Volume VII Part 8 (2/2)
In ancient times, and in all countries, the profession of physic was annexed to the priesthood. Men imagined that all their diseases were inflicted by the immediate displeasure of the Deity, and therefore concluded that the remedy would most probably proceed from those who were particularly employed in his service. Whatever, for the same reason, was found of efficacy to avert or cure distempers was considered as partaking somewhat of the Divinity. Medicine was always joined with magic: no remedy was administered without mysterious ceremony and incantation. The use of plants and herbs, both in medicinal and magical practices, was early and general. The mistletoe, pointed out by its very peculiar appearance and manner of growth, must have struck powerfully on the imaginations of a superst.i.tious people. Its virtues may have been soon discovered. It has been fully proved, against the opinion of Celsus, that internal remedies were of very early use.[9] Yet if it had not, the practice of the present savage nations supports the probability of that opinion. By some modern authors the mistletoe is said to be of signal service in the cure of certain convulsive distempers, which, by their suddenness, their violence, and their unaccountable symptoms, have been ever considered as supernatural. The epilepsy was by the Romans for that reason called _morbus sacer_; and all other nations have regarded it in the same light. The Druids also looked upon vervain, and some other plants, as holy, and probably for a similar reason.
The other objects of the Druid wors.h.i.+p were chiefly serpents, in the animal world, and rude heaps of stone, or great pillars without polish or sculpture, in the inanimate. The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror,--by his annual renewals, to raise admiration,--by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to serve for a variety of symbols,--and by all, to be an object of religious observance: accordingly, no object of idolatry has been more universal.[10] And this is so natural, that serpent-veneration seems to be rising again, even in the bosom of Mahometanism.[11]
The great stones, it has been supposed, were originally monuments of ill.u.s.trious men, or the memorials of considerable actions,--or they were landmarks for deciding the bounds of fixed property. In time the memory of the persons or facts which these stones were erected to perpetuate wore away; but the reverence which custom, and probably certain periodical ceremonies, had preserved for those places was not so soon obliterated. The monuments themselves then came to be venerated,--and not the less because the reason for venerating them was no longer known.
The landmark was in those times held sacred on account of its great uses, and easily pa.s.sed into an object of wors.h.i.+p. Hence the G.o.d Terminus amongst the Romans. This religious observance towards rude stones is one of the most ancient and universal of all customs. Traces of it are to be found in almost all, and especially in these Northern nations; and to this day, in Lapland, where heathenism is not yet entirely extirpated, their chief divinity, which they call _Storjunkare,_ is nothing more than a rude stone.[12]
Some writers among the moderns, because the Druids ordinarily made no use of images in their wors.h.i.+p, have given into an opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of the G.o.dhead. But this is no just consequence. The spirituality of the idea, admitting their idea to have been spiritual, does not infer the unity of the object. All the ancient authors who speak of this order agree, that, besides those great and more distinguis.h.i.+ng objects of their wors.h.i.+p already mentioned they had G.o.ds answerable to those adored by the Romans. And we know that the Northern nations, who overran the Roman Empire, had in fact a great plurality of G.o.ds, whose attributes, though not their names, bore a close a.n.a.logy to the idols of the Southern world.
The Druids performed the highest act of religion by sacrifice, agreeably to the custom of all other nations. They not only offered up beasts, but even human victims: a barbarity almost universal in the heathen world, but exercised more uniformly, and with circ.u.mstances of peculiar cruelty, amongst those nations where the religion of the Druids prevailed. They held that the life of a man was the only atonement for the life of a man. They frequently inclosed a number of wretches, some captives, some criminals, and, when these were wanting, even innocent victims, in a gigantic statue of wicker-work, to which they set fire, and invoked their deities amidst the horrid cries and shrieks of the sufferers, and the shouts of those who a.s.sisted at this tremendous rite.
There were none among the ancients more eminent for all the arts of divination than the Druids. Many of the superst.i.tious practices in use to this day among the country people for discovering their future fortune seem to be remains of Druidism. Futurity is the great concern of mankind. Whilst the wise and learned look back upon experience and history, and reason from things past about events to come, it is natural for the rude and ignorant, who have the same desires without the same reasonable means of satisfaction, to inquire into the secrets of futurity, and to govern their conduct by omens, dreams, and prodigies.
The Druids, as well as the Etruscan and Roman priesthood, attended with diligence the flight of birds, the pecking of chickens, and the entrails of their animal sacrifices. It was obvious that no contemptible prognostics of the weather were to be taken from certain motions and appearances in birds and beasts.[13] A people who lived mostly in the open air must have been well skilled in these observations. And as changes in the weather influenced much the fortune of their huntings or their harvests, which were all their fortunes, it was easy to apply the same prognostics to every event by a transition very natural and common; and thus probably arose the science of auspices, which formerly guided the deliberations of councils and the motions of armies, though now they only serve, and scarcely serve, to amuse the vulgar.
The Druid temple is represented to have been nothing more than a consecrated wood. The ancients speak of no other. But monuments remain which show that the Druids were not in this respect wholly confined to groves. They had also a species of building which in all probability was destined to religious use. This sort of structure was, indeed, without walls or roof. It was a colonnade, generally circular, of huge, rude stones, sometimes single, sometimes double, sometimes with, often without, an architrave. These open temples were not in all respects peculiar to the Northern nations. Those of the Greeks, which were dedicated to the celestial G.o.ds, ought in strictness to have had no roof, and were thence called _hypaethra_.[14]
Many of these monuments remain in the British islands, curious for their antiquity, or astonis.h.i.+ng for the greatness of the work: enormous ma.s.ses of rock, so poised as to be set in motion with the slightest touch, yet not to be pushed from their place by a very great power; vast altars, peculiar and mystical in their structure, thrones, basins, heaps or cairns; and a variety of other works, displaying a wild industry, and a strange mixture of ingenuity and rudeness. But they are all worthy of attention,--not only as such monuments often clear up the darkness and supply the defects of history, but as they lay open a n.o.ble field of speculation for those who study the changes which have happened in the manners, opinions, and sciences of men, and who think them as worthy of regard as the fortune of wars and the revolutions of kingdoms.
The short account which I have here given does not contain the whole of what is handed down to us by ancient writers, or discovered by modern research, concerning this remarkable order. But I have selected those which appear to me the most striking features, and such as throw the strongest light on the genius and true character of the Druidical inst.i.tution. In some respects it was undoubtedly very singular; it stood out more from the body of the people than the priesthood of other nations; and their knowledge and policy appeared the more striking by being contrasted with the great simplicity and rudeness of the people over whom they presided. But, notwithstanding some peculiar appearances and practices, it is impossible not to perceive a great conformity between this and the ancient orders which have been established for the purposes of religion in almost all countries. For, to say nothing of the resemblance which many have traced between this and the Jewish priesthood, the Persian Magi, and the Indian Brahmans, it did not so greatly differ from the Roman priesthood, either in the original objects or in the general mode of wors.h.i.+p, or in the const.i.tution of their hierarchy. In the original inst.i.tution neither of these nations had the use of images; the rules of the Salian as well as Druid discipline were delivered in verse; both orders were under an elective head; and both were for a long time the lawyers of their country. So that, when the order of Druids was suppressed by the Emperors, it was rather from a dread of an influence incompatible with the Roman government than from any dislike of their religious opinions.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _Digest. Lib. I. t.i.t. ii. De Origine et Progressu Juris, -- 6._
[8] Cic. Tusc. Quest. Lib. I
[9] See this point in the Divine Legation of Moses.
[10] ?a?? pa?t? ????????? pa?' ??? ?e?? ?f?? s????? ??a ?a?
?st????? ??a???feta?--Justin Martyr, in Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae.
[11] Norden's Travels.
[12] Scheffer's Lapland, p. 92, the translation.
[13] Cic. de Divinatione, Lib. I.
[14] Decor.... perficitur statione,.... c.u.m Jovi Fulguri, et Clo, et Soli, et Lunae aedificia sub divo hypaethraque const.i.tuentur. Horum enim deorum et species et effectus in aperto mundo atque lucenti praesentes videmus.--Vitruv. de Architect. p. 6. de Laet. Antwerp.
CHAPTER III.
THE REDUCTION OF BRITAIN BY THE ROMANS.
The death of Caesar, and the civil wars which ensued, afforded foreign nations some respite from the Roman ambition. Augustus, having restored peace to mankind, seems to have made it a settled maxim of his reign not to extend the Empire. He found himself at the head of a new monarchy; and he was more solicitous to confirm it by the inst.i.tutions of sound policy than to extend the bounds of its dominion. In consequence of this plan Britain was neglected.
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