The Religion of the Ancient CeltsMacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott)
Religion
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
MacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott)
Celts -- Religion; Mythology, Celtic
M. Reinach, as we have seen, thinks that the Celts had no images,
because these were prohibited by their priests. This prohibition was
pre-Celtic in Gaul, since there are no Neolithic images, though there
are great megalithic structures, suggesting the existence of a great
religious aristocracy. This aristocracy imposed itself on the
Celts.[1010] We have seen that there is no reason for believing that the
Celts had no images, hence this argument is valueless. M. Reinach then
argues that the Celts accepted Druidism _en bloc_, as the Romans
accepted Oriental cults and the Greeks the native Pelasgic cults. But
neither Romans nor Greeks abandoned their own faith. Were the Celts a
people without priests and without religion? We know that they must have
accepted many local cults, but that they adopted the whole aboriginal
faith and its priests _en bloc_ is not credible. M. Reinach also holds
that when the Celts appear in history Druidism was in its decline; the
Celt, or at least the military caste among the Celts, was reasserting
itself. But the Druids do not appear as a declining body in the pages of
Cæsar, and their power was still supreme, to judge by the hostility of
the Roman Government to them. If the military caste rebelled against
them, this does not prove that they were a foreign body. Such a strife
is seen wherever priest and soldier form separate castes, each desiring
to rule, as in Egypt.
Other writers argue that we do not find Druids existing in the Danube
region, in Cisalpine territory, nor in Transalpine Gaul, "outside the
limits of the region occupied by the Celtæ."[1011] This could only have
weight if any of the classical writers had composed a formal treatise on
the Druids, showing exactly the regions where they existed. They merely
describe Druidism as a general Celtic institution, or as they knew it in
Gaul or Britain, and few of them have any personal knowledge of it.
There is no reason to believe that Druids did not exist wherever there
were Celts. The Druids and Semnotheoi of the Celts and Galatæ referred
to _c._ 200 B.C. were apparently priests of other Celts than those of
Gaul, and Celtic groups of Cisalpine Gaul had priests, though these are
not formally styled Druids.[1012] The argument _ex silentio_ is here of
little value, since the references to the Druids are so brief, and it
tells equally against their non-Celtic origin, since we do not hear of
Druids in Aquitania, a non-Celtic region.[1013]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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