Celtic Religion according to Classical Sources - Lecture II (original) (raw)
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Manipulating the Past. Re-thinking Graeco-Roman accounts on ‘Celtic’ religion
IN: Fraude, Mentira y Engaños en el Mundo Antiguo, ed. by Franciso Marco Simón, Francisco Pina Polo and José Remesal Rodríguez. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona (Colleccio Instrumenta, vol. 45), pp. 35-54, 2014
Did druids really exist? Did Celts perform human sacrifice? The aim of this paper is to scrutinise our sources on Celtic religion. We can see that our sources are not only unreliable, but they were also consciously used to manipulate the readers’ image of Celts. Rome’s long-standing fear of the Galli had made way for a fear of the druids by the 1st century A.D. The Romans were increasingly interested in the Celts/Galli in the 1st century B.C., catalysed by Caesar campaigning in Gaul and Britain. But despite first-hand knowledge, authors used obsolete topoi. The reasons for this changed through time and the ‘Celts’ became increasingly instrumentalised. This leads us to another important question: can we use these Graeco-Roman sources for the study of Celtic religion? Are the information on deities, rituals, priesthoods, re-incarnation and Pythagoreanism reliable? These are some of the questions addressed in this paper.
The historical Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age Europe. Proto-Celtic culture formed in the Early Iron Age in Central Europe (Hallstatt period, named for the site in present-day Austria). By the later Iron Age (La Tèneperiod), Celts had expanded over a wide range of lands: as far west as Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula, as far east as Galatia (central Anatolia), and as far north as Scotland. The Celtic languages form a branch of the larger Indo-European family. By the time speakers of Celtic languages enter history around 400 BCE (Brennus's attack on Rome in 387 BCE), they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian peninsula, Ireland and Britain. Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture of northern Germany and the Netherlands represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family. This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from c. 1200 BCE until 700 BCE, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The Greek historian Ephoros of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing in the fourth century BCE, believed that the Celts came from the islands off the mouth of the Rhine who were "driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and the violent rising of the sea". The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BCE). Proto-Celtic, the latest common ancestor of all known Celtic languages, is considered by this school of thought to have been spoken at the time of the late Urnfield or early Hallstatt cultures, in the early first millennium BCE. The spread of the Celtic languages to Iberia, Ireland and Britain would have occurred during the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, the earliest chariot burials in Britain dating to c. 500 BCE. Over the centuries they developed into the separate Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brythonic languages. The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, and during the final stages of the Iron Age gradually transformed into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times. Celtic river-names are found in great numbers around the upper reaches of the Danube and Rhine, which led many Celtic scholars to place the ethnogenesis of the Celts in this area. Anglo-Saxons: a brief history This period is traditionally known as the Dark Ages, mainly because written sources for the early years of Saxon invasion are scarce. It is a time of war, of the breaking up of Roman Britannia into several separate kingdoms, of religious conversion and, after the 790s, of continual battles against a new set of invaders: the Vikings.Climate change had an influence on the movement of these new invaders to Britain: in the centuries after 400 AD Europe's average temperature was 1°C warmer than we have today, and in Britain grapes could be grown as far north as Tyneside. Warmer summers meant better crops and a rise in population in the countries of northern Europe.At the same time melting polar ice caused more flooding in low areas, particularly in what is now Denmark, Holland and Belgium. These
The Case for the Broken Celtic Devotional Traditional Lines of Pre-Christian Antiquity
2019
There is a silence of approximately nine to eight hundred years between the last initiated Druids of late Antiquity and the resurgent modern neo-Druids of Freemasonry and of the Welsh bardic schools. As remarked the French experts of Celtic studies, Guyonvarc’h and Le Roux, a fact rarely aforementioned in any study is the immutable character of the Celtic tradition.1 The Celts of the better known medieval manuscript period passed down less of a religious experience than that of mythological plots. This because the Christian proselytizers never tolerated the presence of the pagan philosophical schools in its proximity. No matter how intensive its conversion effort, this imperial religion could only be but an alien offshoot grafted on a larger and more rustic Indo-European cultural trunk. In other words, the persistent mythological mindset of the past permeated the newly imposed dogmatic religion. This explains why medieval literature is rather more mythic and legendary than ideological and religious.
Celtic religions in the Roman period: Personal, Local, and Global
Marjeta Šašel Kos, Ralph Haussler, Ralph Haeussler, Blanca María Prósper, Cristina Girardi, Daphne Nash Briggs, Anthony C King, Roger S O Tomlin, Vojislav Filipovic, Fernando Fernández Palacios, Alfred Schäfer, Audrey Ferlut, Werner Petermandl, Alessandra Esposito
ed. by R. Haeussler and A. C. King. Aberystwyth 2017.
What is Celtic religion? And does it survive into the Roman period? This multi-authored volume explores the 'Celtic' religions in pre-Roman and Roman times. It book brings together new work, from a wide range of disciplinary vantages, on pre-Christian religions in the Celtic-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire. The twenty-six chapters are the work of international experts in the fields of ancient history, archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy and Celtic studies. It is fully illustrated with b&w and colour maps, site plans, photographs and drawings of ancient inscriptions and images of Romano-Celtic gods. The collection is based on the thirteenth workshop of the F.E.R.C.AN. project (Fontes epigraphici religionum Celticarum antiquarum), which was held from the 17th to the 19th October 2014 in Lampeter, Wales.
A lot has been written about the Celts and about their faith and beliefs. Generally this means the druid beliefs that were present in England just before the Romans turned up. The big problem is that the only contemporary reports of this are those written by the Romans themselves. These reports wouldn‟t exactly have been unbiased and wouldn‟t tell us anything about the faith and practices of the Celts further back into history A quick review of some evidence we do have that may give us some insight into the beliefs and practices of these ancient and half mythical people.
Celtic Polytheism in Roman Britain and Buddhist Subcontinent -I
Synopsis The archaeological hoards of coins, jewellery and valuable metal objects found in England, Scotland and Wales are associated with Romano-British culture. The assortment of finds in Great Britain dated from 43 CE until about 410 CE are part of soteriological cults that gained collective weight under sudden and unexpected circumstances. The Asiatic Greek and Continental Celtic combination first forged a bridge that evidently triggered a domino effect — it drew together the normally localised Celtic polytheism in Roman Britain. Stamped gold plaques in Ashwell treasure from the vanished sanctuary of a goddess named Senuna shares iconographic traits of Brigantia and Sulis Minerva. Alongside, when Roman Victoria or Sulis Minerva suddenly manifests in Buddhist South Asia the idiom 'never the twain shall meet' is outmoded from the outset. If we are to make any headway to understand the mysterious new material culture in Gandhara correlating with Roman Britain, we have to acknowledge that Celtic culture was actually never vanquished by Roman conquests. The activities of the Druids, bards and artisans might have been disrupted – but the displaced Celts grafted the roots of indigenous culture to various societies and actually created profound civilizations in unexpected pockets. In the process, art and ritual gained momentum and spilled into the social construction of 'island' identities formed in the culturally isolated places. Celts are acknowledged as mortuary priests earliest on the northern gateway to the stupa at Sanchi in India. Pattern recognition is fundamental to understand where the absolutely new Greco-Buddhist reliquary cult meets the streamlined trajectory of a long memory twined with the traditional role of the druids. a group of Celts consecrate a hemispherical funerary monument (0.1a). Celts performing rituals implies they were a regular contingent in the Greco-Buddhist cult and were perhaps glorifying one of their own at the foundation of a stupa. The conical caps of three men in the group seem to identify druids, the intermediaries of the gods also served as medicine men, teachers and judges. As a banner emblazoned with crescent and stars is held high two men in the band blow on carnyces (0.1b). Despite their cultural distinctiveness, the Celts wear Greek type of fluttering diadem, laced Roman boots and knee length tunic. The 'eternal life' vine meander well-known in Nabataea frames the winged human spirits known among Celts, Greeks and Egyptians. The inter-cultural orientation seems to coincide with Trajan's successful second campaign (105–106) when Decebalus the valiant enemy king of Dacia evaded capture by suicide. When the Dacian capital north of the Danub in western Romania became a new province, Decebalus would then receive Hero's veneration in the cult centers, wherever these might be.