One of the main problems with any kind of historical inquiry into pagan ritual, lifestyle, and beliefs systems of this time is that they are predominantly told from the Christian clerical perspective. What was written by clerics and scribes as ‘pagan’ belief in those times is incredibly hard to discern, especially from an ethnic outlook, as most of the people who populated much of the Franco-Germanic region had vastly different systems of belief even within Christianity. And even as Roman classicism flourished in the Carolingian manuscript annals, pagan mysticism also became part of the over-arching narrative within Christian thought. Much of what was going on during this time was an ‘enculturation’ of ideas; a cross-blending of faiths, where many of the “pagans” infused elements of Christianity into their own belief system and vice versa. One of the main reasons for why the Carolingian cross looks the way it does stems from many facets of cultural misunderstanding, not only on the part of pagan converts to the Christian faith, but also because Carolingian allegorical writers were using the historical work of Virgil and others to re-interpret Germanic pagan belief systems. Interpretation was a major focal point of Christian mythology and pagan stories like Virgil’s epic of the Trojan war were integrated into the Christian narrative to give a more formative and extensive history of Christianity. By absorbing antiquated Greek and Roman beliefs and poems within their own historical narrative, Carolingian Christian scholars were able to create a historical world that extended further back in time then their non-believing counterparts. Pagan mysticism became amalgamated though a Christian lens; mythology became theology, mythological heroes and gods were re-named as deified rulers, and the history of the pre-Christian world was brought into line with the idea of Christ’s salvation.