gentilism

plural gentilisms

1. countableuncountableheathenism; paganism; the worship of pagan gods

   when a king was converted from Gentilism to Christianism, he did by that very submission to the bishop that converted him, submit to the bishop’s government and became one of his sheep; which right therefore he could not have over any nation that was not Christian.

   a. 1680 (date written), Thomas Hobbes, “Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices by which They were Carried on from the Year 1640 to the Year 1660”, in William Molesworth, editor, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; […], volume VI, London: John Bohn, […], published 1840, →OCLC, page 177

2. countableuncountablea heathenish practice.

   He wrote to Timothy to put him on his guard against it; and styles the gentilisms, "profane vain babblings; and oppositions of science falsely so called" (1Tim 6:20).

   1848, John Thomas, Elpis Israel, Chapter 2

   1 more example

   In Scotland (especially among the Highlanders) the woemen doe make a Curtsey to the New-moon. I have known one in England doe it, and our English woemen in the Country doe retain (some of them) a touch of this Gentilisme still.

   1687, John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, page 36

3. countableuncountabletribal feeling; devotion to one's gens or clan.

   1 more example

   The organization of tribes for the purpose of the free administration of affairs was turned into an organization for plundering and oppressing their neighbors. The organs of gentilism changed from servants of the public will to independent organs of rule oppressing their own people. This could not have happened, if the greed for wealth had not divided the gentiles into rich and poor; if the "difference of property in a gens had not changed the community of interest into antagonism of the gentiles" (Karl Marx); and if the extension of slavery had not begun by branding work for a living as slavish and more ignominious than plundering.

   1909, Friedrich Engels, translated by Ernest Untermann, “Chapter 9”, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State