Ancient Celtic religion

The Strettweg Cult Wagon, c. 600 BC

The archaeological evidence does not contain the bias inherent in the literary sources. Nonetheless, the interpretation of this evidence can be coloured by the 21st century mindset.[12] Various archaeological discoveries have aided understanding of the religion of the Celts.

Most surviving Celtic art is not figurative; some art historians have suggested that the complex and compelling decorative motifs that characterize some periods have a religious significance, but the understanding of what that might be appears to be irretrievably lost. Surviving figurative monumental sculpture comes almost entirely from Romano-Celtic contexts, and broadly follows provincial Roman styles, though figures who are probably deities often wear torcs, and there may be inscriptions in Roman letters with what appear to be Romanized Celtic names. The Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, with many deity figures, is the most comprehensive example, datable by a dedication to the Emperor Tiberius (r. from 14 AD).[16]

Monumental stone sculptures from before conquest by the Romans are much more rare, and it is far from clear that deities are represented. The most significant are the Warrior of Hirschlanden and "Glauberg Prince" (respectively 6th and 5th-century BC, from Germany), the Mšecké Žehrovice Head (probably 2nd-century BC, Czech Republic), and sanctuaries of some sort at the southern French oppida of Roquepertuse and Entremont. There are also a number of Celtiberian standing "warrior" figures, and several other stone heads from various areas. In general, even early monumental sculpture is found in areas with higher levels of contact with the classical world, through trade.[17] It is possible that wooden monumental sculpture was more common. Small heads are more common, mainly surviving as ornament in metalwork, and there are also animals and birds that may have a religious significance,[18] as on the Basse Yutz Flagons.[19] The Strettweg Cult Wagon is probably associated with libations or sacrifices, and pairs of metal "spoons" probably used for divination have been found.

Celtic coinage, from the late 4th century BC until conquest, clearly copies Greek and Roman examples, sometimes very closely, but the heads and horses that are the most popular motifs may have a local religious significance.[20] There are also the coins of the Roman provinces in the Celtic lands of Gaul, Raetia, Noricum, and Britannia.

Most of the surviving monuments and their accompanying inscriptions belong to the Roman period and reflect a considerable degree of syncretism between Celtic and Roman gods; even where figures and motifs appear to derive from pre-Roman tradition, they are difficult to interpret in the absence of a preserved literature on mythology. A notable example of this is the horned god that was called Cernunnos; several depictions and inscriptions of him have been found, but very little is known about the myths that would have been associated with him or how he was worshipped.

One of a pair of British "divining spoons"

Literary evidence for Celtic religion also comes from sources written in Ireland and Wales during the Middle Ages, a period when traditional Celtic religious practices had become extinct and had long been replaced by Christianity. The evidence from Ireland has been recognised as better than that from Wales, being viewed as "both older and less contaminated from foreign material."[21] These sources, which are in the form of epic poems and tales, were written several centuries after Christianity became the dominant religion in these regions, and were written down by Christian monks, "who may not merely have been hostile to the earlier paganism but actually ignorant of it."[22] Instead of treating the characters as deities, they are allocated the roles of being historical heroes who sometimes have supernatural or superhuman powers, for instance, in the Irish sources the gods are claimed to be an ancient tribe of humans known as the Tuatha Dé Danann.

While it is possible to single out specific texts that can be strongly argued to encapsulate genuine echoes or resonances of the pre-Christian past, opinion is divided as to whether these texts contain substantive material derived from oral tradition as preserved by bards or whether they were the creation of the medieval monastic tradition.[12]

Various Greek and Roman writers of the ancient world commented on the Celts and their beliefs. Barry Cunliffe stated that "the Greek and Roman texts provide a number of pertinent observations, but these are at best anecdotal, offered largely as a colourful background by writers whose prime intention was to communicate other messages."[15] The Roman general Julius Caesar, when leading the conquering armies of the Roman Republic against Celtic Gaul, made various descriptions of the inhabitants, though some of his claims, such as that the Druids practised human sacrifice by burning people in wicker men, have come under scrutiny by modern scholars.

However, the key problem with the use of these sources is that they were often biased against the Celts, whom the classical peoples viewed as "barbarians".[12] In the case of the Romans who conquered several Celtic realms, they would have likely been biased in favour of making the Celts look uncivilised, thereby giving the "civilised" Romans more reason to conquer them.[23]

In the Irish and Welsh vernacular sources from the Middle Ages, various human mythological figures were featured who have been thought of by many scholars as being based upon earlier gods. The historian Ronald Hutton however cautioned against automatically characterizing all Irish and Welsh mythological figures as former deities, noting that while some characters "who appear to be human, such as Medb or St Brigit, probably were indeed once regarded as divine ... the warriors who are the main protagonists of the stories have the same status as those in the Greek myths, standing between the human and divine orders. To regard characters such as Cú Chulainn, Fergus Mac Roich or Conall Cernach as former gods turned into humans by a later storyteller is to misunderstand their literary and religious function ... Cú Chulainn is no more a former god than Superman is."[27]

Examining these Irish myths, Barry Cunliffe stated that he believed they displayed "a dualism between the male tribal god and the female deity of the land"[28] while Anne Ross felt that they displayed that the gods were "on the whole intellectual, deeply versed in the native learning, poets and prophets, story-tellers and craftsmen, magicians, healers, warriors ... in short, equipped with every quality admired and desired by the Celtic peoples themselves."[29]

Insular Celts swore their oaths by their tribal gods, and the land, sea and sky; as in, "I swear by the gods by whom my people swear" and "If I break my oath, may the land open to swallow me, the sea rise to drown me, and the sky fall upon me",[30] an example of Celtic Threefold death.

Evidence suggests that among the Celts, "offerings to the gods were made throughout the landscape – both the natural and the domestic."[38] At times they worshipped in constructed temples and shrines, evidence for which have been unearthed across the Celtic world by archaeologists, although according to Greco-Roman accounts, they also worshipped in areas of the natural world that were held to be sacred, namely in groves of trees. Across Celtic Europe, many of the constructed temples, which were square in shape and constructed out of wood, were found in rectangular ditched enclosures known as viereckschanzen, where in cases such as Holzhausen in Bavaria votive offerings were also buried in deep shafts.[39] However, in the British Isles, temples were more commonly circular in design. According to Barry Cunliffe, "the monumentality of the Irish religious sites sets them apart from their British and continental European counterparts" with the most notable examples being the Hill of Tara,[40] and Navan Fort.

However, according to Greco-Roman accounts of the druids and other Celts, worship was held in groves, with Tacitus describing how his men cut down "groves sacred to savage rites."[41] By their very nature, such groves would not survive in the archaeological record, and so we have no direct evidence for them today.[42] Alongside groves, certain springs were also viewed as sacred and used as places of worship in the Celtic world. Notable Gaulish examples include the sanctuary of Sequana at the source of the Seine in Burgundy and Chamalieres near to Clermont-Ferrand. At both of these sites, a large array of votive offerings have been uncovered, most of which are wooden carvings, although some of which are embossed pieces of metal.[43]

In many cases, when the Roman Empire took control of Celtic lands, earlier Iron Age sacred sites were reused, with Roman temples being built on the same sites. Examples include Uley in Gloucestershire, Worth in Kent, Hayling Island in Hampshire, Vendeuil-Caply in Oise, Saint-Germain-le-Rocheux in Chatillon-sur-Seine and Schleidweiler in Trier.[44]

The Celts made votive offerings to their deities, which were buried in the earth or thrown into rivers or bogs. According to Barry Cunliffe, in most cases, deposits were placed in the same places on numerous occasions, indicating continual usage "over a period of time, perhaps on a seasonal basis or when a particular event, past or pending, demanded a propitiatory response."[45]

In particular, there was a trend to offer items associated with warfare in watery areas, evidence for which is found not only in the Celtic regions, but also in Late Bronze Age (and therefore pre-Celtic) societies and those outside of the Celtic area, namely Denmark. One of the most notable examples is the river Thames in southern England, where a number of items had been deposited, only to be discovered by archaeologists millennia later. Some of these, like the Battersea Shield, Wandsworth Shield and the Waterloo Helmet, would have been prestige goods that would have been labour-intensive to make and thereby probably expensive.[45] Another example is at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, Wales, where offerings, primarily those related to battle, were thrown into the lake from a rocky outcrop in the late first century BC or early first century AD.[45]

At times, jewellery and other high prestige items that were not related to warfare were also deposited in a ritual context. At Niederzier in the Rhineland for example, a post that excavators believed had religious significance had a bowl buried next to it in which was contained forty-five coins, two torcs and an armlet, all made of gold, and similar deposits have been uncovered elsewhere in Celtic Europe.[46]

The oak and mistletoe ritual depicted by Henri-Paul Motte (1900)

There is evidence that ancient Celtic peoples sacrificed animals, which were almost always livestock or working animals.[10] The idea seems to have been that ritually transferring a life-force to the Otherworld pleased the gods and established a channel of communication between the worlds. Animal sacrifices could be acts of thanksgiving, appeasement, to ask for good health and fertility, or as a means of divination. It seems that some animals were offered wholly to the gods (by burying or burning), while some were shared between gods and humans (part eaten and part set aside).[10]

Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and military commander in the 1st century AD, wrote of druids performing a ritual whereby they sacrificed two white bulls, cut mistletoe from a sacred oak with a golden sickle, and used it to make an elixir to cure infertility and poison.[47]

Archaeologists found that at some Gaulish and British sanctuaries, horses and cattle were killed and their whole bodies carefully buried. At Gournay-sur-Aronde, the animals were left to decompose before their bones were buried around the bounds of the sanctuary along with numerous broken weapons.[48] This was repeated at regular intervals of about ten years.[49] An avenue of animal pit-burials led to a sacred building at Cadbury.[49] In southern Britain, some British tribes carefully buried animals, especially horses and dogs, in grain storage pits. It is believed these were thanksgiving sacrifices to underworld gods once the stores reached the end of their use.[50]

Irish mythology describes the tarbfeis (bull feast), a shamanistic ritual in which a bull would be sacrificed and a seer would sleep in the bull's hide to have a vision of the future king.[51]

Following the 12th-century Norman invasion of Ireland, Norman writer Gerald of Wales wrote in his Topographia Hibernica that the Irish kings of Tyrconnell were inaugurated with a horse sacrifice. He writes that a white mare was sacrificed and cooked into a broth, which the king bathed in and drank from.[52] This has been seen as propaganda meant to paint the Irish as a barbaric people.[53] However, there may be some truth in the account; there are rare mentions of similar horse sacrifices associated with kingship in Scandinavia and India (see ashvamedha).[52]

18th century illustration of Julius Caesar's account.

There is evidence that ancient Celtic peoples practiced human sacrifice.[11] Accounts of Celtic human sacrifice come from Roman and Greek sources. Julius Caesar[54] and Strabo wrote that the Gauls burnt animal and human sacrifices in a large wickerwork figure, known as a wicker man, and said the human victims were usually criminals. Posidonius wrote that druids who oversaw human sacrifices foretold the future by watching the death throes of the victims.[55] Caesar also wrote that slaves of Gaulish chiefs would be burnt along with the body of their master as part of his funeral.[56] In the 1st century AD, Roman writer Lucan mentioned human sacrifices to the Gaulish gods Esus, Toutatis and Taranis. In a 4th century commentary on Lucan, an unnamed author added that sacrifices to Esus were hanged from a tree, those to Toutatis were drowned, and those to Taranis were burned.[57] According to the 2nd-century Roman writer Cassius Dio, Boudica's forces impaled Roman captives during her rebellion against the Roman occupation, to the accompaniment of revelry and sacrifices in the sacred groves of Andate.[58]

Ritual decapitation was a major religious and cultural practice which has found copious support in the archaeological record, including the numerous skulls discovered in Londinium's River Walbrook and the 12 headless corpses at the French late Iron Age sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde.[59]

Several ancient Irish bog bodies have been interpreted as kings who were ritually killed, presumably after serious crop failures or other disasters. Some were deposited in bogs on territorial boundaries (which were seen as liminal places) or near royal inauguration sites, and some were found to have eaten a ceremonial last meal.[60][61]

Stone head from Mšecké Žehrovice, Czech Republic, wearing a torc, late La Tène culture

The iconography of the human head is believed by many archaeologists and historians to have played a significant part in Celtic religion. It has been referred to as a "head cult"[62] or "cult of the severed head".[63] Among the Romans and Greeks, the Celts had a reputation as head hunters. Writing in the 1st century BC, the Greek historians Posidonius and Diodorus Siculus said Celtic warriors cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle, hung them from the necks of their horses, then nailed them up outside their homes.[62][64] Strabo wrote in the same century that Celts embalmed the heads of their most esteemed enemies in cedar oil and put them on display.[62][65] The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Boii beheaded the defeated Roman general after the Battle of Silva Litana, covered his skull in gold, and used it as a ritual cup.[62]

Archaeologists have found evidence that heads were embalmed and displayed by the southern Gauls.[66][67] In another example, at the southern Gaulish site of Entremont, there was a pillar carved with skulls, within which were niches where human skulls were kept, nailed into position, fifteen of which were found.[68] Roquepertuse nearby has similar heads and skull niches. Many standalone carved stone heads have been found in Celtic regions, some with two or three faces.[69] Examples include the Mšecké Žehrovice Head and the Corleck Head. Severed heads are a common motif in Insular Celtic myths, and there are many tales in which 'living heads' preside over feasts and/or speak prophecies.[62][69] The beheading game is a trope found in Irish myth and Arthurian legend.

John T. Koch says that the efforts taken to preserve and display heads, and the frequency with which severed heads appear, point to a religious importance.[62] Barry Cunliffe believed that the Celts held "reverence for the power of the head" and that "to own and display a distinguished head was to retain and control the power of the dead person".[70] Likewise, the archaeologist Anne Ross asserted that "the Celts venerated the head as a symbol of divinity and the powers of the otherworld, and regarded it as the most important bodily member, the very seat of the soul".[71] The folklorist Hilda Ellis Davidson also said they seem to have venerated the head as "the seat of consciousness and wisdom".[69] Miranda Aldhouse-Green refuted suggestions "that the head itself was worshipped, but it was clearly venerated as the most significant element in a human or divine image representing the whole."[72] However, the historian Ronald Hutton criticised the idea of a head cult, believing that both the literary and archaeological evidence did not warrant this conclusion. He noted "the frequency with which human heads appear upon Celtic metalwork proves nothing more than they were a favourite decorative motif, among several, and one just as popular among non-Celtic peoples."[73]

Two druids, from an 1845 publication, based on a bas-relief found at Autun, France.

According to a number of Greco-Roman writers such as Julius Caesar,[74] Cicero,[75] Tacitus[76] and Pliny the Elder,[77] Gaulish and British society held a group of magico-religious specialists known as the druids in high esteem. Their roles and responsibilities differed somewhat between the different accounts, but Caesar's, which was the "fullest" and "earliest original text" to describe the druids,[78] described them as being concerned with "divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, private or public, and the interpretation of ritual questions." He also claimed that they were responsible for officiating at human sacrifices, such as the wicker man burnings.[74] Nonetheless, a number of historians have criticised these accounts, believing them to be biased or inaccurate.[79][80] Vernacular Irish sources also referred to the druids, portraying them not only as priests but as sorcerers who had supernatural powers that they used for cursing and divination and who opposed the coming of Christianity.[81]

Various historians and archaeologists have interpreted the druids in different ways; Peter Berresford Ellis for instance believed them to be the equivalents of the Indian Brahmin caste,[82] while Anne Ross believed that they were essentially tribal priests, having more in common with the shamans of tribal societies than with the classical philosophers.[83] Ronald Hutton meanwhile held a particularly sceptical attitude to many claims made about them, and he supported the view that the evidence available was of such a suspicious nature that "we can know virtually nothing of certainty about the ancient Druids, so that – although they certainly existed – they function more or less as legendary figures."[84]

In Ireland the fili were visionary poets, which many get confused with Vates, associated with lorekeeping, versecraft, and the memorisation of vast numbers of poems. They were also magicians, as Irish magic is intrinsically connected to poetry, and the satire of a gifted poet was a serious curse upon the one being satirised.[85] In Ireland a "bard" was considered a lesser grade of poet than a fili – more of a minstrel and rote reciter than an inspired artist with magical powers. In the Welsh tradition, the poet is always referred to as a "bardd".

The Celtic poets, of whatever grade, were composers of eulogy and satire, and a chief duty was that of composing and reciting verses on heroes and their deeds, and memorising the genealogies of their patrons. It was essential to their livelihood that they increase the fame of their patrons, via tales, poems and songs. In the 1st century AD, the Latin author Lucan referred to "bards" as the national poets or minstrels of Gaul and Britain.[86] In Roman Gaul the institution gradually disappeared, whereas in Ireland and Wales it survived into the European Middle Ages. In Wales, the bardic order was revived, and codified by the poet and forger Iolo Morganwg; this tradition has persisted, centred around the many eisteddfods at every level of Welsh literary society.