than with an attitude of the soul regard-ing those actions which involve a rupture between fathers and sons, the past and the present, as mentioned above. Unlike Cicero, Lactantius does not regard con-duct as fundamental toreligio, but knowledge of the true God. The God that Lac-tantius appeals to is the God who enters into relation with the individual, with-draws him from the world, and ensures his salvation in eternal life. Religion owes its name not to the heart and mind going back over what has already been done, torelegere, but to being bound to a God who made himself known to men by coming into the world, to religare.What is essential toreligio are truth as a state of things revealed to men, and the relation between man and God: this relation isolates man from the world, obliges him to go back inside himself, to find in his inner life the presence of a God who redeems him by suf-fering on his behalf on the cross and rising again to eternal life.Religiomeans
Lactantius,Divinae Institutiones, IV, 28.
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the bond between God and man: God will save him if he believes in Him and follows His example.
In the history of European culture, these two contrasting meanings of the termreligio –one current in the ancient world, the other affirmed at the time of the formation of Christian theology–have been interwoven and have given rise to various manifestations. Accordingly, religio became further enriched and took on new connotations. And this interweaving and enrichment took place despite the Church’s conflict with paganism at the time of the decline of the Roman Empire. In order to appreciate how religious practice and profession of the truth of the kinship of man with God were equally celebrated and placed in close connection as two sides of the believer’s life, one need but consider the fact that in many places the Church took over the pre-existing cult of the divin-ities worshipped, for instance, by the peoples residing on the borders of the Em-pire that it had converted, transforming it according to its own theological teach-ings. The intimate relation between religious practice and confession is also attested to by the fact that conscientious adherence to ceremonial and liturgical rules was conjoined in mediaeval Christian civilisation with the elaboration of the doctrines concerning the revelation, and by the fact that the link between man and God was not considered by Christianity in the modern age, particularly by Protestantism, as independent of the actions performed in the world.
But the history ofreligiois also a history riven by wars and tragic conflicts– a reality that raises until this very day unresolved problems, which are inherent inreligioconceived in terms of these two meanings. In fact,religioas the reiter-ation of acts designed to praise the divinity or to pray for health and prosperity for oneself and those close to one–one’s family, one’s community, one’s people –might be considered as the precursor ofreligioas a form of life characterizing a given group of human beings and setting them apart from other groups and in-commensurable with them. Andreligioas the relation of man with a God who redeems man contingent on belief in His revelation, beyond the use of reason or attention towards human relations in this world, might be seen as the precur-sor ofreligio as the unshakable affirmation of a transcendent truth and its at-tendant criticism of a way of life inspired only by human experience. In the first case, there is the risk of religious pluralism without any possibility of com-munication between different religious communities, and the consequent engen-dering of self-enclosure, of a conservative posture bound by rules and regula-tions, wary of all that is new as posing a danger and menace. In the second case there is the risk of dogmatism and intolerance towards those who do not share the truth proclaimed by the religious authorities and institutions founded on revelation. While in the first case the human being runs the risk of being en-chained to the conditions of one’s birth, to the group he belongs to, and to
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lective custom, at the loss of individual freedom, in the second case the human being runs the risk of being crushed by a truth that does not admit discussion and differences. Truth in this latter case is imposed on everybody: only by recog-nizing it, is redemption possible, and every other attitude towards God is judged false.Religio, then, whether it derives fromrelegereor fromreligare, contains el-ements that harbinger religious conflicts.
Of course, the path leading from Cicero and Lactantius to our era is a long one.
But the ideas ofreligio that they sustain are not wholly innocent of the evils that religioproduces in our age and our societies. On the other hand, contemporary phi-losophy that does not appeal to religion–either because of its sceptical, naturalistic or historicist tendencies, or because it has turned towards mysticism, in the wake of Nietzsche and the late Heidegger–does not seem able to offer an alternative to re-ligion for those who want to affirm humanism or defend the dignity of man.³