DRÚIDI and DRUIDISM. — From the Celtic druis (dru- augmentative and «vids, seer: “one who is very wise”; cf. Irish sui, Welsh syw in the same sense), according to some; from the Celtic trúa (“to have confidence,” “to believe”), according to others; or, again, from the Indo-European root for “oak” (cf. Greek δρύς): a Celtic priestly body based on recruitment by co-optation and training through initiatory practices of an esoteric character (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 14), charged with presiding over relations between the population and the divinities. To the original esoteric character, which slowly became obliterated, druidism substituted functions of a social and civic order.
As regards the origin of druidism, S. Reinach, M. Pokorny, A. Grenier, and others believe they discern in it the development of a priesthood of the native populations of Gaul, Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, to whom the megalithic constructions are attributable; Hubert, Dumézil, and others, noting instead that druidism had very close contacts with similar Indo-European priesthoods, and that the occurrence of a uniformly indigenous supremacy in religious matters throughout Gaul, Britain, and Ireland would be difficult, tend rather to place it within the framework of Indo-European religiosity.
To these two extreme theories must be added that of D’Arbois de Jubainville, who holds that druidism was brought to England by those early Celts who, known by the names of Goideli and Picti, settled on the island at a date between 1300 and 800 B.C. Druidic doctrine would therefore have found its elaboration during the course of the 1st millennium B.C., through the union of the beliefs of the natives with those of the Celts, and would have reached
Gaul during the 3rd century B.C., brought by those Belgae who, driven from their original settlements by the advance of the Germans, had arrived, through Gaul, in England and eastern Ireland, whence they would later have brought back to the continent the doctrine they had learned there.
Support for this theory is provided by the fact that druidism appears only among the western Celts, and not among those who, before 200 B.C., spread throughout Europe, having the West as their point of departure. The sole testimony to the presence of a Celtic priestly body in Cisalpine Gaul before the 3rd century (Livy, XXIII, 24), a priestly body interpreted by some as druidic, would not invalidate the theory, since relations between the two shores of the Channel must have been frequent even before the settlement of the Belgae. It should also be noted that the presence of druidism among those bands which, beginning probably in the 5th century and followed by others throughout the 3rd century B.C., began to invade the Balkan peninsula, must be ruled out: the drunemeton, an assembly charged with judging cases of murder (Strabo, XII, 5, 1), despite its phonetic affinity and the identity of its juridical function, should not, for philological reasons, be connected with the druidic institution. In any case, it seems logical that this priesthood originated in a single place: either in England (“discipline in Britannia reperta atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur” (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 13), whence the Celts would subsequently have disseminated it; or in the unfathomable cradle of the Celtic race, while admitting, even under the second hypothesis, a European center from which the diaspora of the doctrine later began.
The literary sources for knowledge of druidism are Greek and Latin classical authors and the writings of the evangelizers of Ireland. Both groups provide incomplete information; but whereas the first has value because it was contemporary with druidism and represents a compendium of historical information and an honest attempt at interpretation,
the second, both because of the diminished importance of druidism at the time of the spread of Christianity and because of the evangelizers’ understandable hostility, abounds in distortions and inaccuracies, and can therefore serve at most as a point of comparison.
Leaving aside a treatise on magic, formerly attributed to Aristotle, and the Succession of the Philosophers by Sotion (in Diogenes Laërtius), compromised by its lack of reliability, it is only with Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo that trustworthy testimonies are assembled. To these authors (who also drew upon the information of Posidonius of Apamea, who had stayed around 100 B.C. at Massilia and in Narbonese Gaul) must be added Ammianus Marcellinus, who, although writing in the 4th century, drew upon Timagenes (himself likewise dependent on Posidonius), the author of a history of Gaul written ca. A.D. 14, as well as many others.
The course of druidic training lasted twenty years (Pomponius Mela, III, 2, 19). The drúidi also practiced a teaching ministry in which all the young people of the privileged Gallic classes took part. The institution was organized into classes, founded on different degrees of learning, dignity, and, it is also to be believed, initiation. Diodorus Siculus (V, 31) distinguishes the drúidi into bards, drúidi, and diviners: the same division is attested by Strabo (IV, 4, chap. 197, 4), who, however, speaks of vates rather than diviners, by Ammianus Marcellinus (XV, 9, 8), and by the Irish sources. Over the entire body stood «praeest unus» (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 13; cf. the Vita tripartita of St Patrick), who presumably presided over the general assembly of the Carnutes, when, at a certain time of year, the drúidi gathered in a place considered sacred (Caesar, De bello Gallico, XVI, 13). This meeting perhaps took place in a forest (Pomponius Mela, III, 2, 19; Lucan, Pharsalia, 447-48; Pliny, Nat. hist., XVI, 249), which modern scholars identified as the forest of Orléans along the Loire, or at Dreux, or at Chartres.
Even in Caesar’s time the drúidi represented a privileged class (De bello Gallico, VI, 14): they were exempt from military service and from the payment of taxes. Exemption from military service, rather than appearing as a religious prohibition also found among other priestly bodies, among the Brahmans, for example, may be seen as recognition of the intertribal function of the drúidi, which made them strangers to internal conflicts and placed them in a position, when necessary, to subject a given people to judgment, or to intervene in the midst of a battle to separate the combatants (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 13; Strabo, IV, 4, 4; Diodorus Siculus, V, 31, 5).
The drúidi also exercised the functions of judges in disputes and in cases involving homicide, inheritance, and boundaries. Whoever failed to respect their judgment was barred from sacrifices, a penalty that entailed exclusion from society (in Ireland, the administration of justice belonged to the «fili», corresponding to the vates of Gaul). Moreover, they had the power to appoint the king or other magistrates (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VII, 33).
(from W. Krause, Reignem der Ketten, Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte, II, Lipina 1933, p. 2)
DRÚIDI E DRUIDISMO - Dolmen surmounted by a cross, north of Carnac (Brittany).
...practiced with the aim of securing more abundant harvests: an agrarian motive to which the custom of execratio was not unrelated, whereby the Celts sought to destroy all the booty by fire, iron, or water. Caesar (De bello Gallico, VI, 16) and Strabo (IV, 4, 189) speak of a colossus woven from grasses and hay, filled with men, which was set on fire. The victims of the sacrifice were criminals, but, in their absence, innocent persons were used, perhaps prisoners of war. Before being sacrificed, the victims were kept alive for five years: either to give their relatives time to obtain the sum necessary for the ransom, or because the sacrifices were quinquennial. Immolations were also performed by striking the victims with arrows or crucifying them (Strabo, IV, 4, 198). The sacrifices also had a divinatory purpose, through the convulsions of the human victims or through the manner in which the blood flowed (Diodorus Siculus, V, 31, 2-5; Strabo, IV, 4, 198). Sacrifices were also offered for protection from death in battle (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 16). In the course of time, sacrifices for divinatory purposes were replaced by a rite in which a few drops of blood were drawn from the presumed victim (Pomponius Mela, III, 2, 18). The Druids also gathered oak mistletoe (Pliny, Nat. hist., XVI, 249), samolus, selago, and other plants whose therapeutic properties they knew (id., op. cit. XXIV, 103-104). The cult of megaliths, particularly of menhirs, also seems to be established; the Gauls are said to have continued to worship them because the Druids forbade giving the deities an anthropomorphic form. Even in the medieval period, the cult of stones was present in Gaul, in syncretism with Christianity—a cult against which the Councils of Arles (452), Tours (567), and Nantes (658), as well as a capitulary of Charlemagne (789), pronounced.
Among the body of beliefs, the highest was certainly belief in the immortality of the soul (Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 14), which reveals a yearning for the continuation of life after death and is connected with the thesis that the megalithic monuments, too, were the product of a conception of the soul’s survival. Related to this belief was the Celts’ habit of burning whatever might serve the dead in the afterlife (Caesar, op. cit., 19; Pomponius Mela, III, 2, 19), the practice of throwing letters onto the pyre so that the dead person might carry them to the others who had preceded him into the underworld (Diodorus Siculus, V, 28, 6), and that of lending one another money repayable in the afterlife (Valerius Maximus, II, 6, 10; Pomponius Mela, III, 2, 19). All possessed this certainty of immortal life until the day when fire and water would destroy everything (Strabo, IV, 4, 197, 4). Also connected with this doctrine of immortality was the Gauls’ belief that they had descended from Dispater, the god of the dead, from whom everything begins and to whom everything returns.
The fortunes of Druidism declined with the Roman conquest of Gaul; given the role of national leaders that the Druids might have assumed, the Roman state sought to relegate them as far as possible to obscurity. For this purpose, according to Suetonius, Augustus forbade Roman citizens to practice Druidism, while Tiberius first and then Claudius (Suetonius, Claudius, XXV) abolished it entirely. The institution, however, persisted much longer in England, where it vigorously opposed the introduction of Christianity.