Druid
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A druid was a member of the high-ranking priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. While they were reported to have been literate, they are believed to have been prevented by doctrine from recording their knowledge in written form. Their beliefs and practices are attested in some detail by their contemporaries from other cultures, such as the Romans and the Greeks.
The earliest known references to the druids date to the 4th century BC. The oldest detailed description comes from Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (50s BCE). They were described by other Roman writers such as Cicero,[2] Tacitus,[3] and Pliny the Elder.[4] Following the Roman invasion of Gaul, the druid orders were suppressed by the Roman government under the 1st-century CE emperors Tiberius and Claudius, and had disappeared from the written record by the 2nd century.
In about 750 AD, the word druid appears in a poem by
Etymology
The English word druid derives from Latin druidēs (plural), which was considered by ancient Roman writers to come from the native
Practices and doctrines
Sources by ancient and medieval writers provide an idea of the religious duties and social roles involved in being a druid.
Societal role and training
The Greco-Roman and the vernacular Irish sources agree that the druids played an important part in pagan Celtic society. In his description, Julius Caesar wrote that they were one of the two most important social groups in the region (alongside the equites, or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gallic, British, and Irish societies.[24][failed verification] He wrote that they were exempt from military service and from paying taxes, and had the power to excommunicate people from religious festivals, making them social outcasts.[24] Two other classical writers, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, wrote about the role of druids in Gallic society, stating that the druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle.[25]
Diodorus writes of the Druids that they were "philosophers" and "men learned in religious affairs" who are honored.
Pomponius Mela was the first author to say that the druids' instruction was secret and took place in caves and forests.[29] Cicero said that he knew a Gaulish druid who "claimed to have that knowledge of nature which the Greeks call physiologia, and he used to make predictions, sometimes by means of augury and sometimes by means of conjecture".[30]
Druidic lore consisted of a large number of memorized verses, and Caesar remarked that it could take up to twenty years to complete the course of study. What was taught to druid novices anywhere is conjecture: of the druids' oral literature, not one certifiably ancient verse is known to have survived, even in translation. All instruction was communicated orally, but for ordinary purposes, Caesar reports,[31] the Gauls had a written language in which they used Greek letters. In this he probably draws on earlier writers; by the time of Caesar, Gaulish inscriptions had moved from Greek script to Latin script.
Caesar believed that this practice of oral transmission of knowledge and opposition to recording their ideas had dual motivations: wanting to keep druidic knowledge from becoming common, and improving the druids' faculties of memory.[32]
Sacrifice
Greek and Roman writers frequently made reference to the druids as practitioners of
).Diodorus Siculus asserts that a sacrifice acceptable to the Celtic gods had to be attended by a druid, for they were the intermediaries between the people and the divinities. He remarked upon the importance of prophets in druidic ritual:
These men predict the future by observing the flight and calls of birds and by the sacrifice of holy animals: all orders of society are in their power ... and in very important matters they prepare a human victim, plunging a dagger into his chest; by observing the way his limbs convulse as he falls and the gushing of his blood, they are able to read the future.
Archaeological evidence from western Europe has been widely used to support the view that Iron Age Celts practiced human sacrifice. Mass graves found in a ritual context dating from this period have been unearthed in Gaul, at both Gournay-sur-Aronde and Ribemont-sur-Ancre in the region of the Belgae chiefdom. The excavator of these sites, Jean-Louis Brunaux, interpreted them as areas of human sacrifice in devotion to a war god,[34][35] although this view was criticized by another archaeologist, Martin Brown, who believed that the corpses might be those of honoured warriors buried in the sanctuary rather than sacrifices.[36] Some historians have questioned whether the Greco-Roman writers were accurate in their claims. J. Rives remarked that it was "ambiguous" whether druids ever performed such sacrifices, for the Romans and Greeks were known to project what they saw as barbarian traits onto foreign peoples including not only druids but Jews and Christians as well, thereby confirming their own "cultural superiority" in their own minds.[37]
Philosophy
The Pythagorean doctrine prevails among the Gauls' teaching that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a fixed number of years they will enter into another body
Caesar made similar observations:
With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed. Subsidiary to the teachings of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on the stars and their movement, on the extent and geographical distribution of the earth, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion.
— Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, VI, 14
Diogenes Laertius in the 3rd century AD wrote that "Druids make their pronouncements by means of riddles and dark sayings, teaching that the gods must be worshipped, and no evil done, and manly behavior maintained".[41]
Druids in mythology
Druids play a prominent role in
The greatest of these mythological druids was
Other such mythological druids were Tadg mac Nuadat of the Fenian Cycle, and Mug Ruith, a powerful blind druid of Munster.
Female druids
Irish mythology
Irish mythology has a number of female druids, often sharing similar prominent cultural and religious roles with their male counterparts. The Irish have several words for female druids, such as bandruí ("woman-druid"), found in tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge;[48] Bodhmall, featured in the Fenian Cycle, and one of Fionn mac Cumhaill's childhood caretakers;[49] and Tlachtga,[50] daughter of the druid Mug Ruith who, according to Irish tradition, is associated with the Hill of Ward, site of prominent festivals held in Tlachtga's honour during the Middle Ages.[51]
The Gallizenae
According to classical authors, the Gallizenae (or Gallisenae) were virgin priestesses of the Île de Sein off Pointe du Raz, Finistère, western Brittany.[56] Their existence was first mentioned by the Greek geographer Artemidorus Ephesius and later by the Greek historian Strabo, who wrote that their island was forbidden to men, but the women came to the mainland to meet their husbands. Which deities they honored is unknown.[57] According to Pomponius Mela, the Gallizenae acted as both councilors and practitioners of the healing arts:
Sena, in the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenae, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out on no other errand than to consult them.[58][59][60]
Druidesses in Gaul
According to the
Sources on druid beliefs and practices
Greek and Roman records
The earliest surviving literary evidence of druids emerges from the classical world of Greece and Rome. Archaeologist Stuart Piggott compared the attitude of the Classical authors toward the druids as being similar to the relationship that had existed in the 15th and 18th centuries between Europeans and the societies that they were just encountering in other parts of the world, such as the Americas and the South Sea Islands. He highlighted the attitude of "primitivism" in both Early Modern Europeans and Classical authors, owing to their perception that these newly encountered societies had less technological development and were backward in socio-political development.[64]
Historian
One school of thought has suggested that all of these accounts are inherently unreliable, and might be entirely fictional. They have suggested that the idea of the druid might have been a fiction created by Classical writers to reinforce the idea of the barbaric "other" who existed beyond the civilized Greco-Roman world, thereby legitimizing the expansion of the Roman Empire into these areas.[67]
The earliest record of the druids comes from two Greek texts of c. 300 BCE: a history of philosophy written by
Some say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians. In that among the Persians there existed the Magi, and among the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldaei, among the Indians the Gymnosophistae, and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called druids and semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on magic, and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers.
—Diogenes Laërtius, Vitae, Introduction, Section 1[69]
Subsequent Greek and Roman texts from the 3rd century BCE refer to "barbarian philosophers",[70] possibly in reference to the Gaulish druids.
Julius Caesar
The earliest extant text that describes druids in detail is Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, book VI, written in the 50s or 40s BCE. A general who was intent on conquering Gaul and Britain, Caesar described the druids as being concerned with "divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, private or public, and the interpretation of ritual questions". He said they played an important part in Gaulish society, being one of the two respected classes along with the equites (in Rome the name for members of a privileged class above the common people, but also "horsemen") and that they performed the function of judges.
Caesar wrote that the druids recognized the authority of a single leader, who would rule until his death, when a successor would be chosen by vote or through conflict. He remarked that they met annually at a sacred place in the region occupied by the Carnute tribe in Gaul, while they viewed Britain as the centre of druidic study; and that they were not found among the German tribes to the east of the Rhine. According to Caesar, many young men were trained to be druids, during which time they had to learn all the associated lore by heart. He also said that their main teaching was "the souls do not perish, but after death pass from one to another". They were concerned with "the stars and their movements, the size of the cosmos and the earth, the world of nature, and the power and might of the immortal gods", indicating they were involved with not only such common aspects of religion as theology and cosmology, but also astronomy. Caesar held that they were "administrators" during rituals of human sacrifice, for which criminals were usually used, and that the method was by burning in a wicker man.[24]
Though he had first-hand experience of Gaulish people, and therefore likely druids, Caesar's account has been widely criticized by modern historians as inaccurate. One issue raised by such historians as
Other historians have accepted that Caesar's account might be more accurate. Norman J. DeWitt surmised that Caesar's description of the role of druids in Gaulish society may report an idealized tradition, based on the society of the 2nd century BC, before the pan-Gallic confederation led by the
Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Tacitus
Other classical writers also commented on the druids and their practices. Caesar's contemporary, Cicero, noted that he had met a Gallic druid, Divitiacus, of the Aedui tribe. Divitiacus supposedly knew much about the natural world and performed divination through augury.[2] Whether Diviaticus was genuinely a druid can however be disputed, for Caesar also knew this figure, and wrote about him, calling him by the more Gaulish-sounding (and thereby presumably the more authentic) Diviciacus, but never referred to him as a druid and indeed presented him as a political and military leader.[79]
Another classical writer to take up describing the druids not too long after was Diodorus Siculus, who published this description in his Bibliotheca historicae in 36 BCE. Alongside the druids, or as he called them, drouidas, whom he viewed as philosophers and theologians, he remarked how there were poets and singers in Celtic society whom he called bardous, or bards.[39] Such an idea was expanded on by Strabo, writing in the 20s CE, who declared that amongst the Gauls, there were three types of honoured figures:[80]
- the poets and singers known as bardoi,
- the diviners and specialists in the natural world known as o'vateis, and
- those who studied "moral philosophy", the druidai.
Roman writer
Irish and Welsh records
In the Middle Ages, after Ireland and Wales were Christianized, druids appear in a number of written sources, mainly tales and stories such as Táin Bó Cúailnge, and in the hagiographies of various saints. These were all written by Christian monks.
Irish literature and law codes
In Irish-language literature, druids – draoithe, plural of draoi – are
When druids are portrayed in early Irish sagas and saints' lives set in pre-Christian Ireland, they are usually given high social status. The evidence of the law-texts, which were first written down in the 7th and 8th centuries, suggests that with the coming of Christianity the role of the druid in Irish society was rapidly reduced to that of a sorcerer who could be consulted to cast spells or do healing magic and that his standing declined accordingly.
Welsh literature
While druids featured prominently in many medieval Irish sources, they were far rarer in their Welsh counterparts. Unlike the Irish texts, the Welsh term commonly seen as referring to the druids, dryw, was used to refer purely to
Archaeology
As the historian Jane Webster stated, "individual druids ... are unlikely to be identified archaeologically".[90] A. P. Fitzpatrick, in examining what he believed to be astral symbolism on Late Iron Age swords has expressed difficulties in relating any material culture, even the Coligny calendar, with druidic culture.[91]
Nonetheless, some archaeologists have attempted to link certain discoveries with written accounts of the druids. The archaeologist Anne Ross linked what she believed to be evidence of
An excavated burial in Deal, Kent discovered the "Deal Warrior" – a man buried around 200–150 BCE with a sword and shield, and wearing an almost unique head-band, too thin to be part of a leather helmet. The crown is bronze with a broad band around the head and a thin strip crossing the top of the head. Since traces of hair were left on the metal it must have been worn without any padding beneath. The form of the headdress resembles depictions of Romano-British priests from several centuries later, leading to speculation among archaeologists that the man might have been a religious official – a druid.[96]
History of reception
Prohibition and decline under Roman rule
In the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC, the Roman army, led by Julius Caesar, conquered the many tribal chiefdoms of Gaul, and annexed it as a part of the Roman Republic. According to accounts produced in the following centuries, the new rulers of Roman Gaul subsequently introduced measures to wipe out the druids from that country. According to Pliny the Elder, writing in the 70s CE, it was the emperor Tiberius (ruled 14–37 CE), who introduced laws banning not only druid practices, and other native soothsayers and healers, a move which Pliny applauded, believing it would end human sacrifice in Gaul.[97] A somewhat different account of Roman legal attacks on the druids was made by Suetonius, writing in the 2nd century CE, when he stated that Rome's first emperor, Augustus (ruled 27 BCE–14 CE), had decreed that no-one could be both a druid and a Roman citizen, and that this was followed by a law passed by the later Emperor Claudius (ruled 41–54 CE) which "thoroughly suppressed" the druids by banning their religious practices.[98]
Possible late survival of Insular druid orders
The best evidence of a druidic tradition in the
While the druids as a priestly caste were extinct with the
Minister Macauley (1764) reported the existence of five druidic altars, including a large circle of stones fixed perpendicularly in the ground near the Stallir House on Boreray near the westernmost settlement of the UK St, Kilda.[99]
Classics professor Phillip Freeman discusses a later reference to 'dryades', which he translates as 'druidesses', writing, "The fourth century A.D. collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta contains three short passages involving Gaulish women called 'dryades' ('druidesses'). He points out that "In all of these, the women may not be direct heirs of the druids who were supposedly extinguished by the Romans – but in any case they do show that the druidic function of prophecy continued among the natives in Roman Gaul."[100] Additionally, female druids are mentioned in later Irish mythology, including the legend of Fionn mac Cumhaill, who, according to the 12th century The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, is raised by the woman druid Bodhmall and her companion, another wise-woman.[50][49]
Christian historiography and hagiography
The story of Vortigern, as reported by Nennius, gives one of the very few glimpses of possible druidic survival in Britain after the Roman arrival. He wrote that after being excommunicated by Germanus of Auxerre, the British leader Vortigern invited twelve druids to help him.
In the lives of saints and martyrs, the druids are represented as magicians and diviners. In
Sulpicius Severus' vita of Martin of Tours relates how Martin encountered a peasant funeral, carrying the body in a winding sheet, which Martin mistook for some druidic rites of sacrifice, "because it was the custom of the Gallic rustics in their wretched folly to carry about through the fields the images of demons veiled with a white covering". So Martin halted the procession by raising his pectoral cross: "Upon this, the miserable creatures might have been seen at first to become stiff like rocks. Next, as they endeavoured, with every possible effort, to move forward, but were not able to take a step farther, they began to whirl themselves about in the most ridiculous fashion, until, not able any longer to sustain the weight, they set down the dead body." Then discovering his error, Martin raised his hand again to let them proceed: "Thus", the hagiographer points out, "he both compelled them to stand when he pleased, and permitted them to depart when he thought good."[101]
Romanticism and later revivals
From the 18th century, England and Wales saw a revival of interest in the druids.
The 19th century idea, gained from uncritical reading of the Gallic Wars, that under cultural-military pressure from Rome the druids formed the core of 1st century BCE resistance among the Gauls, was examined and dismissed before World War II,[106] though it remains current in folk history.
Druids began to figure widely in popular culture with the first advent of
A central figure in 19th century Romanticist, Neo-druid revival, is Welshman Edward Williams, better known as
Another Welshman, William Price (4 March 1800 – 23 January 1893), a physician known for his support of Welsh nationalism, Chartism, and his involvement with the Neo-Druidic religious movement, has been recognized as a significant figure of 19th century Wales. He was arrested for cremating his deceased son, a practice he believed to be a druid ritual, but won his case; this in turn led to the Cremation Act 1902.[107][108][109]
In 1927 T. D. Kendrick sought to dispel the pseudo-historical aura that had accrued to druids,[110] asserting, "a prodigious amount of rubbish has been written about Druidism";[111] Neo-druidism has nevertheless continued to shape public perceptions of the historical druids.
Some strands of contemporary Neo-Druidism are a continuation of the 18th century revival and thus are built largely around writings produced in the 18th century and after by second-hand sources and theorists. Some are
Modern scholarship
In the 20th century, as new forms of textual criticism and archaeological methods were developed, allowing for greater accuracy in understanding the past, various historians and archaeologists published books on the subject of the druids and came to their own conclusions. Archaeologist
See also
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Few historians now believe that the Druids, as a corporation, constituted an effective anti-Roman element during the period of Caesar's conquests and in the period of early Roman Gaul
- ^ "Price, William, Dr., (Llantrisant), papers". Archives Network Wales. May 2003. Archived from the original on 2020-05-23. Retrieved 2006-09-27.
- ^ Powell (2005) p. 3.
- ^ Hutton (2009) p. 253.
- ^ Kendrick, T. D. (1927). The Druids: A study in Keltic prehistory. London, U.K.: Methuen.
- ^ Kendrick 1927:viii.
- ^ Piggott (1968) pp. 92–98.
- ^ Ross (1967) pp. 52–56.
- ^ Aldhouse-Green (1997) pp. 31–33.
- ^ Cunliffe (2005) pp. 518–520.
Bibliography
Classical sources
- Caesar, Gallic Wars, book 6 ch 13-18.
- Cicero. De Divinatione. 44 CE.
- Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. c.78 CE.
- Tacitus. Annales. Second century CE. book 14 ch 30.
Bibliography—other sources
- ISBN 9780500050835.
- Chadwick, Nora (1966). The Druids. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
- ISBN 978-0-415-56292-8.
- ISBN 0-631-18946-7.
- Hutton, Ronald (2007). The Druids. London: Hambledon Continuum.
- ISBN 978-0-300-14485-7.
- Rutherford, Ward (1978). The Druids and their Heritage. London: Gordon & Cremonesi. ISBN 978-0-86033-067-7.
- Ross, Anne (1967). Pagan Celtic Britain. London: Routledge.
- Piggott, Stuart (1968). The Druids. London: Thames and Hudson.
External links
- World History Encyclopedia - Druid
- Quiggin, Edmund Crosby (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). pp. 597–598. .