The struggle which the spirit of orientalism waged on its march through Europe, first against the Hellenic paganism, and then against the Christian paganism which had penetrated into the Church itself, has been briefly sketched above. When Christianity had spread later among the Germanic and Slavic nations, there arose a new process of attraction and repulsion between it and the natural religions of the barbarians, the elements of which were partly blended with it and partly repelled by it. The gods were transformed into devils, but their attributes and the festivities in their honor were transferred to the saints. Pope Gregory the Great ordained that the pagan festivities should be changed only gradually to Christian, and that they were to be imitated in many respects.[40] In the time of Boniface there were many Christian priests in Germany who sacrificed to Thor and baptized in the name of Jesus at the same time. Of especial influence on the rapid spread of Christianity was the maxim of Gregory not to be particular in the choice of proselytes, because hope was to be placed in the better generations of the future. To be allowed to attend divine service, and to be buried in the churchyard, it was only necessary to have the benediction of the priest. Gifts to the Church, pilgrimages, self-scourgings, repeating of prayers in Latin, opened the gates of heaven to the proselytes easier than virtue and bravery those of Valhall to the heathen. For the rest the pagan could enter the community of the Church while retaining his whole circle of ideas. The Church did not deny, but it confirmed, the real existence of every thing which had been the object of his faith, but it treated these objects in accordance with its dualistic scheme, sometimes elevating them to the plane of sanctity, and again degrading them to something diabolical. Thus, for instance, it changed the elementary spirits--which the Celts and Germans believed in--from good or morally indifferent natural beings into fallen angels, envying man his heavenly inheritance; and if a thinking heathen could before accept or reject the existence of such beings at his pleasure, it now, when he had become a proselyte, became a matter of eternal bliss to believe in them. There was no superstitious idea gross enough not to receive the signet of the Church; nay, the grosser it was, the more likely was it to be appropriated. Even so cultured an intellect as Augustine, the most prominent of the fathers and authors of his time, declared it to be "insolent" to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs and other demoniac beings which lie in wait for women, have intercourse with them and children by them.[41] Thus was laid the foundation of that immense labyrinth of superstition in the darkness of which humanity has groped during the thousand years of the Middle Ages.